Thanks to the editors, Nadia Arioli and colleagues, and the supporters of Thimble for putting “Icarus” in flight. Thimble is a wonderful and very visually appealing publication with a lot of great work.
Saturday, October 11, 2025!
The Louisville Book Festival is back! This will be my fifth year attending this fantastic event. I will be selling copies of The Delphi. The Festival is always a great time–so many book people in one place. Hope to see you there! 10 am ’til 5 pm at the Kentucky International Conversation Center, downtown Louisville. Click below for more info.
A Little Adventure in the Desert
Actually, it’s a big adventure. Money back if you’re not entertained. Okay, it’s free, so there’s no money involved. But the little town of Hard Times, Nevada, is not what you’d expect. Not at all. I promise if you don’t have fun, I’ll send you a code for a free ride in my time machine, so you can get your time back. You may have heard rumors that my time machine is still experimental. Those rumors are true. But I’m working on it and will announce it here as soon as it’s operational. Watch this space.
Arthur never seemed so relevant . . .
In The Excalibur Incident, time travel meets magic, high fantasy and noir mystery in this irreverent rethinking of Arthurian legend. Philip Ashly, an adventurer who finds himself between jobs, is sent from his native twenty-first century to pre-Arthurian England and the sixth century by the magician Merlin. Merlin wants Philip to make sure Arthur, the legendary king-to-be, will pull the sword Excalibur from the stone, thus ensuring his reign and keeping history and legend intact. Along the way Philip meets Arthur’s sister Vivienne, Morgan the Shapeshifter, and young Arthur himself. But when Philip finds the sixth century, the sword Excalibur, and Prince Arthur and the Knights are not at all what he expected, he must make a decision. Should he should try to complete the task Merlin sent him to do? He must also consider what the consequences for history and time itself will be if he fails to complete his mission.
Stephen King
A Review of Stephen King’s You Like It Darker
Reviewed by David Rogers
Stephen King’s latest collection of shorter fiction has something for everyone—at least, for everyone who is a fan of Stephen King. I say “shorter fiction” because at least one of the stories in You Like it Darker, “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,” pushes the definition of “short story” toward the realm of the novella. But I will leave the job of defining a precise boundary between short stories and novellas (or novels) to those with no truly pressing matters to analyze. We have more urgent questions to discuss, like which of these new King stories will likely give you nightmares.
The collection displays the range we’ve come to expect from King, from supernatural horror to the sort of horror found in vintage King stories like “Apt Pupil” or Roadwork, in which the most frightening aspect of the story is simply human nature at its worst or most destructive. For example, the new story “Wilie the Weirdo” portrays a boy’s fascination–or perhaps “obsession” is more accurate– with death and dying. It also features a realistic portrait of a quietly dysfunctional family that needs no assistance from the Great Beyond to generate its own disturbing reality.
However, “Rattlesnakes,” in this new collection, also exemplifies King’s flair for supernatural scares–and be forewarned, if a viper-related phobia keeps you awake at night, “Rattlesnakes” may well give you permanent insomnia. “Laurie,” in contrast, while terrifying in its own very earthly, non-supernatural way, also turns out to be in large measure an ultimately heartwarming and comforting story about friendship between a man and his dog. Granted, adjectives such as heartwarming may call to mind sentiments King is not often accused of indulging. But again, this collection has range, often in the same story, from the stuff of sweaty bad dreams to the soothing hot chocolate one might use to recover from those episodes.
The lead story, “Two Talented Bastids” is noteworthy on several counts. First, insofar as genre matters, the story is more fantasy, with a hint of science fiction, than anything else. Second, in reading “Bastids,” those who have immersed themselves thoroughly in the King landscape may occasionally be reminded of The Tommyknockers. This is not to say the new story is a rehash of old ideas—far from it. Some similar questions are posed in both the older story and the new. Very different answers are given. Finally, to effectively use the term ‘Bastid’ as an affectionate label rather than an insult, a writer probably has to have lived in Maine for decades and let the state make its mark on the psyche. Employing the regional vernacular as King does might be risky for writers of lesser stature or ones who have not graced that state with their presence as long as King has.
We also find a couple of “bad cop” stories in You Like It Darker. Both of these, “Rattlesnakes” and “Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream,” have other noteworthy features, but both stories show a willingness to depart from the essentially positive portraits of police officers readers find in Kings underappreciated Dark-Tower-related novel From a Buick 8. The new stories do not read as indictments of law enforcement in general. However, the bad behavior of certain officers in these stories provides examples of why no individual should be put on a pedestal simply because of their profession. For those who long to see police officers in a positive light, in these new stories King also gives us good cops who tend to balance the effects of the bad ones.
Anyone who has never before read Stephen King will find You Like It Darker to be as good a place to start as any. For the Constant Reader, it delivers more of what we’ve come to know and love in King’s Worlds.
Asimov’s!
My poem “Train” is out in the May/June issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction.
Review–The Great When: A Long London Novel by Alan Moore
Review by David Rogers
If you are familiar with Alan Moore only as the writer of the Watchmen comic book series or the brains behind V for Vendetta, you might be surprised to find his work does not depend on comic book artists or film or television to bring it to life. In The Great When, Moore displays his familiarity with literary tradition, including references to other British writers such as Max Beerbohm and Arthur Machen. Make no mistake–The Great When: A Long London Novel is a very British book, in the best sense of the description. Setting, characters, language–all immerse the reader in the gritty side of post-World-War-II London. The story also carries the reader through seams and cracks in that London to another city, a fantasy London casual visitors are unlikely to glimpse. Fans of the great Douglas Adams, especially his Dirk Gently novels (which are much, much more rewarding than the eponymous TV series), will sense echoes of Adams’ London in Moore’s Long London.
Moore’s work may most often land in the horror pile when it is classified only by genre. Nevertheless, few writers have enscribed characters as delightful, outrageous, surprising, and downright hilarious as Coffin Ada, the owner of the bookshop where the naive young main character, one Dennis Knuckleyard, lives and works when first we meet him. Visitors to Moore’s Long London may be reminded of other British writers and their characters as well. It is impossible not to think of Ents when we meet Moore’s Gog. Surely P.G. Wodehouse would love the farce played out between Dennis (who, unlike Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster, knows his own limitations painfully well) and the hapless restaurant manager who believes Dennis to be “Lord Oxydol.” This is not to imply Morre has borrowed too heavily from other writer’s characters, but only to note how Moore partakes of and extends comical and fantastic traditions. He thus creates a rich, resonant atmosphere fertilized by the past as well as the present.
Observant despite his naivety, as a main character Dennis serves as an ideal vehicle through which the third-person narrator can explore parts of London that don’t appear on websites for tourists. Not even on websites that warn visitors of neighborhoods to approach cautiously or not at all. For such enlightenment, read Moore’s The Great When.
As is usualy the case, classifying a work within a genre does little or nothing to say what is worthwhile about it. Fans of horror will find much to entertain and inform them in Long London and its monsters. Those for whom monsters alone are not enough will also be delighted.
Ready for a trip to the 6th century?
Join us in The Excalibur Incident and see what happens! http://Amazon David Rogers The Excalibur Incident
Let me tell you a story . . .
Better yet, you can listen for free, or read for free (https://talltaletv.com/val-and-the-vorpal-sword/). What if we do audacious things to the Beowulf story and add a dash of Jabberwocky? Here’s what we get.
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