Category Archives: sff

Invasion of the Stochastic Parrots

Posted on February 20, 2023 by JE

Apparently enough fatheads were taken in by the chatbot hype this winter to flood electronic submission portals with chatbot-written fiction. At last there’s an option for the person who’s too dumb or lazy to read but who thinks they can … Continue reading →

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Swords Against Redundancy: Leiber’s TWO SOUGHT ADVENTURE and SWORDS AGAINST DEATH

Posted on February 20, 2023 by JE

In summary: these two books collect the earliest stories Fritz Leiber published about Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, ergo one or the other is essential reading for the sword-and-sorcery fan. Both are probably essential only to the Leiberian completist, so … Continue reading →

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Not the Last about THE LAST OF US

Posted on February 6, 2023 by JE

Like the rest of the universal world, I loved episode 3 of The Last of Us, but (and this may be where the universal world and I part company) episode 4 reminded me of why I’m tepid about the show … Continue reading →

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Get the Hnakkr!

Posted on January 2, 2023 by JE

I’m rereading Snorri’s Edda and Tacitus’ Historiae in tandem, and it’s an interesting experience. With Snorri, this involves a lot of adventures in the dictionary, as the vocabulary of Old Icelandic is definitely less familiar to me than the vocabulary … Continue reading →

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Fahrenheit 101

Posted on December 28, 2022 by JE

“You don’t have to burn books if the world starts to fill up with nonreaders, nonlearners, nonknowers.”–Ray Bradbury

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Lang Story Short: Lang’s WHILE THE CITY SLEEPS (1956)

Posted on July 14, 2018 by JE

The movie I watched tonight while mostly avoiding exercise was Fritz Lang’s While the City Sleeps (1956), a melodrama about newspapermen, and the women who sort love them sometimes, during the hunt for a serial killer. I was hoping for … Continue reading →

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