The new BRUTARIAN is here

Hey folks, in between my copious amounts of non-posting here on the blog, I sometimes manage to squeeze in occasional, for-real publication in actual dead tree media. Brutarian Quarterly no. 53 is a case in point.



Aside from the spiffy cover, this issue of Brutarian is worth picking up for the contributions inside from yours truly, first and foremost being an interview with the great SF writer and reformed journalist Allen Steele. Here's a sampling of what's in store:

BRUT: You won your first Hugo in 1996 for "The Death of Captain Future." I have to ask you, though, were you influenced in any way by S.J. Perelman's 1940 essay "Captain Future, Block That Kick!"?

STEELE: No, I hadn't even heard of that one before I wrote my story. In fact, a friend of mine, Rob Chilson, gave me that one later on, and I was highly amused. But no, I hadn't heard of it before.

What I was influenced by, of course, were the Captain Future stories themselves. I read those when I was a kid. It was a part of this fascination I had as a pre-teen with pulp fiction that started with Doc Savage and continued through with reading reprints of The Shadow, G-8 and His Battle Aces, Conan and so forth. Captain Future, although he wasn't my favorite of those pulp heroes, somehow there was something about him that really stuck in my head. Many years later I decided that I wanted to try to write a pulp story for the 90s, and it came back to Captain Future. But I didn't want to do a parody, and I didn't want to do a Captain Future story, pre se; for one thing, I didn't think I could get the rights to the character.

So I did sort of a reflection on it. I did a story about somebody who's obsessed with Captain Future to the point that he's trying to emulate him, even though this person has no right in the world to be anybody's hero, and how his personality conflicts with somebody who in some ways does have Captain Future's attributes, somebody how really is something of a heroic type.

It was a lot of fun to write and I can't be more pleased by the fact it's remained popular, is still read and has been translated many times. Now there's even an audio production out there from Audible.com.

In addition to a handful of book reviews contributed by myself, the issue also contains the usual glorious lineup of underground and off-kilter fare. Highlights include an interview with "Scream Queen" Linnea Quigley, she of countless low-budget horror flicks, including "Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers," a personal favorite.

At just $5 an issue, it's cheaper than most other mind-altering substances. Drop by the website and tell Dom you want a copy or six.