Looking Back At… The Dead Zone
Looking Back At… The Dead Zone The Dead Zone was published in 1979, the sixth of Stephen King’s books to appear under his own name. It is one of the earliest of his that I read, loving it as much as I did everything he wrote during that early period. It’s somewhat odd, coming back to it at this remove. For one thing, I would now be infinitely more familiar with David Cronenberg’s quite brilliant and utterly moving film adaptation...
Black Hounds of Death : The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, Volume 9
Black Hounds of Death The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, Volume 9 Edited by Paul Herman Part One These ongoing pieces are overviews rather than reviews and therefore contain spoilers galore Regular readers of these little ponderings will know how utterly weary I get when that bogeyman buzzword of our time – ‘racism’ – is thrown out. So you can imagine the deep sigh I’m breathing as I approach Robert E. Howard’s most...
Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey
Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey Based on the screenplay by Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick I watched Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey a few months back; and, despite having lost count of how many times I’ve seen it since its release in 1968, I don’t think that I ever found it as deeply satisfying as I did this time around. There is just always something new to pore over. And it changes with age, just as the viewer’s...
The Starry Wisdom : A Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft
The Starry Wisdom A Tribute to H. P. Lovecraft Edited by D. M. Mitchell An Occasional Look at Lovecraftian Anthologies: 8 Do you like wallowing in other people’s shit? No, I’m serious. Is your particular satisfaction based on getting right down there and rolling around in the excreted waste of others? Or reading loving descriptions of the same? How about descriptions of male and female genitalia so extreme that they are more...
Hours of the Dragon The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, Volume 8
Hours of the Dragon The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, Volume 8 Edited by Paul Herman These ongoing pieces are overviews rather than reviews and therefore contain spoilers galore. When you take a moment to think about it, in the half-a-dozen or so years after 1928, between them Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Robert Ervin Howard changed the very face of horror/fantasy writing – and the reverberations...
Beyond the Black River – The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, Volume 7 – Pt 2
Beyond the Black River The Weird Works of Robert E. Howard, Volume 7 Edited by Paul Herman Part Two These ongoing pieces are overviews rather than reviews and therefore contain spoilers galore The first two-thirds of this seventh volume contained two pretty naff Howard pieces — and one stone cold masterpiece in the shape of the title story. Unfortunately, since the remaining two consisted of an oddity and a run-of-the-mill...
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