More Words, Deeper Hole

Murder Mysteries - Part 1
Murder Mysteries - Part 2

In return for a cigarette and a light, a seemingly homeless man spins a tale about the Angel of the Lord's Vengeance and the time it solved the very first murder.

Well, at least the killer was not (rot13ed for spoiler) Yhpvsre. For a long time I thought this would be one of those stories where the Christian god comes off as criminally negligent and a bit of a mouth-breather but in fact He is a complete sociopath who is happy to grind people up to make his pretty model's gears go round.

I did not care for the twist ending.

Once again, some interesting names in the cast.

Cast:
Brian Dennehy as Raguel
Anne Bobby as Tink’s Friend
Christopher Burns as Saraquael
Thom Christopher as Lucifer
Ed Dennehy as Zephkiel
Michael Emerson as Narrator
Traci Godfrey as Tinkerbell Richmond
Evan Pappas as Phanuel

Marilyn or the Monster - Part 1
Marilyn or the Monster - Part 2

A Vietnam vet - remember those? There was a war in South East Asia that made the news and everything - very reluctantly seeks therapy. The psychiatrist thinks the vet has PTSD and insists on digging down to the source of the protagonist's problem.

Not my thing. I kept zoning out during this so I don't have an opinion about it.

John Heard as Jack
Thom Christopher as the Psychiatrist
Michele Santopietro as Marilyn
Christopher Burns as Soldier #1
Jim Carroll as Soldier #2
Tucker Smith as the Sergeant

Breakaway, Breakdown

A woman hopped up on drugs aimed at reducing her social inhibitions chatters away at a surly clerk trying to fix the woman's shoe. She recounts how it was she did not stay in space, in the process revealing just how extreme the adaptations required for living in that environment are.

I didn't like any of the characters in this but it was actually pretty engaging, when I didn't want to smack the protagonist with a nerf bat. Reminded me of elements of Usurper of the Sun.

Cast:
Jacqueline Cuscuna as Cleo
Tara Sands as Jane
Lynette Sheldon as Elena
Christopher Burns as Pocket Jesus
Alissa Hunnicutt as Lucy
George Zarr as Computer

The Nostalgianauts

Someone, somewhen, invents a restricted form of time travel which people then proceed to use in a pretty banal way: to go back and watch pivotal moments in their own lives (and by being seen, reveal the importance of those moments to their younger selves, locking history down in the process). Our protagonist, oddly only known as "the Girl", is a misfit in a small town that doesn't think much of misfits; her main source of solace is Gar, the local bright boy.

The Girl doesn't think much of people who grow up to be so focused on their own history as the Nostalgianauts have and she is torn between not wanting to be one of those people and not wanting to be left out of the important moments, or worse, reduced to "bystander". What message could her older self have that wouldn't horribly constrain the life the Girl could then live?

I liked this a lot, actually. I think it might be one of those well-known stories I've somehow managed to miss. I was a bit worried it would all turn out to be about Gar but it doesn't.



Starring:
Kate Simses as The Girl
Beng Spies as Gar
Larc Spies as Jock 1 and Class President
Derek Dooley as Jock 2 and Jean-Luc
Jane Gennaro as Mom and Mrs. Trout
Leah Applebaum as Net-Girl and Phone Voice

In The Shade of the Slowboat Man

I stopped listening to this tale of a vampire and the man I expect it would have turned out she loved because it turns out the answer to "how long can I listen to a story composed of a seemingly endless string of cliches" is eleven minutes.


Cast:
Annabella Sciorra as the Vampire
Richard Edward Long as John Morgan
Christopher Burns
Alissa Hunnicutt
Andrew Joffe
John Kolvenbach
Christine Lavren

A Dry Quiet War - Part 1

A Dry Quiet War - Part 2

A veteran of a Space/Time War returns to his home town, which is on the dusty planet of the Space Oirish. He soon discovers there are other veterans hanging around, using their enhancements to prey on the townsfolk. Unfortunately, if he acts, it may unravel history. On an unrelated note, the framing sequence seems to indicate history was somehow unraveled.

Gardner Dozois liked this enough to collect it at least five times that I can see and I think I've read three of the anthologies. I really don't think the story is well served by the decision to make everyone except Bone talk like old timey Irish from Vaudeville. I'm also pretty sure I saw a western with the exact same plot, only without the raped-with-a-ultra-space-baton bit needed to truly motivate the protagonist.




Cast:
Wilbur Fitzgerald as Henry Bone
Sheila Head as Bex Thredmartin
Tuck Milligan as Marek
Fran Rizzo as 2X2L
Mort Banks as Peter Thredmartin
Andrew Joffe as Father Wu
Jane Gennaro as Garnoth the Halandana
Ed Lane as Rall Mfutu and Adjutant
Karen Braga as Proximity

Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Ichabod Crane, an unlovable teacher adept at sponging off the local community, has his eye on the attractive Katrina Van Tassel and more to the point, on her father's vast wealth. Alas for Ichabod, he has a rival and his rival is willing to go to some extremes to deal with the teacher.

It's kind of obvious Miss Van Tassel is not in fact interested in Ichabod, save as a means of securing Van Brunt's attention by making him jealous. Which is fine because Ichabod is mainly after her money, not her heart.

You know, I've never read the original. The story does not seem to be overburdened with sympathetic characters....


Cast:
P. J. Sosko as Hendrick
Paul Amadeo as Hans and Messenger
Paul Singleton as Ichabod Crane
David Grunner as Kid 1
Laura Sheridan as Kid 2
Timmy Rifesnider as Kid 3
Rebecca Nice as Mrs. O’Brien and Neighbor
Alissa Hunnicutt as Katrina Van Tassel and James
Andrew Joffe as Baltus Van Tassel
Jef Betz as Brom Bones
Cheryl Blake as Neighbor

Fire Watch - Part 1
Fire Watch - Part 2

A student, having studied for one era is tossed back into a completely different one to carry out ... research seems too kind a word. Clumsy bumbling around while testing the limits of causal protection (for what it's worth, basically blabbing out history to come to people in WWII London does not break history) and making blind accusations of treason based on Insane Troll Logic (which to be fair, other people are also using) is a bit closer. He discovers WWII was in many respects unpleasant.

I had such fond memories of this story.

Every single thing that was wrong with Black Out/All Clear was there right from the beginning, wasn't it. Well, except for the page count bloat.

You know, one odd thing about this setting is that if this was my only evidence I'd conclude Willis never went near a university in her life but not only does she have a degree, her husband is a professor. Despite this, it's kind of hard to reconcile this with any post-secondary program I am aware of.

Did we get an explanation as to what happened to cats in the original story? And was it related to how every single revolving door in the world was removed so thoroughly that even knowledge of them was gone by the 2060s?

Did they expand the Commie Terrorists Destroy St. Paul's and also a lot of England and less important places plot? I don't remember that taking up as much time in the original short story. I also don't recall the pinpoint bomb being quite that powerful but it could be it was and I just missed it.

Ignoring Europe (which got done in by fallout), incinerating all of London out to the A20 takes a 10 MT device and since this was a ground burst I think you have to quadruple the yield. That sounds like a hell of a yield to get out of a nuke small enough to be hidden in whatever one Neo-Commie Terrorist could carry into St. Paul's without being seen. I think in theory you can get 50 kilotons/kilogram of fusion device but that would make still the St Paul's pinpoint bomb around 800 kg, which still seems a little big to slip into one's backpack.


Cast:
Sebastian Roché as Bartholomew
Rika Daniel as Frieda
Ian Reed as Langby
George Holmes as Dunworthy
Rita Ben-Or
Anthony Ferguson
Nicholas Haylett
Gideon Juvenal
Ron Keith
Giovanni Pucci
John Rainer
Dieter Riesele
Vicki Stuart
Felix Van Dyke
Nicky as the Cat

The Lucky Strike Part 1
The Lucky Strike Part 2

A tragic accident kills the men who in our history dropped the Bomb on Hiroshima; as a result a new crew including a bombardier psychologically unsuited for the job of dropping an atomic device on a city. Unexpectedly his decision to sabotage the mission does not sabotage the Allied war effort.

Yeah, this is the sort of fuzzy-minded liberal clap-trap KSR's fans just lap up. In our history, nuking Hiroshima was not enough to get the Japanese to surrender, so why would incinerating a bunch of trees get them to surrender?

Did the original have the "it's all evil Truman's fault; St. FDR the Blessed, the guy during whose presidency the A-bomb was developed, would never have actually let anyone use the device into which a surprising amount of resources had been poured during a time of war" angle this one does?

Even given the problems with the second bombing mission, the US had a third atom bomb and the target for it would have been, iirc, Sapporo. If the Bombs had failed, I think it's plausible that the Allies would have had to go with
Operation Downfall; in addition to this, the Japanese war machine would have continued grinding up people in its maw.

(This is the mirror image of Turtledove's "The Last Article", isn't? I know if I ever get to edit Dumbass Alternate History Stories That Insult The Readers Intelligence and Yet Are Popular Thanks to Their Ideological Pandering, both of them would be in it).

Well, thank goodness I have this one behind me.
Cast:
Timothy Hutton as Frank January
Jonathan Davis as Cpt. McDonald
Richard Ferrone as Dr. Forest
Michael Hannon as Cpt. Shepard
Hank Jacobs as Cpt. Jim Fitch
Peter Francis James as Father Getty
Tuck Milligan as Colonel Scholes
Scott J. Rayow as Colonel Dray
Abigail Rose Revasch as Audrey
Ross Stoner as Lieut. Matthews
Mather Zickel as Haddock

Titanic Dreams

This involves two people who experience and then survive the loss of the Titanic in quite different ways: a woman makes it to a life boat and then somehow appears in the modern day Bermuda Triangle. The other survivor survives via a strange transformation, into conscious water drifting aimlessly through the sea.

Cast:
Gigi Edgley as The Woman
Clancy Brown as The Man
Debi Mae West as Roberta
Tuck Milligan as The Husband
Jane Gennaro as The Wife