Damn you, Chuck McKenzie: "The next installment in Quirk's much-heralded sci-fi/classics mashup series, this steampunk take on Anna Karenina discards tsarist Russia for an alternate reality where a miracle metal, gronzium, has fueled the development of a thriving robot culture. Carriages and candlesticks persist, but everything...
I'm going to take Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and change all the descriptions to be that of a steampunk setting....
Roman Catholic monks in Switzerland have placed a job advert in a newspaper as part of a recruitment drive. The Capuchin order says it is looking for professional single men like bankers or lawyers aged 22 to 35 to join their dwindling ranks. The order, which has...
There are old people in science fiction, again. It's not that I actively dislike steampunk, and indeed I have fond memories of the likes of K. W. Jeter's "Infernal Devices", Tim Powers' "The Anubis Gates", the works of James Blaylock, and other features of the 1980s...
As a note to yesterday's post, if you want to read the Twain autobiography online, the Mark Twain Project has it online for free. Anyhow, just that short post for the day. Finally getting over Tuesday's bout of food poisoning, so behind on everything, while today,...
It was said that Samuel Clemens, the author who wrote under the name Mark Twain, made a deal that his full autobiography would not be published until a hundred years after his death. This first in a three book volume set is, to be honest,...
Recently, I have learned a terrible thing about myself. It is shameful, embarrassing, and much, much worse than my theory that Predator is one of the great gay strip tease films of our time. I have learned that I am susceptible to cleaning commercials. Yes. Cleaning commercials. The...
Today, the topic of books that achieved near perfection came up. It's an odd topic, because I've yet to read a book that was, on every level, perfection, and one which I have emerged from, entirely and utterly convinced that nothing better could, or will...
In response to the Elizabeth Moon controversy, the CBS made this post: 1. Regarding demands for “assimilation”: In the United States — as a nation and as a singular culture — no mainstream assimilated identity exists. The U.S. culture, such as it is, is an...
Unsurprisingly, the media is painting unflattering portrayals of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. I particularly like this opening portrayal of him as a paranoid, sucking life from the impressionable youth, and leaving a path of destruction in his wake, courtesy of the New York...