Keeping faith

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

Putting medicine in its place

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Martin Scorsese has something of a reputation as a film maker who does movies about criminals in New York, but … More

Having recently read and written about Quicksilver, the book which precedes The Confusion in Neal Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle trilogy, there’s … More

Martin Scorsese enjoys making films about criminals. He likes representing their lives and their culture, and he often collaborates with … More

One thing I’ve had reinforced through watching the Rudolph Maté directed Robert Mitchum vehicle Second Chance (1953), is the total … More

I’m fortunate enough to be closely related to someone (my mum) who is something of an authority on the state … More