Failing Better
[blows dust off the blog] Well. Hello. Been a while since I’ve powered this thing up. I’ve got a new book out. It’s called Into The Dark and is a collection of science fiction / horror short stories. About 28,000 words of them, all told. Some have been published previously, and some are debuting in …
The last few times I’ve spoken with my dad about politics, we’ve talked about the politics of nationalisation vs privatisation. My feelings on this matter are that anything to do with infrastructure should be under the former; anything else, well, fill your boots. So he said: Give me an example of when nationalising something made …
Covid-19 is what’s known as a novel coronavirus. Novel as in we’ve never encountered it before, and coronavirus being a specific type of virus. It’s called that because its shape makes it look like a bit like it has crowns on it. It was first discovered in humans at the end of 2019, beginning of …
I recently read these three tweets by Helen Lewis, and it helped clarify for me the difference between those against self-ID and the rest of us. The second tweet is the key one here, because it assumes that those in favour of self-ID believe the act of saying a thing causes it to be true, …
Recently my Tuesday night Role-playing group played a nine-episode campaign of Luke Crane’s Fantasy RPG system The Burning Wheel. The current edition is Burning Wheel Gold. It’s safe to say the experience was divisive. We started with (I think) 6 or 7 players, and in the end-game had two. But that end-game… wow. It’s a …
[cookie_declaration]
I’m off to Satellite Six at the end of the month. Hurrah! No? No. Fair enough. The Satellites (of which this will be the sixth, keep up at the back there) are a series of rather lovely UK Science Fiction conferences with a the-science-in-science-fiction theme. (Science Fiction conferences are usually called conventions rather than conferences …
“Writer Piers Beckley artfully condenses the source material to create a lively story that plays out in a mix of poetry, prose and song. The icing on the cake however is Ray Shell’s boisterous direction, which remains sympathetic to the spirit of the Gilgamesh legend while using various theatrical devices to shape the narrative.” – …
A new release! I have a piece in one of my favourite assemblages of oddities, the new Outside In, which has just come out in the shops. This one – Outside In Makes It So – contains 174 curious and wonderful essays on or about or around Star Trek: The Next Generation, each of which is roughly …
That fella leering out of you from the front of our poster? That’s Humbaba. A demon with seven auras, the touch of any of which bring death. He’s also sometimes known as Huwawa, and the picture is of a clay mask made of the demon about 3,800 years ago and currently in the British Museum. …