A Far Out Fantastic Site

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...

Credit: Pixabay I apologise for another late posting but there was a birthday in the family on Saturday and I wasn’t able to get this post done in time.  To me science fiction is not only fun entertainment but also a warning against dangerous futures and an encouragement for hopeful ones. Dystopian science fiction does a lot of the former, or at least the good ones do. Yet it’s too easy, especially with blockbuster films, to look at science fiction too much as escapist entertainment and not enough for the warnings it poses. An example of this is the controversy over the new TV series that debuts September 26, "Ring Nation”. There’s been a lot of concern that shows like this blur the demarcation line between entertainment and reality which is something that much science fiction literature, film and television have warned against. They are warnings that we mustn’t take too lightly.  The ’Ring Nation’ Controversy "Ring Nation" is a new reality TV series by Amazon and MGM th...

 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. I’ll be open about it right now: I’m going to keep this post short because I’m writing it at the last minute and the extreme heat wave my area has been getting has been wearing me out and so I’ve been trying to get to bed a little earlier. I don’t have time to take an afternoon siesta (nap) on the weekdays like they do in Spain and Latin America when the weather is extremely hot. In this post I’m going to stick to answering the September optional question and commemorate a famous author who unfortunately passed away recently.  Question of the Month The optional question for September is: What genre would be the worst one for you to tackle and why? For me there are actually two genres that I would not try writing in because th...