It had to happen eventually. Folks have been asking me to do a podcast for ages and this week I finally acquiesced. I actually like doing radio and have been interviewed on the airwaves at least half a dozen times in the past. So this was a bit strange but fun all the same. I hope it goes over well! I’m planning a few more of these podcasts as the year closes out and if the feedback is good, I’ll continue. But, for today, please join me for the Rocketeer Podcast…
Disappearing subway trains in Boston? An overly-complex track system turning into a mobius strip? Pulp stories weren’t always simple adventures with ray guns! This week’s ROCKETEER looks at an unusual, Retro Hugo-nominated story from 1950 called, “A Subway Named Mobius.” Read the ROCKETEER over on Substack and remember…trains are perfectly safe, most of the time!
I always enjoy #inktober. Pen & ink is one of my favorite illustration techniques and probably the one I use most often. I always find it fun to do a few extra drawings in October for #inktober. Here are the two drawings I’ve done so far in 2023. As you can see, my 1930’s theme remains. Each of these drawing uses a different approach. The girl has quite a bit of stippling but the hoodlum has none, using instead parallel ink marks with some cross-hatching. I’m getting used to my…
Last weekend was my birthday and I was working hard to finish the first draft of the second version of my new “Moon Man” novelette. Funny thing, I mentioned this to someone yesterday at a meeting and they assumed I was finishing READING a novelette. “No,” I clarified. “Not reading, writing.” It made me laugh, she doesn’t know me very well. Anyway, the second attempt is much better. I liked the first plot and may still use it for another story, but it wasn’t hitting the correct marks for a…
This week’s ROCKETEER is my first post about Bryce Walton, a mid-20th century sci-fi and fiction writer. He mainly wrote short works and for that reason is not well remembered today. I think he’s an overlooked writer, especially his dystopian works which are the subject of this week’s posts. Dystopian stories, if done well, can be very instructive for various reasons. Sometimes they are used by “powers-that-be” as predictive modeling for societal change. (We see all the time in “The Simpsons.”) Walton’s dystopias are wide-ranging, interesting, and sometimes prophetic. They’re…
In my second post about pulp-era aliens we take a gander at one of Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore’s Gallegher tales, “The World is Mine.” The five Gallegher stories are about a brilliant inventor who’s only brilliant when he’s drunk as a skunk. He invents “by ear,” solely from the subconscious. In this story he invents a time machine and shuttles in some Martians. These Lybblas are very cute and not at all as we usually think about Martians, then or now. The lexicon of aliens was much greater back…
There seems to be a lot going on at the moment. For the next few weeks the ROCKETEER is going to highlight aliens in honor of the Chehalis Flying Saucer Party—a local event celebrating everything UFO. (It’s like McMenamins UFO Festival only smaller.) I’ll be discussing pulp-era and slightly later stories with the themes of invasion, alien manipulation, control, and humanity fighting back in stories ranging from the absurd to the deadly. The first in that series came out this week: “Tactical Error: This Star Shall Be Free.” The story…
Today’s ROCKETEER is a review of Fredric Brown’s brilliant short story, “Letter to a Phoenix” from 1949. It’s about atomic war and collective insanity. A real mind-bending thought experiment. You can read my review of the story here.
It’s been a busy couple of days here at the studio. First, I finished up a fun pulpy commission for a new book release. On Wednesday, in The Rocketeer, I wrote about the connection between Westerns and Space Opera (with picture examples!) Read The Rocketeer: “Westerns in Space” Today, I received a few more books in the mail for my growing Robert Leslie Bellem reprint story collection. I’ve several new paintings planned, and of course new books on the way. In the midst of tremendous world-wide chaos, life can be fun! Count on it!
Fritz Lang’s visuals for Metropolis (1927) fascinate me. The story is pure socialist creed, but the imagery remains powerful even after nearly 100 years. I remember seeing the re-mastered version with Queen’s soundtrack during college. And I’ve seen the anime remake as well as enjoying Queen’s 1984 video– “Radio Ga-Ga” –immensely. (An interesting year for that video to appear on the scene, in my opinion.) Michael Wm Kaluta created outstanding images for a remake book of Metropolis some time ago. It was his drawings that inspired the title of my…