I haven’t read The Hunger Games or the other books in the series, in part because I hadn’t caught much buzz but also just because I’ve been busy with other things. (The first book has been on my shelf about a year, as have many other books.) But I hadn’t heard much of the buzz,...
Read more →Before I begin, a caveat: I’m not really so well-read on the lives of golden-age American SF authors. Not so informed at all, and so there may be an unreasonable amount of assumption in what I’m suggesting below. I would love to be corrected if I am way off-base. Okay, with that aside: lately,...
Read more →I just ran across a really interesting quote on American culture, which was embedded in a discussion of jazz, but seems to apply quite well to American SF as well. Apparently, from 1961 to 1965, a British literary critic named A. Alvarez ran a show on BBC radio where writers talked about the intellectual...
Read more →Not long ago, I mentioned John Coltrane’s youthful interest in SF and pulp zines. But he was apparently also quite interested in science itself, something I’d suspected but don’t remember seeing confirmed as clearly as in this anecdote from David Amram, a French horn-playing jazz man who knew Trane in New York in the...
Read more →In the course of overhauling this site, I ran across an old character sheet I’d done up for what I’d be like if I were a character in the game Wraith: The Oblivion, which was my favorite RPG game back in the old days. Which sounds both dorky and gloomy, since most characters in...
Read more →Has everyone seen this? They’re not paying tons, but I like the concept — an anthology of speculative fiction about fungi. As a SF-writing homebrewer, you just know I’ve written something up for that….
Read more →Arguably one of the most significant musicians in American history (and unarguably one of the most significant saxophonists and jazz musicians ever), John Coltrane grew up in High Point, North Carolina. It might be a weird thing to bring up — where he grew up, that is...
Read more →So, I mentioned the Korean SF film Invasion of Alien Bikini a few weeks ago. Miss Jiwaku and I saw it tonight, and, well, to say it ruined out evening would be an understatement. I am going to tell you the whole plot here, so that you don’t have to see it, and know...
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