The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Fantasy & Other Annoyances

— compiled by Wombat-socho Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam. As a general rule, I don’t care for fantasy. Far too much of it is derivative elf & dwarf crap, written by people trying to rip off Tolkien for a quick buck while having all the grounding in the other classics of your average […]

Annual Bruce Catton Appreciation Post

— compiled by Wombat-socho For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the […]

A MIDWEEK BOOK POST APPEARS!

— by Wombat-socho Usually I do these on the weekend, because the workdays are usually full of other things that need doing, but Hans Schantz is hosting a humongous book sale on behalf of writers who are actually on our side in the Culture War. So stop giving money to people who hate you and […]

The Doom That Came To Complex 34

— by Wombat-socho It seems I haven’t done any book posts since last fall, when I spent three posts trashing one of the worst lists of combat SF ever posted anywhere, so I’d better get cracking, because I have a lot to talk about.  Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam. One of the subgenres […]

FMJRA 2.0: Farewell To A Master

— compiled by Wombat-socho I rarely cross the streams like this, but it seems important to note that one of the great SF and fantasy writers of my generation is hanging up the keyboard. David Drake, who I have been reading since my high school days fifty years ago when the late Jim Baen published […]

The Mud Below

— by Wombat-socho “We’ve left blood in the dust of twenty-five worlds, and our dead on a dozen more, and all that we have at the end of our hitch, buys a night with a second-class whore. “The Senate decrees, the Grand Admiral calls, the orders come down from on high, It’s ‘On Full Kits’ […]

The Stars Above

— by Wombat-socho   Welcome back to the continued trashing of what may be the worst list of recommended SF not published on Tor.com. I’ve been noodling over this post for most of the week, cudgeling my brain for good space opera, because in contrast to Ryan & Finney, who broke their list into “A […]

“And what is good, Phaedrus, and what is not good – need we anyone to tell us these things?”

— by Wombat-socho Well, yes, Socrates, in this decadent and depraved age we do indeed need people to point out what is good, because Our Moral SuperiorsTM have spent the last couple of decades trying to sell us polished turds masquerading as good literature. This is especially evident in science fiction, where the once-prestigious Hugo […]

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