A Far Out Fantastic Site

Credit: Pixabay Why since 1970? Because that was the year of the first Earth Day and next Friday the 22nd will mark its 51st anniversary! Born out of the 1960s/’70s counter culture, it’s a day that both celebrates our planet and raises awareness of the need to care for it. And because of the rise in climate change, it needs a lot of caring for. Science fiction is loaded with works that warn of the fate of the planet if we go on abusing it and also ones that offer the hope of environmentally sustainable futures. So, yours truly has compiled a list of twelve of the best eco sci-fi books (sometimes referred to as ecopunk or solarpunk ) since the year of the first Earth Day!  The basis for the selection of these works were a combination of the awards they received, their occurrence on the best sellers list, and notable critical praise. Although the list is numbered, the books are not ordered from best to worst but, instead, chronologically by their publication year. I'll admit, I’ve o...

Credit: Pixabay I apologise for not posting last weekend. I was going through a stressful week which gave me a writer’s block. But after taking some time off, I’m now back on track. February is Black History Month, when we in the US honor and celebrate the great achievements African-Americans have made through the centuries. It’s also a time to make ourselves more aware of these achievements and how they’ve contributed to society in our nation. Many of these include the horror fiction of Black authors which are important to acknowledge because, for far too long, people of colour have been left out of the history of horror in the US. Many of us who are fans of the genre like to be scared. We like to see characters that we care about and can identify with in threatening situations that we normally wouldn't want to be in. This desire to be scared for entertainment is common among people of all races and cultures. However, horror fiction has mostly been written by white authors. Tradit...

Credit: Pixabay We're already more than midway through November and so Thanksgiving is almost here. Before we know it, it will be Christmas! November is a short month (it has only 30 days unlike October, which as 31). Unfortunately, a short month can bring a short newsletter and so that may have to be the case with this month’s edition of “Night Creatures’ Call”. As with last month, the newsletter will probably not be out until the end of this month. I got a late start on it but I’m going to try to get back on schedule with the December edition and so release that at the beginning of the month. But even though November’s newsletter may be a short one, it will have the latest details on the progress of my upcoming short story collection, "Bad Apps". So, if you haven't subscribed to “Night Creatures’ Call” yet then you can do so here .  November also means the year's coming closer to its end. One thing I want to do for sure before the year closes is release “Bad App...

Credit: Pixabay Needless to say, the Covid-19 pandemic has made these past three months one of the scariest moments in history. It’s as if we are living in an apocalyptic sci fi, in some respects even a post-apocalyptic one! Even during this time of spring and new life the streets are dead. Things appear to be really down. So, now is a great time for us sci fi and fantasy fans to read some inspirational stories. The problem with much of today’s speculative fiction, however, is that most of it seems to be on the dark side of life. So as not to sound like a hypocrite, I’ll admit that I’m a writer of dark fiction myself. However, as a reader of science fiction and fantasy, I like to read a fair share of optimistic stories. Even when I write dark fiction I try to work some comic relief into it, something that I personally believe all fiction should have to some extent so as not to traumatise our reading experience. So, I’d like to complement, if you will, the list of post-apocalyp...

Credit: Pixabay.com We finally have the winter weather back, since for the last week here in Sacramento we’ve been getting a pre-mature spring. Extreme sunlight in the winter always seems to throw me off balance. I almost thought I was going to have to start sleeping days for a while there! While most people seem to hate the winter because of the gray skies and the cold weather, I love it. Anything other than those here in Nor Cal is a damned sign of global warming which always scares me. But now that we have the clouds and blustering wind back, I’m in the mood for the Winter Games which I started watching last night. And I’m also in the mood for some Nuclear Winter Names of stories that are set in winter or arctic settings! These settings add to the chills of the plots. So I came up with a list of eight of, what I think are, the best horror and sci fi stories set in those environments. And in no way is it an exhausted list; these are just ones that I’ve read and liked so f...

We are officially one week into summer, even though in some parts of the nation, here in Sacramento, California included, the season’s sizzling weather had already begun weeks ago. And like those ancient societies that centered their actions around the seasons and made festivals to please their deities, summer, as with the other seasons, is a time to make plans and goals. One of these for me is in the form of a reading list. Summer provides most of us extra time to catch up on those books that we said we would read, passionately wanted to read but didn’t because we didn’t get around to it. It’s also a time of new book releases, which are equivalent to the flickers’ summer movie releases. This is the time to plan a list of what we would like to read on the pool deck, on a long trip or at the local AC’d café or library on those dragon breath weather days when we just don’t want to go out yet don’t want to pile up on the energy bill running the air conditioner in our houses. Here’s my su...