Thriller writer, archaeologist and traveller
Battlestar is back! The noughties reboot of Battlestar Galactica is getting a fresh showing on BBC2 and iPlayer, having originally been screened on SyFy channel. I’m sitting out a 7-day isolation away from home so on Saturday night I decided for old times’ sake to watch the first 20 minutes of the pilot episode on... Continue Reading →
There will be plenty of retrospective prophets this year. A few scientists will be revealed to have had perceptive papers published in obscure journals just before C-19 hit, but a larger number who predicted other crises will keep quiet. Writers of certain dystopian novels, TV series and movies will be lauded as prescient, although those... Continue Reading →
I’ve just come back from my first (cancelled) literary festival of the year due to you-know-what and have received notification that the second is also cancelled. I’m not holding out much hope for the third or fourth either. Annoying though it is, mine are minor problems compared with what some people are going through right... Continue Reading →
There’s an elephant in the room, but there is also one out in the garden and another in the shed. In fact I’m thinking of buying the field next door to accommodate more elephants. Very few people will notice them, because these are elephants we really don’t want to see, and want to tame even... Continue Reading →
I’d like to continue the theme of my last blog, where I discussed established principles for writing text on a wall. These apply not only to museums and galleries, but other public spaces such as information boards. It goes without saying that the writing should be grammatically correct. Less obvious is that sentences need to... Continue Reading →
“Tell me something I don’t already know,” says Gordon Gekko in ‘Wall Street’. I’m rather like that when choosing a novel. I used to like science fiction because it was not us/here/now, and dislike kitchen sink dramas for the same reason. I know what it’s like to struggle in a grim northern town, I don’t... Continue Reading →
Space Operas we grew up reading such as Star Wars or Star Trek take interstellar travel for granted. They don't even worry about the science - just push a button and engage the warp drive. Much science fiction literature takes the same route. In Ian M Banks' Culture series for example, the Culture are so far... Continue Reading →