There’s a reason dystopian art has been around for centuries. MT White, TJ Martinell, and Chest Rockwell join PunchRiot publisher Nick August to talk about why that is, and what dystopian visions in film and fiction have to tell us. Go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6ovWZUO-AU
PODCAST SERIES This Bus Doesn’t Stop at Your Door (Notes on Writing)
This Bus Doesn’t Stop at Your Door is our first podcast series on writing. We call it a “non-course” on writing where we highlight important notes on writing given by successful writers over the years on various writing topics that we think writers of all kinds need to know. This is a five-part series of …
WEBCAST PunchCast #2: Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers w/Nick August, MT White, and TJ Martinell
Novelists TJ Martinell and MT White join PunchRiot’s publisher Nick August to discuss Heinlein’s Hugo award-winning novel Starship Troopers. Why is Starship Troopers often criticized for promoting fascism? If science fiction provides some measure of criticism of the age in which it is written, what does Starship Troopers have to say about where we’ve been …
RECAP The State of Masculine Art and Entertainment (Livestream)
We went live recently with the Masculine Geek crew (Vince, Rob, and TJ) and with Rian Stone and Roman Astral to talk a bit about masculine art, writing, and entertainment: Is there such a thing? What is it? Where does one find it? Here’s the gist of what we came up with so far: classic …
REVIEW Battling Insensate Evil Never Looked so Boss: Lightning’s Call, Book One by Vincent LaRosa
Lightning’s Call is what you’d get if Tolkien and Lovecraft co-wrote Gangs of New York and Ivan Reitman directed it as though it were Ghostbusters–while Reitman was channelling John Carpenter. Or F.W. Murnau. Nah, Carpenter, definitely–except instead of the Dead Rabbits versus the Bowery Boys, the plot spins around an agitated Civil War veteran named …
REVIEW A Salty Memoir, Salty AF: Rian Stone’s Fuccfiles: Lessons from a Decade of Women
I went back and forth on whether to write up an actual review on this one. Not because it’s not a good book, but because I couldn’t decide right away what kind of book it is. PunchRiot is a literary(tm) platform after all. Must keep hands and feet inside our stated vertical. The gods of …
REVIEW A Hard-Boiled Overnight: The Night No One Slept by TJ Martinell
When searching by title on Amazon for The Night No One Slept, TJ Martinell’s prequel to his previously (2018) published Prohibition-era novel The Men Who Walk Alone, it appears at the top of a page of books with advice for ensuring they and their newborn infants all get a a good night’s sleep. “One of …
REVIEW Apocalypse…Soon? Dead World by K.Z. Howell
One of the best things about the internet in general and self-publishing in particular is the resurgence and proliferation of the short novel, or novella. Nowhere is this better realized than in all of the genre fiction being written at less than forty-thousand words, give or take, or somewhere under two-hundred pages. I have always …
REVIEW Fast Times in the San Joaquin: Lucifer’s Hammer (1977) by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
We’re closing out obscure disaster and dystopian novel week with what may be the least obscure title. I was torn between this and Nevil Shute’s On the Beach, but I covered nuclear holocaust already war with the Alas, Babylon spot and had yet to include a book representing one of my favorite sub-genres: the “cometpocalypse”. Nominated for a Hugo …
REVIEW A Permanent Vacation in Florida: Pat Frank’s Alas, Babylon (1959)
Alas, Babylon‘s storyline is what most people think of when they think of nuclear holocaust stories even if they’ve never heard of it before. One of the first and most entertaining novels about mankind’s nuclear chickens coming home to roost, it is fast-paced and suspenseful due to plenty of action and clever exploitation of the …