Tag: communism

“The Ghost of Worshops Past: How Communism, Conservatism, and the Cold War still molds our path into SFF Writing”

At Tor.com, S.L. Huang writes about the history of writing workshops and its influence on SF/F workshops and writing today. “To those outside the industry, the name “Clarion” might not have much meaning. But to those with aspirations of being a professional SFF author—of joining those like Gaiman—workshops […]

Dracula Sir

Content warning: self-harm, sexual violence, police violence.  From the trailer, I thought Dracula Sir was going to be the kind of film that the film industries of India do often and, generally speaking, very well: a reincarnation story.  I was already hooked by the title alone, but a […]

No Place in Space

To the Stars By Hard Ways (Cherez ternii k zvyozdam, 1981) was based on Kirill Bulychev’s short story, A Difficult Child. In that story, a young humanoid (male, in this case) is found in space, part of a group of similar aliens who have been sent to Earth […]

Moonbeams and Miniskirts

Some years ago, a trio of colorful, contemplative, and sometimes a little bit absurd science fiction films from East German studio DEFA found their way onto home video in the United States. Of them, The Silent Star was the most beloved thanks to its combination of serious speculation […]

The Lure on The Projection Booth

The Gutter’s own Carol talks about The Lure (2015), Karel Kachyňa’s The Little Mermaid/ Malá Morská Víla (1976) and Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s Ondine with Mike White and David Rodgers on The Projection Booth podcast. “Released in the United States as The Lure , Agnieszka Smoczynska’s 2015 […]

“Beautiful Books, Terrible Times”

Hyperallergic has a piece on Soviet children’s books between 1920 and 1935, with images from Inside the Rainbow: Russian Children’s Literature 1920-35: Beautiful Books, Terrible Times. “The 1920s in Russia weren’t exactly what people had hoped they would be. After the 1917 Russian Revolution brought down the old regime […]