Wandering Through Another Mid-40's Birthday

 

Here I am continuing to wander through my mid-40's. That's right, it's time for my annual birthday post!

The Depths of Darkness: Fairy Tale by Stephen King

 

Today happens to be Stephen King's birthday, so my present for Uncle Stevie is a review of his latest novel!

I was eagerly awaiting King's return to fantasy, and Fairy Tale did not disappoint. It's not a mere retelling of any particular fairy tale, but it's more like the answer to the question, "What if Stephen King wrote a fairy tale?" And there are depths to it that may surprise King newbies, but won't surprise Constant Readers.

Prey (2022) and Predators

 

Back in the day (the 1980's) I was a huge Arnold Schwarzenegger fan. (To be honest, I still am.) And one of my favorite of Arnold's 80's heyday was Predator (1987). I was a kid at the time, but something about the story intrigued me. Maybe it was that it started as a Rambo-type military story and became a much weirder science fiction story. Maybe it was my nascent love of stories that turn the tables on preconceived notions, a love that has only deepened over time. Maybe I just thought the Predator was cool.

Over the intervening decades I have watched most of the later iterations of the Predator, most of which were okay but none of which quite captured the same feeling as the original for me. Still, I was really excited when I heard that the newest Predator movie would be set in the early 1700's in North America and most of the human cast would be Native American. What a cool idea!

Hugo Results 2022!

 

I didn't make it to Chicago in person for Worldcon this year, but I did watch most of the Hugo ceremony online. You can find the results here.

It looks like I did pretty well this year picking winners. You can see my picks here and here. I picked the winner for Best Short Story, Novelette, and Novella. 

I was starting to feel like I had my finger on the pulse of the Hugo voters, but then I didn't pick the winner for Best Novel. I really liked all the novel nominees so I can't complain. While I personally didn't like A Desolation Called Peace quite as much as its predecessor A Memory Called Empire, I'm glad to see Arkady Martine win another Hugo.