Tag Archive | "authors"

30 Years of Robert Rankin – Japanese Devil Fish Girl and other unnatural attractions

Friday, May 20, 2011

0 Comments

2011 sees acclaimed brit author Robert Rankin in print some thirty years. We have here the first of a number of reviews and articles to celebrate this anniversary, this one looking Rankin’s most recent book, where James Bacon takes time to consider the metaphorical elements to this humorist’s recent work while looking at the place [...]

Continue reading...

Douglas Adams – ten years ago today

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

1 Comment

(portrait of Douglas from his Wikipedia entry) Can it really be ten years today since we lost the great Douglas Adams?Taken from us far too early, can’t help but wonder what the famously techno-fixated scribe would have done with books and other media of his works on today’s portable, wifi, 4G tech? Wonder what Douglas, [...]

Continue reading...

“Pencil-necked weasel”

Thursday, May 5, 2011

1 Comment

I almost missed this until author Jeff VanderMeer pointed me in the direction of this City Pages site, but apparently Neil Gaiman was insulted – pretty much verbally abused actually – by some ridiculous Republican politician in Minnesota who clearly has no manners and no decorum or any ability to conduct himself in public in [...]

Continue reading...

The Moth presents Neil Gaiman

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Comments Off

The Moth presents a good video with Neil Gaiman, recorded live at 27 Arts in New York in 2007 as part of PEN’s World Voices Festival (link via Wim):

Continue reading...

Diana Wynne Jones passes away

Monday, March 28, 2011

Comments Off

(Diana with adorable kitty, pic borrowed from and (c) her author-approved fan site) I missed hearing about this at the weekend until a friend in my SF book group mentioned it to me – very sad to report that the wonderful fantasy author Diana Wynne Jones has finally succumbed to her long fight against cancer. [...]

Continue reading...

Douglas Adams: Parrots, the Universe and Everything

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Comments Off

Okay, this is mostly the late, great Douglas Adams in his natural history mode rather than science fiction writer mode, but when I found this recording of Douglas from the University of California (via TED) from 2001, I thought some of you might enjoy seeing it again and, let’s be honest, any excuse to post [...]

Continue reading...

You can be a character in a Peter F Hamilton novel

Friday, November 5, 2010

Comments Off

Bestselling science fiction author and all-round good egg Peter F Hamilton tells me that, along with a whole slew of writers, he is offering readers the chance to bid on Ebay to have a character named after them in his next novel, with the funds raised going to Autistica, which campaigns to invest more into [...]

Continue reading...

From the BBC archives: In Their Own Words – British Novelists Collection

Monday, August 16, 2010

Comments Off

The BBC’s extensive archives offer up a veritable literary treasure trove – some 40-odd British writers in their own words, including several notable writers from the SF&F stable such as JRR Tolkien, TH White and John Wyndham, as well as several authors who haven’t been averse to using elements of science fiction or fantasy in [...]

Continue reading...

Books! Comics! Writers! Artists! Readers! The Edinburgh Book Fest begins!

Saturday, August 14, 2010

1 Comment

Edinburgh is already heaving with the Fringe well underway – August is Festival time and a city already awash with global tourists are joined by legions of Festival goers, almost doubling the population. Today another major festival landmark begins as our friends in the 2010 Edinburgh International Book Festival open proceedings (excellent YA fantasy author [...]

Continue reading...

The Haunting – and sketching – of Hill House

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Comments Off

Writer’s Houses has sketches by the great Shirley Jackson, found in her papers in the Library of Congress, including some of Hill House and other fictional locales (link via Matt Staggs):

Continue reading...

Edinburgh International Book Festival: Moore, Trudeau, Bell, Banks and more

Friday, July 30, 2010

Comments Off

August is all but upon us and in the city of Edinburgh that means the world’s largest arts festival is about to take off. The population of the city almost double between tourists, festival goers and performers on every corner and during two weeks of that month long circus of every conceivable kind of artform [...]

Continue reading...

Lit Sutra – Brit writers in India

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

1 Comment

Alastair kindly informs us that several British writers – China Mieville, Andy Diggle, Mark Billingham and Denise Mina -are all travelling to India this week. It’s part of the Lit Sutra programme of the British Council, “whose aim is to introduce the best British crime fiction, sf & fantasy, and graphic novel writers to the [...]

Continue reading...

Ian Rankin and Neil Gaiman at the Edinburgh Book Fest

Friday, August 21, 2009

3 Comments

Its summer in Scotland but last night you could almost mistake it for autumn – sunny, but cool and even evidence of chestnuts appearing on the trees. Still, a pleasant evening to walk towards Edinburgh’s elegant Georgian New Town (like the Old Town designated a UN World Heritage Site), bells pealing from the distinctive three-spired [...]

Continue reading...

How to Love Your ‘Inner Zombie’

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Comments Off

Quite early on in the blog’s existence I chatted with author Jaspre Bark when Rebellion, owners of 2000 AD, launched their then-new Abaddon Books range of novels. Jaspre had obviously put some thought into his answers and it made for an interesting read (if I say so myself). Recently he mentioned to me that he [...]

Continue reading...

What a writer did before he was a writer

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Comments Off

One of my favourite (and consistently most inventive) contemporary science fiction writers Charlie Stross has finished posting up a 25, 000 word piece of autobiography about how he came to be the science fiction scribe he is today, How I Got There in the End: “I was writing fiction (and articles for Computer Shopper) as [...]

Continue reading...