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Author Archives: Michael Grasso

Seas of Blood, Rains of Fire: The Post-Apocalyptic Worlds of Early ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ 

By Michael Grasso

A couple of years ago, a canny and intelligent friend referred to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons setting of the Forgotten Realms as “post-apocalyptic.” I thought for a moment, ready to dismiss the fictional world’s bog-standard fantasy feudalism as nothing of the sort…

2 weeks ago June 3, 2026 in Sports, Games & Toys.

“Qualified, Competent, Sincere”: The MUFON Symposium Proceedings

By Michael Grasso

The suggestive commonalities of these disparate MUFON presenters does seem to buttress the now-common view that the entire world of postwar American ufology was a giant blind alley meant to distract from and obfuscate top secret U.S. military programs…

May 12, 2026 in Occult & Paranormal.

Truckin’ for Souls: Explo ’72 and the Jesus Revolution

By Michael Grasso

Near the end of Richard Nixon’s first term, the forces of conservatism and reaction were in the ascendancy in America. This public resurgence of “traditional values” was itself a counter-revolution against the turmoil unleashed by the young…

February 21, 2024 in History & Politics.

Tubular Terrors: ‘The Norliss Tapes’

By Michael Grasso

This Halloween, I decided to give another of Kolchak producer Dan Curtis’s horror TV movies a try. The Norliss Tapes, which aired on NBC in February of 1973, features another favorite of genre sci-fi and horror TV, Roy Thinnes, in the lead role…

October 31, 2023 in Film & TV.

Big Tech, Nostalgia, and Control: Grafton Tanner’s ‘The Circle of the Snake’

By Michael Grasso

I’m sure many members of Generation X have taken a moment to look around the pop culture landscape over the past decade and a half and had a sudden moment of realization: there are certainly a whole lot of people trying to sell me things using the media of my youth…

December 15, 2020 in Books & Literature.

Tubular Terrors: ‘Invitation to Hell’

By Michael Grasso

Invitation to Hell definitely follows on well-trod thematic ground, examining the American nuclear family’s impulse to conform and keep up with the Joneses in suburbia. But it’s on the execution, in the casting, and in a few of the left-field plot developments that the film really shines…

October 29, 2020 in Film & TV.

Dead Shells and Black Plaques: ‘The English Heretic Collection’

By Michael Grasso

Using as its inspiration English Heritage, who preserve the very bones and sinews of English feudal hierarchy in the form of the nation’s stately homes and historical sites, Sharp’s English Heretic project seeks to détourne these edifices of authority…

October 26, 2020 in Books & Literature.

Portals and Presences: The Surreal Landscapes of Hipgnosis

By Michael Grasso

“Album covers… defined you,” says Hipgnosis founder Aubrey “Po” Powell in his “Welcome to Hipgnosis” history in 2017’s Vinyl . Album . Cover . Art: The Complete Hipgnosis Catalogue, a 300 plus page full-color hardcover monster that reproduces the collective’s entire album cover output from 1967 to 1984…

September 16, 2020 in Art & Illustration.

“A New Self”: The Radical Imagination of Ernest Callenbach’s ‘Ecotopia’

By Michael Grasso

Visualizing a better world has never been more important, or more difficult. The promise of utopia—or at least a world that places its values on health, happiness, and lovingkindness—has been an object of pursuit for philosophers, theologians, and regular folks since the dawn of human civilization…

August 4, 2020 in Books & Literature.

“Style Is Surely Our Own Thing”: Nate Patrin’s ‘Bring That Beat Back’

By Michael Grasso

It’s practically impossible to imagine popular music in the year 2020 without taking into account the central role digital sampling now plays in making beats and reshaping melodies…

July 8, 2020 in Books & Literature.

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