The Earth is...Not a Good Place?
Review: Litany For A Broken World by LJ Cohen Multiverse books are often hard to write and this one is a multiverse in more ways than one. The book centers...
Capclave!
Kinda craving the desert today. Where I am going is Capclave. Please swing by the Rantings of a Wandering Mind table and buy a book or three from me and/or...
Relax, The Dog Doesn't Die
The Handmaid's Tale 3.11 "Liars" Ooh, boy. Serena arranges a meeting with the American spy, who apparently claims he can help her get Nicole back. How does...
XX is Boy, XX is Girl - Not Always!
Sex and gender is something we keep arguing about, and one of the central arguments of those who think it's immutable is that XY = boy and XX = girl. I could...
Language and Emotion
Review: Overmorrow by Lancelot Schaubert So, where do I start with this book? It's well written, the prose is beautiful, but it comes over to me as trying a...
Fall Fun?
Will be spending this weekend attending Small Press Expo. Next weekend is Capclave! Not a huge fan of them being back to back, but the wonderful people who...
We Can Be Useful
The Handmaid's Tale 3.8 "Unfit" This episode focuses on Aunt Lydia. We find that she was a teacher before...in an environment that was already showing signs...
Everything You Know About Vampires Is Wrong
Ah, vampires. A staple of not just horror fiction but dark fantasy, urban fantasy and, of course, romantasy. Sometimes they're evil monsters. Sometimes...
Cyberpunk, Old Style
Review: Iconoclast by Dave Walsh This book is a cyberpunk romp. Yes, it deals with identity, but it never gets that serious about it...or, to be honest,...
Ravencon, Here We Go!
So, Ravencon 2026 is kind of special. It’s the 100th anniversary of the coining of the term science fiction, in its current context, by Hugo Gernback....
Canada, But Not Quite
The Handmaid's Tale 3.5 "Unknown Caller" Serena arranges a trip to Toronto to meet with Luke and Nichole in a safe, public space. And doesn't try to snatch...
Why the Dark Ages Weren't So Dark
It happened again. Some less than educated person on social media started talking about the "Dark Ages" and kept doubling down when actual historians told...
Jewish Vampires and Interdimensional Weirdness
Review: Transmentation|Transcience by Darkly Lem Darkly Lem is a pen name used for collaborations between no less than five authors - Josh Eure, Craig...
You are...Useful
The Handmaid's Tale 3.2 "Mary and Martha" Marthas, it turns out, have their own catch phrase...and substantially more freedom than Handmaids. They're still...
What is a Population Bottleneck - and How It Might Have Affected Us
Genetics is an interesting topic. Our genetic code is a mechanism for natural selection and evolution. It also determines things like our hair and eye...
Double Trouble
Review: Impostors by Scott Westerfeld This trilogy is a sequel to Westerfeld's hugely underrated (IMO) Uglies post-apocalyptic YA series, and gets even more...
I Can Still DO It...
Just as a note that I can still do it at my age. We hiked from Harpers Ferry to the Maryland Heights overlook (there’s proof) and then went all the way up to...
Light and Dark
The Avengers 2.1 "Mr. Teddy Bear" Sometimes, I go off on a 60s spy fi tick. Especially The Avengers given Emma Peel...let's just say as a girl I couldn't...
The Importance of the Mill - Water, Wind, and More
Remnants of the mill race of a major pulp mill, Harpers Ferry, WV, USA You've probably, at some point, met a "Miller." It's a pretty common English surname....
Sharks and Serial Killers
Review: His Selachian Majesty Requests It took me a while to warm to this book. There is perhaps a bit too much explicitly Christian imagery in it…countered...