Futuro Imperfeito

I’m not sure exactly when I started enjoying Science Fiction and Horror. It seems a part of me since I can remember. Growing up in Salt Lake City, I was five when Neil Armstrong stepped on the Moon, and though I have no recollection of it, that may have played a part – for years, I kept a Hallmark pop-up book about the Moon landing. I remember watching Star Trek for the first time at a schoolmate’s home – this must have been around 1970, so in syndication right after the initial run. It was “Arena”, the episode in which Kirk fights the Gorn lizard-man. Boy, that was exciting. I remember watching Dark Shadows and horror films way above my age; the Spider-man cartoon, and the Haunted Mansion ride on my first trip to Disneyland in 1971. (I also loved westerns like Bonanza, but being born in Utah I guess it really comes with the territory.)

After moving to my mother’s home country, Brazil, I discovered Japanese tokusatsu series like Ultraman, and the Planet of the Apes movies. But maybe the first game-changing event was going to see 2001: A Space Odyssey in the cinema with my mother, around 1975. That really blew my mind. I watched it a second time, and then a third with my grandfather, who would become a huge influence, even after his passing. He loved SF, and had shelves of paperbacks: lots of Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke; a Lovecraft collection; a first American edition hardcover of 1984, and also books by Brazilian SF authors such as Jerônymo Monteiro. My mother enjoyed these, but also introduced me to Ray Bradbury. When I started out on my own, I discovered Frederik Pohl and the Hugo Award Winners anthology edited by Isaac Asimov, and from there authors like Robert Silverberg and Harlan Ellison. And all of this before Star Wars had even come out. 

What Star Wars did most of all was to get me interested making movies. It got me reading film magazines – not only genre magazines, but filmmaking and film criticism. As a teenager, I made a couple of Super-8 special effects movies with model spaceships, and briefly considered trying a career in motion pictures. I ended up going into journalism, but in a sense that dovetailed with my interest in speculative fiction. I’ve covered international news for almost 30 years, including wars, social and political changes, major scientific breakthroughs and space exploration.

For a while, I was content to watch from the sidelines. But recently I’ve attended Chicon 8 (2022) and the Glasgow Worldcon (more on this to come), which made me feel what it really means to be part of the SF community. And in the last decade or so, I got the itch to contribute to the conversation and write a bit myself: essays, reviews, comments. Maybe a story or two. I’ve been contributing to a friend’s blog, and now here I am with my own. Please feel at home, get in touch, whether you like what I write, or to tell me how wrong I am. 

Let’s talk.