Category: Science Fiction

City of the Elder Things

The City of the Elder Things (it didn’t have a proper name) is the most well described of Lovecraft’s alien cities, which also includes Pnakotus, the city of the Great Race of Yith that lay in the Australan outback, and R’lyeh, Cthulhu’s tomb. Immense, alien, frozen in time both literally and figuratively, half of the …

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At the Mountains of Madness [Reading Challenge 2022]

At the Mountains of Madness by H. P. Lovecraft Originally published 1936 in Astounding Stories [ Challenge # 1:  Reread a book you have already read. ] Finished my first challenge this year, H. P. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness. I first read it back in college some decades ago, and enjoyed it, but …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 3/2/22: Battle of the Gargantuas (Syfy monster movies)

In the 2000s and 2010s, that purveyor of quality entertainment, the SyFy channel, released over 200 original made-for-TV movies, which, given the network’s name, could only peripherally be called science fiction. Most were what was once called B-movies, variations on disasters, monsters both mythic and human-created, and horror… and often all three, with the addition …

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Worldbuilding Wednesday 1/19/22: The Best of Twittersnips (Playing in Another’s Sandbox)

Very occasionally over the past years I’ve stepped out and created random characters for existing media —  books, movies, or even toy lines. Here’s a selection.   Franchise and fanfic characters Middle Earth (J. R. R. Tolkien) Smerri Peachlake, Nol Bluffbuggin, Gosti Threeclasp (Hobbits) Yevenglazar, a giant spider Prince Thrindhöil Gandian Graymurgh, a wizard Islands …

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Alien Mrs. Claus

It’s wearing a skirt, so it must be the Mrs!

Worst Dressed Superhero

I’m aware that the list is very long, as comic book heroes and heroines have been doing their thing in questionable costumes for decades. But 1973’s dystopian gladiator Killraven takes my vote for worst-dressed: black leather boots with over-the-knee epaulets and modified slingshot thong (with lacing.) I feel dirty just by looking at him. Not …

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Whatcha Dune?

Projected poster art for Jodorowsky’s Dune, the movie that never was. Paul Atreides/Muad’dib is at center. The names of the designers are at lower left, and if you follow their work, you can pinpoint what elements of the illustration they worked on: Foss the spacecraft, Giger the sandworm, Moebius the characters and perhaps that landscape. …

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Not Feyd Away

The recent release of Villeneuve’s adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune got me thinking about the many depictions of Feyd Rautha, Paul Atreides’ antithesis and rival, created by artists over the years. Why not the saintly Paul himself, you ask? Well, he’s just not as interesting. He spends most of the book in a stillsuit, the …

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The Drudgery of Ironing

The alien certainly thinks so.

Existential Spock

Mr. Spock deals with his fear in a unique way in this old comic book panel.