Flickers on the Wall: Needing a Little Zombie Love

My Blood again is rushing
I feel I might be blushing
My face is turning red
I have never felt so un-undead
In the world of independent short film, no critter pops up its nasty little head more than the zombie. I’m being too conservative. Forget creature films; my completely unreliable survey (I asked me) shows there […]

Audiobook Fix: Novellas from Audible Frontiers

As I’ve watched audiobooks climb in popularity over the past several years, I’ve wondered why short fiction hasn’t caught on more with listeners. Not short stories, generally, but rather novelettes and novellas, which, in my opinion, is where a lot of the best science fiction lives. On audio, most novelettes and novellas end […]

From the Podosphere: Escape Artists 2008 First Quarter Round-up

Before getting to this month’s reviews, I’d like to thank John Dodds for his care in piloting From the Podosphere since its inception. It’s a privilege to be taking over his excellent column.
In the coming months, I hope to highlight some diverse sources of short podcast fiction, but it can’t be denied that the […]

The Day Job: Quitting It

Keep telling yourself, it’s not about the money.

When I first got it into my head that I wanted to be a writer, I had a pretty specific (if contradictory) vision of what that would be like. On one hand, the life looked incredibly romantic. You know, that sensitive Byronic picture of the writer […]

Distillations: Explorations of Hunger

In this month’s Distillations column, we explore three poems involving different twists on the mundane experience of eating and the experience of hunger. The narrators in each poem are human, and the food being discussed is not particularly exotic: risotto, soufflés, and mother’s milk. However, each poem shows hunger from an unexpected direction.

Flickers on the Wall: Masters of Horror - Season 2

I just can’t keep away from Masters of Horror (my examination of series one begins here). The first season was the finest collection of genre films in over forty years. It is essential viewing for all horror fans, an encyclopedia of monsters, madmen, and fear as presented on-screen in the past half-century. […]

Audiobook Fix: Arthur C. Clarke

When I heard that Arthur C. Clarke had passed away, my reaction was probably the same as a lot of other fans. I wanted to read him again, right away. In one of his last interviews, he said that of all the things he did, he most wanted to be remembered as a […]

Distillations: Visions of Time

Around here, March is when spring starts making its tentative appearance. If fall and winter are about remembering the past, spring is all about the future. In many ways, this idea of change is where science fiction began. What will happen next? What will the world be like if X happens? What will […]

The Day Job: Get Out of the House

When writing isn’t the day job, then your writing “office” is probably in your house. Of course, for writers who do make their living through words, their office is probably at home too. For many, the idea of working from home is the ideal. Sleep late. Trundle down to the computer […]

From the Podosphere: February 2008

Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver is a free podcast from BBC Radio 4. It’s a coming-of-age tale set in an unspecified prehistorical period. Young Torak’s father is viciously killed by a bear possessed by a demon. The boy is left alone in the ancient forest and sets out on an odyssey to a mystical mountain […]