Tom Baker

Joined June 2018

855 stories

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Author of Haunted Indianapolis, Indiana Ghost Folklore, Midwest Maniacs, Midwest UFOs and Beyond, Scary Urban Legends, 50 Famous Fables and Folk Tales, and Notorious Crimes of the Upper Midwest.: http://tombakerbooks.weebly.com

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Star Trek: "What Are Little Girls Made Of?"
Massive Ted Cassidy, who portrayed "Lurch" on the old "Addams Family" TV show, stars here as a giant Kanamit-type character who is, in actuality, a killer cyborg. Kirk and Nurse Chapel (Majel Barrett-Roddenberry) beam down to Ye Olde Star Trek World to examine the inside of a D&D cavern and get two Red Shirts (Vince Deadrick, Budd Albright) killed. They're there to check up on Dr. Cory (Michael Strong), who came here, oh, a long time before just to examine the remains of the "Old Ones'" (borrowed obviously from H.P. Lovecraft, as this episode was penned by none other than Robert Bloch) lost civilization. Seems the Old Ones were particularly adept at making life-like cyborgs that are indistinguishable from human beings.
By Tom Bakerabout a year ago in Futurism
Batman: "Zero Year"
Batman: Zero Year is the collected series of crossover books authored by Scott Snyder and James Tynion, with artwork by Greg Capullo and Rafael Albuquerque. It reenvisions the troubled rise of the Dark Knight, from his birth at the hands of a murderous criminal in Crime Alley to his wanderings across the globe "in search of himself" (steadily training with all manner of renegade and tribe to become the physical and intellectual crime-fighting powerhouse before donning the mantle of the Caped Crusader).
By Tom Bakerabout a year ago in Geeks
Mirror Image
Note: I've started writing a series of horror microfictions based on prompts given to me by Little Buddy ChatGPT. The prompt here is:
By Tom Bakerabout a year ago in Fiction
Breathless (1960)
People often ask me (actually they don't) how I manage to be so eclectic in my tastes--I like everything. Or, at least, a little of everything.
By Tom Bakerabout a year ago in Critique
"A Clash Between Barbarism and Civilization"
We meet today at a crossroads of history. Our world is in upheaval. In the Middle East, Iran’s axis of terror confronts America, Israel and our Arab friends. This is not a clash of civilizations. It’s a clash between barbarism and civilization. It’s a clash between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
By Tom Bakerabout a year ago in The Swamp
Dr. Strange
Dr. Strange is a 1978 two-hour pilot take on the famous, nicely-costumed superhero "Sorcerer Supreme" a cornerstone of the Marvel Universe. I first read some of the exploits of the good Doctor in a reprint comic book I bought at a Walmart as a kid, but I first saw this movie even earlier, when it was rerun on cable in the late 1980s. I forever associate it in my mind with having a helluva bellyache from eating too much ice cream or some other indulgent treat.
By Tom Bakerabout a year ago in Geeks
The Outer Limits: "The Sixth Finger"
There is nothing wrong with your TV set...that watching a little "Outer Limits" can't cure! To that end, I've become, over the last year, a dedicated fan of the show, and plan to watch EVERY SINGLE EPISODE in the same weird, amblin', lackadaisical manner in which I do most everything. So far I've seen "Cold Hands, Warm Heart" (with El Capitan Kirk himself, William "The Shat" Shatner), "Demon With a Glass Hand" (with Robert "Greatest American Hero" Culp), "Soldier" (the episode written by Harlan Ellison and ripped-off by James Cameron to create Terminator), and most recently "Corpus Earthling" (again with Robert Culp). I've seen a few more, mainly from the first season, and I can't, as my "Simpsons" cartoon alter-ego might say, declare any of them the "Worst episode ever!" "The Outer Limits" never disappoints, except for maybe when the "alien" you see is anything BUT. Such is the case with Season 1, Episode 5: "The Sixth Finger".
By Tom Bakerabout a year ago in Futurism
The Twilight Zone: "Elegy"
"The time is the day after tomorrow. The place: a far corner of the universe. A cast of characters: three men lost amongst the stars. Three men sharing the common urgency of all men lost. They're looking for home. And in a moment, they'll find home; not a home that is a place to be seen, but a strange unexplainable experience to be felt." Twilight Zone, "Elegy"
By Tom Bakerabout a year ago in Futurism
Tuned to a Dead Channel
It's 2024, and the world of Neuromancer is finally upon us. Moreover, it's steadily being surpassed, fiction paling in comparison with reality, which is slowly developing.
By Tom Baker2 years ago in Futurism
Marconi Plays the Mamba
The Eighties were a paradisical time of lemonade rivers and cotton candy clouds, where everyone had joy and a high fashion sense: hair was big, and women wore lots of makeup, huge earrings, and blouses with shoulder pads. We all ate delicious McDonald's three meals a day, and movie theater popcorn was covered in a buttery substance equivalent to slamming fourteen Big Macs. Eye shadow, lipstick, rouge, Cyndi Lauper hair, and Debbie Gibson eyes were the cultural touchstones that kept Commieland in relative check. (Well, that, and our nuclear arsenal.)
By Tom Baker2 years ago in Beat
Vivisepulture: Or, To Be Buried Alive
Fearful indeed the suspicion -- but more fearful the doom! It may be asserted, without hesitation, that no event is so terribly well adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress, as is burial before death. The unendurable oppression of the lungs -- the stifling fumes from the damp earth -- the clinging to the death garments -- the rigid embrace of the narrow house -- the blackness of the absolute Night -- the silence like a sea that overwhelms -- the unseen but palpable presence of the Conqueror Worm -- these things, with the thoughts of the air and grass above, with memory of dear friends who would fly to save us if but informed of our fate, and with consciousness that of this fate they can never be informed -- that our hopeless portion is that of the really dead -- these considerations, I say, carry into the heart, which still palpitates, a degree of appalling and intolerable horror from which the most daring imagination must recoil. We know of nothing so agonizing upon Earth -- we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost Hell. "The Premature Burial." Edgar Allan Poe
By Tom Baker2 years ago in Horror
The Thing
John Carpenter's The Thing is a classic science fiction horror thriller that has become infamous for the excessively gruesome display of special creature and splatter gore effects, images that make it a landmark of cinematic disgust. The film out-Aliens Alien, the film from several years earlier it most closely resembles. Alien, make no mistake, was sickening. However, it never quite reached the level that The Thing takes it to. The audience will be astounded (and repulsed) by shredded dog faces, bursting chests with shark-like teeth, amputated limbs, writhing tentacles, stomachs full of digested canine, and grue and sickening biological slop by the bucketful. This is a film that pulls no punches when it comes to making the audience queasy.
By Tom Baker2 years ago in Horror

Tom Baker

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Star Trek: "What Are Little Girls Made Of?"

Batman: "Zero Year"

Mirror Image

Breathless (1960)

"A Clash Between Barbarism and Civilization"

Dr. Strange

The Outer Limits: "The Sixth Finger"

The Twilight Zone: "Elegy"

Tuned to a Dead Channel

Marconi Plays the Mamba

Vivisepulture: Or, To Be Buried Alive

The Thing

Stories (855)