At some point in the 80s, I was somewhere in Florida, and a dude gave me a quarter to play a Lunar Lander arcade game … I was in Florida to watch a space shuttle launch. We’d stopped at some gas station and in the mini shop there was an actual Lunar Lander arcade cabinet.… Continue reading The Astronaut and the Quarter
Tag: odd order
A Darkness Surrounds Him
Outcast, Vol. 1: A Darkness Surrounds Him by Robert Kirkman, Paul Azaceta, &al., collects the first issues in an interesting new story in just as dark and depressing a world as Kirkman’s The Walking Dead and the show. It’s an interesting take on possession horror, but here’s the thing: I’ve gotten tired of the depressing… Continue reading A Darkness Surrounds Him
Bubba Ho-Tep
I was looking for books set in the weird west, for reasons, and ended up being reminded that Bubba Ho-Tep by Joe R Lansdale was a book before it was a movie. So, I got sidetracked by this one, which is a kind of hillbilly gumbo of conspiracy theory supernatural horror humor. As a bonus,… Continue reading Bubba Ho-Tep
The Dulwich Horror
The Dulwich Horror by Oliver Harris is an entry into the corpus of Cosmicism, but not really Lovecraftian. It’s not set in New England, but rather in London, England proper. It doesn’t feature the Elder Gods, but rather an interesting twist on the Old Norse Gods. The protagonist’s name is Ursula, and that’s a bit… Continue reading The Dulwich Horror
Itsy Bitsy
Itsy Bitsy by John Ajvide Lindqvist is my first return to the corpus that contains Låt den rätte komma in, and its adaptions, about which I swooned a while back. It’s definitely the same literary voice I recall, though from translations by the same translator, so … who’s voice is it luring me in? Ironically,… Continue reading Itsy Bitsy
Red Dragon
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris is the first story where the character Hannibal Lector appears, and is the launching point for a series of books, movies and television, not the least of which are Jonathan Demme’s revelation that interior menace was far creepier and disturbing than the externally gross on screen with Silence of the… Continue reading Red Dragon
The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn
The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn by Usman T Malik is a grim fairy tale fantasy with time and reality twisting short story that is full of excellent middle east magical realism centering around human and jinn interaction. I definitely recommend this. I made 56 highlights.
The Yanthus Prime Job
The Yanthus Prime Job by Robert Kroese is a novella featuring Pepper Melange from the Rex Nihilo / Starship Grifters series. This is by far the best story out of any of the Starship Grifters books, though available separately it is also included in Aye, Robot, book 2 of the series. There is not a… Continue reading The Yanthus Prime Job
Omon Ra
Omon Ra by Victor Pelevin, translated by Andrew Bromfield, is weird. But, like, good weird. Like, you should read it weird. Although this is the first book by Pelevin I’ve read, I’ve had The Helmet of Horror, also translated by Bromfield, part of the Canongate Myths series, on my to-read stack for ages, and I’ve… Continue reading Omon Ra
Straw Boss
Straw Boss by J R Evans is a novella tie-in with Straw Boss: A World of Adventure for Fate Core. A lot of times that might seem like a warning sign, as game tie-ins aren’t always so great; but this one is not only perfectly good as a stand alone without any need to know… Continue reading Straw Boss
Descent Into Hell
Descent Into Hell by Charles Williams is an amazement. I was taken by the curiosity of the Endymion Press cover of this book having a unicursal hexagram. So, I think I picked this up without really knowing much about it other than the oddity of its appearance. But, in the end, this was fantastic to… Continue reading Descent Into Hell
Civil Disobedience
I wanted to like Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau and had high hopes, nay, even the expectation, that I’d like this book. But, Thoreau comes across as an ignorant Uncle Joe Bubba who rants about the gubmint being evil ‘cuz it tells folk what to do and gets in their way, but who lives… Continue reading Civil Disobedience
Glitch
Glitch by Hugh Howey is a far too brief vignette to be good, but isn’t bad. It’s an okay short about a robot gladiator who becomes sentient which causes a moral dilemma and struggle for control. It’s like an excerpt from, or a pitch for, a larger story, but after the end I didn’t really… Continue reading Glitch
KLF
KLF: Chaos Magic Music Money by J M R Higgs isn’t hardcore history and reads a bit like a magazine article in tone and tempo, but it’s got a lot of history I didn’t know about, both directly and tangentially related to KLF, especially around Discordianism, that I found very interesting, and it was a… Continue reading KLF
Chameleon
Chameleon by Layden Robinson is a short unfolding mystery of self-realization with epic fantasy horror elements that just didn’t stick with me for long after reading it. I made 8 highlights.
The Infinity Gauntlet
The Infinity Gauntlet by Jim Starlin, Ron Lim, and George Pérez is pretty understandably epic in scale. I don’t know how the upcoming Avengers movie can get to this story without more setup than we’ve seen so far. But, who knows? I’ve heard rumours that they might not start with this story right away, which… Continue reading The Infinity Gauntlet
Botchan
Botchan by Soseki Natsume, translated by J Cohn, is something I’d been meaning to read for, well, a couple of decades now. I’ve had a physical copy longer than I can recall when I got it, perhaps a gift from my Grandmother. I’ve tried getting into it a number of times, but just couldn’t. I… Continue reading Botchan
The Copper Cascade
The Copper Cascade: A Virulent ChapBook by Kneel Downe, foreword by Steve Taylor-Bryant, is the “first in a series of Virulent ChapBooks which introduces readers to the characters and concepts of Kneel’s universe”. Apparently there’s a giant and complex VirulentBlurb corpus from which this collects a coherent short selection of extracts, but it stands well… Continue reading The Copper Cascade
The Goat
The Goat: Building The Perfect Victim by Bill Kieffer was something I picked up because it appeared on the Hermetic Library ad spaces through Project Wonderful, and had a pretty compelling illustration with interestingly bizarre description. Turns out it really was quite interestingly bizarre. The erotica part wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, but it… Continue reading The Goat
Parallel Lives
Parallel Lives by Parker Gordon is a wibbly-wobbly astral time-travelling puzzle-solving caper. There were points where I thought the narrative got a little unclear, a couple times it seemed the narrative was treading the same bit again without reason to do so, and maybe a couple things didn’t feel like they got resolved in the… Continue reading Parallel Lives
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