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Dec 26, 2024 | 
womenwriteaboutcomics.com | Doris V. Sutherland
We have entered an era of AI slop. Periodicals are struggling with floods of submissions cooked up by ChatGPT rather than human imaginations, while readers downloading ebooks from Amazon are faced with the possibility of their latest purchase being the churned-out product of AI masquerading as actual creativity or scholarship. While science fiction is no more affected by this than any other genre, its duty to predict the future (albeit often through an escapist lens) puts it in a unique position.
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Dec 20, 2024 | 
womenwriteaboutcomics.com | Doris V. Sutherland
Humanity has lost a war with the majoda, an interplanetary association united by an artificial intelligence called the Wisdom. Earth has been destroyed, and a space station called Gaea now houses a remnant of humanity in a rigid militaristic society.
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Nov 11, 2024 | 
womenwriteaboutcomics.com | Doris V. Sutherland
Friday, 8 November saw the presentation of the fifth annual Ignyte Awards. Originally attached to the virtual convention FIYAHCON, these awards, which celebrate science fiction, fantasy, and horror by diverse creators, have continued to take place every year despite the convention being on hiatus since 2021. Here are the highlights of the 2024 Ignyte Awards.
One of the works honoured was The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera which won in the category for adult novels.
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Oct 31, 2024 | 
womenwriteaboutcomics.com | Doris V. Sutherland
Some readers may feel that, so far, the stories covered in this series on nineteenth-century American vampire literature have shown an insufficient quantity of fangs. The first part covered stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving, and Ambrose Bierce that dealt with the theme of the seductive revenant – but, strictly speaking, none were about vampires.
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Oct 25, 2024 | 
womenwriteaboutcomics.com | Doris V. Sutherland
Concluding a series that celebrates the fifty-fifth anniversary of Night of the Living Dead with a look at the classic zombie film and its many follow-ups. And here we come to the end of the line. George A. Romero’s Living Dead series – a series that lasted long enough to see official sequels, semi-official splinters, Italian mutations, and the birth of the splatterpunk movement – reaches the final instalment of its six-film canon with Survival of the Dead.
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Oct 24, 2024 | 
womenwriteaboutcomics.com | Doris V. Sutherland
Continuing a series examining the early days of American vampire fiction: Part 1 looked at the work of Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving, and Ambrose Bierce; part 2 discussed a story by James Kirk Paulding. Now, let us meet another author…Vampire literature saw two major periods of flourishment in the nineteenth century. The first came early on, during the height of the Romantic era, when Byron and Polidori laid the groundwork for the genre we know.
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Oct 17, 2024 | 
womenwriteaboutcomics.com | Doris V. Sutherland
The previous post in this series examined stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving, and Ambrose Bierce that explored the themes of macabre resurrection and twisted sexuality, thereby helping to pave the way for later generations of American vampire literature. However, none of these stories directly addressed vampire folklore. James Kirke Paulding’s 1846 story “The Vroucolacas,” which ran in Graham’s American Monthly Magazine of Literature and Art, is a different matter.
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Oct 11, 2024 | 
womenwriteaboutcomics.com | Doris V. Sutherland
Content warning: This article contains illustrated scenes of graphic violence, including sexual violence. Continuing a series that celebrates the fifty-fifth anniversary of Night of the Living Dead with a look at the classic zombie film and its many follow-ups. Anyone who takes a close look at Night of the Living Dead must surely feel pity for the film’s co-writer, John Russo. After all, it was Russo who suggested that George A.
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Oct 10, 2024 | 
womenwriteaboutcomics.com | Doris V. Sutherland
AMC’s Interview with the Vampire saw its second season this year, along with news that it had been renewed for a third season. There is evidently still life in the Anne Rice books which formed the basis of the series and gave the world the vampire antiheroes, Louis and Lestat. Rice is credited with doing more than any other author to popularise the notion of the vampire as a sympathetic protagonist, rather than a monster to be destroyed as in the works of Bram Stoker and J. Sheridan Le Fanu.
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Sep 13, 2024 | 
womenwriteaboutcomics.com | Doris V. Sutherland
Continuing a series that celebrates the fifty-fifth anniversary of Night of the Living Dead with a look at the classic zombie film and its many follow-ups. The great zombie springtime of the 2000s saw the Night of the Living Dead family tree grow back branch by branch. Romero’s series was revived; Return of the Living Dead returned; and even the Book of the Dead series had its long-delayed third volume.
