Category Archives: science fiction

Musings about Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror

Posted on Tuesday 3 March 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

I keep thinking about my Provisional Conclusions, how they might be streamlined or crystallized, and how they relate (as I’ve alluded more than once in this blog) to the insights provided by the fields of fantastic fiction — science fiction, … Continue reading →

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Links and Comments: Michael Shermer, Science and God, Religion vs Education, Your soul

Posted on Monday 2 February 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

Michael Shermer’s new book As mentioned a couple posts ago, Michael Shermer has a new book out this week (I got my copy yesterday), The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason Lead Humanity toward Truth, Justice, and Freedom, which addresses … Continue reading →

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Passages by Benford

Posted on Friday 16 January 2015 by Mark R. Kelly

I’ve been belatedly catching up on 2014 short fiction in the past two or three weeks, moreso than I’ve done in the past two or three years; not enough to in time contribute substantially to the Locus Recommended Reading List, … Continue reading →

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Interstellar… Music

Posted on Tuesday 11 November 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Gary Westfahl’s reviews save me lots of time and money. Whenever I think a new SF film might be interesting enough to see…. his review often persuades me otherwise. (And when I do see them, my reaction is much the … Continue reading →

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Skiffy Flix: Assignment Outer Space

Posted on Thursday 23 October 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

There was a period in the mid to late 1990s when I watched a whole bunch of 1950s and ’60s science fiction films, via a video store around the corner from my house then, back in the days when there … Continue reading →

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Recent Links and Comments: Ken Ham, Timothy Egan, Valerie Tarico, Adam Frank, Nathaniel Frank

Posted on Thursday 24 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

I’m some two weeks behind on posting comments and links here, though I’ve been compiling such links for eventual posting. Website issues have preoccupied me. Here’s a first bunch of them. More tomorrow. 23 July: Salon: The Christian right’s 5 … Continue reading →

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Literary SF authors

Posted on Tuesday 8 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Thought of the day – is a characteristic of a ‘literary’ genre SF writer one who writes short fiction? (By ‘genre SF writer’ I exclude those ‘outsider’ literary authors who happen to write books resembling SF. Like today’s example, Edan … Continue reading →

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Rereading Gene Wolfe’s “The Fifth Head of Cerberus”

Posted on Thursday 3 July 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Gene Wolfe is one of the most intelligent, albeit ambiguous in effect, writers in science fiction (and fantasy). He was an industrial engineer, famously for having partly invented the machine that made Pringle potato chips, before he began writing in … Continue reading →

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Science Fiction and the perception of a greater truth

Posted on Monday 23 June 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a passage from an early 1960s science fiction story, a story later incorporated into a novel, about a young man who works as a yardboy in a small town in a pre-industrial society near the “Katskil border”. One morning … Continue reading →

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Clarke, Childhood’s End, part 3 – passages

Posted on Saturday 7 June 2014 by Mark R. Kelly

Passages from Clarke’s Childhood’s End. The early part of the book involves a faction of the public that objects to the Overlords’ presence, on the grounds that their influence deprives them of “Freedom to control our own lives, under God’s … Continue reading →

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