Smart roots

I’ve been following the work of James Beaudreau since he sent me a trio of beautifully packaged CD albums for…

History of tradition

I think I’ve burnt myself out on research now. There’s a lot more I could read to expand my thinking…

Michael Woodman is a lover of words. On his most recent album in particular, his lyrics display an affinity for…

Having finished reading Neal Stephenson’s epic historical trilogy The Baroque Cycle it’s quite hard, on reflection, to recall everything that’s…

Martin Compston is best known for appearing in the entertainingly silly police fantasy Line of Duty, but his first acting…

Frank Herbert’s Dune has been a part of my life for many years—I started reading it for the first time…

The historian Roy Porter was known during his lifetime as a ‘one-man book factory’, a prodigiously productive scholar who wrote…

Mostly if I want to find out about something (I call it ‘research’ when I’m feeling self-important), I look on…

Sampling became one of the most significant new techniques in record production during the 1980s, and although its influence on…

I read an interview with Suzanne Simard in New Scientist and it brought tears to my eyes. Her description of…

Kim Stanley Robinson is known for not writing stories about soldiers, or other stereotypically heroic figures—which in our deeply fucked-up…

Ordinary voices get so little time and exposure that we tend to forget what they sound like, despite the fact…

Much of the development of videogames passed me by, despite my early and continuing interest, thanks to my long voluntary…

Having been interested in comics for a very long time, I have of course been aware of manga. Until now,…