Gary Ballard Author

Scenes from a Courtesan’s Life by Honoré de Balzac Review: A Classic Hot Mess

I am a fan of Balzac’s work since I read some of it in college, though I must admit my memory of the books of his I have read is sketchy at best. I picked up Scenes as one of those free books on Amazon and felt like rekindling my love of French naturalist lit […]

December 13, 2018 at 11:00 pm | Books | No comment

The Modern American Conservative Movement Has One Ethos – The Divine Right of Wealth

The American Conservative Movement, as defined over and over by authors, pundits, spokesmen and politicians in publications such as The National Review or The Weekly Standard, or in the alt-right Shitlord Dens like Breitbart, or in the words of politicians like Rep. Paul Ryan, Sen. Mitch McConnell or Sen. Lindsay Graham, is one that espouses […]

November 23, 2018 at 9:14 pm | Politics | No comment

Book Reviews: Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd and The Return of the Native

There is a temptation by the modern reviewer of classical creative works to view those works with a somewhat jaundiced eye, seeing them through the lens of modern interpretations of morality, propriety and cultural mores. I have long fallen into this trap. My first impressions of most non-genre Victorian literature like Thomas Hardy or of […]

July 29, 2018 at 6:42 pm | Books | No comment

Two Halves Not a Whole: Seveneves by Neal Stephenson Book Review

Readers of this all too-infrequent blog will know that I am a huge fan of Neal Stephenson’s work, especially his seminal cyberpunk work Snow Crash as well as his more esoteric fare like Anathem. You’ll also note that I was not a huge fan of what I saw as the wasted potential of his last […]

April 23, 2017 at 3:40 pm | Books | No comment

The Ten Billion Dollar Orange Gorilla in the Room – Election 2016

So welcome back to me. I haven’t blogged on here for quite a while. I have actually sat out almost the entirety of the 2016 Election except for commenting on Twitter, though anyone who knows me should know how I felt about most of it. I think there’s been some really great people who have […]

October 13, 2016 at 10:41 am | Politics | No comment

How We Start the Conversation About Race

Last week brought yet another infuriating example of America’s incessant tendency to ignore everything wrong until that wrong thing blows up in its collective face, and then ignore it again. Of course, I’m speaking of the nine African-Americans killed at the Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Like all of America’s best examples of […]

June 26, 2015 at 8:23 pm | Politics, Uncategorized | No comment

Griftopia Review: You’ll Want to Punch a Kitten

Good non-fiction can often impart a wide-range of emotions to the reader and Matt Taibbi’s Griftopia is no exception. While the main emotion should likely be riot-inducing anger, I found myself alternately experiencing resigned disappointment as well as depression broken by gallows humor. Taibbi, a contributing editor of the magazine Rolling Stone has been writing […]

November 19, 2014 at 2:14 pm | Books | No comment

Become a Patron of my cyberpunk work on Patreon

Those who have been paying attention to the Bridge Chronicles site for my cyberpunk series will notice that the whole site has been given a facelift. It’s been high time I made that site over as I hadn’t changed the look since releasing The Long and the Short Swords, almost two years ago. Part of […]

November 6, 2014 at 3:43 pm | Fiction | No comment

Dan O’ Brien Releases Mobsters, Monsters & Nazis

I was contacted by fellow indie author Dan O’Brien about promoting his latest release, now available on Amazon’s Kindle Store. Called Mobsters, Monsters and Nazis, it is a collaboration between Dan O’Brien and Steve Ferchaud, who illustrated Conspirators of the Lost Sock Army and the Loose Change Collection Agency.

November 1, 2014 at 12:02 am | Books | No comment

Reamde by Neal Stephenson Review

I’m a huge fan of Neal Stephenson’s work. Snow Crash is one of those books that has had a huge effect on my own writing and remains one of my all-time favorite novels. In addition, I’m a longtime player of MMOG’s like the one Stephenson describes in this book, T’Rain. The concept of one of […]

October 16, 2014 at 10:18 am | Books | No comment

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