Free Republic

Dystopian entertainment is all the rage now that Donald Trump is president, and the more unglued it sounds about an approaching American totalitarian state, the better, hence the liberal cheerleading for "The Handmaid's Tale," a TV series made for the streaming service Hulu. It's based on a loopy 1985 novel by the radical feminist Canadian author Margaret Atwood, which imagines the United States quickly falling under a theocratic dictatorship based on its Puritan roots. America becomes a patriarchy called the Republic of Gilead. All women are deprived of their rights and forbidden to read. Due to environmental degradation, very few...

THE BASICS: THE TRIAL OF TRAYVON MARTIN, a new drama by Buffalo’s Gary Earl Ross, directed by Subversive Theatre founder Kurt Schneiderman, stars Shawnell Tillery for the defense, Brian Brown as defendant Trayvon Martin, Rick Lattimer as George Zimmerman, Kunji Rey for the prosecution, along with Lawrence Rowswell, Leon Copeland, Brittany Bassett, Kajana Stover, and Michael Mottern. It runs through Saturday, May 6th, Thursdays through Saturdays at 8:00 p.m. at the Manny Fried Playhouse, 255 Great Arrow Avenue on the third floor. Run time: over 90 minutes with one 10-minute intermission. (408-0499). www.subversivetheatre.org THUMBNAIL SKETCH: THE TRIAL OF TRAYVON MARTIN...

Cadain's Watch is the last book in the Storms of Transformation series, tracing the journey of a family fleeing an oppressive state to save their illegally born daughter. What are the strengths and weaknesses of this Christian fiction book?

Washington D.C., Mar 19, 2017 / 04:21 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Raymond Arroyo has an impressive resume.He’s a New York Times bestselling author several times over. He’s an award-winning journalist and producer. And his weekly EWTN show, The World Over Live, reaches more than 350 million global households and 500 U.S. radio affiliates.So when Arroyo says his Will Wilder series of books for young readers just might be “the most important work I’ve ever done,” it’s quite a statement.What makes these books so important, in his view? The lifelong impact that they can have on kids.“When an adult reads your...

Greetings Freepers. I'm posting a 100% self-serving vanity because I suspect I'm going to need some help. My most recent novel delves a little into politics and as the reviews begin to come in, I'm already getting flack for conservatism. It so happens that the reviewer left a five star review, but because I've submitted the novel to about two hundred literary-type reviewers, bloggers, etc, I suspect there will soon be a deluge of left-leaning reviews. So I wanted to make the same offer here as to all the book reviewers and bloggers who have just received their copies. I'll...

As Donald Trump triumphantly passed his 50th day as the President of the United States Who Is Not Hillary Clinton, Democrat leaders secretly gathered to survey the smoking wreckage of a party that was supposed to dominate America for a generation and ended up only dominating it until midnight on November 8, 2016. Chuck Schumer approached the podium to address the gathering, his voice a bit hoarse from his recent phone call "thanking" Harry Reid for the Reid Rule. “We need to be honest,” said Schumer, to widespread laughter. “No, no, I mean with ourselves. Come on, get real –...

Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. on Monday contemptuously dismissed White House deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes’ denials that the Obama administration played a key behind-the-scenes role in getting a resolution condemning Israel through the U.N. Security Council, describing him as an “expert at fiction.” Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government says it has “iron-clad” information indicating that the Obama administration had a role in the crafting and passage of the resolution that passed Friday in the absence of a U.S. veto. Ambassador Ron Dermer told MSNBC the Israeli government had proof that it would share that evidence with the incoming...

Valentine’s Day is here, and with it, the usual slew of literary and pop culture reminders of what love does to us. Pick your poison—Jane Austen, Nicholas Sparks, the Brontes, Old Hollywood, 90s rom coms, BBC bodice rippers—we are saturated by reminders that a rewarding life includes a worthy, rewarding and, above all, romantic relationship. I don’t hate the romantic canon. But I want to convince you that we should broaden it by reviving an underrated masterpiece: Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd. (The novel has also been made into a beautiful movie, although, full disclosure, I’ve not seen...

His Dark Materials author Philip Pullman has announced he will release the long-awaited follow-up to the popular trilogy - sparking an online frenzy from his delighted fans. The next trilogy of books, which the Cambridge-based writer describes as an 'equel' rather than a prequel or sequel, begins with The Book Of Dust which will be published on October 19 by Penguin Random House Children's and David Fickling Books.

A disturbing Reddit thread claims that in 2008 the ex-business partner of James Alefantis, DC chef and restauranteur Carole Greenwood, caught Alefantis in the act of sexually battering her then 17 year-old son. Subsequent internet postings identified the location of the alleged crime scene as being Comet Ping Pong Pizza, a DC ping pong-themed pizzaria featuring live music acts. Citing a "family emergency", Greenwood abruptly terminated her business dealings with Alefantis and disappeared, finally surfacing as Executive Chef at Bethesda's Food & Wine Co. An anonymous poster to the thread, presumably Alefantis, objects to the dark story: "Why wouldn't I...

A book of short stories titled “Forty Minutes Late” has been returned to a San Francisco library -- 100 years late. ... Johnson’s great grandmother had checked it out from the city’s old Fillmore branch in 1917. She passed away a week before the due date, and the Fillmore branch is no longer around. Johnson found the 1909 book, by F. Hopkinson Smith, in an old steamer trunk in 1996. He assumed the library wouldn’t want it back, but a recently announced “fine forgiveness program” that runs through Feb. 14 inspired him to return it.

Most of you will probably remember Kathleen Donohoe, an Irish-American writer and New Yorker-and full disclosure, my cousin-from previous posts on this website. This year saw the publication of her debut novel, Ashes Of Fiery Weather. The title is taken from a poem by Wallace Stevens, Our Stars Come From Ireland, which celebrates the importance of place as a facet of memory. It’s a fitting entry point to this book, which explores how geography-both in New York City and Ireland-contours our worldview. Ashes also recognizes the importance of history, both on a collective and individual level, which-as the son of...

West Wing Character Toby Ziegler Having observed debates about the Second Amendment for 50 years, it is surprising to find something new. Tosten Burks, writing at good.is, uses a quote from a fictional character as an authoritative source on the Second Amendment. From good.is: The Constitution’s most controversial amendment reads: “A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” The NRA has spent much of the past 40 years broadening the interpretation to expand the gun market. The original intent, however, is...

After surgery, I'll be in the hospital for about five days. Not sure how much lucid time I'll have, but I want to take a good book. I like Nonfiction, History, Autobiographies, and of course, America.

Hi everyone. I've been away for a while, and had a lot of time to get my sci-fi romance adventure novel going full steam ahead. I'm at a point in the story where my main character is backpacking her way across Europe on a shoestring, while trying to elude a number of suspicious characters. I spent some time quasi-backpacking overseas a few decades ago, but not along the route my character is taking, which includes England, France, Switzerland and Italy. If anyone has any direct personal experience with these places and is willing to share those experiences in this thread...

In this collection of potential reading, Mark Yon suggests books that you may appreciate whilst considering your vote. It may have escaped your attention that during this week there are elections in the US. Whilst we do not endorse any particular candidate or party at SFFWorld (and the person mainly writing this is non-US anyway!)  but on behalf of SFFWorld we thought we would compile a list of ten SF books that use politics as an important part of their world. Be warned – not all of these are future visions you may like…

A wave of apprehension and anguish swept the Republican Party on Thursday, with many GOP leaders alarmed by Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of the election and concluding that it is probably too late to salvage his flailing presidential campaign. As the Republican nominee reeled from a turbulent performance in the final debate here in Las Vegas, his party’s embattled senators and House members scrambled to protect their seats and preserve the GOP’s congressional majorities against what Republicans privately acknowledge could be a landslide victory for Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. With 19 days until the election, the Republican...

Virtually every film in modern memory ends with some variation of the same disclaimer: "This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is purely coincidental." The cut-and-paste legal rider must be the most boring thing in every movie that features it. Who knew its origins were so lurid? For that bit of boilerplate, we can indirectly thank none other than Grigori Rasputin, the famously hard-to-assassinate Russian mystic and intimate of the last, doomed Romanovs. It all started when an exiled Russian prince sued MGM in 1933 over the studio's Rasputin biopic,...

A neighbor of mine, who once considered himself a Bernie supporter, handed me a copy of the book after I expressed some curiosity and told him that I read some of it online. The book talks about everything from government engineered diseases to extraterrestrial conspiracies, most of which is complete nonsense, but some that also rings eerily accurate in 2016. I'm not willing to do more than brush Cooper's book off as coincidental rubbish – which I really think it is – but I find myself compelled to share the passages and moments from the book that struck me the...

Islamic terrorists lit the fuse… …but a treacherous president planted the bomb. And that’s only the beginning, in the most daring and exciting thriller ever from the pen of sixteen-time New York Times bestselling author Stephen Coonts. With the nation in shock over the latest Islamist outrage, the president imposes martial law, cancels the imminent presidential election, and suspends the Constitution. In response, Texas secedes—and what follows is the bloodiest, most harrowing internal insurrection since the Civil War. In the center of the action are former CIA director Jake Grafton and former CIA operative Tommy Carmellini with a mission unlike...