I’d like this to be a TV show just to hear kids saying, “Did you see ‘Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef’ last night?”. Then again, given that this unusual and gripping novella starts with the arguments of a gang of undead babies for starting their own union it’s unlikely to be on before the 9pm watershed […]
The sub-title on the beautifully-designed cover says ‘The story of a murderer’, while the inner title page describes the tale as ‘A Golden Age Story’. The acknowledgements at the end go further and say that the Golden Age referred to is both that of science and detective fiction, with the book an ingenious and original […]
I look for all sorts of different things in SF: big ideas, beguiling strangeness or some kind of compelling otherworldly mystery. Not many novels combine all three elements as successfully as this one does. It’s been a while since I have been gripped to the last page without any clear idea of how the tale […]
Richly Satisfying This compelling novel was originally called ‘The Whores Asylum’ but was apparently renamed to appease a certain chain of stationery stores who thought the title a bit much, despite being happy to stock popular S&M erotica and those amateur photography mags with half-naked women on the front. I’m not knocking either publication […]
Fear the binary! Emma Newman is a successful novelist and podcaster whose work has been nominated for awards including the Hugo. Her podcast, ‘Tea and Jeopardy’, came about because Emma noticed that there weren’t many female podcasts and no silly science fiction at all. SF podcasts tended to be of the terribly serious talking head […]
http://www.unsungstories.co.uk Science fiction is inherently dramatic; the highest grossing movies tend to be SF, with their ability to find compelling visual metaphors for the tension between what is possible and what is not (yet). Stage productions are fewer, possibly because of the misguided notion that loads of special effects are needed, and until recently there […]
One of the many satisfying things about this novel is that the usual everyman point of view character, FBI Agent Joseph Newcomen, as actually more of a nemesis. He’s an all-American jock but the America of the novel is a puritanical, reactionary state whose neo-Victorian values are depressingly easy to believe as a near future […]
An epic fantasy novel that actually has an ending! That alone would get it an above-average helping of stars but this novel is also a multi-faceted adventure that gleefully subverts a number of beguiling but insidious conventions, like the expected appearance of the main female character and tedious notions of manhood associated with warriors. We […]
Peter Capaldi’s first series as the Doctor was a return to the ‘spooky stories about a spooky man’ template of the classic series and a shift away from the show’s increasing tendency to be primarily about itself. However, the new season’s opener, ‘The Magician’s Apprentice’, seemed at first to be a move back towards that […]
Den Patrick interviewed by Gillian Redfearn at the BSFA, 22 April ’15 Den Patrick has written the comedic ‘War Fighting Manuals’, the ‘Erebus’ fantasy novel trilogy and maintains a popular blog. One of the best-known entries in the latter is ‘The Gentleman Geek’, which details ten dos and don’ts of the geek about town. It’s good […]
Life in Sci-Fi 