As always, December is the ideal time for retrospectives of the past 12 months:
2020 TEXAS GLADIATORS – January 1st of this year saw the publication of the movie review I’d been planning since I started Balladeer’s Blog back in 2010! My favorite bad/ weird post-apocalypse movie reviewed on New Year’s Day of the year in which it was set. How close to reality were its predictions for the future? Nowhere NEAR close but that’s part of the fun of course.
This Italian ripoff of Mad Max delivers futuristic Texas Rangers, mutants, evil villains, deadly mercenaries and Italian extras as fake Native Americans who live in absurd post-nuke teepees. It’s ideal if you love legendarily bad movies. HERE.
TWENTY GREAT ITEMS FOR THE POOR AND WORKING CLASS – A score of terrific news items for the poor and the working class to kick off 2020. HERE.
KILLRAVEN, SABRE AND THE SLOW FADE OF AN ENDANGERED SPECIES – My review of the post-apocalyptic adventures of Killraven and Sabre in the year 2020 as told from the 1970s.
I also examined the way writer Don McGregor incorporated unused elements of his canceled Killraven series into his independent Sabre graphic novel. Killraven fought for freedom from Earth’s alien conquerors. Sabre fought for freedom from a human dictatorship which arose in the aftermath of disasters involving poverty, disease, terrorist attacks and nuclear catastrophes. Read it HERE.
TWENTY MORE FAILED PREDICTIONS FROM PSYCHICS – Remember when the Battle of Armageddon was fought in the year 2000? Or the way a woman was elected U.S. President in 1990? Or the way we eliminated air pollution? You don’t? Well that’s because none of those things happened. To laugh at similar predictions click HERE.
THE LOG OF THE FLYING FISH (1887): ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION – My review of the 1887 novel about The Flying Fish, a craft capable of flying and serving as a submarine.
The vessel’s inventor and crew have adventures around the world including discovering a prehistoric oasis at the North Pole, hunting unicorns and a variety of other escapades. Click HERE. Continue reading
GULLIVAR JONES ON MARS (1905) – Written by Edwin L Arnold. In 
Gullivar Jones on Mars starts out in the late 1860s or early 1870s with U.S. Navy Lieutenant Gullivar Jones, a veteran of the Union forces in the Civil War, in New York City on shore leave. He comes into possession of a Turkish rug with unexplained mystical powers. While standing on the unrolled rug he wishes he was on Mars and the flying carpet transports him there. (?) 
GULLIVAR JONES ON MARS (1905) – Written by Edwin L Arnold, this novel was originally published under the title Lieut. Gullivar Jones: His Vacation. Years later, with the spelling of the lead character’s first name altered, it was published as Gulliver of Mars. Over the years it was revived under a variety of titles. I’m using the title that I prefer – Gullivar Jones On Mars. 
If Arnold had written this story decades later it could have been said that he was intentionally subverting the tropes of heroic sword & science epics. Unfortunately, this novel instead seems to be the victim of ineptitude on the author’s part. 
THE INCUBATED GIRL (1896) – Written by F.T. Jane, as in THE Jane who originated the Jane’s Guides. 
THE ARTIFICIAL MAN: A SEMI-SCIENTIFIC STORY (1884) – Written by an unknown figure under the pseudonym Don Quichotte. 
AROUND A DISTANT STAR (1904) – Written by Mrs Muirson Blake under the alias Jean Delaire.
THE DEATH-TRAP (1908) – Written by George Daulton, this story was published in the March, 1908 issue of Pearson’s Magazine. It’s once again Ancient Creature Feature time with this story about a monster from Lake Michigan which sometimes enters the Chicago sewer system to prey on unsuspecting denizens of the Windy City. 
He comes to regret that decision when, on a poorly-lit street, he sees a drunken sailor get dragged down into the sewer and devoured by a slimy, half-glimpsed creature. Our hero flees for his life and doesn’t stop running until he’s reached one of Chicago’s bridges.
CONSOLATIONS IN TRAVEL or THE LAST DAYS OF A PHILOSOPHER (1830) – Written by THE Sir Humphrey Davy, this is largely a work of philosophical discourse but with one section devoted to a science fiction tale: The Vision. 
The first planet they travel to is Saturn, where Davy is awestruck by the alien landscape. Strange clouds fill the skies and among the oddest planetary features are large columns of liquid which flow from the ground upward. Saturn is inhabited by intelligent beings with three pairs of wings and organs like elephant trunks dangling from their bodies. 