A Far Out Fantastic Site

An attendee in a costume resembling the Spider-Man  villain, Doctor Octopus, at the 2015 Wizard World Comic Con Sacramento. Photo Credit: Steven Rose, Jr. Last week I talked a little about Wizard World Comic Con  and said it wasn’t all comics but other forms of popular media such as movies, television, video games and, to a certain degree even literary fiction. It ran the whole weekend, Friday through Sunday, but I only attended Sunday. But the one day alone still had more than enough to see. Because I wanted to look through the dealers’ room, which covered nearly the entire convention hall of the Sacramento Convention Center, I had to limit myself to three of the 14 panels scheduled for that day. All three were about storytelling to some extent, but I found one particularly helpful to writers such as myself. It was entitled “Where the Synergy of Video Games, Books and Films Collide”. Wizard World Synergy “Where the Synergy” was a panel of artists and writers,...

A Wizard World Comic Con in Manhattan, NY Photo Credit:  © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons I know I said I would have a review of a Philip K. Dick short story for you soon but my writing project schedule has become a little jumbled this past week. I was especially held back when my Internet went out on me yesterday afternoon for no apparent reason. And it came back on, also for no apparent reason, but not until the evening. It was really frustrating, but the most important thing is that it’s back on so I can write and post this entry for you. So I’ll have to hold off the review until a later date because an event I want to tell you about is already going on. It is Wizard World Comic Con and it has returned here to Sacramento. If you are not in the Sacramento area to attend Wizard World, there’s good news. This is a touring comic convention that hits several cities throughout North America so there may be one near you in the upcoming months. If you’re not in t...

Because there have been a lot of things going on this past week in the world of sci fi, fantasy and writing, I thought it would be a great time to do a week in review. Sunday 7 June: Christopher Lee Dies at 93 Years When I heard about this only a few days ago, I was both shocked and sad. Sir Christopher Lee has been one of my favourite actors since childhood. I first found out about him when I was a kid, around six or seven, on a hosted horror movie show called Creature Features . The host, the late Bob Wilkins, talked about Mr. Lee all the time, let alone featured his horror movies, and interviewed him on the show. Lee’s Dracula movies always inspired me in everything horror. He’s one of those actors right up there with Lenard Nimoy (who sadly also died back in February) who you wish were immortal. You even get kind of mad at the fact that death exists when famous actors like him die. Well at least in his movies he’ll be immortal and not just in his Dracula ones, which his hi...

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons I apologise for posting so late. I normally have been posting on a Friday or Saturday, but this past Saturday I had a family event to go to and was there a little longer than I had intended. Earlier last week, I was in bed reading a used copy of the Arabian Nights only to find out a page was missing. It was a missing leaf to be exact; the actual pages were 41 and 42, front and back. It was right in the middle of the story about the fisherman and the genie. I was really mad when I discovered this because I didn’t want to continue until I could replace the missing page. Even though the Arabian Nights is a compilation of stories, they are told within one overarching story. The book begins with the Princess Scheherazade’s tale that she tells to the king in order to hold off her execution. Even though she is the chief story teller in the book, within her stories are other stories told by the characters. So they are stories within stories, li...