ratiocinations out of thin air and elsewhere
I HAVE ALWAYS loved fantasy and science-fiction, even the endless lame movies that we watched at family night at the drive-ins back in the early ’60s. By the end of that decade, I was hooked on the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line of novels and the Dangerous Visions school of science-fiction.
In this category I address/review/criticize books and the people who write them—especially the work of Poul Anderson, Philip Dick, Harlan Ellison, Anne McCaffrey, and Norman Spinrad.
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TWENTY ODD YEARS AGO, I was turned on to Glimpses, a novel by Lewis Shiner. I’d never heard of the author but as I don’t keep up with much of anything anymore (it’s the old age thing), that wasn’t surprising. Because of the source of the recommendation, I read the book and thought it might be an Americanized form of “magical realism.” [Read more] “shawna mccarthy created a space of her own”
THE TRAILER for the 2001 movie A Knight’s Tale did not impress us, but fourteen years later a friend brought the DVD over so we were obliged to sit through it. The star, Heath Ledger, had impressed us in his tour de force as the Joker in The Dark Knight (2008). [Read more] “on writing about knights and jousting with darragh metzger”
I FOUND MY AGING COPY of Poul Anderson’s Brain Wave when I discovered Joachim Boaz’s site Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations. I read Joachim’s take on Poul Anderson’s novel—he considered it “vaguely good”—and the comments submitted by his readers and I disagreed with certain observations of theirs. So, I want to address a few of those issues here on my site. [Read more] “on poul anderson’s brain wave”
I JUST HAD A ‘WHAT A COINCIDENCE’ MOMENT! They are not all that dissimilar from deja vu moments, except the sometimes slightly scary feeling that accompanies the latter is rarely part of the former. When coincidence occurs to me, I am usually delighted, rarely frightened into believing some form of pre-determinism, as deja vu can do. [Read more] “yet more on science fiction and fantasy (is this modern science fiction part 6?)”
IF I SAID that all ‘modern’ fantasy can be traced to one author and one story, J.R.R. Tolkien and The Lord Of The Rings, few would argue. While aficionados and historians can make arguments for the influence of Lord Dunsany, James Branch Cabell, and others, almost all the well-known fantasy titles of the past four decades can be traced to the tales of the Bilbo and Frodo Baggins and the One Ring. [Read more] “modern science fiction and the gimme part 5 – on modern fantasy and the gimme”