Superficially, the opening passages of Kill List could be taken as the introduction to another Brit-made gangster movie. The central characters, Jay and Gal are guns for hire – mercenaries who do very dirty work. They’ve got a history together, including a visit to Kiev eight months before that, it is suggested, went very wrong. […]
Mitt Romney and George Osborne: Proof of an alien communist conspiracy sent to foment a worldwide revolution?[i] Although I have no proof to support the assertions I am about to make,[ii] this article will argue that the leaders of the world’s conservative parties (and their fellow travellers in the global uprising that has become known […]
Science fiction doesn’t often do politics. There’s no shortage of sf writers willing to explore ideology or, more frequently, shove their personal ideology down a reader’s throat in the crudest way imaginable, but engagement with the real way that societies make policy decisions is not often the focus of interest[i]. However, Jason Heller’s debut novel, […]
This week I have been reading the Penguin Classics edition of Sappho’s poetry (Stung With Love: Poems and Fragments). It is a wonderful little book full of extraordinary language. One thing that made me stop was this bit from Aaron Poochigian’s introduction The Spartan poet Alcman’s First and Third Panthenia (‘Maiden’s Songs’, seventh century BCE) […]
…and also the department of, in the politics of image control, the more things change, the more things stay the same. “A distinguished scholar of Macedonia and Alexander, the Cambridge historian GT Griffith, once observed with a certain amount of frustration: “It is one of the paradoxes of history (and of historiography) that this king… […]
There is, when you think about it, a surprisingly long list of very good films about boxing. Consider just the biopics: Raging Bull (the story of Jake LaMotta); Somebody Up There Likes Me (Rocky Marciano); The Hurricane (Rubin Carter); Gentleman Jim (Jim Corbett); Cinderella Man (James J Braddock); and The Fighter (Micky Ward). On top […]
I have been thinking recently that a lot of the science fiction books I’ve read in the last few months are particularly cruel about the lives of ordinary people. Take this passage by James Lovegrove in Redlaw, which attacks The Daily Mail reader mentality: “There’s a reason why that rag is as popular as it […]
Well, I nominated four of the five shortlisted novels for this year’s BSFA Award (and Kim Lakin-Smith’s Cyber Circus came close to getting a nod too) so I can’t complain about the shortlist. Cyber Circus by Kim Lakin-Smith (Newcon Press) Embassytown by China Mieville (Macmillan) The Islanders by Christopher Priest (Gollancz) By Light Alone by […]
Somewhere in the heart of Love is a very good short film being brutally battered to death by a writer/director intent on driving home his “VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE” without subtlety. That’s not to say that there aren’t good things in Love, but you have to work to dig them out from a film that is […]
If you’re a member of the BSFA and you didn’t get around to nominating your favourite novels, short stories, non-fiction and artwork for this year’s awards then you’ve got a final chance… You can email your nominations to awards@bsfa.co.uk or you can go here and fill in the form. You have until 10:00pm Thursday 19 […]