The Wisdom of Tobolowsky

Stephen Tobolowsky, in his new book The Dangerous Animals Club, has a great comment on drug use that really deconstructs our fascination with the practice – “[D]rugs create [an] ……

Has Brad Bird read Superfolks?

Most likely, since The Incredibles shares much thematically with this 1977 novel by Robert Mayer. Many of the concepts with Superfolks are familiar, but only because we have been immersed…

Worst Book Cover Ever?

Is this book cover for Alien Sex, a fantasy sci-fi short-story compilation, the worst ever? Let’s look at the evidence. The background color is pus gray usually reserved for orphan-grade…

In Place of a Soul…

I read the sci-fi book Leviathan Wakes as a bit of a palate cleanse after the intensity of McTeague. Yet in the midst of this potboiler (I am using that…

Greene’s The Tenth Man

Graham Greene could have been talking about today’s political pundits with this line from The Tenth Man: “She was like an old weatherworn emblem of wisdom – something you find…

Mr. Spaceship

In the short story “Mr. Spaceship,” published in 1953 in a publication called Imagination (according to my Citadel Twilight collection, Volume 1), Philip K. Dick put a human brain into…

The Living Structure Meme

If you want to prepare for a new and illustrious career for future, I would recommend bioengineering, since future ships and buildings will be living things. Paolo Bacigalupi’s “A Pocketful for…