Month: February 2012

  • Workfare: Stupid or Evil?

    There’s a saying in which I believe and attempt to live my life by: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. With that in mind, let’s run a little thought experiment. You are the manager of a company, and your objective is to maximise the profit for the company. You […]

  • Gender Equality and the Nuclear Option

    So, Paul Cornell has done an interesting thing. A little bit of background: I’ve met Paul at several conventions, and we’ve been on several panels together. That men and women are and should be treated as equal, and that in today’s society (both in general and in the particular subculture of SF Fandom) they are […]

  • Rocket Science (Fiction)

    Well, if you haven’t seen me for the last four or five months, it wasn’t because I don’t love you any more. It’s because I’ve been working on a magazine called “Spaceships of Science Fiction”. My copies arrived on Thursday. (Technically speaking it’s a bookazine, yes. Hush there at the back.) It costs £7.95, is […]

  • Happy Birthday, Chuck

    This year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. Now I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for Charles. As well as being an absolutely brilliant writer, he helped me to get my start in the business. The first theatre play I wrote that was professionally performed was an adaptation of […]