Repackaging a Classic: The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

Repackaging a Classic: The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

Comments 1 comment


Cinder, Volume One of The Lunar Chronicles (Square Fish, February 2020). Cover by Tomer Hanuka

I don’t usually hang out in the young adult section at Barnes & Noble. OK, that’s a blatant lie. I gawk at the colorful table displays like a starving zombie at a Springsteen concert. Let me start over.

I love the young adult section at Barnes & Noble, but I don’t usually buy a lot of stuff. On the other hand, I don’t often come across book descriptions like this one.

Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move…. Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction.

A Cinderella retelling dressed up as cyberpunk noir, described as “a cross between Cinderella, Terminator, and Star Wars” by Entertainment Weekly? That’s worth twelve bucks. I totally missed Marissa Meyer’s Cinder when it was released in hardcover a decade ago, but I was delighted to bring the new paperback edition home with me, and you know what? I’m glad I did.

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: Constantine 2 is Finally (Almost) a Reality

Goth Chick News: Constantine 2 is Finally (Almost) a Reality

Comments 11 comments

Cover of Hellblazer #1 (January, 1988.). Art by Dave McKean

Everyone has a couple. You know, the movie or movies that serve as your mental comfort food. In the same way that you might long for Mac and Cheese or a PB&J when the world gets on your nerves, I bet you have movies you rewatch for the same reason. When asked, some of my day-job coworkers mentioned When Harry Met Sally, the original Star Wars, and Anchorman as films they put on to lift their spirits.

As you could probably guess, my go-to movies are slightly left of center. My top three in no particular order are Jaws (1975), the first Blade (1998) movie and Constantine (2005). I haven’t looked too closely as to why these stories provide me such a soothing mental distraction, or even what they have in common. But thankfully they are all streaming because I damaged more than one DVD of each taking them with me when I used to travel long stretches for work. I mean, nothing says “sweet home Chicago” like Bruce the shark.

Whereas both Jaws and Blade had more than one sequel, such as they were, Constantine did not. Based on a DC Comics character who first appeared in his own comic Hellblazer in 1988, John Constantine would go on to star in 300 issues, earning him third place in Empire’s 50 Greatest Comic Characters of All Time. So, it was not for lack of source material that we haven’t seen Keanu Reeves reprising his rendition of the cynical, chain-smoking occult detective, until now.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: The Last Blade Priest by W.P. Wiles

New Treasures: The Last Blade Priest by W.P. Wiles

Comments 2 comments


The Last Blade Priest (Angry Robot, July 2022). Cover design by Alice Claire Coleman

I’m a little late out of the gate with this one. The Last Blade Priest came out last summer and I ignored it, despite the warm reviews from most of the usual sources (GrimDark Magazine called it “a brilliant epic… one of my favorite new releases of this year,” and Publishers Weekly said it’s “gripping… demonstrates the value of thoughtful, well-planned worldbuilding.”)

But it wasn’t until I stumbled across Ian Mond’s review at Locus Online last fall (“The Last Blade Priest… unashamedly embraces the tropes of epic fan­tasy – the political shenanigans, complex magic systems, and ancient, enigmatic Gods – that make the genre so much fun to read”) that my interest was finally piqued, and I bought a copy.

…

Read More Read More

When You’re Lost in the Darkness: The Last of Us, Episode One

When You’re Lost in the Darkness: The Last of Us, Episode One

Comments 2 comments

Hello! It’s me. Your wildly introverted author/gamer, who is very excited to be sharing my thoughts with you regarding HBO’s recent adaptation of The Last of Us from the perspective of someone who absolutely loved the game on which it is based. I’ll be examining each episode independently.

Unfortunately, due to my working an obscene amount, I have limited time, so I’ll only be able to post every second week or so. For that reason, though they’re written shortly after each episode airing, each review will be far behind the episodes as they’re released. That’s alright, though, as I reckon it will leave plenty of time for you to watch each episode and I won’t have to worry about spoiling it for you, because there absolutely will be spoilers.

So, with that out of the way, let’s just dive right into episode one: When You’re Lost in the Darkness.

…

Read More Read More

Another Shelfie (#3): I Never get your limits, Byrne. There are Unexplored Possibilities…

Another Shelfie (#3): I Never get your limits, Byrne. There are Unexplored Possibilities…

Comments 2 comments
Click for enlarged view

I’ve done two posts here with Sherlock Holmes shelfies. If you missed those (shame on you!), I’ve been posting shelfies, with comments on some of the books, over in a bookshelf subreddit. With over 2,000 physical books, I’ve got a lot of shelves. The two shelfies I’ve done BG posts on, were Sherlock Holmes shelfies. No surprise there.

I have a Poly Sci undergrad, and I’m interested in some different areas of history. One that I have been interested in since my college days is the Constitutional Convention of 1787. My library is pretty impressive for just ‘some guy.’

So, I did a shelfie of my books on the Convention. Directly below that shelf is one with mostly-related books from that Founders Era. Together, there’s some pretty good stuff on the topic. So, here are my two shelfies, with a fair amount of commentary on most of the books.

I LOVE reading about the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and would spend time with these shelves if I wasn’t caught up in reading so much other stuff. I try to read/re-read something in this area every several years, at least.

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1787

I read Catherine Drinker Bowen’s Miracle in Philadelphia as a Poly Sci undergrad. It was one of those books that sets you on a path for the rest of your life (The Iliad is another). I have amassed quite the library for the American Constitutional Convention of 1787.

The two-set encyclopedia on the left is a terrific resource, which is also an online reference.

The Men Behind the Nation is a cool coffee-table book on the Founding Fathers.

…

Read More Read More

Haunted Trucks, Ghostly Theaters, and Creepy Picnics: The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XII, edited by Karl Edward Wagner

Haunted Trucks, Ghostly Theaters, and Creepy Picnics: The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XII, edited by Karl Edward Wagner

Comments 2 comments


The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XII (DAW, November 1984). Cover by Vicente Segrelles

The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XII was the twelfth volume in the DAW Year’s Best Horror series and the fifth edited by the great Karl Edward Wagner (1945–1994). The book was copyrighted and printed in 1984. After nine covers by Michael Whelan, we have a new cover artist, the Spanish artist Vicente Segrelles (1940–). I think this is a frightening cover and less fantastic than those that Whelan often did. I had this by my bed one night and actually turned the book over because the lich-woman in the mirror was sort of creeping me out. That’s pretty good horror art!

But an even bigger artistic change is that this is the first DAW Year’s Best Horror without the famous yellow DAW spine and the famous DAW yellow tag on the cover; though the DAW “number” is still ongoing, this one being 603. This major aesthetic switch came about for all of DAW’s titles in late 1984. I assume that the DAW powers-that-be thought after about twelve years a change was needed. Maybe, but it does sadly mark the end of an era in paperback publishing. Nevertheless, the cover font of The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XII is still similar to previous volumes, keeping it artistically in a line to some degree.

…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Space Opera and Space Odysseys edited by Brian Aldiss

Vintage Treasures: Space Opera and Space Odysseys edited by Brian Aldiss

Comments 12 comments


Space Opera and Space Odysseys (Futura, July and December 1974). Covers by Eddie Jones

Brian Aldiss had a long and enviable career at the top of the science fiction field, with dozens of novels to his credit, and nearly three dozen collections.

But in his long career he also produced some excellent anthologies. In partnership with Harry Harrison he released nine annual volumes of Best SF (1967-1975), three retrospective titles looking at SF of the 1940s to the 1960s (Decade: The 1940s and its sequels), and fine standalone titles such as The Astounding-Analog Reader and Farewell Fantastic Venus! But on his own he also assembled several terrific volumes, including a few we’ve looked at in the past, including Galactic Empires, Volumes One & Two and Perilous Planets.

Today I want to examine two wonderful paperback anthologies he released in 1974 with Futura in the UK (and later reprinted in the US in incomplete editions): Space Opera and Space Odysseys, which contain stories by Robert Sheckley, Donald Wandrei, Daniel F. Galouye, Edmond Hamilton, James E. Gunn, Philip K. Dick, Leigh Brackett, Ray Bradbury, Jack Vance, A. E. van Vogt, Charles Harness, Randall Garrett, Isaac Asimov, Fredric Brown, Arthur C. Clarke, Edward E. Smith, Alfred Bester, Frank Belknap Long, James Tiptree, Jr. Ross Rocklynne, F. M. Busby, Poul Anderson, Walter M. Miller, Jr., and many others.

…

Read More Read More

400 pages of the Best of the Modern Weird: Weird Fiction Review #12 from Centipede Press

400 pages of the Best of the Modern Weird: Weird Fiction Review #12 from Centipede Press

Comments 2 comments


Weird Fiction Review #12 (Centipede Press, October 2022). Front and back covers by Stephen Fabian

Weird Fiction Review, edited by John Pelan and published annually by Centipede Press, has gradually established itself as the premier magazine of modern dark fantasy. It’s published a dozen issues so far and has included fiction by Simon Strantzas, Steve Rasnic Tem, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Laird Barron, Victor LaValle, Stephen Graham Jones, Marc Laidlaw, Joseph S. Pulver, Brian Stableford, Darrell Schweitzer, John Shirley, and many, many more.

But I think the reason I love this mag — aside from its incredible production values and huge size (issues typically run around 400 pages) — is the excellent non-fiction. It brings genuine scholarship to fascinating topics, with lengthy and entertaining articles on things like a history of the legendary Gnome Press by Stefan Dziemianowicz, a brief history of Mexican Horror Comic Books by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a survey of The Horror Pulps 1933-1940 by Robert Weinberg, an essay on EC Comics by E. B. Boatner, Collecting Karl Edward Wagner’s Carcosa by Ron Clinton, 90 Years of Amazing Stories by Joseph Wrzos, and a regular column on Forgotten Masters of the Weird Tale by editor John Pelan that has covered Nictzin Dyalhis, Paul Ernst, Arthur Leo Zagat, Sax Rohmer, C. Hall Thompson, Walter Owen, Edmund Snell, and Wyatt Blassingame.

The latest issue features fiction by Caitlin R. Kiernan, Laird Barron, Victor LaValle, Stephen Graham Jones, Scott Bradfield and others, plus a full-color Stephen Fabian Art Gallery, an appreciation of the film Let’s Scare Jessica to Death by John Llewellyn Probert, an interview with Weirdbook publisher W. Paul Ganley by Darrell Schweitzer, an article on William F. Nolan by Jason V. Brock, an interview with Graham Masterton by Dave Roberts — and a celebration of the life and work of Weird Fiction Review’s editor John Pelan, who tragically past away on April 11, 2021.

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News Reviews: Ghost Eaters by Clay McLeod Chapman

Goth Chick News Reviews: Ghost Eaters by Clay McLeod Chapman

Comments 0 Comment

Ghost Eaters (Quirk Books, September 20, 2022)

Author Clay McLeod Chapman only recently teamed up with Quirk Books, one of my all time favorite sources of strange and unusual stories. For that reason alone he should have been on my radar, not to mention that he is a prolific writer of comics, short stories and several other novels, most of the creepy variety. No, I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I made Chapman’s acquaintance via a suggestion from Amazon, whose algorithms, I must now grudgingly admit, know me pretty well.

In searching for some fun reading material to see me through a mind-numbing four-day business trip bracketed by an even more mind-numbing 9 hour round trip flight, Amazon served me up Ghost Eaters: A Novel as something I might like. Described by Esquire magazine as “Trainspotting meets Requiem For A Dream, rewritten as an avant-garde horror movie soundtracked by Nine Inch Nails,” it was a no-brainer that I was going to load this one on my tablet. However, I also hedged my bets by loading several other e-books by more familiar writers just in case this story couldn’t hold me.

Let me just tell you now, I needn’t have bothered.

…

Read More Read More

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Fury of the Norsemen

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Fury of the Norsemen

Comments 5 comments

The Viking (USA, 1928)

Considering there were only about a dozen-and-a-half movies about Vikings released in the first hundred years of filmmaking, they had a cultural impact far exceeding their number, establishing a clear and consistent archetype of the Viking warrior that holds true even today. All the tropes and visual hallmarks of that archetype were in place in the first full feature, 1928’s The Viking, and didn’t really change much over the subsequent 80 years. Interest peaked in the early ‘60s with a spate of films from both Hollywood and Italy, represented here by Mario Bava’s Knives of the Avenger, and didn’t get much of a rethink until Terry Jones’ Erik the Viking (1989), with its attempt to turn the genre on its head and simultaneously explore its mythic roots.

The last ten years have seen another upswing in interest in Vikings onscreen, starting with video game Skyrim in 2011 and the Vikings TV series in 2013, and there’s no sign of it slacking off, so it seems a timely moment for a quick survey of the genre’s beginnings. I hope you enjoy it.

…

Read More Read More