From the Podosphere: April 2009

After a year of reviewing all the Escape Artists stories for The Fix Online, this month From the Podosphere will ring the changes and not cover anything from Escape Pod, Pseudopod or PodCastle. I’ve nothing against the undoubted leader in podcast short fiction, but editorial suggestions have been made about casting the net wider, [...]

Rocket Science: 1966 – 1967

1966: Tricon, Cleveland, Ohio
Short Fiction: “Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman by Harlan Ellison
Next time you find yourself running late, consider yourself lucky to be living anywhere but in the society Harlan Ellison imagines here. The society is so obsessed with keeping it all running that, to prevent anyone from slowing things down, the [...]

Flickers on the Wall: The Roots of the Next SF Animated Features

Big stars, big talent, and even more important for Hollywood, big money are transforming independent shorts into wham-bam features.  Nothing too surprising there.  Many filmmakers construct their short films as calling calls, pitches for paying gigs, and structure those shorts to be the best bits of bigger works, or small segments of them.  But that’s [...]

From the Podosphere: March 2009

PodCastle begins March, we are told, with the first of a run of Elf stories, though the creatures seem oddly absent in this example. Expertly read by Bill Ruhsam, Emma Bull’s “De La Tierra” concerns a futuristic assassin, carrying out his profession with the aid of biological enhancements (or possibly elves) that speak to him. [...]

The Day Job: What About the Day Job?

Two weeks ago, Jonathan Safran Foer, the author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Everything is Illuminated, addressed a hundred or so high school writers at the Mesa State College High School Creative Writing Conference.  In the midst of giving them his opinions about what worked for him as an author, and, hopefully, giving [...]

Rocket Science: 1963 – 1965

1963: Discon I, Washington, DC
Short Fiction: “The Dragon Masters” by Jack Vance.
In “The Dragon Masters,” Jack Vance (1916 -) introduces the reader to three sets of people at the outset, each represented by one character. The first two are Joaz Banbeck and Ervis Cancolo, who are leaders of two separate factions of humans. They are [...]

Flickers on the Wall: Have Two Minutes for Horror?

Ghost House Pictures is one of many small horror production/distribution houses that have sprouted up in recent years; however it easily strides past the bargain basement direct-to-DVD marketers, mainly due to two of its founders: Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert of The Evil Dead fame.  With their horror street cred well established, and a minor [...]

From the Podosphere: February 2009

There were only two PodCastle stories for February, but the sight of a PodCastle Giant, “Hell is the Absence of God,” appearing on my iPod caused me pleasurable anticipation—I looked forward to hearing another of Ted Chiang’s well-crafted, thoughtful stories. The pleasure was soured, however, by James Trimarco’s leaden reading, which robs the narrative of [...]

The Day Job: Keeping the Writer Alive

Maybe the toughest part of being a part-time writer who has to have a non-writing day job is keeping the writer part of me alive and enthusiastic. It’s that darned world out there full of distractions and creativity-sucking messages like, “Why don’t you come watch some television with us?” or “A bunch of us [...]

Flickers on the Wall: The New West

A very young nation has very young folktales, and in the very young nation of the United State, the medium of film arrived in time to tell those tales.  The genre was the western, and for the 1930s, ‘40s, and ‘50s, the film western presented the dreams, fears, and morals of the society, generally with [...]

Rocket Science: 1960 – 1962

1960: Pittcon, Pittsburgh, PA
Short Fiction: “Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes
progris riport 1 – martch 5, 1965
Dr. Strauss says I shud rite down what I think and evrey thing that happins to me from now on.

There haven’t been many science fiction stories with as wide an appeal as Daniel Keyes’s “Flowers for Algernon.” It [...]

From the Podosphere: January 2009

Escape Pod appears to be still in recovery from its recent hiatus, as we have only half the month’s usual quota of stories, beginning with another installment of Jeffery R. DeRego’s Union Dues superhero saga, in which we hear something about the origin of the Union itself. The parallel structure of “Union Dues – All [...]

The Day Job: Art and Competitiveness in a Scary Publishing World

Have you been following the publishing news lately?  Magazine distributors charging more per copy, which will close up some magazine shops; publishers firing employees and closing some of their lines; a major fantasy print magazine ceases publication; another one goes from a monthly to a bimonthly schedule; a major book store franchise in trouble and [...]

Rocket Science: 1958 – 1959

1958: Solacon, South Gate, California.
Short Story: “Or All the Seas with Oysters” by Avram Davidson
Ferd and Oliver own a bicycle shop. Oliver is a womanizer; Ferd a deep thinker. Oliver leaves Ferd alone, a lot, and Ferd uses that time to study nature. A seemingly insignificant observation by a customer (why can’t we ever find [...]

Flickers on the Wall: 10 for 10 From Sundance

The snow and bitter cold signal the time for independent film fanatics to seek out the coldest and bitterest place they can find.  That place is Park City in the mountains of Utah, where each year cineastes bundle up and trudge through glittering snow drifts while avoiding skiers, all in the name of the indie [...]