Those odd subjects of conversation

One of the things I look forward to about a convention weekend is the bar chat. Basically, the bar chat you get at a convention is the conversational equivalent of taking a bunch of regularly exercised, but well trained, puppies to the park and letting them off the lead. After feeding them amphetamines. For four […]

Headers versus Hearters

*Scene: the classroom in the Peanuts cartoons. At the front, the ever-incoherent teacher. Facing her, a column of kids at desks: Lucy, Patty, Charlie B, and at the back, wearing a dunce hat, a bemused looking kid, slightly older than the rest, who we learn is called Neil. The deployment of dunce hats is not […]

Conventional Happiness

Becoming really impressed with the organisation of this year’s Eastercon to be honest, and that’s before it even happens. Not only have they released a smart phone app that allows you to keep track of everything that’s going (and even reminds you about programme items you really wanted to see if you ask it nicely), […]

March reading

Concentrated on novels during March to give myself a chance of making a properly informed vote before the BSFA awards.* Embassytown by China Mieville (Pan Macmillan): for 100 pages or so I thought this was going to be it, the-Mieville-that-I-loved, but it ended up being the-Mieville-that-I-was-initially-intellectually-stimulated-by, moved on to the-Mieville-that-started-to-outstay-its-welcome, and lastly the-Mieville-that-bored-me-so-much-I-had-to-skim-the-last-bit-just-to-call-it-done-even-though-admittedly-that-last-bit-actually-had-some-action. As usual […]

Pointlessness

This never happens. I’m going to talk about something that annoys me, on TV. I like a quiz show, me. I guess in once sense they fulfil some inner twelve year old smart alec know-all that never got over being praised for retaining abstruse information (yay, gold star!), but they can also be entertaining and very […]

Show of hands: Eastercon

All this genre chat reminds me that the annual SF get-together known as Eastercon is almost upon us. I say this every year, but I adore Eastercon. Four days in a hotel with good friends talking about all the things we love. How could I not? This year’s event, being at Heathrow, has already sold […]

Cafe culture

It seems I have become conditioned to cafe culture. At least from a writing point of view. I’m thinking of this for two reasons. The first is because I took a few days off work a week or so ago, a Wednesday to Friday stretch that added to the weekend gave me five full uninterrupted […]

They shoot talking horses, don’t they?

So this year’s Clarke award short list has caused a bit of a stooshie. It always does, it’s that kind of an award although, in the past, it used be complaints about books from non-genre publishers sneaking into the ghetto party; now it seems to be the other way around. I’ve no intention of going near […]

Eastercon selling out!

By which I mean not that the venerable UK SF convention is going down the movie and TV stars route, but that with a week and a half still to go before the event there are almost no tickets left. I’ve been going to Eastercon for a long time now–I skipped the Heathrow one in […]

Iain Rowan’s One Of Us

He is you know, but One Of Us is also the title of Iain’s debut novel. Regular visitors to this part of the internet can’t have escaped the occasional bouts of Rowan-mania that erupt here. I love Iain’s prose, and even though his work is largely classified as crime fiction, I love the margin-treading his stories […]