We are now proudly the OFFICIAL podcast of the Boston Comic Con!

So, here we are in the back 9 of this television season and it quite frankly it hasn’t been spectacular. The uber-geniuses at ABC have just the thing to make everyone stand up…… It’s titled No Ordinary Family. Here is the 411 … the story of a family whose father, Jim, a once aspiring artist finds him and the rest of his family with “abilities”. Cast includes Michael Chiklis as Jim, Julie Benz as his wife and unnamed munchkins. Continue reading…

The Dead Red Head (DRH) was recently chastised for her minimalistic review of “Dead Snow” (although I thought it covered my feelings of the movie explicitly), so I promise to make this review more verbose.
If you are looking for a quick version, know that “Paranormal Activity” is the first movie to scare the bejeezus out of the DRH in a long time. Almost all psychological scares (the best ones) with almost no blood, very little swearing and no nudity; If you’re looking for a Saturday night scare, trust me, this is the one oh boys and ghouls, end of review.
If you’re looking for more…meat, as it were…the DRH continues to extol the scare value of “Paranormal Activity”. (Spoiler Warning, Yellow Level, Nothing More Than You’d Get in a Long Preview)

Continue reading…

Our thoughts and prayers are with the family of Andrew Koenig tonight.

TV: Fringe renewed for 3rd season

Smallville renewed for 10th season, Chuck has another season but……so does Heroes.

The curse of Chi McBride continues as The Human Target tanks and will not be renewed.

Pat from Double Midnight talks about GraniteCon – March 14th in Nashua NH

David Niall Wilson interview

New novel is called “Vintage Soul”; came out in December.

http://macabreink.com/store

Answer this question in the comments to win Batman Blackest Night 1-3.

Who is the author and editor of the anthology Dangerous Visions?

Continue reading…

Our Guest: Steve Lettieri of scifinal.com & StoryForge TV

A shout out to all our international listeners.

Walter Koenig’s son (Andrew) apparent suicide.

Dead Red Head: Crazies, Nightmare on Elm Street, Alice.

Late breaking news: Max Headroom coming to DVD!

Prop Daleks go for $31,100 & $23,784 in auction yesterday.

Action Comics #1 sells for 1 million dollars; Detective #27 beats it by 70K four days later!

New Superman flick to be titled ‘Superman Unleashed’?

Video Games – Bioshock 2 and Mass Effect 2

Halftime Trivia

Fun With Internet  Sci-Fi:

Steve talks about Sci-Final.com and what it offers that nobody else does?

Which series he recommends as a starting point and why it offers a diversity that mainstream media cannot and does not.

If you read SFSN via an RSS feed you may have noticed a bit of zaniness going on this morning. Since Wordpress gave us the amazing auto-update feature, it’s really been a snap to update and I haven’t been paying so much attention to reasons for updating. Having said that, one of the settings that got by me was “number of items to include in syndication feed”. This was at the time set to 10, which only allowed our last 10 podcasts to appear in iTunes. This setting has now been changed to 1000000… which had the unfortunate consequence of marking a lot of posts unread and bumping them to the top of the feed. Many apologies for the inconvenience, but our feed should now be back to normal.

You know that “fun fact” about the frog in boiling water? The one where if you drop the frog into water that’s already boiling it will freak out because it hurts; but if you put the frog in cool water, then turn on the heat, the frog will calmly sit there and boil to death because it doesn’t notice?

I like my horror to be like the second frog. If a horror story needs to startle it’s audience to get a reaction, it’s just not a good story. Don’t get me wrong, surprises and gore and gripping moments are also key, but the mood of the story has to come gradually, so that the audience doesn’t notice until it’s too late to get out.

Douglas Clegg’s novel Neverland delivers just this kind of delicious slow horror. He moves his characters seamlessly from the everyday horror of a family falling apart to the supernatural horror of devil-worshiping children.  The child characters are refreshingly convincing, and Clegg falls into neither of the two most overused stereotypes in horror: the paragon of innocence that must be protected, or the adult/demon in a a creepy child’s body.

The real kicker of this book is its ambiguous nature. Good and Bad, Right and Wrong have no real place here. There is just the Bad Choice and the Worse Choice, giving the story a level of complexity that is utterly chilling.

Neverland is due to be released in May, but it’s available now for preorder through Amazon. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to put a library hold on one of Clegg’s other novels, because if they’re anything like this one, I’m an instant fan.

I saw Swedish Zombie film Dead Snow over the weekend. It was very slick, but I expected a lot more from it. Mostly I expected either more humor or more intensity – I was served neither. While it had moments, this one left the Dead Red Head…well…cold.

Answer this question in the comments to win a custom caricature from Scott Hamilton.

Superman first appeared in Action Comics #1; Batman first showed up in Detective Comics #27. Which comic heralded the first appearance of Wonder Woman?

Scott Wegener’s Atomic Robo on the Apple iPhone ad.

Joss Whedon to make film about San Diego Comic-Con attendees

Director Jeffrey Blitz/Producer Sean Welch making documentary on history of DC Comics

Smallville returns to Baywatch-quality scripts. You are now allowed to sleep.

Evil Wil Wheaton returns to Big Bang Theory

DVD -The Time Traveler’s Wife – It’s not science fiction. It is however a great movie!

Sheldonshirts.com has EVERY SHIRT that Sheldon has worn on Big Bang Theory; also have Leonard’s shirts, Wolowitz’ belt buckles, and a whole bunch of Big Bang stuff you need so very desperately.

Comics Corner: Legendary Talespinners #1 — buy or die.

Supergirl 50th issue – Jamal Igle has never been better

Our Guest tonight: Bill MacKenty educator & video game designer.

The Dead Redhead’s Wall of Weird!

Singapore is stealing beaches, a scoop at a time.

Doctor Who vs. Thatcher

New site dresses your inner goddess

Toblerone from outer space