The Top 11 Genre Media ...

This is Part 2. You can find Part 1 (and the introduction) HERE. 5. Twilight The runaway success of what is essentially a non-ironic vampire soap opera is vexing for fans of more traditional genre media. It also seems to come without the usual focus on deep story and “realism” that...

Fantasy: Always a Narra...

I’m rereading Robert McKee’s STORY for my comic writing class. (That I’m taking from Brian Michael Bendis, because it’s awesome.) In the book McKee discusses how Fantasy is the genre that ends up hewing most closely to a classic narrative structure. Since in most...

James Cameron’s A...

Avatar has taken a lot of heat because the story is relatively simplistic, and it’s fair to say that you won’t be surprised by the events as they unfold. But let’s give credit where credit is due: The story is, for the most part, motivated by character, even if that happens in much...

Kiss the Future Dubai...

I’ve been thinking a lot about the fate of speculative fiction over the last week, and it’s been impossible for me to consider it without also thinking about the collapse of Dubai. Take a look at these pictures and tell me that you don’t get a least a little bit of a...

Batman: Arkham Asylum &...

I’m about halfway into the new Batman game, and I already love it. And it’s not because it’s actually a great game. The thing is clunky in twenty different ways, not in the least of which is that Batman can’t actually jump, which is a usually sure sign that at some point in the...