Worldcon felt like a destination wedding held on a cruise ship where you and several thousand of your closest friends gathered for a completely overscheduled weekend with the world’s most frantic activities director.
Read MoreApex Magazine Goes to the HugosUnless you’re a professional wrestling fan, you’ve probably never heard of Al Snow. A wrestler who hit the heights of the mid-card in the nineties, he’s never been one of the wrestling fraternity that has broken through into the public consciousness the way main event stars like Hulk Hogan and Steve Austin did.
Read MoreAl Snow’s Advice for SF WritersI’ve read and loved countless books over my lifetime, but few have been as important or influential as the one sitting on my desk as I write this article: the Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook. (The 3.5 edition, for those of you who must know.)
Read MoreMighty Axes and Beer-Soaked Beards: The Portrayal of Dwarves in FantasyEvery year, in the spring, there is a ritual. The coming WorldCon announces the Hugo nominees. The ritual is not the announcement, but the reaction.
Read MoreWhat It Is We Miss When We Don’t Read FanzinesIt’s not just me, right? The Gothic novel is ripe for a comeback. This particular sub-genre has been creeping into my subconscious for some time, and not just because I accidentally went to a lecture the other month on the Female Gothic in Film, which quoted Joanna Russ and made me squee like the fan girl I am.
Read MoreGirl Meets House: Kitchen Sinks, Joanna Russ and the Female GothicBecause of the particular nature of my upbringing, I probably have more college credits in Biblical Study than you have in your major, and my major was not Biblical Study. That’s simply the way I grew up, the environment I grew up in, and the choices I made when I was younger.
Read MoreFaith in the FantasticFor some, the fact that you are reading this on a screen is amazing. For me, however, what’s impressive is that you could be from any part of the world: London, Bangkok, Hong Kong, Seoul, Perth, Cape Town, etc, and you’re reading this now, not several months—or years—later.
Read MoreWorld SF: Our Possible FutureHere’s a cool thing about speculative-fiction readers: we’ve always been interested in exploring all the possible variations of human existence. From Samuel R. Delany to Ursula K. Le Guin to Caitlín R. Kiernan to Geoff Ryman, we’ve covered some serious ground in our examinations of gender and sexuality.
Read MoreReaching into the QUILTBAG: The Evolving World of Queer Speculative FictionSomeone clever once said, apropos of the Justice League, that the only thing sillier than an adult dressing up in colorful tights to fight crime, was a whole roomful of such folk. That’s a good analogy for films, TV shows and books that posit elaborate secret societies of vampires, werewolves and other supernatural creatures that operate just below the radar of human awareness.
Read MoreNo Mortals Allowed