Month: December 2011

Leonard Maltin in Gremlins 2

I don’t have guilty pleasures. If I like something, it’s worth my unashamed praise. But if I did have a guilty pleasure, it’d be Gremlins 2. I really didn’t like the first one, but I wouldn’t say I hated it. On paper, the sequel sounds even worse. It sounds downright awful. Amazingly, it’s one of the most original and entertaining Hollywood films ever made. Don’t believe me? Just look at this mash-up between it and Where The Wild Things Are:

You know who else didn’t like the first Gremlins? Movie critic Leonard Maltin. So what did the filmmakers do? They put him in the sequel. (For the record, Maltin gave the second film a positive review. I think he should have taken a note from Ebert and neglected to review a movie he took part in making. Kind of seems like cheating, no?)

A lot of fans are begging for another Gremlins movie. Perhaps they’re overlooking the fact that Joe Dante probably wouldn’t come back to direct and the movie would be so full of soulless CGI (instead of the convincing puppetry of the first two films) it’d be as bad as, well, Critters 3.
Yes. That is a young Leonardo DiCaprio.

Free Story: If I’m Here, Imagine Where They Sent My Luggage by Robert J. Sawyer

Robert J. Sawyer’s upcoming novel Triggers is currently being serialized in Analog. It’s fantastic so far. It’s like a Tom Clancy novel combined with a science-gone-wrong plot that isn’t anti-science. If you hit the bookstore right now, you should be able to catch it from the first. Or download the digital issue of Analog. It’s like two or three bucks depending on whether or not you subscribe.

Last month’s Apex saw the arrival of a new editor, who in his first editorial mentions something Elizabeth Bear said: science fiction is currently in its rainbow era. She’s right. There isn’t one thing that science fiction is doing right now.

So for this week’s free story, I thought I’d find something by Sawyer. I’m not the hugest fan of flash fiction, but I’m not so close-minded I’d ignore it. This story is two hundred and fifty words long and it feels right. If I’m Here, Imagine Where They Sent My Luggage.

You can find other free stories of his here.