October is gone. Like many months this year, it wasn’t a good one, but it did end with a lovely bit of political schadenfreude. Add in the free candy and maybe October wasn’t so bad after all. In the Skiffy and Fanty echo chamber, we’ve been watching the stats with amusement. You’ve been enjoying our stuff, both new and old. That gives us happy feels. Here are the most popular posts and episodes you enjoyed this month:
Behind the Throne by K.B. Wagers takes a familiar idea, the fish out of water, from a distant part of a galactic empire, and updates it for a 21st century mentality and enlightened point of view. In not all, but many works past, the protagonist would be male, it’d be a patriarchal empire ruled by a King, Emperor, what have you. Women would have at best secondary roles, with even the occasional strong female character having a relatively unexplored interior life, and certainly not a full-on point of view that gives us her real story (I’m looking at you, Princess Leia). A man’s world, where men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. Some novels and novelists have tried to buck this sausage fest of space opera in the past. Elizabeth Moon’s Vatta series, for example. Some of Debra Doyle’s and James D. MacDonald’s Mageworld novels feature a strong female protagonist front and center. Even with these exceptions, Space Opera and space adventure have for decades been overwhelmingly a male-dominated and male-catered affair. Luke Skywalker and Han Solo cast long shadows indeed.
http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFEpisode339HalloweenTortureCinemaMeetsMaximumOverdrive/Sandf-Episode339-HalloweenTortureCinemaMeetsMaximumOverdrive.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSCocaine, man eating machines, and AC-DC, oh my! In this special Halloween Horror edition of Torture Cinema, Shaun, David, and Alex are joined by Zena, the Real Queen of Horror, to review the 1986 Stephen King written and directed “horror” film, Maximum Overdrive. Apparently, even Stephen King couldn’t get Stephen King right. The crew discusses how stupid the premise is, eviscerate the despicable characters, muse on where one might find a goblin semi-truck, and share a story that makes the reality of this coked out travesty even more horrifying than the movie. But at least Zena liked the movie, and that means our work here is done.
Welcome to the latest installment of my comics review column here at Skiffy & Fanty! Every month, I use this space to shine a spotlight on SF&F comics (print comics, graphic novels, and webcomics) that I believe deserve more attention from SF&F readers. This month, I’m going to draw your attention to a webcomics series, new in 2017, that tells a complete story that you can read for free online – that also marked the surprising and welcome return of some old friends: Rob Walton’s Ragmop. (This review contains spoilers!)
Another week, another poll. You know the drill!
http://media.blubrry.com/skiffyandfanty/dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/archive.org/download/SandFSignalBoost24IanMuneshwarAndZinE.Rocklyn/Sandf–SignalBoost24–IanMuneshwarAndZinE.Rocklyn.mp3Podcast: Play in new window | DownloadSubscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | Podcast Index | Email | TuneIn | Deezer | RSSThis is the final episode of our month of focusing on horror writers, and it has been so much fun that we’ll be sure to do it again next year! Each of our guests had different reasons for why they write horror and how they use the conventions of horror to explore themes that are important and interesting to them, so make sure you listen to all of them! In today’s episode of Signal Boost, Jen talks to Ian Muneshwar, a queer writer of Indo-Guyanese descent, about how he uses his work to explore his cultural history of forced diaspora, how he works with language in his stories, and how his queer identity influences his writing. Then Zin E. Rocklyn, a writer of Trinidadian descent, talks to Jen about the childhood stories (CW: Gore) that inspired her love of horror, how she juxtaposes the sacred and the profane, and how important it was to her to be included alongside other black women in the horror anthology Sycorax’s Daughters. We hope you enjoy the episode! Note: If you have iTunes and like this show, please give us a review on our iTunes page, or feel free to email us with your thoughts about the show! Here’s the episode (show notes are below):
