dark matter

LitStack Review: Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

Dark Matter Blake Crouch Publisher: Crown Release Date: July 26, 2016 ISBN 978-1-101-90422-0 When you read in an author’s Acknowledgements page, and he thanks his film and TV manager, and his entertainment attorney, and then you read the line, “I couldn’t ask for a stronger group trying to make XXXXX, […]

LitStack Review: Dark Orbit by Carolyn Ives Gilman

Dark Orbit Carolyn Ives Gilman Tor Release Date: July 14, 2015 ISBN 978 0-7653-3629-3 So much of the science fiction genre – the “ships in space” part of the genre – has, understandably, been based on exploration and discovery. I mean, what can be more exciting than imagining new worlds, […]

Birthdays

On this day, May 11, in 1919, screenwriter John Michael Hayes was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. Well known for his collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock (who he worked with on Rear Window, To Catch a Thief, The Trouble with Harry and The Man Who Knew Too Much), he started his writing career crafting shows for radio, which in turn led to invitation from Universal-International Pictures to write for the movies. He also penned scripts for such classics 1950s films as Torch Song, The Carpetbaggers, Peyton Place, and BUtterfield 8. He also taught film writing at Darmouth College until 2000, and died of natural
causes in 2008.

Birthdays

On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.