ust now embarking on its second year on the Web, The Zone is a one-time print magazine that has reinvented itself in electronic form. In the process, it has become an invaluable source of in-depth information on the SF field, offering book and movie reviews, recent news, writer profiles—and just about anything else that can be distilled into a concise, well-written article.
A quick browse through The Zone's main page offers enough reading to suck in a visitor for hours: interviews with Ursula K. Le Guin, Jeanne Cavelos and Jeffrey Thomas, a profile of Jack Vance, a section on the worst SF films ever made (rated on the basis of toxicity) and more besides. By digging back
into older issues, browsers can find a dense and gem-packed catalog of other offerings. Highlights include an article on the career of Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, an interview with Connie Willis and a season-by-season analysis of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The Zone also runs contests that allowing guests to win recently released DVDs, an exhaustive and offbeat links page, capsule comments on television programs and DVD/video releases and several top-10 lists, including a series wherein genre authors list their favorite 10 SF Novels. These shorter features are welcome additions to the more serious articles, making The Zone one of those pages truly worth visiting again and again.
— A.M. Dellamonica
Site of the Week—October 28, 2002
et me confess to a secret sin: I read encyclopedias for fun. Now, I know this vice is not to everyone's taste. However, I suspect that there are many more of my trivia- and factoid-devouring kind out there than is commonly assumed. And I know one fellow member of this species who is intent on sharing his vast hoard of knowledge with the rest of us. That man is Jess Nevins. Jess runs several sites where you can learn about the myriad fictional heroes created during the long history of popular literature. One site is devoted to Victorian exemplars. Another focuses on comic-book protagonists. But the one under examination today covers the years from the end of Victoria's reign to 1939.
Pulp and Adventure Heroes of the Pre-War Years is basically nothing more—and nothing less—than a mammoth online encyclopedia organized by character name. Click on a letter of the alphabet—the choices represented under each letter are arrayed nicely on the main page—and you are brought to the generous blocks of text detailing the history of everyone from Dusty Ayres to Zorro.
The mad fecundity of the pulpsters thus presented is astounding. The reader will be moved to a deep nostalgia for a time never personally experienced, when legions of fans eagerly awaited the next installment of, say, the adventures of Rafael Sabatini's Captain Blood. And, of course, the hokey absurdity of some characters provides plenty of laughs. How about "The Man with the Molten Face," whose prosthetic facial features could be altered—after a good hot soak—into a number of identities?
Finally, Nevins' links are outstanding. Often within an entry he provides buttons for reaching pages on the author in question or even entire e-texts. His master list of other pop-culture sites is astonishing as well. There's enough information here to croggle even Doc Savage!
— Paul Di Filippo
Site of the Week—October 21, 2002
he thesis of The Mexican Movie Gallery is plain enough: "Mexican cinema art of [the '50s and '60s] is generally superior to American theater graphics of the same time period." Now, given the plethora of classic movie posters that Hollywood generated during this era, the adherents of south-of-the-border graphics have a tough fight to wage to convince the general public of their contention. But if you visit their site, you'll soon be swayed at least gently in their direction.
Here you'll encounter the arresting, boldly colored, melodramatic imagery that advertised the films featuring such luminaries as El Santo, Mil Mascaras and the Aztec Mummy. These homegrown heroes, several of them masked wrestlers, starred in lurid, action-packed thrillers that some viewers feel are the quintessence of B-movie-making. On this site, you'll marvel at clear, crisp reproductions of such lobby-art masterpieces as Santo vs. the Martian Invasion, which depicts Santo gamely aiding a green alien and wielding a bulbous raygun, and at Neutron vs. the Death Robots, the so-called death robots appearing to be humans wrapped in copper sheathing and wearing hairy masks.
But the Mexican film industry also translated the visions of U.S. filmmakers for the native audience. Take a gander at what they did to George Pal's War of the Worlds and you'll realize that while SF is an international language, its accents are quite different around the globe. And don't hesitate to use the link to the Agrasanchez Film Archives, which offers an even wider array of Mexican iconography. Unfortunately, a second link, to CineMexicano, is broken. Perhaps El Santo could leap this virtual chasm, but not us.
— Paul Di Filippo
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