After the break you’ll find the abstract and introduction to my PhD thesis published in 2005. Looking back, I think I was probably considerably more optimistic about the potential for resistance to the big challenges facing liberal democracies than I am today, though I remain convinced that the scope for local, collective resistance remains far […]
The publication Old Man’s War brought John Scalzi both critical and commercial success. His work was widely praised for its fast-paced action and for its updating of classic science fiction tropes but the novel was also controversial and attracted considerable criticism. This article is not the place to rehash the extensive online debates about Old […]
This issue we descend further into the pits of hell to bring Matrix readers the bad and the ugly in science ficton film. Join us as we reach a new level of terror and explore the tortured mind of troubled auteur Roy “Chubby” Brown through his seminal 1993 masterwork U.F.O. The Movie.
The Wicksboro Incident (2003) is “inspired” by The Blair Witch Project in much the same way that a drunk pissing his name in the snow is “inspired” by Picasso. And it is proof that low budgets don’t always mean smart film-making and better imagination. Watch it and see if you can guess which of the […]
If the bomb had dropped in the early 1960s the English middle class would have been thoroughly inconvenienced — getting a decent cup of tea was going to be bloody hard if all the best china had been smashed for a start.
1988’s The Seventh Sign is a film in the tradition of Rosemary’s Baby or The Omen, but, y’know, rubbish. No one who acted in this film has been heard of since 1995. Is it cursed?
The Night Caller From Outer Space (1965) AKA Blood Beast From Outer Space proves that not just American girls are threatened by the lustful advances of alien beasts. Martin McGrath leaves humming the theme tune, over and over and over…
If you are going to build an enormously destructive weapon, then please follow the rules laid out in The Mouse That Roared. Make it warble alarmingly when it moves, place an alarm clock inside it to scare people and make it small enough to throw around a papier-mâché dungeon.
Adventure! Mysterious lands! Dinosaurs! Huge, impressive beards! The Lost World might be nearly 80 years old, but this movie has it all. It even has Arthur Conan Doyle. And he’s typing!
Surely nothing could be worse than waking up to discover that nuclear war has brought an end to civilisation as we know it? In Day the World Ended Samuel Z Arkoff and Roger Corman set out to prove that nuclear armageddon is just the amuse bouche in the menu of terror. Quake before horribly deformed […]