I’ve had to write a lot of new writer bios recently, which is both weird and very nice. It’s weird because for years I thought those were written by the editors of the publication/website/podcast/youtube channel/dog/piece of driftwood your work was appearing on. But no, turns out you have to write your own which is, essentially, …
Langdon St Ives’ adventuring days are largely behind him. He still does the odd job for the Society, and is trying to sell his wife on the idea of both an airship and an elephant to pull back the roof of the airship hangar, but his life is quieter, more measured than it’s been in …
James P. Blaylock’s short story, ‘The Ape-Box Affair’ was published in 1978. One of the very first pieces of Steampunk fiction, it was soon followed by KW Jeter’s Morlock Night and Tim Powers’ The Anubis Gates, all three of which set much of the architecture of the steampunk movement in place. Blaylock has spent the …
Traditionally, and I speak as someone who rode The X Files train all the way to the end, conspiracy shows tend to be ever shrinking rabbits pulled from ever more grandiose hats. You either constantly spin things out, to positively Scooby Dooian proportions, meander an info dump into tie in media (The X Files principle …
I’m a sucker for cozy catastrophes. It’s a slightly derogatory term that refers to the sort of end of the world stories that John Wyndham pioneered. Quiet, sleepy English village is woken by the sudden, horrifying (And implied) forced impregnation of every woman in the village with psychic death children, whilst two villages up another …
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GlAhQtbNR0] I meet Frank Haskins in a pub in central London. It’s one he picked and the moment I step through the door I can see why. The walls are covered with pictures of Sherlock Holmes, London’s greatest detective in every single one of his guises. Basil Rathbone’s lightfooted near-swashbuckler, the precise, hawk nosed …
The most expensive meal I’ve ever eaten was Dim Sum. It was at Harrod’s, in London, in December 2011. Marguerite and I went there because when you go to London for the first time, Harrod’s is a pretty good idea and like so many other people, we fell victim to the building’s insidious design. You …
I love odd shaped roleplaying games. I was a gamer kid, realizing very quickly that D&D itself was not for me, but gravitating towards the more unusual elements of the hobby. There was an old, battered set of the original Traveller rules in one of my classrooms that I utterly loved, even though I …
Twice, in the last few months, film makers have reached out to me to share their movies and to see if I’d like to share them with my readers. In both cases, it was unsolicited and in both cases it was a very pleasant surprise. We’ve already talked about the excellent micro-noir, Burn, and …
I have a slightly complicated relationship with roleplaying games, or at least the most popular ones in the field. I know, I know, it’s a classic hipster line ‘Oh you like that? EVERYONE likes that’, but I’ve never, ever connected with Dungeons and Dragons in any of its forms, and the closest thing the industry …