I have just finished “Devolution” by Max Brooks. It was fine, although I was disappointed by the lack of easter eggs regarding a certain band from Akron, Ohio. I’ll just have to assume that the blurb on the cover reading “one of the greatest horror novels I’ve ever read,” is a reference to that writer […]
I don’t think this piece by Tony Milligan in The Conversation regarding Fermi’s paradox, Cixin Liu’s 3 Body Problem, and the universe being a dark forest where everyone hides, is quite right. I have no difficulty with people finding problems with the book. I did not enjoy it, and so did not go on to […]
I am receiving constant reminders of how the Covid knockdown and working from home has knocked me for six. Today it was the effort it took to get me off my arse and out the front door for a day out on my own, and to make the decision all by myself as an adult […]
“An adult is in charge,” I thought while reading ‘The Separation’ by Christopher Priest. On the news of his recent death, I moved a few of his novels towards the top of my unread pile, and ‘The Separation’ was the first that I hit. On starting, I wondered why I had not read it earlier […]
My latest publication, My Wonder Book of Snails and Slugs, is available for your free reading pleasure (?) in the new edition of Penumbric. I think of it as a sometimes melancholy, sometimes sinister tale of love, loss and survival, and also of snails, a sea of slugs, a sea monster, bat faced cardigan monkeys […]
I am a creature of habit and habits, and given that day has come round yet again, here is my alleged poem yet again, with the same introduction as before, ever so slightly modified for yooman comsumption, woah, even the same afterword, just like a pompous git … … Today is Australia Day. You can […]
Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don’t allow our enemies to have guns, why should we allow them to have ideas? – Joseph Stalin Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to […]
The opening of “The Old Man” with Jeff Bridges as an older gentleman experiencing a home invasion who turns the tables with unexpected hidden talents got me in. The darkness of the imagined scene where he efficiently kills off innocent police officers and his evening’s date just to avoid detection, kept me there. I ended […]
………. Hardly on topic, I once wrote a poem about Ancient Astronauts which I do not care to repeat here, however I am fond of the coda: The ancient astronauts did not returnthey are lost in spacewhere any one bitis as good as any otherThey will be foundbut Dr Smith will fuck them up
9 years ago, we were living in The Netherlands when Russia shot the Malaysian civilian aircraft MH17 out of the sky. We found out when the phone started ringing from Australia. My wife’s uncle, who was staying with us, was due to take that flight the next day. Family were concerned that they may have […]
Nobody is looking 