Category Archives: review or meta-review

Two-and-a-Half Murders in Black and White

Posted on March 30, 2025 by JE

I watched a couple of pretty good new-to-me movies that could loosely be described as noir: Panique (1946) and The Window (1949). Both of them are based on fiction I haven’t read, but now kind of want to. Reviews follow, … Continue reading →

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Surfing the Time Waves

Posted on March 29, 2025 by JE

I’m reading the minor declamations of pseudo-Quintilian in Shackleton-Bailey’s great Loeb edition. The idea is to briefly escape the current political nightmare by immersing myself in the weird little stories of these controversiae. It’s not going that well. For example: … Continue reading →

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Rats Live on No Evil Star: Leiber’s THE SWORDS OF LANKHMAR

Posted on March 27, 2025 by JE

In summary: The Swords of Lankhmar has a slow start. In fact, it has two slow starts. But once the beat drops, as it were, the story swings into action and lots of weird things happen at an increasingly rapid … Continue reading →

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Ripped From the Headlines: UNNATURAL DEATH by Dorothy L. Sayers

Posted on March 22, 2025 by JE

Some writers I take to with irrational intensity. Others, who may be equally good or even great, I don’t. Sometimes I understand the process involved; sometimes I don’t. Sayers is one of the writers I took to as soon as … Continue reading →

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Mountains and Monsters: Leiber’s SWORDS AGAINST WIZARDRY

Posted on March 16, 2025 by JE

A couple years ago I set out to review all of Fritz Leiber’s books about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser—foundational texts for sword-and-sorcery and for my personal imagination. I knocked off the first three (or four, depending on how you … Continue reading →

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Pseudoplumes, Nom de Nyms, Birds, & Oooze

Posted on February 28, 2025 by JE

I’m not a big fan of literary criticism in any field (although I have committed some), but one of my big books from my late teens onward was Le Guin’s The Language of the Night (1979), especially for the essays … Continue reading →

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Call Him Poul (if you can pronounce it)

Posted on February 18, 2025 by JE

A judicious review by Paul Weimer of a great NESFA volume linked below. I liked this book a lot, but for me the most distinctive feature of this series is the one that I like least: the stories are a … Continue reading →

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There Are Limits

Posted on July 9, 2024 by JE

I’ve been watching through The Outer Limits (1963-1965), a show I have fond memories of from when I was a kid. Uff da. They’re mostly terrible so far. The best episode of the first five was 1.4 “The Man with … Continue reading →

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Carney Knowledge: MADBALL by Fredric Brown

Posted on June 15, 2024 by JE

Fredric Brown was one of the best writers of sf at shorter lengths–especially very short lengths. His story “Knock” was so short he had to write a longer story to embed it in. His “Puppet Show” brilliantly mocked the Campbellian … Continue reading →

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Breslin vs. Trump

Posted on May 31, 2024 by JE

As Fate or Chaos would have it, the LoA collection of Jimmy Breslin arrived on my doorstep this week, so that on the evening when Trump’s guilty verdict was announced in Manhattan, I got to read Breslin’s verdict on Trump … Continue reading →

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