Fiction

Here’s an end-of-year list of my favorite movies, TV shows, books and games from 2011. I’ve added links to Spotify where soundtracks are available. Happy New Year!   My Favorite Movies of 2011 Rise of the Planet of the Apes Attack the Blocks Source Code Drive Midnight In Paris Hanna The Adjustment Bureau Limitless X-Men: First Class Trollhunter   My Favorite TV Shows of 2011 Game of Thrones Breaking Bad Justified Spartacus: [...]

Spotify is more than just about music. We’ve already covered some of the stand-up comedy (here and here) and excellent Blake’s 7 audio dramas, but did you know that there’s also a whole feast of classic audiobooks, audio drama and plays on Spotify too?   Audio Books on Spotify While there aren’t any modern audiobooks on Spotify yet (Amazon’s audible.co.uk has seen to that), there are still quite a few [...]

Towards the end of 1980, His Majesty’s Starship Derbyshire, the pride of the British Space Agency fleet, blasted off into Outer Space on a mission of imperial urgency. The Derbyshire was crewed by six of Britain’s finest astronauts, hastily trained to prepare for a task of extraordinary circumstance. Jodrell Bank had detected an alien spacecraft briefly entering the inner solar system before retreating to an orbit around 90377 [...]

Rob Grillo (author of “Anoraknophobia“) has just released his new book Is That The 12″ Mix? which you can now buy here. With an exclusive introduction by Martyn Ware (Heaven 17), the book narrates the history of the twelve inch mix and of the remix evolution in the early and mid-80s. The book also includes a chapter on obsessive fans of 80s music. That’s where I come in Before this blog, I ran a website (also [...]

“The Parralox Persuasion” by Jer White. A short story to celebrate the release of Metropolis, the third album from Parralox. (with apologies to Iain M. Banks)

I have my HTC Desire wired up to listen to in the car when I’m commuting to and from work each day. I’m often not in the mood for music until later on in the day, so to keep me entertained I subscribed to a selection of podcasts (a podcast is a kind of radio show you can subscribe and listen to whenever you want). I was initially overwhelmed at the sheer volume, variety, and quality of podcasts out there: most bad, some good, [...]

In this week of the UK general election, several science fiction writers have declared their voting intentions for their prefered political party. English SF writer Neal Asher recently said “I judge books, not a writer’s politics. There’s a lot of books out there by some real hard lefty types, and a lot of those books I really love.” I agree that it’s the book not the writer’s beliefs that matter, but [...]

Is That The Twelve Inch Mix? is a forthcoming book about the history of remix culture from author Rob Grillo (Anoraknophobia). With an exclusive introduction by Martyn Ware (Heaven 17), the book narrates the history of the twelve inch mix and of the remix evolution in the early and mid-80s. The book also includes a chapter on fans of 80s music. Rob had liked what I’d done for the original Pansentient League site and thought it showed [...]

I’ve read around 30 novels this year, mostly science fiction and fantasy but also some crime novels and a few popular science books too. Here are my 10 favourite books that I’ve read this year. The majority were released this year, although a few are older and one isn’t actually out until spring 2010. So, if you want a few recommendations or ideas on what to read over the holidays then read on!

If you’re in Edinburgh and into science-fiction, fantasy, graphic novels or speculative fiction you might be interested in the Edinburgh SF Book Group. We take it in turns to pick a book for the group to read each month then meet up in Henderson’s to chat about it.