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Next year will mark the 45th anniversary of Ridley Scott’s landmark sci-fi horror movie, Alien. I saw the movie when I kid way back in 1979. Here are ten things I (still) love about it: For a movie that has the second-most disturbing scene in the history of cinema (the shower scene in Psycho is #1), the film starts…
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When I first heard the band Garbage, I was struck by lead singer Shirley Manson and her fabulously expressive voice—at times monotonal, at other times growling. This pale goth girl from Scotland had somehow tailored her vocals to exactly fit the manic-depressive zeitgeist of the 90s. Indeed, I would argue that the band’s premier song,…
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A few months ago, I wrote a post about M. R. Carey’s excellent sci-fi novel, The Girl with All the Gifts. I recounted how incredibly impressed I was by the way Carey took an exhausted genre—the zombie apocalypse story—and found a way to make it fresh and vital. As luck would have it, the next novel I chose…
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If you were alive in the early days of MTV, you probably remember this gem from Kiwi pop group Split Enz. It’s got everything an 80’s New Wave hit should have: trippy synthesizer riffs, an infectious hook, and a truly bizarre video (complete with the players dressed in New Wave zoot suits). And—oh, yeah—it’s also…
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Well, it’s official. My book is now available for pre-order (make that pre-pre-PRE-order) on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, etc. (Yes, even Walmart.com.) I’m not asking you to buy it (although it would make an excellent gift for that special someone in your life; or for your boss, co-worker, distant relative, crazy uncle, etc.). But…
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In his amazingly good sci-fi novel, The Peripheral, William Gibson describes a environmental cataclysm called The Jackpot. The name is perfect, in that it evokes not a single-cause catastrophe but rather a horrific alignment (like the diamonds on a slot machine) of multiple ones. Global heating. Drought. Pollution. Pandemics. Poverty. Et cetera. But, as is…
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When I was in college in the 80s, there was only one dance club in town that didn’t play the usual top 40 pop music. It was a little joint called My Friend’s Place, and it wasn’t actually in town, but rather out in the county between Gainesville and Hawthorn. We called it MFP, and…
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I find it ironic that, here in America, we have only two socially acceptable ways to identify ourselves with regard to religion: you’re either a believer, or an atheist. Yeah, this is crazy. For all kinds of reasons. We all know that the first category—believer—really describes a vast spectrum of religious faith, from rigid practitioners…
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I love Stephen King. I watch his interviews and lectures on YouTube, and I re-read his book, On Writing, once or twice a year, finding it one of the best meditations on the craft around, not to mention a very fine memoir. I follow him on Twitter (er…X), and you should, too (he’s @StephenKing, if…
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(Author’s Note: The recent tragedy in Maui got me thinking about one of my favorite novels of the past twenty years, The Descendants, which is set nearby. I am reposting this essay about it as a kind of semi-tribute.) Even though I fancy myself a literary fiction writer (even when I’m writing detective or sci-fi…
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Ash Clifton, Writer 