scop (noun): Old English – bard, minstrel, storyteller
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Mystery Theatre has Moved
Find PSMT at its new domain. Launched during the height of the first COVID wave, Prime Stage Mystery Theatre was initially designed to fill a gap left by live theatre performances during those dark months of social distancing. Thus, the theatre company known for “bringing theatre to life” took on the new mission of “bringing…
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Origins of Body Horror
Did it begin in the 1980s? In the decade before computer-generated animation gave us morphing faces in Michael Jackson’s Black or White and the fluid flesh of James Cameron’s Terminator 2, cinema’s masters of practical effects were busily corrupting the human form. Dick Smith gave us rippling flesh in Altered States (1980); Tom Sullivan, the…
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Obscure SF Films: Part 2
The lightning round. In my previous post, I reported on the first round of The Obscure Science Fiction Movie Game. Held on the first day of this year’s North American Science Fiction Convention, the game asked panelists to identify great-but-forgotten films. Points were awarded based on how many in the audience had seen and liked…
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Obscure SF Films
… the search continues. The hunt for overlooked genre films (see my previous post) resumed in Buffalo, NY, when Hugo Award Winning artist Frank Wu hosted a panel on forgotten science fiction films. Held on the first day of the 16th North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFiC), the panel gave me the chance to join…
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Wanted: Standalone Novels
Can you find the standalone science-fiction novel? Last week’s post concluded by asking, “Do you have any recent stand-alone sf books to recommend?” Alas, it seems coming up with such recommendations is not as easy as it sounds. Consider, for example, the books pictured above–seven titles I’ve either read or reread in preparation for a…
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Great but Forgotten Films
One of the “great” science fiction films I recall seeing as a kid is World Without End, a post-apocalyptic adventure in which a band of astronauts lands on a primitive planet that turns out to be Earth in the future. That’s not a spoiler. Other films might present similar surprises as twist endings, but World…