Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 46

Fancast Spotlight: If This Goes On (Don’t Panic)!

It’s time for the next entry in my Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project. For more about the Fanzine/Fancast Spotlight project, go here. You can also check out the other great fanzines and fancasts featured by clicking here.

I have decided to expand the scope of the project to also cover fancasts, because the fancast category could also use a boost. And besides, the borders between fanzine and fancast are porous anyway.

So today, I’m pleased to feature If This Goes On (Don’t Panic)!, a newish podcast focussed on the hopepunk movement, which was created by Alan Bailey and Nebula winner Cat Rambo.

Therefore, I’m happy to welcome Alan Bailey of If This Goes On (Don’t Panic)! to my blog.

Tell us about your podcast or YouTube channel.

On our podcast we like to explore how narrative helps people to envision and achieve a better future. In turn, we like to talk to writers, editors, activists, gamers, and anyone else who helps us imagine those worlds. We consider our podcast to be linked thematically with HopePunk. Our interpretation of HopePunk takes a stance of hope through resistance to the current norms. Emphasis on the PUNK. Any given podcast discussion can range from a specific novel or story, to a guest’s career, politics, religion, music, writing tips, and ttrpgs. Guests often include editors, traditionally published writers, and Indie writers.

Some other previous guests have included folks like Bill Campbell, Tobius Buckell, Malka Older, P. Djeli Clark, and James Morrow, Janet Forbes (founder of the world building platform World Anvil), and Graeme Barber (writer and ttrpg critic).

Who are the people behind your podcast or channel?

Alan Bailey (that’s me) – cohost, editor, and creator

Cat Rambo – cohost and creator

Diane Morrison – cohost and webmaster

Rachel Renee – producer and occasional cohost

Why did you decide to start your podcast or channel?

When my last podcast, Alan & Jeremy VS Science Fiction, broke up I started floating ideas to people I knew to test the waters. One of those people happened to be Cat and one of my ideas happened to be a Hopepunk podcast. I wanted a way to mix my belief in progressive political activism with one of my favorite hobbies, reading genre. Cat, being a well known progressive herself, liked the idea. So after meeting up and talking through the idea we agreed that we wanted to encourage writers to imagine a better future. After a few months it became apparent that Cat wouldn’t be able to do interviews as often as we’d like and we brought in Diane and Rachel to help out.

What format do you use for your podcast or channel and why did you choose this format?

We use two different formats on our podcast. Initially, we only used a pre-recorded, edited format. But after Coronavirus happened, we decided to do some extra episodes streaming live on Twitch. We then recorded those and put them out nearly unedited. The purpose was to help people fill up their time. It also helped us to add a few extra episodes without the work of editing.

In our pre-recorded format, which I would consider to be our primary format, we decided to go with two interviewers. The reason being that I just didn’t feel prepared to always be the one and only reviewer. I have three children, two of which are very young, and a day job. It’s hard to always be on top of your game with those kinds of time commitments, so having two people there allows some flexibility for us. I also think it adds some unpredictability into the mix. We don’t coordinate with each other before the interview, so no one knows what the other person has in mind.

The fanzine category at the Hugos is one of the oldest, but also the category which consistently gets the lowest number of votes and nominations. So why do you think fanzines, fancasts and other fan projects are important?

This is a great question. I think there are a number of reasons why fan projects are important.

While there are small communities everywhere, and even large communities in places like Reddit and Facebook, fan projects help to drive those conversations.Fan projects amplify fan voices. For example, I think the increased diversification of SFF we’ve seen in the last few years has been driven, in part, by fan projects. So not only do we help drive the small conversations, but we help drive the conversations editors and publishers are having with each other.Fan projects add value and validity to the art. There needs to be a place for critique and discussion that doesn’t border on academic. In this way we add value to genre by tying it to the context of everyday people who don’t devote themselves to writing.It’s DIY and punk rock – meaning anyone can have a voice. Everyone’s voice is important and everyone should have a say about what they like.

In the past twenty years, fanzines have increasingly moved online and fancasts sprang up. What do you think the future of fan media looks like?

It’s honestly hard to imagine what comes next (one reason I admire SF writers). The number of fancasts will continue to increase. I have little doubt of that. I learn of new podcasts regularly these days. I want to say things will somehow become more interactive, but I have no idea how that would work.

The four fan categories of the Hugos (best fanzine, fan writer, fan artist and fancast) tend to get less attention than the fiction and dramatic presentation categories. Are there any awesome fanzines, fancasts, fan writers and fan artists you’d like to recommend?

Sadly, I am also guilty of not knowing many fan writers, fanzines, or fan artists. I do look forward to hearing the answers to this. Maybe we’ll have some of them on the podcast. However, I can certainly recommend some of my favorite fancasts:

Breaking the Glass Slipper – a great podcast focusing on feminism in SFF.Imaginary Worlds – Think NPR for SFF. Very professionally done.The Skiffy and Fanty Show – Probably the standard for interview podcasts in genre.The Coode Street Podcast – A couple of long-time SFF pros (Jonathan Strahan and Gary Wolf)  give their opinions about everything genre.Aurelia: A Storytelling Podcast – A new podcast focusing on Disabled, Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous, and other Storytellers of Color. I realize this last one has Storytelling in the title, but they also do interviews and reviews.

Where can people find you?

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/If-This-Goes-On-144679452728639
Twitter: @if_this_goes_on
Websites: https://itgodp.libsyn.com/  This takes you directly to the podcast episodes.
https://itgodp.wordpress.com/ This is our more general website where you can learn more about us.

Thank you, Alan, for stopping by and answering my questions.

Do check out If This Goes On (Don’t Panic)!, cause it’s a great fancast.

***

Do you have a Hugo eligible fanzine/-site or fancast and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.

Fancast Spotlight: The Journey Show

It’s time for the next entry in my Fanzine Spotlight project. For more about the Fanzine Spotlight project, go here. You can also check out the other great fanzines featured by clicking here.

I have also decided to expand the scope of the project to also cover fancasts, because the fancast category could also use a boost. And besides, the borders between fanzine and fancast are porous anyway.

So today, I’m pleased to feature the first fancast, namely The Journey Show. The Journey Show is a new fancast, which only started up last year as an outgrowth of the three-time Best Fanzine Hugo finalist Galactic Journey and just started its second season yesterday. Like I said, the borders between fanzine and fancast are porous.

Therefore, I’m pleased to welcome Gideon Marcus of The Journey Show.

Tell us about your broadcast.

The Journey Show is an outgrowth of Galactic Journey, our time machine to 55 years ago in fact and fiction. That site has been around since 1958…er…2013, and the conceit is that we are all fans living in the past, day by day, reviewing all the works of the time in the context of their time.

While Galactic Journey is a primarily text-based experience, we’ve frequently gone to conventions and other physical venues to do our Come Time Travel with Me show, in which we dress up in our vintage duds and talk about various SFnal topics. They’re always popular and a lot of fun.

The Journey Show is our way of bringing that experience to people all over the world through the magic of broadcast technology!

Topics have ranged far and wide, from discussing the Hugo Ballot of 1965 to the modern trends in art and architecture. The state of the art of wargames to the growing corps of classic women science fiction writers; Gemini in space to the new genre of Japanese animation. Plus fun musical guests and a pair of back to back doodling episodes featuring some really great illustrators.

Each show was an exciting new experience, and that’s why I couldn’t wait to bring back The Journey Show for a second season!

Who are the people behind your broadcast?

The only constant in the Journey Show is its host, Gideon Marcus. We try to have a different set of guests every time, though we have our repeat favorites, of course!

We’ve had so many wonderful celebrity guests, it’s kind of incredible. They include:

Dr. Lisa Yaszek, Georgia Tech Science Fiction professor and editor of The Future is Female Anthology
Alyssa Winans, Hugo Finalist cover artist
Tom Purdom, Hugo Finalist author
Lew Pulsipher, famed wargame designer
Gabriela Hernandez, CEO of Besamé Cosmetics
Erica Friedman, Founder of Yuricon, ALC Publishing and Yurikon LLC
Marie Vibbert, laureled SFF author

And then, of course, there are the folks associated with the Journey in one way or another, many of whom are Big Names in their own right:

Kerrie Dougherty, OAM, Space Historian
Gwyn Conaway, Design Guild Member
Jason Sacks, comic books historian
Cora Buhlert, Hugo Finalist fan writer
Kris Vyas-Myall, UK correspondent
Lorelei Marcus, singer-songwriter/illustrator
Acacia Weber, professional flautist
Jimmy Purcell, comic strip artist
Erica Frank, historian of the obscure

And many many more. You’ll see all of these faces plus a lot of new ones in Season Two.

Why did you decide to start your broadcast?

When the lockdowns started in March of last year, since we couldn’t do in-person events, we thought we might try doing a live broadcast in the style of the variety shows of the mid-60s. The first show was such a success that we kept it up every two weeks through October with a special charity fundraising episode in December. I like to think it helped keep spirits up — ours and that of the viewers! With so many of us stuck at home, this was a way to connect, and also to travel to a complete other time, forgetting the troubles of our current time for a moment.

What format do you use for your broadcast and why did you choose this format?

I use a software called WebinarJam, which seats up to six panelists and broadcasts to an infinite audience. I like it better than Zoom because it doesn’t require the viewer to download anything, and it’s got a lot of built-in features like automatic reminders, the ability to easily drop in video or polls or slideshows, etc.

We do our best to make it feel like an classic TV show, something like a cross between That Was The Week That Was and Jack Benny. So lots of musical bits, a news segment, and themed episodes. Since I “live” in the past, it’s pretty easy for me to stay in character the whole time.

The fanzine category at the Hugos is one of the oldest, but also the category which consistently gets the lowest number of votes and nominations. So why do you think fanzines and sites are important?

Fancasts offer a chance for fans to get together and share their love of things SFnal without regard for geography or demography. At every Journey Show, our chat room is jumping, and after each show, we repair to Galactic Journey’s “Portal 55” Discord server, where we continue the fun. It’s the same experience on YT and Twitch channels, too.

Fannish interaction has always been important. It’s never been just about the professional creations but the genre as a whole and all of its contributors: the occasional costumer, the prodigious fanfic writer, the earnest reviewer, the folks who just want other folks who want to interact with those who share their passions.

Without fanzines, fancasts, conventions, and other fannish endeavors, art becomes a one-way, commercial endeavor. That way likes sterility and death.

In the past twenty years, fanzines have increasingly moved online. What do you think the future of fanzines and fancasts looks like?

In the old days, if you wanted to reach your fellow fen, you had to meet them in person at conventions or other gatherings. Maybe you exchanged letters (some of us still do!) The recent developments in broadcast software make it so easy to produce your own show, and it’s great. There’s now tons of content on a variety of channels — one doesn’t need cable anymore!

The four fan categories of the Hugos (best fanzine, fan writer, fan artist and fancast) tend to get less attention than the fiction and dramatic presentation categories. Do you have any recommendations for any of the fan categories?

Cora Buhlert, James Nicoll and Alasdair Stuart are great Fan Writers. I’ve always enjoyed Nerds of a Feather and Journey Planet. Of course, File 770 is a titan. There are so many great fan artists out there. If you watch the Doodle episodes of The Journey Show, you’ll see some of them.

Where can people find you?

Galactic Journey
The Journey Show
The Journey Show at Anchor FM
The Journey Show on YouTube
The folks who do Galactic Journey
Galactic Journey on Twitter
Galactic Journey on Facebook

Thanks, Gideon, for stopping by and answering my questions.

Do check out The Journey Show, cause it’s a great fancast.

***

Do you have a Hugo eligible fanzine/-site or fancast and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.

WandaVision Introduces a Surprise Guest Star “On a Very Special Episode”

It’s time for the latest installment of my episode by episode reviews of WandaVision, Marvel’s new sitcom parody/Dickian faux reality paranoia. Previous installments may be found here. Also, may I remind you that Disney is still not paying Alan Dean Foster and others.

Warning: Spoilers and pretty significant ones at that behind the cut!

In Westview – or rather the Westview anomaly a.k.a. the Maximoff anomaly – time has advanced to the late 1980s or early 1990s, judging by wardrobe and hairstyles, but Wanda and Vision are still dealing with the troubles of parenthood. More precisely, the twins refuse to sleep or stop crying and neither Wanda’s magic nor pacifiers can help.

The titles sequence is clearly modelled on the title sequence for the US sitcom Family Ties, which ran from 1982 to 1989 and gave the world Michael J. Fox. The family portrait, the type face, the sappy theme music, it’s almost a one on one copy, though the bit with the photos of the cast members at different ages was borrowed from the intro of another US sitcom called Growing Pains, which aired from 1985 to 1992. Courtney Enlow breaks down the title sequence and traces the influences at io9 and also finds a scene inspired by Full House, another 1980s family sitcom, which is notable for starring Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, the real life sisters of Elizabeth Olsen (who plays Wanda), as the requisite cute sitcom kid. Talking of influences, I’m surprised that WandaVision didn’t riff on Married with Children, which dates from the same period and was hugely popular, though maybe not idyllic enough. I do understand why they didn’t riff on The Cosby Show, because I guess everybody would rather forget that show ever existed and that Bill Cosby had a lengthy career in spite of being a sex offender.

But while WandaVision borrows the visuals, it does not borrow the central conflict of Family Ties, which contrasts the 1960s hippies parents (though they do look terribly conservative in the footage I’ve seen) with their Reagan-voting would-be yuppie son Michael J. Fox and shallow airhead of an older daughter. I’m glad that WandaVision eschews that central trope, because it sounds absolutely terrible. I’m also glad that I never saw the show (which did air in Germany, but at a time when there was much more exciting fare such as US action shows like The A-Team or Knight Rider available), because it would have made me dislike Michael J. Fox, who’s actually an amazingly likeable actor. Also, speaking as someone who actually was a teen during the 1980s, that show looks about as far removed from my actual life at the time and that of my friends as a TV show from an alien planet. Were there shallow jerks like Michael J. Fox’s character? Of course, there were. But everybody hated them.

Once more, the 1980s fashions and interior design are pitch perfect, though the episode remains in widescreen, whereas a real 1980s sitcom would have been in 4:3 ratio. Even the hairstyles are right for the period, which is quite a feat, because not only are 1980s hairstyles incredibly ugly seen through 2020 eyes (though I also found them ugly back in the day and refused to have anything like that done to my poor hair), but they’re also very difficult to recreate, because 1980s hairstyling products contained a lot of harmful substances that have since been banned, with the result that period hairstyles never hold for long, when receated with modern, gentler products. That said, both Wanda and Agnes are dressed period accurate – I wore that pants and vest combo a lot in the 1980s and I also had that plaid blouse – but a lot more fashionable than real 1980s sitcom Moms. Look at the mother characters in the clips linked throughout this post and compare them to Wanda and Agnes. What Wanda and Agnes are wearing are young women’s styles, closer to what the daughters in those shows are wearing. And even the daughters are dressed frumpier in many scenes.

Luckily for Wanda and Vision, Agnes drops by in full 1980s aerobic get-up and offers to babysit. For some reason, Agnes is not at all bothered by Wanda’s superfast pregnancy. Vision is wary about letting Agnes babysit, since he’s clearly suffering from the New Dad jitters. Maybe Vision and Din Djarin could form a New Dad support group, since they both have a bad case of the New Dad jitters with regard to letting other people watch their young ones.

Wanda eventually convinces Vision to let Agnes have a go, when two very strange things happen. The first is that Agnes fluffs a line and asks Wanda, if she wants her to redo the take, much to the confusion of Vision. This and subsequent events suggest that Agnes is aware that she’s living in a sitcom, even if Vision still has no idea (though he, too, is waking up).  This also reinforces that question: Just who exactly is Agnes? Clearly, she’s just not another mindcontrolled citizen of Westview, but who or what is she? And why do we never see her husband Ralph? Does Ralph even exist? Also, what became of the missing witness Agent Woo was looking for in Westview? Is Agnes maybe that witness? And what exactly did she witness?

More alarming is what happens when Agnes finally succeeds in getting the kids to sleep. Wanda and Vision suddenly realise that the incessant crying has stopped and go check on the cribs, only to find them empty. Instead, Billy and Tommy are standing right there, aged approximately five.

Now rapid aging of child characters was apparently a thing on US TV for a long time, both to avoid the legal issues and restrictions of working with child actors and to allow for more exciting storylines than changing nappies. Though I mainly recall rapid aging from soap operas, where a kid who’d only just been born was suddenly a teenager with teen storylines barely a year later. Initially, I chalked those phenomena down to having missed a lot of episodes (as a teen, I could only watch US soap operas during school holidays, so I naturally missed a lot of episodes), but I couldn’t possibly have missed ten years or more worth of episodes, especially since all the other characters still looked the same. However, kids on US sitcoms mostly seemed to age in real time to the point that a sitcom family would inevitably adopt a younger kid (often a peviously unseen niece or nephew), once the youngest kids of the family had aged out of the “cute” stage. This happened on The Brady Bunch, The Cosby Show and others as well. Even the Family Ties show that the intro is modelled after added a younger kid (who was rapidly aged between seasons) in response to the real life pregnancy of the actress who played the mother, while the Growing Pains show mentioned also included a surprise pregnancy for the mother which resulted in another cute kid for the family.

Wanda and Vision are as surprised about the rapidly aging twins as everybody, which suggests this isn’t Wanda’s doing, at least not consciously. Agnes, meanwhile, is remarkably blasé about it all. “Oh, they grow up so fast.”

The next scene shows Billy and Tommy clearly attempting to hide something from Wanda in the kitchen sink. That something turns out to be a cute little dog. Tommy and Billy of course want to keep the dog. Wanda doesn’t want them to, because taking care of a living thing is a huge responsibility (yeah, Wanda should know considering she’s kidnapped a whole town). Agnes, who drops by once again, thinks the kids should keep the dog. Vision finally tells the boys that they’re not allowed to have a pet until they’re ten, whereupon Billy and Tommy age up by another five years. Wanda seems genuinely surprised, suggesting that this wasn’t her doing, but rather that of the boys who seem to have inherited their Mom’s abilities. Come to think of it, Wanda seems genuinely surprised at the dog as well. And of course, Billy and Tommy get to keep the dog whom they name Sparky. Meanwhile, Agnes is once more not at all fazed at what’s happening right in front of her eyes. Honestly, what does it take to faze that woman?

If Billy and Tommy keep growing up at the rate they are, they should be ready to join the Young Avengers by the end of the show, which is also what they did in the comics. For those keeping track at home, in the comics Billy – that’s the twin dressed in red with the shorter hair – is gay and in a longterm committed relationship with Hulkling. Tommy – the twin in blue with the longer hair – is straight and had a complictaed relationship with Kate Bishop, who has been confirmed to be popping up in the upcoming Hawkeye show.

Unlike previous episodes, this episode skips between the sitcom reality and the real world outside Westview. And so we see Monica Rambeau being debriefed and given a medical examination, after Wanda forcibly ejected her from Westview. Monica turns out to be fine, though her CT scans are messed up, suggesting that maybe she’s about to experience a bout of superpower development. Monica also confirms that Wanda was controlling her and that it was painful. However, she also thinks that Wanda is not actively hostile and that she actually protected Monica from getting killed, as she was ejected from Westview. Finally, Monica also confirms that the twins really are Wanda’s children – after all, she helped to deliver them.

Meanwhile, Hayward, the S.W.O.R.D. director and Monica’s boss, proves himself to be a complete and utter arsehole. Unlike Monica, he is completely sure of what is going on in Westview and that it’s all Wanda’s fault. Hayward also offers us a recap of Wanda’s career in the Marvel Cinematic Universe so far, that she and twin brother Pietro were orphaned young and later radicalised, that they got their powers from Hydra and initially used them against the Avengers in service to Ultron, before changing sides. Hayward also digs up some other less than stellar moments from Wanda’s Avengers career such as Wanda accidentally blowing up the wrong building during an Avengers mission in Lagos, Nigeria, also referenced in this week’s fake commercial, which is for Lagos brand paper towels, which mop up every mess you can possibly make. Also note that the liquid used in the demonstration is bright red, when it’s always blue in real commercials, because red looks like blood and yellow like pee. Finally, the actors in the fake commercial are the same actors as in previous fake commercials.

However, Hayward makes the same mistake that plenty of people make, when he claims that the airport trashing fight that Wanda was involved in along with pretty much every other Avenger past and present took place in West Berlin. First of all, West Berlin hasn’t been a thing since 1990, it’s just Berlin now and has been for thirty years. Secondly, the airport fight doesn’t actually take place at any of Berlin’s airports (it had up to three at one point with a fourth that opened last year), but at the airport Halle-Leipzig in the town of Schkeuditz approx. 175 kilometres south of Berlin. They don’t even make any attempt to disguise this – gangways and air bridges emblazoned with “Airport Halle-Leipzig” are clearly visible in several shots. The surrounding area doesn’t fit Berlin either – after all, War Machine crashes and break his spin on a potato field outside Schkeuditz, which again is very visibly there. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve driven past that very field, when visiting my great-aunt in Schkeuditz. Coincidentally, the movie where all this happens, Captain American: Civil War, is known as “The Avengers in Schkeuditz” in this house, though it’s still my least favourite of all Marvel Cinematic Universe movies and the only one I’ve never rewatched (I’ve even rewatched the not very good Hulk movie). The fact that part of it was shot in Schkeuditz is the only good thing about it (okay, and it introduced Chadwick Boseman as Black Panther, whom we lost much too soon) and even there I’m not a fan of the large-scale property destruction (“If you must wreck an airport, Avengers, wreck fucking Atlanta!”) nor of the fact that they shot in Schkeuditz only to completely erase the town. Honestly, I think Captain America: Civil War would have been a better movie, if it had just been the Avengers sitting in my great-aunt’s parlour in Schkeuditz (or rather in the courtyard of her apartment building, since the parlour is too small for several Avengers, particularly oversized ones like Hulk, Thor and Giant Man. I’m also not sure if Aunt Metel’s furniture would have survived Iron Man and War Machine in full armour), chatting and having coffee or barbecue.

Finally, Hayward also reports that Wanda broke into a S.W.O.R.D. facility to steal Vision’s dismembered body, against Vision’s explicit wishes (he did not want to be reanimated for fears of being turned into a weapon) and in defiance of the Sakovia Accords, which forbid reanimating people. Of course, if the Avengers had followed the Sakovia Accords, none of the people Thanos killed – half of the population of the entire universe – would have come back to life. Never mind that I’m pretty sure that Vision did not want S.W.O.R.D. to dismember his remnants either. And what precisely does S.W.O.R.D., an agency we’ve never heard of before, want with Vision’s body? And why did they dismember him, when Vision was in one piece – minus mindstone – in Avengers Infinity War and Endgame? Finally – and that’s probably the most disturbing thing about this scene – we now know that the Vision walking around in Westview is a reanimated and stitched together corpse. He’s basically a zombie.

Agent Woo points out that Hayward’s summary of Wanda’s superhero career is way too simplified and Monica remarks that she’s pretty sure that Wanda has no political motive and doesn’t meant to harm anybody, so she’s hardly a terrorist, whereupon Hayward reminds Monica – complete with live footage – that Wanda turned her into a blaxploitation cliché. Darcy sums it up best when she says that Hayward is an arsehole. Coincidentally, Hayward is also very reminiscing of all of those politicians and suit wearers who wanted to outlaw or imprison the X-Men throughout decades of comics. Apparently, when Disney bought back the X-Men rights along with all of 20th Century Fox, they also purchased anti-mutant prejudice along with it.

However, Wanda not just changed Monica into a blaxploitation cliché, it also turns out that Monica’s groovy 1970s ensemble is bulletproof, because Wanda physically changed Monica’s clothes – which included a bulletproof vest – to suit the setting. This gives Darcy, Monica and Jimmy Woo an idea. Maybe, if they send in something that fits the 1980s setting, like an old drone, they can outwit Wanda and make contact. We also learn that Monica is not happy when Agent Woo accidentally mentions Captain Marvel, probably because she hasn’t seen Carol in 25 years or so.

Meanwhile, inside the Westview anomaly – or the Hex, as Darcy calls it – Wanda’s little sitcom paradise is slowly unravelling. Sparky has gone missing and Vision has gone to work, even though – as the twins point out – it’s Saturday. We do get another scene set in Vision’s office – the first since episode 1 – and the 1980s have also arrived there in the form of clunky Commodore computers and e-mail. It’s interesting that the jokes in the office segment – Do we need a letter opener for the e-mail? Do we need a stamp? – are jokes that are squarely aimed at a contemporary audience. No genuine 1980s sitcom would have made those jokes, because a lot of people wouldn’t have gotten them. The e-mail that Vision, Norm and everybody else in the office receives turns out to be a message from Darcy Lewis about the Westview anomaly, which everybody is reciting in almost hypnotic fashion. It’s not clear whether the e-mail was another attempt by Darcy to contact someone inside Westview or whether it was an accident. Vision now clearly realises that something is very wrong and shortcircuits Norm, briefly shocking him awake. “Norm” is frantic, because he’s worried about his father and sister. He also begs Vision to make “her” (presumably Wanda) stop, because it hurts. Vision finally resets Norm and heads home to confront Wanda.

Meanwhile, Wanda and the twins are searching for the missing Sparky, when Wanda spots the drone and glares up at it. Monica tries to use the drone to communicate with Wanda, but once again Hayward has tricked her and the drone is armed. He orders the drone to fire on Wanda – never mind that the ten-year-old twins are standing right there next to her – and the screen goes to static. At the same time, an alarm goes off in the S.W.O.R.D. compound outside Westview. Something or rather someone is breaching the barrier that cuts Westview off from the rest of the world. Everybody hastens outside and who emerges from the barrier but Wanda – dressed in her regular MCU superhero costume (she has never worn her iconic comic costume on screen) – dragging the trashed drone behind her. She also has her Sakovian accent, which was absent in the sitcom scenes, back. Wanda is seriously pissed off and boy, you won’t like her when she’s angry. Wanda basically tells Hayward and S.W.O.R.D. to go away and leave her alone and never bother her again. She also causes the various S.W.O.R.D operatives to point their guns at Hayward instead of at her. Monica tries to argue with Wanda and also tells her that she had no idea the drone was armed, but Wanda isn’t having any of it. She doesn’t want to argue, she wants to be left alone.

So far, the Marvel Cinematic Universe hasn’t really done much with Wanda, who’s after all one of the most powerful characters in the Marvel Universe proper. However, WandaVision in general and this scene in particular show the Wanda I remember from the comics, a Wanda who’s very screwed up, very powerful and very dangerous. Also – and maybe that’s wrong of me – I cheered when Wanda told off Hayward and the other S.W.O.R.D. agents.

That said, what Wanda is doing – roping innocent people into her little sitcom universe – is clearly wrong. I don’t think anybody would mind Wanda playing happy family with Vision and the twins, but she did kidnap a whole town to do so. If Wanda truly is the one in charge here, which isn’t entirely clear either.

Back in Westview, tragedy strikes. For when Wanda and the twins finally find Sparky, the poor little fellow has expired after eating Azalea leaves in Agnes’ garden. Yes, WandaVision just killed a dog, which is supposedly a huge taboo in US popular culture, particularly lighter fare such as sitcoms. The kids are heartbroken and even Agnes the unfazable seems genuinely shocked. “Make it right, Mom”, the boys beg Wanda, “Bring him back”, which suggests that the twins know very well what their Mom is capable of. “You can do that?” a genuinely surprised Agnes asks Wanda. Wanda says that she can’t bring back the dead (though she did bring back Vision), because death is forever, and that the boys will get over the loss in time, though this doesn’t mean they should quick age again. “But you said family is forever, Mom”, one of the twins says. You can almost see something clicking inside Wanda’s head, though she’ll bring back something or rather someone far bigger and more important than Sparky the cute dog.

But first Wanda has to deal with Vision who’s home and wants to know what’s up. Vision point blank tells Wanda that he knows that she’s controlling everything and keeps rearranging the sets and the town overnight. He also tells her that she must stop, because she’s hurting real people like “Norm”. Wanda counters that the idea that she is controlling a whole town and everybody inside is ridiculous. Then Vision drops another bombshell. “Why are there no children other than the twins in Westview?” he asks. This made me frantically think of the past few episodes, but unless I’m mistaken, we really haven’t seen any children in Westview, even though it’s exactly the sort of place where families with children would live. Which makes the benefit performance “For the Children” in episode 2 even more creepy than it already was.

Wanda doesn’t want to argue with Vision and just lets the credits roll. However, her control is slipping and so we get a Wanda versus Vision confrontation – complete with flying and powers flaring – in the living room over the credits. “You never were like this before…” Wanda says and you know she almost would have blurted out, “Before you died.” Vision, meanwhile, reveals that he does not remember his life before Westview, none of it. And Wanda reveals that she doesn’t know how the whole Westview thing started. So even if Wanda is controlling everybody, is she herself being controlled? And by whom?

The argument is interrupted by the doorbell ringing. Vision thinks that Wanda is rearranging the plot again to suit her purposes, only that this time he’s having none of that. “That’s not my doing”, Wanda says and opens the door, only to find herself face to face with her twin brother Pietro, who’s very much dead. Only that this isn’t the Pietro we encountered in Age of Ultron, who was played by Aaron Taylor Johnson, but the Pietro from Fox’s X-Men movies, played by Evan Peters, and looking like the typical 1980s cool dude comic relief character.

“She recast Pietro”, Darcy exclaims, referring to the many instances in various US TV shows, where characters have been recast with different actors. Even the MCU has done it, replacing Terrence Howard’s Jim Rhodes in the first Iron Man movie with Don Cheadle in all subsequent appearances of the character, replacing Edward Norton’s Hulk in the not very good Hulk movie (which is still part of the MCU continuity) with Mark Ruffalo and also replacing the blonde one of the Warriors Three in the Thor films. However, Wanda didn’t just recast Pietro (and she seems as surprised as anybody else to see him), she happened to recast Pietro with his counterpart from the Fox X-Men movies. So did she plug Pietro from another universe? And is this a way to explain away discrepancies between the Fox X-Men movies and potential future Marvel/Disney X-Men movies as “Well, it’s a different universe?” as well as to allow other recastings and bringing back characters from the dead? Whatever, this was a genuinely surprising development.

In addition to the title sequence, another thing that WandaVision borrowed from Family Ties (and other sitcoms of the period) is the awkward juxtaposition of comedy moments, complete with laugh track, and serious moments. Here’s is an example from YouTube where Michael J. Fox is dealing with a bad case of survivor’s guilt after a friend died in a car crash, while the daughter tries to cheer him with not particularly helpful remarks and that bloody laugh track is still playing in the background, while Michael J. Fox is breaking down from grief. Honestly, look at that clip. It seems as if Michael J. Fox isn’t even in the same show as the woman who plays his sister. Though characters dying in car crashes seems to have been a thing in 1980s US sitcoms. Here is a clip from Growing Pains where a friend of the daughter has just died in hospital following a car crash. Though at least here the laugh track shuts up, once the brother delivers the bad news. Meanwhile, here’s another example of misplaced laugh tracks: Michael J. Fox is developing a drug problem, his parents are remarkably supportive (well, they were 1960s hippies and probably had drug experiences themselves) and that stupid laugh track is playing in the background over a dramatic scene. Truly, the US sitcom is a very strange form of entertainment. Though watching those clips, it’s not difficult to see why Michael J. Fox became a huge star, since he’s acting his heart out there. However, he still doesn’t even seem to be in the same show as the rest of the cast.

Coincidentally, those sitcom episodes with more serious moments, often involving the death of a supporting character or drugs as well as a neat moral lesson, were often labeled as “A Very Special Episode”, which is echoed in the title of this episode of WandaVision. We do have a death in this episode, that of Sparky the cute little dog (Rest in Peace), as well as not one but two deaths undone, Vision’s and Pietro’s. And while all WandaVision episodes to date had their share of creepy and serious moments, this episode fully alternates between comedic and serious moments, often within the same scene. And it’s just as awkward as in the 1980s sitcom clips I linked above. One of the things WandaVision is doing very well is highlighting what a very strange and artificial form of entertainment the US sitcom is.

In his review, Camestros Felapton says that WandaVision is difficult to evaluate episode by episode, because it’s a very strange show, which shifts from episode to episode, and we’re not quite sure if the pay-off will live up to the build up. And indeed, these reviews often end up being more plot summary than reviews, though I usually find more than enough to write about – as well as look up some truly terrible looking vintage sitcoms on YouTube – even though the actual plot is usually quite slight.

We’re one episode past the halfway point, so it’s still too early to tell just where WandaVision is going. However, so far the ride has been intriguing enough that I want to keep watching and that’s all that matters. Will the pay-off eventually live up to the build-up? We’ll see.

Fanzine Spotlight: Star Trek Quarterly

It’s time for the next entry in my Fanzine Spotlight project. For more about the Fanzine Spotlight project, go here. You can also check out the other great fanzines featured by clicking here.

Today’s featured fanzine is Star Trek Quarterly, which – as the title indicates – is all about Star Trek.

And now I’d like to welcome Sarah Gulde of Star Trek Quarterly. Sarah was a Hugo finalist for Journey Planet in 2019.

Who are the people behind your site or zine?

Trekkies! Specifically, people involved in Star Trek fandom either IRL or online. I want anyone who loves Star Trek to feel welcome to send in submissions, from articles to art to fanfic to reviews to whatever shows their love of Trek!

I’ve also been very lucky to be introduced to folks like Karen Roberson, who created the new logo and does the covers now, and Sue Kisenwether, who created the website. Personally, I edit the submissions, lay them out, post the finished fanzines online, and advertise them on social media.

Why did you decide to start your site or zine?

I’ve been a Trekkie since TNG started in 1987, so when Chris Garcia and James Bacon asked me to guest edit an issue of Journey Planet, I did a whole Star Trek-themed issue. I reached out to people I know in the Trek community and asked them to write about how Star Trek had impacted their lives. I ended up receiving some really impactful stories, from a friend who had immigrated to the US finding a family, to another friend finding the courage to come out of the closet, all through Star Trek.

It was a game-changing experience for me to edit other people’s stories. Everyone has a story to tell, but everyone is at a different writing level. Some pieces I didn’t have to touch, while I spent hours editing others. I loved helping people tell their stories, and making sure those stories were heard.

I loved it so much I didn’t want to stop with one issue! After some careful thought, I decided to create my own Star Trek-themed fanzine. Monthly was too much for me to take on by myself, so I went with quarterly. I asked Women At Warp, a feminist Trek podcast, to write a regular column. (Since then I’ve joined the show as a co-host.) I passed out flyers at the big annual convention in Las Vegas soliciting submissions for the first issue. And I posted to various Star Trek Facebook groups looking for more.

I didn’t know what to expect, but I got a lot of great submissions from people who are passionate about Star Trek. And it’s continued ever since!

What format do you use for your site or zine (blog, e-mail newsletter, PDF zine, paper zine) and why did you choose this format?

I originally started Star Trek Quarterly as a JPEG zine on Facebook only. It gave me a free, ready-to-go infrastructure for posting and advertising my fanzine. I didn’t (and still don’t) know how to create a website, but recently my Women At Warp co-host Sue Kisenwether created a WordPress site for me, so now folks can access Star Trek Quarterly as a PDF outside of Facebook.

The fanzine category at the Hugos is one of the oldest, but also the category which consistently gets the lowest number of votes and nominations. So why do you think fanzines and sites are important?

I don’t worry about whether my fanzine is “important”. I make it because Star Trek is important to me, and because my fanzine makes my (and others’) love of Star Trek a bigger part of my life. You don’t make art because it’s important, you make art because you have something you want to express and get out into the world. If it becomes important to other people and they want to give it an award, that’s just icing.

In the past twenty years, fanzines have increasingly moved online. What do you think the future of fanzines looks like?

I wouldn’t tell anyone else how to distribute their fanzine, but personally I can’t imagine taking on the costs of sending a physical product. I have no expenses now but time and effort, and I intend to keep it that way. It would stop being fun for me if I had to fundraise or charge to keep it going.

The four fan categories of the Hugos (best fanzine, fan writer, fan artist and fancast) tend to get less attention than the fiction and dramatic presentation categories. Are there any awesome fanzines, fancasts, fan writers and fan artists you’d like to recommend?

First of all (and self-servingly), the Women At Warp podcast! We’re on a mission to explore “intersectional diversity in infinite combinations”, meaning we discuss Star Trek from an intersectional feminist perspective. We’re a part of the Roddenberry Podcast Network and will be hitting a million downloads sometime in mid-2021. You can find us online at womenatwarp.com, and @womenatwarp on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

I’d also like to specifically recommend a fanfic writer who is a regular contributor to Star Trek Quarterly. They go by Curator on AO3, and @curatoronAO3 on Twitter. I’m not a part of the fanfic community, but I LOVE reading Curator’s submissions each quarter. They’re well written and give you little pieces of the Star Trek story you didn’t know you were missing.

Where can people find you?

Website: https://startrekquarterly.wordpress.com/
Facebook: @startrekquarterly
Twitter: @StarTrekQtrly

The next submission deadline is February 28 – I hope any Trekkies reading this will think about sending something in! Just email it to startrekquarterly@gmail.com.

Thanks, Sarah, for stopping by and answering my questions.

Do check out Star Trek Quarterly, cause it’s a great zine.

***

Do you have a Hugo eligible fanzine/-site or fancast and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.

Fanzine Spotlight: Speculative Fiction in Translation

It’s time for the next entry in my Fanzine Spotlight project. For more about the Fanzine Spotlight project, go here. You can also check out the other great fanzines featured by clicking here.

But first of all, I also want to point you to my latest article at Galactic Journey, where I talk about the Lufthansa flight 005 crash which happened at Bremen airport on January 28, 1966, only approximately five kilometres from where I live. All 46 people aboard Lufthansa flight 005 died, the worst disaster to befall the Lufthansa until then and still the second worst today.

Today’s featured fanzine is Speculative Fiction in Translation, which made the longlist for the Hugo for Best Fanzine in 2019 and 2020. Since I’m a translator myself (though rarely of fiction except for my own), the mission of this site is near and dear to my heart.

Therefore, I’m thrilled to welcome Rachel Cordasco of Speculative Fiction in Translation.

Tell us about your site or zine.

I started SFinTranslation.com in 2016 when I couldn’t find any websites that focused on   tracking speculative fiction in English translation. Having reviewed a few works of SFT for SF Signal (before it closed a few years ago), I decided to learn more about the science fiction, fantasy, and horror that was being written around the world and then translated for Anglophone  readers. Since 2016, I’ve reviewed several dozen works of short- and long-form SFT (both for my site and for World Literature Today, Strange Horizons, and other publications), written  essays spotlighting regional SFT, and used social media to bring SFT to the attention of more readers. Among other things, I publish a regular “Out this Month” post to help readers find new SFT releases and I update a linked list of SFT that’s freely-available on the web.

Who are the people behind your site or zine?

I created SFinTranslation.com and regularly update it with content, but I also welcome guest posts, which often come in the form of reviews. Daniel Haeusser, my co-host on the 16-episode   SFT podcast (2018-19), frequently sends me reviews to post on the site. I’ve also welcomed reviews from Andrea Johnson, Graham Oliver, Emily Balistrieri, and others.

What format do you use for your site or zine (blog, e-mail newsletter, PDF zine, paper zine) and why did you choose this format?

I use WordPress for my site because it’s easy to use and my site looks good whether you’re looking at it on your desktop, laptop, or cell phone. I’m thinking of adding an email newsletter in the future when my kids are older and I have more time to devote to SFT work!

The fanzine category at the Hugos is one of the oldest, but also the category which consistently gets the lowest number of votes and nominations. So why do you think fanzines and sites are important?

Fanzines and fansites are important because they’re often created and maintained by people who (like myself) do the work purely for the love of it. We maintain these publications because we want other people to share our love for a particular kind of art or medium. Several people have told me that they always wanted to read more in translation but didn’t know where to look and my site helped them find what they were looking for. It’s comments like that that help fuel SFinTranslation.com.

In the past twenty years, fanzines have increasingly moved online. What do you think the future of fanzines looks like?

Like the whole “print books are dead!” canard of the early 2000s when ebooks became popular, I think print fanzines will always exist, even though many have migrated online. In some ways, it’s easier to maintain a fanzine online because you don’t have to deal with having it printed and mailed, though you do have to pay to use certain content management systems. Perhaps we’ll see a resurgence of print zines in the coming years, since many people still crave the physical and tangible. I myself print out an SFT catalog (in color) each year to bring to WisCon, which I hand out freely to anyone who comes to one of my SFT panels.

Where can people find you?

SFinTranslation.com
@Rcordas on Twitter
https://www.facebook.com/sfintranslation
rachel@sfintranslation.com

Thanks, Rachel, for stopping by and answering my questions.

Do check out Speculative Fiction in Translation, cause it’s a great blog.

***

Do you have a Hugo eligible fanzine/-site or fancast and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.

First Monday Free Fiction: A Valentine for the Silencer

Welcome to the February 2021 edition of First Monday Free Fiction, which is also posted on the first day of the month this time around.

To recap, inspired by Kristine Kathryn Rusch who posts a free short story every week on her blog, I’ll post a free story on every first Monday of the month.

February is both the month of Carnival and of Valentine’s Day. Over the years, I have written three Valentine’s Day stories, Valentine’s Day on Iago Prime, Ballroom Blitz and this month’s free story, A Valentine for the Silencer.

As the title indicates, this story is part of my Silencer series of pulp style adventures. So travel back in time to New York City in the year 1938, where Richard Blakemore, hardworking pulp writer by day and the masked vigilante known only as the Silencer by night, is planning a romantic dinner with his fiancée Constance Allen. However, his alter ego still has work to do first.

So follow Richard Blakemore, as he deals with…

 

A Valentine for the Silencer

It was February 14, 1938, half past five in the afternoon. The winter sun was still up, if only barely, but the light sucking bulk of the Equitable Building already cast its long shadow down on Nassau Street.

Two blocks from the Equitable Building, Thomas Walden, twenty-five years of age, junior accountant at the Sinclair Oil Corporation, walked out of the gilded revolving door of the gothic extravaganza that was the Sinclair Oil Building on the corner of Liberty and Nassau. He had curly brown hair, open blue eyes and a sprinkle of freckles on his nose. He also had a spring in his step and a whistle on his lips and it seemed to him as if even the dome of the Singer Building a block up Liberty Street smiled down on him on this wonderful day. With a wide grin on his face, he rounded the corner and headed for the unremarkable brownstone building that sat right next to the soaring white terracotta tower where he worked.

On the ground floor of this unremarkable brownstone was a small, equally unremarkable shop. “Abraham Bernstein & Sons — Diamonds and Fine Jewellery,” a sign above the door announced in discreet gilded lettering.

A chime jingled, as Thomas Walden pushed open the door and stepped into the shop. Behind the counter, an elderly man with curled silver sidelocks and a matching beard laid down a magnifying glass as well as the ring he’d been examining and looked up.

“Ah, Mr. Walden,” Abraham Bernstein exclaimed. If he noticed the class ring of gilded pot metal on the young man’s hand and the modest gilded watch on his wrist, he gave no indication of it. “It’s a pleasure, as always. And right on time, too.”

“Do you have it?” Thomas Walden asked, completely forgetting his manners, “Is it finished?”

In response, Abraham Bernstein gave the young man a benign smile. “Of course, it is finished. I promised you that it would be, did I not?”

“And…?” Thomas Walden asked, near bursting with suspense.

Abraham Bernstein’s smile widened. “It is magnificent, if I may say so. A ring to win the heart of even the most icy of maidens. But see for yourself.”

With great ceremony, Bernstein unlocked the counter, picked up a ring from the display and held it under a desk lamp for Thomas to examine.

“A 0.75 carat emerald cut diamond flanked by smaller baguette cut diamonds and sapphires, all set in platinum…”

The technical terms meant little to Thomas, but he squinted at the ring, dazzled by the shimmer of the diamonds and sapphires.

“It… it’s beautiful,” he stammered.

“A true beauty for a beautiful lady,” Bernstein agreed, “The sapphires will match her eyes.”

“Her eyes?” Thomas exclaimed, utterly confused

“Your bride,” Bernstein clarified, “You told me she had blue eyes and blonde hair. The ring will match her eyes and hair and complexion.”

Thomas wasn’t entirely sure why engagement rings had to match a lady’s complexion. His own mother wore a plain gold band that certainly did not match her ruddy cheeks. But things were different now and Daisy was the daughter of a Wall Street banker, accustomed only to the very best. And this ring was the very best, or at least the very best Thomas could afford on a junior accountant’s salary.

“She will love it,” Abraham Bernstein assured him, “Young ladies always do.”

“Yes, I… I think she will.”

Bernstein placed the ring into a velvet lined box, while Thomas pulled out his chequebook and wrote a cheque with higher numbers than he had ever written, at least as far as he could recall.

“When is the proposal, if I may ask?” Bernstein wanted to know.

“Tonight,” Thomas blurted out, his hand shaking ever so slightly, “I’m meeting her at the fountain in City Hall Park in…” He checked his watch, his very modest watch, gilded instead of gold, 3.45 at Montgomery Ward’s. “…fifteen minutes.”

“But surely you won’t propose in the park,” Bernstein said.

“No, I have a table reserved at Zuccotti’s for tonight. Dinners, music, champagne, the whole works. And that’s where… where I’ll ask her.”

Thomas slipped the ring box into a pocket of his coat and smiled at old Mr. Bernstein. “Wish me luck.”

“I’m sure she will accept,” Bernstein said indulgently, “Mazel und brucha for both of you.”

And so Thomas Walden left Abraham Bernstein & Sons some ten minutes after he’d entered the shop, the ring box heavy in his pocket and his bank account lighter by several hundred dollars. With a spring in his step and a whistle on his lips, he walked north along Nassau Street towards City Hall Park where Daisy and his future were waiting for him.

He did not even notice the icy wind that blew down Nassau Street or the snowflakes that it drove into his face. And he certainly never noticed the man who was loitering in the doorway of a shuttered tobacconist shop across the street. Nor did he notice that the man emerged from the shadowed doorway and followed him, making sure to always stay about five steps behind.

***

At around the same time, Richard Blakemore, pulp writer by day and the steel-masked crimefighter known only as the Silencer by night, was walking up Nassau Street at a brisk pace.

For though the sun was still up — in theory at least, for that blasted Equitable Building was plunging all of lower Manhattan into shadow — the Silencer had already completed his mission for the day and has spent the afternoon putting the fear of God into a crooked banker who had cheated sweet little old ladies out of their life savings.

The banker had promised to pay back his ill-gotten gains — all of them — and donate the rest to the Littlest Angels Home for Orphans in Hell’s Kitchen. And just to make sure that the man kept his promise, Richard had personally watched him write the respective cheques, while he kept the Silencer’s silver-plated twin .45 automatics trained on the banker all the time.

He’d left the twin .45 automatics along with the Silencer’s steel mask locked in the trunk of his Maybach Zeppelin that was parked in the shadow of the Singer Building a few blocks away. And now he was just Richard Blakemore, pulp writer and man about town, on his way to a romantic dinner with his beautiful fiancée.

In his hand, he held a heart-shaped box of fine chocolates he’d picked up at a chocolatier on Maiden Lane. And in one of the many pockets of his swirling black coat — the same swirling black coat the Silencer wore — was a jewellery box holding a slender bracelet studded with diamonds and emeralds that matched Constance’s green eyes.

An icy wind whistled down Nassau Street, blowing snowflakes into his face, so Richard turned up the collar of his coat, tightened his blood-red silk scarf and pulled the brim of his fedora — the same fedora the Silencer always wore — deeper into his face.

Tomorrow he would start typing up the latest Silencer adventure, the one with the crooked banker. Though he would have to come up with a better title than that. Hmm, what about The Werewolf of Wall Street? Or maybe The Vampire of Wall Street?

He’d ask Constance which one she liked better. After all, he’d meet her soon. Most likely, she was already waiting for him at The Edgar, a restaurant in the atrium of the Temple Court Building, named after Edgar Allan Poe who’d once lived at that address, long before even there was a Temple Court Building, supposedly New York City’s first skyscraper, on the corner of Nassau and Beekman Street.

Richard smiled. He’d always liked The Edgar with its cosy mahogany and burgundy leather interior. And besides, as a writer of mysteries and crime fiction, Edgar Allan Poe was his patron saint of sorts. Hell, considering that Poe had not just invented the murder mystery, but also wrote adventure stories, satire, fantasy, horror and science fiction, he was the patron saint of all pulp writers everywhere. And so it was only appropriate to pay his respects to old Edgar and raise a glass in his honour once in a while.

The red brick façade and twin pyramidal peaks of the Temple Court Building were already in view, when Richard noticed a young man with curly hair walking maybe fifteen yards ahead of him. He seemed nervous, his right hand constantly fingering something in the pocket of his tweed coat. The young man stopped, glanced at his wrist watch, and abruptly turned into an alley that ran from Nassau Street to Park Row.

A few seconds later, another man in baggy pants and a herringbone newsboy cap, followed. Something gleamed in his hand, struck by a stray ray of light from a streetlamp. A switchblade knife.

Richard swore. He pulled his silk scarf over his face in lieu of a mask and set off in pursuit.

***

Thomas Walden was lost in his own thoughts as he walked along Nassau Street. In his mind, he formulated and reformulated his proposal, while his hand patted the pocket in which the ring box rested with every other step.

He did not notice the man in the herringbone newsboy cap who’d shadowed him ever since he’d left Abraham Bernstein & Sons, always careful to keep at least five steps behind. And he certainly did not notice the man in the long black coat and the fedora who walked maybe fifteen yards behind both of them.

Thomas passed the pharmacy on the corner of Nassau and Ann Street. Light spilled out of the windows onto the gloomy street, so Thomas took the opportunity to check his wristwatch, for 3.45 at Montgomery Ward’s did not buy you a fancy glow-in-the-dark dial. Almost six. Daisy would already be waiting for him by the fountain in City Hall Park. The most important date of his life and he was late. And wasn’t that just his luck?

But maybe he could still make it on time. Initially, Thomas had planned to turn onto Beekman Street and walk on to Park Row and City Hall Park. But there was a shortcut, an alley running behind the Temple Court Building all the way to Park Row, where it ended directly across from the entrance to City Hall Park. If he walked through that alley, he could save a few minutes and still make it to the fountain and Daisy on time.

Without hesitation, he turned into the alley, still unaware that he was being followed.

Nassau Street had been gloomy, but this nameless alley was almost pitch black. The cobble stones were slick with a mixture of wet snow and other, less palatable substances. Garbage leaked out of the trash cans behind The Edgar and occasionally, an enterprising rat scurried across the alley.

Thomas wrinkled his nose in disgust. He stepped into a puddle and soaked the hem of his trousers. He just hoped it was water and not something worse, cause he had no idea how to explain that to Daisy. Proposing while smelling of rat piss, wouldn’t that be just his luck?

He paused briefly to shake off whatever he’d stepped into and finally became aware of the footsteps behind him. It was probably nothing, just someone else taking the same shortcut he’d taken, but nonetheless Thomas decided to quicken his steps. And besides, Daisy was waiting.

“Where you going so fast?”

The voice echoed through the alley, hollow and mocking. Thomas did not answer. He just quickened his steps.

“Hey, I’m talking to you.”

In response, Thomas quickened his steps even further, almost running now, only to slip on a patch of black ice and fall flat on his face.

Proposing with a black eye and a bloody nose. And wasn’t that just his luck?

He barely had time to catch his breath, before he was roughly hauled to his feet again and slammed against the rear wall of the Temple Court Building.

A figure loomed before him, a shadowy figure wearing a newsboy cap.

“Didn’t your momma never tell you not to run?” the figure asked, his voice sneering, “And didn’t your momma never teach you no manners? Cause it’s not nice, running away when someone’s talking to you.”

“I… I’m sorry,” Thomas stammered, aware that a trickle of blood was running down his nose.

“Well, it’s nice that you’re sorry, but I can’t eat sorry,” the figure with the newsboy cap said, “And besides, this is a toll road and you…”

The figure poked a finger into Thomas’ chest.

“…you ain’t paid up yet.”

Something bright flashed in front of Thomas’ face. A knife.

“And now give me your money or I’ll slit your throat.”

The heroes of the pulp magazines Thomas sometimes read on the elevated during his commute to Brooklyn would have launched themselves at the mugger and seized the knife. But Thomas wasn’t a hero. He was just a junior accountant at Sinclair Oil and so he reached into his coat with trembling fingers to withdraw his wallet.

He had twenty-five dollars in there — to pay for the dinner, the champagne, the Hungarian violin player who would accompany his proposal with a rendition of “Gloomy Sunday”, which just happened to be Daisy’s favourite song. And if he was lucky, there would be enough for a cab ride home as well.

None of that would happen now — unless Zuccotti’s was understanding enough to let him put the dinner on tab and pay at the end of the week, when his next wage came in.

“And now the watch and the ring, quick.”

With trembling fingers, Thomas opened the leather band of his modest gilded watch, 3.45 at Montgomery Ward’s. He tugged on the class ring on his finger — Riverside High School, class of 1930. It took him a few tries, but then it came off, taking some of his skin with it.

Shaking, he handed the ring and the watch to the mugger, who unfortunately was more of a jewellery connoisseur than one would assume, given his chosen profession.

“This is junk,” the mugger spat, “Just junk.”

He flashed his knife in front of Thomas’ face again.

“I saw you coming out of Bernstein’s. And Abe Bernstein, he don’t sell no junk. He sells gold, diamonds, the good stuff. So what did you get at Bernstein’s?”

“N…nothing,” Thomas stammered, “I… I just made an inquiry.”

“Bullshit!”

The knife was at his throat again, very close now, so close that Thomas could feel the cold kiss of steel on his skin.

“You got something at Bernstein’s, something good. It’s in your pocket, the pocket you’re always fingering. And now hand it over or…”

The mugger did not elaborate. Not that there was any need.

“Please, no,” Thomas stammered, “It… it’s a ring, for my girl. Not the ring, please.”

But the mugger knew no mercy. “Give me the ring!”

***

Barely fifteen yards away, in the cosy mahogany and leather dining room of The Edgar, Constance Allen set alone at a table under a framed portrait of Edgar Allan Poe, patron saint of pulp writers everywhere. At least that’s what Richard said, for Constance sincerely doubted that Poe had ever been officially canonised.

She sipped on a glass of sherry and nibbled on some bread with beurre Maître d’Hôtel, steadfastly ignoring the pitying looks of the waiters in their frock coats and the other couples in their elegant clothes.

Though at least with regard to fashion, Constance and her gown of rose crêpe de chine that perfectly matched her auburn curls could keep up with any other woman in The Edgar tonight. There was only one problem. Everybody else was with their respective partners, while Constance was all alone.

She cast a surreptitious glance at her diamond studded Cartier watch. Richard was late. Again.

She should be used to this by now. Should be used to the waiting, the worry, the pitying looks from waiters and other diners. But nonetheless, she’d hoped that at least this once he’d be on time. After all, it was Valentine’s Day.

Constance knew that the Silencer was on a mission today. Nothing overly dangerous, Richard had assured her. All he had to do was put the fear of God into some crooked banker who’d swindled his clients out of their life savings. The banker was in his fifties, balding, pot-bellied. Not the sort to fight back. Most likely, he’d fold as soon as he laid eye on the Silencer. Quite possibly, Richard wouldn’t even need to draw his guns, let alone use them.

But sometimes, even balding and pot-bellied bankers kept a pistol in their desks. And sometimes, they even knew how to use it.

What if something had gone wrong? What if Richard was wounded, hurt, on the run? Or what if the banker had called the police? What if they’d come too soon and caught the Silencer red-handed? After all, Justin O’Grady’s favourite watering hole, The Beekman Pub, was just around the corner. What if Richard was languishing in a cell even now, facing the sort of trial that usually ended with a one way trip to the electric chair?

Constance took another sip of sherry to calm her nerves. Most likely, it was nothing. Richard was just late, that was all.

Like a ghost, a waiter appeared next to her table. “Is there anything else I can bring you, Miss?”

Constance forced herself to smile. “Not at the moment, thank you.”

The waiter gave her a sympathetic nod. “Is the gentleman late?”

“It would seem so.” Constance emitted a quick laugh that sounded fake even to her own ears. “He always forgets the time.”

“That’s typical of those Wall Street boys,” the waiter said, “Always so focussed on chasing after profit that they even forget a date with a lovely young lady.”

“Oh, my fiancé is not a banker,” Constance said, “He’s a writer.”

“Oh, a newspaper man then,” the waiter said, “Those reporters are even worse, so busy chasing down a story that they forget about everything else.”

“Quite so,” Constance said, her forced smile almost cracking her face.

***

“Maybe it’s nothing,” Richard told himself, as he followed the nervous young man and the sinister fellow with the newsboy cap into the alley behind the Temple Court Building. Maybe it was just a coincidence, perfectly harmless. Or maybe it was the sort of clandestine meeting that might be illegal, but was hardly a crime.

The alley was almost pitch dark and Richard fervently wished for the Silencer’s mask with its inbuilt nightvision gadget. But the mask was locked in the trunk of the Maybach, parked in the shadow of the Singer Building a few blocks away. So were his twin .45 automatics, which meant that Richard would have to make do without.

Though he was not entirely without weapons. He still had a set of brass knuckles he kept in a pocket of his coat — the Silencer’s coat — for emergencies. And so he ducked behind a trash can and slipped them over the fingers of his right hand. He also set the box of chocolates down on top of the trash can. He just hoped that the rats wouldn’t get to it, before this business had been dealt with.

“Where you going so fast?” the would-be mugger’s voice echoed through the alley. In response, the footsteps, which up to now had been regular, quickened.

“Hey, I’m talking to you.”

The footsteps became even quicker, as the young man finally realised the danger he was in. And then, the steps suddenly stopped with a splashing, crashing sound, as the young man slipped and fell.

He never had a chance to get up, before the mugger hauled him to his feet and slammed him back against the wall. The mugger’s knife gleamed in his hand, when a stray ray of light falling from a rear window of the Temple Court Building struck it.

Without a single sound, Richard crept closer, sticking to the shadows. Though it was unlikely that either the mugger or his victim would have noticed him anyway. The mugger was way too focussed on his loot and the victim was simply too terrified.

Richard watched as the young man handed over his valuables — wallet, watch, ring. And if the mugger had stopped there and made a run for it, he might still have gotten away. But he didn’t.

Instead, he flashed his knife and demanded that the young man hand something else over, something purchased at a shop called Bernstein’s. Richard wasn’t familiar with the shop, but then he didn’t have to be. After all, the area around Nassau Street, Fulton Street and Maiden Lane was Manhattan’s diamond district. So it wasn’t difficult to imagine just what it was that the mugger wanted.

Richard was close now, very close. Close enough to hear the mugger demand, “Give me the ring or I swear I’ll slit your throat from ear to ear!”

“No, please, it’s for my fiancée. I…”

The easiest way to deal with the situation would be to just knock out the mugger from behind. Not very honourable, true, but then muggers who attacked their victims in dark alleys didn’t deserve to be treated honourably.

There was just one problem. The mugger had his knife at the throat of the young man. The blade was close, too close. So close that the young man might be injured, when Richard knocked out the mugger from behind.

He sighed under his breath. Time for some showmanship then.

And so Richard readjusted his scarf, so it covered his mouth and nose, and stepped out of the shadows.

“Let the man go,” he thundered, his voice somewhat muffled by the scarf.

The mugger, however, did not let the young man go. “Get lost and mind your own business. This is my alley. Go find one of your own.”

“I am the Silencer,” Richard thundered, “Scourge of crime and protector of the innocent….”

Damn, that always sounded so much better in the pulps.

“And now let the man go or face the consequences!”

Now the mugger finally did let his victim go. The young man plunged to the ground, landing on his butt in a puddle of molten snow.

But Richard couldn’t worry about him now, because the mugger whirled around to face him, the knife still flashing in his hand.

“You really want to get slashed up, don’t you?”

The mugger launched himself at Richard, knife raised. But Richard sidestepped the attack. He grabbed the mugger by the wrist and slammed his knife hand against the wall, again and again, until the knife finally clattered to the ground.

Richard kicked the blade away, sending it skidding across the alley, well out of reach. But in the process, he dropped his defence and left himself open to a counter attack. And the mugger took that chance and punched Richard in the face.

He was wearing a ring and so the mugger drew blood. Not much, just a cut on the cheek and a split lip, but it was enough to knock Richard off balance, at least for a split second.

The mugger followed up with a second punch, but this time Richard managed to jump aside at the last second and the mugger’s punch hit the wall instead, breaking at least one of his knuckles with a satisfying crunch.

The mugger howled in pain and rage and whirled around to launch himself at the Silencer once more. But this time, Richard was ready for him. He raised his own fist, reinforced by brass knuckles, and knocked the mugger out. The man fell to the ground, out cold, and landed in a pile of wet snow and frozen trash.

Richard put the brass knuckles back into his pocket and pulled up his scarf, which had slipped during the fight.

“Are you all right?” he asked the victim, who was watching him with wide, terrified eyes.

The young man nodded. “I… I…” he stammered, clearly in shock. Once more, he patted the pocket of his coat. He pulled out a handkerchief, pressed it to his bleeding nose and cast a glance at the downed mugger. “Is he…?”

“It’s okay, he’s out cold,” Richard said, nodding at the mugger, “He can’t hurt you anymore.”

To make sure of that, Richard pulled a pair of handcuffs from one of the many pockets of his coat and snapped them around the mugger’s wrists. Then he searched the man’s pockets and found three wallets, two wristwatches, one pocket watch and one ring.

He handed the loot to the young man. “Here. See what’s yours and hand the rest over to the police. I’m sure you’re not his only victim.”

The young man, meanwhile, was still stammering. “I… I… I can’t see. It’s too dark.”

Richard sighed. He reached into yet another pocket of his coat and produced a compact but powerful flashlight. He switched it on and handed it to the young man.

“Here. That should help.”

The young man took the flashlight, but instead of examining the loot, he directed the beam upwards, at Richard’s face.

“Hey, I… I know you.”

Uh-oh, that was not good.

“You’re that guy from the magazine, the Shadow.”

Behind his red silk scarf, Richard breathed a sigh of relief. “The Silencer, actually.”

Although the young man had a point. With the scarf covering the lower half of his face, Richard did look a little like the Shadow. Though he’d better not tell Walt Gibson about this or he’d never live it down.

“I’m Thomas Walden, by the way,” the young man said, “And I thank you.”

Richard nodded. “Pleased to meet you. And now check what is yours.”

Thomas Walden riffled through the mugger’s loot and picked out one of the wallets, one of the wristwatches and the ring.

“Those are mine.” He opened the wallet and quickly counted the bills. “The money’s still there, too.” The young man looked up. “What about the rest?”

“Hand it over to the police. You may have to go to the police building on Centre Street or the first precinct stationhouse on South Street, though you’ll probably see a patrolman before then. Or try The Beekman Pub just around the corner and ask for Captain O’Grady. He’s usually there, when his shift ends. Let him know where he can pick up the mugger.”

“But I… I can’t go to the police,” Thomas Walden exclaimed, “Not now, at any rate. I… I’m meeting my girl in City Hall Park and I’m already late…” He glanced at his wristwatch. “…much too late, so I really have to go…”

Walden jumped to his feet, swaying only a little, and would have dashed off, if Richard hadn’t caught him by the arm.

“Easy. You’ve had quite a shock. And I’m sure your girl will understand, once you explain what happened.”

“But I… I’m proposing tonight,” Thomas exclaimed. Once more, he patted the pocket of his coat, where — so Richard now understood — he carried the ring. “And I can’t be late.”

Behind his makeshift mask, Richard smiled. “All right. Go and meet your girl in City Hall Park, explain what happened and then find a police officer.”

Thomas shone the beam of the flashlight down at himself, taking in his soiled trousers and a tear in one leg. “But I look like crap,” he said crestfallen and handed the flashlight back.

“Trust me, if she really loves you, she won’t mind. Though she may just fuss over you.” Constance would, at any rate. “And now go.”

“But… what about you?” Thomas wanted to know.

“I have a date of my own to keep.”

Richard cast a quick glance at his own wristwatch. The radium glow told him that he was already late. Fortunately, Constance was used to it by now, though she’d still worry.

“Oh yes, and I would appreciate it, if you could downplay my part in all this. The NYPD and I are not exactly friends.”

Well, Richard was friends with Justin O’Grady of the NYPD, but unfortunately, Justin was no friend of the Silencer’s.

“Farewell and good luck.”

Richard spun around, swirling his coat for theatrical effect, and walked back the way he’d come, towards Nassau Street. He even remembered to pick up the box of chocolates, checking first that the rats hadn’t gotten to it.

The pharmacy on the corner of Nassau and Ann Street was still open, its lights spilling out onto the sidewalk. Richard stopped and pulled down his scarf to check his reflection in the window. He had a split lip, a scratch on his right cheek and the beginnings of a black eye. Nothing that Constance hadn’t seen before, but nonetheless, she’d worry. And so Richard walked into the pharmacy to make himself a little more presentable.

“Good evening. I’d like some gauze, alum, iodine solution and adhesive bandages, please,” he told the clerk behind the counter, “An ice pack would be nice as well. And if I might borrow a mirror.”

The man shot him a look of sympathy. “Rough night, huh?”

Richard nodded. “I stumbled upon a mugging.”

“Oh dear. Should I call the police?”

Richard shook his head. “Already being taken care of. Now I just need to make myself presentable for my date, especially since I’m already late.”

***

A few minutes after his encounter with the mugger and the Silencer, Thomas Walden stumbled out of the alley onto Park Row. The Woolworth Building loomed before him, its gothic revival terracotta façade lit up for the evening. Once the tallest building in the world, it was still a striking cathedral of commerce, even though it was now only the sixth tallest skyscraper in the city — and how had that happened?

At the foot of the Woolworth Building lay City Hall Park, where Daisy was waiting for him by the fountain. And so, Thomas dashed across Park Row, nearly getting run down by honking cab in the process.

But Thomas did not slow down. He dashed through the wrought iron gates and past the bare trees, dashed towards the fountain at the centre of the park, the fountain where Daisy was waiting for him.

And then he spotted her in the swirling snow, dressed in a smart blue coat, a blue felt hat pressed onto her golden curls. The colour perfectly matched her eyes. It also, so Thomas couldn’t help but notice, matched the diamond and sapphire ring that still sat in his pocket. The ring he wanted to give her right now, rather than later at Zuccotti’s. Provided Zuccotti’s even still had a table for them, considering they were already late.

Daisy spotted him the moment he saw her and dashed towards him through the falling snow.

“Oh my God, Thomas, I was so worried.” She flung her arms around him and only now noticed his rather bedraggled appearance, the torn trousers and bloody nose. “What happened?”

“I was mugged,” Thomas panted, “Only a few yards away, in an alley off Nassau Street…”

“Oh my God,” Daisy repeated, pressing a gloved hand to her mouth, “We must call the police. I think I saw a patrolman only a few minutes ago.”

“And we will,” Thomas assured her, “Later. But first, there is something I have to ask you, something important…”

He dropped to his knees in the snow, right there and then. His trousers were already ruined anyway, so what did it matter? He’d ask Daisy right here, right now.

And so Thomas reached into his pocket, the very pocket he’d been patting every other minute, and pulled out the ring box. He even managed to open it, on the second try.

“Daisy Van Camp, will you marry me?”

For maybe half a second, Daisy was too stunned — or maybe too dazzled by the ring glittering in the light of the lanterns in the park — to respond. But then she reached out and pulled Thomas to his feet.

“Yes,” she said, “Yes, I will.”

And then she flung her arms around him and kissed him in the swirling snow.

***

At around the same time that Thomas proposed to Daisy in City Hall Park, Richard Blakemore finally walked into The Edgar and was met by a waiter who did his best to ignore the split lip, the swelling eye and the cut on his cheek, now covered by an adhesive bandage.

“A shaving accident,” Richard replied to the waiter’s unspoken question.

“Of course, sir. The lady is already waiting.”

The waiter escorted Richard to his table and there was Constance, a vision of loveliness in a dusty rose gown. A flicker of concern crossed her face, as she took in his injuries.

Richard bent down to kiss her on the cheek. “Sorry I’m late, dear.”

“What happened?” Constance wanted to know, once the waiter was out of earshot, “Did the banker fight back?”

Richard shook his head. “Not the banker. I came across a mugging in the alley right behind this building and had to intervene.” He smiled. “I rescued a young man and the engagement ring in his pocket. He’s probably proposing to his sweetheart right now. Which reminds me that I bought you chocolate from that shop on Maiden Lane you like so much…”

Richard handed her the heart-shaped box that was only a little battered.

“…and I also brought you this.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out the jewellery box with the diamond and emerald bracelet.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, my love.”

The End

***

That’s it for this month’s edition of First Monday Free Fiction. Check back next month, when a new free story will be posted.

WandaVision Takes a Detour into the Real World in “We Interrupt This Program”

It’s time for the latest installment of my episode by episode reviews of WandaVision, Marvel’s new sitcom parody/Dickian faux reality paranoia. Previous installments (well, just two) may be found here. Also, may I remind you that Disney is still not paying Alan Dean Foster and others.

Warning: Spoilers and pretty significant ones at that behind the cut!

After last episode, I probably wasn’t the only one who wondered where WandaVision, Marvel’s time and reality-hopping, Philip K. Dickian sitcom, would go next. Would we put in a stop in the late 1970s or go straight into the 1980s? But once again, WandaVision surprised us by…

…transforming into a regular Marvel movie for an episode, complete with regular widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio.

“We Interrupt This Program” begins on the day that everybody who was snapped out of existence by Thanos comes back all at the same time. We’re in a hospital, where Monica Rambeau (played by Teyonah Parris, whom we previously met as Geraldine) is reassembled and wakes up in a chair beside an empty bed in a hospital that has been plunged into chaos, because doctors, patients and visitors are suddenly reappearing in droves after five years of non-existence.

Avengers: Endgame focussed on those who were not snapped out of existence by Thanos and the trauma they suffered, but it largely ignored the experience of the people who suddenly came back to life after five years with no idea of what had happened and that the world had moved on (literally in many cases) without them. Due to the pandemic, there haven’t really been a lot of Marvel movies set after Endgame – only Spider-Man: Far From Home, which kind of glossed over the whole thing.

However, the brief early scenes with Monica Rambeau blipping back into existence give us an excellent insight into the traumatic experiences of those who came back after five years. For Monica not only had no idea what happened, she’s also frantic because the person at whose hospital bed she was sitting – her mother Maria Rambeau, last seen in Captain Marvel – is gone and the bed is empty. So Monica runs through a hospital that’s in utter chaos, asking for her mother, until a doctor recognises her. However, this doctor has bad news for Monica. Not only was Monica gone for five years, her mother has also died in the meantime.

Yes, those bastards killed Maria Rambeau off screen!

Now Lashana Lynch*, the actress who played Maria Rambeau, left for what probably seemed like the greener pastures of the James Bond franchise at the time to appear in No Time to Die, a Bond film that has been repeatedly delayed to the point that no one is sure whether it will ever come out at all or whether anybody will care at that point. Not that I can’t understand Lashana Lynch’s decision. The Bond films, though I’m over them and have been for almost twenty years now, are still a big deal, particularly in the UK. And a part in a Bond film, particularly since it appears to be a recurring role, is still a plum job and joining the ranks of Bond girls is still a nigh guarantee of cinematic immortality.

Nonetheless, I’m pissed at Marvel for killing off Maria Rambeau off-screen, because Maria was awesome. Killing Maria in her fifties (based on Captain Marvel being set in 1994 and Lashana Lynch being 31, when she made that movie) via cancer is doubly unfair. Of course, no one is ever really dead in the Marvel universe (ask Phil Coulson or Vision, for that matter, for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and pretty much every character but particularly Jean Grey for the Marvel Comics universe), so we may well see Maria again. I certainly hope so.

In the course of the episode, we also learn that Maria went from ex-fighter pilot and single mom living alone somewhere in the South in Captain Marvel to director of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s sister organisation S.W.O.R.D. We suspect Nick Fury, whom she met in Captain Marvel, may have pulled some strings there. That said, I think it’s awesome that both S.H.I.E.L.D. and S.W.O.R.D. were founded and run by women and POC in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, even if Maria’s successor as director is a white dude. Talking of which, has this fellow appeared somewhere in the Marvel Cinematic Universe before? Cause he didn’t seem familiar. The actor Josh Stamberg has been in pretty much everything, but I can’t find anything Marvel releated in .

Monica Rambeau also works for S.W.O.R.D. and swiftly reports back for duty, only to be told that she’s grounded for now, because no one yet knows what the psychological and physical repercussions of being blipped out of and back into existence will be. So instead of going into space, Monica is sent to New Jersey to help the FBI with a missing person case.

Once in New Jersey, Monica meets another familiar face from the Marvel movies, namely FBI agent Jimmy Woo (played by Randall Park) whom we last saw getting caught up in same very weird events in Ant-Man and the Wasp. James Pyles pointed out on Twitter that Jimmy Woo actually has a long history in the Marvel Universe and first appeared in a 1956 comic called The Yellow Claw as one of the first sympathetic Asian characters (the comic otherwise seems to have been typical yellow peril/red scare fare). It seems weirdness is following Agent Woo around (well, he lives in the Marvel Universe), because when trying to contact a person who’s in the witness protection program, Agent Woo found that not only that person had seemingly vanished, but the entire town of Westview, New Jersey, had vanished as well. And anybody who knew either the missing witness or anybody else in Westview, New Jersey, is suddenly struck by anmesia. It seems as if Westview, New Jersey, never existed.

Monica finds that Westview is surrounded by some kind of forcefield. When she tries to send in a S.W.O.R.D. drone, the drone promptly vanishes. A bit later, Monica herself approaches the forcefield herself and is promptly sucked in. Most likely, Agent Woo immediately contacted S.W.O.R.D. to report that he has not only lost a witness and a whole town, but also a S.W.O.R.D. agent, because the next time we see the quiet little town of Westview, it is surrounded by a temporary base.

The scene now shifts to a transporter full of scientists who are brought in to help with the investigation. One of these scientists is another familiar face we haven’t seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a while now, namely Darcy Lewis, now Dr. Darcy Lewis, Jane Foster’s intern and friend in the two first Thor movies. Darcy is played by Kat Dennings, who also has significant sitcom experience via her roles in Two Broke Girls and Raising Dad, where she played the sister of Brie Larson, i.e. none other than Captain Marvel herself.

Via her equipment, Darcy detects that the barrier around Westview is emitting huge amounts of cosmic radiation of the type that occurred shortly after the Big Bang. But there is also another type of longer wave radiation, which turns out to be some kind of broadcast signal. “Get me a really old TV”, Darcy asks someone, “And with really old, I mean not flat.”

Once Darcy has been hooked up with a TV, we next see her watching the first episode of WandaVision, which we already saw two weeks ago. “What is this?” someone asks. “It’s a sitcom”, Darcy replies, “A 1950s sitcom.” “But why would someone make a sitcom starring two Avengers?” Agent Park wants to know, expressing the thoughts of pretty much everybody when WandaVision was first announced. And indeed, Camestros Felapton points out in his review that the discussions among the characters in this episode mirror the discussions the viewers had after the last three episodes.

We now get to see snippets of the episodes we already saw, viewed on Darcy’s TV and later on a whole bunch of other ancient TVs. The bit about the difficulties of getting these very old TVs to work rang very true, because old tube TVs are becoming an endangered species, because they were mostly thrown away, after they were no longer useful.

Meanwhile, Darcy, Agent Woo and the others try to identify the people in the sitcom and gradually match the characters to inhabitants of Westview. They also wonder how Vision can be there, when he’s supposed to be dead. Though I wonder how they can recognise Vision in his human disguise. Yes, the Avengers are celebrities, but I imagine that Vision would be in his original form during official appearances. Interestingly, Wanda’s nosy neighbour Agnes has not yet been identified and neither has the missing witness. Eventually, Darcy and Agent Woo also spot Monica in her role as Westview inhabitant “Geraldine”, though they have no idea if Monica knows what’s going on and is playing along or if she has been taken over by the sitcom reality.

We now also get explanations for many of the weird breaks and blips in the sitcom reality we saw in the past three episodes. The red toy helicopter Wanda found in her garden was one of the drones S.W.O.R.D. keeps sending into Westview. The sinister fellow in the beekeeper’s outfit who emerged from a manhole was a S.W.O.R.D. agent in a hazmat suit who tried to infiltrate Westview via the sewers. And the voice from the radio in episode 2 was Agent Woo trying to get through to Wanda via the broadcast signal. However, Darcy also notes that anytime the sitcom illusion threatens to crack, the broadcast seems to be censored (via Wanda rewinding reality, as we’ve seen her do twice before).

It’s also facinating how both Darcy and Agent Woo do become invested in the sitcom world and Wanda’s and Vision’s life, even though they know it’s all a fake. In many ways, this mirrors how we become caught up in fictional narratives to the point that if a character dies in a longrunning soap opera, people start applying for the now empty apartment, even though the whole thing is wholly fictional.

Eventually, the episode gets to the point where episode 3 ended. Monica unwisely mentions Pietro and Ultron and Wanda ejects her from Westview. Monica lands on the grass just outside the forcefield. “Wanda”, she stammers, once she comes to again, “It’s all Wanda”, expressing what we already suspected. Wanda has created the sitcom reality and kidnapped a whole town full of people, likely in response to the massive trauma of losing pretty much everybody who ever mattered to her (not to mention being killed and brought back to life herself).

In the sitcom world, Wanda also gets a shocking reminder of the truth when she sees Vision grey and dead with the mind stone torn out of his forehead by Thanos. But once again, Wanda magicks everything away and the episode ends with her playing family with Vision and the twins.

There was a hint of the sinister behind the cheery suburban facade and canned laughter of WandaVision from the beginning, but in this episode it comes fully to the fore, once we see both the trauma Wanda and everybody else brought back to life after five years away underwent, but also the horror of what Wanda is doing, namely roping real people with real lives into her personal little fake reality. Nonetheless, I can’t bring myself to see Wanda as the villain here, at least not a witting villain, no more than I did in the comics. Because the Wanda we see in WandaVision is the Wanda that comic readers have known for years now, a young woman who’s deeply traumatised, highly unstable, very powerful and very dangerous.

It’s also interesting that at least in the comics, the children of the frenemies Magneto and Professor Xavier, namely Wanda and Legion, are the ones who keep breaking reality and messing up whole universe, in response to parental neglect and their traumatic upbringing. Throw in Jean Grey, whose transformation into Dark Phoenix occurred due to the massive trauma of dying (for the first time – by now Jean is an old hand at dying) as well as to being mind-raped (since confirmed by writer Chris Claremont to have been a stand-in for a physical rape he couldn’t portray within the strictures of the Comics Code) and it becomes clear that the most powerful and dangerous superbeing who did some of the worst damage to the Marvel Universe were all born of massive trauma. Okay, there’s also Jim Jaspers who breaks universes without any PTSD excuse, but then Jaspers is frequently forgotten, probably because he originated with Marvel UK, in spite of being one of the scariest Marvel characters ever.

Another thing I really liked about this episode of WandaVision is that it’s second-stringers and supporting characters like Jimmy Woo, Darcy Lewis and Monica Rambeau (whom we’ve only seen as an approximately ten-year-old supporting character in Captain Marvel so far) rather than the Avengers, Nick Fury or other major characters who are trying to stop/save Wanda and rescue the people of Westview. And come to think of it, both Wanda and Vision were very much second-string characters themselves up to this point. Wanda does play a decent enough role in Age of Ultron, but was very much in the background in Captain America: Civil War, Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. And Vision’s biggest scenes were his “birth” and his death. Neither of them ever had a solo movie. So WandaVision is finally giving the supporting characters and second-stringers of the Marvel Cinematic Universe their due. Furthermore, WandaVision finally portrays Wanda as the character we know from the comics, where she is one of the most powerful and potentially dangerous characters in the whole Marvel Universe, rather than as a goth girl with glowy hands and telekinetic powers.

I was initially sceptical about WandaVision, but after a few minutes of adjustment, I have been enjoying the first three episodes quite a bit. “We Interrupt This Program”, however, kicks the entire series into a higher gear and also links it to the regular Marvel Cinematic Universe rather than leaving the series as some weird side project.

I can’t wait to see what Wanda and S.W.O.R.D. will do next.

*Talking of Lashana Lynch, I recently spotted her in a rerun of Death in Paradise together with Dominique Tipper, who plays Naomi Nagata in The Expanse. Now British crime dramas like Midsomer Murders or Death in Paradise quite often feature future stars before they were famous, but two future stars in a single episode is unusual.

Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month for January 2021

It’s that time of the month again, time for “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of speculative fiction by indie and small press authors (as well as the occasional Big 5 book) newly published this month, though some December books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Once again, we have new releases covering the whole broad spectrum of speculative fiction. This month, we have epic fantasy, urban fantasy, historical fantasy, gaslamp fantasy, sword and sorcery, paranormal mysteries, supernatural thrillers, technothrillers, science fiction thrillers, space opera, military science fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction, Cyberpunk, Steampunk, horror, LitRPG, speculative poetry, vampires, demons, goblins, muses, goddesses, haunted houses, mechas, first contact, interstellar wars, superheroes, dread worms, dark gods, barbarian kings, crime-busting witches, crime-busting ghosts, murderous artificial intelligences, death retired and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Speculative Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a group blog run by Jessica Rydill and myself, which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things speculative fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

Speculate: A Collection by Microlit by Eugen Bacon and Dominique Hecq:

From what began as a dialog between two adventurous writers curious about the shape-shifter called a prose poem comes a stunning collection that is a disruption of language-a provocation. Speculate is a hybrid of speculative poetry and flash fiction, thrumming in a pulse of jouissance and intensity that chases the impossible.

One might describe some pieces as complex, relentless, but above all, speculating or crossing borders in the fantastic playground of language. We invite you to leap onto the stage of your own imaginings, plunge into what Henry James called the house of fiction.

This is how we envision ours:

A single detached house tossed out of Speculate settles across your dreams. Skin, paper-thin, desiccated and scripted like a collage, covers the absence of doors, thresholds, verandas, stairways and footpaths. But there are windows and louvers that look out to rain-licked grasslands. This is a house unsealed, with the sky art and earth art washed or rolled into each other on adjacent floors and walls. The roof, unlettered, is made of two sliding suns of creamed panels, foundation-like. Round the back is a rope ladder that will win you over. Up, up you go. Enter with care as you would any fiction that blurs the boundaries of genre, mode or form, that goes beyond the written and borrows from the unwritten. Together we can interweave art with language and watch it shape itself anew in an endless process of spontaneity and play because we can be here and there and away, all at once.

-Dominique Hecq and Eugen Bacon

The Plains of Shadow by Richard Blakemore and Cora Buhlert:

Long before Kurval became King of Azakoria, he was a guard captain in service to the tyrannical King Talgat of the land Temirzhan beyond the sea.

One day, Talgat orders Kurval to escort the condemned witch Aelisia to the Plains of Shadow and behead her, so her blood may feed the dark gods who dwell there.

However, Kurval does not want to execute the sentence, once he learns that Aelisia is innocent of the crimes of which she has been accused.

But if he lets Aelisia go free, Kurval will not only have to face the wrath of Talgat but also the fury of the dark gods who dwell upon the Plains of Shadow.

This is a novelette of 9800 words or approx. 33 print pages in the Kurval sword and sorcery series, but may be read as a standalone. Includes an introduction and afterword.

Worm Fodder by Richard Blakemore and Cora Buhlert:

After a hunt, King Kurval of Azakoria and his entourage make camp at the village of Ogwall. However, something is not right in the village. All men of fighting age are away at a mysterious ritual and the remaining villagers are clearly afraid of something.

Kurval investigates and learns that the mysterious ritual in the woods involves sacrificing the young Celisa to the dread worm Thibunoth.

Kurval is furious, for he outlawed human sacrifice in the kingdom of Azakoria. And so he sets out to save Celisa, deal with the monster and punish those who would violate the ban on human sacrifice.

This is a novelette of 9600 words or approx. 32 print pages in the Kurval sword and sorcery series, but may be read as a standalone. Includes an introduction and afterword.

Blind Date with a Supervillain by H.L. Burke:

Juggling life as a superhero with college and a social life is hard, but Shawn Park, AKA Surge, feels he’s killing it. Things look even brighter when he makes a connection with the sweet but shy new barista at his favorite coffee shop. Maybe a guy really can have it all … but appearances can be deceiving.

Apparition just wants her supervillain father to be proud of her, and she’ll do anything to accomplish that: even disguise herself as mild-mannered coffee shop employee Nikki to get close to the superhero he’s stalking. However, between his charming smile and kind words, she finds herself hopelessly drawn tp the good natured Shawn.

As the chemistry between Shawn and Nikki sizzles, the tension between Surge and Apparition grows. If he finds out the truth, they could be headed for something far more explosive than the average breakup.

Wherever Seeds May Fall by Peter Cawdron:

The Prince of Darkness is coming. Comet Anduru skimmed the clouds of Saturn. Rather than being drawn into the gas giant, it skipped back out into space. With the comet heading for Jupiter, speculation is mounting it’s an alien spacecraft making its way to Earth. Lieutenant Colonel Nolan Landis and Dr. Kath McKenzie are caught between an angry public and an anxious President as they grapple with the scientific, social, and political implications of First Contact.

FIRST CONTACT is a series of stand-alone novels that explore the concept of humanity’s first interaction with extraterrestrial life. Like BLACK MIRROR or THE TWILIGHT ZONE, the series is based on a common theme rather than common characters, allowing these books to be read in any order. Technically, they’re all first as they all deal with how we might initially respond to contact with aliens, exploring the social, political, religious, and scientific aspects of First Contact.

The Brass Queen by Elizabeth Chatsworth:

She knows a liar when she sees one.
He knows a fraud when he meets one.

In a steam-powered world, Miss Constance Haltwhistle is the last in a line of blue-blooded rogues. Selling firearms under her alias, the “Brass Queen,” she has kept her baronial estate’s coffers full. But when US spy J. F. Trusdale saves her from assassins, she’s pulled into a search for a scientist with an invisibility serum. As royal foes create an invisible army to start a global war, Constance and Trusdale must learn to trust each other. If they don’t, the world as they know it will disappear before their eyes.

If you like the Parasol Protectorate or the Invisible Library series, you’ll love this gaslamp fantasy—a rambunctious romantic romp that will have you both laughing out loud and wishing you owned all of Miss Haltwhistle’s armaments.

The Fury of Angels by Julian M. Coleman:

It’s the late 1800s, and Sara’s mother is a witch. It’s the 21st century, and Sammy is trapped in prep school hell. The identical besties are doomed to immortality. It’s their lethal rage that makes them efficient killers.

 

 

 

 

Scions of Humanity by M.D. Cooper:

The Orion War is over and new peace is spreading…

It will take centuries for the legacy of the prior conflict to fade away, conflicts spurred on by diasporas and resource restrictions that will ripple through the Perseus, Orion, and Sagittarius arms of the galaxy.

Yet in the wake of those final battles comes a reprieve, a new peace maintained by the knowledge that total war is too devastating to even contemplate, that the weapons employed–should they come into common use–would lay waste to the galaxy.

Admiral Tanis Richards, the former Field Marshal, wishes nothing more than to retire to her lakehouse and stare out over the rippling waters for a year or two, but knows she cannot. For the greatest enemy that humanity and free AIs have ever faced waits for her at the galactic core. Epsilon, a powerful AI, his nodes filling an entire world, is has his mind bent on remaking the universe, and organic life is not in the blueprint.

Though they yearn to enjoy the fruits of their labors, Tanis and her allies must prepare for one final battle against the scions of the human race. They must prepare to fight The Ascension War.

The Cemetery Ghost by Amy Cross:

As she explores a snowy cemetery, Elizabeth Shaw is shocked to come across a strange little boy. Although he remembers his name, Patrick has no idea where he comes from, and a moment later he vanishes into thin air.

Meanwhile, a mysterious man moves into the nearby rectory. Determined to recover a dangerous book, Jerome Shand starts by torturing the spirits of a family who died many years ago. When that approach fails, however, Shand realizes that he only has one option left. He needs to find the last remaining ghost of the Munce family, a young boy named Patrick who disappeared after he and his family were murdered seventy years earlier…

Soon, Elizabeth and Patrick discover that leaving the past behind isn’t as easy as they’d hoped. Dark forces are waiting in the shadows of the rectory, and an evil force is desperate to break free. Can Patrick stop Shand, or will the ancient Lochdale Book finally spill its evil secrets into the world?

Dawn Breaker by Pippa DaCosta:

With Rafe missing, demons claiming half the night station, and the vampire queen closing in, Lynher and Kensey are left with nowhere to hide. Backed into a corner, they must fight.

But can two human orphans harness the magic of the night station to stand against the vampire queen?

 

 

California Demon by Debra Dunbar:

In New Hell, only the monsters survive.

Eden Alvaro is a licensed Vulture, picking through the aftermath of violence in demon-plagued LA, and fencing her finds to help support her family. But when a crooked cop reports her for a salvage she didn’t take, all hell breaks loose.

Stripped of her license, Eden finds herself with a price on her head. When the mercenaries hunting her raid her home, brutalize her family and abduct one of her sisters, Eden turns to the enigmatic Bishop—a man with a reputation for violence who, for the right price, can find just about anything or anyone.

With time running out to find her sister before she’s sold into slavery, Eden is determined to get her back—even if she has to slaughter her way through a gang affiliated with the traffickers and face down one of the powerful demons in control of the city.

She’ll need every bit of her burgeoning magical powers to bring her sister back alive—and she’ll need to put herself in debt to Bishop. But when it comes to her family, no price is too high for Eden to pay.

Muse Delusion by T.K. Flor:

A lost manuscript. A woman determined to find it. A man who finds her irresistible.

In NYC, freelance consultant Jack Ellis – still grieving after the death of his beloved grandmother – finally starts to put his life back together. But his attempts to leave the past behind unravel when he meets Lisa, a storybook-beautiful woman who claims she came for a manuscript that Jack’s grandmother promised her. A manuscript Jack has never heard of.

Allured by her beauty and drawn to her impetuous personality, Jack joins Lisa in a search that takes them on an unexpected journey, casting the people he thought he knew in a whole new light.

There’s no doubt Lisa is a disruptive force, yet Jack cannot disentangle himself from her quirky and potentially dangerous intrusion. Lisa is all charm when it suits her, but can Jack accept her mysterious mental powers and embrace a woman who believes she is actually a muse from Mount Olympus?

Jotnar Snare by Rachel Ford:

A reclusive mountain race. A paradise under siege. A problem magic cannot solve.

When the Jotnar’s mountain paradise is attacked by a seemingly all-powerful enemy, the race of giants must break their age-old rule and seek help from outsiders. They turn to the mage’s university to understand the threat.

Apprentice Wizard Idun Wintermoon and blade-for-hire Liss Forlatt travel to the wintery mountain stronghold to aid the giantfolk. But to defeat a foe who turns the magic of his victims against them, they’ll need to tap into strengths they didn’t know they had.

To defeat a magic siphoning wizard, sometimes you need a magic-challenged sellsword.

The Dark Lord Bert 2 by Chris Fox:

How Does a 1 Hit Point Dark Lord Save the Real World?

Kit and her friends are gamers, but not the ordinary kind. It seems that Track Jick was right, and that people who play roleplaying games really are wizards and witches. Kit’s game master uses a magical die to transport them to an alternate world where they can really become their characters, and forget all about the real world.

Unfortunately, during a power scuffle the d20 gets knocked into the game world. If they can’t get it out then the game world will explode, and everything in it will die. Worse, to Kit’s mind, their parents will be disbarred, and they’ll never be able to play again.

Enter one tiny goblin with just a single hit point, but a heart large enough to save a fake world…if he can reach the d20 before the Dark Lord White 2.0. Along the way Bert will meet his fellow dark lords, and finally learn magic. Plus Boberton gets very large indeed.

The Valiant by J.J. Green:

King Arthur in outer space?

Endless warfare has ravaged Earth, and billions are desperate to escape. One of them is Taylan Ellis.

Driven from her home in the West Britannic Isles by an invasion and severed from her children, Taylan enlists with the Britannic Alliance, hoping she can help regain her homeland and find her kids.

But decades of internal conflict and terrestrial and space warfare have left the BA on the edge of collapse.

Then its battleship, the Valiant, picks up a distress signal. The rescuers break into a sealed chamber and find the apparently mummified remains of an Iron Age chieftain. Disappointed, they’re about to leave when they discover the ‘mummy’ has a pulse.

Taylan suspects she knows who the mystery man is and what he’s capable of. If she’s right, can she convince her superiors and save the BA, her country, and her children?

The Valiant is book one in J.J. Green’s new space fantasy series, Star Legend.

Ghostly Wedding by Lily Harper Hart:

Harper Harlow and Jared Monroe fell in love fast and hard. Finally, their big day is here.

They just need to solve a murder before they exchange their vows and take the next step to happily ever after.

Peter Humphrey, an insurance salesman from a neighboring town, appeared to be minding his own business when a woman came out of nowhere and struck him down while he was crossing the street. Harper witnessed the accident and vows to solve the murder before it’s time to leave on her honeymoon.

It might take more work than she realizes, though.

Peter was a normal guy, a father who doted on his daughter and was friendly with his ex-wife, and yet somehow he had a secret. His ghost points Harper toward Montgomery Manor, toward a woman who suffered her own tragedy almost two decades before.

On paper, Peter’s murder and the Montgomery tragedy shouldn’t be connected … and yet they are. It’s up to Jared and Harper to figure out how if they want to enjoy their wedding and what comes after … and they’re both determined to do it.

Some things are meant to be. Harper and Jared believe their union is one of those things.

Prepare yourselves, because this is one wedding you’ll never forget.

Alyx: An AI’s Guide to Love and Murder by Brent A. Harris:

Home is where the heart is. It’s where you go to feel safe with your loved ones.

But what if your home wanted you dead?

Tech-loving teen Christine makes fast friends with her home’s AI, Alyx. But when a real-world romance threatens their bond, Alyx turns from friend to foe.

 

So Beckons the Abyss by Joel Jenkins:

The Cataclysm changed the face of the world, swallowing up modern cities and gleaming skyscrapers while vomiting up the ruins of ancient civilizations.Many governments and institutions collapsed, while others survived by reinventing themselves or reforming from the ashes of the old societies.During this time, a new sport of cutthroat cross-country vehicular racing developed and became an international sensation. The racers are worldwide celebrities, but dark and mystical forces are at work to control and use them.

 

On the Street Where Death Lives by Cate Lawley:

Skeletons in the closet

The living have them, but what about ghosts? Geoff’s about to find out! He’s convinced his ghostly neighbor Ginny was murdered. When he starts digging for answers, he unearths more than facts.

Join Geoff, his favorite bobcat Clarence, Sylvie and a gang of supernatural misfits as they investigate murders, both past and present!

 

Cooking for Cannibals by Rich Leder:

Fountain of youth? More like murderous medication!

Carrie Kromer pushes the boundaries of science, not her social life. The brilliant behavioral gerontologist’s idea of a good time is hanging out with her beloved lab rats and taking care of her elderly mother and the other eccentric old folks at the nursing home. So no one is more surprised than Carrie when she steals the lab’s top-secret, experimental medicine for aging in reverse.

Two-time ex-con Johnny Fairfax dreams of culinary greatness. But when his corrupt parole officer tries to drag him from the nursing home kitchen, the suddenly young-again residents spring to his defense and murder the guy—and then request Johnny cook them an evidence-devouring dinner to satisfy their insatiable side-effect appetite.

As their unexpected mutual attraction gets hot, Carrie and Johnny find themselves caught up with the authorities who arrive to investigate the killing. But even more dangerous than the man-eating not-so-senior citizens could be the arrival of death-dealing pharmaceutical hitmen.

Can Carrie and Johnny find true love in all this bloody madness?

Cooking for Cannibals is a dark comic thriller with a heaping helping of romance. If you like fast-paced plots, unconventional characters, and humor that crosses the line, then you’ll have a feast with Rich Leder’s wild ride.

Buy Cooking for Cannibals and dig in to a side-splitting serving today!

Long, Hot, Witchy Summer by Amanda M. Lee:

Life couldn’t be going much better for Hadley Hunter. She’s living the dream on Moonstone Bay with her boyfriend Galen Blackwood, plotting her next move as a witch for hire, and basically basking in happiness.

That all changes when a summer afternoon on the beach turns into a nightmare, an odd creature from the depths of the ocean surfacing and attacking Hadley on the beach. Her friend Lilac, a demon with a few issues, fights it off but it escapes … and becomes a problem for an island that bases its entire economy on tourism.

The all-powerful DDA isn’t happy. Lilac’s hair refuses to stop glowing red. Booker is struggling to help all his friends. Essentially, things turn messy quickly.

On top of that, Hadley’s father drops in out of nowhere and demands she return home. He’s not happy with what he hears about the island and decides it’s too dangerous for her to say. Hadley, of course, has other ideas and is determined to bring her father around to her way of thinking.

Between monsters popping up out of nowhere and her father’s inability to stop freaking out, Hadley has her hands full. The monsters keep popping up in the oddest places, and always their attention is on Hadley.

Monsters are nothing new for Hadley but the ones attacking now seem to be different. It’s up to Moonstone Bay’s newest witch and her motley crew of paranormal colleagues to solve a mystery and save the day. Again.

They just have to survive to do it.

Family Solstice by Kate Maruyama:

The Massey family loves their house. It’s been in the family for generations, and the land on which it sits has been with them even longer. In the summer everyone comes through to visit and the house is alive with family friends, barbecues and lobster boils. But come fall, the mood shifts as all of the kids start training for their turn in the basement.

Shea, the youngest Massey is training extra hard. She’s thirteen and that means this is her year to battle on Solstice. Her older siblings won’t tell her exactly what’s in the basement, you don’t know until you’re fighting it. She’s excited finally to be in the know.

She does know that whatever happens in the basement every December 21 makes it possible for the Masseys to spend the rest of the year enjoying their home and all that it brings. It is her family duty.

But something about this year is different. Mama’s extra quiet this fall, and the house is breathing early.

Maruyama explores the dangers of tradition, inheritance, and the sins of the father in this horror novella.

Disposable Heroes by Gregory Mattix:

Boomer is a pretty simple guy for an alien hybrid. He runs on booze, caffeine, and junk food. He works as a bullet-resistant tank for a crew of street-running mercenaries. If someone needs hurting or something needs blowing up, he’s the guy to do it. It might not be the most glam life in Arutairu Megacity, but it’s his, and he’s rather attached to it.

When Boomer’s team takes on a shady job with the promise of a stellar payday, the proverbial excrement quickly meets the fan, and hit squads come after him and his crew. Normally, a few amateur goons with guns would just make for good target practice, but he suddenly finds himself unable to protect his friends. His rapidly expanding list of problems soon includes double-crosses, femme fatales, a hybrid assassin wielding alien weaponry, and an army of mercs gunning for him and his rapidly dwindling crew. As if that mess wasn’t enough to deal with, he fears he might be losing his sanity as he blunders into the middle of a conspiracy so vast it will shake the foundations of the entire city.

What’s a dumb grunt like him to do? Get some bigger guns and fight back, of course. And make some bastards rue the days they were born.

Steel Rogue by Alex Oakchest:

Rick is destined to become a legend.

But he doesn’t realize that yet. Right now, Rick is a young guy with a secret that will get him into trouble. He inherited forbidden magic from his mother, who disappeared before she could teach him how to use it.

When his father is murdered and Rick is stalked by a deadly bounty hunter, he gets his ass out of town. Searching for a way to use his secret powers, he finds himself in a tough new city where a bunch of thieves become his mentors.

Soon, he’s at the bottom of the ranks of a sect of magic users. Fueled by his wish to grow stronger, he finds ways to exploit his new powers. Tested to his breaking point by his new teachers, he gains abilities that he never knew existed.

With a desire for greatness and magic of infinite potential, so begins Rick’s rise to legend.

Null Identity by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant:

From the bestselling authors of Invasion and Yesterday’s Gone comes Null Identity, a new stand-alone novel written in the world of The Tomorrow Gene. This is a disturbing philosophical exploration of what can happen when our scientific advancement outpaces our ethics.

Cassandra Knight is trying hard to believe that she is safe and sane. Living with an adoring billionaire in his luxurious secluded mansion, she should have everything she needs to recover from the mental breakdown that drove her to attempt suicide.

And yet, she is haunted by vividly recurring nightmares of the moment she tried to take her life and the persistent feeling that something just isn’t right.

What happened on that hazy night when she hit rock bottom, and why does it seem like everything and everyone around her are conspiring to keep her from remembering?

Null Identity is a compelling mix of Ex Machina meets The Invisible Man in the story of one woman’s struggle to unearth the truth and understand her own past.

Grave Mistake by Christine Pope:

When you pull up stakes, make sure you don’t get stabbed in the back.

Self-taught in the arcane arts, hedgewitch Selena Marx is comfortable doing divination for West Los Angeles’ anxiety-ridden housewives, lawyers, and aspiring actresses. Her biggest challenge? Avoiding Lucien Dumond, leader of the Greater Los Angeles Necromancers’ Guild, who views her as fresh meat to add to his harem of slavishly devoted groupies.

Selena’s not interested in the slimy, celebrity-schmoozing sorcerer, but nobody turns Lucien down without consequences. When he threatens to fit her with magical cement shoes and drop her off the Santa Monica Pier, Selena’s Tarot cards point her to Globe, Arizona, for a new home, a new shop, and a cursed pet cat.

Just as she’s settling in and meeting the locals — including Calvin Standingbear, hunky chief of the San Ramon Apache tribal police — Lucien tracks her down…and promptly disappears. When his body turns up on tribal lands, it’s up to Calvin to investigate. Starting with Selena.

And when one of Lucien’s acolytes is killed, traces of dark magic and cryptic warnings from the spirits send Selena and Calvin in a race against time — before a too-close-for-comfort evil cuts her own life short.

At the Gates and Other Stories by Patrick Samphire:

A ghost searches for revenge in ancient Egypt. A boy unearths the bones of a dragon. A girl risks awakening a dark god to save her dog…

He reached out a hand and touched Grace’s cheek. The touch made her shiver. “You can’t save everyone, Grace.”

“I don’t want to,” Grace whispered. “Just her.”

At the Gates and Other Stories is a collection of sixteen fantasy short stories.

Luck Be a Lady by Chris H. Stevenson:

Mason Hart has just lost his job, fiancé, and car in less than 48-hours. A short time later he accosts a cop and ends up in jail. He finally lands in a hospital as the result of a jailhouse brawl. He’s helpless to quell this downhill slide into calamity. Since he believes all is lost at this point, suicide seems the only alternative left…

Until the figure of Felicity Fortune, the Roman Goddess of Luck, interrupts Mason’s suicidal plans in the nick of time. It seems Felicity Fortune was hampered by the bird flu and few other appointments, so she must apologize for her tardy appearance. She tells Mason that he’s ripe for a cosmic alignment, and that his 15-minutes of fame and wealth are finally at hand. He is allotted six chances via the roll of the golden dice for his deserved share of the “Great Cornucopia.”

Beshaba, the Maid of Misfortune, has ear-marked Mason at the exact same time, to heap upon him the bad luck part of the equation. She is the evil incarnate daughter of Felicity, and now covets Mason for her own devious alignment. Everything that Beshaba represents is in stark contrast to her mother. It is a deliberate ploy to spite the good works of her mother, thus laying down a challenge of cosmic power.

Their simultaneous claim to Mason forces the two Goddesses into a mythological cat fight in hell. When this push and shove reaches a fevered pitch, even the destiny of mankind in called into question. Mason must find the solution and tear away the veil of darkness that could upset the divine balance between good and evil. What he doesn’t know is that the final key to the solution is himself.

Equilibrium by Glynn Stewart:

Peace forged on the edge of civilization
Lies forged in the heart of mankind
A legend rises to the final challenge

Exile to the Syntactic Cluster has been good for Kira Demirci and her friends. Once elite pilots of the Apollo System Defense Force, they now own the most powerful mercenary warship in the entire star cluster. Working with the carrier-for-hire Conviction and her Captain John Estanza, they have helped the King of Redward usher in a new era of hope for the entire Cluster.

That hope is nearly shattered when Estanza’s old enemies in the Equilibrium Institute strike directly at Redward’s king. Revenge and money bring the mercenaries into an allied fleet—one intended to neutralize the last threats to the peace.

But the Institute’s plans for the Syntactic Cluster are intricate and deep. Even as the mercenaries and their employers move against the enemies they see, shadows gather in the Cluster, bearing whispers of a forgotten name: Cobra Squadron.

Necrogarden by Bryon Vaughn:

Death has seeped into The Garden, black and oily.

A sickness is spreading through The Garden threatening to destroy everything that neuro-cognitive genius Brenna Patrick has built at NeuralTech. World domination will have to wait, at least for now.

Adversaries will become allies. New enemies will upset the balance of power. People will die.

In an epic struggle for control of a system that can topple governments, turn peasants into rulers, and make even the darkest, most sadistic miscreant into a god, only the resilient will survive.

NECROGARDEN is a roller-coaster ride of a thriller, one that will have readers pondering the nature of memory, and of reality, long after they’ve read the last page.

Metal Warrior: Hard As Steel by James David Victor:

The only way to save Earth may be to take the fight outside of the solar system.

A military sci-fi adventure from Amazon All-Star author James David Victor

Dane and the mech fighters of the Mechanized Infantry Division have taken the fight to all enemies, alien and human alike. When they discover a portal to other solar systems, they have the means to end the invasion or take the fight across the galaxy. If they can defeat the overwhelming forces defending it. In the end, nothing less than humanity’s place in the galaxy is on the line.

Metal Warrior: Hard as Steel is the fourth book in the Mech Fighter series. If you like fast-paced space adventures with engaging characters and exciting battles, you will definitely want to see how the Metal Warriors save mankind, or if they can.

Download Metal Warrior: Hard as Steel and continue this epic space adventure today!

The Wind in My Heart by Douglas Wynne:

Miles Landry is trying to put violence behind him when he takes up work as a private detective focused on humdrum adultery cases. But when a Tibetan monk hires him to find a missing person, things get weird fast.

Charged with tracking down the reincarnation of a man possessed by a demonic guardian from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Miles is plunged into a world of fortune-tellers, gangsters, and tantric rituals. The year is 1991 and a series of grisly murders has rocked New York City in the run up to a visit from the Dalai Lama.

The police attribute the killings to Chinatown gang warfare. Miles–skeptical of the supernatural–is inclined to agree. But what if the monster he’s hunting is more than a myth?

Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.

Indie Crime Fiction of the Month for January 2021

Welcome to the latest edition of “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”.

So what is “Indie Crime Fiction of the Month”? It’s a round-up of crime fiction by indie authors newly published this month, though some December books I missed the last time around snuck in as well. The books are arranged in alphabetical order by author. So far, most links only go to Amazon.com, though I may add other retailers for future editions.

Our new releases cover the broad spectrum of crime fiction. We have cozy mysteries, historical mysteries, Jazz Age mysteries, paranormal mysteries, hardboiled mysteries, police procedurals, crime thrillers, medical thrillers, science fiction thrillers, technothrillers, police officers, amateur sleuths, private investigators, doctors, missing persons, cold cases, crime-busting witches, crime-busting socialites, crime-busting maids, crime-busting teachers, crime-busting ghosts, murderous AIs, murder and mayhem in Palm Beach, Florida, Galveston, Texas, New York City, Brighton, London, Sicily and much more.

Don’t forget that Indie Crime Fiction of the Month is also crossposted to the Indie Crime Scene, a group blog which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things crime fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

An Unfortunate Demise by Blythe Baker:

Death stalks the guests at a seaside resort…

While staying at Brighton with the formidable old Mrs. Montford, Anna Fairweather witnesses a drowning. Suspecting the “accident” is something more sinister, Anna begins a search for the truth – and the killer.

Does a belligerent brother-in-law carry an old grudge? Is the victim’s grieving husband a little too quick to move on? With an entire hotel full of suspects, Anna must uncover the secrets, and the motives, the hotel guests and employees are desperate to hide. But with the clock ticking, will Anna get to the bottom of the mystery – or find herself at the bottom of the ocean?

Murder in the Evening by Blythe Baker:

Death comes to dine…

When an elegant dinner party with friends ends in the sudden death of a beautiful young socialite, Alice Beckingham finds herself a witness to murder. Intrigued by a cryptic note in which the victim predicts her own demise, Alice enlists the aid of the cunning but slippery Sherborne Sharp to investigate.

Alice has more than one killer to contend with, however, as her family continues to be plagued by unanswered questions surrounding an older unsolved mystery.

Working together, the lady detective and her jewel thief partner set out to trap a killer. But will the looming shadows of the past leave Alice blind to the dangers of the present?

Dark Waters Inn Mysteries Box Set by Bekah Bancroft and Jaxon Reed:

In 1900 a massive hurricane wiped out Galveston, killing thousands and leveling the island.

One building survived, the Dark Waters Inn. The proprietress made a deal with the angel who watches over Texas . . .

Over the years the island rebuilt. But Dark Waters remains untouched, haunted by a ghost whose successive granddaughters continue running the inn. Macey Davenport shows up late for her grandmother’s funeral and suddenly finds herself the new owner of a very special place.

Cord Dupree is a lonely highway patrol officer in West Texas. One night, he pulls over a werewolf . . .

Suddenly Cord finds himself promoted, handed a silver badge tied to the ghost of an old Texas Ranger. His job now is to serve as the living half of a paranormal law enforcement team stretching back to the 1800s.

When Cord and his partner become guests at the Dark Waters Inn, old ghosts are reunited and romantic sparks fly in the land of the living. But a secret organization keeps tabs on the paranormal in Texas. When guests start showing up dead in Galveston, it will take Cord, Macey, their ghosts and Bogey the dog to figure out whodunit and do something about it.

Grab all five books in the complete Dark Waters Inn series with this box set:
A Bite for Dinner
Paws for Lunch
A Breakfast Tail
A Nosey Brunch
Snacks for Packs

Murder at Midnight by Beth Byers:

January 1927

New Year’s has arrived and Vi has resolutions. Her friends have faced something they never expected, and they’re all a little fragile. Determined to help her family, Vi brings them all together.

No one is even startled when they come across a body. But maybe, for once, something good can come from such an event. Maybe, they’ll find their peace along with a killer.

 

The Reticence by Levi Fuller:

Sisters Margo and Marcia Fleming have always enjoyed investigating cold cases.

Tracking down elusive suspects while giving victims some peace of mind. They get the job done, no matter what’s at stake. Whether local police departments want their help or not.

They will stop at nothing to get to the truth.

For their latest case, a distraught mother requests their help to investigate the unsolved murder of her fourteen-year-old daughter, found naked and tortured on the bank of a river. With the whole town claiming that she was loved by everyone and never caused any trouble, Margo and Marcia will have to work hard to solve a murder that, by all appearances, looks like any other small-town murder. But appearances can be deceiving, as they have learned, and the killer may be far closer than anyone has expected before.

Can Margo and Marcia solve the case before they run out of time?

Figs and a Cadaver by Fiona Grace:

A VILLA IN SICILY: FIGS AND A CADAVER is book #2 in a charming new cozy mystery series by bestselling author Fiona Grace, author of Murder in the Manor, a #1 Bestseller with over 100 five-star reviews (and a free download)!

Audrey Smart, 34, has made a major life change, walking away from her life as a vet (and from a string of failed romance) and moving to Sicily to buy a $1 home—and embark on a mandatory renovation she knows nothing about.

Audrey is busy working to open the town’s new shelter, while also renovating her own problematic home—and dating again. With the help of friends, she begins taking in sick strays. But not everyone in town is grateful for her services, and she soon makes unexpected enemies.

When Audrey gets a tip about an injured dog near the coast and goes to find him—she finds the dead body of a powerful local instead.

Can Audrey, now a suspect, solve the crime and clear her name?

Or will her Sicilian dream fall apart?

Ghostly Wedding by Lily Harper Hart:

Harper Harlow and Jared Monroe fell in love fast and hard. Finally, their big day is here.

They just need to solve a murder before they exchange their vows and take the next step to happily ever after.

Peter Humphrey, an insurance salesman from a neighboring town, appeared to be minding his own business when a woman came out of nowhere and struck him down while he was crossing the street. Harper witnessed the accident and vows to solve the murder before it’s time to leave on her honeymoon.

It might take more work than she realizes, though.

Peter was a normal guy, a father who doted on his daughter and was friendly with his ex-wife, and yet somehow he had a secret. His ghost points Harper toward Montgomery Manor, toward a woman who suffered her own tragedy almost two decades before.

On paper, Peter’s murder and the Montgomery tragedy shouldn’t be connected … and yet they are. It’s up to Jared and Harper to figure out how if they want to enjoy their wedding and what comes after … and they’re both determined to do it.

Some things are meant to be. Harper and Jared believe their union is one of those things.

Prepare yourselves, because this is one wedding you’ll never forget.

Alyx: An AI’s Guide to Love and Murder by Brent A. Harris:

Home is where the heart is. It’s where you go to feel safe with your loved ones.

But what if your home wanted you dead?

Tech-loving teen Christine makes fast friends with her home’s AI, Alyx. But when a real-world romance threatens their bond, Alyx turns from friend to foe.

 

On the Street Where Death Lives by Cate Lawley:

Skeletons in the closet

The living have them, but what about ghosts? Geoff’s about to find out! He’s convinced his ghostly neighbor Ginny was murdered. When he starts digging for answers, he unearths more than facts.

Join Geoff, his favorite bobcat Clarence, Sylvie and a gang of supernatural misfits as they investigate murders, both past and present!

 

Cooking for Cannibals by Rich Leder:

Fountain of youth? More like murderous medication!

Carrie Kromer pushes the boundaries of science, not her social life. The brilliant behavioral gerontologist’s idea of a good time is hanging out with her beloved lab rats and taking care of her elderly mother and the other eccentric old folks at the nursing home. So no one is more surprised than Carrie when she steals the lab’s top-secret, experimental medicine for aging in reverse.

Two-time ex-con Johnny Fairfax dreams of culinary greatness. But when his corrupt parole officer tries to drag him from the nursing home kitchen, the suddenly young-again residents spring to his defense and murder the guy—and then request Johnny cook them an evidence-devouring dinner to satisfy their insatiable side-effect appetite.

As their unexpected mutual attraction gets hot, Carrie and Johnny find themselves caught up with the authorities who arrive to investigate the killing. But even more dangerous than the man-eating not-so-senior citizens could be the arrival of death-dealing pharmaceutical hitmen.

Can Carrie and Johnny find true love in all this bloody madness?

Cooking for Cannibals is a dark comic thriller with a heaping helping of romance. If you like fast-paced plots, unconventional characters, and humor that crosses the line, then you’ll have a feast with Rich Leder’s wild ride.

Buy Cooking for Cannibals and dig in to a side-splitting serving today!

Long, Hot, Witchy Summer by Amanda M. Lee:

Life couldn’t be going much better for Hadley Hunter. She’s living the dream on Moonstone Bay with her boyfriend Galen Blackwood, plotting her next move as a witch for hire, and basically basking in happiness.

That all changes when a summer afternoon on the beach turns into a nightmare, an odd creature from the depths of the ocean surfacing and attacking Hadley on the beach. Her friend Lilac, a demon with a few issues, fights it off but it escapes … and becomes a problem for an island that bases its entire economy on tourism.

The all-powerful DDA isn’t happy. Lilac’s hair refuses to stop glowing red. Booker is struggling to help all his friends. Essentially, things turn messy quickly.

On top of that, Hadley’s father drops in out of nowhere and demands she return home. He’s not happy with what he hears about the island and decides it’s too dangerous for her to say. Hadley, of course, has other ideas and is determined to bring her father around to her way of thinking.

Between monsters popping up out of nowhere and her father’s inability to stop freaking out, Hadley has her hands full. The monsters keep popping up in the oddest places, and always their attention is on Hadley.

Monsters are nothing new for Hadley but the ones attacking now seem to be different. It’s up to Moonstone Bay’s newest witch and her motley crew of paranormal colleagues to solve a mystery and save the day. Again.

They just have to survive to do it.

Factor-7 by J.D. May:

Factor-7 presents a terrifying scenario that’s ripped from the headlines. You think it could never happen. Factor-7 will make you think twice!

The life of Dr. Sam Hawkins, the head trauma surgeon at Galveston’s St. Peter’s Memorial Hospital, is changed forever by the cryptic words of his dying friend, Dr. Bill Roberts, and a string of murders and blatant cover-ups that follow his demise. Sam reluctantly teams up with Dr. Rainee Arienzo, an Italian infectious disease specialist, and together they uncover the terrifying truth about Factor-7, a bio-weapon with a 98% mortality rate.

Dr. Roberts’s journal tips them off that a clandestine plot for using the virus is about to be unleashed by a secret society, the Keepers Collegium. The Collegium, an international group of rogue intelligence agents, ex-military, and government officials, has a demonic plan to use the pathogen to destroy anyone who threatens their twisted ideology.

Sam and Rainee can’t trust anyone. Danger and deceit are around every corner as they travel the world. They soon realize that public exposure of the evil plot would be as dangerous to the world’s security as the bio-weapon itself. The fallout could lead to World War III. Therefore, they must not only shut down the plans of the Collegium, but also keep the top-secret information from ever being revealed. But as they work to stop the plot, Sam and Rainee are kidnapped by the largest Mexican drug cartel. The kingpin, who financed much of the Collegium’s plot, wants Dr. Roberts’s journal because it lists the names of the major players in the Collegium who had double-crossed him. He plans to carry out his special revenge. And he also has his own plans for Sam and Rainee. In order to survive, Sam and Rainee have no choice…they must play with one of two devils or be burned by both.

Factor-7 is a bucking bronco ride of bio-weaponry, secrets, terror, betrayal, infidelity, raw human emotions and redeeming love. It’s a gripping suspense thriller that will keep the reader up all night turning the pages.

Null Identity by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant:

From the bestselling authors of Invasion and Yesterday’s Gone comes Null Identity, a new stand-alone novel written in the world of The Tomorrow Gene. This is a disturbing philosophical exploration of what can happen when our scientific advancement outpaces our ethics.

Cassandra Knight is trying hard to believe that she is safe and sane. Living with an adoring billionaire in his luxurious secluded mansion, she should have everything she needs to recover from the mental breakdown that drove her to attempt suicide.

And yet, she is haunted by vividly recurring nightmares of the moment she tried to take her life and the persistent feeling that something just isn’t right.

What happened on that hazy night when she hit rock bottom, and why does it seem like everything and everyone around her are conspiring to keep her from remembering?

Null Identity is a compelling mix of Ex Machina meets The Invisible Man in the story of one woman’s struggle to unearth the truth and understand her own past.

Grave Mistake by Christine Pope:

When you pull up stakes, make sure you don’t get stabbed in the back.

Self-taught in the arcane arts, hedgewitch Selena Marx is comfortable doing divination for West Los Angeles’ anxiety-ridden housewives, lawyers, and aspiring actresses. Her biggest challenge? Avoiding Lucien Dumond, leader of the Greater Los Angeles Necromancers’ Guild, who views her as fresh meat to add to his harem of slavishly devoted groupies.

Selena’s not interested in the slimy, celebrity-schmoozing sorcerer, but nobody turns Lucien down without consequences. When he threatens to fit her with magical cement shoes and drop her off the Santa Monica Pier, Selena’s Tarot cards point her to Globe, Arizona, for a new home, a new shop, and a cursed pet cat.

Just as she’s settling in and meeting the locals — including Calvin Standingbear, hunky chief of the San Ramon Apache tribal police — Lucien tracks her down…and promptly disappears. When his body turns up on tribal lands, it’s up to Calvin to investigate. Starting with Selena.

And when one of Lucien’s acolytes is killed, traces of dark magic and cryptic warnings from the spirits send Selena and Calvin in a race against time — before a too-close-for-comfort evil cuts her own life short.

A Murder of Principal by Saralyn Richard:

When a maverick principal comes in with a student-centered agenda, there’s no more business as usual at Lincoln High School. And killing the principal is just the beginning…

When someone sets fire to Lincoln High and kills the new principal, chaos threatens to overtake the urban school. Assistant Principal Sally Pearce, originally hired to help the deceased principal revamp the culture, vows to carry on the mission. In so doing, she locks horns with fellow assistant principal, Wally Welburton, and gets caught up in gang threats, racial tensions, grievances, sexual harassment complaints, and murder.

Sally never dreamed she’d be faced with solving a mystery and returning the school to order. The odds are against her—a woman in a man’s job, a minority in a tough position. Her strong moral compass and commitment to students bolster her as she meets challenge after challenge. When a second murder happens on campus, Sally realizes she’s trapped in a cycle of violence that must be stopped—now.

Palm Beach Taboo by Tom Turner

There’s a dangerous cult in Palm Beach.

All about philanthropy and altruism, they say. All about sex and money, Crawford and Ott say.
Then there’s a brutal stabbing…make that sex and money and MURDER!

Suspects? Well, there’s a billionaire heiress, an ex-movie star, a former member of Skull and Bones, a Blackwater psychopath…and the bizarre thing, they’re members of the Mensa society!

She Told a Lie by P.D. Workman:

A missing girl.

Her confused family and friends don’t know what to think about her disappearance.

The police will only put so many resources into the search for a missing teen. They don’t have time and money to spend on runaways and voluntaries. But that doesn’t mean no one cares.

Zachary Goldman is on the case, and he is determined to find out what happened to Madison Miller and to bring her home safely.

If she’s still alive, he’s going to find her.

No matter what danger he might face personally.

The Wind in My Heart by Douglas Wynne:

Miles Landry is trying to put violence behind him when he takes up work as a private detective focused on humdrum adultery cases. But when a Tibetan monk hires him to find a missing person, things get weird fast.

Charged with tracking down the reincarnation of a man possessed by a demonic guardian from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Miles is plunged into a world of fortune-tellers, gangsters, and tantric rituals. The year is 1991 and a series of grisly murders has rocked New York City in the run up to a visit from the Dalai Lama.

The police attribute the killings to Chinatown gang warfare. Miles–skeptical of the supernatural–is inclined to agree. But what if the monster he’s hunting is more than a myth?

Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Tales from the Darkest Depths.

Not-a-Fanzine Spotlight: Simultaneous Times

It’s time for the next entry in my Fanzine Spotlight project. For more about the Fanzine Spotlight project, go here. You can also check out the other great fanzines featured by clicking here.

Not every worthy project that deserves more exposure is a fanzine. And even though this series focusses on fanzines, I have decided to feature some non-fanzines that deserve a boost as well. So today’s featured not-a-fanzine is the Space Cowboy Books Presents: Simultaneous Times podcast, which for Hugo-purposes counts as a semiprozine, since it’s a paying fiction market.

But whatever category it fits in, it’s a great podcast and I’m not just saying that, because they produced a lovely audio version of one of my stories, “Patient X-5”, last year.

So I’m happy to welcome Jean-Paul Garnier of Space Cowboy Books, a great SFF specialty bookstore in Joshua Tree, California, as well as producer and narrator of the Simultaneous Times podcast.

Tell us about your site or zine.

Space Cowboy Books Presents: Simultaneous Times is actually three different projects that operate under the same name. It started, and continues, as a science fiction anthology podcast (semiprozine) with cast readings and original soundtracks. Then I started our fancast – Simultaneous Times Supplementary Log, which features interviews with the authors and composers of the podcast. Lastly, we also produce a monthly print fanzine newsletter that features interviews with authors and editors, small press new releases, artist spotlights, articles, speculative poetry and more. We have also released an anthology of stories from the podcast called Simultaneous Times Vol.1, with Vol.2 scheduled to be released in spring of 2021.

Who are the people behind your site or zine?

Zara Kand is the co-founder of Space Cowboy Books, she also does all of our visual art, proof-reading and a lot of voice acting. Our music department for the podcasts is: RedBlueBlackSilver, Phog Machine, and Field Collapse. And I (Jean-Paul L. Garnier) serve as the editor of the newsletter, producer of the podcast and voice actor, and anything else that might need to get done. And of course our work would be nothing without all of the wonderful authors that contribute their work and take the time to be interviewed. We are also ever grateful to our audience.

Why did you decide to start your site or zine?

I started the podcasts because I grew up listening to radio dramas, such as X Minus One, and always wanted to produce one of my own. I have a background in audio production and am friends with some amazing composers, so when I re-listened to one of my favorite programs Mind Webs, I said to myself, I’ve got to make a show like this.

The Simultaneous Times Newsletter started when the pandemic lockdowns started. Usually I’m at my bookstore six days a week, and since we specialize in science fiction, most of my conversations center around the genre. Immediately I began to miss the conversations and my customers, so I started the newsletter as a way to stay connected with science fiction fans. Since then it has just grown. But we still give free subscriptions. I thought people would prefer to get a letter in the mail over receiving an email.

What format do you use for your site or zine (blog, e-mail newsletter, PDF zine, paper zine) and why did you choose this format?

Several members of my team, including myself, have a background in radio. When we all started talking about starting a podcast we decided that we wanted to produce the program the way that radio shows were produced in the past. Really take the radio arts approach instead of going with modern trends in podcasting. Since then we’ve even teamed up with the radio station KZZH 96.7 in Northern California, so our program did end up on the air.

The Newsletter is print because I wanted to put something physical in people’s hands, especially during this time of not being able to see each other. That being said, I have started to put the back issues on our website, so the archive is available to everyone.

The fanzine category at the Hugos is one of the oldest, but also the category which consistently gets the lowest number of votes and nominations. So why do you think fanzines and sites are important?

I believe that they are important because they are a gateway into the genre, and one that is not provided by the industry itself. Because it comes from the fans it is trustworthy in ways that commercial interest cannot be. Fanzines tend to be unpaid passion projects, and because of this tend to be run by people who really care and want the genre to stay healthy and to move forward in interesting ways. Also, because there usually isn’t a commercial factor behind the fanzine they can take risks, do things their own way, and move faster than the traditional publishing world. Most of us live for science fiction, for me it is largely that I want to give back to a field that has brought me so much enjoyment over the years.

In the past twenty years, fanzines have increasingly moved online. What do you think the future of fanzines looks like?

I think that because most things have moved online people will eventually get tired of the format and react against it by trying new things, and or doing things the way we used to. We’ve often seen this with nostalgia over which mediums we use to listen to music. Ultimately the content is more important than the medium, but I do worry over the temporary and fragile nature of the internet, one coronal mass ejection and it all gets wiped away. I also think we will see more hybrid formats and mixed media. That being said, any way people can connect and share their passions is a good thing, and we will continue to try and connect with each other regardless of the medium.

The four fan categories of the Hugos (best fanzine, fan writer, fan artist and fancast) tend to get less attention than the fiction and dramatic presentation categories. Are there any awesome fanzines, fancasts, fan writers and fan artists you’d like to recommend?

Oh yes! There are so many great ones I don’t know if I can list them all here. But here’s a short list:

I currently write for https://warpspeedodyssey.com/ which is a relatively new Canadian SF blog run by Steven Morrissette

As I’m sure your readers know http://indiespecfic.blogspot.com/ is a wonderful resource!

http://galacticjourney.org/ is always putting out great content!

And here’s a few others that I have found useful:

http://worldswithoutend.com/

https://www.aphelion-webzine.com/

https://www.aphelion-webzine.com/

https://dreamfoundry.org/

Where can people find you?

Simultaneous Times Podcast (semiprozine): https://spacecowboybooks.podomatic.com/

Simultaneous Times Supplementary Log (fancast): https://spacecowboybooks.bandcamp.com/album/simultaneous-times-supplementary-log-interviews-with-the-authors-and-musicians

Simultaneous Times Newsletter (fanzine): https://spacecowboybooks.blogspot.com/p/simultaneous-times-newsletter.html

Space Cowboy Books online store: https://bookshop.org/shop/spacecowboybooks%20

Twitter: https://twitter.com/space_books

IG: https://www.instagram.com/spacecowboybooks/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyQwqKhUuhW_s9lDtXnKmsA

Thanks, Jean-Paul, for stopping by and answering my questions.

Do check out Simultaneous Times, cause it’s a great podcast. And should you ever find yourself in Joshua Tree, California, visit Space Cowboy Books in person or check out their online store from anywhere in the world.

***

Do you have a Hugo eligible fanzine or site and want it featured? Contact me or leave a comment.