Slashdot poll Favorite fictional place?. I am disgraced as someone who works in IT and didn’t know about Elbonia. Current memes force me to propose CSI: Elbonia at least.[…]

Good question huh? Would you leave an oversized, over-powered infant in charge of a super-powered robot? Indeed the question is begged why would he want to operate said robot in the first place when his prime directive is to SMASH!
Answer. To sell to[…]

From China, international home of the quirky, a rare story which isn’t somehow related to eggs.[…]

I’m a big fan of Taschen, and own quite a lot of their art books. Most of them are excellent. I saw a fat Taschen book on Japanese comics, entitled Manga, at a reduced price, so thought it would be good. It runs to nearly 600 pages, and there&#[…]

This is utterly fucking awful. I really loved a pair of Bester’s old SF novels, kind of pulp with modernist ideas (we’re talking Joycean SF in the ’50s), and real intensity – at least, that’s how I remember them, but I w[…]

There is a problem that many high-concept properties have. The concept is more interesting than any individual story you can tell about it. This is a problem common with many hero-led action films and other media adaptations*. The idea behind The Apo[…]

Dressing up your pets is art! No, really, it’s not just a sad and tragic thing people who talk about themselves as if they are the parent of the pet do, not at all. I know this because my good friend Rachael is organising a second art event con[…]

Andrew Wheeler’s essay, The Sorry State Of Fans, talks broadly about the same things I did the other day – fan response to, for instance, the Dr Who TV series. Both Wheeler and I find fandom wanting, though for differing reasons: I’[…]

Scott Shaw’s Oddball Comics is an entertaining read once a week, where all he does is uncover a really stupid comic from the past and retell it. There is very little side, or snide, but then there does not need to be. Take this weeks entry Spid[…]

You don’t expect an Elmore Leonard book to start in Africa. Perhaps that is the point. The first five chapters of Pagan Babies is set in Rwanda, and is pretty much about the massacres. Admittedly it told me nothing I did not already know about […]