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Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Month: October 2015

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High-Rise: Lord of the Flies in an urban luxury high-rise

High-Rise by J.G. Ballard

If you had the chance, would you live in a massive, 1,000-unit luxury high-rise with its own supermarket, liquor shop, schools, pools, gyms, etc.? Instead of living in some dreary suburb with boring, prosaic neighbors, why not join an elite group of young and successful professionals, like-minded and sophisticated, with immaculate taste and superb social connections? Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to join the elite upper echelons of society? This is the scenario that J.G. Ballard creates in High-Rise (1975),


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October 16th, 2015. and ´s rating: | | , , | SFF Reviews | 17 comments |

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Film: Night of the Creeps

Night Of The Creeps directed by Fred Dekker

Though something of a highly regarded cult item today, Fred Dekker’s first film, Night of the Creeps, was an unqualified flop when first released in August 1986, only recouping a little more than 1/10 of its $5 million budget. A highly amusing yet genuinely jolting mixture of comedy and horror, the film combined any number of disparate genres – the zombie film, the alien invasion film, the depressed/suicidal cop-seeking-redemption film, the frat house comedy – into one highly satisfying stew, and yet, for some reason,


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October 16th, 2015. ´s rating: | , | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

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Collaborative Cliché — Epic Fantasy Edition!

Every once in a while we invite all of you to join us in the cliché-fest we call Collaborative Cliché, invented by retired reviewer Ruth Arnell. Last year we rocked the urban fantasy world. This year, we return to an old favorite: Epic Fantasy. Ah, yes, those familiar tales of derring-do on a large canvas that are just a little too familiar. Help us embrace the cliché!

I’ll start us off. Then you continue the story by adding your cliché-ridden passage in the Comments Section. You can come back and add as many passages as you like.


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October 15th, 2015. | Thoughtful Thursday | 8 comments |

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Aftermath: A fast-paced, action-packed Star Wars reset

Aftermath by Chuck Wendig

I like STAR WARS but I am not a superfan. I have only seen 4.5 of the 6 current movies and to the best of my recollection I have never read a STAR WARS novel or novelization before this one. I think this daily-double of ignorance makes me the perfect reviewer for Chuck Wendig’s STAR WARS: AFTERMATH, part of THE JOURNEY TO THE FORCE AWAKENS series of novels tied in to the upcoming movie The Force Awakens.


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October 15th, 2015. ´s rating: | | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |

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The Blood Island Trilogy: Filipino horror cinema at its “best”

The Blood Island Trilogy directed by Eddie Romero

Surely one of the most beloved horror offerings in the history of Filipino cinema, Eddie Romero’s so-called Blood Island trilogy has been flabbergasting audiences for almost half a century now. Here, for your one-stop shopping pleasure, I offer three mini-reviews to help guide you through these remarkable sci-fi/horror outings:

BRIDES OF BLOOD: Wow, does this flick make for one wild and woolly experience! Brides of Blood (1968), the first adventure in the Blood Island trilogy, must be deemed, along with 1959’s Terror Is a Man,


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October 15th, 2015. ´s rating: | , | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |

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WWWednesday: October 14, 2015

This week’s Word for Wednesday: “Scobberlotcher,” a noun, means an idler, a slacker or lazy person. The first documented example of it in writing is in 1697, in one of historian John Aubrey’s Brief Lives  books. Writing of a university dean, Aubrey said that many students at the university were scobberlotchers who drank and wandered about and “telling the numbers of trees.”

I wonder if “scobberlotch” could be a verb.

Nobel Prize for Literature

Svetlana Alexievich won the Nobel Prize for Literature. She is best known for her book on Chernobyl,


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October 14th, 2015. | World Wide Wednesday | 4 comments |

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Concrete Island: Stranded in modernity like a latter-day Crusoe

Concrete Island by J.G. Ballard

In the early 1970s, J.G. Ballard was busily creating modern fables of mankind’s increasingly urban environment and the alienating effect on the human psyche. Far from humans yearning to return to their agrarian and hunter-gatherer roots, Ballard posited that modern man would begin to adapt to his newly-created environment, but at what price? Ballard’s protagonists in Crash (1973), Concrete Island (1974), and High-Rise (1975) are modern, urbane creatures, educated and detached,


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October 14th, 2015. ´s rating: | | , , | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

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Terry and Bill chat with Kameron Hurley

Today we welcome Kameron Hurley, the author of THE WORLDBREAKER SAGA, published by Angry Robot Books. The first two volumes are The Mirror Empire and Empire Ascendant, with a third, The Broken Heavens, expected to see publication in August 2017. Hurley’s saga deals with race, gender, sex roles, war, survival, slavery, genocide and many other hot topics in the context of war between and countries and between alternate worlds, with a number of philosophical issues raised along the way. We discuss the difficulty of writing about more than two genders,


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October 13th, 2015. and | | Author Interviews, Giveaway! | 22 comments |

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Crooked: Nixon is flawed, tortured, and completely compelling!

Crooked by Austin Grossman

Austin Grossman’s Crooked is the best book I’ve read this year. I expected good things from Lev Grossman’s twin brother, but not much otherwise as I am not — was not — a big fan of Nixon or, indeed, of American history in general. Let’s be real, I’m an unpatriotic Europhile who prefers reading about the Tudors to the Kennedys, who will always find the Norman Conquest more interesting than the American Civil War.


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October 13th, 2015. ´s rating: | | , , | SFF Reviews | 14 comments |

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Star of Gypsies: A beautiful story about exile, wandering, and coming home

Star of Gypsies by Robert Silverberg

In 3159 AD humans have spread across the universe, colonizing other planets. The spaceships that took them to the stars were piloted by the special “magic” of the Romany people. The Romany “Gypsies” have always been mistreated by the people of Earth who never realized their true history and nature. The Gypsies are not actually human. They are the remnant of an ancient race who escaped from their home planet thousands of years ago when it became inhospitable to life after its sun flared. According to prophecy,


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October 13th, 2015. ´s rating: | | , , | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |

Next SFF Author: Ben Aaronovitch

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