The World (Philip K) Dick Made

Philip K Dick is dead, alas, so it is possible that the world we live in is not his dream. Then again I have read Ubik. And also, it would be impolite to cast PKD as the Demiurge. The again, Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn, but I have never associated PKD with HPL, so […]

The golden age of science fiction

Dear Reader, It has been a while between posts, and this is delayed news, but I have been busy moving house – you may have noticed the world had stopped, this was the reason. On the story front, and what other front is there here, my “The golden age of science fiction” has recently been […]

The Lathe of Heaven

I’ve had to pack up my library for reasons, so downstairs I have nearly 70 x 40 litre cartons of books accumulated over 50 years. I don’t have TBR piles, I have TBR book cases. I wonder if there are enough years left to read them, plus all the others out there that I don’t […]

My 3 Body Problemo

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 […]

The Separation by Christopher Priest

“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 Wonder book of Snails and Slugs

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 […]

A meagre homage

JG Ballard died in 2009 on April 19 (I am a tad late to say ‘OTD’). I read his “The Voices of Time” in a paperback collection edited by Damien Knight, 100 Years of Science Fiction. (I was very happy to buy those two volumes, by the way, in the mid-70s, with part of the […]

The Luge! The Luge!

For your Winter Olympics reading pleasure in the short breaks between episodes of The Curling (not a Laird Barron novel), why not read my story with a title that threatens to break the Twitter character limit, “The murder of Father Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin considered as the single men’s Olympics Luge final“? A story that manages […]

Story #26 – “The Time-Traveller’s lament”

May I recommend for your reading … pleasure? … my most recent publication, and my final for 2021 (and who knows, perhaps my final ever?), The Time-Traveller’s Lament ? So many things to say about this, for a change. Thanks to the folks at Sci-Phi Journal. This is the second story of mine they have […]