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A Spider-Man’s Spider-Man
With the biggest opening-weekend box office in history, the latest Marvel outing ought to erase the conventional wisdom that their audience suffers from superhero fatigue. And really, what are we measuring with opening-weekend box office? The power of positive reviews? The strength of the marketing strategies? The raw dollars pumped into advertising? The charisma of the actors on their press junkets? There appears to be a very fuzzy causal connection…
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Service Model
As I listened to Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Service Model, I was struck by two things: how the story captured a post-apocalyptic world in a manner that felt like a Terry Gilliam film, and how brilliant Tchaikovsky’s narration was. I was gobsmacked by both. Briefly, Service Model covers the plight of a robot valet seeking answers in some indeterminate future when the world has collapsed gradually and then all at once. As…
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When The Moon Hits Your Eye
If you love John Scalzi’s “voiciness”, this is a book for you. If you find Scalzi’s voice a little too glib, smarmy, and laced with pop-culture winks and nods—maybe not so much for you with this book. When The Moon Hits Your Eye (A title borrowed from Dean Martin’s hit That’s Amore) is the 2025 science fiction-ish book of short stories that considers the real-world implications of an absurd, nursery…
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Sic Semper Tyrannis
Thus ever to kings. These are the words Virginians put on the great seal of their Commonwealth. Look. Above those words stands Virtue, the Amazon female figure clad in a helm and carrying a spear and a sheathed sword. Her left foot holds Tyranny, a tyrant king subdued on the ground, his crown tossed asunder. In Virginia, we have no intention of living under kings. We even put it on…
SCIENCE FICTION – DOUBLE FEATURE
Reality is weird. The science that reflects our understanding of reality is weird. The very mission of science fiction is to reflect that weirdness in ways that fill the reader with wonder. Science fiction writers aren’t here to repeat comfortable tropes. We’re here to make the reader confront the unabashed nuttiness of reality and their place in it.
E.W. Doc Parris
Author, Artist, Developer