I'm wounded but you can't see it!


A lot of stories involve a wounded and/or flawed character. It's a staple of strong storytelling; a character has some kind of pain or wound to overcome, and that's the inner journey they take along with whatever outward ...

I remember when cell phones began to get popular and pervasive. As a fan of horror movies, I said to myself “well, that's the end of a lot of horror stories!”

With cell phones, it doesn't matter if you're stuck at camp or in a creepy house ...

In the early 80's, thanks to the success of Halloween and Friday the 13th, a slew of slasher movies was released. There was even a documentary about the glut of imitators that flooded the theaters/video stores for a few years.

There was a smaller trend (smaller in several ...

Malcolm Gladwell was in an interview, and expressed a theory, or mini-theory. He talked about the show Law and Order and how it works, with almost every episode a comforting victory of the system.

From there, he theorized four types of fictional approaches, calling them the Western, the Eastern, the ...

I've had the conversation multiple times - maybe based on something I read in the past - that the
business of taking care of your money, your credit, taxes and expenses is something that was never touched on when I went to school.

Well, these have been proclamations rather than conversations ...

Star Trek: A Piece of the Action

So this could be considered Part Three of my loose-knit series on science fiction: The Distorted Society.

This is a sci-fi convention where there is an Earth…or another planet, at least somewhat Earth-like, that has some aspect of society that is a ...

A conceit or gimmick on the series ‘24’ was that it took place in real time. One hour on the show was one hour of activities, and the 24-episode season covered the events of a single day.

As entertainment, I loved that show, and appreciated the gimmick of it with ...

It's a strange thing in recent years that following the behind-the-scenes craziness and
mixed-disastrous results of modern franchises is far more interesting and entertaining than anything in the movies and shows themselves.

Now that the fandoms, including those who enjoy the new chapters of beloved franchises, hate them, or ...

Ideas both big and deep can - and has - been explored in Sci Fi. Some themes that have resonated with me include ‘What it Means to be Human’. This could be said to be the point of ALL fiction in a way I suppose. But to explore humanity through the lens ...

When he created the Twilight Zone, Rod Serling was motivated by the desire to tell more meaningful stories. In his writing career up to then, his work had been heavily censored.

Serling realized that by setting his stories in fantastical situations, in alternate or futuristic versions of Earth, that he ...