Here are a couple more things I read this month. Modern pulp and a classic of speculative fiction.
Jangar! Citadel of the Winged Queen by L.D. Whitney (Cliffhanger! Press, 2026)
Jangar’s second story is another fast-paced pulp adventure as he finds himself fighting as a gladiator in the arena of a lost city. A fun and exciting read. Both this story and the previous one reminded me of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robet E. Howard at times.
Rating: 5/5
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison (Union Square & Co., 2026)
With AI being in the news more and more every day, I thought it was a good time to re-read Ellison’s 1967 story about an artificial intelligence keeping the last five survivors of Earth as playthings in an apocalyptic world. Just as powerful as I remember.
This new edition collects the story along with an introduction by J. Michael Stryzinski, essays by Ellison, and a response to the story written by ChatGPT. One of the essays by Ellison is on writing for the screen and as interesting as it is, it doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the material. Always good to read anything by Ellison though, especially since this hasn’t been reprinted since 1976. I could care less about the response from ChatGPT.
I’ve been reading a lot of stuff on Kindle recently, but I read this in trade paperback. I really like the design. It has an embossed cover with French flaps and the embossing, the font, and the artwork well together. The circuitry hidden within the cover design is all out on the inside of the French flaps. Unlike a lot of modern book covers, it seems like a lot of thought was put into the design for this one.
Rating: 5/5 for the story and for cover design, 4/5 for the collection as a whole.
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