Another spring is giving way to summer, and you know what that means: Love is no longer in the air.

Oh, it’s easy to fall in love in March and April when the cold, harsh winter is melting away and the sun is shining on your face and the birds are singing and the trees are flourishing and the bumble bees are all exhausted from all their pollen-gathering and bee-copulating.

But summer is stifling and the kids are out of school and, if you’re me, you’ve been crawling around in your attic trying to fix your air conditioner eight out of the last ten days. Summer makes for grumps, and that means it’s far less likely that you’ll feel the delicious bite of cupid’s arrow — unless you take your cue from the world of fantasy.

Using the sci-fi canon as a guide, we’ve made a list of five ways to make someone fall in love with you, even in the sweltering heat.

1) Become a fighter pilot — 30 Rock has taught us a very important lesson about humor: Things are funny when they’re true. And so Liz Lemon’s series-long fascination with her imaginary boyfriend, Astronaut Mike Dexter, never gets old because we’ve all been there. Who hasn’t been in love with a fighter pilot at some point? (Seriously, show of hands. I don’t believe you.)

Han Solo, Lt. Colonel John Sheppard, Starbuck, Apollo, Buck Rogers, Maverick, Ice Man. It takes a perfect storm of athleticism, arrogance and cockpit know-how to become a top pilot, and when you master it, it’s like making the perfect mix CD. You can get anyone to fall for you at any time in any place on any planet.

2) Give a gift from the heart, preferably one that’s charmed — It’s not just the inexplicably gullible Uther from BBC’s Merlin that has been hoodwinked into love by donning an enchanted pendant (although we can’t remember anything as disgusting as him shagging a troll).

Since the beginning of time, women and men have been using enchanted gifts to woo one another. And it always works because humans are the most narcissistic creatures in the galaxy! We think we deserve gifts! Everyone of us is Snow White: we would all take apples from bitches because … who would want to poison us? No one! We’re lovely!

3) Trap the object of your affection in a confined space, become emotionally unavailable — This technique can work on a spaceship (see, again: Han Solo), but it works equally well with something as ordinary as a police box. Say you are a centuries-old, always-dangerous, occasionally-curmudgeonly, slightly-unhinged bloke with a Messiah complex and a bizarre fetish for being called “Doctor.” Do you think any woman in her right mind would fall in love with you? Absolutely not. Especially if you made clear at the very beginning of your relationship that you’re always being called to sacrifice those closest to you for the good of humanity.

But then, why do all of Doctor Who’s companions fall hopelessly in love with him? And even more bizarre, why do we — who have had the advantage watching eleven doctors over 40 years — fall hopelessly in love with him? We’re not sure. We just know that small spaces and emotional distance is a foolproof recipe for love.

4) Brew or purchase a love potion — No, we’re not talking about tequila. We’re talking that special witches brew that was explored so thoroughly in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It can be administered directly from a cauldron, concealed in confectionery, even diluted in a beverage.

The effects of love potion are immediate and they are potent. It is a powerful aphrodisiac, as evidenced by the fact that the wealthy, handsome Tom Riddle shagged the disfigured pauper Merope Gaunt. (And that Ron Weasley thought he was in love with Romilda Vane when, well, have you met Hermione Granger?) The benefit of a love potion is that if you fall out of love, you can stop giving it. The danger of a love potion is that it can spawn the most evil wizard of all time.

5) Die — No, we’re serious. Accept the fact that you’re never going to snag the man or woman of your dreams and give yourself over to a vampire. In a few centuries, gorgeous women 200 years your junior will not be able to resist you. You can try to murder her. You can verbally abuse her. You can cause her families to be slain. You can hate her friends. You can invite her to a party where your family will try to suck her blood. You can even almost (accidentally) kill her while having sex with her, and it won’t matter. She will love you FOREVER.

You don’t need to be funny or smart or charming. You don’t even need to be handsome. All you need to be is dead. Also, you might want to think about growing your hair out.

Do you have any other sure-fire ways to make someone fall in love with you? Share them in the comments!

As you know by now — what with the nine-point Richter scale fanboy squeal that detonated this time last week — the first Scott Pilgrim vs. The World trailer has finally dropped.

The film follows the “seven evil exes” arc from Bryan Lee O’Malley’s stellar graphic novels, and since I have not yet been afflicted with Michael Cera backlash, I loved it — especially the part where Mae Whitman’s Roxie Richter tells Scott Pilgrim that she’s going to kill him. (It was like the Bland Ann Veal/George Michael Bluth fisticuffs I always wanted! Remember when they were almost pre-engaged!)

It’s actually endearing how Scott Pilgrim fights Ramona’s former flames to win her affection, but as I was watching the trailer I realized that if Scott Pilgrim and/or Michael Cera were ever called upon to battle the worst fantasy ex-boyfriends and/or girlfriends, they would be toast.

With that in mind, my best friends and I made a list of the ten worst fantasy exes.

Jean Grey/Phoenix, X-Men: The Last Stand — In the third X-Men movie, a grieving Cyclops discovered that his girlfriend had risen from the dead, and was infinitely hotter than she had been in her first life. (That hair! My God!) He was overjoyed when he found her there by the lake, but then she kissed him and his head literally exploded. (She tried the same thing with another X-Man later on, but Hugh Jackman’s deltoids Wolverine’s willpower was too strong for her.)

Merope Gaunt, Harry Potter — Things with your ex-girlfriend are always going to be awkward, especially when the child you fathered while under the spell of her love potion decides to murder you and your new family in the genocide he spawns while he’s on his quest for immortality. Oh, also: It’s hard to remember when you ever thought it was cute that she spoke Snake.

Jill Roberts, Chuck — It wasn’t enough for Jill to break Chuck’s heart in college by leaving him for his best friend. Noooo, then she had to show up in his life years later as a triple-agent with designs to either: a) turn him over to the bad guys, b) kill him dead c) woo him into re-falling in love with her or d) break-up him and his soul mate. She almost accomplished all of the above. Unfortunately, brown-eyed/brown-haired women are my Kryptonite. So, I get it. But I don’t like it.

Darth Vader, Star Wars — Slashing innocent children to death with a lightsaber? Not exactly what I’d call “boyfriend material.” But once Padmé was out of the picture, things got even worse! Anakin quickly became a heavy-breather with a penchant for trying to kill his own son. And how about when he almost let his children fall in love with one another? Not cool, Vader. Incest is not cool.

Lex Luthor, Lois and Clark — In the first season finale of the Greatest Superhero Show of Our Generation, Lois stared at herself in the mirror in her wedding dress and practiced saying her new name: “Mrs. Lex Luthor. Lois Lane Luthor. Lois … Lois Lane … Lois Lane Kent.” Mr. Lex Luthor? Not so much a fan of her attachment to the name Kent. He even came back from the dead to prove just how much he hated it.

Boomer, Battlestar Galactica — Shot an admiral? Check. Joined the Cylons? Check. Had tricky-pretending-to-be-someone-else-adultery-sex? Check. Kidnapped children? Check. My best BSG buddy chose Boomer over Gaius and/or Six for all of those reasons, even though Gaius and Six did “so much bad things together.”

Frances ‘Frankie’ Kane, The Flash — Superheroes always have complicated love lives, but as soon as Wally West evolved from Kid Flash into The Flash, Frances walked out on him. Maybe if she’d stayed, she wouldn’t have gotten hypnotized into being Magenta. And maybe she wouldn’t have gotten her father’s demon soul implanted into her. It was always the blame game with Frankie Kane. She needs some serious therapy. And a new brain.

Zoebot, Caprica — Every date can’t be canoodling on a canopy bed floating on a pristine lake surrounded by rose petals. Or, you know, flying Vipers. But you’d hope your girlfriend might remember those good times when you want to burn her soul off her meta-cognitive processor. But not Zoebot. She came unhinged, flung her ex-boyfriend across the room, and cracked his skull. Apocalypse anyone?

Rolf, The Sound of Music — I know what you’re thinking: The Sound of Music is not fantasy, Heather Hogan! Well, why don’t you trek on over to Wikipedia and find out about the real von Trapp family (spoiler alert: Sister Maria pregnant out of wedlock!) and then tell me the musical isn’t fantasy. And so let’s talk about Rolf. I hated him from the moment he started that condescending “you need someone older and wiser” song-and-dance, but when he blew his whistle on Liesel and the whole von Trapp Family, well, that was just way over the line. I’ll take care of you, Rolf — with a swift kick to the Nazi sack.

Gollum, Lord of the Rings — There are exes who want to kill you, to kill your new partner, to blow up the whole world. And yes, that’s annoying — but then there are exes who just can’t let go. They hole up in caves and lose all sense of personal hygiene and before you know it, they’re walking on all-fours and muttering into the dark about “their precious” this and “their precious” that. That’s not just irritating; it’s downright menacing. We hates it. Tricksy little exes!

Thanks to Joe, Ashley, Kat, Abigail and Jennie for helping me make this list!

Back again for another highly opinionated — some might even say downright cranky — look at the week in fantasy. You’ve been warned!

THIS IS HALLOWEEN, THIS IS HALLOWEEN!

If it wasn’t clear from all our Halloween coverage this week, I’m a real fan of the holiday.

And if it wasn’t clear from my article on how to make the “perfect” haunted house, I’m a real fan of haunted houses too.

In fact, I’m reminded of the very confounding dilemma I had every year as a kid on Halloween: do I want to create and control an elaborate Halloween display for the trick-or-treaters who come to my house, or do I want to go out trick-or-treating myself?

Experience the joy and satisfaction of creativity and self-expression — or eat candy?

It’s a dilemma I still find myself wrestling with today as editor of TheTorchOnline.com: Do I want to interview Lucy Lawless or Craig Horner or Anthony Stewart Head or Lynda Carter? Or do I want to eat candy?

The ideal solution? Eat candy while editing TheTorchOnline.com! Which I do.

THE WORST HALLOWEEN CANDY

Speaking of Halloween candy, does anyone really like Kit Kats? Or Heath bars?

Here are my choices for the very worst Halloween candy:

• Raisins. Seriously? What do you not understand about the word “candy”?!
• Wax anything.
• Candy corn. Tastes as waxy as wax lips.
• Dum dums. Honestly, how cheap can you be?
• Chick-o-sticks. I don’t think anyone ever ate these. I think they’re putting us on.
• Milk Duds. Impossible to eat without losing a filling.
• Dots. See “Milk Duds.” Plus, they have no taste.

All this said, I’ve noticed my candy tastes are changing over the years. I used to say, “Don’t waste my valuable candy real estate on nuts or peanuts!” But the older I get, the more I realize that, hey, peanuts are pretty good in chocolate.

Which doesn’t mean that the inside of a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup doesn’t still taste like dog vomit to me.

THE “FEMINIZATION” OF SCI-FI, OH, MY!

Earlier this week, I linked to a horse’s ass upset that science fiction, which he terms “a very male form of fiction,” is becoming more inclusive:

There is an undeclared war on real science fiction on TV and in movies.  The former Sci-Fi channel, now “Syfy,” is a good example of what has been happening to science fiction on television.  In 1998 Bonnie Hammer took over the Sci-Fi channel and declared that “more female viewers were needed.”  Over the next several years, the Sci-Fi channel became increasingly feminized, losing many of its traditional male viewers in an attempt to go after female viewers….The re-imagined re-delusioned Battlestar Galactica is a good example….While the original series had its problems, it was standard science fiction with men doing and accomplishing things.  The new series instead had a lot of relationship drama and whiny men who were generally unable to find their way out of a wet paper bag.

Later, he goes on:

This season three gay characters will be added to various shows on “Syfy”, one of which will be part of a “communal marriage” with “heterosexual and homosexual couplings.”  This will mean less programming where men actually get things done and more relationship drama, which will inevitably drive even more men away from the channel.

For the record, I still think this might be parody. But if it’s not, it goes way beyond sci-fi. It’s part of this infuriatingly stupid attitude that the world has somehow been “invaded” by women, racial minorities, and gay people, to the exclusion of white men.

News flash: women, racial minorities, and gays have always existed. They just weren’t allowed to fully participate in society until very recently. White men did control everything, but not because they were doing it better: it’s because they wrote the rules and refused to play fair!

Affirmative action, indeed.

But the greater picture is that full participation by minorities isn’t just good for minorities; it’s good for everyone! At the very, very least, it makes for better, more interesting, more realistic, much more sophisticated science fiction!

(Incidentally, anyone who thinks that the horrible, hackneyed Star Wars knock-off that was the original Battlestar Galactica is better than the sublime remake … well, wow, I’m not sure how to respond to that. That person is either (a) completely blinded by irrational prejudice, or (b) experiencing a different reality than the one I’m living in.)

The thing is, I hate to pit “white men” against “everyone else,” even rhetorically, because I absolutely believe that most white men can see that all these social changes are far and away a good thing. It’s only idiots like Glenn Beck and this writer who think otherwise.

And they sense that their sad, tired way of looking at the world is quickly ebbing away, which is why they’re so angry.

THE TINDER BOX TAKES ON THE IDIOT BOX

This upcoming week is all about V, the remake of the 80s mini-series and series. I’ve seen the pilot, and I’ll have a full review on Monday. But suffice to say: I loved it.

And we also have Sam and Dean getting stuck in TV hell in “Changing Channels,” this Thursday’s episode of Supernatural, in which the Trickster sends them into an alternate universe where they’re characters in various TV shows. This show does like their “gimmick” episodes, doesn’t it? But you know what? For the most part, they work.

THE TINDER BOX AT THE BOX OFFICE

Opening in theaters this weekend, perfectly appropriate for Halloween weekend, is The House of the Devil, which is getting great reviews. Here’s the trailer:

Well, this week’s flame has sputtered out, but join me again next week when I promise I won’t be nearly so cranky.

Oh, who am I kidding?!