Author Archives: Alex R. Howe

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About Alex R. Howe

I'm a full-time astrophysicist and a part-time science fiction writer.

The Moon Landing at 50

Posted on July 19, 2019 by Alex R. Howe

Unless you’ve been living under a Moon rock, you’re probably aware of how significant today and this week are. July 20, 2019: the fiftieth anniversary of the first Moon landing. What can I say about this event that won’t have … Continue reading →

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Dystopia as an Inverted Hero’s Journey: Act III

Posted on July 16, 2019 by Alex R. Howe

Act II Generally, in the traditional hero’s journey, The Ultimate Boon (or its equivalent), will be the climax of the story. What’s left is simply the denouement, and it will be covered very quickly if it is written out at … Continue reading →

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Dystopia as an Inverted Hero’s Journey: Act II

Posted on July 13, 2019 by Alex R. Howe

Act I — Act III The second act of the traditional hero’s journey is usually (though not always) the adventure proper, from the time the hero leaves the ordinary world to go on his quest, to his victory over the … Continue reading →

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Dystopia as an Inverted Hero’s Journey: Act I

Posted on July 9, 2019 by Alex R. Howe

Introduction — Act II This is the second post in my series analyzing dystopian literature as an inversion of the famous hero’s journey. If you want to know more about what I’m talking about, look at the previous post, but … Continue reading →

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Dystopia as an Inverted Hero’s Journey: Introduction

Posted on July 6, 2019 by Alex R. Howe

Act I I’m starting a short series of posts where I analyze dystopian literature in a way that I haven’t seen anywhere else before. Dystopia is a catch-all category for fiction featuring tyrannical governments, post-apocalyptic worlds, or the general break-down … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Spider-Man: Far From Home

Posted on July 5, 2019 by Alex R. Howe

Well, just a few months after Avengers: Endgame, your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man is back for his European tour. When Marvel’s schedule of movies was revealed, Spider-Man: Far From Home felt like kind of an afterthought to Avengers: Endgame (not to … Continue reading →

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New Year’s Resolutions, Part 2

Posted on June 30, 2019 by Alex R. Howe

Previous Post in this series. This year, I tried to be smarter about my New Year’s resolutions, after making just one resolution in 2018 and failing miserably. This year, I made five resolutions, but I tried to calibrate them to … Continue reading →

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Book Review: The Massacre of Mankind by Stephen Baxter

Posted on June 25, 2019 by Alex R. Howe

Stephen Baxter is one of my favorite sci-fi authors. I’ve reviewed several of his books before, but one that I haven’t is The Time Ships, which was a sequel to H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine authorized by the Wells … Continue reading →

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History’s Dinner Party

Posted on June 22, 2019 by Alex R. Howe

I wrote this post in 2016, but it got buried in my folder of planned posts. I honestly don’t even remember where I got the idea. I think it was a writing prompt in a group I attended at the … Continue reading →

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Movie Review: Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Posted on June 2, 2019 by Alex R. Howe

Godzilla: King of the Monsters is this year’s big giant monster movie (obviously). A sequel to the 2014 reboot of Godzilla and Kong: Skull Island, this movie features bigger villains, bigger monsters, and a pretty epic giant monster fight. Honestly, … Continue reading →

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