Call them folk tales, wonder tales, or fairy stories: Fairy tales have a history of adaptation that was born long before some Italian wrote one down on paper in the 1500s. They have celebrated renaissance, preached religious values, and outlined basic moral behavior, with a little adventure, magic, and witchery thrown in for entertainment value. [...]

Look.
I’m sitting down to have this conversation with you as a friend, as somebody who loves you. As somebody who’s devoted thirty-odd years of her life to you.
We’ve all made some mistakes. We’ve all had moments in our lives when we got a little self-important, maybe. Where our senses of humor failed us.
I’m as guilty [...]

American popular culture—science fiction and otherwise—feasted on the Cold War’s stew of paranoia, incessant competition couched in terms of progress, and threat of mutually assured destruction right up until the tension could, without a doubt, be declared over with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. In retrospect, it’s pretty amazing that Soviet-phobic films [...]

My main complaint, and reason my interest flagged, was that both the characters and setting seemed flat.—SF Reader on A Shadow in Summer
…an imagined world of this quality: for a city as graceful and fascinating as Saraykhet, and for such persuasively human characters.—Strange Horizons on A Shadow in Summer

One of the things that my wiser [...]

Little excites our sense of adventure more than an attractive ruin: a castle on a hill, a vine-clutched pyramid, a masonry wall sheltered in a natural cave. Ruins appear in a variety of roles in the fantasy tale—and it’s rare indeed to find a fantasy without them. Some are indelible settings for pivotal scenes, like [...]

Food is one of our most basic desires. It’s the first thing we ask for after being born, the fuel for our work and our reward at the end of a long day. Because of this, it’s been an integral element of storytelling since Eve ate the apple, and science fiction and fantasy are no [...]

Music and technology have always gone hand in hand—and the explosive flowering of music as an art form in the last century is also the story of the explosive growth of technology. Indeed, people have recognized the potential of computers to revolutionize music since before there even were computers. In 1842, [...]

Calling "Lights! Camera! Action!" on a Hollywood stage to mimic the setting of a generic suburban apartment is easy. When a film takes place on another planet, convincingly evoking an alien world is more complicated than using the usual soundstage and standard backlot. Fortunately for filmmakers looking for setting options other [...]

Since the Martians first landed in Guildford, fellows with small mustaches and large empires have been defending the Earth. Nathaniel Tapley explores the enduring appeal of the honest, English chap in science fiction and fantasy.
He comes as Death From The Sky. He lays waste to civilizations and he has brought down empires. He treats [...]

To most movie buffs, the phrase "independent film" conjures up images of intensely personal low-budget films. While the term actually applies to any film outside the studio system, the Independent Film Movement has transformed the Indies into a fertile ground for nurturing new talent and exploring ideas that the mainstream [...]