The recording of ‘Wonderworld’ from journal entry Studio 6, BBC Maida Vale studios 14.00 to 18.30 8 February 2007. It was the Very Snowy Day that people had been treating like the approaching apocalypse all week. I put on my trainers instead of my boots, which later transpired to be a mistake and then had […]
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 […]
Adapting ‘As Good As It Gets’ and hearing Charity’s unceasing voice in my head gave me the idea of writing ‘Diamond Roads’ as a novel so, over six months, I did. It was hugely exciting. Every day I would look forward to finding out what each character did. The evolution of the story came to […]
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 […]
I’d wanted to write a piece of TV science fiction for some time. I thought about ‘The Psychometric Man’ but I couldn’t call it that. In the meantime, ‘Engines of Creation’ by K Eric Drexler, a book that posited the idea of nanotechnology, had gradually been popularised since its publication in 1986. I started to […]
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 […]
Scott K Andrews interviewed by Jason Arnopp at the British Science Fiction Association Meeting, 25 February 2015 The workings of time travel are impossible to show without telling, asserts Scott K Andrews, author of the young adult time travel trilogy ‘TimeBomb’, so in the first of the books he avoids this conundrum by deliberately not explaining […]
Shortly after my last gig as Robert Blair, WH Smiths ran a science-fiction short story competition to win a bit of computer kit. I can’t remember what the kit was and I certainly didn’t want it but I did want to win the competition. I have been writing since the age of 14. I date […]
William Gibson is a very long man. Until you actually see him in person, you don’t realise how long he is; his legs alone seemed to dwarf the interviewer. It’s one of the unexpected characteristics of an author I have admired since 1991, when I first read that great opening line ‘The sky above the […]
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