A Far Out Fantastic Site

Credit: Pixabay Often, I try to mark my summers with a big screen movie. Summers are magical and they especially were when we were kids. And they’re still magical for us adult artists, and that includes writers. I remember my summer from when I was 9 because that’s when “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” premiered (1980) and my dad took my kid brother and I to see it.  Even bad movies served as a landmark, or maybe more like a “timemark”, for some of my summers when I was a kid. I won’t forget how unamusing the fourth “Jaws” film, “Jaws: The Revenge”, was when I saw it on the big screen during the summer (1987) just before my junior year of high school. Still, it was an event that I shared with my younger brother that was characteristic of summer. Of course, I thought I would like the movie and so that’s why we went to see it. So even now as an adult, every summer I’ll go see a movie that I think I’ll like and then remember the summer for it regardless of whether I liked it or not. 

Credit: Pixabay Warning: This review may contain spoilers. In past Book-To-Movies, we’ve reviewed several movie adaptations of books and short stories by famous science fiction and horror authors. All those films have stuck to the plot of the original work to at least some recognizable degree. But this week’s Book-To-Movie will be the first to review a film that does a poor job of staying faithful to the original plot. The film is 1992’s “The Lawnmower Man” which is based on Stephen King’s short story of the same name. Even so, the movie is a really good one. So then what’s the problem? The problem is that it’s hardly an adaptation and so more its own story simply with the title of King’s short work slapped onto it.  ‘The Lawnmower Man’: The Short Story Stephen King’s “The Lawnmower Man” originally appeared in “Cavalier” magazine in 1975 and was then collected into his book of short fiction, “Night Shift” the following year. The story’s protagonist is a middle-aged husband and dad by t

Photo Credit: Pixabay   As a science fiction writer, I’ve always had a fascination with the prehistoric. It’s often been the subject of pulp fiction and b movies and so, more often than not, has been romanticized with human and dinosaur existing side by side, almost never harmoniously. Such stories can be considered what we now call alternative historic fiction, or in this case alternative pre historic fiction. This is because science has proven that humans did not come along until millions of years after the dinosaurs went extinct. Yet, there are a lot of great books and films out there that depict early humans in a much more realistic manner than the pulps and b films. For example, there’s Jean Auel’s novel, “The Clan of the Cave Bear”, which was adapted into a 1986 film. There’s also Jacqui Murray’s “Dawn of Humanity” series of books, the latest of which is “Laws of Nature”. I had the pleasure of interviewing Jacqui for tonight’s post.  Photo Credit: Courtesy of Jacqui Murray "

  It’s the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for another Insecure Writers Support Group (IWSG)  post! In an IWSG post, we writers bring our writing challenges and problems out into the open to share with each other and try to offer solutions. Making Time to Write When Working a Day Job After four months, I finally returned to the work place of my day job yesterday! I had been teleworking part of the time during those four months and the rest of the time I was either in the hospital or recovering at home. It was so good to get back to my place of employment and see the familiar faces that I had missed during my time off.  But with a day job comes less writing time. Generally, “day job” is defined by us artists and writers as a job unrelated to our creative and artistic work. When I was teleworking I was doing so on a limited schedule and so had more time to write, but since I’ve returned to my workplace and regular schedule I have less time. So, I have to be very thorough a

Credit: Pixabay.com I received my second dose of the Covid shot yesterday. Even though I didn’t get sick from it like some people have, I woke up with muscle soreness this morning and have had it all day. So, I’m going to take it easy today and keep this post short with a little sci fi news and updates. Also, it’s a holiday weekend, so we all deserve to take at least a small break. I’ll mostly be working on my short stories for my upcoming   collection throughout the weekend. ‘Alien TV Series in the Works Noah Hawly, producer of the Hulu series, “Fargo”, is coming out with a TV series based on the “Alien” movies. Like “Star Wars”, The original 1979 “Alien” spawned an entire franchise of sequels, prequels and retail items. The franchise came out with action figures, bubble gum trading cards, games, comics and even prose fiction books. And now, also like the “Star Wars” franchise with its “Mandalorian” series, it’s finally coming out with a TV series. According to Hawly in a “Vanity Fai