I did editing for the intro adventure of a project that's now live on Backerkit! It's a post-modern fantasy city setting inspired by Prague, full of cats, and the adventure is a complex story of a ship and its sailors/passengers across 4 different moments in its history. I spoke with Sparkle, the lead writer on the project, about Prague's influence on her work, the importance of diversity, and the experience of translation, both across languages and systems.The team is based in Czechia, so they…

And there was there an herd of many swine feeding on the mountain: and they besought him that he would suffer them to enter into them. And he suffered them. Then went the devils out of the man, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake, and were choked. When they that fed them saw what was done, they fled, and went and told it in the city and in the country. Then they went out to see what was done; and came to Jesus, and found the man, out of whom…

Tonight I am heading back to school.Unfortunately, it is a Lucio Fulci school, so this will probably not end well. This one has been on my list for a while, but I never got around to watching it. It is *slightly* outside of my range, but 1987 is on my mind right now, and I thought a college-era movie with psychic shenanigans would fit well.Ænigma (1987)Kathy (Milijana Zirojevic) is a student at St. Mary’s, an exclusive girls’ boarding school outside Boston. She is lonely, awkward, and the…

by Cláudio Alves Latin American storytelling at TIFF wasn’t just about great feats of actress-ing, as I explored in part one of this miniseries within the broader festival coverage. Another common thread found between several projects was an exploration of queerness in its many forms. From an Irish studio's attempt to honor a Dominican child’s journey of self-discovery to a French-Haitian tale of sexual liberation from the chains of Christian fundamentalism, the Toronto program had much to…

In 1984 here in America there appeared the anthology Supermen, the third volume of the Isaac Asimov's Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction series. A British edition followed in 1988. We here at MPorcius Fiction Log have read seven stories from the book (links to the appropriate blog posts below) and today read three more. To experience these super stories yourself, in the very form in which I will be reading them, try this link. "Angel, Dark Angel" by Roger Zelazny"What Rough Beast?" by Damon…

When I started to conceive of this campaign setting, I thought of this post by my colleague Tom Kilian who asked: What if Gondor had been in Earthsea? You may say that this is a fork of his original post. And I've started to write so many strange things that are so different from his original conception, I must give them my own names. But I hope Tom will be indulgent (or at least forgiving) with the way my ideas have run away from his initial inspiration. The story of the Isles is one of…

Just to make a change from tiny aeroplanes for a moment, here are a couple of character minis I made for a Fantasy Hero campaign I was running, years and years ago.The little guy in front is Sir Basil de Brass, a tiny little brass automaton, whose personal shame was that he needed to be wound up at least once a day. He was absurdly confident and brave, in spite of his very diminutive stature. The little lady to the left with wings is Pandora, a fairy. She was a real mischief and practical…

You Can See Everything focuses on Elizabeth Holmes, the former head of Theranos, a company that claimed to have developed a revolutionary miniature blood-testing device. Things didn't go well. In 2022, Holmes was found guilty of four counts of investor fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and three counts of wire fraud. She was sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison, and, along with the company's former president, Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani,* was ordered to pay $452…

Every year since I’ve started this blog, I’ve published a few classic open access stories of horror for the Halloween season! In recent years, I’ve started to make a theme for each year. This year, the theme is “communication”: the transmission of information from one point to another, often but not necessarily both ways! This may not seem like a particularly spooky topic for a horror story, but read through the following collection of stories and you can decide for yourself… Sorry, Right…

When we planned our timings for the 1949 Club, I hadn’t realised there would be a two-day work retreat… which was wonderful, but has put me very behind in amalgamating reviews, let alone reading them or writing my own. I have several more books to write about this week, though they may come in a scramble towards the end of the week… And today’s is a book by a reliable, much-loved author: dear Beverley Nichols. I’ve been accumulating them rather faster than I’ve been reading them, but turning to…

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Ben Ehrenreich’s book Hold Still is a brilliant elegy to his mother, author and activist Barbara Ehrenreich, told through short stories and journal entries. Kirkus wrote of the book:…

Disclaimer Previously… Armageddon Game Conclusions The Good The Bad The Weird Stay Tuned… Disclaimer In these posts, we discuss a non-“Free as in Freedom” popular culture franchise property, including occasional references to part of that franchise behind a paywall. My discussion and conclusions carry a Free Culture license, but nothing about the discussion or conclusions should imply any attack on the ownership of the properties. All the big names serve as trademarks of the owners, and so…

Flirtatious people in movies often get a bad rap, but sometimes these folks can right social wrongs. Look at Three Little Girls in Blue (1946), a musical about three sisters stuck on a chicken farm. These gals remain perfectly coiffed despite the eggs, feathers, and muck of the poulty biz, but never mind. They do their best with the inheritance … Continue reading →

To me the variety of languages in Europe is highly valuable, something to cherish. Even if in practice it also provides many hurdles, in order to bridge languages and be able to scale things across Europe. Maintaining the cultural differences is important as a source of creativity and variety of ideas, while at the same time using our commonality to get things done collectively. I’ve held this position for a long time, and since a year or so I have better vocabulary for it when discussing it in…

Back in 2019, I read the book Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith and said: I really enjoyed this evolutionary tale. It’s equal parts biology and philosophy. I will never look at cephalopods quite the same way again. Reading Ray Nayler’s The Mountain In The Sea reminded so much of that book that I couldn’t resist flipping ahead to the acknowledgements at the back. Sure enough, Other Minds gets a big shout-out. But that’s only part of…

“He was a titan, a giant. He could have been as famous as any songwriter in the world, but chose not to be.” – Barbara Dickson From Substack, Paul Rees brings us the story of a musician who I’d not thought about in a couple of decades whose career could have gone very differently. I’m listening to Stealin’ Time in the background as I draft this.

Where does the soul go when the body perishes? In Jonathan Maberry’s new novel, they get implanted into robot mechs to fight in an alien war. Is this the best option? Or is heading into the light the better option? Soldiers in Ghosts of the Void have to decide whether or not to make the ultimate sacrifice, the one beyond even death. JONATHON MABERRY: I grew up weird. I was poor, lived in a terrible neighborhood, and had monsters as parents. My escape was to use books as doorways to worlds where…

I am rather late to catch up with the enthusiasm for this excellent fantasy police procedural novel set in an alternate present, but here I am, puffing away at the back of the pack. If you like Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London series there’s a good chance you’ll like this, but I think that will … Continue reading Pagans, by James Alastair Henry →

Read the full post at - Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicholson I picked up Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicolson on a lark at the library. It was during the PR hype for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, and it looked like a solid book. It was a fine read. A little too fast in places – there were parts I skimmed. But here’s my real issue: the whole premise could have been a blog post. Probably a tweet. The argument is that Homer matters because the Iliad and the Odyssey are the oldest surviving…

It’s hard not to appreciate Writer/director Mike Flanagan’s devout commitment to the horror genre. He appears game to tackle anything, has a zillion counterintuitive concepts up his sleeve and is even known to occasionally spin semi-gold from stinky straw (looking at you OUIJA: ORGIN OF EVIL). He’s wowed me on many occasions but he also has a tendency to gild the lily and mangle classic tales to the point that they lose part of their identity. I wasn’t crazy about the liberties he took with the…

I grew up with A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, read the stories to my own child, and saw the original drawings on display at The New York Public Library some twenty-odd years ago. The subtle wit and cleverness of Milne’s storytelling helped shape my understanding of comedy and made me love books. I hated the Disney Pooh films because that wasn’t Pooh’s voice as I heard it in my head. The poetry collections (When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six) are also wonderful. Happy Centennial,…

Dream Workby Mary OliverGenres: Poetry Pages: 96 Rating: Synopsis: Dream Work, a collection of forty-five poems originally published in 1986, follows both chronologically and logically Mary Oliver’s American Primitive, which won her the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1983. The depth and diversity of perceptual awareness, so steadfast and radiant in American Primitive, continues in Dream Work. Additionally, she has turned her attention in these poems to the solitary and difficult labors of the…

From “Black Women are the mules of the Earth” to Thriving and Refreshed (Video and commentary)“In this empowering video, we challenge the narrative that has long portrayed Black women as the "mules of the Earth.” We explore the rich, vibrant lives of Black women who are thriving, not just surviving. Join us as we share inspiring stories, celebrate resilience, and discuss the importance of self-love, community support, and unapologetic joy. Together, we can shift the dialogue and uplift each…

Gail Simone and company's story from the Summer of Supergirl anthology—which was collected in Supergirl Vol. 2: Hometown Horrors, a trade I reviewed in this column—was about the first meeting of the current version of Supergirl and the current version of Mary Marvel. Reading it made me curious about a previous story about the first meeting of a different version of Supergirl and a different version of Mary Marvel, 1997's Supergirl Plus. There weren't all that many Plus books, but I thought they…

{We continue with our fortnightly serial epic of the early years of the Beaten Generation. Please enjoy responsibly if at all…}They came to the end of the hall and to a door on which was painted in cursive gilt letters: W.C.Livingston pushed open the door and gestured for Harry to go first, and Harry did, entering a spacious lavatory of marble and granite, porcelain and dark wood, and at the head of a row of sinks to the left a tiny old Negro man in a white jacket sat on a stool reading a…

Thanks to Charlie Horse 47 and Killdumpster for their sponsorship of this post, via the magic of Patreon. ***I think we all remember the joke that went, "Mississippi is a very long word but can you spell it?"And we never needed that joke more than we did, this week in 1976.That's because seizing the top spot on the UK singles chart was none other than Mississippi by Pussycat. How well I remember the video that went with that one.But what of the accompanying album chart?Its pinnacle was still…

What was it? A short story entitled “Alien Animal Encounters,” which I sold to Strange Horizons magazine, and which they published on this day in 2001. Prior to this story, I had never submitted a short story of any sort (much less a science fiction short story) to any publication. I had written short stories in high school and one in college (although that one was actually half written in high school, finished in college), and then after that there was a long dry spell for years until this…

Not gonna lie: I’m jealous of Kurt’s new stereo system.