If you were wandering the aisles of the video stores in the 80s like I was, you were always looking for something fun and exciting to watch and a good percentage of the time one of the films that found its way home with me, or passed to me by a friend at school would…
Category: The Book Shelf
The Hollow Places (2020) – T. Kingfisher
The Hollow Places is a wonderfully creepy novel, laced with humour and pop culture references, and less than three chapters in I decided that I definitely needed to read more of T. Kingfisher, aka Ursula Vernon. We’re introduced to Kara, 34, newly divorced, and moving in with her Uncle Earl, taking up residence in a…
Star Trek: The Next Generation – Ghost Ship (1988) – Diane Carey
Diane Carey can be forgiven for a lot of the portrayals in Ghost Ship, the first novel in The Next Generation series released by Pocket Books following the novelization of the pilot episode. The book was largely written before there was any casting in place, and she could only rely on the show’s bible to…
The Impossible Fortress (2017) – Jason Rekulak
I loved Rekulak’s Hidden Pictures, so when I checked to see what else he’d written and discovered he’d penned a coming-of-age story in the 80s with characters who were exactly the same age I was in the year 1987, I had to check it out. And I LOVED it. The Impossible Fortress takes us into…
Star Trek: The Joy Machine (1996) – James E. Gunn
James E. Gunn takes the original story treatment for The Joy Machine by Theodore Sturgeon, who gave us the TOS episodes Shore Leave and Amok Time, and turns it into a novel that feels very much like an Original Series episode. When a couple of Federation investigators disappear on a planet, one that Captain James…
Swan Song (1987) – Robert McCammon
I remember seeing the original cover for this paperback in a variety of book racks when I was a teen, and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I didn’t recognize the name of Robert McCammon at the time, though since that time Boy’s Life has become one of my favourite books. I didn’t…
Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Ultimate Visual History (2017) – Michael Klastorin
I remember the first time I watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It was 1984, it was my 13th birthday, I had read the fotonovel from the school library, was fascinated by the subject matter (I still am), and though I had seen the rubber toys in grocery stores when the film came out,…
Lords of Uncreation (2023) – Adrian Tchaikovsky
Orbit Books delivers the final book in Adrian Tchaikovsky’s The Final Architecture Trilogy, and if you dug the first two, the space opera in the third is going to let you enjoy every page as Tchaikovsky wraps things up while delivering a fast-paced, highly enjoyable tale. The Architects, strange planet-shaped beings that appear from unspace,…
How to Sell a Haunted House (2023) Grady Hendrix
I have greatly enjoyed Grady Hendrix’s books so far, there are still a couple more for me to track down, and I’m willing to say How to Sell a Haunted House is one of his best. Combining a story of loss with a puppet that seems to be the equal of the clown doll in…
Undisclosed (2017) – Steve Alten
I want to believe. I’ve said it before on this blog and in my own personal life, I’ve been fascinated by the possibilities of what and who may be out there and the idea that maybe we’ve already been in contact with. Consequently, I’m aware of Steven Greer, a former emergency room doctor who has…
The Mind Reels 