Charlee Jacob’s novella “Up, Out of Cities that Blow Hot and Cold” – which debuted in the 2000 collection of the same name before being reissued as a standalone book – is a story that takes the concept of urban decay literally. All around the world, cities are being hit by disasters: the Eiffel Tower…
Action 2020: A Controversial Classic Returns
In 1976 the British comics scene was shaken by controversy, all due to a new publication with the innocuously generic title of Action. Outwardly a typical boy-targeted comic – the cover to issue #1 showed a shark, a footballer and a tank, none of them exactly groundbreaking topics – Action was, on the inside, a…
Weary of Being a Woman: Dark Agnes — from Pulp to Comics
Conan the Barbarian is the best-known of the characters created by Robert E. Howard, but he is far from the only one. Prior to his early death in 1936, Howard conceived an entire pantheon of pulp heroes including the likes of Solomon Kane, Kull of Atlantis and Bran Mak Morn, many of whom had afterlives…
The Invisible Man is a Triumphant Return for a Horror Classic
Cecilia Kass (Elisabeth Moss) is forced to flee her abusive boyfriend, wealthy technology pioneer Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen). Over the next two years, she lives in fear that Griffin will track her down — until she hears that her ex-boyfriend is now dead. But shortly afterwards, strange things begin to happen around Cecilia’s home, and…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Dread in the Beast
Bodily fluids flow freely through horror fiction. Whether the substance in question is sucked out by vampires or splattered across walls by serial killers, there is a good chance that a novel of the genre will contain its share of blood, brains and viscera. In the more erotic corners of horror literature, readers are apt…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: Haunter or Soma
Charlee Jacob invoked atrocities from across human history in the same way that a Romantic poet might invoke the Arabian Nights. Sometimes she delved into the past and found inspiration in such familiar horror reference points as Jack the Ripper, Elizabeth Bathory and the witch-hunts; other times she ripped tales of murders and warfare from…
Birds of Prey is a Sparkly Sledgehammer to the Senses
2019 was the year of the evil clown, with terrifying new interpretations of the Joker, Pennywise, and Mr. Mime leering from our cinema screens. 2020, meanwhile, looks set to be the year of the super-heroine, as Black Widow and Wonder Woman gear up for their latest celluloid runarounds. What better character to carry the transition…
Patreon Exclusive: G. Willow Wilson’s Wonder Woman: A Retrospective
Welcome to the first in a new exclusive offering for our Patreon Patrons. Each month, we will be publishing exclusive essays by our contributors on various topics. In our first essay, Doris V. Sutherland explores the 2018-2019 run on Wonder Woman by G. Willow Wilson.
Copter Crash: Isabel Fall and the Transgender SF Debate
On New Year’s Day, the latest issue of the digital science fiction magazine Clarkesworld went live. The line-up included a mixture of established talents and new names; in the latter category was Isabel Fall, who contributed a story entitled “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter.” Isabell Fall’s piece was available on the website for…
Remembering Charlee Jacob: This Symbiotic Fascination
Having spent years charting a landscape of atrocity, degradation and twisted ecstasy across her short fiction, as discussed in the previous post in this series, Charlee Jacob made her debut as a novelist in 1997 with This Symbiotic Fascination. This novel tells the story of two employees at an electronics shop, Tawne Delaney and Arcan Tyler;…
The Vampyre’s Legacy, Part 12: One More Decade
Two centuries ago, Dr. John Polidori’s story “The Vampyre” was published, and vampire literature was born. The Vampyre’s Legacy series has charted the evolution of the genre over two hundred years, taking one story from each decade to use as a case study. But the most recent decade presents a problem: the period is still too…
Best of WWAC 2019
Best of 2019 lists have been making their way around the internet, but as the year draws to a close, I asked WWAC contributors to take some time to think about themselves. Here, several of our writers talk about the pieces that they are most proud of, either because of what the subject matter means…
