Not So Juvenile: Star Man’s Son / Daybreak 2250 A.D. by Andre Norton

Thursday, May 14, 2026 William Stoddard Comments 5 comments

*Daybreak 2250 AD*, originally published as *Star Man’s Son*, one half of Ace Double D-69 (Ace Books, 1954). Cover artist unknown

I started intentionally looking for science fiction to read in elementary school. Our city library had one big room full of fiction for young readers, from preschool through high school, so I found books that were meant for readers older than I was — but I enjoyed reading them, even if I didn’t understand everything that happened to their protagonists. The top two science fiction writers, for me and I think for a lot of other people, were Robert Heinlein and Andre Norton.

Norton had written half a dozen novels, mostly historical, before she ventured into science fiction in 1952 with Star Man’s Son. But it seems to have been successful; she wrote a new fiction novels nearly every year for some time after that, and I went on reading the library copies at least up through Catseye in 1961.

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High Fantasy in the Tolkien tradition: The Iron Tower Trilogy by Dennis L. McKiernan

Wednesday, May 13, 2026 Charles Gramlich Comments 12 comments

The Iron Tower Trilogy: The Dark Tide, Shadows of Doom, and The Darkest Day
(Signet, August 1985, September 1985, and October 1985). Covers by Alan Lee

I recently posted some of my thoughts about High Fantasy. I haven’t read a large amount from that field but I did read Dennis L. McKiernan’s first trilogy of books, the Iron Tower trilogy, which is definitely High Fantasy written very strongly in the Tolkien tradition.

Here’s my review of those three books, which I read in an omnibus edition.

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Mortal Kombat II – A Movie Review

Tuesday, May 12, 2026 S.M. Carrière Comments 2 comments

Good afterevenmorn, Readers!

This past Saturday, I headed out with a few of my martial arts students, past and present, to watch the second installment of the recent Mortal Kombat adaptations. I’m not going to lie, the draw for me was the involvement of Karl Urban as Johnny Cage. Cage was never a character I played, but the retired action movie star is a fun idea for this franchise, and I will generally support anything Karl Urban does. Even when it’s bad, he’s great in it. And sometimes when it’s bad, it’s good. Ask me about my love of the 2005 film Doom one day. I never said I had great taste.

The point is, I went and saw the movie, and the short review is, I loved it (see afore mentioned note about my tastes). Let’s dive in!

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Ten Things: Tubi TV Edition

Monday, May 11, 2026 Bob Byrne Comments 2 comments

So, last week, I talked about ten movies that you can stream for free over on Tubi. I could easily list ten or twenty more. There’s a lot of good stuff there.

I’m also watching TV shows on Tubi. Of course, a multiple season show takes a lot longer to work through, than a single movie. It’s got some cool animated shows, like Pinky and the Brain, The Looney Tunes Show, and The Pirates of Darkwater. I’ll probably do a post like this on just cartoons.

But today we’ll talk about live-action shows. Now, PlutoTV is terrific for TV shows. Entire channels dedicated to Star Trek shows, mysteries, Westerns, etc.. And I’m leaning into RokuTV (also free). But let’s look at ten shows you can catch on Tubi. Some of the biggest hits are there, but I’ll try to focus on some others.

A reminder: I talked here about how I was finally fed up with all the streaming apps I needed to watch stuff. So, except for Prime (the family orders a lot of stuff from Amazon), I cut the chord on all of them. I’m missing Daredevil, and didn’t watch a single Pittsburgh Penguins playoff game (I did listen to all of them). But it’s going fine.

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Fauxnan the Barbarian, Part Two

Sunday, May 10, 2026 Neil Baker Comments 21 comments

A veritable cornucopia of dodgy barbarian and barbarian-adjacent movies that I have never watched before, and will probably never watch again. Enjoy Part One here.

Gor (1987) – USA/Italy

Another nail in the Cannon coffin lid, this effort to start a franchise based on the uncomfortable series of novels by John Norman spawned one sequel, and then went belly up before things could get worse.

It follows the same basic plot of the books; dull physics prof Tarl Cabot (Urbano Barbarini — dull as a dish cloth) owns a family heirloom macguffin that transports him to the barbaric planet of Gor, where he must right some wrongs and show the locals that human is best — so far, so very Barsoomy.

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An Obscure 70s Fantasy: The Vanishing Tower, by Michael Moorcock

Saturday, May 9, 2026 Rich Horton Comments 7 comments

The Vanishing Tower (DAW Books, June 1977). Cover by Michael Whelan

Here’s another in my series of reviews of “mostly obscure” 1970s/1980s books — the last one was of Evangeline Walton’s The Children of Llyr. That book was published in 1971, and so was the original edition of The Vanishing Tower (first titled The Sleeping Sorceress.)

And already I can hear people asking “Obscure? Obscure?! Evangeline Walton’s Mabinogion retellings were not really obscure, and Michael Moorcock’s Elric novels are not remotely obscure!”

And I apologize — because you’re right. This novel in particular is part of one of the major sword and sorcery series of all time. Yet — as with the The Children of Llyr — it’s a book I myself didn’t read until just now, over 50 years after it first appeared.

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Forgotten Authors: Miles J. Breuer

Friday, May 8, 2026 Steven H Silver Comments 1 comment

Miles J. Breuer was born in Chicago on January 3, 1889, but the family moved to Crete, Nebraska when he was four years old so his father could attend medical school. He attended the University of Texas and went on to medical school at Rush Medical Center. He worked as an internist, specializing in tuberculosis at Lincoln General Hospital in Nebraska. He often bylined his work with his credentials as an M.D.

In 1916, he married Julia Strejc and they had three children, Rosalie, Stanley (who died at 18 when he fell from St. Isabel Glacier), and Mildred. During World War I, he served in France and achieved the rank of first lieutenant in the Medical Corps. Upon his return to the U.S., he joined his father’s medical practice and began publishing medical articles in Czech language newspapers and a monthly medical column in a Czech-language agricultural magazine. He published the Index of Physiotherapeutic Technic in 1925, outlining physical therapy practices.

His first English language science fiction story, “The Man with the Strange Head” appeared in the January 1927 issue of Amazing Stories, however, it was previously published as “Muž se zvláštní hlavou” in a Czech language almanac published in Chicago. He also appears to have published “The Man without an Appetite” in the Czech magazine Bratrský věstník in 1916, although it didn’t see English publication until 1963. His Czech stories tended to be published under the name Miloslav J. Breuer, and he continued to publish in Czech throughout his early writing career.

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Dark Muse News: Sword & Sorcery Chain Story (#19-#23)

Thursday, May 7, 2026 SELindberg Comments 0 Comment

In August 2025, we hailed the emergence of a second Chain Story project championed by Michael A. Stackpole. This is a Sword & Sorcery-focused, contagious set of connected (“chained”) stories.

Each is:

A standalone tale
Readable in any order
Free to read!
Interconnected via a theme involving a Crown

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A Sword & Planet Graphic Novel: Bigfoot: Sword of the Earthman by Josh S. Henaman, Andy Taylor, and Tamra Bonvillain

Wednesday, May 6, 2026 Charles Gramlich Comments 2 comments

*Bigfoot: Sword of the Earthman* Volume 1, collecting issues 1 – 6 (Action Lab Entertainment, August 2, 2016)

Dipping back into the Sword & Planet genre, here’s one of the odder items I have. Bigfoot: Sword of the Earthman, subtitled “The Galaxy’s Greatest Action-Adventure Hero.” As far as I can tell, Josh Henaman is the writer, with Andy Taylor (Penciller), Tamra Bonvillain (Colorist), and Adam Wollet (Letterer).

This is a graphic novel collecting the first six issues of the story. I bought this because it was billed as sword & planet set on Mars, and featuring Bigfoot. It mostly was, although not quite what I was hoping it might be.

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