"Two great tastes that taste great together." Such is the promise of crossover fan-fiction: One story that combines characters/ideas/etc from two or more distinct (and much-beloved) settings. The contemporary American comicbook industry is practically built on crossovers, from one-shot licensed properties (i.e. Batman/Predator) to entire series devoted to interactions between characters who normally appear in separate titles (i.e. The Avengers), and this sort of thing is hardly unknown to other mediums such as television, either. This time around, Random Access looks at two very different crossovers...

If you want a Star Trek crossover, you could do worse than the stories about Anilam IV (A4 for short). It seems that this remote, unremarkable colony is the site of a recent meteorite impact, and said falling rock contaminated the entire planet with an unusual form of energy (called Van Schuyver radiation) which induces gross physical alterations in anyone who stays on Anilam IV for more than 24 hours. Noted colonists include one David Sinclair, a half-Betazoid with the head of a bull whose inability to speak means he can only communicate via telepathy, and who runs the colony's best drinking establishment, the Deaf Horse --

Yeah. If you're starting to think that A4 sounds remarkably like Mark Van Sciver's Tails of the Blind Pig setting with the serial numbers filed off and a fresh coat of paint, you're right. While there are distinct and noteworthy differences (example: in A4, affected individuals return to normal if/when they leave the colony; in TBP, SCABs are stuck for life, period), the fact that a sizeable majority of A4 characters (including virtually all of those with significant roles in the setting) are obvious clones of pre-existing TBP characters makes it difficult to regard A4 as a viable, independent setting unto itself. This is unfortunate, as A4's combination of Trek and TBP offers a number of interesting possibilities that ought not be allowed to lie fallow.

Check out the Anilam IV website and let your imagination roam...

The 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center was a shocking tragedy of the highest order. Indeed, some have found it difficult to believe that any human being could be capable of such wanton, pointless atrocity.

Maybe they're right.

Maybe it isn't any human agency that bears responsibility for bringing down the Two Towers. Maybe the true architect of that woeful event is more evil, more ancient, than any human being. Maybe Bin Laden and his underlings are best understood as mere pawns of an eldritch intellect that hails from beyond this Universe, an antediluvian Thing which cares no more for the works of Mankind than it does for Man himself.

Maybe.

Or maybe not.

Surf on over to necronomi.com for an examination of the possible link between Usama Bin Laden and... Great Cthulhu.

If you know of any sites whose subject matter renders them suitable for inclusion in TSAT, send us the URL!