I wasn’t going to comment on the Clarke Award kerfuffle caused by Chris Priest’s blog post about the shortcomings of the shortlist and his attack on the committee – but everyone else seems to be getting stuck in, so here is my somewhat late (I’m having internet connection problems) take on the situation.
I always have more than one book on the go at any given time. There is always one novel and one work of non-fiction work (usually something on politics, history or economics) on the go. Actually, I’m usually part way through several works of non-fiction at any given time and, when I commuted, I was […]
Generally, when someone says a Hollywood blockbuster is “the worst film ever” my reaction is to ball my fingers into a fist and beat him soundly. It’s not that I want to defend big studio releases or even that I think The Matrix Revolutions, Pearl Harbour or John Carter are good films. They’re obviously not. […]
Why Some Things Should Not Be For Sale by Debra Satz is a work of political philosophy that critiques the assumptions that underlie much modern economic theory and the implications of those assumptions in the application of markets to real world problems. Satz starts from the principle that markets have their value and their place […]
John Carter of Mars is going to go down in the history books as one of the biggest flops in cinema history . It might have been cheaper for Disney to actually build a pile of money and climb to Edgar Rice Burrough’s fabled Barsoom rather than make this film. The early reckoning is that […]
Since issue 58 of Focus is now off to the printer, I thought I’d put up this from issue 57 – the second in what appears to be an ongoing series of flash fiction pieces inspired by common writerly errors indentified by The Turkey City Lexicon. This is a slightly longer version than the one […]
A bumper mailing includes: BSFA AWARDS BOOKLET 2011 Featuring all the shortlisted short stories… The Silver Wind by Nina Allan The Copenhagen Interpretation by Paul Cornell Afterbirth by Kameron Hurley Covehithe by China Miéville Of Dawn by Al Robertson
No one should go into director David Mackenzie’s Perfect Sense expecting a light-hearted romp. This apocalyptic romance is a slow-burn – despite packing four separate-but-linked disasters into a brief 88 minute. Its characters exist on the edge of the world (well, Glasgow) and can only watch and wait, essentially incapable of influencing the flow of […]
Despite the garish cover and silly title, John Quiggin’s Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us (Princeton University Press, 2010) is a book with a serious and timely intent – to rescue our societies from the disastrous effects of right-wing economic orthodoxy. Quiggin begins by quoting Keynes’ contention that practical men “are usually […]
This week I read Strange Divisions & Alien Territories: The Sub-genres of Science Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) edited by Keith Brookes. It’s a collection of essays that, the blurb on the back says: explores the sub-genres of science fiction from the perspective of a range of top SF authors, combining a critical viewpoint with exploration […]