Adam Rowe

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When Genre Tropes Go Bad

Maddd Science I really wanted to title this letter "When Good Tropes Go Bad." I can't, though! Because the point I'm making here is that when we realize tropes are rooted in some kind of nasty prejudice, they don't become bad, they

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Indiana Jones

Note: This issue comes with a trigger warning for rape. Nothing graphic, but it's a little blunt, so if you don't want that in your life today, you might consider bailing out now. Thanks. Maddd Science When it comes to fictional characters that really deserve their

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Voyages to the Moon

Maddd Science My favorite Christmas gift this year? Voyages to the Moon, a 1948 exploration of humanity's millennia-long obsession with visiting the moon, written by Dr. Marjorie Hope Nicolson (the first woman to be a Columbia University grad school professor, according to her Wikipedia page). I have to

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Movie Titles

Maddd Science Okay, weird theory time. It’s known that people who read more books are more likely to use complex and lengthy sentence structures, while audio and video watchers are more accustomed to the shorter, naturalistic sentences. I wonder if the minimalist trend in 21st century movie titles — they’

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AI and Gender

Yeah, I know: A lot has been said about gendered AI, both in fiction and in real life. I've got a theory about it, but first, here's a look at the articles that helped me come up with it. This We Are The Mutants article focuses

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The Haunting of Hill House

Maddd Science Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House is pretty great, in my opinion. Granted, I agree that the ending of the show is as bad as everyone's saying it is. But almost the entire season leading up to it is a propulsive puzzle-piece family drama

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Anti-Semitic Genre Fiction

Maddd Science Well, right up until yesterday I was still planning to run the Haunting of Hill House themed issue that I promised last time. Instead, I'm moving up a future issue I was planning, in light of yesterday's mass murder in a Pittsburgh synagogue --

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Wattpad

Maddd Science I've been tracking social writing network Wattpad's push for coverage of their book, film, and TV deals over the past couple weeks. They're pioneering a new path for creatives that's really interesting to me: I love exploring how different forms

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History of Paperbacks

Maddd Science I was recently researching the 21st century's history of paperback books for a new project, and figured I'd let you all in on a couple of the most useful articles I found on the subject. Here's Andrew Liptak's overview. The

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The McScam Article

Maddd Science Hot on the heels of last week's newsletter about the stories behind films, here's a nearly identical topic: The story behind the greatest soon-to-be-a-film story ever written: The McScam article. There are layers to this newsletter, lemme tell ya. It comes in three parts.

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The Story Behind the Film

Maddd Science One element of media that I've found I'm more interested in than most fiction startups is the process by which a story gets turned into a film. Apparently the process isn't lucrative enough to be cost-effective for most social writing networks, with

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The Plot Twist

Maddd Science This article holds spoilers for The Sixth Sense, although, if you haven't had The Sixth Sense spoiled for you, have you really lived? The science of the plot twist: How writers exploit our brains Vera Tobin, The Conversation When we know the resolution of an event

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Steve Ditko

Maddd Science Last month, Steve Ditko died at 90. The guy's kinetic fingerprints are all over the Marvel universe -- Iron Man's red and gold color scheme was his idea, and so was the idea that Banner Hulks out when he's angry (instead of

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Westworld

Maddd Science “Puzzle box” TV shows are mindless summer blockbusters in TV form: They both eschew characters and realistic plots for guilty-pleasure spectacle. Insane conspiracy theories are disaster porn for the brain, since we’re hardwired to see patterns everywhere, and puzzle box TV can get more attention in a

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Ancient Astronaut "Theory"

Maddd Science On why ancient astronaut theory is explicitly racist. Turns out 70s-era sci-fi played a big part in why we've suffered through 13 seasons of Ancient Aliens on the "History" channel. Technology Worship and Human Debasement in Erich von Däniken’s ‘Chariots of the Gods?

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Heists

Maddd Science If you ask me, the heist movie is the purest wish-fulfillment film genre. Sure, Superhero movies are the other big example, but they're bogged down with all that spectacle. Heist movies are entirely about a perspective that's unknowable by definition, the successful criminal, which

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Chesley Bonestell

Maddd Science As the sole proprietor of the 70s Sci-Fi Art blog, I see a lot of sci-fi art centered on a very specific time period. There's a reason I went so specific: Just "retro" sci-fi is a term that can cover anything from the 1920s

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Solo

Maddd Science Solo: A fun time. The surprising stuff was good, the perfunctory stuff was bad. But the plot made more sense than Rogue One. And not to get into spoilers, but that uprising from an oppressed class halfway through was a nice worldbuilding move. How has that never come

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Superheroes II

Maddd Science Marvel Is Still Trying To Solve Its Villain Problem In ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Vince Mancini, Uproxx The age of the franchise film has turned moviegoing into a sort of Fantasy Movie Exec game, where we discuss each installment mostly in terms of what it means for that franchise.

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Babylon Berlin

Maddd Science I've got a new TV show rec, although it's been on Netflix since like January, so I'm a little behind the times: Babylon Berlin. It's a historical drama set in 1929 Berlin before the rise of the Nazis. Pros: It&

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The Youths

Maddd Science Millennials aren't the cool kids on the block anymore: Gen Z — 18-year-olds and under, I think — is differentiating itself. I'm a middle-of-the-road Millennial who just turned 26 today, so I'm less than a decade distinct from Gen Z, and I can still

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Spoilers = good?

Maddd Science Infinity War is possibly the best example of a film that really can be meaningfully spoiled, and I think it's because the plot twists and jokes are the best things worth discussing about the film once you've seen it. The movie isn't

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Ready Player One

Maddd Science Okay, I was going to make this issue about spoilers, but that's before I remembered that the best thinkpiece-spawning film since Last Jedi came out the other week. And interestingly enough, both Ready Player One and Last Jedi are so much fun to talk about because

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Ex Machina

Maddd Science Welcome to a very special Saturday edition of Maddd Science. Today's topic: Ex Machina, a quite good three-hander about guys being creeps. Some spoilers: Ava: Ex Machina (dir. Alex Garland, 2014) Dangerous Characters, Sady Doyle At this point, you can guess that I’m fairly impatient

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Triangle

Maddd Science If you aren't a hardcore "puzzle thriller" fan, you might not even be aware the subgenre exists. The Cube series is probably the most representative. I've also seen Exam and The Game and The Belko Experiment. The Saw series counts, I guess,