Dance of Joy
I was nicely surprised to get an email from the eds. at The Guardian this week telling me that my blog post on ‘Are we now Post Sci-Fi?‘ is being reprinted in the The Review, The Guardian’s media...
View ArticleBookshops are not Churches. But.
Earlier this week the Guardian book website unleashed a tumult of anger and frustration against the UK’s largest bookseller, Waterstones. The thrust of Stuart Jeffries article was that with its...
View ArticleSeal of Approval
Sigh. The Hundredth Master of Ninja Assassin is malingering. You know that moment when a living malleable story turns into a dull lump of hard, dried up clay in your hands? Yup, thats where I am. One...
View ArticleGuardian Books Podcast – SF Special
I have the pleasure of being a guest on this week’s Guardian Books Podcast. This was my second time on the show, but this time around the whole episode is dedicated to speculative fiction. Hurrah! We...
View ArticleCheer up! The future is Shiny
The future. If our television screens are to be believed, it’s not a place you’d want to go. Dwindling resources will continue to fuel national rivalries, pitching the world into a state of endless...
View ArticleIs fantasy just entertainment?
Just because fantasy is everywhere doesn’t mean it has to appeal to the lowest common denominator. We must keep sight of its roots in ancient storytelling and its power to transform. There are few...
View ArticleEnd-of-the-world literature
I’m on the Guardian book podcast again this week, discussing literature of the apocalypse as the Angry Volcano God put us all in that frame of mind. At the end I call Kraken ‘H.P.Lovecraft via...
View ArticleKraken by China Mieville
China Miéville has a passion for London. The multi-award winning author has reflected the city’s surreal side in Un Lun Dun, set it to a drum’n'bass beat in King Rat, and inundated it with vampire...
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Mieville, Embassytown and radical SF
Image by ceridwenn via Flickr Is SF becoming cool? If it is, as China Miéville claims, then the award-winning author, whose new novel Embassytown hit the shelves yesterday, may have something to do...
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The Reengineering of Fantasy
Look. I like Conan. If stories let us play out our secret fantasies in widescreen technicolor, then clearly there’s a part of me that longs to be a muscular barbarian, crushing my enemies and hearing...
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