A Far Out Fantastic Site

Credit: Pixabay.com Like in many parts of the state, Northern California has been having its summer wild fire problem. Even though Sacramento hasn’t been hit by any of the flames (the closest fire has been in Redding) the smoke blows over to here. Even so, and even though it’s been frying in the triple digits, I put on my gas mask (okay, my clinical anti-germ mask)  Saturday afternoon  and braved the extreme heat to take advantage of a sale at one of the comic book stores. It almost wasn’t worth it. I kind of thought maybe the time would have been better spent continuing to work on a short story that will probably take more than three months to complete because it involves inter-dimensional time travel. So this is a story that I have to bring all kinds of quantum mechanical concepts into and I’m no astrophysicist. Worldbuilding To Create Aliens However, I’m done with the worldbuilding part of the story, unless future drafts prove otherwise. What helped me...

Warning: This review may contain, what are considered by some, spoilers. Credit: Pixabay.com In last week’s post I said that Steven Spielberg isn’t a horror director and so that the first Jurassic Park movie did not have the degree of horror as did Michael Crichton’s book of the same name. And I don’t think Spielberg is any more a director of horror movies today than he was when he made the first Jurassic Park film. However, the latest of the Jurassic Park films, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom , which I saw last weekend, contains a lot more of the horror element than probably any of the other sequels, even more than the original novel. Believe it or not, it has a gothic theme to it. How much more horror can a science fiction film such as that get? Although the movie starts off with an expedition on Isla Nublar, the island that the din o saur “ theme park” was re- built on but then destroyed in the previous installment , it soon enough moves to the estate of a...

Credit: Pixabay.com Just today I saw Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom . It was a lot better than what many critics said but I think I liked the first Jurassic World movie better and it definitely wasn’t as good as the first Jurassic Park film. Because I’m a lover of originals (books, movies, TV series, etc.) and because this is a Book-To-Movie post where I review movies based on books, I’m going to review the first Jurassic Park film along with the novel that it’s based on. For those of you not familiar with the Jurassic Park films and books that inspired them, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is not directly based on any of the Michael Crichton novels like Jurassic Park is. It’s merely a sequel to the movie preceding it ( Jurassic World ) . But before I saw Fallen Kingdom , I wanted to make sure I did two things: read Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park and then see the Stephen Spielberg movie adaptation which I saw a few days ago right after finishing the book. Before tha...

Credit: Pixabay.com I meant to post about Sinister Creature Con a couple weeks ago but several other events came up . This convention for all things of the horror genre occurred Saturday and Sunday the weekend of June 16 th at the Scottish Rite Center in Sacramento. I only attended Saturday and was preparing swag up to the minute I had to leave the house for the con. Although this con that occurs twice a year in Sacramento--once in the summer, once in the fall--honours both mainstream and indie horror artists, it caters to the latter most of all. It’s an event where indie writers and artists like myself can find support and encouragement that we often don’t get elsewhere. In the Dealers’ Room Sinister Creature’s dealers’ room on Saturday was mostly filled with the arts and crafts of indie creators, most of who work in the horror genre. The work on display and for sale included everything from paintings of famous movie monsters to handmade goth jewelry to horror au...