So this week I’m reading The End of the Story, a collection of short works by Clark Ashton Smith, who was a writer in the vein of HP Lovecraft, albeit (so far) a little less eldritch in his abominations.
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 5/10/2016: “The End of the Story””
So this week we’ve been watching “Jurassic World“, in which things get a little out of hand at the Wild Animal Park Safari Park Jurassic Park Jurassic World theme park, a lovely place which looks like someone put the Safari Park and Sea World together in a tumbler, shook it up, and poured the resulting slurry out into a Hawaiian valley. The cause of the chaos this time is not a hurricane or corporate espionage, but rather, some overly ambitious genetic engineering combined with generally poor animal husbandry and a door that could maybe have been reinforced a little better. This all leads up to a designersaurus that’s much smarter and more versatile than it should be, which uses its mad skilz to escape its enclosure and go marauding. Hilarity ensues. And by “hilarity” I mean “lots of people getting eaten by dinosaurs”.
So recently we watched “Ant-Man“, in which Jack Colton gives Phoebe’s boyfriend/(spoiler alert)husband Mike a suit that allows him to shrink down to the size of an insect, while Kate glowers disapprovingly. Hilarity ensues.
So apparently the Walking Dead have constructed an amusement park in Avalon on Catalina Island — excuse me, “Catrina Island” — in an attempt to draw in more victims. You may want to visit Two Harbors instead.
Here’s what Avalon looks like from a similar angle when it’s not being overrun by the living dead and their ambitious waterfront redevelopment endeavors:
And of course the panoramic view:
From the air, we can sort of get an idea of where the “Catrina Island” ranger station was located:
As for staying on the island or leaving, I’d have gone with staying, at least until Lloyd’s of Avalon runs out of caramel apples. After all, it’s the zombie apocalypse. Once the caramel apples are gone, they’re gone for good. Unlike, say, gasoline, of which there appears to be an unlimited supply.
By the way, did anyone else have a “look at the flowers” flashback in that final scene? Or was it just me?
So this week I’m reading The Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker, which is not about Grundy and somebody who does not grant wishes, but rather, about a golem whose master dies almost immediately after she becomes animated and a jinni who is accidentally freed from an olive oil decanter while it is in for repairs.
Both of these rather lost supernatural creatures find themselves adrift in New York City at the very end of the 19th century. Hilarity, most likely, does not ensue.
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 4/12/2016: “The Golem and the Jinni””
So this week I’m reading Ramage, by Dudley Pope. No, “Ramage” is not Scooby-Doo trying to say “Damage”; it’s the first book in a 1960s-era naval series along the lines of the “Horatio Hornblower” novels — at least, I assume it’s along those lines, since I never read the “Hornblower” books or saw the television series. But look! Boats!
It’s been a while since I reached into my pile of rejection letters, so I thought I would go ahead and do that again. This time the random letter picker told me to pull something out of the “J” slot, which hasn’t got very much in it, “J” being one of the less commonly used letters in the English language. But it does have a Jabberwocky.
Continue reading “Random Rejection: Jabberwocky Literary Agency, “Dragon Stones””
So this week I’m reading Anvil of Tears, by Erica Lindquist and Aron Christensen, in which the crew of a rustbucket spacecraft pick up a girl on the run from the Alliance and end up sheltering her and her brother from — oh wait, sorry, that’s “Firefly”. In Anvil of Tears, the girl is on the run from something called the Sisterhood, which is likely nefarious, though just how nefarious remains to be seen …
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Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 3/15/2016: “Anvil of Tears””
This week I’m still reading The Yellowstone Conundrum, by John D. Randall, which some 400-odd pages in has begun to morph from a natural disaster epic into an urban warfare epic: Another Battle of Seattle, if you will, only this time between marauding street gangs and various pockets of Our Heroes trapped in the city by the one-two punch of a 9.5 earthquake (which, in this book, is vastly the punier of the two big quakes) and subsequent tsunami (not puny at all). In fact, one group of characters even gives a shout-out to “Escape from New York” by assigning themselves characters from the film. Oh, and for those who were worried — spoiler alert! — the dog is still with us. (In case you were wondering, he’s designated as the Ernest Borgnine character in “EfNY”, Cabbie.)
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 3/8/2016: “The Yellowstone Conundrum” Is Still Conundruming”
So this week I’m reading The Yellowstone Conundrum, by John D. Randall, in which Old Faithful really blows its top. Hilarity ensues. No, wait, not hilarity. What’s that other thing? Oh right. Disaster.
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 3/1/2016: “The Yellowstone Conundrum””
Viscosity 