There seems to be an idea floating about in the ether that my review of John Scalzi’s new novel, Redshirts (posted late yesterday) is negative, and that I don’t like Scalzi’s books. Both are untrue. Redshirts didn’t strike me as laugh-out-loud hilarious, as it has been billed [1], but it’s a pleasant, quick entertainment —…
It is simply impossible to declare a novel “not funny.” Humor is so personal that all any person can really do is declare whether he laughed or not. And so I’ll say this: John Scalzi‘s new novel, Redshirts, has four quotes on the back cover (from luminaries Melinda Snodgrass, Joe Hill, Lev Grossman, and Patrick…
Yes, that credit does have the faint whiff of “by William Shakespeare, additional dialogue by Sam Taylor” to it, but it can’t be helped. Anything needs to be adapted if it’s going to work in another medium — which is a big “if” — and having it done by one person, who then lays out…
Every art form has stories that can only be told this way: novels that can’t be turned into movies, operas that must be seen in person, movies that could only be flickering pictures in the dark. Comics is still a new art, and only has a few examples so far. But Ray Fawkes’s 2011 graphic…
These may not actually be the absolute 10 Worst Book Covers in the History of Literature, but they’re definitely on the shortlist. My favorite is right here: Double Penetrator! Try to tell me that was inadvertent! Just try!
This is not the kind of book that lends itself to a detailed, in-depth review, but that’s just fine: it’s about what I need on a night when I want to keep up a string of daily review posts but feel too lethargic for overly energetic thinking and typing. (I was up at 5:15 for…
If you’re plugged into the comics field at all, you’ve probably already heard of this: it’s the gigantic out-of-left-field book that all of the cool kids have been talking about for the last six months (call it 2011’s Bottomless Belly Button). Of course, the really cool kids have known about it for a while: Nilsen…
Once again, those few benighted souls relying on Antick Musings for their skiffy-world news have been poorly served, but here’s the most recent clutch of awards given out in our realms: Robert A. Heinlein Award This is both a fairly new award — barely a decade old — and one given for a body of…
If you know this story at all, you know the quote: “This is an imaginary story…aren’t they all?” That would be true but trite if it weren’t for the fanatical identification of the superhero reader with his favorite characters — and, even more so, with the continuity of their stories. When “Whatever Happened to the…
My plan to reduce the stack of read but unreviewed books by reviewing one a day has fallen sadly afoul of events — and the particular “event” in this case was the fact that Thing 2 (my younger son, now 11) and I have been playing a lot of Lego Indiana Jones 2 the last…
The Platonic ideal of the comic is precisely balanced between art and words, each as exquisite and precise and lovely as the other. And there might actually be one or two comics that come within spitting distance of that, but not much more: it’s an ideal because it really doesn’t happen. Every comic, like every…
The lingering memory of my year of blogging for the SFBC — which ended five years ago, so I really should be over it by this point — still compels me to post SFnal awards, even when I do so far too late to benefit anyone. What can I say? I’m a flawed person. Anyway,…
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