The cloaking device used by the titular spaceship to sneak into alien territory feels like a metaphor for the characters in Ian Whates’s bracing space opera. Most of these people have ulterior motives, with the motives of one so ulterior she doesn’t even know them herself. Such duality seems to be a survival mechanism in […]
If Aliette de Bodard and Anne Leckie joined forces to write their version of ‘Silence of the Lambs’ set in a space war imagined by Iain M Banks it might end up a bit like ‘Ninefox Gambit’. For all that, the novel is entirely original, with a sonorous, almost detached rhythm that makes it uniquely […]
I think and write in a visual way because: I was a screenwriter and one needs to, especially when physical directions are minimal and the characters are lying It’s useful when clarifying projects, whether they are creative or not – in fact especially if they’re not I cannot draw and openly envy anyone who can […]
My second transmission from Eastercon 2017 is distilled from the 14 April ‘Science Educator & Author’ panel with Dr David L Clements, Anne Charnock, V Anne Smith, TJ Berg & Wyken Seagrave One of the many great gags in the US sitcom ‘Silicon Valley’ takes place when the embattled CEO finally gets his tech start-up […]
Because a Super Relaxed Reality Club just wouldn’t work I was apprehensive about attending because I have a tendency to be tense. Would I be allowed in? And if I was, would there be enforced massage from a large troll of indeterminate gender wearing too much make-up and a Minion onesie? Or is that just, […]
‘Children of Time’ is one of those books one devours obsessively and then mourns once it’s finished. Such has been its impact that I don’t know what to read next (apart from more of this author’s books). Either way, I’ve had to go off-genre and read a bloody thriller for my next book. Yes, ‘Children […]
Like Led Zeppelin albums, Unsung Stories’ spoken word evenings are individually numbered, adding to the unique sense of each. Tonight’s intersection of fact and fantasy was the observation by regular MC George Sandison that today was Diana Wynne Jones’s birthday. Jones, who was at Oxford when CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien were lecturing there, is […]
1939: Nazi fascists have bullied and lied their way into power. They have no plan so they start a war that achieves the exact opposite of what was intended. 1981: Argentine fascists have bullied and lied their way into power. They have no plan so they start a war that achieves the exact opposite of […]
Peter F Hamilton (L), BSFA’s Andrea Dietrich & Gareth L Powell (R) Gareth L Powell is the author of so many short stories he has lost count of them and six novels, including the BSFA Award-winning ‘Ack-Ack Macaque’. A lifelong SF reader, his degree is in humanities: a blend of subjects like philosophy and sociology […]
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