Paul T. Riddell has an opinion. And he’s not afraid to use it.
The Texas-based “science fiction essayist” apparently raised many an eyebrow when he wrote a ton of articles and reviews for zines and online way back when (aka the ’90s), which have been collected into two big paperbacks: GREASING THE PAN: THE “BEST” OF PAUL T. RIDDELL: VOLUME 1 OF THE PROVERBS 26:11 PAPERS and THE SAVAGE PEN OF ONAN: THE “BEST” OF THE HELL’S HALF-ACRE HERALD: VOLUME 2 OF THE PROVERBS 26:11 PAPERS.
He gave up writing in 2002, coinciding with his divorce, but people kept asking for a collection of his work, so here you go. Have two!
Among the many rants and ramblings comprising a collective 900-ish pages, you’ll learn why:
• the chain bookstores can’t properly shelve genre magazines;
• today’s horror films aren’t horror at all;
• comic-book movies are not needed;
• you should feel sorry for the toy stores with all the PHANTOM MENACE overstock;
• we should hate corporate America for killing off the Dysfunctional Family Circus website;
• William Gibson did not birth the cyberpunk movement;
• bad movies are like black tar heroin; and
• you didn’t want to work at Texas Instruments in 1989, provided you have an aversion to coming into contact with other people’s feces.
There’s some ONION-esque fake news pieces in the back of GREASING. One of them in particular cracked me up, entitled “HEAVY METAL 2000 Viewership Reaches 2000″ (“At a press conference, Eastman, visibly holding back tears of joy, said, ‘All of that effort has paid off.’”). Sometimes, Riddell takes a little too long to get to his point, but once he does, he gets off some golden lines.
He’s not afraid to tell it like it is, which is what makes these those readable, whether you agree with him or not. Their short nature — a few pages apiece — encourages picking them up during short-attention spans. Admittedly, I’m not through them all yet, but they’re sort of fun to just skip around and see what he has to say about the likes of WING COMMANDER, LEXX and whatever wretched movie the SciFi Channel dared show. —Rod Lott
Related posts:
- LIT TRIP >> Half Price Books: Austin, TX
- Greasing the Piñata
- F. Paul Wilson’s The Keep
- Savage Season / Mucho Mojo
- Jimbo / The Education of Uncle Paul
