Total Recall Rewatch: Random Thoughts
Still holds up, for the most part. You have to set aside a whole lot of junk science to appreciate it, but as a late-80s actioner, it works. Yeah, the feeling of the thing is very much what the 1980s thought the future would look like, complete with over-large...
Always an Alternative
No entertainment product is indispensable. There is always an alternative, even if it’s just reading bible stories around the living room. The powerborkers – spelling intentional – forgot that the artificial little tribes they built around jerseys and colors mean a lot less to the public than the organic...
Thumb’s Up: The Vast of Night
This was pretty good. It’s a slow-burn mystery set in small-town New Mexico way back in the lost golden age of the 1950s. The plot revolves around a technically literate high-school girl – one who feels organically smart rather than performatively so because screw you manbabies – and a...
Fanning the Flames of Good Reading
There’s a couple of fresh new outrages going on in the drama llama club that is mainstream sci-fi. Somebody tried to publish a magazine that didn’t prostrate itself before the cult of Nu and got cancelled. Again. And something about Lovecraft. Again. BOR-ing! Rather than talk about that, why...
The Earth a Machine to Speak
Ya gotta understand that when I talk about “engineering porn”, I’m not talking about slinky women dressed immodestly and draped over trains. Sometimes people use that second word as a suffix that means, “gorgeous ideas about a typically innocuous thing elevated to a higher level by means of extraordinary...
T-Bird and Throttle #3
My hard copy order of Josh Howard’s T-Bird and Throttle arrived a week or so ago, and it got buried beneath a pile of other things. Last night, while zonked out on allergy meds, I reached for the shelf and the timing of grabbing TB&T couldn’t have been better. It...
Secrets of Blackmoor: The Movie
One for the wargames, oddly enough. The birth of Dungeons and Dragons is a strange and fascinating story of how creatives can draw forth order from the froth of chaos. I went into this film expecting a lot of defensive snark about how Gary Gygax was a Johnny-come-lately who...
Lord of the Fake News Flies
Like all American boys, I was reliably informed by people who should have known better that The Lord of the Flies was an important book that had important things to day and that asked important questions. Like all normal American boys, after reading it, the only question that I...
Book Clubbing
Alexandru over at The Dacian has a cunning plan. Every two weeks he will pick a short story worthy of discussion and give the stalwart Old Guard fans a chance to read and discuss across blogs. In his own words, he hopes to: foster an environment rich in community...
The Island, No Not That One *Updated*
We’re not talking about the 2005 Michael Bay clone escape film of the same name, we’re talking about a quiet little Russian flick that is pretty much the exact opposite. Although, this The Island isn’t without a good explosion and gunfight. Apparently I’m not the only one fleeing the...