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sLast week, I looked at Marvin Albert as “Ian MacAlister’s” Strike Force 7. Three weeks ago, I had some good luck at the library book sale. I picked up nine James Bond novels by Ian Fleming, Signet/New American Library editions from the 60s and early 70s. Found a nice Modesty Blaise paperback with Robert McGinnis […]
Up to this point, this light novel survey has been focused on stories set in the writers’ present. The recent history of the medium can be organized into three great periods: the secondary fantasy worlds of the 1980s and 1990s, the primary fantasy adventures of the 1990s and 2000s, and the isekai portal fantasies of the 2000s and […]
Desperate last stands, alien invasions, and the mysteries of Mars fill this week’s newest science fiction releases. Alabaster Noon (The Four Horsemen: Omega War #12) – Mark Wandrey and Chris Kennedy The invasion of Earth is a broken dream, a victim of Peepo’s ability to play the long game better than anyone thought possible. With […]
SUPERVERSIVE: “Is that a JoJo Reference?”, the Livestream
Tuesday , 25, June 2019 Superversive Leave a commentBen Wheeler and I, Anthony Marchetta, with a surprise visit from authoress April Freeman, take a deep dive into “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” with the finale of the Part 5 anime just a few weeks away. (Amos Bellomy is me, just an old Google username that’s still on my account.) Incidentally, part 5 is awesome and […]
Sensor Sweep: Super Heroes, In the Labyrinth, Dennis Etchison, H. Rider Haggard, Zorro
Monday , 24, June 2019 Sensor Sweep 8 CommentsCinema (Walker’s Retreat): Netflix premiered Neon Genesis Evangelion. The new translation, coupled with music rights failures, means that Netflix fucked up a sure thing. No one is happy with it. The SJWs are mad at the change to Shinji’s relationship to Kaworu. Fans are mad at the removal of “Fly Me To The Moon”. Other translation […]
Two months ago, I wrote a piece about Marvin Albert writing as “Ian MacAlister’s” Skylark Mission. Strike Force 7 was the third novel under this pseudonym. Another Fawcett Gold Medal paperback from June 1974. Originally sold for $.95 cents. The cover has a distinct pulp atmosphere to it. Strike Force 7 has a contemporary setting […]
Previous entries in this light novel recommendation series have explored Tolkien’s primary and secondary worlds, with the aim of explaining the mechanics of isekai portal fantasies that take characters from the present and fling them into fantasy worlds. As a result, the selections have dealt with heroes from the primary world–our world. But self-contained and internally consistent fantasy worlds […]
Finales and debuts, steampunk and litRPG gamerpunk, dungeon lords and adventurous raiders, and the return of the Destroyermen feature in this week’s fantasy new releases. Bloodwood Forest – Jeremy Fabiano and Cadeen Fabiano A deadly curse. A life hanging in the balance. One girl holds the key. Catherine knows one thing: She needs to get stronger. Much […]
This is a guest post by Rich. Take it away: It has now been more than forty years since small press stalwart David Madison shot himself dead in an Arlington railway yard. He was twenty six years old. I do not presume to understand why he did this. And I am not about to […]
Friend of the blog, Karl K. Gallagher, best known for his Torchship trilogy of hard sci-fi novels (previously reviewed here), took a swing at the fantasy genre fastball this spring with the release of his Lost War duopoly. The result is a solid, stand-up triple with much to recommend it. It’s a wild blend of […]
Brand new from DMR Books is Byron A. Roberts’ The Chronicles of Caylen-Tor. I have mentioned Roberts’ fiction in the past in Swords of Steel and Swords of Steel III. The Chronicles of Caylen-Tor is a collection of three novellas along with some appendices. The setting is antediluvian, just before the “Second Cataclysm.” “The Siege […]