As noted in the previous post of this series, the biggest change faced by vampire fiction of the 1930s and ‘40s was that authors in the genre were now competing with films. Admittedly, dramatised vampires were not a new phenomenon: after all, the 1819 publication of Polidori’s “The Vampyre” had been swiftly followed by a…
2019 Hugo Awards Celebrate the Fantasy Existing Among Us
Thousands of science fiction and fantasy fans arrived in Dublin this month to take part in the 77th World Science Fiction Convention. The activities and attractions culminated on Sunday with the Hugo Awards, when a selection of winners were presented with coveted socket ship trophies.
2019 Hugo Award Reviews: Novels Part Two
Welcome to the final set of reviews for this year’s Hugo Awards! The previous post in this series covered three of the six books in the running for the Best Novel Hugo. Now, it is time to cover the remaining three…
2019 Hugo Award Reviews: Novels Part One
Welcome back to the series reviewing the prose fiction in the running for this year’s Hugo Awards! With Best Short Story, Best Novelette and Best Novella covered, all that remains is Best Novel. Here are the first three finalists in the category…
2019 Hugo Award Reviews: Novellas Part Two
Welcome to another instalment of our six-part series looking at this year’s finalists for the Hugo Awards! The previous post covered three contenders for Best Novella. Now let us round off the category by looking at the three that remain…
The Vampyre’s Legacy, Part 7: Dion Fortune’s Demon Lover
Born Violet Mary Firth in 1890, the British writer Dion Fortune is one of the most influential figures in Western occultism. She penned a sizeable number of books – both fiction and non-fiction – prior to her death in 1946, including a sequence of occult novels. The first of these, a 1927 book entitled The…
2019 Hugo Award Reviews: Novellas Part One
Welcome back to this series reviewing the prose contenders for the 2019 Hugo Awards. Previous instalments have covered Best Short Story and Best Novelette. Now it is time to begin looking at the contenders for the title of Best Novella…
Tammy & Jinty Special 2019: The Girls are Back in Town
In the past, generations of British girls were entertained by comics with names like Sally, Judy, Diana, Debbie, Emma, June, Penny, Sandie, and Tina. The respective title character would serve as a mascot, while each issue contained a collection of stories about the exploits of various young heroines. D.C. Thomson’s Bunty, which ran from 1958 to…
2019 Hugo Award Reviews: Novelettes
Welcome to the second of our series examining the prose stories that are competing at this year’s Hugo Awards for science fiction and fantasy. The previous post covered the Best Short Story category. Now, let us raise the wordcount and enter Best Novelette, honouring stories of between 7,500 and 17,500 words in length…
The Vampyre’s Legacy, Part 6: An Occult Dawn
In 1897, Dracula had successfully transported the vampire from a hazy Gothic past to turn-of-the-century London – and it is quite possible that the Count would have found himself at home. After all, he arrived just in time to see a rising interest in occultism that occurred during the late Victorian and Edwardian eras.
2019 Hugo Award Reviews: Short Stories
The 2019 Hugo Awards are scheduled to be presented in August at the Dublin Worldcon. Many fans of SF/F are awaiting the big day, all the while eagerly reading and evaluating this year’s finalists. As per annual tradition, I will be joining in with a series of reviews covering the Short Story, Novelette, Novella and…
Britain Versus Aliens in Invasion 1984!
Invasion 1984! Alan Grant and John Wagner (script), Eric Bradbury (art), various (lettering) Treasury of British Comics/Rebellion May 2019 A stablemate to the legendary 2000 AD, Battle was a weekly anthology that aimed to kick new life into the traditional British war comic. During its run from 1975 to 1988, it tried a number of…