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

Babylon to Chorleywood in thirty-two pages

Oxford University Press’s Very Short Introduction series has staked out a territory for concise introductions to a bewildering variety of … More

Warts and all

I’m on a long-term project to read all of Michael Moorcock’s classic fantasy-fiction, which comes together under the general rubric … More

No hubris

Having loved Snow Crash a long time ago, and having decided after reading Anathem in 2012 that Neal Stephenson is … More

Read this now

We don’t live in a temporal silo, separated from the past and future by an impermeable barrier. Indeed, when you … More

Beautiful movement

Running has been a part of me since I was in my early twenties—not competitive running, but thrashing along rural … More

Entertaining contrivance

What little I’ve read of Neal Stephenson’s work has made me want to read more of it, but I don’t … More

A warm voice in a cold world

When I wrote down my thoughts in response to La Belle Sauvage, which is the first volume of Philip Pullman’s … More

Sweet reasonableness

Having had occasion to excavate some of my East Anglian roots in response to watching The Dig recently, I was … More

Expert hand-holding

Worldbuilder, storyteller—these are Philip Pullman’s great strengths for me. As a ‘novel-maker’ he’s stuck in a rather old-fashioned, comfortable mode … More

Sharing

Rachel Roddy’s second book is full of anecdotes and recollections, little narrative vignettes about her immediate household, the extended Sicilian … More

Thresholds

We cross thresholds, we readers. Each book we read is entered through a portal, and marking those portals—projected onto the … More

A game of madness

I’ve never paid particular attention to Nicholas Hawksmoor’s famous London churches, although I am familiar with some of them. I … More