“I can’t find them. They’re gone. I can’t even prove they existed.” The loose thematic inspiration for The Twilight Zone episode “And When The Sky Was Opened,” Richard Matheson’s short story entitled “Disappearing Act” is uniquely distinct from The Twilight Zone episode that it inspired. Both the episode and the…
Radio Play Review: The Hitch-Hiker (1941) by Lucille Fletcher
“I know at this moment that I’m perfectly sane. That it’s not me who has gone mad…” Recently, I sat down and listened to Orson Welles’s magnificent and haunting radio performance of Lucille Fletcher’s chilling ghost story, “The Hitch-Hiker,” which was first written and performed in 1941. This was in…
Star Trek Book Review: Best Defense (2016) by David Mack
“It was an outrageous proposition. A mission doomed to fail. Una didn’t care.” Stardate: Unknown (2268) At the start of Best Defense, a historian’s note tells us that this novel takes place after the Enterprise’s diplomatic mission to Babel (“Journey to Babel”), one week after the mission to Argus X…
Goosebumps Review #31: Night of the Living Dummy II (1995) by R.L. Stine
“And then, to my horror, the wooden lips parted. The red mouth slowly opened. And Slappy let out a soft, evil, ‘Hee hee hee.’” Amy Kramer is the middle child of three children and she is miserable. Her older sister, Sara, is a “genius painter,” and her annoying goofball brother,…