fiction

January 9, 2020

Reading is Believing (DOG EAR)

as on a long bike ride with a buddy. Back at his house after a number of two-wheeled adventures, I mentioned to him about Mortal Engines, a series I’d grown interested in and the megabomb movie that came from it. Not that the movie was bad. It just wasn’t quite there, not for the hundred million dollars they spent on it. So it goes. A franchise that wasn’t. But the thing was, my friend started warning me off the movie before I’d even admitted that, in large part of curiosity, I’d purchased it. And I liked it – it was […]
June 4, 2020

Old Fiction (DOG EAR)

he library has reopened for book delivery. Coming off a Black Sails binge, I decided to reread Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. What did I notice as I finished that first chapter? I noticed how lame some of the other books I’ve recently read are. I just finished a Libertarian fiction that was, frankly, pretty damn dumb (if you now have literal heaven on earth, if the dead can return and you can visit, then why are we talking about the second amendment (with the author putting words in Jefferson’s mouth))? And then there was that yellowing space opera I […]
December 24, 2020

Three on Three (Dog Ear)

was doing my last-minute Christmas shopping the other day (which was good since someone in my train club called while I was and said he’d maybe had contact with a Covid case and I had hung out with him Saturday). But I was already mulling over something I’d just seen. Of course, I’m a Mange/Anime guy. I love the stuff, the raw power and beauty of a well-told story (even though they have a lot of clunkers, too). So I’d wandered over to where the Manga was, the outer three walls of a U-shape of shelves. All three outer faces […]
February 4, 2021

The Real World (DOG EAR)

ecades ago, a friend of mine worked at TRW. At the time they had a pretty pompous ad – something like “TRW – what does it stand for?” My friend laughed at this and said “Three Random Words”. But he also noted that, right out of college, it meant “The Real World”. The Real World. No more drinking every night. No more philosophic debates late into the wee hours. No more D&D. No more showing up for class only if you wanted to. The Real World was a small cubicle. Be-in-by times. Crummy coffee. Deadlines you didn’t agree to. Unfair, […]
August 7, 2022

The Year’s Best Science Fiction (Vol 1) (Review)

‘m kinda cheating here. I’m in the middle of an Ark Royal book and I had to give Art of War a break (interesting, but they are milking it through explanations to justify a bookish length). So really, I began The Year’s Best Science Fiction (Vol 1) , by Jonathan Strahan, after last Christmas (when my who-knows-me-best wife gifted it to me). And she got it off the old books graveyard shelf, given that it was Yule 2021 and the year in Year, here, is 2019. But collections of short stories can be the bomb. You can read them in any order, […]