Category Archives: Uncategorized

1. Errol Morris has Part 1 of “Seven Lies About Lying” at the NYT website (registration may be required). I’m not sure I can buy the pedantic distinction between lying and deception, but it’s an interesting stretch of text, illustrated … Continue reading →

1. My Blog Gate post for this week is a review/reader’s memoir of Stargate by Tak Hallus (a.k.a. Stephen Robinett), as a belated memorial to the late author. 2. You’ve probably heard by now, but Baen’s Universe is closing. I … Continue reading →

The Vortex Cannon: useful and beautiful.

Stephen Robinett (a.k.a. “Tak Hallus”) is dead–and has been, it seems, since 2003. He sort of fell out of the field by the 1980s, and personally I thought it was a mistake to drop his pseudonym: “Tak Hallus” is weird … Continue reading →

1. This is bad. What is M. Night Shyamalan thinking? I’m speaking as one of the three people on the face of this planet who actually liked The Village. But I’m about done with him, at this point. 2. This … Continue reading →

My Blog Gate post of the week is up at last, a review of Matthew Goodman’s The Sun and the Moon. Executive summary: I really liked it.

If I had picked a Dunsany novel likely to be adapted as a movie, My Talks with Dean Spanley wouldn’t have been it. But this does look like it might be a lot of fun. They’re certainly working with a … Continue reading →

1. Ho ho ho ho Mr Vorkos you’re going to be Vorkos-again! And again and again, we hope. 2. More news on Berlusconi’s shady dealings about hideous decrepit old bodies–not his own this time, though (thank God). The news report … Continue reading →

1. In this week’s Blog Gate episode I commit career suicide. Don’t miss! 2. A bunch of plaster images of theatrical masks have been unearthed from Pompeii. I particularly like this one, which looks a lot like Hirschfeld’s caricatures of … Continue reading →

1. Hemingway’s Moveable Feast—“restored” or Bowdlerized? (at the NYT–registration may be required). 2. NESFA has scheduled a collection of John Bellairs’ fantasies—The Face in the Frost, an unfinished sequel and some shorter humorous stuff, most of which I’ve never seen. … Continue reading →