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TOF tackles the subject of religion, how it relates to genre, mostly movies and TV, mostly a Christian perspective. Religion is such a large topic, that it is hard to do it justice in one episode. We only have time to cover a few things.

Jerome Stueart joins Troy and David for the episode. As a first time guest, we ask Jerome his first experiences with the speculative genre, and what he fell in love with. David also asks him what was the first genre thing he fell in love with. And Troy asks Jerome what his all-time faves are, in the 6 categories we ask now, which are: Favorite genre author, novel, shorter work, movie, TV show, TV episode.

Troy does a short introduction of religion.

Some of the things covered:

The Chronicles of Narnia
The Exorcist
Deep Space 9
Mazes and Monsters
Children of Men
5th Element
Dogma
Field of Dreams
The bible as fantasy novel
Contact
The Book of Job
God Game
The Matrix
Signs
Carl Jung’s Synchronicity
Battle Star Galactica (BSG)

This is our holiday episode, and part of what is also discussed, the idea of faith and religion as vehicles of hope, compassion. social justice, and caring for the poor. That loving each other is the message. And, how religion and fantasy work so well together. How faith may give you reasons to be compassionate. The question of what if, why is this happening, closure, grief, meaning, and purpose.

TOF will hopefully return to the topic of religion, do a deeper dive, and cover other creation myths, the darker side of religion (covered briefly in this episode), Disc World, A Canticle for Leibowitz, the Sparrow, The Handmaid’s Tale, and much more.

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Jerome Stueart is a gay writer and artist whose writing has appeared in F&SF, Fantasy, Tor.com, Geist, Strange Horizons, On Spec, and several Tesseracts anthologies.

In 2020 he was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award in Short Fiction. His work is often found at the intersection of science fiction, fantasy, and faith.  As co-editor of the 2015 anthology Wrestling with Gods (Tesseracts 18), he asked others to explore that same intersection.

Stueart lived for nearly a decade in the Yukon, but now lives, writes, and paints in Dayton, Ohio, as well as working in a café bakery.

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Troy and David talk about the Batman movie from 1966.

In March of 1966, a decision was made to make a feature film of the TV show. An all-star set of baddies, called The United Underworld, decide to de-hydrate some of the leaders of the free world, and extort the nations of the world to have their leaders returned.

July 30, 1966, released in theatres.
July 4, 1971, premiered on TV.

The Penguin’s submarine.
The Penguin as ringmaster.

Burt Ward doing most of his own stunts in the film.
Bruce Wayne falls hard for Miss Kitka.

Troy and David look at the two iconic, classic scenes in the movie.

1] The scene where a shark takes a bite out of Batman’s leg.
2] Batman trying to get rid of a bomb.

All of this in a universe where everything is labelled.

The famous Dutch angles (when the camera is not level), when you are in the lair of a criminal. Maybe because they are crooked?

“Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb.”

A bomb with the longest fuse in history.

Troy and David also do their Dream Casting and Schrödinger’s Cast, looking at six roles:

Batman [Adam West]
Robin [Burt Ward]
The Riddler [Frank Gorshin]
The Joker [Cesar Romero]
The Penguin [Burgess Meredith]
Catwoman [Lee Merriwether]

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Troy Harkin and David Clink (and Lee McCormack) look at Galactic Rock. This three-part series delves into Rock ‘n’ Roll that is “out there” and perhaps even “out of this world” including things that are science fiction, fantasy, horror, and their mashups and subgenres, and will delve into science and space, from the beginnings to present day.

Were you a fan of…

Space Oddity and Star Man (both by David Bowie)
Monster Mash (by Bobby Pickett)
Theme From The Munsters (by Jack Marshall)
The Lonely Man Theme [often referred to as “The Hulk walking away music”] (by Joe Harnell)
The Purple People Eater by Sheb Wooley

Listen in as we look at these songs and much more.

Be sure to check out the entire series:
pt. 1 (available beginning July 9, 2022)
pt. 2 (available beginning July 23, 2022)
pt. 3 (available beginning August 6, 2022)

Troy and David’s special guest for this series is Lee McCormack.
Please see his bio below.

ALSO:

Be sure to check out our Spotify playlist: “Galactic Rock (TOF)”

It includes every song that we mention in our three-part series and many more. It is ten hours long! Shuffle away!

Lee McCormack is a Canadian multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and podcaster.

As a musician he has played in Malhavoc. He’s headed up professional tributes to Johnny Cash, and The Clash. He has also played drums as Ringo in various Beatles tribute bands. In addition to this he’s recorded his own material at the legendary Sun Record studio in Memphis, Tennessee. In 2020 he released the single “Train to Heartbreak” backed with “Every Night’s A Saturday Night”.

Lee has been the host and producer of Tramps Like Us, a Bruce Springsteen podcast, since 2016.

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Troy Harkin and David Clink (and Lee McCormack) look at Galactic Rock. This three-part series delves into Rock ‘n’ Roll that is “out there” and perhaps even “out of this world” including things that are science fiction, fantasy, horror, and their mashups and subgenres, and will delve into science and space, from the beginnings to present day.

Were you a fan of…

Space Oddity and Star Man (both by David Bowie)
Monster Mash (by Bobby Pickett)
Theme From The Munsters (by Jack Marshall)
The Lonely Man Theme [often referred to as “The Hulk walking away music”] (by Joe Harnell)
The Purple People Eater by Sheb Wooley

Listen in as we look at these songs and much more.

Be sure to check out the entire series:
pt. 1 (available beginning July 9, 2022)
pt. 2 (available beginning July 23, 2022)
pt. 3 (available beginning August 6, 2022)

Troy and David’s special guest for this series is Lee McCormack.
Please see his bio below.

ALSO:

Be sure to check out our Spotify playlist: “Galactic Rock (TOF)”

It includes every song that we mention in our three-part series and many more. It is ten hours long! Shuffle away!

Lee McCormack BIO

Lee McCormack is a Canadian multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and podcaster.

As a musician he has played in Malhavoc. He’s headed up professional tributes to Johnny Cash, and The Clash. He has also played drums as Ringo in various Beatles tribute bands. In addition to this he’s recorded his own material at the legendary Sun Record studio in Memphis, Tennessee. In 2020 he released the single “Train to Heartbreak” backed with “Every Night’s A Saturday Night”.

Lee has been the host and producer of Tramps Like Us, a Bruce Springsteen podcast, since 2016.

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Troy Harkin and David Clink (and Lee McCormack) look at Galactic Rock. This three-part series delves into Rock ‘n’ Roll that is “out there” and perhaps even “out of this world” including things that are science fiction, fantasy, horror, and their mashups and subgenres, and will delve into science and space, from the beginnings to present day.

Were you a fan of…

Space Oddity and Star Man (both by David Bowie)
Monster Mash (by Bobby Pickett)
Theme From The Munsters (by Jack Marshall)
The Lonely Man Theme [often referred to as “The Hulk walking away music”] (by Joe Harnell)
The Purple People Eater by Sheb Wooley

Listen in as we look at these songs and much more.

Be sure to check out the entire series:
pt. 1 (available beginning July 9, 2022)
pt. 2 (available beginning July 23, 2022)
pt. 3 (available beginning August 6, 2022)

Troy and David’s special guest for this series is Lee McCormack.
Please see his bio below.

ALSO:

Be sure to check out our Spotify playlist: “Galactic Rock (TOF)”

It includes every song that we mention in our three-part series and many more. It is ten hours long! Shuffle away!

Lee McCormack BIO

Lee McCormack is a Canadian multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and podcaster.

As a musician he has played in Malhavoc. He’s headed up professional tributes to Johnny Cash, and The Clash. He has also played drums as Ringo in various Beatles tribute bands. In addition to this he’s recorded his own material at the legendary Sun Record studio in Memphis, Tennessee. In 2020 he released the single “Train to Heartbreak” backed with “Every Night’s A Saturday Night”.

Lee has been the host and producer of Tramps Like Us, a Bruce Springsteen podcast, since 2016.

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This is part 2 of our holiday special to be broadcast on December 25th, 2021.

This episode looks at speculative movies.

[Please listen to Part 1, which is season 2 episode 5, if you want to listen to David and Troy talk about holiday TV, books and comics.]

There are two movies that we will look at in much more detail in this episode:

Black Christmas – 1974
Krampus – 2015

These two films will take the vast majority of our holiday movie special.

We will look at other holiday fair that have some kind of speculative content. Two of the greatest examples are:

“It’s a Wonderful Life”
“A Christmas Carol”

NOTE: I don’t think we look into “A Nightmare before Christmas” at all, and some other recent classics are missed. We need to save something for next year!

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When it comes to Black Christmas, this is one of the great speculative Canadian films, up there with Ginger Snaps (2000) and Heavy Metal (1981), even though Heavy Metal is a Canadian-American co-production. The Thing (2011) and Cube Zero (2004) have enough Canadian content to qualify as Canadian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Canadian_science_fiction_films

Canadian Horror Films:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Canadian_horror_films

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What is it about Black Christmas that makes it one of the earliest, and perhaps the first one ever, slasher film? Why do so many people consider it a classic?

How is it that the director, Bob Clark, who is best known for

Murder by Decree
Tribute
Porky’s
A Christmas Story

end up directing Black Christmas?

How is Black Christmas influenced by The Exorcist?
How did Black Christmas influence Halloween and other films?

Why is John Saxon so great?

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We will also look at Krampus, and why it is, in the tradition of Gremlins, a horror movie that the whole family can enjoy (as long as your children are not super young). Why does Troy and his family watch this recent classic every Xmas? Listen and find out!

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Troy Harkin and David Clink will talk about the holidays, in genre movies.

There is no special guest for this episode.

Blade Runner is considered an SF classic, one of the best films of the last 50 years. Why is that? What is it about it that makes it endure? The setting, the soundtrack, the story, the acting? Was 2019 close to what was predicted?

Have you ever thought of yourself as a replicant?
Have you taken the Voight-Kampff test?

Troy Harkin and David Clink will do a deep dive on Blade Runner, with special guest Charlene Challenger (see author bio below).

Troy and David introduce a new segment on their podcast: Dream Casting. Which all-time actors and actresses would you have in the roles? Which current actors would you want? And just how far outside the box are you willing to go?

Charlene Challenger is the author of two young adult fantasy novels: The Voices in Between, for which she was nominated for the 2015 Aurora Award for Best Young Adult Novel and long-listed for the 2015 Sunburst Award Young Adult Novel category; and its sequel, The Myth in Distance.

Her work is also featured in Stone Skin Press’s Gods, Memes and Monsters.

She is represented by Kelvin Kong of K2 Literary (https://k2literary.com/authors/charlene-challenger/).