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Category Archives: Short Story Anthology

Tales From The New Twilight Zone

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Tales From The New Twilight Zone Order this bookStory: J. Michael Straczynski, head writer on the 1980s revival of The Twilight Zone, transforms several of his best-known scripts from that show’s brief run into prose.

Review: The late-80’s revival of The Twilight Zone, in all honestly, went completely unnoticed by yours truly. In fact, I’d completely forgotten about it until it was mentioned often in connection with Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski’s past television works. Lo and behold (not necessarily in that order, mind you), I stumbled across a copy of Straczynski’s short-form novelizations of several of the New Twilight Zone episodes. I figured it would be interesting to see his writing style in a new venue – not Babylon 5, and not his excellent guide to scriptwriting. Wow, was I ever in for a surprise. Continue reading

The Planets

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The PlanetsOrder this bookStory: The Planets is, quite simply, one of my all-time favorite books, a mind-boggling and impossible-to-pigeonhole anthology of scientific essays and short stories from some of the best science fiction authors on the planet. The Planets is a brilliant combination of facts, speculation, and artwork, each section of the book focusing on one of the planets in our solar system, as well as the asteroids, comets, and Earth’s moon, and how humankind could change it – or how it could change us.

Review: Though it’s most likely out of print now, this book is one of my most prized literary possessions. Smartly-written factual essays combined with mold-breaking science fiction short stories made for a book whose contents have challenged and awed me since my early teens. (Somehow, the follow-up book, The Stars, edited in much the same staggered science/science fiction format, didn’t thrill me as much.) Continue reading