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Tony Travis



Tony's Review of Dog Star
Dog Star is one of those short pieces that appears simple on the surface but settles into your mind over time. It is about an astronomer stationed on the Moon, a dream, and a dog named Laika, but it becomes much more than that. Clarke does not write to shock you. He writes to make you feel the weight of memory, loyalty, and the fragile threads that connect who we were to who we become. The story begins with a man waking on the Moon. He hears his dog barking the same dog he l

Tony Travis
7 hours ago2 min read


Tony's Review of The Silver Key
The Silver Key by H. P. Lovecraft is one of his most reflective and quietly strange stories, less concerned with cosmic terror and more focused on loss, memory, and the slow erosion of wonder. This is Lovecraft turning inward. The horror here is not a monster or an ancient god, but the moment when imagination gives way to rigid adulthood. The story follows Randolph Carter, a recurring figure in Lovecraft’s work, who has lost the ability to dream. As he grows older, the world

Tony Travis
6 days ago2 min read


Tony's Review of Asleep in Armageddon
Asleep in Armageddon is a Bradbury short story that begins with relief and then slowly turns into dread you can feel in your bones. On the surface it feels like a simple space crash tale: astronaut Leonard Sale survives a shipwreck on Planetoid 787, finds breathable air, food, a working radio, and sends out a rescue signal. Six days alone doesn’t seem like a sentence. It seems like rest and recovery. But that ease is the first trap Bradbury sets in place, and to miss that is

Tony Travis
Jan 112 min read


Tony's Review of The Outsider
The Outsider by H. P. Lovecraft is one of his most personal and quietly devastating stories. It is horror built not on cosmic scale, but on isolation, identity, and the slow realization that the self may be the true source of fear. This is an early work in Lovecraft’s career, and it already shows his ability to turn inner anguish into something gothic and unforgettable. He was trying to reach a style much like Poe, and it is close. The story follows an unnamed narrator who h

Tony Travis
Jan 42 min read


Tony's review of the Nine Billion Names of God
The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke is a quiet story with an enormous idea at its center. It does not rush. It does not shout. It simply presents a premise and lets the weight of it settle in, which is where its power comes from. This is science fiction at its most restrained and most unsettling. There is little to say about this story that has not been said. Yet, its uniqueness and importance cannot be overstated. The story follows a group of Tibetan monks who

Tony Travis
Dec 28, 20252 min read


Happy Holidays!
Have a fantastic Holiday Season! -Tony

Tony Travis
Dec 25, 20251 min read


Tony's Review of Dune Awakening
Dune Awakening I have been reading Dune for decades. The original novels, the expansions, the missteps, the reinterpretations. Frank Herbert’s work, particularly the early books, helped shaped how I think about science fiction, about systems, myth, power, and consequence. Dune Awakening is one of the most ambitious attempts yet to translate that world into an interactive form, and ambition on this scale deserves a serious, long form response. While you will find much, I say c

Tony Travis
Dec 14, 20255 min read


Tony's Review of The Other Gods
The Other Gods sits early in Lovecraft’s body of work, a time when he was still shaping the ideas that would later become the backbone of his cosmic vision. You can feel him testing themes, experimenting with myth, and playing with a voice that would grow darker and grander in later years. This story stands at the border between his Dunsanian dream pieces and the colder, more cosmic tales he eventually became known for. The tale follows Barzai the Wise, a mystic and scholar

Tony Travis
Dec 7, 20252 min read


Tony's Review of Superiority.
Superiority by Arthur C Clarke is one of those science fiction stories that slips a warning into the future and hands it right back to the present. It is short, sharp, and more honest than most war stories ever dare to be. Clarke does not deal in glory here. He deals in arrogance, miscalculation, and the false promise that better technology always wins. The story is framed as a confession from the losing side of an interstellar war. An officer explains how his people had eve

Tony Travis
Nov 30, 20252 min read


Tony's Review of Out of the Aeons
Out of the Aeons is one of those Lovecraft stories that feels like a museum exhibit that should never have been opened. It begins mild and scholarly, almost harmless, then slowly tilts into something ancient, hungry, and colder than time. Lovecraft always enjoyed blending archaeology with cosmic dread, and this is one of the clearest examples of that approach. What starts as an academic curiosity becomes a reminder that humanity’s understanding of history is a narrow window

Tony Travis
Nov 22, 20252 min read


Tony's Review of Journey to the Center of the Earth.
Journey to the Center of the Earth remains one of Jules Verne’s most enduring works because it never loses sight of what makes exploration worth doing. It is not just a story about going down into the Earth. It is a story about curiosity and the stubborn need to know what lies beyond the limits of accepted knowledge. Verne understood that real adventure comes from the tension between excitement and danger, and he lets that tension build one careful step at a time. The novel

Tony Travis
Nov 15, 20252 min read


Tony's Review of Rendezvous with Rama
Clarke’s strength lies in his restraint. He does not tell us what Rama means or who built it. He lets us wander through its corridors, its vast cities of light and silence, and draw our own conclusions. Every discovery raises new questions, every answer feels incomplete. It is science fiction at its purest, curiosity sharpened by reason. It's also very realistic as to what would likely happen with such an unknown. We would not have answers, only more questions. Captain Norto

Tony Travis
Nov 8, 20252 min read


Tony's Review of Something Wicked This Way Comes.
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury is a meditation on fear, youth, and the relentless passage of time. It carries that distinct Bradbury rhythm, yet unsettling, like a dream that turns strange the longer you linger in it. Beneath its carnival lights and autumn winds lies a story about what it means to grow older and face the shadows we try so hard to ignore. The novel follows two boys, Jim Nightshade and Will Halloway, and the sinister traveling carnival that ar

Tony Travis
Nov 1, 20252 min read


Tony's Review of The Hunters from Beyond
The Hunters from Beyond by Clark Ashton Smith is a striking tale of art, obsession, and unseen worlds pressing too close to our own. It captures Smith’s signature style; it is lush, poetic, and filled with an unease that feels both intimate and ancient. This is horror born not from the monstrous outside, but from within the creative mind itself. The story centers on Cyprian Sincaul, an artist whose sculptures seem almost alive in their grotesque detail. His friend, the narr

Tony Travis
Oct 26, 20252 min read


Tony's Review of The Moon Bog
The Moon-Bog is one of H. P. Lovecraft’s lesser-known tales, yet it carries his familiar mix of nostalgia, dread, and the weight of old-world memory. On the surface, it is a simple story about an Irish estate, an ancient bog, and the supernatural retribution that follows when a man disturbs sacred ground. Beneath that, it is a reflection of Lovecraft’s own uneasy relationship with modernity and his longing for a vanished past. The story begins when an American inherits an an

Tony Travis
Oct 19, 20252 min read


Tony's Review of What's the Matter with Kansas
What’s the Matter with Kansas? is a sharp and often biting look at how cultural identity reshaped American politics. Thomas Frank...

Tony Travis
Oct 12, 20252 min read


Tony's Review of Ender's Game
Ender’s Game is one of those rare science fiction works that balances intellect with emotion. It follows Andrew “Ender” Wiggin, a child...

Tony Travis
Oct 6, 20252 min read


Tony's Review of In the Vault
In the Vault is a short story written by H. P. Lovecraft in 1925, though it was published in 1926. Unlike many of his works that dive...

Tony Travis
Sep 27, 20252 min read


Tony's Review of I am Legend
Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend stands as one of the most influential works of modern horror and science fiction. First published in...

Tony Travis
Sep 20, 20252 min read


Of Hunger and Will, presale available now!
Of Hunger and Will is available! get it soon as on 23 OCT 25 when it goes live the price will jump to 5.99 USD. It is 3.99 USD during...

Tony Travis
Sep 15, 20251 min read
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