I grew up in a housing estate that was built on a gently-rising hillside. The top of the hill was ringed with trees, ancient sessile oaks, wych elm and horse chestnut. You wouldn’t call it a forest, it’s not that big, but it’s a bit more than a few random trees. We called it Hangman’s […]
They sent me out to Swords to get Willy O’Brien. I handed him the message and watched his lips form a tight line. He looked up, rubbed his nose where his glasses rested, then climbed into the cab of the lump of an Austin lorry I’d borrowed. We bounced along the road back to Dublin, […]
Over the last few weeks, and especially since the end of Matt Hancock’s tenure as Health Secretary there has been a notable shift in the government’s language regarding the future of the UK’s response to Covid-19. When he announced the further extension of restrictions at the start of June, the Prime Minister used a phrase […]
McGrath, Martin (2017) “Ayckbourn’s Artificial People.” Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, 46 (128) . pp. 60-72. ISSN 0306-4964 This article explores how Alan Ayckbourn’s science fiction, in particular the use of androids/gynoids in the plays Henceforward… (1987), Comic Potential (1998) and Surprises (2012), casts light on the themes that run throughout his work. […]
So, a few months ago a student on Middlesex University’s journalism degree approached me with some questions about how a journalism student could prepare for work in public relations. Anyone who knows me will be entirely unsurprised to discover that I answered at somewhat stupid length. I think some of the stuff here might be […]
Once again the government has used a high-profile announcement of an apparent technological breakthrough (the “game-changer” this time is the promise of ninety-minute diagnostic tests) to try to distract from their general failure to effectively address the pandemic (and, in this particular case, to grab front pages from the embarrassing story of a former minister […]
Escapology by Ren Warom (Titan Books, 2016) If I reveal that the characters in Escapology, Ren Warom’s first novel, have names such as Amiga, Shock, Twist and Deuce then some of you will immediately deduce a great deal more about the book. You’ll intuit that this is an everyday story of hacker folk. You may […]
The way in which Corbyn and his mates have been using the issue of Brexit as a weapon in their desperate attempts to retain control of the Labour Party is, I think, revealing. The most common criticism of the Labour Party they inherited was that it wasn’t ideologically pure enough. That it was too concerned […]
Arthur C Clarke by Gary Westfahl (The University of Illinois Press, 2018) Gary Westfahl has been a bit unlucky. After reading his Arthur C Clarke – an instalment in the “Modern Masters of Science Fiction” series from The University of Illinois Press – and while I was trying to work out what to say in […]
About fifteen years ago I was given a book to review by the then editor of Vector – it was Fine Cuts, by Dennis Etchison. It was the first book I’d read by him, but in a (too brief – he didn’t write enough) binge I immediately tore through the rest of them. There was […]