Category: Science-Fiction

On Horizon Zero Dawn and the Heroism of Aloy

Every April is Switcheroo Month at The Cultural Gutter. This month Comics Editor Carol writes about Horizon Zero Dawn. ~~~ Watch out, everyone, I am going to talk a bit about story elements because I enjoyed Horizon Zero Dawn‘s story. Sometime I’d like to discuss it in greater […]

From the Archives: These Lonely, Haunted Places

SF/F Editor Keith Allison is engaged in a top secret mission abroad, so this month we’ll be sharing his meditation on folk horror and Penda’s Fen. ~~~ Mentally unpacking Penda’s Fen, a 1974 entry in the BBC’s “Plays for Today” series of television movies tackling controversial subjects often […]

Science, Fiction, and Science Fiction Hoaxes

Sasquatches, Godzilla-like sea monsters, alien invasions, vampire squid – it’s April switcheroo month once again at the Gutter and I’m about to take you down a rabbit hole of hoaxes and truly strange things inspired by one of my favorite podcasts, Popular Science’s The Weirdest Thing I Learned […]

Gab Emperor of Dune

“This is where things get weird.” So the prophecy foretold when I went forth into the desert and proclaimed that it was time for the sleeper to awaken, that I would finally look into the place I feared to look and find, staring back at me, God Emperor […]

Martian Man Hater

Like pretty much every punk rocker in history, my first exposure to Angry Red Planet was the cover to the Misfits album Walk Among Us, which depicted the band being menaced by a giant…rat-bat-spider…thing. Or maybe it was working for them. The monster, like the album, was pretty […]

I Was Once a Man!

In October of 2003, when I was employed as a writer for Toyfare magazine, I was tasked with writing an article pitting the two iconic toy lines against each other in a battle for overall supremacy. Hey, it’s the sort of things we did back then. I went […]