“Diamonds In The Rough: Our Problematic Faves, Who Coincidentally, Are Women”
The writers of Women Write About Comics share their problematic favorite characters from comics, manga, anime and tv.
When The Graveyard Shift Sisters Met Dark Matters
The excellent Graveyard Shift Sisters interview the amazing Cate and Erica of Dark Matters! “The women behind Dark Matters are Cate and Erica; ‘genre-lovers exploring issues of race and ‘other’ in various arts, media, and academic disciplines, in the context of science fiction, horror, fantasy, the supernatural, and all things geek-friendly.’ This digital […]
“J.K. Rowling, No: The Opportunism of ‘History of Magic in North America'”
At Tor.com, Chris Lough writes about the problems with J.K. Rowling’s “The History of Magic of North America.” “Fiction is a story we create, and history is a story we find, but the opposite is also true, and this makes the structure of both very similar. In this […]
“A Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fiction”
At Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, author Nisi Shawl offers “A Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fiction.” In 1909 Harvard’s president, Charles W. Eliot, issued a 51-volume anthology he claimed could provide its owners with a complete liberal arts education. In the same vein, I’ve pulled […]
The British Raj, Quantum Physics, and Some Super Cool Snake Rings: Roland Joffé’s The Lovers
In the “making of” feature on the DVD of The Lovers, director Roland Joffé (The Killing Fields, Fat Man and Little Boy, City of Joy) describes his film as an exploration of the concept of time split across two eras, represented by “quantum physics” in the near future […]
“Land Travel Before Engines”
At Mythcreants, Chris Winkle writes about the difference between overland travel in fantasy and in historical reality. “Many fantasy stories involve traveling from one city to another, often in worlds without engine technology. Before cars and trains, traveling over land was exhausting and dangerous. The logistics of a […]
The Cultural Gutter 