Author Archive: UncleGeoff
Geoff Willmetts has been editor at SFCrowsnest for some 15 plus years now, showing a versatility and knowledge in not only Science Fiction, but also the sciences and arts, all of which has been displayed here through editorials, reviews, articles and stories. With the latter, he has been running a short story series under the title of ‘Psi-Kicks’
If you want to contribute to SFCrowsnest, read the guidelines and show him what you can do. If it isn’t usable, he spends as much time telling you what the problems is as he would with material he accepts. This is largely how he got called an Uncle, as in Dutch Uncle. He’s not actually Dutch but hails from the west country in the UK.
Doing Time by Jodi Taylor (book review).
You would think that the first three chapters from individual first person perspectives of the three key players that Jodi Taylor’s novel, ‘Doing Time’, would be doing the same throughout. It doesn’t. From therein, it becomes a third person narrative. These three chapters do suffer a bit. Mostly because they are in first person and […]
Back Issue #116 October 2019 (magazine review).
As Mike Eury explains in his editorial that the Mike Golden draw cover was drawn for him as a homage to Superman # 138 years ago and with a proper colour job used here. This ‘Back Issue’ falls in line with Halloween so the slant for horror is here this time. This begins with a […]
Retro Fan #6 Fall 2019 (magazine review).
The opening features of the latest edition of ‘Retro Fan’ is pure Americana as I can’t recall them ever being shown over here. The first is an interview by Dan Johnson with TV horror host Svengoolie although I think he should have been called Son Of Svengoolie as he’s the second of that name. Amusingly, […]
Images Of The Past: A Century Of Man-Made Disasters by Nigel Blundell (book review).
I have to confess that the main interest in reading about disasters is ensuring that such things should never happen again and lessons were learnt from it. Nigel Blundell’s book, ‘Images Of The Past: A Century Of Man-Made Disasters’ covers 15 significant ones, although some chapters, deal with collective ones as that befallen the American […]
The Future Of Erotic Fantasy Art by Paul Peart-Smith (book review).
I pulled my copy of ‘The Future Of Erotic Fantasy Art’ four years ago and using some spare time to catch up with this book and found mint copies are still out there. The first introduction by artist Chris Achillés defines ‘erotic art’ as featuring women in a state of undress but not necessarily of […]
Roman Soldier Operations Manual by Simon Forty (book review).
When I was originally offered books from Haynes new range based on historical warriors, I did wonder if it fell in our remit. However, with so many books in our genre resetting history or even telling tales with a historic background, then they do make for useful research. Simon Forty’s book, ‘Roman Soldier Operations Manual’, […]
Anackire (The Wars Of Vis Trilogy book 2) by Tanith Lee (book review).
When the term ‘prolific’ is used to describe a writer, the implication often is that the resulting work will be the kind of enjoyable romp, characteristic of the old pulps. Often this assumption is true and there are many readers who appreciate this kind of book. Rarer is to find a prolific writer whose works […]
Sunburst Award winner for 2019 (award news).
The Sunburst Award Committee has announced the winners of the 2019 Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantasticin Adult, Young Adult, and Short Story categories. The winner of the 2019 Sunburst Award for Adult Fiction is Plum Rains by Andromeda Romano Lax (Penguin Random House Canada). The Sunburst Jury commented:- “Plum Rains […]
Editorial – October 2019: Charisma is never enough.
charisma /kəˈrɪzmə/ noun noun: charisma; plural noun: charismata 1. “he has tremendous charisma and stage presence” compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others. synonyms: charm, presence, aura, personality, force of personality, strength of character, individuality; More magnetism, animal magnetism, drawing power, attractiveness, appeal, allure, pull; magic, spell, mystique, glamour “some managers acquire […]
Calling International Rescue: an article by: GF Willmetts.
With two slightly different versions of ‘Thunderbirds’ TV series out there, it did make me ponder on a very real point. If there really was a secret organisation intent on appearing when normal rescues were impossible to do that very thing in our type of world there would be different repercussions, more so in a […]
