The source

Reading the second volume of Rebellion’s sumptuous collected Nemesis The Warlock has been a real pleasure. It hasn’t been a … More

A joy

One of the leading South American festivals of electronic and experimental music, I gather, is Novas Frequências, held somewhere in … More

Indulging in the immediate future

In Red Moon Kim Stanley Robinson turns his attention to the Earth’s satellite in much the same way that he … More

Mystery abides

First-person narratives often use the grammatical device of the first-person pronoun to solicit the reader’s close identification with the narrator, … More

Difficult questions

Josienne Clarke has a vocal style. Some of its appurtenances, such as its precise diction, its half-rounded vowels, its purity … More

Needful history

A book with a title like The Cambridge History Of Medicine makes an obvious claim to be definitive, but also … More

Complicated fun

In my current mission to read Neal Stephenson’s entire oeuvre, I’ve been zigzagging between his earlier and later publications. If … More

More than its parts

Neither One Of Us was the last album Gladys Knight & The Pips recorded for Motown, released after they’d left … More

Still hidden

Hidden Figures tells the long untold story of the black women who worked as mathematicians at NASA in the 1950s … More

Culturing flavour

The world of ‘elite food’ raises certain questions. It would be easy to write off entirely, from a social justice … More

Speculative non-fiction

In the interests of easing myself gradually into research, I’ve continued my investigation of historical bread-baking with quite a modest … More

Root access

When I was young, reggae was a central part of pop-music—everyone had heard it, and although it wasn’t the most … More

In black and white

Having dipped into Kim Stanley Robinson’s work at intervals during his career (whether retrospectively as here, or contemporaneously), I’m starting … More

Periodic themes

My two main topics of research for my soon-to-be commenced fantasy novel are baking and medicine, since they’re the activities … More