Blog Posts

Blog Posts

Book Review: The Red Men by Matthew de Abaitua

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About a third of the way through The Red Men, Matthew de Abaitua’s ravishing new-old (I’ll explain in a moment) cyberpunk nightmare, is very likely the creepiest scene I’ve ever encountered in literature. Not just in genre fiction. In literature. I’m not going to spoil it for you. You’ll know it when you hit it. And your brain will leap out of your skull and try to escape the building, flopping and squelching across the floor until it’s stuck hurling itself ineffectually against a door or gate or other obstacle. Help me. You’ll want to chase after it so you can read the rest of the book. Probably.

Blog Posts

Retro Childhood Review: The Dark is Rising

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There was an endless variety of faces — gay, sombre, old, young, paper-white, jet-black, and every shade and gradation of pink and brown between — vaguely recognizable, or totally strange… [Will] thought: these are my people. This is my family, in the same way as my real family. The Old Ones. Every one is linked, for the greatest purpose in the world. I was going to start my review of Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising Sequence with the first in the series, Over Sea, Under Stone, because it holds a certain place of nostalgia based on its similarity to other much loved childhood fiction like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, both being about a group of absurdly normal siblings doing something important. But as I considered what I wanted to read to finish out 2017, a year full of darkness for so many people, the only book that seemed appropriate was The Dark is Rising. Because what’s more relevant than a book about how one person can fight back the darkness by finding strength in the love and support of family, friends, and a world that is fighting with him? Especially when it’s full of winter holiday cheer.

Announcements and Errata

Announcement: The 2017 Listener / Reader Survey

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I know. We’re a bit late putting this message up on the blog. Still, better late than never, amaright? Two years ago, we ran a survey primarily for listeners of the show. The intent was get a better sense of what was working and not working for our listeners, what listeners wanted us to do in the future, etc. Now it’s 2017, the year of trashfires, and we’re trying to end things on a high note with a bunch of fantastically geeky podcasts and a brand new survey for listeners AND blog readers. So, here we are imploring you to take our survey. It has questions about how you listen to the show, what you like the most/least, polls on ideas we have for the future, questions about blog content, requests for suggestions for future content, Patreon and funding-related questions, and more.

Blog Posts

Book Review: Winterglass by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

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Benjanun Sriduangkaew creates a fascinating and very loose retelling of The Snow Queen folktale with Winterglass, a high fantasy novella that infuses steampunk technology and an interesting form of magic.  With gorgeous prose and a refreshing perspective on fantasy in general, Sriduangkaew’s unique take on a classic tale creates a captivating narrative with twists, turns, and deadly secrets.  Sriduangkaew’s own-voices retelling features an entirely POC cast and lots of queer rep, set in Southeast Asia.  It’s a relatively quick read, and I spent a very enjoyable afternoon in the world of ice and intrigue. We follow the narrative through two points of view, giving us a deeper look at the complicated and twisted workings of an intriguing world.  Sriduangkaew balances the narrative across the different sides, leaving readers an interesting perspective on a world wrapped in ice.  The narrative itself relies on a concept of a world in the process of being conquered by a deadly force, a queen who desires to be whole.

Blog Posts

SEA Quest: Southeast Asian Horror Fiction

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Southeast Asia is a hot-bed of horror. The region is saturated with dark histories and even darker mythologies. From the krasue from Thailand to hantu tetek from Malaysia and Singapore, legends and stories are rife with things that not only go bump in the night, but are more blood-thirsty than your average Northern Hemisphere ghosts. Centuries of years of trade, migration and settlement brought in more scary spirits and monsters. The Southern Chinese diaspora celebrate Hungry Ghosts Festival for an entire month. Don’t go out at night. Don’t swim in the sea. Don’t kick offerings on the floor. People often breathe a sigh of relief once the month is over. Similarly, the bloodshed and trauma of many wars have left the imprint of haunted memories and hauntings by restless spirits displaced by massacre, starvation and pain. Southeast Asians love horror. Horror movies are extremely popular. Horror and ghost stories are consumed avidly by fans of this genre. In Singapore, a series of ghost stories is still on-going, fueled by the popularity of ghost stories and our obsession with the paranormal. The stories are ghost-written (pun intended, as claimed by the author who collects personal accounts from fans of the series) and range from poignantly sweet to downright horrific. Some remind me of the composition writing I received when I was teaching. Some are real and make me shiver at the sheer terror they evoke in me. We all grow up listening to stories about the pontianak, the penanggalan and the manananggal. The region shares similar stories about female ghosts who would detach their heads from their bodies. Their heads fly in the night, organs and entrails dangling beneath. the organs apparently glisten or shimmer. My relatives would talk about planting cactii around the house as protection. In the morning, so they say, they would find the penanggalan with her entrails snared and tangled by the cactii. For this SEA horror special, I will focus on two Southeast Asian horror writers.

Blog Posts

The Intersection: The Shape of Water

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I am a Guillermo del Toro fan. Mind you, I didn’t discover him until Pan’s Labyrinth in 2006, but I made up for it. (And if you haven’t seen The Devil’s Backbone and The Orphanage, you absolutely should.) So, when I heard he was doing a Creature From the Black Lagoon kind of film with extra-added romance, I was all in. The preview can be found here. My expectations, based upon the trailer, were something between Creature From the Black Lagoon and Edward Scissorhands. I thought it would be creepy and sad because that’s Guillermo del Toro’s work, and he does it very, very well. However, this time I was surprised. The film is gorgeous. All his films tend to be, and it’s obvious that every visual aspect is carefully chosen. The creature makeup and design was exactly right. The costumes are impeccable. I think the film is set in 1961 or possibly 1962.[1] The cast is amazing, and I was very happy to see Octavia Spencer. She’s wonderful as Zelda Fuller, Elisa Esposito’s coworker. Interestingly enough, this film is a Feminist one—unlike the original Creature From the Black Lagoon which features a monster kidnapping a white woman so he can have his way with her and a hero who must save her from being plundered. In this case, the two roles are switched. The villain in The Shape of Water is played by Michael Shannon and is a walking, talking sack of toxic masculinity which particularly fits the era—a time when square-jawed heroes featured heavily in film and literature. It was nice to see that role as the antagonist. Even the Russians (the standard Big Bad of the ’50s and ’60s) weren’t as awful. I appreciated that. 

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