I happened to just now read one of his, The Cosmic Rape, which prompted me to write about him next. This short 1958 novel is about a hivemind entity making first contact with humanity. It has taken over two galaxies and is working its way through its[…]

McBain, writing under that name and Evan Hunter (which he changed his name to in 1952, from Salvatore Lombino), is the only writer by whom I have read over a hundred books, and that is likely to remain true for a long time, maybe permanently. And I&#[…]

An extraordinary passage in Huizinga’s The Waning Of The Middle Ages comes to our attention:
The taste for unbridled luxury culminated in the court fetes….Nothing could be more insipid or ugly than the ‘entremets’, consisting[…]

To read the story, click here; to read about our ‘hauntography’ project, click here.
An elderly man takes in his orphaned young cousin. It is surprising, given that the man is known as something of a recluse, a retiring academic type &#8[…]

Like all new Freaky Trigger series, the idea for this one came in the pub. I had been re-reading MR James’ Collected Ghost Stories and started talking about them with Mark and Rick: within moments I thought, “let’s blog it”. H[…]

Vachss is a unique writer. Most of his novels centre on a man named Burke, someone far enough beyond the underworld that they don’t know he exists. He makes a living ripping off child porn fans and wannabe mercenaries, and will take a PIish cas[…]

(Introductory notes: my series Comics: A Beginner’s Guide seemed to go over quite well, as far as I can tell. It occurred to me that there were two other areas where I have sometimes been asked for guidance and recommendations – the other[…]

Obviously I have an attraction to crazy quixotic blogging projects*, but I have to take my hat off to Laura Hudson and Leigh Walton, who are planning to blog EVERY ISSUE OF CEREBUS. On the one hand, there are ‘only’ 300 of ’em. On t[…]

I’ve not even opened it yet (it’s a collection of 1950s DC SF comics) – I just wanted to show everyone the cover.[…]

Almost all the talk these days in comics is of graphic novels, mostly meaning collections of the continuing traditional 24-page monthly comic. Writers create story ‘arcs’, i.e. they write for later collecting, most often in six-issue chun[…]