Untinted spectacles

Unlike many who write genre fiction, I didn’t grow up reading the stuff. Don’t know, it just never appealed to me. My loss, I guess, but one benefit it has left me with is the distinct lack of rose in my spectrum when viewing the older works in the genre. When I first joined GSFWC […]

A word in your shell-like

I find this rather exciting. TTAPress have just launched a new arm to their kaliesque fiction goddess – a podcast site called Transmissions From Beyond. Looks like it will consist of spoken word readings of stories published in all three of TTA’s magazines: Interzone, Crimewave and Black Static. There’s three stories up now for your […]

AbFab Whitby

So, over the weekend the postman dropped a very welcome jiffy bag on my mat. It was something I’ve been looking forward to for a fair while now, and I’m delighted to announce the arrival of Fabulous Whitby. This is the second in what looks hopefully like it might be a series of short story […]

That there is a doorway to a world of enchantment

Last night. Oh, last night. The last, and greatest, of the birthday gifts. Leaving blazing Glasgow on the east-bound bus we arrived in a fog-bound Edinburgh that was doing its best to mimic Holmsian London. A real pea-soupah that was chill and damp, and rotten and otherwordly. All of which was appropriate because we were […]

Weather and Culture

So it was one of those weekends where the summer seemed to have been condensed down into two days. The sun shone overtime, its light intensified to hot flowing honey with just enough breeze to take the edge off, and keep everyone the right side of happy. And, occasioned by visiting dignitaries, we went out […]

Delia Dances

We always knew Delia Derbyshire was ahead of her time, but presaging 21st C dance music by over 30 years is quite some going. Good on her!

On turning…

So, after a month of surprisingly maudlin introspection, I emerge on the other side of 40 no different in any tangible way to when I went into it. It wasn’t, after all, a one-way portal molecule-thin glass that wizens your atoms as you step through like time-lapsed footage of so many ageing apples. And life […]

Drawing The Sweep

Last night, in the legendary football city of Glasgow, the draw was made for the official TTA Euro2008 Sweepstake. In a lavish ceremony, Presiding Officer Ian Hunter and Secretary Craig Marnoch of the officiating body, GSFWC, drew the competing countries and the numbers of the contestants. The Draw in full: 1 Andy Cox France 2 […]

The Taste Of Mundanity

So, the Mundane SF issue of Interzone has come and gone. In case you’ve not been aware, there was a whole bunch of foohfarah about the Mundane manifesto, because I don’t know, the rhetoric rubbed people up the wrong way or something. And that was rekindled when IZ announced they were handing over the reins […]

Random Access Memory Forever

It used to be that when you had one of those moments of memory where something from your childhood bobs to the surface of the mental rummage pile you’d perhaps have to resign yourself to the fact that it would most likely only be glimpse, you’d never get to experience it again. Of course the […]