Category Archives: Uncategorized

Book Review of “End of Men” by Suzanne Strobel

end

Cover art for the book “End of Men”

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi

First of all, after writing The “End of Men” Challenge, I owe Suzanne Strobel an apology. I was expecting a very different book than the one she wrote (click HERE to find it on Amazon).

Part of what gave me that particular expectation was the blog post of hers describing her novel and, quite frankly, her fears of violent men. I can only believe that the book’s protagonist Charley Tennyson is her alter-ego, at least in terms of the depth of her anxiety over “mass shootings.”

However, Tennyson never gives in to the “anti-male” sentiment that many of the other characters embrace and even manages to find love with a man.

Oh, there were flaws to be sure. This is set in a dystopian near future, but the technology is all so perfect and for the most part free. Money is only mentioned once when discussing the activation fees for what is essentially a personal force bubble. Other than that, living in luxurious “havens,” riding around in iCars which carry over your personal settings from your home, and having wrist Surges (think a way amped up smartphone with holographic filming and projecting capacities), seem to be cost free.

Continue reading →

The “End of Men” Challenge

suz

© James Pyles

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi

I get an email from Bookbub every morning. I initially signed up and indicated my book preferences to see if I could get a line on reading material I otherwise wouldn’t know about. I’ve even considered promoting some of my works on Bookbub, but according to Jericho Writers, it’s astonishingly expensive.

After a while, I stopped opening the emails. Most of the books looked really boring, and the few I did buy because of seeing them on the app weren’t particularly worth it.

Today, on impulse, I clicked the link and found End of Men by Suzanne Strobel (that’s her Amazon Author’s page).

The Bookbub blurb says:

Continue reading →

No Room for “Minor Attracted Persons” Here

protect

© UN Viet Nam\shutterstock

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi

In the sixteen months since I posted The Trouble with “The Trouble with Being Born” and Netflix’s “Cuties:” The Sexual Exploitation of Children for Profit, they have become two of the most frequented blog posts I’ve authored. Unfortunately, I suspect the reason is that, since they deal with minor girls used as a sex objects, they are attracting rather unsavory characters euphemistically known as “minor attracted persons.” For that reason, I’m permanently deleting these posts. I do not want to be a party to satisfying the desires of people who would abuse children to gratify themselves.

I didn’t pull the term minor attracted person out of thin air. I found an article at Campus Reform called Old Dominion University criminal justice professor defends pedophilia.

Continue reading →

“Doc Savage, Man of Bronze:” The Origin of the Superhero Group

doc

Cover art for Doc Savage magazine

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi

Doc Savage and his oddly assorted team might be considered the progenitors of today’s “Fantastic Four” and many other teams of superheroes — even Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos.” -Stan Lee, creator of Marvel Comics’ “Spider-Man” and “The X-Men”

There are probably two reasons to read pulp fiction that’s 70, 80, 90, and even 100 years old. The first is that you’re a true fan of the genre. The second is, if not for these ancient heroes, we wouldn’t have the modern ones that, at least up until recently, were box office blockbusters at the movies.

In the mid-1960s as I was about to enter Junior High, I didn’t realize these stories existed and more, I didn’t know that various publishers had finally convinced the owners of these older properties to allow them to appear as paperbacks. It was the perfect time for me. I was the age and sex of the target audience, and the average price for a paperback was around 40 to 60 cents a copy. Heck, back then, even a comic book cost 12 cents.

So Edgar Rice Burroughs’ entire Tarzan and John Carter of Mars book series abruptly appeared in mall bookstores all across the country. So did E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman and Skylark series along with what Robert E. Howard and every other author under the sun wrote about Conan the Barbarian.

Continue reading →

Film Review of “John Wick” (2014)

wick

Promotional poster for the 2014 film “John Wick”

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi

I’ve been hearing a lot about John Wick (played by Keanu Reeves), but mainly as a meme. Basically, if you kill Wick’s dog, he comes after you with a vengeance. I didn’t really know what it meant.

I knew there were three Wick films out and a fourth pending. I thought maybe the movies were based on a book series or something (they’re not).

So when I was at my local public library yesterday and saw the 2014 original “John Wick,” I figured “why not?”

Knowing nothing about the film or the character, it was hard to get into at first. Who is this wounded, dying guy at the beginning? Why is he watching a video of a woman, apparently his wife Helen (Bridget Moynahan), on his phone as he bleeds out.

Then the rest of the film as a flashback.

Continue reading →

“Blood Heir” and Beyond

blood heir

Cover art for the novel “Blood Heir” by Amélie Wen Zhao

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi

Blood Heir by Amélie Wen Zhao is not the sort of novel I’d read, but as I’ve said once, twice, and most recently a third time, I hate bullies, especially those who pretend to be workers of “justice”.

Over absolutely unjustified allegations of racism (the book hadn’t even been published yet), the author herself voluntarily “apologized” for her racism in her book and withdrew it from publication.

Horrible mistake. Grievous error.

Fortunately, not long later she realized this was all part of some ridiculous campaign against her that had nothing to do with racist themes in her story (the story was based on elements of the author’s ethnic and national past) and everything to do with the bad character of her opponents. She went ahead and released her book for publication. That was November 2019.

So how did the book do when real people read and reviewed it:

Continue reading →

Update on Amélie Wen Zhao’s “Blood Heir”

blood heir

Cover art for the novel “Blood Heir” by Amélie Wen Zhao

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi

In reviewing my blog stats today, I saw someone had read an article I wrote back in February 2019 called Amélie Wen Zhao, “Blood Heir,” and Social Justice (or is it vengeance).

Apparently, even before Amélie Wen Zhao’s book was published, a whole bunch of self-righteous online pundits accused Zhao of writing an anti-black tome which should, from their perspective, be shunned and never see the light of day. You can click the link I provided for the details, but among the bullies I was was able to find on twitter were Ellen 오 Oh and Paige Cee (Cee had made her twitter page private during the backlash against her, but I see now it’s available).

Unfortunately, after being brutally and unjustly attacked, Zhao did the worst thing she could do. She apologized to her abusers. Metaphorically speaking, this is like the victim of domestic violence apologizing to the person who has beaten her black and blue with their fists.

Continue reading →

Not the Comic Books I Grew Up With

gay bobby

Images from “Uncanny X-Men #7,” “Uncanny X-Men #52,” and “All-New X-Men #40” found at “Bounding into Comics.”

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi

I received quite a bit of feedback on my last blog post, mainly in social media. So when insomnia seized me by the throat tonight, I re-read some other “controversial” material I’d sampled earlier and figured, why not? I need to kill some time and let being sleepy overwhelm my anxiety (long story).

I follow the blog Bounding into Comics and yes it does come from a somewhat conservative place socially. While I periodically complain that the entertainment industry has forgotten how to entertain, they/it does have other characteristics. One can be found in the “Bounding” article Every Single Comic Book Character That Has Been Retconned To LGBTQ+.

No, I’m not going to rant about LGBTQ representation in comic books or anything else. The world is a diverse place and that will naturally be reflected in what we watch, read, and listen to. Any form of entertainment is a product of its times which is why making and then remaking a movie or TV show decades apart will yield two different products. Compare the original 1960s Lost in Space with the much more recent Netflix remake (which admittedly I’ve never watched, but I’m convinced the two shows must be very different from each other). It’s also why it’s reasonable to have gay characters in comic books today when you would never have found even one when I was growing up.

Getting back to the article, there are only six DC and Marvel characters listed out of hundreds or perhaps thousands of superheroes, so it’s not like it is a big deal. The complaint that author John F. Trent makes is that each and every one of these fictional people started out as totally straight characters. Every single one.

And every one was retconned to become bi or gay.

Continue reading →

Rejection and Feedback

typing

Found at typinglounge.com – No image credit given

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi

Random stuff.

I haven’t been writing much lately. Okay, I haven’t been writing anything new at all. I do technical writing for my day job of course, and I just finished yet another freelance job updating/refreshing test questions at the back a technology book (it’s actually more interesting than it sounds, pays pretty well, and has a quick turnaround).

What I have  been doing is submitting previously rejected short stories to different publishers, actually trying for more “mainstream” periodicals.

This is where the rejection part comes in. One story is basically urban fantasy/crime story (I’ve just submitted it yet again, so we’ll see) and the other is a sort of “pirates in space” tale, complete with oppressive colonizers, revenge, and swashbuckling. I even included a fictionalized version of a famous author.

The vast, vast majority of time when you get those rejection emails, they’re pretty standard fare and offer no feedback good, bad, or indifferent. This last one did:

Continue reading →

“Superversive” Books for Children

birds

Cover art for “Elephants Are Not Birds” by Ashley St. Clair

If you like my work, buy me a virtual cup of coffee at Ko-Fi

Every once in a while, I’ll craft something here about Superversive as opposed to “subversive” writing and other art forms in Science Fiction and Fantasy. The idea is that for the past several decades, the entertainment industry in general has moved away from ideas such as:

  • Heroes being heroic
  • Doing good for the sake of being good
  • A happy ending isn’t such a bad thing after all
  • Love and beauty are real in the world and in people
  • It’s okay to be spiritual/religious beings and maybe we aren’t complete if we shun that
  • Family is positive and not dysfunctional
  • Civilization is better than chaos
  • Strength, courage, honor, beauty, truth, sacrifice, spirituality, hope, and humility are all virtues and have their place in stories. Superversive tales should NEVER leave the reader in despair

No, not every single SF/F book published in the last twenty years is doom, gloom, and overridden by a progressive politics and social view…

…it just seems that way sometimes.

Continue reading →