Grown Up Book Report: Killer’s Payoff, by Ed McBain
The last twenty years of publishing has really done a number on the second hand book market. As a kid, you couldn’t swing a dead cat in a used bookstore without hitting some high quality writing. Near as I can tell, the early Heinlein novels and Conan collections and...
Modern Sci-Fi, Why Do I Even Bother?
Overdrive is the poor man’s Audible. It’s a cell phone program that allows you to check out books from your local public library. You can even listen to audio books which you can download from Project Gutenberg’s Audio Books section or through the local library branch. The books available on Project...
Thoughts on the Pulp Revolution
As mentioned previously, the publishing world is undergoing a revolution, and the pulp revolution is just one outgrowth of the changes roiling the market. I use the term ‘pulp revolution’ mainly because smarter men than I use it, but also because it encapsulates the salient points of the changes taking...
Boosting the Signal: Geek Gab
If you haven’t listened to the latest edition of Geek Gab yet, it’s well worth your time. Just be ready for a bombastic introduction by Daddy Warpig; he settles down after the first couple of minutes, and while still excited, drops the slow yelling. P. Alexander is the guest...
Street Fight: The Karl Barber Collection
Karl Barber is a modern day action hero fighting the good fight to make the world a better place, one job at a time. From stopping rapacious transnational lumber corporations in the jungles of Cambodia to fighting violent human traffickers in the southwest American deserts, Karl sets out to do...
This Is Why We Fight
It’s everywhere. Cruising around with my daughter as she peck, peck, pecked at her cell phone, she snorted in disgust. “This stupid game,” she sneered. “You see what I have to deal with?” At the next stoplight she showed me what was on the screen. She had been playing...
What It’s All About
You, gentle reader, are not alone. Thanks to the kind and generous support of fellow travelers Jeffro, PC Bushi, and Cirsova, the traffic on this blog has jumped to levels that should have taken months to reach. Before we get into a timely introduction for recent regular visitors, let...
Stranger Things, It’s Decent
We’re almost living in golden age of television production. The production costs are lower, the transmission methods varied, and the consumer market fractured to the point that it is easier than ever to allow for quality production of niche programming. Producers are free to be daring, take risks, and...
Pepe!
Who, me? A funny thing happened on the way to the regularly scheduled Democratic candidate speech dedicated to calling Republican voters racist. While describing the latest oogity-boogity man to shore up support from the perpetually frightened voters, some non-violent protestor exercised his right to freedom of speech by shouting out,...
Two Panels Diverged
While shouldering my way through a particularly grinding commute this week, I found myself with the time to listen to a pair of mp3’s that had been sitting on my phone. The first was a recording of the 2016 Worldcon panel on “State of Short Fiction”that saw its moderator,...