Planets = Big Towns. One of the problems with Space Opera style science fiction is that it tends just to scale up normal adventure fiction into the larger sizes of the universe. Therefore we get spaceships that do trips of a few thousand light years […]

Food Blind Spots
I have a tiny blind spot when it comes to two items of food. I find it almost impossible to distinguish by sight very thin green beans and green chilli’s. Now considering that the chilli in question is astoundingly hot, and the[…]

Context may not be everything, but lack of context is much worse. Tourism is partially about trying to work out how different countries work. You do not speak the language, you may not be able to read the labels, or understand what is going on. That […]

Write captions for the Tate. The Tate is asking for submissions for captions for its artworks if you think you can do better. This is nicely open in as much as the staff admit that there could easily be punter sout there with more expertise than then[…]

FT Top 100 Films
34: TRON
If Tron taught kids one thing, it is that films that look good, and are about things we like, will not necessarily be good. It possibly allowed breathless sci-fi kiddies to consider The Return Of The Jedi to be better than i[…]

A question about narrative complexity. I am buying a birthday present for my five year old nephew and as dutiful uncle tend to err on the side of books. What books do you get a kid who is only just starting to read? Previous brithdays I have upped th[…]

Poor old Robbie Savage. Finally the “Robbie Savage Fact” as it had become known, is no longer true. Robbie, a scamp, a teaser, a mullet topped rascal of the highest sort (for which read dirty little bugger) has finally been sent off, and […]

I suppose if I had one problem with Before Sunset, it was that the characters, having grown up, had become less interesting. This may seem odd, considering more had happened to them in the past nine years, but in getting older their personalities wer[…]

FT Top 100 Films
35: DUNE
I’ve never really “got” David Lynch. Possibly because I saw his a few of his films before I could “get” them. I saw Blue Velvet as a sixteen year old, and was a bit bored. A fourteen year old me[…]

Carter Beats The Devil is one of those “real people in fictional narratives” pieces which are often tedious hack-jobs weaving fact and fiction. And they usually involve the death of President Kennedy. At least CBTD involves the death of a[…]