Monthly Archives: November 2014

In the Service of Absolution, Part 6

The bluish glow of the holo-image of Admiral Pierce gave him a faintly ghoulish look. After the last raid, Captain Lawrence had felt the need to break radio silence and let the Admiral know exactly what was on his mind. Having just completed his tirade he was now pacing in front on the image in obvious frustration.

“Do you think we can talk about this like reasonable people?” asked the floating image of Pierce. “Look, I understand your frustrations with Ramirez; I really do. He’s a young officer on a mission of some strategic importance and he’s eager to prove himself. I think we can both understand and accept that. The fact that he is aggressive in pursuing his assignment, while distasteful to you, is exactly why I picked him for this assignment. The more enemy shipments you intercept, the better things are for us, of have you forgotten why you are out there?” Continue reading

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Filed under Andrew Hales, Short Story

A Stroll Among Shadows: A fan’s thumb nail guide to film noir

The last thing that I want to write for this blog post is a paraphrase of the Wiki page about film noir, so for our purposes here, I’m going to talk about my experience with film noir and give an overview of what it is, some of the history, stars, directors, archetypes, and mostly talk about my favorites in the genre.

So just what is film noir anyway? The word noir gets thrown around a lot in modern movie geek-speak, but doesn’t seem to have a hard and fast definition. How does one separate a film noir from a run of the mill crime film? I’ve heard movies referred to as modern noir or neo-noir; I even referred to A Dame to Kill For as a comic noir in my review. Believe it or not, “what is film noir” really isn’t an easy question to answer. Continue reading

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Filed under Joseph De Paul, Movies

Editorial | Does Geek Culture Hold the Answers to National Security?

For this post, I collaborated with Hannah Givens, from Things Matter (which you should totally check out).  Our mutual love of international relations shines through everything we do, apparently.

Technological innovation raises some obvious questions. What kind of technology will humans use in the future? How will it work and what will it do for us? How will it change the way we do things? Those questions are, perhaps, at their most controversial in the realm of national security, where technology can kill (or protect) ever-greater numbers of people. Fortunately, geek culture is an oracle of war. Science fiction has been imagining the future for a long time now, and was already providing possible answers before national security experts even understood the questions. Continue reading

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Filed under Editorial, Guest, Tracy Gronewold

Weekend Reviews: Wasted Lands Omnibus

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Wasted Lands Omnibus (Magnetic Press)

Created by Dave Dorman

Writer: Dave Dorman and Del Stone, Jr.
Illustrator: Dave Dorman, with Christopher Moeller, Jon Foster, and Durwin Talon
Cover: Dave Dorman
 

My initial expectations about this omnibus were completely incorrect. This is not one single, cohesive story, but rather a collection of several story telling forms about the same characters set in a place called the Wasted Lands.  These have been published in various places and at different times for the last couple of decades, but are finally compiled here. Continue reading

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Filed under Comic Reviews, Reviews, Saturday Reviews