Magnus Anderson joins the Slug Lords to talk about Arsen Darnay’s short story, “Such Is Fate”. It’s about a gypsy, a sailor, a tank of liquified gas, and what we can learn from the past. Music comes via Olivia Newton-John and […]

17. Ratpack – Searchin’ For My Rizla
“I am the magnificent! The most prettiest! The baddest Mexicano of all times!”
A crackly Dave Barker successfully shouts down the echoing authority of The Bouncer, protesting Ratpack’[…]

Amanda Hamilton just asked of Stephen Gately on live sunday morning telly. Excellent stuff there.
(The context of the question, best forgotten, sadly is from plugging an unusually shit and unncecessary book by a DJ of similar qualities.)[…]

I’ve talked about In The Night Garden – one of the BBC’s current flagship childrens’ programmes – enough in the pub to justify a post focusing on it and its strange cosmology. The show is produced by Ragdoll, who are sta[…]

Victoria de Rijke joins Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to talk about “Aye, and Gomorrah”, a tale of sexless astronaut prostitutes and the people who worship them. I’m not making that up! It was written by Samuel R. Delany in 1966 a[…]

On the face of it, there is little that Imperial Life In The Emerald City by Rajiv Chandrasekaran and the musical Wicked have in common, except that they both feature a location called the Emerald City. And indeed if you remove the circumstantial fac[…]

“Track 12” by J.G. Ballard gets Slugged this week, with Richard Thomas joining Mark Sinker and Elisha Sessions to discuss it. Elisha reads this odd story of revenge via home recording in case you haven’t; music comes courtesy of Joh[…]

I have a new Pitchfork column up, called “45 Things I Love About Pop”, which as titles go is among my more straightforward ones. A lot of what I talk about is helpfully linked to thanks to the wonders of YouTube: this post is designed to […]

I usually start with my favourite work under consideration, but for the last entry in the series, I am saving the best for last. Crime is obviously central to countless comics, but I am not really talking about the superhero comic, not Alan Moore&#82[…]

With so much stuff whizzing around the internets, accelerating barely-humorous* claims of big bangs, and all-devouring black holes zapping around one way, and conspiracy nuts spiralling out of control going the other way and throwing out like actual […]