RogerBW's Blog

Re-Animator (1985) 30 April 2022

1985 horror, dir. Stuart Gordon, Jeffrey Combs, Bruce Abbott: IMDb / allmovie. New medical student Herbert West is dedicated to his work…

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Undaunted, Mike Shepherd 29 April 2022

2009 military SF, seventh of the Kris Longknife books. Kris, continuing her exploration mission, meets an oddly peaceful Iteeche ship (the aliens who almost wiped out humanity during the last big war), and doesn't get to act on what she learns.

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The Weekly Challenge 162: Playing Fair with ISBNs 28 April 2022

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved ISBN check digits and the Wheatstone-Playfair cipher. (Note that this is open until 1 May 2022.)

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The Shadow Pavilion, Liz Williams 27 April 2022

2008 urban fantasy. Detective Inspector Chen's partner has disappeared, finding himself stalked by tiger-demons. And someone is trying to assassinate the new Emperor of Heaven.

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Board Games at the Bear, 10 April 2021 26 April 2022

Missed the March meeting because I was at Airecon…

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A Merciful Fate, Kendra Elliot 25 April 2022

2019 romantic mystery, fifth in the Mercy Kilpatrick series. A body found in the woods could be connected with an armoured car robbery thirty years ago. FBI agent Kilpatrick and her police chief fiancé Truman Daly, among others, investigate.

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In the Mouth of Madness (1994) 24 April 2022

1994 horror, dir. John Carpenter, Sam Neill, Julie Carmen: IMDb / allmovie. The insurance investigator is sent to find the wildly popular horror author, who's vanished with the overdue manuscript of his latest book…

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The Laundrymen, Jeffrey Robinson 23 April 2022

1995 non-fiction, an informal look at money-laundering.

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Marlow Tabletop and Board Games 4 April 2022 22 April 2022

This Meetup-based boardgames group continues at the Marlow Donkey.

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The Weekly Challenge 161: Words and More Words 21 April 2022

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved word selections and manipulations. (Note that this is open until 24 April 2022.)

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The Falls, Kristine Kathryn Rusch 20 April 2022

2016 science fiction, fifth of its series. In the heyday of the Fleet, one of the great Sector Bases is scheduled for closure – in thirty years, but that still affects people's lives now as they plan their futures. And outside the base odd things start happening, such as two pairs of shoes left at the top of the big local waterfall…

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Pulp Fiction (1994) 19 April 2022 - 1 comment

1994 crime drama, dir. Quentin Tarantino, John Travolta, Samuel L. Jackson: IMDb / allmovie.

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To Be Taught, If Fortunate, Becky Chambers 18 April 2022

2019 science fiction novella. Four interstellar explorers discover wonders.

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Last Action Hero (1993) 17 April 2022 - 8 comments

1993 action comedy, dir. John McTiernan, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Charles Dance: IMDb / allmovie. Danny loves the Jack Slater movies, but he didn't expect to find himself in one.

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Death on the Nile 16 April 2022

1997 audio adaptation by Michael Bakewell of Christie's 1937 mystery, in five 30-minute episodes. The heiress gets married (to her best friend's former fiancé), then murdered; she's joined in the latter by what seems like half the cast.

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The Angel of the Crows, Katherine Addison 15 April 2022

2020 Victorian fantasy. Wounded in Afghanistan, Dr J. H. Doyle returns to London and takes up with a new roommate, a renegade angel interested in the solving of crime.

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The Weekly Challenge 160: Balancing Four is Magic 14 April 2022

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved English word lengths and array partitioning. (Note that this is open until 17 April 2022.)

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Airecon in 2022 13 April 2022

I went to this year's Airecon – my fifth visit to the show. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.

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Stellar Fox, Glynn Stewart 12 April 2022

2015 SF, second of its series. Kyle Roberts, former fighter jock now forced by neural implant damage into the big-ship navy, has both a good popular reputation and highly-placed enemies. Which means that his command of the new carrier is going to be more complicated than it needs to be.

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Schindler's List 11 April 2022 - 1 comment

1993 drama, dir. Steven Spielberg, Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley: IMDb / allmovie. As the Jews of Krakow are rounded up into the ghetto, one Nazi businessman sees a way to get rich.

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The Witness for the Dead, Katherine Addison 10 April 2022

2021 fantasy. Thara Celehar is a witness for the dead, a priest who can retrieve some memories of the recently-deceased. Having been of some slight assistance to the emperor, he's moved away as far as he can from the court and politics, and just wants to be able to do his job…

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Reservoir Dogs 09 April 2022

1992 crime drama, dir. Quentin Tarantino, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth: IMDb / allmovie. What happens if the manager won't give you the diamonds?

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Atlas Alone, Emma Newman 08 April 2022

2019 science fiction, a direct sequel to After Atlas. Dee made it onto the evacuation ship at the last moment, and is one of the few people who knows what happened to Earth as they left. But a mysterious someone seems to want to help her with her quest for justice.

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The Weekly Challenge 159: Farey and Moebius 07 April 2022

I’ve been doing the Weekly Challenges. The latest involved generating more sequences. (Note that this is open until 10 April 2022.)

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Burn Cycle, Joel Dane 06 April 2022

2020 young adult SF, middle volume of a trilogy. Maseo Kaytu has done the previously impossible and operated one of the mysterious CAV weapons as its pilot rather than as a remote controller. What next?

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Marlow Tabletop and Board Games 7 March 2021 05 April 2022

This Meetup-based boardgames group continues at the Marlow Donkey.

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Leave It to Psmith, P. G. Wodehouse 04 April 2022

1923 comedy. Psmith finds himself at Blandings, impersonating a squalid but trendy Canadian poet.

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Point Blank (1967) 03 April 2022

1967 crime/revenge film, dir. John Boorman, Lee Marvin, Angie Dickinson; IMDb / allmovie. Walker's partner in crime betrayed him, took his wife and left him for dead. Walker wants his money back.

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Remove the Bodies, Elizabeth Ferrars 02 April 2022

1940 murder mystery. Toby Dyke the journalist vaguely knows the young and naïve Lou Capell, so when she comes to him in tears wanting a place to sleep and to borrow fifteen pounds, he provides them, even though she refuses to explain why. Soon afterwards, he gets a phone call saying she's been murdered… US vt Rehearsals for Murder.

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March 2022 Trailers 01 April 2022 - 2 comments

Some trailers I've seen recently, and my thoughts on them. (Links are to youtube. Opinions are thoroughly personal. Calibration: I want a trailer to tell me what's different about this film; the marketers want it to tell me why it's like all the others…)

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