Uh-oh.  Our hero is in trouble. “Captain!  The enemy’s Vetch Cannon are proving more than a match for the shields generated by our Krump Vanes!” “Blast it!  I warned the Admiralty that this would happen!” “We’re really getting a pounding, sir!” “Mr. Blazey— do we still have those froomistats in the hold?” “Yes, sir, but […]

Alert reader Andrew Coyne informs me that my novel Voice of the Whirlwind seems to have inspired an album by rising electronic music star Access to Arasaka (whose name is itself a reference to the Cyberpunk 2020 card game Netrunner). The album is écrasez l’infâme, the defiant battle cry of  Voltaire quoted by Steward in the novel, and the […]

As part of my program to revisit books that I liked when I was younger, I recently re-read Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land for the first time since I was in college. Oh, my. I should point out that as a young person I read all the Heinlein I could find.  (Have Space Suit, Will […]

We have here three versions of the “Amen Break,” as originally recorded back in 1969, on a song called “Amen Brother,” by a group called the Winstons.  (There was a time, as George Clinton of Parliament recalls, groups were either named after cigarettes, cars, or birds.)  “Amen Brother” was the B side of the Winstons’ hit […]