Monthly Archives:
sShort Reviews – Peril Orbit, by C.J. Wedlake
Friday , 30, September 2016 Book Review, Uncategorized 3 CommentsPeril Orbit by C.J. Wedlake appeared in the Summer 1949 Issue of Planet Stories. It can be read here at Archive.org. If Payne needed to fill up a couple of pages, he picked the right piece to do it with. Peril Orbit is a (very) short story of a one man craft that had attempted […]
SENSOR SWEEP: Tarzan’s Daughter-in-Law, Quixotic Publishers, Romantic Fiction, and Male-centric SF Adventure
Wednesday , 28, September 2016 Sensor Sweep 2 CommentsAppendix N (Cirsova) The Son of Tarzan — “Really, The Son of Tarzan could’ve just as easily been called The Daughter-in-Law of Tarzan. Though the narratives’ focus on Meriem doesn’t ratchet up into high gear until the middle of the novel, Burroughs has given us something that the first book lacked – a co-protagonist who […]
WARGAME WEDNESDAY: Avalon Hill’s The Arab-Israeli Wars – Part 3: The Chinese Farm (or That’s a Wrap)
Wednesday , 28, September 2016 Wargames 2 CommentsBefore calling it quits on this one, my dad wanted to do one last big tank vs. tank battle. The Chinese Farm scenario in The Arab Israeli Wars is one of the largest in terms of piece-count. Two contingents of Israeli armor and mobile infantry move in from the south and east against a string […]
SUPERVERSIVE: A Superversive Theory of Violence
Tuesday , 27, September 2016 Superversive 11 CommentsI’ve been trying to show my niece one of my favorite childhood films for some time now; probably a year or two. But I guess kids are pretty opinionated, want to watch what they know, and are sometimes a little obnoxious when they’re not being endearing. It was a war. She wanted to watch Star Wars […]
Guest Post by Misha Burnett: Zeitgeist by Bruce Sterling
Monday , 26, September 2016 Appendix X 3 CommentsParty Like It’s 1999: Bruce Sterling’s Zeitgeist Bruce Sterling is a fairly well known name in science fiction. He can be reasonably credited as one of the founders of the Cyberpunk movement and his novel The Difference Engine (co-written with William Gibson) helped to launch the Steampunk movement. I could talk about a lot of […]
The 2016 H. P. Lovecraft Re-read: The Dunwich Horror
Sunday , 25, September 2016 Fiction, Short Fiction 6 CommentsH. P. Lovecraft wrote “The Dunwich Horror” during the summer of 1928. S. T. Joshi states the story is a result of a tour of Athol and central Massachusetts at that time. The story is 17,524 words so about 5,000 more words than “The Colour Out of Space” and 6,500 words more than “The […]
Short Reviews – The Starbusters, by Alfred Coppel, Jr.
Friday , 23, September 2016 Book Review Leave a commentThe Starbusters by Alfred Coppel, Jr. appeared in the Summer 1949 issue of Planet Stories. It may be read here at Archive.org. Sometimes a story can have all the right pieces, but they can fail to come together in a satisfying way. Sadly, that is the case for Alfred Coppel’s The Starbusters. Commander “Strike” Strykalski […]
Guest Post by Scott Cole: A Conversation with Peter Grant
Thursday , 22, September 2016 Interview 2 CommentsBeyond reading some Louis L’Armour and watching Clint Eastwood I’ve never delved too deep into the Western genre. Recently, I wanted a change of pace and stumbled across Brings the Lightening. The story; of a paroled Confederate veteran named Walt and his quest to begin a new life out West sounded interesting, but the first scene, in which Walt avoids an ambush by equal measures of luck […]
Alexander over at The Players’ Aid has a rave review for Columbia Games’ Richard III: I cannot state emphatically enough how refreshing it is to play this game. The aesthetic is great, I also love the period and setting – I’ve never played another war game from this period. The time of play is a […]
REVIEW: “No Placeholder for You My Love” by Nick Wolven
Tuesday , 20, September 2016 Appendix N 5 CommentsThe pulps take a real beating in the press. You know the litany of slurs that are deployed every time old school science fiction and fantasy comes up. Even people that appreciate some of the classics feel compelled to denounce aspects of them just as they would tend to distance themselves from controversial political figures […]
SUPERVERSIVE: Unlikely Bastions of Superversion
Tuesday , 20, September 2016 Computer Games, Games, Superversive, Uncategorized 14 CommentsThe first and only video game I ever got in trouble for playing was Squaresoft’s Chrono Trigger. You see, early on in the game, there’s a chapel in the woods that has been taken over by monsters, and in order to keep the charade up and hide their dastardly deeds, several snake-women disguise themselves as […]
Nethereal was already the talk of the town it got book bombed by Larry Correia. The buzz shot up another order of magnitude when its author decided to book bomb himself in response to this year’s Hugo kerfuffle. Thanks to DragonCon, Nethereal‘s sequel became the first Indie title to win a major award. It was […]