On this day in 1957, the BBC screened a film purporting to show Swiss farmers harvesting spaghetti from spaghetti plants.

fantasy book reviews science fiction book reviews

Remedios Varo

Writing, Editing, and Publishing:

Horror Writers Association have announced some of the 2014 award recipients, including both Tanith Lee and Jack Ketchum for Lifetime Achievement Awards.

Part of a series on the psychology of inspirational female characters, this week Janina Scarlet talks about Katniss.

Are you an academic, writing a non-fiction project about speculative fiction? Check out this grant to help fund writers complete a project on popular culture, comics, or dime novels.

Or perhaps you long to be an academic, studying fantasy literature? In that case, Achala Upandren interviews Dr. Robert Maslen, creator of the world’s first M.Litt in Fantasy Literature, and he tells us about the program and his hopes in creating it.

More gorgeous pages from the first illustrated Harry Potter book, with art by Jim Kay; I cannot wait to buy this!

Cat Rambo discusses how long she had been sharing brainspace with the fictional world of Tabat,and what’s it like to finally have a book set in this world out in the real world.

fantasy book reviews science fiction book reviews

Remedios Varo

Movies and Television:

Have you heard of this new show called iZombie?

New Who has been on the air for 10 years; Happy birthday, Doctor Who!

Joseph Gordon Levitt is going to be in a Fraggle Rock Movie, I repeat, Joseph Gordon Levitt is going to be in a Fraggle Rock movie.

A look back at “Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre” as Susan Harlan wonders when fairy tales lost their edge, blaming (in part) the Disneyfication of fairy tales. Best quote: ” It’s also the logical end of princess culture: the transformation of an actual woman into a cartoon.

Internet Stuff:

Gen Con threatens to pull from Indiana if Governor signs religious freedom bill.

Marvel releases a Pizza Dog…I mean, Hawkeye figurine.

A Harry Potter parody of “Uptown Funk”. What more do you need to be happy?

Art Feature: 

Today’s art is by Remedios Varo, Spanish-Mexican surrealist.

Author

  • Kate Lechler

    KATE LECHLER, on our staff from May 2014 to January 2017, resides in Oxford, MS, where she divides her time between teaching early British literature at the University of Mississippi, writing fiction, and throwing the tennis ball for her insatiable terrier, Sam. She loves speculative fiction because of what it tells us about our past, present, and future. She particularly enjoys re-imagined fairy tales and myths, fabulism, magical realism, urban fantasy, and the New Weird. Just as in real life, she has no time for melodramatic protagonists with no sense of humor. The movie she quotes most often is Jurassic Park, and the TV show she obsessively re-watches (much to the chagrin of her husband) is Buffy the Vampire Slayer.