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Adrian Selby

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Adrian Selby

Reading

artwork of a skull in a hat with an american flag
Reading

Dead Astronauts & Postcapitalist Desire

August 28, 2022September 16, 2022

Dead Astronauts by Jeff Vandermeer is hard sci-fi. There’s no space opera grandeur here, it’s far more profound. It offers a tender and bleak vision of how humanity changes and fails.

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Epic Iran
Thoughts

Epic Iran

August 2, 2021August 4, 2021

(Gold model of a chariot, 500-330BC) In the book I’m writing at the moment, the main character finds themselves torn from their ordinary life in my hometown of Barry. I wanted them to find an ally and mentor to help them navigate their conflict and keep them alive.I wanted this character, who I ended up…

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‘British’.
Thoughts

‘British’.

February 10, 2021August 4, 2021

I’d not long started my career in videogames when a game designer told me that good game design is giving people what they want, but also giving people something they didn’t realise they wanted, but now they’ve got it, they’re delighted. Similarly, if you cannot offer something new and compelling as an opposition party in…

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Stop Being Reasonable & The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
Reading

Stop Being Reasonable & The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle

July 26, 2020August 28, 2022

With regard to arguing with others about who we should be and how we should act, I wrote recently about how hard I’ve found it to change my mind. So, after the edits and proofs of my forthcoming novel Brother Red, I managed to get stuck into a book I’d bought a while ago precisely…

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Whiteshift
Reading

Whiteshift

April 1, 2020August 28, 2022

Whiteshift, by Eric Kaufman, is an easy book to recommend you read, in part because it is a thoughtful, detailed presentation of some challenging ideas and in part because its subject matter couldn’t (coronavirus aside) be more important. There are aspects to the thesis I don’t accept or understand, but I now accept, more clearly…

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Janesville. A premonition?
Reading

Janesville. A premonition?

December 14, 2019August 26, 2022

I’m reflecting on the aftermath of a UK election result that I, personally, found disappointing. As with the Trump result a few years ago, there’s a fair amount of soul-searching and blame-pinning on the left. In games we call it a ‘post-mortem’ and it’s a reflection on what went wrong and what needs to change,…

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Roadside Picnic & Beneath The World, A Sea
Reading

Roadside Picnic & Beneath The World, A Sea

December 8, 2019August 26, 2022

These two books, one old, one new, continue my lucky streak of ‘boundaried alien geography on earth’ novels that started with the amazing Southern Reach trilogy and continued with Tade Thompson’s award-winning Rosewater.

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Every step you take…Part 2 – Surveillance Capitalism
Thoughts

Every step you take…Part 2 – Surveillance Capitalism

September 11, 2019August 28, 2022

“Maybe you don’t want to ask a question. Maybe you just want to have it answered for you before you ask it. That would be better.” Larry Page, 2014 “We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers…we believe the issue of advertising causes enough mixed incentives that it is…

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I can’t change my mind.
Thoughts

I can’t change my mind.

July 17, 2019August 25, 2022

I’m left-wing. I think I know what that means, but I’m never sure. I come from a family who have always been left-wing. Their arguments and their actions were hugely influential on my politics. I did once think that it was entirely because of that upbringing that I became left-wing; Labour to be precise, despite…

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Landmarks & Postcapitalism
Reading

Landmarks & Postcapitalism

June 19, 2019August 26, 2022

With the third book’s first draft completed and no more deadlines at this point in time, I’ve begun recharging after years of frantic scribbling. The first book I chose to read after coming up for air is a book I wish I’d read before starting writing at all. I’ve read one previous book by Robert…

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The Sheltering Sky, The Damned United, The Raven Tower and Lanark
Reading

The Sheltering Sky, The Damned United, The Raven Tower and Lanark

May 19, 2019August 28, 2022

I’ve been busy finishing my third novel. While I was wrestling with it over the last few months I managed to read a few books I’m now ready to recommend. Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky, first published in 1949, is the story of Kit and Port Moresby, Americans full of fashionably existential angst deciding to…

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The Blind Assassin
Reading

The Blind Assassin

February 22, 2019August 28, 2022

“In Paradise there are no stories, because there are no journeys. It’s loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward, along its twisted road.” The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood, is one of the best books I’ve read. It’s a delight to be able to say it so soon, comparatively speaking,…

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All Among The Barley & The Gutter Prayer
Reading

All Among The Barley & The Gutter Prayer

January 28, 2019August 28, 2022

1930’s rural England seen through the eyes of a troubled young girl coming of age and a high-octane rollercoaster fantasy set in a bleak, violent and ancient city were my January reads. Melissa Harrison’s All Among The Barley is meticulously researched. Early in the book it felt heavy-handed, almost over the top. Edie Mather, the…

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So Long, See You Tomorrow & Rosewater
Reading

So Long, See You Tomorrow & Rosewater

December 1, 2018August 26, 2022

I needed to step away from sff reading at least briefly, mix it up. I got a blast of something beautiful. William Maxwell’s So Long, See You Tomorrow is a marvellous novella. I was reminded of Ian McEwan’s prose, still my favourite, for its transparency and depth of perception. Maxwell’s book presents the act of…

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Me with my new book The Winter Road
Thoughts

I used to stand in bookshops pt 3

November 17, 2018August 26, 2022

In the last episode… I had just seen my book for the first time in a bookshop. March 2016. Over two and a half years on a hell of a lot has changed in my life, good and bad. Now it’s Saturday morning, two days after the above picture was taken. There’s a lot more…

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The Wake & Rotherweird
Reading

The Wake & Rotherweird

October 16, 2018August 28, 2022

The Green Man figure from the folklore of numerous cultures and religions manifests in these two glorious novels as a righteous and very english force; a saviour of tradition, a keeper of continuity. The Wake, by Paul Kingsnorth, is the tale of Buckmaster of Holland, an ‘oxganger’ in the 11th century just as the Normans…

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Tolkien painting of Bilbo
Thoughts

Picasso and Tolkien and obsession

September 22, 2018August 4, 2021

“Everything we love is about to die, and that is why everything we love must be summed up, with all the high emotion of farewell, in something so beautiful we shall never forget it.” In their own utterly distinct ways, Picasso and Tolkien were creative contemporaries.  They shared nothing, perhaps, beyond their being obsessed with…

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The Winter Road. The other road.
Reading

The Winter Road. The other road.

April 27, 2018August 4, 2021

My second novel is called The Winter Road and it’s out in November. It’s been a journey. I’ll shortly create a page on this site with more cool stuff relating to it, but here’s the cover reveal and blurb over on the marvellous ‘The Fantasy Hive’. The cover, a part of which is this post’s…

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The Fifth Season & Nigerians In Space
Reading

The Fifth Season & Nigerians In Space

March 20, 2018August 26, 2022

As saddened by the whole Hugo ‘puppy’ bullshit as any right-thinking person would be, it did introduce me to The Fifth Season, so thank you for that guys. Incidentally, Deji Bryce Olukotun’s Nigerians In Space bubbled up to the top of my ‘to read’ pile too. I loved both these books.

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Newsletter #4 – Scythians, Gods and Rogues
Thoughts

Newsletter #4 – Scythians, Gods and Rogues

January 7, 2018August 28, 2022

This is a big chunk of my latest newsletter. I’ll drop them in here from time to time so you can see the kind of things that my subscribers have agreed to be sent to their inbox, those lucky/weird people (delete as appropriate)… Mind-blowing. That’s my considered opinion of the two major exhibitions you can…

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The Southern Reach trilogy
Reading

The Southern Reach trilogy

December 22, 2017August 26, 2022

I love Jeff Vandermeer’s work because I love HP Lovecraft’s work. But I enjoy Vandermeer more. Horror describes the ways in which people strive to escape the painful and grisly annihilation of the self. It can be personal or impersonal, understandable or insensate. It can also describe our confrontation with the unfathomable. This last is…

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Newsletter #1
Thoughts

Newsletter #1

November 19, 2017August 4, 2021

Here’s the contents of the first newsletter I sent out to my first couple of subscribers :) If you’d like some of this in your inbox occasionally, you can sign up via the link above! The future is quieter. I’ve set up this newsletter primarily so that I can keep in touch with anyone who…

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Every step you take…
Thoughts

Every step you take…

November 4, 2017August 4, 2021

…aka ‘Why I’ve decided to boycott Facebook and Google.’ It began innocently enough. I fancied popping along to Bristolcon for the first time and I was invited to do a panel called ‘You are the product’. I’d put it down as an option (the organisers offer a range of panel ideas and pick those options…

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Ninefox Gambit & Aurora
Reading

Ninefox Gambit & Aurora

October 7, 2017August 26, 2022

I’m reading a bit of sci-fi at the moment as I’m woefully under-read in the genre. How lovely to have these two line up back to back. Ninefox Gambit is a brilliant debut by Yoon Ha Lee. Kel Cheris is a captain given a seemingly impossible mission to destroy an impregnable space fortress that is…

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Dark Tales
Reading

Dark Tales

September 19, 2017August 26, 2022

Dark Tales, by Shirley Jackson, is a hugely effective collection of short gothic horror stories written in the fifties and sixties. She died in ’65. I confess, like many I’ve spoken to about this book, not to have heard of her until a recent review of this collection, many of which were originally published in The…

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The Familiar Volume 1 & A Stranger In Olondria
Reading

The Familiar Volume 1 & A Stranger In Olondria

July 19, 2017August 28, 2022

“But preserve your mistrust of the page, for a book is a fortress, a place of weeping, the key to a desert, a river that has no bridge, a garden of spears.”  Sofia Samatar I’ve long been fascinated by virtuosi and recently I’ve read two almost without equal. Mark Danielewski and Sofia Samatar are virtuosi,…

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Senlin Ascends & The Sudden Appearance of Hope
Reading

Senlin Ascends & The Sudden Appearance of Hope

February 10, 2017August 26, 2022

I do almost all my reading on the bus. Thus, my go-to indicator of a great read is how surprised I am that I’ve reached my destination. With Senlin Ascends, by Josiah Bancroft, I’ve been oblivious to my journey altogether. Our protagonist, Thomas Senlin, is a newly-wed on his honeymoon to a fictional Tower of…

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The Name of the Wind
Reading

The Name of the Wind

January 7, 2017August 28, 2022

“I was brilliant. Not just your run-of-the-mill brilliance either. I was extraordinarily brilliant.” Patrick Rothfuss has written an astounding debut that I cannot unequivocally recommend. Well, that’s not strictly true. I can, but it’s clear why, despite its assured place in the modern canon, it’s divisive. It’s easy to see why the book is captivating….

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Beyond Redemption and Hunters & Collectors
Reading

Beyond Redemption and Hunters & Collectors

December 22, 2016August 26, 2022

In the last few weeks I’ve read two great books; both are clever and both feature a strong central trio of characters. In Beyond Redemption by Michael Fletcher, we have three emotionally stunted, savage and amusing warriors who wander a dark and wretched world leaving a trail of death and chaos behind them until they…

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The Buried Giant & The Quarantined City
Reading

The Buried Giant & The Quarantined City

November 28, 2016August 26, 2022

Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant bolsters the list of fantasy genre writing that pushes its boundaries and should invigorate the genre’s authors and fans.

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Last week: Art, devils, witches and death
Thoughts

Last week: Art, devils, witches and death

November 8, 2016August 28, 2022

They’ve always seemed easy to parody, the Abstract Expressionists. ‘They just flicked paint about’, ‘can’t they draw?’ etc. So I was as surprised as anyone to fall in love at the RA exhibition last weekend. The galleries were crammed with works, to the displeasure of some critics, but it gave me an opportunity to see…

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The Vorrh
Reading

The Vorrh

September 18, 2016August 28, 2022

Brian Catling’s The Vorrh is a very beautifully written book, with the most unforgettable first chapter I’ve read in years.

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I look up
Thoughts

I look up

September 1, 2016August 26, 2022

All my life, on a clear night, I look up. The vast, hypnotising beauty of eternity surrounds us; unmediated, glorious, silent. A tilt of my head pinions me helplessly on the spear of my curiosity, my meaning. I want to explore.

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Chicago World Fair
Reading

Against The Day

August 21, 2016August 28, 2022

Where do I begin? While this is not my favourite book, it is the best novel I’ve read. Pynchon, for me, is the most accomplished writer in English alive. Here is my impossible benchmark.

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Jonathan Strange & Mr.Norrell
Reading

Jonathan Strange & Mr.Norrell

June 5, 2016August 28, 2022

If the awards and critical acclaim have not steered you towards the fractious company of the two foremost English magicians of the nineteenth century, then it is unlikely my meagre addition to the chorus will tip the balance. Nevertheless, I exhort you to go get this enchanting novel. And I was enchanted.

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Billie and Amy
Thoughts

Billie and Amy

May 15, 2016August 25, 2022

Amy Winehouse had voice to burn, a sound burnished by a drunk god showing off, like He took a bet to make another Billie Holiday and won the bet with a sad contempt.

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Frank Sobotka
Thoughts

Frank Sobotka

April 12, 2016April 12, 2016

David Simon’s The Wire is high on all lists of unmissable television.  I’ve heard many people describe season 2 as the weakest season. I completed it over the weekend and hope this is true, if only because it was riveting.

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The Violent Century
Reading

The Violent Century

March 26, 2016August 26, 2022

This is a story about superheroes in the second world war and beyond, a counterfactual fantasy. At first you will rightly think of Watchmen and X-Men but Lavie Tidhar has created something here that is more bleak and more noir, as though the X-Men had been re-told by John le Carré.

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Hiding the ventriloquist*
Thoughts

Hiding the ventriloquist*

March 21, 2016August 28, 2022

“My name’s Gant and I’m sorry for my poor writing.” So begins chapter one of Snakewood. As I planned out the book I fretted a great deal over how to immerse readers in the lands, cities and lives of the world of Sarun, in which the story is set. I recalled how vividly I daydreamed…

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Reading

It’s Snakewood launch day :)

March 15, 2016August 26, 2022

Edited 26.08.22 This page contained a link to the soundcloud audio for chapter 1 of Snakewood. You can get that and more here.

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I used to stand in bookshops pt 2
Thoughts

I used to stand in bookshops pt 2

March 13, 2016August 26, 2022

I was gearing up for March 17th, when I’d finally see my book sit quietly on a shelf alongside hundreds of others, as though it was the most ordinary thing; just a book, on a shelf. I was preparing myself to be, well, a bit underwhelmed? The anticipation couldn’t possibly deliver a satisfying payoff, so…

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leadinglightdesign.com
Thoughts

They followed their mercenary calling…*

February 29, 2016August 26, 2022

The poem ‘Epitaph On An Army Of Mercenaries’ by AE Housman** is one of my favourites, and graces Snakewood as its foreword. It was an influence on the novel not so much because it happened to be about mercenaries, but because I had challenged myself to tell a story about them such that a reader…

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Cliffe Fort Jetty
Reading

The Bone Clocks

December 28, 2015August 26, 2022

The title of David Mitchell’s marvellous book almost fully encapsulates it, as all its characters, deathless or otherwise, serve its dominant theme: the misery of ageing.

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Slaine has a warp spasm
Thoughts

How Sláine and a handful of mushrooms defined the magic of Snakewood*

December 22, 2015August 26, 2022

My debut fantasy novel Snakewood, due out in March, is the realization of a world I first dreamed up as a teenage boy. I’d like to introduce you to the way magic works in that world – no lightshows and fireworks, just thick bad-tasting gloop known as ‘fightbrew’ that makes you superhuman!

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Snakewood
Thoughts

I used to stand in bookshops…

November 26, 2015August 26, 2022

…as a teenager, then a man in my twenties and thirties and I used to look at the science fiction and fantasy novels and believe I, also, was a writer, when I wasn’t.

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The Children Act
Reading

The Children Act

August 28, 2015August 28, 2022

I’ve written here about my miserable realisation I wouldn’t read more than a couple of thousand books in my lifetime, if I really went for it.  I thus struggle to read more than one or two books by any author because there are so many more authors to read.  How could I read another Philip…

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Hawk Helen MacDonald
Reading

H is for Hawk

August 19, 2015August 28, 2022

Helen Macdonald has opened her soul, and unlike most of us, is able to articulate its pain and its healing with a beautiful and haunting power.

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Goldfinch
Reading

The Goldfinch & The Liars’ Gospel

August 3, 2015August 28, 2022

Theo Decker, the protagonist of Donna Tartt’s brilliant novel The Goldfinch contemplates the way Carel Fabritius’s painting of the same name has dominated his life, a complicated connection beginning with the shocking opening as his mother is killed in a terrorist bomb blast in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in their hometown of New York. …

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Girl with all the Gifts
Reading

The Girl With All The Gifts

June 19, 2015August 28, 2022

Minor spoilers regarding early part of novel ahead… I’ve not personally overdosed on zombie movies/games/books/TV shows/tee shirts etc. but because the rest of the world has, I’ve got a second-hand kind of weariness of it, so much so I have tried to avoid it. I’ve done the odd George Romero, loved Shaun of the Dead…

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Tooze Deluge
Reading

The Deluge

June 13, 2015August 28, 2022

I’d been putting off trying to articulate my thoughts on Adam Tooze’s masterful analysis of global history from 1916-1931, The Deluge, because, being so ignorant about that era, I wasn’t sure what I could say other than ‘read it, it’ll educate ya’, for fear of drawing incorrect or misleading conclusions from this densely detailed and…

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Stannis Baratheon
Thoughts

Stannis Baratheon is not the Mayor of Casterbridge

June 9, 2015December 5, 2015

This post contains Game of Thrones spoilers, for, well, almost all of it, along with the movie adaptation of The Mist and the opening of the Mayor of Casterbridge, oh and possibly King Lear.  Yep, I think that’s it.

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Banner Saga
Thoughts

The Banner Saga

May 31, 2015August 26, 2022

I was captivated by the gorgeous artwork when it first popped up in my Steam shop window.  A quick scan of some reviews was enough for me to buy it.  Then, as I’ve been rather busy, I shelved it until now. After ten minutes I was utterly immersed.  The Banner Saga, by the Texas based…

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Quantum Thief Rajaniemi
Reading

The Quantum Thief

March 20, 2015August 28, 2022

This book has no right to be a debut.  It’s exhilarating, a tour de force. The Quantum Thief is a heist thriller the threads of which are woven into a sinuous and densely realised future.  It’s a challenging read, I’ll admit hard to follow in places, as Hannu Rajaniemi displaces the awesome intelligence and agency…

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Joe Abercrombie
Reading

Rivers of London & The Blade Itself

March 6, 2015August 26, 2022

I recently read, back to back, Ben Aaranovitch’s Rivers of London and Joe Abercrombie’s The Blade Itself, the latter a long overdue read for me as a fantasy author. It was because of their similarities that I’m writing about (and recommending them) together.

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The KLF
Thoughts

Burning a million pounds

February 10, 2015December 23, 2015

It had been a long time since I listened to The KLF’s ‘Chill Out’ album.  I was trying to drown out one of the many satirical teenage comedies on Nick Jr. my daughter loves in order to get a redraft of my novel finished. It’s a beautiful album, but hearing it after so many years made…

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Hobbit Jackson
Thoughts

Peter Jackson’s ‘Ring Cycle’ – a love letter

January 21, 2015August 28, 2022

I’ve read a lot of complaints over Peter Jackson taking a short book and making a trilogy out of it merely to screw us all for extra cash. Bullshit.  Well, mostly. I don’t doubt it makes Time Warner a heap more money and I don’t doubt that to get all the big stars on board…

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Here Richard McGuire
Reading

Here

December 30, 2014August 26, 2022

Here, by Richard McGuire, is no less than the zenith of the graphic novel as an art form. It is one of the most profound things I’ve read.

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Ethics Gaza Sudan
Thoughts

Proximity and the manipulation of moral feeling

September 12, 2014August 28, 2022

News coverage of Isis and Gaza recently has reminded me of Henry Fonda.  Specifically, the Henry Fonda thought experiment in Judith Jarvis Thomson’s landmark (and quite brilliant) paper ‘A Defense of Abortion’. ((Philosophy & Public Affairs, Vol. 1, no. 1 (Fall 1971) )) For Thomson it’s a quite ghastly aside, the rejection of which (proximity…

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Miéville City
Reading

The City & The City

August 11, 2014August 26, 2022

Hopefully all China Miéville’s novels are as original and engaging as this one.  The City & The City is on one level a standard ‘detective investigating death of girl uncovers big conspiracy’ story, but Miéville has decided to weave the tale into a quite unique milieu.  

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Housing Philosophy World Trade Center
Thoughts

Knowledge – a few helpful questions for the internet age

July 26, 2014August 4, 2021

How do you know what to believe? The internet has fragmented the ancient institutions that have shaped and disseminated knowledge and it has democratized facts in a way never before seen in human history. When deciding what to believe, and by corollary what moral and practical courses of action derive from those beliefs, anyone with…

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House Danielewski
Reading

House of Leaves

June 30, 2014August 28, 2022

If the horror genre is a journey, then House* of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski, is its destination. I say this not only because it is an attempt to get at the fundament of what is horrifying, but also because the nature of the attempt is an audacious, remarkably intelligent and emotionally satisfying weaving of…

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Gabriel García Márquez
Reading

One Hundred Years of Solitude

June 10, 2014August 28, 2022

Hearing that I hadn’t read any of Gabriel García Márquez’s work, when his death was announced, a friend kindly bought me this, as he had Wolf Hall.  Clearly, he knows what’s good for me. This twentieth century classic in the magical realist tradition was my first foray into the realm, unless Calvino’s If On A…

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Derek Gervais
Thoughts

Sentimentality

May 17, 2014October 22, 2018

Ricky Gervais’s new series of Derek has once again divided viewers and critics.  The show is a sentimental ‘mockumentary’ following, principally, four characters in a nursing home for the elderly.  I loved the first series, the final episode being as moving as the christmas special of The Office.  Many of the criticisms stem from a…

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Grimwood Replay
Reading

Replay

April 18, 2014August 26, 2022

Replay, by Ken Grimwood, tackles the classic ‘What if…’ scenario: “What if I could live my life over again?” It treads a path between the wonderful Star Trek episode ‘The Inner Light’ and Groundhog Day.  Jeff, the book’s protagonist, is going to ‘replay’ his life more than once, unlike Picard; but unlike Phil Connors, he’s…

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wolf hall mantel
Reading

Wolf Hall

April 11, 2014August 28, 2022

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel, is a masterpiece.  It is one of the best books I will ever read. I know this because I’ve lost count of the times I’ve paused over a page, muttered ‘Fuck off’ at the sheer and dazzling quality and control of the form and the narrative, and then carried on reading,…

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reading books
Thoughts

The Reader’s Gift

March 25, 2014August 26, 2022

As someone learning the craft of writing, and leaving it rather late to do so, I need to read widely, and read writing of good quality so that I may learn from it.  It was inevitable I would become a neurotic reader. Anyone with a passion for books has or will come to the realisation…

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murakami norwegian
Reading

Norwegian Wood

March 12, 2014August 28, 2022

So, I’ve popped my Haruki Murakami cherry, having heard from a number of different sources about this writer and his cult following and magical prose. Norwegian Wood is a story, set in Japan, of a teenage boy, Toru Watanabe, in love with a girl, Naoko, who we learn is schizophrenic and with whom he shares…

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good coffee
Thoughts

Good coffee is easy

March 3, 2014December 5, 2015

In the UK in the last ten to fifteen years, there has been an explosion in the amount of us buying coffee while we’re out and about. With this boom, its headline acts being the big chains like Starbucks, Costas, Nero etc. the word ‘barista’ has reached the common lexicon, rarely confused now with the legal…

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literary agent self publishing
Thoughts

In the land of the blind, could the literary agent be king?

February 6, 2014August 26, 2022

Writers have a problem.  It’s harder than it ever was to get published.  It’s also easier than it ever was to get published.

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poverty inequality
Thoughts

Shouldn’t things be better?

January 26, 2014October 26, 2017

“How is it that we have created so much mental and emotional suffering despite levels of wealth unprecedented in human history?” (The Spirit Level) It’s not the sort of thing you can sort out in a blog entry, but there’s any number of things that don’t seem to add up when I think about British…

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jamie carragher abraham lincoln fallout videogame football manager
Thoughts

Abraham Lincoln, Jamie Carragher and me

January 7, 2014August 26, 2022

I’m stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, a post-apocalyptic ruin, watching a man called Hannibal slowly lead a handful of worn-out looking former slaves and a diseased, mutated Brahmin bull to the headless statue of the former president.  On the back of the bull are some supplies and the stone head of Abraham…

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star wars alien amadeus
Thoughts

Ten of my favourite movie moments

December 16, 2013August 25, 2022

Well, it’s my blog, I can do a ‘my favourite things’ if I want to.  What prompted it was this year’s christmas Radio Times.  For as long as I can remember I’ve enjoyed sitting down with it and reading through, picking out all the old films I’d like to watch, you know, ‘Meet Me in…

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Physical digital media kindle iphone
Thoughts

Hard Copy

December 8, 2013December 5, 2015

If our homes express who we are, what of the home where all of your literature and music is invisible to the casual eye; no trace of the stories and music that move you and define you represented alongside whatever art or furniture or decor you’ve put together to create a place that is special…

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Running lido Saltdean
Thoughts

Why I love running

November 13, 2013September 9, 2019

There’s an iron nail in my left knee the first half mile away from my front door, down the slope past the school, dozing in the silence of its lie-in on a bright Saturday morning. The nail, where my iliotibial band sticks itself to my knee, warms and melts away as I turn onto the…

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Snakewood
Thoughts

Making my own words work

November 7, 2013August 28, 2022

I talked in my last blog-post about the pleasure I get from hard-working prose.  Good writing comes from the choices you make with the words you commit to the page.  In this blog-post I’m going to look at two scenes from my book Snakewood and explain what I was trying to achieve with them.  I…

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kathleen jamie sightlines
Thoughts

The deliciousness of hard-working prose

November 2, 2013August 28, 2022

What would you say constitutes great writing?  For a practising writer like me, good writing isn’t just about what is enjoyable to read, but also about the choices a writer makes when they select words to convey their message. I thought I’d try to articulate what great writing looks like to me, using an author…

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Altered Carbon (veers into bonus thoughts on mental continuity and my nan!!)
Reading

Altered Carbon (veers into bonus thoughts on mental continuity and my nan!!)

October 18, 2013August 26, 2022

Altered Carbon, by Richard Morgan, is a cyberpunk-noir detective thriller of the ‘locked room’ variety.  If you want steam rising out of your grates in grimy streets straight off the ‘Blade Runner’ mood boards and a bosomy femme fatale in a plot full of twists and turns then stop reading and go buy it, because as a debut novel,…

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jeff vandermeer
Reading

City of Saints and Madmen

October 9, 2013August 26, 2022

City of Saints and Madmen, by Jeff Vandermeer, has been labelled ‘avant-garde fantasy’.  It is.  The city is the star; Ambergris is a violent and gothic-romantic ecosystem, the inhabitants of which live in a fearful symbiosis with the deeply mysterious ‘Greycaps’.  These underground dwellers were initially displaced by the founders of Ambergris from the much older city that it grew…

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mmo gaming addiction
Thoughts

Richly blending achievements may cause loss of sleep!

September 29, 2013August 26, 2022

Over the years I’ve been addicted to a number of games.  These include all the MMOs I’ve played, Championship Manager, Civilization, Elite, Just Cause 2 and Test Drive Unlimited.  And this was proper addiction, you know: “Oh shit it’s 4am, oh man, not again.” Five hundred calories a day on weekends (crisps, tea and chips) Tips and strategy…

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End Day
Thoughts

End Day

September 20, 2013August 28, 2022

“Sit down son.” Jerry’s mum and dad were on the sofa opposite him. This was his End Day, his sixteenth birthday, and so the day he would be told how long he had to live, the day the law said he had a right to know. His mum was biting her lip, her knuckles were…

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chuck palahniuk
Thoughts

Show don’t tell

September 14, 2013August 28, 2022

I spend some time on an internet writing forum.  There have been a few forum threads that have exploded over the titular writing maxim.  One post in particular is based on some advice Chuck Palahniuk had written somewhere: ‘you may not use “thought” verbs.  These include:  Thinks, Knows, Understands, Realizes, Believes, Wants, Remembers, Imagines, Desires’…

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wool howey
Reading

Wool

September 4, 2013August 28, 2022

Spoiler free.  Rest easy… Hugh Howey is in the enviable position of the author who self-published with a good enough book, got a buzz going and then took off into the stratosphere – publishing deal! film in the offing!  I’m delighted for him. It reminded me afresh that all the self-marketing in the world isn’t…

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Robert MacFarlane
Reading

The Old Ways

August 14, 2013August 28, 2022

The Old Ways by Robert MacFarlane is a book about walking country paths. I know, that’s what I thought, and I only bought it because writers of the stature of John Banville named it as one of the books of the year on its release last year. But then I started reading it, and I was…

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worldbuilding
Thoughts

Worldbuilding part 2: It’s a kind of magic

August 5, 2013August 26, 2022

This blog post gives an overview of my very physical take on ‘magic’ in the world of Snakewood. Now, inevitably, with a fantasy novel, you’re likely to have some sort of ‘magic’, something to make it fantastic in the purest sense. For Snakewood, perhaps because of my conceptual struggle, as a materialist, for magic, I…

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philosophy systems
Thoughts

Love and brains and language games

July 26, 2013December 5, 2015

I’m going philosophical in this post, so those of a disposition sensitive to pointless armchair theorising look away now. I’ve long been interested in Philosophy, but particularly interested in the brain, the most complex thing in the known universe, as far as I’m aware. In this post I want to explain why I think the mind is…

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worldbuilding
Thoughts

Worldbuilding part 1 – how prevailing winds shape history’s winners and losers

July 18, 2013August 26, 2022

How to create a convincing fantasy world. That’s the question I’m sure all writers in the genre wrestle with at the outset.  You can get lost in it.  All such writers I’ve read on the forums I frequent vary in how deeply they imagine the setting for their story, prior to banging out the chapters….

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tim powers
Reading

The Stress Of Her Regard & Sum

July 11, 2013August 26, 2022

Byron, Keats and Shelley – check. Vampires – check. Life or death adventures through London, Venice, Rome and the Alps – check. As with the other Tim Powers novels I’ve read (The Drawing of the Dark, On Stranger Tides and Last Call), The Stress Of Her Regard pits a hopelessly outclassed protagonist, here Michael Crawford, against…

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lotro
Thoughts

Design your own difficulty – how LOTRO lost its soul

July 4, 2013August 26, 2022

I’ve wondered for a while what the use of analytics in driving game design would mean for games.  There are clearly massive benefits.  But along the way I think there are casualties, particularly when it comes to the uniqueness of a vision a designer has for the experience they’ve created.  The only time I’ve articulated…

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grammar
Thoughts

Do readers care about grammar?

June 26, 2013August 28, 2022

“Surely if incredibly high sales of authors who don’t close edit their books teaches us one thing, it’s that in some parts of some genres editing is less important to readers than other factors…..the point about self-publishing is that every type of reader can find books that are for them so long as we stop…

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jack vance
Reading

The Intellectuals and the Masses, The Dying Earth trilogy and Little, Big

June 20, 2013August 28, 2022

I’ll share my thoughts and recommendations here of great books I’ve read.  Here are three I’ve read recently, I’ve not read a bad book in a while it seems ;) “The tragedy of Mein Kampf is that it was not, in many respects, a deviant work but one firmly rooted in European intellectual orthodoxy.” John Carey So, I’ve…

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guild wars
Thoughts

Why Guild Wars was the best MMO

June 14, 2013August 26, 2022

I never played World of Warcraft (WOW). It could be a fatal caveat to the bag of opinions that follows, but, as Rushdie said of Don DeLillo’s magnum opus Underworld, WOW “fills the sky” where MMOs are concerned.  It must be acknowledged, a tip of the hat to the naked emperor from here onwards, as well…

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Snakewood fantasy
Thoughts

The final full stop.

June 9, 2013August 26, 2022

The final sentence of Snakewood approached, already in my head, and I’m looking at the words unfold like I’m on a train thundering off the rails and over the cliff.

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