Matthew Kresal
Bio
Matthew Kresal was born and raised in North Alabama though he never developed a Southern accent. His essays have been featured in numerous books and his first novel Our Man on the Hill was published by Sea Lion Press in 2021.
Stories (96/0)
Review - 'The Martian Invasion Of Earth'
For over a year now, UK based audio drama company Big Finish has been producing a series of audio dramas based on the works of H.G. Wells. Along the way, they've given us a Stirling final performance from the late Sir John Hurt as The Invisible Man and even managed to turn Wells' vague future history The Shape Of Things To Come into a gripping tale. All that, however, has merely been a prologue to their adaptation of arguably Wells' best-known work: The War Of The Worlds.
By Matthew Kresal5 years ago in Futurism
Review: Batman - Gotham By Gaslight
“What if?” stories have always been popular with the chance to re-imagine events or people in a different light. Comics, in particular, have made much use of the idea with DC dedicating an entire range to it known as Elseworlds which put its character such as Batman and Superman into new settings in the past or turned the characters fundamentally on their head. It's not surprising then that the most recent DC Universe animated movie would take the very first Elseworlds tale which takes the Dark Knight into steampunk territory as he takes on Jack The Ripper. It's safe to say that expectations were high for this particular animated movie but does it live up to them?
By Matthew Kresal5 years ago in Geeks
Review: A.G. Russo's 'Offenbunker'
There seems to have been a resurgence in fiction surrounding the Cold War as of late. Despite the Berlin Wall falling nearly twenty years ago, writers have been flocking back to the decades-long standoff between East and West including old masters like John le Carré. New writers have also come to the genre including A.G. Russo, whose novel Offenbunker brings spy fiction, secret government bunkers, and the threat of nuclear war altogether in a neat package.
By Matthew Kresal5 years ago in Serve
Review: 'Silver Screen Saucers'
2017 marked seventy years of the modern UFO phenomenon began with the sighting of pilot Kenneth Arnold and the still controversial events at Roswell, New Mexico. For much of time (indeed beginning within just a few years), Hollywood has made use of it to tell everything from 1950s B-movies to some of the biggest hits of all time. Taking in the width and breadth of these “silver screen saucers” is writer Robbie Graham whose 2015 book of the same name explores this sometimes murky mix of fact and fiction.
By Matthew Kresal5 years ago in Futurism
Doctor Who: The Third Doctor Adventures Volume 3 Review
After four stories across two sets, Big Finish's The Third Doctor Adventures audios can be said to have firmly arrived. Tim Trealor has settled in as the new voice of the Third Doctor on audio and the company has proven just as adept at recreating this era as they have others. So this third set would seem to be setting up two more fantastic tales, especially with a Dalek story. But does it?
By Matthew Kresal5 years ago in Futurism
Review - 'Faction Paradox: This Town Will Never Let Us Go'
Nearly a decade ago, I attended a panel at the Chicago TARDIS convention on the topic of the novels of the wilderness years of Doctor Who (i.e. that time period between 1989 and 2005 when there was no TV show airing). On the panel were convention guests who had contributed to those books: Jonathan Blum, Paul Cornell, Kate Orman, and Gary Russell. Perhaps it was inevitable that the topic of Lawrence Miles, that looming but an immensely controversial author of the era, came up as the proverbial "elephant in the room." Despite Miles attacking them all in interviews, all four had great things to say about his work and it was Cornell who said that Miles, "should have been the next great British science fiction writer." In reading this, Miles' last published novel (which I bought at the same convention six years later), I can't help but feel he was right in that assessment.
By Matthew Kresal5 years ago in Futurism
Review: By Dawn's Early Light (1990)
The Cold War and the ever-looming threat of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union inspired many works of its time. These included films that explored just how a nuclear war might begin with such classic 1960s films as Stanley Kubrick's dark comedy Dr. Strangelove and the more serious Fail Safe. Coming at the tail end of the Cold War in 1990 between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the break up of the Soviet Union, HBO's By Dawn's Early Light was the last triumphant grasp of that sub-genre of Cold War storytelling as it told a gripping tale of potential Armageddon on the edge of peace.
By Matthew Kresal5 years ago in Serve
Doctor Who: The First Doctor Adventures Volume 01 Review
It's what fans have been wondering ever since "An Adventure In Space And Time" aired back in 2013. Having brought together a group of performers to play the iconic first ever Doctor Who cast, many had been wondering if there might be some new adventures in store involving the original TARDIS crew. December 2017 offered a helping of just that thanks first to the 2017 Christmas special offering David Bradley the chance to play the First Doctor on screen alongside Peter Capaldi's Twelfth Doctor. Meanwhile over in the licensed audio dramas produced by Big Finish Productions, the entire group has been reunited and the results are just what the Doctor ordered.
By Matthew Kresal5 years ago in Futurism
Very British Thrillers
Chances are you've heard of James Bond and George Smiley. You might even have heard of their creators, Ian Fleming and John le Carré. Have you heard of Alistair MacLean, Alan Hall, Francis Clifford, Ted Allbeury, Ian Stuart Black, or James Mayo? All of them were part of an explosion in the thriller genre headed by British authors over a twenty odd year period between the 1950s and 1970s, a period which the noted writer and critic Mike Ripley now examines with his book Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (itself a paraphrasing of a Fleming quote in fact) which explores this very British contribution to an ever popular genre.
By Matthew Kresal5 years ago in Geeks
'Doctor Who': "Twice Upon A Time" Review
Warning: Potential spoilers for the episode below. “It's the end but the moment has been prepared for.” Those words spoken by Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor on the brink of his regeneration more than three decades ago could also be applied to this year's Christmas special. It's safe to say expectations were high thanks to the announcement of Peter Capaldi exiting the series alongside showrunner Steven Moffat, Jodie Whittaker taking over as the first female Doctor, and then the return of David Bradley playing the role of the very First Doctor (Bradley had previously played actor William Hartnell, who originated the role, in 2013's "An Adventure In Space And Time"). So did "Twice Upon A Time" live up to those expectations or did it crash and burn?
By Matthew Kresal5 years ago in Futurism
The Strange Case of Doctor Omega
For years as a Doctor Who fan, I've been vaguely aware of something called Doctor Omega. No, it isn't a spin-off of the long-running British science fiction series. In fact, it predates the BBC series by more than a half-century. Originally published in French as Le Docteur Oméga in 1906, this early science fiction novel with its tale of interplanetary exploration featuring a title character who is an old man with white hair certainly would seem on the surface to be quite like William Hartnell's First Doctor. Yet is there more to it than that? Is Doctor Omega the predecessor to Doctor Who?
By Matthew Kresal5 years ago in Futurism
Doctor Who: The Last Post Review
It's hard to believe that it's been over five years now since we lost Caroline John, the actress perhaps best known for playing Doctor Liz Shaw alongside Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor in Doctor Who's 1970 season. Yet despite appearing on the long-running series for a single season, fans never forgot the character and the actress returned to reprise the role numerous times on audio for Big Finish Productions in the years before her passing. The last story recorded before her passing, the appropriately titled The Last Post, stands as a tribute to character and actress alike.
By Matthew Kresal6 years ago in Futurism
