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Horror Double Feature: Womaneater & Please Don’t Eat My Mother

In today’s Shocktober Double Feature, we will encounter Amazonian natives, a carnivorous tree, a man-eating houseplant and full-frontal nudity. It’s Womaneater and Please Don’t Eat My Mother!

WOMANEATER (1958)

For those of you wondering whether Pittsburgh-born beauty Marpessa Dawn ever made another film besides 1959’s classic Black Orpheus, here is your answer. She appeared one year earlier, as an Amazonian native at the opening of Charles Saunders’ Womaneater, being sacrificed to a carnivorous tree. That tree is stolen by English scientist George Coulouris,

October 4th, 2024. Sandy Ferber | Film / TV, Horror | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Horror Double Feature: The Black Scorpion & Dinosaurus

In today’s Shocktober Double Feature, we will encounter giant insects, prehistoric beasties and a very befuddled caveman! It’s The Black Scorpion and Dinosaurus!

THE BLACK SCORPION (1957)

By the late 1950s, filmmakers must have been running out of insects that they could mutate and transform into giant monsters. Audiences had already been treated to such fare as Them (giant ants), Tarantula (spiders), The Monster From Green Hell (wasps), The Beginning of the End (grasshoppers), The Deadly Mantis (praying mantises),

October 3rd, 2024. Sandy Ferber | Film / TV, Horror | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |

WWWednesday: October 2, 2024

In Reactor, Molly Templeton stops to praise things that aren’t brilliant, awesome, amazing, or setting the genre on fire—they’re just good.

I loved The Fall when I first saw it, and then it disappeared. Nerds of a Feather rediscovered it and reviews it here.

Baen’s short story contest is open for submission until February 1, 2025. As I read the summarized guidelines, it looks like they want science fiction.

Here is a list of local agencies providing relief in North Carolina after Hurricane Helene,

October 2nd, 2024. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | no comments |

Horror Double Feature: The Bells & The Cat and the Canary

In today’s Shocktober Double Feature, we encounter mesmerism, murder, insanity, a spooky house and an escaped madman, in two wonderful old silent films! It’s The Bells and The Cat and the Canary!

THE BELLS (1926)

The Bells is a very fine silent movie from 1926 that is not at all creaky and should manage to impress modern-day viewers. As revealed in my beloved Psychotronic Video Guide, this story was, remarkably, filmed no less than four times prior to this 1926 version,

October 2nd, 2024. Sandy Ferber | Film / TV, Horror | SFF Reviews | 5 comments |

Horror Double Feature: Killers From Space & Mars Needs Women

Although I was born a little too late to experience the Golden Age of the cinematic double feature – that is to say, the 1940s and ‘50s – I have been able to enjoy the next-best thing, thanks to where I happen to live. Back in the 1970s and ‘80s, NYC boasted well over a dozen so-called “revival theaters” that showed the classic old movies, usually in double-feature format. Most of those theaters are no more, and the ones that remain today, sadly enough, no longer show two films paired together for a single ticket price. But those wonderful theaters still remain fondly in my memory.

October 1st, 2024. Sandy Ferber | Film / TV, Horror | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |

Bruce Wayne: Murderer? by Various Authors (an Oxford College Student Review!)

In this column, I feature comic book reviews written by my students at Oxford College of Emory University. Oxford College is a small liberal arts school just outside of Atlanta, Georgia. I challenge students to read and interpret comics because I believe sequential art and visual literacy are essential parts of education at any level (see my Manifesto!). I post the best of my students’ reviews in this column. Today, I am proud to present a review by Lixin (Lareina) Yan:

Lixin (Lareina) Yan is a first-year student at Oxford College and is considering majoring in Visual Arts and Psychology.

September 28th, 2024. Brad Hawley´s rating: 4.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Facial Justice: Jael Bait

Facial Justice by L.P. Hartley

It was Anthony Burgess, writing in his 1984 overview volume 99 Novels: The Best in English Since 1939, who first made me aware of L.P. Hartley’s truly remarkable creation Facial Justice. In his essay in that volume, Burgess tells us that Hartley’s novel is “a brilliant projection of tendencies already apparent in the post-war British welfare state.” It is one of the very few sci-fi novels that the Clockwork Orange author chose to spotlight in his book,

WWWednesday: September 25, 2024

Per Locus, it’s official that F&SF has gone quarterly. I don’t know what this means for the magazine, but I don’t think it’s good.

Locus also reviewed Abigail Nussbaum’s new collection of reviews.

One of the smartest and most thoughtful writers in the SF field is Ted Chiang, and in the New Yorker he writes with intelligence and thought about AI as a maker of art.

Continuing with the intelligent and thoughtful writer theme, here’s Richard Powers being interviewed by the U.K.

September 25th, 2024. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 1 comment |

The Last Dangerous Visions: Disappointing

The Last Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison & J. Michael Straczynski

Short story collections by their nature are hit and miss. The classic, almost unavoidable go-to review is calling a collection a “mixed bag” or noting only “some of the stories hit.” Honestly, I wish I could go that far with The Last Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison (kind of) and J. Michael Straczynski (kind of), but the disappointing reality is that most of these stories rather than some “didn’t hit” for me,

September 24th, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 2.5 | A.E. Van_Vogt, Adrian Tchaikovsky, Cory Doctorow, Dan Simmons, David Brin, Harlan Ellison, J. Michael Straczynski, James S.A. Corey, John Morressy, Max Brooks, P.C. Hodgell, Robert Sheckley, Ward Moore | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Feast of Bacchus: It’s Greek to me

The Feast of Bacchus by Ernest G. Henham

Tenebrae (1898), by the London-born writer Ernest G. Henham, had turned out to be one of my favorite reading experiences of 2023, and I had been wanting to read another book from this same author ever since. A Gothically inflected tale dealing with fratricide, madness, and a 20-foot-long spider monstrosity, Tenebrae was a deliciously morbid treat; one that had been rescued from over a century’s worth of oblivion by the fine folks at Valancourt Books.

The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins: A D&D graphic novel

FanLit welcomes a new guest reviewer: Serena Labrecque! Find out more about Serena at the bottom of this post.

The Adventure Zone, Here There Be Gerblins by Clint, Griffin, Justin, and Travis McElroy & Cary Pietsch

The Adventure Zone, Here There Be Gerblins (2018) is the first in an ongoing graphic novel series based on the McElroy family’s D&D campaign. It’s a convenient way to enjoy the story without listening to 69 podcast episodes: over 82 hours of content.

Magnus Burnsides (human fighter),

September 20th, 2024. Serena Labrecque´s rating: 4 | Comics | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

The Wind That Sweeps the Stars: Often utterly fascinating

The Wind That Sweeps the Stars by Greg Keyes

Greg Keyes’ The Wind That Sweeps the Stars (2024) is a book that while it has its issues I’d say with pace and structure, is often utterly fascinating thanks to the underlying mythos that serves as the sub-structure of the story. That mythos, combined with several action-packed fight scenes and several engaging and likable characters makes it an easy recommendation despite my few quibbles.

The story itself is relatively simple. We open in a tall tower in the center of an Empire’s fortress capital,

September 17th, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4.5 | Greg Keyes | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

The Naming Song: I absolutely loved this premise

The Naming Song by Jedediah Berry

The Naming Song (2024), by Jedediah Berry, is an ambitious work with a thoughtful and thought-provoking premise, and if (for me at least), it didn’t fully carry through on that ambition or premise, I’ve got to give credit to Berry for the reach. Certainly, given both that ambition and the level of writing here, I’ll look forward to what comes next from them (and also check out some prior work).

The story is set in world that developed after a great cataclysm that seemingly erased all language (amongst more tangible losses;

September 16th, 2024. Bill Capossere´s rating: 4 | Jedediah Berry | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

Thistlefoot: I can’t wait to read it again

Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott

2023’s Thistlefoot, by GennaRose Nethercott, is one of my favorite reads of 2024. This literary fantasy draws from Jewish and Eastern European folktales, with a concretely modern setting, a gloss of mythic American West (hobos and tumbleweeds), and sentences that sing with poetry.

Isaac Yaga is a street performer and a con artist. He can impersonate almost anyone, and he is always on the run, either from the people whose pockets he’s picked, or from his own guilty memories, accompanied only by a small black cat named Hubcap.

No Night Without Stars: Likeable heroes, poor pacing

No Night Without Stars by Andre Norton

No Night Without Stars (1975), by Andre Norton, is a post-apocalyptic adventure set in a world where civilization has collapsed, and all that’s left are scavengers and warring factions.

The hero of the story is an ambitious and curious young man named Sander who has left his tribe, where he feels disrespected, to search for lost knowledge from the past. Sander hopes to discover the secrets of creating a particular alloy that smiths used to use.

WWWednesday: September 11, 2024

Reactor reviews Suzan Palumbo’s newest, a space-opera retelling of The County of Monte Cristo. Sign me up.

And enjoy their review of an upcoming Netflix “Sci-fi movie with jokes,” It’s What’s Inside.

In honor of the anniversary of Star Trek: The Original Show (in Canada, where it aired first) Chris Barkley shares his 15 favorite episodes. How do they match up with yours?

Next year’s WorldCon, in Seattle, Washington, USA, will feature a film festival. Thanks to File 770 for this item.

September 11th, 2024. Marion Deeds | World Wide Wednesday | 4 comments |

Fledgling: Enjoyable but forgettable

Fledgling by Molly Harper

Fledgling (2019), the second book in Molly Harper‘s SORCERY AND SOCIETY series, picks up where Changeling left off, following Sarah Smith (posing as Cassandra Reed) as she endeavors to learn magic and navigate elite society at Miss Castwell’s Institute for the Magical Instruction of Young Ladies while keeping her identify as a former housemaid secret. If you haven’t read Changeling yet, you’ll want to do that first.

Sarah is feeling more comfortable with her magical abilities and her social situation.

Impossible Creatures: Perfectly serviceable

Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell

I really wish I hadn’t seen all the hype around Katherine Rundell’s Impossible Creatures — the Waterstones Prize, the comparisons to C.S. Lewis, Philip Pullman, Rowling, and Tolkien, the sales numbers off the charts. That way I could have come to the book clean of expectations, even though I (as one should) took all such comparisons with heaping bucketfuls of salt, if not entire mines’ worth. Unfortunately, I did see all those comparisons, and so despite all that salt, I couldn’t help but be disappointed by what in the end turned out to be a perfectly serviceable MG fantasy,

Fullmetal Alchemist (volume one) by Hiromu Arakawa (an Oxford College Student Review!)

Stephanie Kola-Ogunbule is a first-year student at Oxford College and is considering majoring in Business Analytics or International Business Her home is Atlanta,

September 7th, 2024. Brad Hawley´s rating: 4.5 | Comics | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

The Glorious Pool: Bottoms up!

The Glorious Pool by Thorne Smith

In Ron Howard’s 1985 film Cocoon, a group of seniors becomes rejuvenated as a result of taking a dip in a swimming pool whose waters had been infused with “life force” by some extraterrestrial visitors. But as it turns out, this was not the first time that some aged adults had discovered a Fountain of Youth of sorts in such a place. Thus, over half a century earlier, we find a similar setup – although with a completely different explanation – in Thorne Smith’s remarkably madcap fantasy The Glorious Pool.

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Recent Discussion:

Sandy Ferber on Horror Double Feature: The Bells & The Cat and the CanaryOctober 4, 2024
BTW, Steve Sterner will be performing at seven films during this upcoming fest: https://filmforum.org/series/clara-bow
Sandy Ferber on Horror Double Feature: The Bells & The Cat and the CanaryOctober 4, 2024
As far as I know, Bill, Steve Sterner is the only person who does the live accompaniment to silent movies…
Sandy Ferber on Horror Double Feature: The Black Scorpion & DinosaurusOctober 3, 2024
And I'm positive that Kaidan will fondly remember watching these movies with his old man for the rest of his…
Sandy Ferber on Horror Double Feature: The Black Scorpion & DinosaurusOctober 3, 2024
You bet, Marion!
William Capossere on Horror Double Feature: The Black Scorpion & DinosaurusOctober 3, 2024
Black Scorpion was one of the movie I watched with my son Kaidan as I introduced him to a AT-Home-Film-Festival…