The journalists of online site Click Clique have ostensibly assembled on the evening of October 28 to pitch their picks for the scariest viral videos. However, editor-in-chief June (Kalima Young) has divulged a truth to her top reporter, Rachel Silver (Melissa LaMartina). The site is going to have to downsize because the click-through revenue streams […]
Read more "Clickbait: What Happens Next Will Scare You"Five occupants of a train’s coach find themselves drawn into a bit of storytelling and fortune telling by the sixth, an eerie but sociable gentleman calling himself Dr. Schreck (Peter Cushing), whose name he explains, is German for Terror. Using a pack of tarot cards, Dr. Schreck offers to reveal a possible, supernatural future as […]
Read more "Five Pronouncements of Doom: Dr. Terror’s House of Horror (1965)"When the police raid a safe house in El Paso, Texas, they find the place has become home to a blood bath. Among the many corpses, they find one survivor who goes by the name The Traveler (Efren Ramirez), and he has quite a story to tell. Several stories, in fact, and he desperately hopes […]
Read more "Five Tales of Dread and Gory Humor: Satanic Hispanics (2022)"Linda Addison is one of the best kept secrets in speculative poetry, bar none. She has a terrific sense for language, a playfulness that veers into the darkest pockets of human experience and back out again into the realm of surreal whimsy. Who can fashion a punchline that also serves as a revisionist fairy tale […]
Read more "Just Me and the Forever Dead: Linda Addison’s How to Recognize a Demon Has Become Your Friend"Christi Nogle’s name is not a familiar one for me, and this is the first concentrated dose of the author’s short fiction I’ve had. The writing is lyrical, poetic. The characters are drawn well. The circumstances they find themselves involved in run a gamut from the chilling to the warmly inviting. Her characters live in […]
Read more "A Vague Sense of Unease: Christi Nogle’s One Eye Opened in That Other Place"Like any lifeform, humanity wants to prolong its existence but when journeys to even the nearest star is a death sentence for anyone living with current propulsion technologies, the survival obsessed species does the next best thing. They devise a method for sending their knowledge and material into space, pouring all their accrued wisdom, learning, […]
Read more "Slow Boat to Tomorrow: John Scalzi’s Slow Time Between the Stars"Iraya was born to human parents, but he was raised by the Senator, one of the Genteels—aliens that conquered earth. Now, he’s leaving home of his own will, going by the name Ira as he heads to school on a space station. There he will enjoy the anonymity and seeing how the people he was […]
Read more "A Fresh Start: Rebecca Roanhorse’s Falling Bodies"Following-up the 2022 middle grade collection, Stinetinglers, R. L. Stine returns with another ten stories that pit kids against the uncanny: Stinetinglers 2. “Lucky Me” finds young Chuck Lucky chancing upon a lucky charm that may well give his family the boost they need. But why does his parents’ luck seem to be taking a […]
Read more "Welcome Back to Fright Nights: R. L. Stine’s Stinetinglers 2"When Big Joe and Dottie Loudermilk retired, they didn’t settle down in a comfortable house and let their children be parts of their lives. Instead, they sold their possessions, invested in an Airstream trailer and pickup truck and took to the roads to see America in all its peculiar glory. Along the way, they got […]
Read more "Trouble Magnets: Gar Anthony Haywood’s Nowhere to Go and All Day to Get There"As regular readers of this site probably gleaned, I enjoy the hell out of anthology films. The style is a great way to spin numerous short but sweet (or quick n’ dirty, if that’s your preference) yarns. Sometimes they are under a single director’s control and others bring a whole bunch of folks together. I […]
Read more "A Seasonal Feast of Blood, Violence, Depravity, and Cheer: Deathcember"
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