As part of The Sunday Salon – a blogging experiment where readers post brief articles on the books they’re currently reading – here’s the tome I’m perusing today: The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. It is a document designed to capture the essential nature of communism in the form pushed by European [...]
It’s been a disappointing day. This morning, the Canterbury half marathon took place and I wasn’t there. Or, rather, I was there – in the crowd, cheering on my friend Nir. About three weeks ago, I was getting towards the end of a ten kilometre run when I my left knee – slightly dodgy already, [...]
The saga of this start-up, which was tipped as a company to watch way back in 20061, has ended with its key assets being purchased by HarperCollins. One might argue that the matter is closed. However, the Bookseller ran an in-depth piece on the débâcle2 last Thursday. It’s worth reading as a closely-described account of [...]
Episodic memory is sometimes called autobiographical memory (though certain neuroscientists consider them to be different phenomena). This refers to the experiential remembrance of one’s own life: what one had for breakfast, one’s first day at school, and so on. Forgetfulness is fundamental to the human cognitive system. Without it, all manner of information processing tasks [...]
According to our friends over at the Cable News Network: Author Iain M. Banks, whose “Culture” novels have made him one of science fiction’s leading lights, has created a utopian universe where altruistic robot spaceships care for genetically-enhanced humanoids, where no one wants for anything and where people are freed from the chores of daily [...]
I’m disappointed to read this BBC News story about some members of the staff at Kingston University (London) telling students to positively skew their answers in the National Student Survey. (Disclaimer: I’m an Associate Lecturer at the Open University.) “If Kingston comes down the bottom, the bottom line is that nobody is going to want [...]
This blog has been banging on like a misfiring Energizer Bunny since July 2004. At that point, I had written the first draft of my novel Déjà Vu, and it was – I think – in the hands my erstwhile editor, the top notch Aliya Whiteley1. My first entry, entitled Reading the classics, began: Today [...]
Charles Stross has posted some typically thoughtful comments on the nature of length in fiction. What, exactly, is a short story and how does it differ from a novel? Can a novel itself be a chapter? It’s a truism of the writing business that short stories are not like novels. There are any number of [...]
What is Twitter? Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send “updates” (or “tweets”; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter website, via short message service (e.g. on a cell phone), instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific or Facebook. Via Wikipedia You’ll have [...]
John August, successful Hollywood screenwriter and blogger, posts some thoughts on how to raise your game as a writer while working. My advice for you is to dedicate one day a week to disassembling good movies. Take existing films (and one-hour dramas) and break them down to cards. Think of yourself as an ordinary mechanic [...]