It’s not strictly accurate to call Strange New World a Gene Roddenberry project. It’s more of a secondhand offshoot. When CBS rejected Roddenberry’s post-apocalyptic Genesis II pilot with Alex Cord, he reworked it for ABC as Planet Earth with John Saxon in the lead (a major improvement). ABC rejected it, but Warner…

You’re in luck! There actually is a (silly) explanation in the book. Alias was (as the article says) made to be a sacrifice, but she was meant to be sacrificed at a specific location, so they gave her enchanted armor that basically has extremely high levels of protection, but with an exemption for a specific…

I remember this book extremely well, since I bought it while waiting for the game to be released on the Commodore 64. I had absolutely loved Pool of Radiance, and in the computer game universe of Forgotten Realms Curse of the Azure Bonds was billed as the sequel (and indeed, you could port your party straight over…

Through the 1960s, 70s a80s, John Saxon was in every damned TV show, and his character was always damned cool.

I don’t know how many readers here ever read The Destroyer series of books by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir, but from the way main character Remo Williams was described in the book and illustrated on the covers, I’ve always been convinced that John Saxon was the inspiration.

And after seeing Enter the Dragon, I feel…

Saxon was in Planet Earth, which was one of two pilots about NASA scientist Dylan Hunt, who wakes up in a post-apocalyptic 22nd Century after being frozen for centuries and joins a team of scientists working to restore order and civilization. Alex Cord played Hunt in the other pilot, which was titled Genesis II.…

Mitchell.... Eye on the sandwich

Honorable non-genre mention: Mitchell (1975), basis for the greatest episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 ever made.

No warning about the hideously deformed faces in The Ring (the girl at the beginning and the guy at the very end both have their faces briefly shown with twisted mouths and waterlogged skin)? Those images stuck with me for weeks after seeing it the first time 15 years or so ago. 

It’s lampshaded in the book, though. The big-E Evil sorceress Alias was cloned from dressed her like that on purpose because she thought it was funny.

Amen. As I’m hacking an enemy to bits and then later picking over its corpse for anything valuable, I don’t want those remains to be culturally-insensitive.

Good lord, Wizards. Grow a backbone and stop bowing to every little complaint. I hate spiders, but I don’t expect you to remove them from the Monster Manual. 

C. sphaerospermum is a melanized, radiotrophic fungus—an organism capable of converting radioactive energy into chemical energy, which it does using melanin pigments inside its cell walls...

rrrreeeeaaaaccchhhiiinnnggg...

Mars facilities preconceptual engineering feasibility study

I see absolutely nothing that could go wrong with an 8” thick mat of Chernobyl fungus that is self-sustaining and self-replicating, and feeds on radiation. Especially not in 2020.

Don’t bother appeasing the mob.. Whatever you do is never enough

the module still gives the Vistani abilities to curse and hypnotize players or cast spells like Evil Eye, which, along with unrevised art that heavily conjures stereotyped imagery of the Romani, leans into tropes that suggest the Romani have mystical, dangerous powers, tropes that have been used in the past to target…

Do you want Triffids?

Definitely naming my garage rock band Extreme Chernobyl Fungus.