Craig Laurance Gidney's Blog, page 48
January 29, 2014
American Horror Story:Coven’s lasting contribution to TV History–the odd bird Myrtle Snow
American Horror Story:Coven comes to an end tonight. It was a hot mess of season that just cohered into a bigger hot mess. Marie Laveau! The Axe Man! Madame LaLaurie! Stevie Nicks! It had bitchy catfights, necromancy and scenery-chewing turns by most of the actors involved. It played, inexpertly and ineptly, with issues of racism […]
January 25, 2014
Tokens or Intruders: The issue of Diversity at SF Conventions
The talented and provocative Jim C. Hines posted a thread on his Facebook about increasing diversity at SFcons. The responses to that thread were for the most part positive about the issue, but, predictably, there were a few ‘trolls’ who raised the de rigueur whining about quotas, political correctness, and, most egregiously, the notion that […]
January 23, 2014
STORY REVIEW: The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere by John Chu. A magical realist comedy-of-manners
The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere by John Chu My rating: 4 of 5 stars This short story could be in the New Yorker. The fantasy element is slight and serves to underscore this comedy-of-manners family saga. The story is grounded in reality and comes alive in the tensions between the siblings. Reminds […]
January 22, 2014
Quintessential Existentialism in Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man’
One of my pet peeves about literature is how the Universal Everyperson is always defaulted to white and male. Sartre and Camus are heralded as writers of the Existential Angst of Modern Man, while Ralph Ellison’s masterpiece Invisible Man is simplistically (imho) considered to just be about the Black Experience. I think that Invisible Man […]
January 14, 2014
STORY REVIEW: Love among the Avatars in ‘Super Bass’ by Kai Ashante Wilson
Super Bass: A Tor.Com Original by Kai Ashante Wilson My rating: 4 of 5 stars Super Bass is a dense, ‘slice-of-life’ piece of fantasy fiction that’s also a love story. The prose is rich, sensual and deeply interior. It reminds of me of early Samuel R Delany, when he just throws you into an alien […]
January 13, 2014
MUSES: The Gnostic Gospels of Flannery O’Connor
“A Good Man is Hard to Find” was my first introduction to the work of Flannery O’Connor, and short fiction in general. It really packs a wallop. Black comedy, serial killers, social critique and, ultimately metaphysical transcendence are all in this brief story. Her fiction is dense and multi-layered. There is more going on in […]
January 7, 2014
BOOK REVIEW: The Warrior Who Carried Life by Geoff Ryman. A classic of genderqueer speculative fiction.
The Warrior Who Carried Life by Geoff Ryman My rating: 4 of 5 stars “Cara’s mother had always said something very strange about dust: that it was the remains of the dead, and should be respected. “The air is full of other people,” she had told Cara. The dust in the sunlight looked like stars.” […]
January 1, 2014
First Flash Fiction of the New Year
Once, I captured my inner child. I saw one her evening, crawling on the cornices and wandering on the edge of the wainscoting. At first I thought it was a figment of my imagination; after all, I was a wee bit tipsy on the Creme Yvette cocktail Aunt Sapphire had made before she turned in. […]
December 31, 2013
VIRTUAL MEMORIES’ Year’s End Podcast
Gil Roth, who produces the book-centric podcast Virtual Memories, asked me to contribute to his year’s end podcast. I appear with a bunch of other distinguished guests,* discussing the favorite book that I read in 2013. Give it a listen! Charles Blackstone, Lisa Borders, Scott Edelman, Drew Friedman, Kipp Friedman, Craig Gidney, Ed Hermance, Nancy […]
December 30, 2013
On Depression: The siren song of the Echthroi
I tried to get off my anti-depressants around the same time my first book was published. Among the reasons I was quitting: no longer afford COBRA payments for my insurance, so I would no longer be able to get prescriptions anymore. Besides that, things were going pretty well. I mean, I had a book out […]
