A Far Out Fantastic Site

The promotion poster for the 1976 horror movie, "Carrie". The movie was recently selected for the National Film Registry. Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons I never thought 1976's "Carrie" as being a good movie. I saw it when I was a freshman in college and thought it was one of the most pessimistic, most despairing films ever. But that's when I had a different view of horror movies and what they should consist of. After all, I was just out of high school and carrying with me my own family's beliefs of what decency is. So, I've been meaning to watch the movie again lately but haven't had a chance. But now I'm inclined even more to see it since it’s been selected for the Library of Congress's National Film Registry (NFR). “Carrie” is one of at least three films that are science fiction or fantasy that will be inducted into the NFR. What’s more is that all three are based on books! The other two are Disney’s "The Little Mermaid" and ...

  It's the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for another Insecure Writer’s 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.  When the brink of the holiday season comes around which is, at least for me, just after Thanksgiving I never feel ready for it. Time flies by so fast that it seems like when one Christmas goes by another comes within only a week rather than a year. So, it’s from around Thanksgiving up to about the second (full) week of December that I always wonder how I’m going to handle both my regular year-round duties and the holidays. And those year-round duties include my writing. So, that brings me to the IWSG optional question of the month: Are the holidays a time to catch up or fall behind on writer goals?  For me the holidays are a time to inevitably fall behind in my writing. This means that I don’t intend to fall behind bu...

The promotion poster for the 1960 movie adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher" which starred Vincent Price. Photo Credit: Wikemedia Commons    Our Book-To-Movie for November is now crossing into December in which I apologise for. However, like myself, I’m sure many of you were too busy to read many blogs during the Thanksgiving weekend in which I hope you all had a great one. I didn’t post this during the week either because I was busy getting caught up on things that I got behind on mostly due to the holiday. Here’s November’s Book-To-Movie in December. In a Book-To-Movie , we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation. We’ve reviewed many Roger Corman film adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe’s short stories here in the past. One we haven’t reviewed yet is his 1960 adaptation of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher”. One of the most distinguished features of Poe’s horror tales is his morbid style in both setting and character. Vincent Price...

Credit: Wikimedia Commons I’ve been watching an episode a week for the last three weeks of Guillermo Del Toro’s new Netflix horror anthology series, “Cabinet of Curiosities”. (Yes, you read that right; I only watch an episode a week and so I don’t do binge watching.) So far, the series has been really good. I first started watching the episodes in order (even though the series doesn’t have an over-arcing storyline), but only up to the second episode. That’s because I wanted to see how at least one of the two episodes based on H.P. Lovecraft stories played out. Episode five is based on the short story “Pickman’s Model”, and episode six is based on the short story “The Dreams in the Witch House”. I’ve only seen the first of these two so far and thought it mostly played out really good including the creature effects. However, an article at ScreenRant doesn’t seem to give it as much credit, nor does it give much more to episode six. The article’s author, Padraig Cotter, says the monsters ...

Credit: Pixabay If you read, a few years back, my Book-To-Movie review of “Logan’s Run” , please don’t mistaken this post as a duplicate of it. What this post is concerned with is not the movie and book as a whole but with two evil AI characters in the story. “Evil” may be too sentimental of a word here because computers aren’t moral beings, they don’t have a conscience to make moral decisions. At least not yet. I’ll just use the word synonymously with “corrupt”, as in corrupt software. Isaac Asimov once said, "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them." Neither do I fear them. I don't even fear the lack of them. I fear the overdependence on them. In other words, I fear society’s addiction to computer technology. And society has become addicted to it. Look at the people on a busy city sidewalk and at least every other person is either looking down at a mobile phone, are holding it up to their ear or wearing headphones connected to it. “Logan’s Run” foretells this o...

It's the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for another Insecure Writer’s 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.  November has come really fast and so October flew by like a speeding bat! I was nearly burning myself out to get things done for my Halloween themed blogs and newsletter and even activity outside of my writing such as decorating the house. October and December are the busiest times of the year for me, so November is kind of a breather period between the two. So, for me, November is a time to rest . . . and to write. Not that I don’t write during October or November, of course. When I say that November is a time for me to write, I mean it’s a time to get back on track with the writing routine and not worry about holiday duties, Halloween and Christmas being two of my favourite celebrations of the year.  What about Thanksgiving?...

Credit: Pixabay.com Warning: This review may contain spoilers for both the book and movie being discussed. Read at your own risk! As I said last post , we've moved our Book-To-Movie review from its usual fourth weekend time slot to this Halloween weekend (or as I like to call it, Halloweekend). In a Book-To-Movie, we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation. The usual fate of rip-off films, it seems, is that they’re often soon forgotten as if they never existed. That was almost the case with the original film adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel, "Dracula". And those of you who are thinking the original film was Universal's 1931 film starring Bela Lugosi, it wasn’t. That was only the original legal film adaptation of the novel. The original adaptation was the 1922 German-made "Nosferatu" and is one of the oldest vampire movies. Although it was at one time destined to be forgotten, it became far from that. As this year’s media coverage of “No...

Credit: Steven Arellano Rose  And this really will be a mini report and I will tell you why in a bit. As you may have guessed, I’m delaying the Book-To-Movie  of the month to next weekend. Today was Sinister Creature Con's Sinister Halloween Con at the Scottish Rite Center in Sacramento, CA and so I wanted to go over that a little, and, as I’ve kind of already indicated, I do mean I’ll go over it just a little. Sinister Creature Con is the organization that puts on horror conventions in the Sacramento area throughout the year and is very big on make-up art but features other art as well such as books, comics, paintings, sculptures, jewelry and even clothes. And they always feature tons of guest celebrities. Now, why is this con report going to be so short? Because I didn’t attend it. Not really. I only attended the free outdoor portion. By the time I arrived at the Scottish Rite Center, which was a little before 2 PM, the length of the line for admission was nearly the equiva...

Credit: Pixabay We're just over two weeks away from Halloween! I've been slowly but surely decorating my house, and lining up my favourite horror fiction to read as well as favourite horror flicks to watch. Many of you have probably been doing similar. You’ve probably also been shopping like mad for the best deals on candy, costumes, decorations and party food. And this Halloween those deals are more important than most years because of the big inflation that's been going on. You may even be struggling to find the best deals on horror movies to rent or stream for Halloween. Well, you can really save some bucks if you look to free streaming movies which, as of this writing, include plenty of scary ones.  The drawback is that in order for the platform companies to make these films available for free viewing, you need to put up with commercials. Most commercials can get pretty annoying but the good news is that many free streaming platforms' ad breaks aren't as long as...

It's the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for another Insecure Writer’s 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. October is the month of Halloween and so when I saw the optional question for the month I knew it was perfect timing. At least for me whose one of two favourite genres is horror. The other is science fiction. So, the question of the month is What do you consider the best characteristics of your favorite genre? I’m going to divert a little in my answer to this question in that, as I’ve already named them, I have two favourite genres and there’s one characteristic that I like best about both of them: the monster character.  Of course, science fiction stories do not always have to have monsters in them, but a lot of them do and among these many have overlapped with horror. Not even horror stories have to have monsters in them, but mor...

Credit: Pixabay Today we have another guest blogger! May I introduce to you author Elizabeth Mueller ! I’m very grateful for Elizabeth to be with us this post. She is, as she puts it, “a diehard romance” writer yet has also written and published in other fiction genres, including science fiction and fantasy. She’s currently working on a dystopian sci fi / fantasy / romance novel which she’ll be sharing with us a segment from. Both a full-time author and a homeschooling mom of five kids, Elizabeth has contributed to several science fiction anthologies, including steampunk, while still writing in her favourite genre. Let me not delay any longer: here’s Elizabeth discussing her writer’s journey from speculative fiction to realist fiction, to romance!  Guest Blogger: Elizabeth Mueller Thank you for having me over at your lovely place, Steven! You’ve asked if I could talk about speculative fiction. To be honest, I’ve always wondered what that was and never tried to understand it as I’ve...

Credit: Pixabay It's the fourth weekend of the month and so time for another Book-To-Movie review! In a Book-To-Movie, we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation. Because Jeff Vandermeer's "Annihiliation" can be considered a science fiction horror book it was probably relatively easy to adapt into the 2018 film of the same name. That is, only when it came to mixing genres. Science fiction horror has tended to be more popular in movies than in books, especially during the present century. When it came to adapting specific scenes from “Annihilation” the novel, that was probably a big challenge for the movie’s producers. Many segments in the novel get so surreal to where they can only be perceived if read (or listened to on audio) rather than seen on screen. So, it’s perfectly understandable that director Alex Garland refined some of those scenes if not left them out altogether. What isn’t understandable are some of the scenes he added. The ones I have i...