The Crotchety Old Fan

Available June 22, 2010
ECCO/Harper Collins
254 pages
$23.99
Larry Doyle is the author of I Love You Beth Cooper and a former writer on the team that weekly brings us The Simpsons. It should come as no surprise then that his latest novel – Go Mutants – is hilarious. Humorous even. Side-splittingly funny, to borrow [...]

I might not give you the answer you want me to…
SF Signals’ Mind Meld feature is a popular and regular feature that I’ve participated in on several occasions. The conceit is that the Signal uses its prominence and contacts to pose a question and gather up a bunch of informed answers from experts in [...]

EDIT: It wasn’t too long after the review went up that the publishers informed me that the title of the anthology has been changed to MASKED, and that a modified cover has also been prepared.  So when you read on and it says “With Great Power”, simply substitute “MASKED” and you’ll do just fine. (end)
One [...]

COF has, regrettably, gone from a daily/multiple daily posted blog to one that I only seem to get around to every week or so.
I probably regret this more than any of my readers, as I was starting to do pretty darned good on the traffic and the connections & etc; links were building and I [...]

I tried to watch it. Twice.
My intestines will never be the same again, and I’ll not waste anymore time discussing an utterly atrocious, thoughtless attempt at cashing in on an author’s name and works.
The minute I saw their stand-in for the FABULOUS RIVERBOAT, the ship that Sam Clemens compromises his ideals to get built, [...]

“With no power comes no responsibility.  Except that isn’t true.”
That line from Kick Ass pretty much sums up the meta-message for Kick Ass the movie.
Underdogs need to take a beating before they can prevail.  The trial by fire is an all important aspect of the mythos.  Kick Ass posits the theory that in order to [...]

I’ve just recently finished re-reading the entire series.  I do not need internet pundits to remind me that Sir Richard fucking Francis Burton is not a bad guy; nor that people were resurrected all at once;  nor that….
To say that the upcoming mini-series on syfy is FULL of fail is an understatement of such grand [...]

I just received the new superhero anthology – WITH GREAT POWER… – edited by Lou Anders.
And I have already paid a price. (Echoing a major theme of superhero tales. There is always a cost for receiving gifts from the gods, and it doesn’t matter whether those gods live on Olympus or at a publishing [...]

As mentioned earlier today, a mention for which I have already been roundly castigated by none other than Jeff VanderMeer, who’s work I unsuccessfully nominated (Finch for Best Novel) and who – despite his obvious mastery of the English language could come up with no better word to describe my justifications than “babble” (both Jeff [...]

First, a bit of catching up, followed by my review of the Outer Limits episode O.B.I.T.
I’ve appeared yet again on John Ottinger’s blogosphere roundup, this time asking me (and a host of others) how we organize our book collections. To which the short answer, for me, is – poorly. (I just can’t seem [...]