Flatter your reader. That sounds like a pretty solid narrative strategy! Make your audience think they are really smart, and they’ll probably come back for more. Books can do this automatically, just by the virtue of taking us into the thoughts of other people – not so easy […]
The adage has it that truth is stranger than fiction. I swear that’s true in Mexico. One of my favourite writers, hardboiled crime novelist Paco Ignacio Taibo II, has to struggle to keep up with the absurd plot of his beloved nation. Although Taibo is a fine writer, […]
Some may regard the birth of the superhero as June, 1938 with Action Comics #1. But while the fantastic popularity of the Man of Steel did have a profound effect on how “Hero” stories were told ever after, there were supermen already at work, protecting the dark alleys […]
Horror stories make people uncomfortable or scared in many ways. The most basic has always been fear of death and/or physical destruction. For example, I don’t want my body torn to shreds by zombies, so I’ll be scared if it happens to a character I empathize with. In […]
Summers in Toronto can be apocalyptic. If it isn’t the plague of aphids infesting our air supply, it’s the flood of crap at the multiplex.
A surprisingly lucid and yet still impossibly nerdy look at The Top Ten Sci-FI Films That Never Existed: “There was a movie that perfectly captured the Douglas Adams experience, the combination of bitter sarcasm and sharp imagination, the droll British wit and whale-exploding slapstick that infused his novels. […]
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The Cultural Gutter 