Author name: shaunduke

Dr. Shaun Duke is an instructor at DMACC and the Director of the Portolan Project at the Speculative Literature Foundation. He received his M.A. and Ph.D in English from the University of Florida and a B.A. in Modern Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He studies science fiction, digital fan cultures, Caribbean literature, literary canons, postcolonialism, and digital rhetoric. In addition to his academic work, he wears many hats. He is a writer of genre fiction and a freelance editor at The Duke of Editing. His fiction has appeared in Curiouser Magazine, Stupefying Stories, and elsewhere. He also hosts and produces The Skiffy and Fanty Show, a four-time Hugo Award finalist podcast dedicated to examining the literary, cinematic, and cultural world of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. His podcast work has sent him around the world to participate in conventions, conduct interviews, and more. When he's not podcasting, he can be found on his Twitch channel, AlphabetStreams, or Bluesky, Threads, Mastodon, and other social media places.

Blog Posts

Review: Blended (2014; dir. Frank Coraci)

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Blended (2014; dir. Frank Coraci) can be summed up in a single sentence:   an exhausting two hours of jokes about androgynous daughters, lesbians, and Africa.  There are few films I can legitimately say should be consigned to the fires where “art” goes to be mercifully removed from human consciousness.  Blended, unfortunately, is one of those films.  Contrived and painfully anathema to comedy, Blended may be one of the worst films of 2014; it may even be the worst Adam Sandler film to be presented to the public. Starring Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, Blended follows two single parents, Jim (Sandler) and Lauren (Barrymore), who meet on a blind date and realize they pretty much hate one another.  But as fate would have it, they can’t seem to avoid meeting, especially when both Jim and Lauren decide to take their kids on an African safari, not realizing that they’re each going on the same trip.  As a result, they become engrossed in one another’s lives, sparking, as to be expected, a romance and giving meaning to the title.

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Review: Nightcrawler; or, The Chill of Capital (2014; dir. Dan Gilroy)

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To say that reviewing Nightcrawler (2014; dir. Dan Gilroy) is a difficult task would be an understatement.  Nightcrawler haunts the viewer like something out of Poltergeist (1982; dir. Tobe Hooper).  It’s the kind of experience that I find impossible to forget, not simply because of its focus on Los Angeles’ late-night chaos but also because its examination of that life is in so many ways uncompromising and disturbingly logical.  Talking about such a film without blathering on endlessly becomes a difficult task indeed, which may explain why this review is so focused on a single element:  Bloom. Nightcrawler follows Louis Bloom, an eccentric small-time thief who literally steals his way into the “nightcrawler” business in Los Angeles after witnessing a “nightcrawler” taping a car accident (Bill Paxton).  Determined to “make it,” he begins selling to a low-rated local news station and sets out to dominate the market at any cost.

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Review: Taken 2 and Islamaphobia (2012; dir. Olivier Megaton)

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After the enormous success of Taken (2009; dir. Pierre Morel), which raked in $226.8 million worldwide on a $25 million budget, it was inevitable that we would get a repeat performance.  And a repeat Luc Besson and his cavalcade of writers gave us.  Taken 2 attempts at a continuous narrative, but it is ultimately a game of thematic repetition which the film hopes you won’t notice.  On the surface, this is fine, since the series identifies its theme anyway, but one must wonder how a world in which someone like Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) exists can continue to operate.  After all, Bryan is an uncompromising murderer who cares little for international law.  Indeed, he cares little about anyone outside of his personal circle, as becomes clear to us in his oft-quoted speech: I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don’t have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

Blog Posts

Review: Assassin (2014; dir. J.K. Amalou)

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You’d think from the cover copy for the Blu Ray release of J.K. Amalous’ Assassin (2014) that what you were about to watch was a character-driven crime thriller fed by crafty dialogue and compelling characters.  After all, by declaring that Assassin comes from the makers of Casino and Goodfellas, both Oscar nominated works, the copy implies a film of a certain quality.  It is unfortunate, then, that the film on offer is less like Goodfellas and more like a watered down Jason Statham movie. Danny Dyer plays Jamie, an assassin-for-hire who murders competitors and irritations on behalf of “reformed” criminals John and Lee Alberts (Gary and Martin Kemp, respectively).  On one such job, Jamie meets Chloe (Holly Weston), a drug-addled stripper, and falls for her.  Jamie soon discovers that his last target was Chloe’s father; when Chloe starts asking too many questions, she draws the attention of the Alberts, who demand Jamie kill her, too.  Failing to do so, they both become targets, putting Jamie in the sights of men just like him.

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Confessions of a Comics Junkie: Identity, Obsessions, and Everything

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I buy quite a lot of comics — probably not as many as some, but enough that my collection has started to get a little overwhelming.  There are currently two long boxes of comics in my closet.  Full.  And on top of those long boxes are two stacks of comics that are likely to fill a third long box.  That’s a lot of comics to have collected in only a few months.  Lucky for me, I am good at finding deals, and my local comic guy gives me a discount on new comics if I pre-order them.[1] On top of that, I easily read fifty or sixty comics a month when I’m busy.  Right now, I’m 11 comics into Marvel’s The Ultimates, which I mostly read during the shortest third leg of my flight from Florida to California.[2][3]  On a good month, I can go through a crossover event or two in a week — Flashpoint and Avengers vs. X-Men events took me less than a week each. [4] So not only am I buying the heck out of comics, I’m also reading them

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My Superpower: Adrian Reynolds

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My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Adrian Reynolds to talk about how the power of selective stupidity relates to White Lily, an upcoming SF short film. ————————————————————— Hi, I’m Adrian Reynolds, and I’m selectively stupid. Not generally stupid, but specifically stupid around some stuff – like science. Which, seeing as some of what I write is science fiction, could be thought of as limiting. Actually, it’s not: being selectively stupid is my superpower. I caught online comments from some people who’d seen Gravity and were dismissive of the physics. Me? My mouth was open the whole time. That’s called awe by the way, not snoring. And why? Well, I don’t need an in-depth understanding of science to be blown away by an awesome film. And

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