I have been enjoying Drew Hayden Taylor’s Take Us to Your Chief and Other Stories (2016), a collection of short sci fi stories from a First Nations perspective. The collection includes a wide variety of stories, often with a sense of quirk but always with a sense of struggle, physical and psychological, at the continued colonization indigenous ( Read more... )

Just before the record heat struck, my family and I spent a few days in Paris so that I could attend and present at a lovely conference on the Legacy of Ursula Le Guin in the Anthropocene. The conference was wonderful! A diverse group of fascinating folks with a range of insights and experience with Le Guin’s work. I may write about it more, but ( Read more... )

I am back from whirlwind travels abroad (to Iceland and France) and will unload some thoughts in a few posts, starting with last first. On the flight home I watched a very good Icelandic movie I would like to recommend: Rökkur/Rift ( Read more... )

Poor Dark Phoenix: it's been getting bad press for two years or something, sucking up internet vitriol at Sophie Turner and franchise fatigue, general concerns that it would be another X3-like flop, rumors of a troubled production, etc. It may well also have suffered neglect from studios knowing this would be the last in the franchise and having ( Read more... )

Weird year. I can't remember what I read. I feel like I read a lot of scholarly essays and reread a lot of things, but here's some sampling.

Stranger Bird by Joe PitkinThis is a self-published, not quite YA fantasy novel by a colleague of mine. It's the coming-of-age story of a boy, Burdock, who must learn responsibility and self-sacrifice when he ( Read more... )

My sci-fi short The Eater is done. It's up on YouTube as a full film and as four webisodes. I fulfilled my (tentative) New Year's resolution to complete it. All in all, it took about five years. It's definitely microbudget and, yes, in at least one spot the boom is in. But I'm reasonably happy with it ( Read more... )

A friend asked my why I like Banana Fish. She has just seen the anime and wasn't quite getting the appeal. I wrote so much in reply that I figured I'd post it here or anyone else who might want to read thoughts on BF. (Spoilers for the whole shebang)( Read more... )

I don't know if I've ever been so pleased with the voting of my fellow Oregonians in the 16-ish years I've lived here. They pretty much came through with sanity across the board ( Read more... )

I was coloring in my daughter's coloring book when inspiration hit me.
( Read more... )

I don't think I ever posted this. Or if I did, it'll be here twice:

Some Books I Read in 2017
(Brain too dead to keep exhaustive list.)

The Buried Giant by Kazuo IshiguroA strange, reflective, fantasy-but-not-really look at life in Britain in the generation or so after King Arthur with an emphasis on the scars of war. The tone has stuck with me ( Read more... )