Monthly Archives: March 2011
outcasts & power drives
Self-important walking about: the core trope of television sci fi in the UK. Without it we won’t watch. With it, we’ll watch anything, up to & including the kind of robotic downer hamming closely associated with Hermione Norris. Blake’s Seven … Continue reading
Comments Off
Filed under fantasy
fragile spaces
Versions of this aesthetic have been playing to packed houses & across disciplines since the 1970s. Its power was revelatory: it sustained itself between mystification & demystification. With that edge blunted–both by the normalisation of the aesthetic & in terms … Continue reading
Comments Off
Filed under ghosts, the postmodernised landscape
a dip in the empty pool
Recently, the only thing I can face after work is “The Voices of Time”. It’s lazy, I suppose, to just slip into this story’s mysterious currents of imagery–astrophysics & mandalas, time & architecture–& bathe in the feeling of a work … Continue reading
Comments Off
Filed under books & reviews
not a hint of irony
One evening a week I have supper in their garden with my friend B and his family, who live on the hill above the port. The history of that quarter is of a fall from grace. It begins with some … Continue reading
Comments Off
Filed under mjh free fiction
heartbreaking search strings (5)
what makes sci fi interesting?
Comments Off
Filed under science fiction
i would never quote from salman rushdie
But even he can’t be wrong all the time. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveller, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize … Continue reading
what more could you want
“What has congealed as an environment is a relationship to the world based on management, which is to say, on estrangement … It’s difficult to imagine a more complete hell.” Wasted Ideology, reposting from If You Can Read This, You’re … Continue reading
Comments Off
Filed under the postmodernised landscape, things to avoid in popular fiction, writing
cry for help
C spent the weekend in Berlin. I spent the weekend in a made-up world. Something is wrong here & I’m so close to understanding what it is. No, don’t say anything, just let me think. I want to get it … Continue reading
Comments Off
Filed under the horror
the lost oeuvre
Barnes & Noble claim to have 20 (used) copies of Wolf Rider: A Tale of Terror by M John Harrison. Order your copy quickly before they discover I didn’t write it, & it subsides into the quantum foam from whence … Continue reading
Comments Off
Filed under lost & found, the horror
