Nightfall: Willoughby Obsession

Willoughby Obsession

A psychically-gifted asshat's plot to get even with his cheating wife and his cheating business partner goes pretty well right up to the moment our villain dies from stress while exerting his mighty powers. This is in the first couple of minutes and isn't what the story is about. What it's about is the struggle by a curious reporter and a reluctant cop to figure out how a wife, her husband and his partner all died in seemingly innocent events virtually simultaneously.

There seems to be a lot of adultery so far in Nightshade.

It's so weird to hear Canadians being all Canadian in these things.

Nostalgia!

Remember L5 colonies? Well,

Three space colony summer studies were conducted at NASA Ames in the 1970s. A number of artistic renderings of the concepts were made. These have been scanned and are available here as small, medium, large, and publication quality jpeg images. Scans by David Brandt-Erichsen.

An example:


I chose this one because as far as I know it contains the only non-white person ever depicted in a space colony illustration from this era.

New to me

Has anyone else heard of Damanhur?

Nightfall: Wind Chill

Wind Chill

I thought this tale of a young city woman's strange rural encounter was going to be another variation on The Wicker Man or one of Lovecraft's horrified reactions to the fact that people can be very slightly different from what he was used to. In fact, it's a variety of a fairly traditional ghost story. Thematically related video behind the cut.

Boy,sexual harassment was completely OK back then, wasn't it?

I thought the sound of snow crunching was reasonably well done. It is a bit off but how often does that sound come up on radio? Although there have been two winter stories so far...

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What's wrong with the world

Commies. Definitely Commies.

Please let this not suck

And another thing I caused

So a few months back, both AA and I discovered the book Ecotopia by way of author James Nicoll. Our reaction was pretty much the same: "Well, it's good to know the eco-liberals had their own equivalent of Atlas Shrugged." The book isn't actively repellent (mind you, that's to my politics), but is an example of the drift of leftist politics of the era taken way, way too far - black power becomes "the minorities are fine on their own," free love becomes "please partake of my bosom, guy I've barely met." This review takes pleasure in poking some holes in the feel-good utopian good time of the novel, and I can't say its critiques aren't unfounded. Needless to say, gazing upon this... thing caused quite a few plot hooks to take root.