FUNGUS AND THE FEAR OF THE UNKNOWN IN LOVECRAFT AND BEYOND
Fungus. Just saying the word feels like a mouthful of something slimy and spongy that is seriously testing your gag reflexes. But why are we simultaneously so disgusted by and fascinated with it?
MY HEROES HAVE ALWAYS BEEN MONSTERS
Monsters, like Disney’s many orphan protagonists, are also coldly calculated to win our hearts. Misbegotten, misunderstood, they reflect the ugliness the world makes us feel, while defiantly asserting their right to exist and thrive. Show me a movie-lover who can’t shed a tear for King Kong, the Gill-Man or Frankenstein’s creation, and I’ll show you who the real monster is.
5 COMPOSERS WHO SHOULD’VE SCORED BLADE RUNNER 2049 INSTEAD OF WHAT’S-HIS-FACE
We got ripped off by the future twice. We were never getting flying cars (only 5-0 and fat cats had them in Blade Runner, anyway), but we deserved a score for Blade Runner 2049 that would enable us to sit in our burnt-out Priuses up on blocks and dream of flying over the gleaming spires and methane torches of monolithic mega-cities.
LOVE KILLS WITH OBSESSION IN THE TWISTED ROMANCES OF EDGAR ALLAN POE
What we now call Valentine’s Day went from the orgiastic throes of Lupercalia to solemn Christian saint’s day to a commercial lovefest celebrated with stale chocolates, boxed wine and sleazy D-list adult entertainment. Edgar Allan Poe didn’t exactly do Valentine’s Day.
WASTE OF SPACE
The resilience of the American space program is best embodied by the astronaut movie that tanks every year. And they just keep coming. Why, Lord, why?
IN PRAISE OF SEX AND VIOLENCE
It’s a hoary cliche in American cultural criticism that if you kiss a breast in a story or film, you’ll get in a lot more trouble than if you stab one.
THE GERNSBACK REFERENDUM: SEND MORE SPACE OPERA
There’s a persistent bit of Hollywood apocrypha about how Stanley Kubrick included a replica of the Discovery spacecraft from 2001: A Space Odyssey amid the burning rubble in the concluding scene of Full Metal Jacket.
WEIRD WOMEN AND OTHER ANOMALIES
One overview of Weird Tales, for example, estimates that about 17% of its authors were female; sometimes they wrote under initials (C. L. Moore is surely the most famous example of this), and sometimes they bore names that…well, sounded likelier to be masculine (Bassett Morgan). The most extraordinary of the female contributors to Weird Tales during its heyday must be Allison V. Harding: with 36 Weird Tales stories to her credit, she was ahead of contributors like Ray Bradbury and Frank Belknap Long.
MAKE AMERICA GHOULISH AGAIN
Speculative fiction author J.G. Ballard once famously proclaimed that science fiction was the literature of the 20th century.
EXILE FROM MIDDLE EARTH: HOW FANTASY FAILED US
I remember tears welling up in my eyes at the beginning of Peter Jackson’s The Fellowship Of The Ring, when Frodo confronts Gandalf, upon his belated return to the Shire.
LOVECRAFT MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU’RE SORRY
THE LATEST LOVECRAFTIAN MORAL CRISIS/TEACHABLE MOMENT has peaked and rolled back under the weight of countless other cultural controversies…