Blog Archives
sSensor Sweep: Anime loss, Nintendo lawsuit, Dragoncon, Paladins, Men’s Adventure Magazines
Monday , 22, July 2019 Sensor Sweep 4 CommentsFantasy Fiction (Forbes): The fantasy genre has exploded in recent years with the popularity of hit series like Harry Potter and A Song Of Ice And Fire. Fantasy first hit its stride in popular culture with old, pulp sword-and-sorcery stories like Conan the Barbarian and sword-and-planet fare like The Princess Of Mars. Later, J.R.R. Tolkien sparked the modern era of fantasy fiction […]
Sensor Sweep: Sword & Sorcery, Tales From the Magician’s Skull, Boxing, C.S. Lewis, RIFTS
Monday , 15, July 2019 Sensor Sweep 2 CommentsLit-Crit/Culture Wars (Brain Leakage): They always featured their alpha male heroes in exotic locations, getting into fist fights, knife fights, and gun fights. The women were always fast and dangerous. The bad guys were always powerful and ruthless. The covers usually depicted some hard case with a gun, striking a tough guy pose with a […]
Sensor Sweep: Philip K. Dick, Anti-Heroes, Black Colossus, Derleth Mythos, Robert Heinlein
Monday , 8, July 2019 Sensor Sweep 3 CommentsPhilip K. Dick (Salon): Once considered a cult figure, the science fiction author Philip K. Dick is now recognized as one of the most prescient and powerful writers of the 20th century. His work not only foreshadowed many of the technological anxieties and possibilities of our era, but shaped the sensibility of the sixties and seventies […]
Sensor Sweep: S-F Weapons, Thomas Ligotti, Savage Minicrate, Michael Whelan, Starman Jones
Monday , 1, July 2019 Sensor Sweep, Uncategorized 6 CommentsCinema (IGN.com): The concept of the sci-fi weapon also has its allure. Whether it’s a cyborg hero taking down villains with some kind of crazy blaster, or evil Dark Lords wiping out entire planets with their mechanical monstrosities, there is no doubt that the destructive capabilities of such futuristic weaponry appeal to a certain base […]
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 […]
Sensor Sweep: Spears of Clontarf, Mech, Max Brand, Melee, Dresden Files
Monday , 3, June 2019 Sensor Sweep 7 CommentsRobert E. Howard (Jeffro Johnson): This is a great story, a fascinating piece. In the first place, it shows us up close the sort of peoples, Christian and pagan, that produced the bedrock of the myth and legends that would define our base concepts of fantasy and heroism. But it also presents the notion that […]
Sensor Sweep: Roger Zelazny, Tros of Samothrace, Fred Saberhagen, Eyrie of the Dread Eye, Charles Beaumont
Monday , 20, May 2019 Sensor Sweep 1 CommentAuthors (Rich Horton): Roger Zelazny would have been 82 today, but, dammit, he died way too young in 1995. I loved his short fiction but I haven’t written a lot about it, so instead I’ve taken four rather short bits, capsules, really, that I did of four of his novels, for my SFF Net newsgroup […]
Sensor Sweep: Heir to the Empire, Fletcher Pratt, Ki Khanga, Jack Williamson, 1990s Comic Books
Monday , 6, May 2019 Sensor Sweep 7 CommentsCinema (Kairos): An anonymous commenter on yesterday’s post asks who should have been cast in a hypothetical 1993 film adaptation of Heir to the Empire. The hour when such a film could have been made has long since passed, but wistful speculation on what might have been is all Star Wars fans have left. Without further ado, here […]
Sensor Sweep: Paperback Fanatic, Ben Bova, Tros of Samothrace, Warhammer
Monday , 29, April 2019 Sensor Sweep 4 CommentsPopular Culture (Men’s Pulp Mags): Justin Marriott and Paul Bishop are two of my favorite pulp culture mavens. (“Pulp culture” is a term I borrowed from the book of that name by Frank M. Robinson and Lawrence Davidson and expanded to encompass both early pulp magazines and pulp art and later magazines, books and movies that have pulpy DNA, such as men’s adventure magazines and action/adventure […]