If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! If you’re a Doctor Who fan – and one of the true variety who has all the old black and white episodes on DVD, still watching them regularly – then some exciting news has emerged. Two episodes from the [...]
Several fresh snippets of news have popped up regarding the much anticipated JJ Abrams Star Trek sequel, which is destined to hit the silver screen in 2013. Abrams has apparently cast Alice Eve, of Entourage and Sex in the City 2 fame, for Star Trek 2 as it’s currently being referred to. The British actress [...]
The Walking Dead is nearing the end of the first half of its second season here in the UK. And it has rather shuffled its way through the initial part of the series, albeit picking up some pace in the last couple of episodes. Even if, regarding the last episode’s cliffhanger – don’t read the [...]
At the weekend, All Zombies Must Die was unleashed on Xbox Live. As you can probably guess from the title, this is a rather tongue in cheek game developed by Doublesix with a focus on multiplayer zombie slaying. Set in the town of Deadhill, All Zombies Must Die offers a huge variety of weapons (such [...]
Gears of War fans should be sprinting to their Xbox, MS points in hand, because a new batch of DLC has been released for the game. Raam’s Shadow is, in fact, the biggest add-on ever to be released in the history of the Gears of War franchise. The new mini-campaign is around three hours in [...]
Focus Home Interactive has announced that it has bagged another game which is being developed that’s based on the Game of Thrones books and hit TV series. The franchise, which has suddenly got hotter than an orc torturer’s poking stick since it was aired on Sky earlier this year, has had several computer games developed [...]
The Winner of our April 300 Word Writing Challenge is writer John J Brady, (known on these forums as alchemist). He wins a £10 voucher to spend at Amazon or The Book Depository, our quarterly prize. As usual, the challenge our members faced was to write a story of no more than 300 words, inspired [...]
Joe Abercrombie’s “Best Served Cold” is a standalone novel set in the same world established in his “First Law” trilogy. Therefore if you’ve read that, some of the references and characters may be familiar. If not, you’re in for a treat anyway. The whole story is based on a plot of vengeance, which is established [...]
Embassytown, China Miéville 2011, Pan, 405pp, £7.99 There can be little doubt that China Miéville’s is currently the poster boy for British genre writing. His novels routinely appear on award shortlists – he has won the Arthur C Clarke Award three times, a feat so far unmatched. He’s one of the few genre writers to [...]
The winners of the 2011 Prix Aurora Awards, the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards, which are presented by the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Association, were announced on 20 November during SFContario 2, Canvention 31, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Best English Novel was WWW: Watch (Penguin Canada), by Robert J. Sawyer. In addition to [...]
Dreadnought (Tor), by Cherie Priest, has won the 13th Endeavour Award, given to a science fiction or fantasy novel or to a science fiction/fantasy collection by a single author from the Pacific Northwest. The award was announced recently at OryCon 33, in Portland, Oregon. As winner of the award, Ms. Priest received an honorarium of [...]
Winners of the World Fantasy Awards for 2011 were announced last weekend at the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego, California. Best Novel was Nnedi Okorafor’s Who Fears Death (DAW), which was also a Nebula Award finalist for best novel. Both the Best Novella and Best Short Fiction awards came from Stories: All-New Tales, edited [...]
Joe Abercrombie’s “Best Served Cold” is a standalone novel set in the same world established in his “First Law” trilogy. Therefore if you’ve read that, some of the references and characters may be familiar. If not, you’re in for a treat anyway. The whole story is based on a plot of vengeance, which is established [...]
Embassytown, China Miéville 2011, Pan, 405pp, £7.99 There can be little doubt that China Miéville’s is currently the poster boy for British genre writing. His novels routinely appear on award shortlists – he has won the Arthur C Clarke Award three times, a feat so far unmatched. He’s one of the few genre writers to [...]
Leviathan Wakes, James SA Corey Orbit, 561pp, £12.99 Leviathan Wakes, the first book of the Expanse series, landed with a substantial thud during the summer of 2011. According to George RR Martin, it is a “kickass space opera”, a quote prominently displayed on the front cover. There is another approving quote by Charles Stross on [...]
The following is based on discussions on these forums and materials I have prepared for clients, but I am, I think, bringing all of it together for the first time. Though it is principally addressed to fantasy writers, it applies to science fiction, too. ON WORLDBUILDING Back in the days of my youth, I used [...]
Over the years, I’ve been in a position to read a considerable number of unpublished manuscripts, and to hear (or read) a considerable number of new writers discussing their ideas. And one thing I’ve noticed is how very, very often the writer who is straining every nerve to write something that will redefine the fantasy [...]
(This article first appeared in my forum several years ago. I post it now — slightly revised — because I believe the subject is more relevant than ever. It is not intended to single out any one author, but to address a general trend.) Is Fantasy Becoming More Realistic or Simply More Cynical? After using [...]
THE OBJECT OF DESIRE — AN INTERVIEW WITH TANITH LEE In a remarkable career, spanning four decades, Tanith Lee has written stories in practically every genre or subgenre of speculative fiction one could imagine: dark fantasy, children’s fantasy, gothic horror, steampunk, science fiction, mythic fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, fairy tales, contemporary fantasy … and the list goes [...]
Forum member Teresa Edgerton is the winner of our January 300 Word Writing Challenge. She wins a £10 voucher to spend at The Book Depository, our quarterly prize. As usual, the challenge our members faced was to write a story of no more than 300 words, inspired by an image selected by our moderators. For [...]
Solaris Rising, edited by Ian Whates Solaris, 325pp, £7.99 Subtitled “The New Solaris Book of Science Fiction”, Solaris Rising is precisely that – a reboot of the George Mann edited The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction under a new editor, and an anthology of nineteen stories by well-known contemporary science fiction writers. And like [...]
Infidel, Kameron Hurley Night Shade Books, 376pp, $14.99 Nyxnissa, the ex-bel dame, was introduced in God’s War, also published by Night Shade Books in 2011. Infidel is not a direct sequel to that book, though it does follow on from its story. In God’s War, Nyx was booted out of the bel dames – state [...]
Kalypso Media has announced that the latest instalment of the Jagged Alliance series is set for release on the PC in February 2012. The turn-based tactical combat game will see the player putting together the usual crew of diversely skilled mercenaries, this time to recapture the island nation of Arulco, which is ruled over by [...]
Christopher Fowler is to launch his first book for Solaris in the New Year, which is being billed as “the ultimate Hammer Horror they never made.” Hell Train reaches the UK on the 5th of January and is set to be a fabulous offering of “bizarre creatures, satanic rites, terrified passengers and the romance of [...]
Dragon Eternity, a browser-based MMORPG from Q1 Online, has now moved from closed beta to public testing. So now anyone can head over to the website and sign up to play. Being browser-based, the game doesn’t require any installation, and it’s free-to-play. Dragon Eternity puts a firm focus on PvP or player versus player action, [...]
THE WINNER OF OUR 300 WORD WRITING CHALLENGE #3 is writer Samanda Primeau, known on these forums as TheDustyZebra. The quarterly challenge requires entrants to write a story of no more than 300 words, inspired by a picture chosen by the moderators. The image is above, and the winning story is below. Congratulations TDZ! To [...]
I recently had the opportunity to interview award-winning author, Elizabeth Bear. It was a remarkably challenging and candid interview — much, one imagines, like the writer herself, who displayed a marked disinclination to whitewash the truth or tell comforting lies. She is the author of more than twenty published novels and a long list of [...]
Skyrim was released last Friday and pretty much everyone into RPGs and video games rushed out to buy it. Reviews have been pretty much glowing, with a Metacritic average of 94% to 96% depending on which format you’re looking at. We’ve already been playing the sequel to Oblivion and can indeed confirm that it’s an [...]
All Zombies Must Die hits the Xbox
At the weekend, All Zombies Must Die was unleashed on Xbox Live. As you can probably guess from the title, this is a rather tongue in cheek game developed by Doublesix with a focus on multiplayer zombie slaying. Set in the town of Deadhill, All Zombies Must Die offers a huge variety of weapons (such [...]
Raam’s Shadow DLC out for Gears of War 3
Gears of War fans should be sprinting to their Xbox, MS points in hand, because a new batch of DLC has been released for the game. Raam’s Shadow is, in fact, the biggest add-on ever to be released in the history of the Gears of War franchise. The new mini-campaign is around three hours in [...]
Two lost Doctor Who episodes returned to BBC
If you’re a Doctor Who fan – and one of the true variety who has all the old black and white episodes on DVD, still watching them regularly – then some exciting news has emerged. Two episodes from the sixties which were thought to be lost have been discovered and returned to the BBC, meaning [...]
Focus claims Game of Thrones RPG
Focus Home Interactive has announced that it has bagged another game which is being developed that’s based on the Game of Thrones books and hit TV series. The franchise, which has suddenly got hotter than an orc torturer’s poking stick since it was aired on Sky earlier this year, has had several computer games developed [...]
Alice Eve cast for Star Trek 2
Several fresh snippets of news have popped up regarding the much anticipated JJ Abrams Star Trek sequel, which is destined to hit the silver screen in 2013. Abrams has apparently cast Alice Eve, of Entourage and Sex in the City 2 fame, for Star Trek 2 as it’s currently being referred to. The British actress [...]
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