A Far Out Fantastic Site

I said I'd show it to the beta readers first, and so I did. I said I would then show it to my newsletter subscribers [link], and so I did. Now I'm showing it to the rest of the planet. Yes, this post, along with the ones on my Facebook and Instagram pages, is the official reveal of the book cover to my new and upcoming collection of short stories, "Bad Apps"!  You’ll find the cover with the most recent and final revised version of the book’s blurb below. I'd like to thank the illustrator who I hired, Eternal Visual, for doing such a super job on the illustration to the cover. He took it even further than the concept sketch I gave him to work from, and I approved it with very little thought because I was that impressed! Thanks, again, Eternal Visual!  For the cover's font's, I used Orbitron because, out of Kindle Direct Publishing ‘s font selection, it was the one most fitting for the science fiction short story collection this book is. But the book is al...

  Credit: Pixabay A new year brings new hope and Martin Luther King Jr. was definitely a man of hope and a new vision, especially with his “I Have a Dream” speech. I did a post on King several years back and on how his vision of a better future for all races served a function similar to that of science fiction. I said that this was one of the few things about him that connected with the genre. I underestimated. He had another big connection with science fiction. I’ll show you what that was in a little bit. Also coming up in this post: news about my newsletter in progress and an upcoming “Frankenstein” movie.  Martin Luther King Was a Fan of a Very Famous Science Fiction TV Series  In the post on Martin Luther King that I mentioned above, I said that he did not have many connections to science fiction except for his vision of a progressive future. However, I only found out yesterday while reading over an article at MentalFloss.com that he was a regular watcher of the ori...

Credit: Pixabay.com As I said last post, I’m postponing the Book-To-Movie review to next week like I did last month because of the inevitable delays in the library’s services where I check out movies from. So today I have some views about some upcoming sci fi TV shows, especially the “Star Trek” series, and updates about the self-publishing of my work Upcoming ‘Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ Series The problem with a lot of science fiction TV series right now is that they don’t do much more to take a person’s mind off of the gloom and depression of the present world-wide plague that continues killing thousands of people. We go outside of our homes for the essentials and see that everyone is wearing masks and remembering that we too are, if we’re wise, wearing one. It’s so surreal since nothing like this has happened before in most of our life spans. (Most of us weren’t around yet to experience the early 20th century flu pandemic.) It’s as if we’ve been living in a post-apoc...

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to get together a bigger story for this week’s post like I had hoped . So here are some more lightning news flashes, or lightning flash non-fiction, with links to the full stories. These stories cover race issues in sci fi and fantasy pop culture, and the world-building behind The Circle . Then comes news of the blogger’s current projects. Star Trek  Licence Plate Removed Due to Racist Connotation   During the week, a man in Canada was forced by policy to turn in his Star Trek - themed license plate due to “politically incorrect” language. The message on the licence plate unintentionally conveyed reference to a racist method of assimilating the indigenous population of Canada to white culture. However, it was actually referring to Star Trek (post-original series) episodes involving the alien and villainous Borgs’ attempts to assimilate other races. ReplacingLovecraft’s Image in the World Fantasy Award   The World Fantasy A...

Photo Credit: NBC It’s only been a little over a week since we lost Leonard Nimoy. His Spock was one of my two favourite Star Trek characters (the other being Capt. Kirk) whose calm and wise personality always inspired me in getting through the problems that everyday life can bring. This was especially the case when I was a teenager going through a big Trekker phase. But as I grew older, I began admiring Nimoy not only for his role in Star Trek , but for his work in film in general: his work as actor, writer and director. For me he was a figure of intellect which is probably what got me through high school and perhaps college as well. Besides Star Trek , he played numerous other roles both in and behind the scenes in movies and television, both in and out of the science fiction genre. He was in the “I, Robot” episode of the original ‘60s Outer Limits series. This episode was, interestingly, based on not Isaac Asimov’s novel/short story collection of the same name but o...

  Warning:  This post may contain content or links to content considered to be obscene/objectionable by some viewers. The Fool's Illusion is finally here! It is in digital format, and so you can get it on Kindle for free until 11:59 tonight (Pacific Standard Time) only! That is that it will be available for free until one minute before the witching hour (midnight) tonight, after that it turns back into a rott'in money-costing jack-o-lantern. (Okay, so money's not all that rotten, but we can all use free stuff, right?) So get your free e-copy of The Fool's Illusion now! Speaking about rott'in jack-o-lanterns, I just saw the debut episode of Fox's  Sleepy Hollow last night. (I taped it on good ol' fashioned video tape because your busy author doesn't have time to watch it in real time.) I was paradoxically impressed. Kind of like I was with Abrams' Star Trek , which in fact one of the writers for his Star Trek , Roberto Orci, is...

I just wanted to be sure to make this birthday wish to a TV/movie star who has not only been a favorite science fiction actor of mine, but a favorite actor and performer of mine period. Besides his performance in the Star Trek franchise, there have been countless other movies and television series that his work has been absolutely fantastic in. One of these is the hosting and narrating he did in the 1970s paranormal/strange phenomena documentary TV series In Search of . . . So . . . Happy Birthday, Leonard "Mr. Spock" Nimoy ! and may you continue to live long and prosper.