Ancient Logic

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...

I originally called this last of my year-end posts “Alive in…” because honestly I couldn’t think of a more general or truthful way to labeling the intention of these posts: “I was alive in 20XX and here’s what I saw.” That’s the way it’s seemed to me in the past. Heading Across by Morgan Crooks (2018) I had a tough year in 2018 but I survived. There are many, many things that happened that made this year difficult but I’m still alive and I hope for a better 2019. I guess I’ll start at the top. As many of you already know, I’m getting divorced early next year. Lauren and I have gone through rough patches before but at some point this year it became apparent to both of us that we were trying very hard to keep something going that was making us both miserable. So, in the next few months I will be: selling my house, filing a lot paperwork, transitioning to some other living situation, and figuring out where to go next. In part, although this has been incredibly difficult and I hones...

For my third year-end wrap-up blogpost, I’m going to share the things I’m most glad I read this year. In previous editions to this post, I’ve focused on novels and short stories I read that were published in that calendar year. I’m going to have to have to do something a little different this time. In years past, one of the motivating factors pushing me to read current writing was my own desire to update and broaden my own writing skills. I wanted to see what was out there and who was writing stuff I wanted to read. This year I have been involved in this longer project which has changed my focus to a lot of mythology and non-fiction books. I’ve read some books released this year but rather than rank them separately I’ll fold them into what left a mark - literary-wise - this year. The Only Harmless Great Thing by Brooke Bolander. A couple years back Uncanny Magazine published Bolander’s “Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies,” which was one of the most savage and funny take-downs of a sub-genr...

To continue my year-end best-of list, I’ll next move to movies that I really enjoyed this year. As usual, this is not a list meant to be what I think had the highest artistic merit of all movies released this year. I watch a lot of movies but I don’t watch nearly enough to be able to make a statement that sweeping. These are movies I liked a lot and I continued to think about for the rest of the year (however long that might be at this point). #5: Annihilation. I honestly didn’t think this was going to wind up so far down my list (number-wise). I loved the book this movie is loosely based upon by Jeff Vandermeer, and think that in terms of capturing the mood and translating the basic idea of the story for a wider audience this movie does an incredible job. It is a beautiful, awe-inspiring cerebral science fiction and damn unsettling to boot. It’s not at the top of this list because ultimately it didn’t seize my imagination or hit me with a hammer blow of feelings like some of the o...

It’s about that time of year again. Today I’m going to list my favorite five albums I heard this year. In terms of music, I wasn’t blown-away by much released this year. Most of what I bought were albums released ten or even twenty years ago. I wouldn’t classify this as nostalgia because what I was listening to wasn’t really what I was listening to at that time. Nevertheless it was a shift from last year which I thought was an excellent year for new music. That said my favorite release this year is one of my favorite albums in quite some time. #5) Be the Cowboy by Mitski: Propulsive, poignant electro-pop with a lead singer who seems to narrating, moment by moment the day she realized she had the ability to survive everything weighing her down. Survive, that is, if she did everything exactly the way she needed to. This is album composed of highly danceable anthems to self-possession and there’s not a single track that doesn’t contain some moment of cataclysmic heart-break set to a m...

As a long, strange year comes to a close, I guess the big emotion I have right now is simple gratitude. I got a bunch of stories published this year, from way back in February with "Killing the First Gods," in the A Book of Blasphemous Words anthology to "Promontory" in the fantastic A Breath in the Sky anthology, to "The Boy in the Picture" and "Implicate Order," in Grievous Angel and Lamplight Magazine respectively. I've never left a year feeling more certain of my dedication of time, emotional energy, and creativity to the act of writing than this year. I don't know what 2018 will bring in terms of my stories but I can't help but feel a degree of cautious optimism. Bone Necklaces by Morgan Crooks (2017) I feel optimistic perhaps because I see how much talent is out there producing the kind of fiction I love reading. It is not possible to list all of the writers active out there right now without feeling I'm slighting s...

The third in my series of year-end lists is literature. As in past years, I've divided this post into two categories: Novels and short stories. Each of these stories made 2017 just a bit brighter for me and I hope this list includes at least a writer or two new to you. Novels: I Wish I was You by SP Miskowski: This was the subject of a review earlier this year. The way I feel about this novel, the tragedy of a talented person crippled by anger and regret, transformed into a monstrous avatar of wrath, has not really left me. Beyond the perfection of its prose and its preternatural subject matter, I feel like this is one of the best evocations of the mid-nineties I've seen published. There's something about this book that lingers with me long past the concerns of its plot and characters. I guess what I'm trying to say is this work moved me. 2017 would have been a lot dimmer if I hadn't read this work. New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson: Robinson writes ne...

On to movies. Overall, 2017 was a great year for speculative movies. Three above average MCU movies, a bunch of interesting reboots, and a Star Wars movie makes for a decent period to be an SFF fan. Correspondingly, I ended up seeing relatively fewer non-SFF movies this year despite there being several (Baby Driver, Wind River) that I really do want to see.  "Chasm" by Morgan Crooks (2017) Below are my picks for the movies of the year. #1: Dunkirk. No real surprise there. I felt this was basically the movie of the year in July and little transpired between then and now to change my mind. Essentially this is a war movie built around a complicated structure weaving three disparate threads into one complete narrative. I'm not someone who thinks all war-movies are anti-war simply by virtue of showing the terrible fates of young men. This movie, for example, strikes a bleak and, at times despairing tone, to bring the drama of sacrifice on the beach of Dunki...

Every year, I jot down my favorite albums, movies, and books. This was a great year for music and below are the albums that meant the most to me. In other words, these are the albums I listened to the most that came out this year and why you might like them too.  Swallowed in Leaves by Morgan Crooks (2017) American Dream by LCD Soundsystem. LCD Soundsystem is a band lurking on the fringe of my awareness for many years. A mix of casual indie drone and dance music, this band struck me as something to appreciate in theory more than practice. That changes with this album. Apparently the product of a specific request by the late David Bowie, James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem put together this collection to reflect what happened last year and this. The results are staggering. I think what impressed me first is the degree of FREEDOM in this album. The happy hybrid between indie rock noise and dance music grooves produces one epic and heart-rending moment after another. Thi...

Part of me wants to sum up this year in one or two words - it sucked! - and be done with it. I've spilled a lot of virtual ink in service of pessimism lately so maybe it's time to put paid to 2016 and be done with it. Instead, I'd like to take a moment to remember some of the good things about this year. This was a year of friends. I met a bunch of amazing people this year, had time to hang out with old friends, and had some of the best conversations about politics, speculative fiction, movies, and life. If you spent time with me, helped me understand this world a little bit better, filled it with life and laughter and hope, well, the least I can do is thank you. Thank you for reading my stories, putting up with my mistakes, and giving me your support. Thank you Lauren for being the best friend a person could ever hope for and congratulations for finishing your masters. This was a year of video games. Maybe not the most consequential aspect of life but, you know ...

This was a great year for speculative fiction, both novels and short stories and I had a little trouble narrowing down my favorites to just five. Which is part of the reason this post is running right up to the end of the year. Every story I'm listing below is one that is still sitting with me all these months later.  For the record, I have one more of these year-end posts left - a sort of wrap-up of everything else. In comparison to last year, which was nearly all science fiction (and one very Sfnal fantasy novel) I've got a slightly more eclectic list going here. The Fisherman by John Langan: This is the last novel I read in 2016 and the best. Langan's tale of two widowers bonding over fishing the streams and rivers of Upstate New York combines intensely personal tragedy, with scenes of compelling weirdness and terror. The story raises interesting questions about the nature of language and the responsibilities of those in grief.  Infomocracy by Malka Older....

For my second year-end post, I'd like to talk about movies. There are five movies that stuck with me this year, perhaps not the five best movies, but certainly good ones that meant something to me. From my limited perspective as a routine movie-goer the gap between blockbuster movies and "quality films" continues to grow each year. Are these even in the same genre anymore? While certainly the basic technology employed by movies and films is the same (except when it isn't) the point of films seems to be diverging. The point of a movie like Marvel's Captain America: Civil War is to serve as the vehicle for cathartic spectacle while the point of my favorite movie is something closer to communication - the passing on of knowledge to the audience. In principle, I enjoy both modes but I wish they would cross-pollinate a bit more. It is the rare movie, (The Lord of Rings Trilogy, Star Wars, and Interstellar come to mind) that seems to want to do both: to create a grand ...

Each year, I like to gather together the albums, movies, and stories that meant something to me. I wouldn't call this a "Best of" list, exactly, although I do think that all of these works are worth your time to track down. My intention is simply to record those things that felt important or helped me understand the world in someway. In a confusing, disappointing, and increasingly terrifying year like this one, maybe art doesn't really matter all that much. If that's your response, I say more power to you. For better or worse art keeps me alive and these lists are meant to record what kept me writing, creating, and working. Skeleton Scene by Morgan Crooks (2016) Alright, so THIS list is about music and as far as the year goes, while I liked a number albums very much I wasn't blown away by any particular album. While I think this list contains very strong albums, it may not match up with many BOY posts you see elsewhere. These are simply the albums I li...

This last five best list is the hardest one. All of the movies listed below are terrific. The next two movies I didn’t include on this list are also pretty great. Yet, I think there is a virtue in ordering experiences and with that in mind, Mad Max beats out competitors. I’m not sure if this is a better movie than Spotlight or Ex Machina, but it certainly occupied more of my attention this year.   Mad Max: Fury Road. To be clear, this is an action film. A well-made, sincerely wrought exercise in mayhem to be sure, but ultimately this is a long car-chase. But there is something about Fury Road that, for me, goes beyond a good movie and enters the realm of myth-making. This movie didn’t work on all of my friends and I’ve seen very detailed break-downs on how Imperator Furiosa is not a new-wave feminist icon, or how the plot has major holes, or this and that. But in the end, this film stands unmarked by carping. It found a way to make action movies cool again, sketching in 120 minut...

This is the second in my year-end series addressing works of music, literature, and film that seemed important to me. Today, I’m focusing on literature. I read a bunch this year, mostly works from 2014 but a few from this year. Any long-time reader of this blog might be able to guess at my favorites from this year but I discovered plenty of exciting new artists along the way. Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson: Hands-down my favorite novel this year and probably one of my favorites from KSR outside of the Mars Trilogy. Borrowing themes and motifs from previous works (even Shaman!), Kim Stanley Robinson here crafts a generation ship tale unlike any I’ve read. This novel will endure for me well past 2015 because its target is not just the implausibility of interstellar travel, but the pernicious danger of human ideas when confronting the hard truths. Put simply, people are bad at accepting facts they cannot see or choose to ignore. Sound familiar? Even so, this novel is not doom and gloom...

The only thing more crazy futuristic sounding then 2014 is 2015. That’s a big year for sci fi fans, the year Marty McFly went to the 80’s version of the future, hover boards, holographic Jaws, and all. Periodically I’ll wander around a place and just wonder what my eight year old self would make of it. Would anything stick out as ‘futuristic?’ I’m not usually left with much. What is arguably futuristic is hidden, or buried in the hands of pedestrian web-surfers. Sometimes I see a slick Tesla or a sign that would require thirty years of back story to explain, but for the most part our present feels like the present of my youth. Not terribly strange in the aggregate, only remarkable in the details, the little hints of what might be on the way. If you’re concerned about such details you could find plenty of evidence that we’re heading to a catastrophe or that we’re beginning to pull out of a tailspin. It’s all in how you look at things. Publishing news: 2014 will be memorable t...

I was finally able to catch up enough with my reading list in 2014 to read books and stories published in 2014. There’s more I hope to read within the next few weeks to prepare for the Speculative Fiction: Year in Review panel for Arisia, but I’ve already found more than a few reasons to celebrate literature this year. I’m splitting this post in two, the first half dealing with novels and the second half talking up a few of my favorite shorter works. Novels: 5) The Peripheral: William Gibson achieves two tricks in this novel. One is stylistic. Gibson writes cool just about better than any living science fiction author. Even though he’s describing a very discouraging brand of dystopia, one can’t help but want to live there, to experience what Gibson is describing. The other trick Gibson manages is showing the cost of such pondering. In this book, characters from two separate time period confront a murder with consequences for both realities. The future isn’t simply a directi...