Author name: Daniel Haeusser

Daniel Haeusser (He/Him) is an Associate Professor of Biology who teaches microbiology and biochemistry. He researches bacterial cell shape & division, and phage (bacterial viruses) that alter either in their host during infection. His constant reading spans many genres, but SF, Fantasy, Horror, mystery, and world literature remain closest to his heart. His regular book reviews can be found at Reading 1000 Lives, and he also contributes reviews to Strange Horizons, Fantasy Book Critic, Speculative Fiction in Translation, and World Literature Today. You can connect with him on Goodreads or Bluesky.

Cover of Eerie Whispers: Exploring Canada's Reluctant Relationship with Its Ghostly Lore, by Brian Baker, featuring an old turret of a house or church, seen through a gap in trees.
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Book Review: EERIE WHISPERS by Brian Baker

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Eerie Whispers is a nonfiction title from last year with the subtitle: Exploring Canada’s Reluctant Relationship with Its Ghostly Lore. Despite my scientific profession and general skepticism, I’ve always been fascinated by and enjoyed ghost stories or any other paranormal or strange tale under the folklore umbrella. And people with that kind of interest are included among those for whom journalist Brian Baker (founder of The Supersitious Times) specifically wrote this book: “those who have an honest interest in Canadian ghost stories and feel at home with the spooky: historians, folkorists, archivists, anthropologists, investigators, mediums, parapsychologists, journalists, and enthusiasts.” The Canadian focus of Eerie Whispers drew my interest from among all the other similar books that get published each year, especially because of that word ‘reluctant’ in the subtitle. Canadians are reluctant to talk about their local ghost stories and experiences? The major focus of the start of Eerie Whispers is about this question, and the related question of why. Being in Buffalo, which at times feels like South Canada (and at times we might really wish it were), I hadn’t heard about or experienced this sentiment of paranormal discomfort from our Northern friends and neighbors. In fact, the only ghost tour I’ve ever gone on in my life was just across the border in Ontario. Now, the reluctance is of course a generality with certain exceptions, but apparently there is more of tight-lipped hesitance to delve into and dwell upon spooky ghostly claims with any remote suggestion that they may reflect a reality. Eerie Whispers is interesting to the ghost or general folklore enthusiast just in that regard alone.

Poster for Dead Lover (2025), featuring a blond woman's face, a blue lightning bolt, and grimy hands, one holding shears and the other cupping a finger.
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Movie Review: DEAD LOVER (2025) Directed by Grace Glowicki

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An unnamed lonely gravedigger (director Grace Glowicki) from a long line of gravediggers (Family Motto: Dig deep. Dig hard. Never stop digging.) yearns for a worthy man to love, a good man to love her back. The problem is that her dedication to the job makes the gravedigger smell of corpses; her flesh, hair and clothes emit a putrid rot that would turn aside any potential suitor. She experiments with botanicals whose scents might mask the stink of death, but to no avail. Her loneliness builds until the untimely death and burial of a famous opera diva (Leah Doz) brings the deceased’s mourning brother (Ben Petrie) into her graveyard. Catching her gaze, the brother professes a strong attraction to the gravedigger’s malodorous state, rather than the repulsion she’s used to. An intense relationship follows, but the man admits to the gravedigger that he has sterility issues that make their desire for children and a family difficult. He elects to travel abroad for a new experimental procedure to treat his infertility, but en route home he is lost at sea, only his ring finger bearing the symbol of their love retrieved to be returned to the stunned and heartbroken gravedigger. Dig deep. Dig hard. Never stop digging. The gravedigger refuses to give up on her love, and sets out to use her botanical skills to grow her lover back from the severed. Which only succeeds in growing an exceptionally elongated and comical animate finger that desires a body. Thankfully, there’s the dead body of her lover’s opera-singer-sister just outside. Only the aristocratic former husband (Lowen Morrow) of this corpse might object, and the creature the gravedigger forms might be more monster than lover.

Cover of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Ring of Fire, by David Mack, featuring (clockwise from left) Nurse Christine Chapel, First Officer Una Chin-Riley, Capt. Christopher Pike, Science Officer Spock, and Security Chief La'An Noonien-Singh, encircled by a yellow-orange ring of fire (the accretion disk around a black hole).
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Book Review: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: RING OF FIRE by David Mack

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The fourth novelization from the Strange New Worlds show of the Star Trek franchise, Ring of Fire takes place between the episodes “The Sehlat Who Ate Its Tail” and “What is Starfleet?” from this past, third season. It’s the first novel from regular franchise writer David Mack to feature the cast of Strange New Worlds, but incorporates elements from throughout Star Trek canon as is typical for recent novels from the shared, expanded universe. As expected when writing this type of novel, Mack has limitations within the framework of what the show-runners are doing with specific character arcs in the cast. But Mack has also proven very successful at working within the boundaries of the sandbox to create compelling and entertaining stories that make optimal use of all the objects and details that sit inside that very large sandbox that is Star Trek. Ring of Fire continues that success. Fans who didn’t care for certain developments in the third season of the television show won’t be able to completely escape those here, but they will be able to enjoy the unique aspects of this particular story featuring the Pike-era USS Enterprise crew. Ring of Fire has a character-driven plot that focuses largely on an investigation by Security Chief La’An Noonien-Singh, but manages to give significant development to other characters, particularly Helmsman Erica Ortegas, who gets an opportunity to step up and shine as acting Number One. But the novel is equally plot driven as a mystery that involves espionage, sabotage, murder, and central speculative elements that make this more science fiction than a standard adventure that just happens to be set in space.

Dolly (2025) movie poster, featuring a creepy eyeless doll (or person wearing a doll mask) reaching into a cradle, from the Baby's POV. Tagline: Mommy knows best.
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Movie Review: DOLLY (2025) Directed by Rod Blackhurst

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Normally I try to keep features covered here within the confines of speculative or fantastic fiction, particularly when considering things classified as horror. From what I initially read about Rod Blackhurst’s new slasher feature Dolly, I somehow thought that there was some supernatural or fantastic element to it, but it turns out not. I imagine there still may be some readers of this with general horror interest though, even if within mundane fully human realms of ‘monstrosity.’

Kickstarter page image for The Cookout anthology, featuring a ticket, a flying saucer, jellyfish floating in space or the sea, and various cookout foods including sausages and shish kebabs.
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Kickstarter Signal Boost: THE COOKOUT: An Anthology of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, Edited by Erin Brown, Emmalia Harrington, Tonya R. Moore, & P.C. Verrone

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Coming up in March we’re planning a podcast Signal Boost interview with writer/editor Tonya R. Moore about The Cookout, an anthology of science fiction and fantasy stories by Black authors of the African diaspora, centering on the traditions of “the cookout” — the joy, the drama, and the delicious food! A Kickstarter campaign is currently going on to support the anthology and help pay the contributors, who include Brent Lambert, Eden Royce, DaVaun Sanders, and Sheree Renée Thomas to date. There is just FIVE more days left to support this campaign, before we have the live recording with Moore or are able to release the podcast, so we’re also boosting this now on the blog. They are close to their goal, so be sure to check it out and help if you are able! Moore is a Jamaican speculative fiction writer and editor based in Florida. She is the editor-in-chief at Rogue Star Magazine, Poetry Editor at Solarpunk Magazine, and an associate writer at Galactic Journey. Her latest short story publications include “Water Baby”, published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and “Anansi and the Astronaut”, published in the Spacefunk! Anthology. Moore is co-editing the collection with three others: 1) Erin Brown, a poet and author of horror, fabulist, and fantasy short fiction who has been published in FIYAH, Nightmare, Midnight and Indigo, The Deadlands, and many other venues, 2) Emmalia Harrington, a disabled QBIPOC novelist of Walk on Grey Ruins, whose short stories can be found at FIYAH, Abyss and Apex, Flame Tree Press, and elsewhere, and 3) P.C. Verrone, an author and playwright whose work has appeared in FIYAH, Nightmare, PodCastle, and numerous anthologies, and whose debut novel Rabbit, Fox, Tar is forthcoming from Catapult this year. Why The Cookout? How did this idea come about? Find more information on The Cookout and its editors/contributors on its website. And help support the project on Kickstarter.

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