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Fourteen years have passed since Skyfall, the twenty-third installment in the James Bond franchise, was released. The Daniel Craig era is now over, and the entire Bond series has just been dumped onto Netflix until a new actor is anointed and the series can undergo yet another reboot. Of course, I have no idea who…
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Author’s Note: I just learned that Ridley Scott’s classic sci-fi film Blade Runner will be back in theaters this month (today, actually) in a limited release of the so-called “Final Cut” version. None of the participating theaters is near me, alas. So, instead of going, I thought I would re-post this tribute that I wrote…
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Gainesville has a famous bar called The Salty Dog Saloon, across the street from the University of Florida and just two blocks away from Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. Back in the 1990s, I spent many an evening at The Salty Dog, shooting pool, drinking beer, and inhaling so much second-hand smoke that, as I soon…
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Went to Barnes & Noble’s yesterday and couldn’t resist finding my book and facing it out. (Yes, a cheap dopamine hit. I’m desperate.) Apologies to Ann Cleeves, whose books I hid. (Only some of them, though!)
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The great sci-fi writer Clifford D. Simak was known for writing novels and short stories with off-beat main characters. Often, his protagonists were cynical, working-class stiffs (often with a drinking problem) who stuck to their own, private, moral code, often at great cost to themselves. One of Simak’s editors once groused that all of his…
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Recently I was chatting with a friend of mine, and at some point in the course of the conversation I told her about one of my favorite thriller novels of the last twenty years. It was Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell, who sadly passed away in November. I described the plot to my friend, explaining…
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This 1977 cover for Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles is probably an off-beat choice for my Classic Sci-Fi Book Covers series. After all, it’s a pen-and-ink illustration, which is a very unusual choice for sci-fi art. Unusual, that is, unless you’re the great Ian Miller, who does most of his work in pencil or pen.…
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Everything you need to know about alt-rock in the 1980s can be learned from listening to four bands: The Smiths, Echo & the Bunnymen, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and The Cure. I’ve featured all of these bands except The Cure, so it’s about time, especially considering that they were, in some ways, the most innovative…
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It is almost a law of nature that if you scroll through Twitter for long enough, you will run across a Star Trek meme. And, if you keep scrolling, you will eventually run into a “There are four lights!” meme. These memes are, of course, a reference to one of the most famous episodes of…
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Have you ever noticed that, at any given time, the tech bros and sci-fi nerds of the world are obsessed with one current, real-world technology. Right now, it’s AI. A few years ago, it was cryptocurrency. The topic itself changes over time, but whatever it is, they can’t stop talking about it. I’m a bit…
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Ash Clifton, Writer 