Sherlock Holmes and Other Modern Myths

There are some fictional characters that have achieved a kind of immortality outside of the stories from where they were conceived, and they get interpreted over and over again in new books, television shows, plays and movies.  These include Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Tarzan, Ebenezer Scrooge, Frankenstein, Superman, James Bond, and to a lesser extent, Elizabeth [...]

iStories: The Short Story Hit List 100 Weekly

Let’s face it, the heyday of the short story as a popular art form was decades ago, probably as far back as when F. Scott Fitzgerald got rich and famous selling stories to the Saturday Evening Post and Colliers.  Except for would-be writers, required reading for students, fan fiction fanatics and a damn few diehard [...]

Ringworld in Oz

When I was a dumbass kid of 10 I acquired a reading addiction by discovering the Oz books by L. Frank Baum.  When I was a dumbass kid of nineteen, I dropped out of college for the first time and bought the fourteen Oz books and reread them.  At nineteen I felt like a grownup [...]

Where are the Wholesome TV Shows?

I’m wondering if the TV shows I watch make a statement about my personality, or even more, if they influence it.  I constantly argue with my friends about the old nature versus nurture debate, with me believing biology is the stronger force, while my feminist friends holding firm to the power cultural influences.  If my [...]

Heinlein’s 13th Scribner’s Novel

There are legions of Robert A. Heinlein fans out there that grew up reading the 12 canonical Heinlein young adult novels published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in the 1940s and 1950s, that if we were ever given three magical wishes would use our first wish to get the 13th novel.  Many science fiction writers have [...]

Filming Science Fiction Short Stories

Over at BestScienceFictionStories.com Rusty Keele got an email from a film director asking him about which science fiction short stories would make great 10-15 minute films.  Go by and post your suggestions.  I suggested “The Menace From Earth” by Robert A. Heinlein, even though it would have to be cut down some to meet the [...]

The Fate of SF Magazines

Over at Slashdot.org they posted a news announcement with comments, “Difficult Times for SF Magazines” that is very worth reading if you’re worried about the fate of SF magazines.  The main announcement was Realms of Fantasy will cease publication with the April issue and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has dropped it’s schedule [...]

Books Read 2008

2008 was a year of reading about the world and looking back at classic science fiction.  18 of the 45 books I read this year were SF.  11 were non-fiction.  12 books were ones I had read before – for some reason I listened to many SF classics that I first read back in the [...]

Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke

Childhood’s End holds up extremely well in the 55 years since the book first appeared in 1953.  I just finished listening to the new Audible Frontiers audio book edition from Audible.com, and I was surprised in several ways.  First, I was surprised that a science fiction book from 1950s worked so well as a whole.  [...]

A World Without Fiction

Last night I read the riveting essay, “The Interpreter” by John Colapinto from the new 2008 edition of The Best American Science and Nature Writing.  I highly recommend buying the collection, but the link to the article takes you to the New Yorker where you can read it for free.  This fine essay a about [...]