Skip to main content

What I Read in June 2017


I think the theme of the stories this month would be identity and love. Most of the stories below involve, in some respect, the forces necessary to draw two people together. I wouldn't exactly call these valentines but each story spoke to me about where love is between people in this early point of the 21st century. I hope enjoy reading them as much as I did!

  • Hero by Damian Aw: (DSF) I really dig it when an incredibly short story can fold up so much drama inside its narrow narrative. This flash piece takes from concept to stakes to consequence in an admirably brief tale. A man goes from movie to movie, correcting all of those tiny tragedies essential for a certain kind of story-telling. I was reminded of some of the closing themes of "Red Shirts," by John Scalzi: the obligation writers owe to their creations. 
  • Marcel Proust, Incorporated by Scott Dalrymple. (Lightspeed) Interesting pharmapunk speculation. What if a drug promoting the retention of memory had the drawback that if you stop taking the drug you will forget everything learned while taking it. From the short vignette at the beginning, to the gestures towards believability, this really worked for me. 
  • Love Engine Optimization by Matthew Kressel. (Lightspeed) In a near-future NYC, a hacker uses big data mining to win the perfect partner. Parts reminded me of Mr. Robot - the aimless awkward disaffected hacker trying to make a connection in near future Manhattan. Kressel works very hard here to keep the reader engaged with an unsavory protagonist, cheerfully sharing some aspects of the story up front but keeping the more distressing aspects until the end. The goal didn't strike me as being one of encouraging sympathy for the devil but more so the reader understand the very special fate in store for this flawed individual. 
  • Secret Keeper by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam. (Nightmare) A retaking of the phantom of the opera as though it's a very special episode of Glee. The central idea of this story, that something is owed to the teacher for the gift of instruction is deconstructed here, brought into an even more sinister light than in the original text. Nightmare published a recent re-working of Red Riding Hood, which I also enjoyed. 
***

Personal note: Today I'm also sharing chapter 58 of my web serial, "Agent Shield and Spaceman." Ithink I am under 10 chapters away from being done. I can't give an exact count because I may be tempted to cut one of the last chapters into two more parts.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

With the title World War Z

Early on in the mostly disappointing zombie epidemic thriller World War Z, UN Investigator Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) hides out in a Newark apartment, trying to convince a family living there to flee with him from the hordes of sprinting, chomping maniacs infesting the city. The phrase he uses, drawing from years of experience in the world's troubled war-zones is "movement is life." Ultimately he's unsuccessful, the family barricades their door behind him and they join the ever-swelling ranks of the undead. As far as a guiding philosophy goes for a pop-action thriller like World War Z, 'movement is life,' isn't bad. And for the first half of the movie or so, it follows its own advice. Similar to other recent zombie movies (Dawn of the Dead, Shaun of the Dead) the warning signs of what the rest of the movie will bring are subtle and buried until all hell is ready to break through. The television mentions 'martial law,' Philadelphia traffic snarl
I’m going to take a slightly abbreviated approach to this year’s best-of lists and mostly focus on movies. It’s not that I didn’t read or listen to music but for whatever reason I feel uninspired to talk about either topic. C’est la vie! So in no particular order are five movies I greatly enjoyed watching this year. Firstly, Avengers: Endgame. Well, I guess there is some order to this list because literally the first thing I thought of in terms of movies I’ve seen is this movie. It is inevitable! This is the one MCU flick it’s hard for me to remember as simply a super-hero film. Although I found its predecessor a bit more more compulsively watchable, I really enjoyed this film. First of all it’s tone, which veered from despair, heist hijinx, parental reconciliation, to epic mega-brawl was never boring. Even the gorgeous mess which is that final fight has its own interior logic and sports some of the best looking cinematography this side of Black Panther. With Endgame MCU found a

Stephen King's 2017

Despite the release of a single novel and a few short stories, 2017 has to rank up there as one of the more Stephen King ascendant years. No less than four movies based on his works appeared, including one of the most successful horror films of all time, the first part of IT. 'The Mist' (Stephen King) by Dementall.deviantart.com Of course, with King, for every high, there are plenty of lows and 2017 also provided a number of examples of how to do his works wrong. But let's start with the good stuff. The movie adaptation of IT, directed by Andres Muschietti and starring a number of talented young actors (including Finn Wolfhard of "Stranger Things" fame) really captured, for me, a lot of what I liked about the original novel. Being scary certainly helped, but with King, the horror slice is never really the whole cake. What makes King King, at least for me, is the combination of earthy, believable characters with lurid, "Tales from the Crypt&quo