So I was talking this week with my parents, who remember the polio epidemics of the 40s and 50s. Each summer the virus would flare up in different cities and regions. When there were outbreaks in a particular locality, movie theaters and bowling alleys would shut down, and swimming pools and beaches would be closed. It seems to me the present situation is not unlike a polio outbreak where the air is a swimming pool, the entire country is a movie theater.
Category: Writing
The Early Years: (Almost) Easter & A Price Drop Announcement
Looking for an inexpensive novel to read while we’re all under orders to stay home as much as possible? I’ve reduced the price to 99 cents on the ebook editions of all the novels that are currently under my control (all of them except Night Watchman*, whose publisher abruptly closed up shop last year — a fact I only learned about when I noticed it had disappeared from the Kindle store).
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Teaser Tuesday: “The Night Bird”
This week’s Teaser Tuesday comes from The Night Bird, by Brian Freeman, in which a serial killer starts targeting the patients of a psychiatrist whose therapeutic technique involves replacing her patients’ traumatic memories with new, non-traumatic ones, thus curing them of their phobias or whatever. Sort of like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, only without the attractions of any actual science fiction or Kate Winslet.
Teaser Tuesday: “Spin”
So this week I was reading Spin, the Hugo award-winning novel by Robert Charles Wilson, in which mysterious aliens give Earth the Krikkit treatment by encasing it in a “membrane” that induces an extremely steep time differential between what’s inside and what’s outside. Hilarity ensues.
Teaser Tuesday: “Wonder Boys”
This week’s Teaser Tuesday comes from Wonder Boys, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Michael Chabon. This is a book I actually finished quite some time ago, but which I’ve been saving for after my series about The Event was finished.
Since that series is now complete, here is your long-deferred Wonder Boys teaser.
Teaser Tuesday 11/26/2019: “Night After Night”
Recently I was reading Night After Night, by one of my favorite authors, Phil Rickman, who wrote a couple of amazing horror novels back in the day, but who’s now probably best known for the Merrily Watkins series of (somewhat) paranormal mystery novels. This one is not a Merrily Watkins novel, but it is a—wait for it!—paranormal mystery. Of sorts.
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Not A Review Of Some Other Stuff I Watched While Waiting For “Avengers: Endgame”
So Netflix finally sent me Avengers: Endgame, a little over a month after it was released on disc. As previously noted, we—mostly meaning me—had to watch a number of other movies while waiting for that one (#firstworldproblems). My wife paid little to no attention to those movies, but she did make a few observations here and there. First up: The Lego Movie.
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It’s “Important” To Put Your Quotation Marks In The “Right” Place
Not A Review Of “Fast Color”
Ever since we got a good-sized television and a Netflix disc subscription, we haven’t been to a movie in the theaters. Not once. Not even for Avengers: Endgame*. But that’s okay, right? Because now it’s out on Blu-Ray and surely Netflix will have bought a zillion copies of it** so that everyone who wants it can see it right away, right?
Wrong.
Teaser Tuesday 10/15/2019: “Here & There”
Recently I was reading Here & There, a science fiction novel by Joshua V. Scher.
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Viscosity 