أحمد خالد توفيق (Ahmed Khaled Towfik) The prolific author, Ahmed Khaled Towfik, passed away from a heart attack on April 2nd, 2018. Although I had encountered his books occasionally in passing, I
Tempograd. (Moscow, 1980) The novel “темпоград” by Георгий Гуревич Georgii Gurevich is quite intriguing. When I saw the cover posted on the twitter feed of Vladimir Poleganov @innerkosmos I tried
In conjunction with the Melon Conference 2, the University of Hong Kong recently held a seminar on Gender in Science Fiction and Fantasy Writing, described as: “Throughout the history of Science Fic
On March 17th, 2018, Melon Conference 2 was held in Hong Kong. In this interview, the author and keynote speaker at the conference, Allen Steele, shares his thoughts on the current state of SFF in H
Body painting by Emma Hack, inspired by Tretchikoff’s drawing The Equinox is upon is, and what a strange one! If you are feeling a little punch-drunk, spun thin on the web of craziness that passe
Well, as much as I love WordPress, I finally got tired with the updates and the response times when the shared hosting MySQL instances got bogged down. Since I’ve been moving away from CMS in general
Recently I checked out a copy of Altermundos, Latin@ Speculative Literature and Popular Culture from the library. It contains many fascinating and important essays on the history and current state o
My first taste of any artwork associated with Keleck (aka Kelek), was at Boskone this year, where Andy Gelas brought my attention to two French paperback editions of Conan. These were Conan Le Guerrier, and Conan Le Cimmerian, in the Titres SF editions from the early 1980s. Needless to say, the eye-popping contrast in red and black, and the the purity of design in these covers hit me like a sucker-punch in a Philip Marlowe story. Le Cimmerian has a pure movie-poster effect, with that smashing red background, and the bare skin of the figures has a smooth air-brushed look, while the tightly delineated designs on the metal are all perfectly highlighted. The first thing I noticed about Le Guerrier is the darkness of the figure, of the rich draperies, of the stairwell vanishing into shadow. The hair is certainly done the same way as Le Cimmerian: frizzy threads in direct highlight against the background. But in Le Guerrier, the eyes, the skin, the deliberate brushstrokes on the wall, and the marble steps; they have a very different aesthetic from the super-slick air-brushing of Le Cimmerian. What is going on here?
A review of The Blind Men and the Elephant by Russell M. Griffin You would think that a novel investigating the inner life of a freak — indeed, the freak of freaks: Elephant Man — woul
Happy New Year to all living beings! Live long and prosper. It’s been a troublesome and unpredictable 2016 — not that the clump of 365 consecutive days has any particular significance, but si