★ The Tale of Russell T. Davies

As my fam­ily and child­hood friends can attest, I once had an unspeak­ably detailed know­ledge of the BBC tele­vi­sion show Doctor Who. I knew all the epis­ode names, trans­mis­sion dates, major char­ac­ters. Think this guy with a shorter nose. Even now, it’s not dif­fi­cult to recall that the machine used in the War Games epis­ode to ferry troops from one place to another was called a SIDRAT (Space and Inter-Dimensional Robot All-Purpose Transporter). See?
Read more →

Blogging with the Stars

I’ve been hibern­at­ing over the winter. To be spe­cific, I’ve been mark­ing assign­ments. There was no time for updat­ing this blog. But when I say ‘no time for updat­ing’, I mean I had no time to write longish art­icles. There was cer­tainly time to write shorter ones.

This morn­ing, I had an idea. Maybe two.
Read more →

The Genre that Dare Not Speak Its Name

What do nov­els about a jour­ney across post-apocalyptic America, a clone wait­ress rebelling against a future soci­ety, a world-girdling pipe of spe­cial gas keep­ing mutant creatures at bay, a plan to rid a col­on­is­able new world of dino­saurs, and genetic engin­eer­ing in a col­lapsed civil­isa­tion have in common?

They are all most def­in­itely not sci­ence fiction.

My favour­ite bit about this post? The graphic at the top shows a fly­ing sau­cer in Earth orbit; the cap­tion makes it clear that the space­ship is CGI.

Thanks for that.

► David Barnett: Science fic­tion is the genre that dare not speak its name | Books | guardian.co.uk