Rosie and I stumbled across Banner of Souls a novel by a British Science Fiction and Fantasy author Liz Williams. It’s the first of her work that I’ve come across and I was impressed by her writing and the “way out there” setting so I contacted Liz and she was kind enough to oblige me […]

The good people over at SFSignal decided to turn the tables on your memetherapists and stick us under the spotlight. They asked all three of us a load of questions and you can read our answers here.

John Leslie is Professor Emeritus at the University of Guelph’s Philosophy Department. He’s also associated with the Lifeboat Foundation and has written about and studied cosmology, metaphysics and cosmology.

We continue our coverage of Science Fiction and Fantasy art with an interview with artist Brian Dow an artist who has recently come to my attention via Pyr’s editor Lou Anders blog Bowing to the Future.

Today we interview award winning Science Fiction and Fantasy illustrator Dominic Harman about his work. His distinctive illustrations have graced the covers of over a hundred magazines and book jackets as well as being tucked away inside the pages of Interzone, Analog and other magazines.

I liked the radio dramas of yesteryear. When I first discovered Live365 a few years back I went through it and listened to every Science Fiction related radio show I could find. The novelty wore a bit thin eventually, there’s only so much 1950s Science Fiction radio dramas I could listen to.
But with podcasting the […]

We stray from our Modus Operandi today with an interview with fantasy author Mark Chadbourn from the English midlands. One of his recent blog posts entitled Age of Heroes, where he talks about how the state of the world effects people’s tastes in genre fiction, caught my eye, as well as a few links to him from the SF&F blogosphere.

We wrap the week up with Science Fiction author and blogger Tobias Buckell. We discuss his breakthrough novel Crystal Rain, blogging, his writing and the future of Science Fiction on the Internet.

John C. Wright answers the question “Is it worth preserving the thin red line between sci-fi and fantasy” with his usual eloquence.
You can find our brain parade on the same subject here

We’ve interviewed a number of Science Fiction Writers over the past few months. For a change of pace I interviewed an artist. Gavin Mundy is a self taught artist who enjoys conventional subjects but, with an over-active imagination too vivid for his own good, frequently depicts fantasy, sci-fi and ‘real world’ space subjects.

Today we interview John G. Hemry (A.K.A. Jack Campbell) a military SF writer with a military background. John is a retired U.S. Navy officer. His father is a mustang, so John grew up living everywhere from Pensacola, Florida to San Diego, California, including an especially memorable few years on Midway Island.

Today we bring you Science Fiction Writer and former SFWA president Paul Levinsion. Paul’s also been kind enough to participate enough in a number of our Brain Parades. And thanks to our nifty new Tag cloud you can see all his commentary at a click of a button, just hit the Paul Levinson tag.

We kick the week off with an interview with Paul Hartzog about Panarchy theory which he is a primary developer of. He contributes to Smart Mobs and also blogs at Panarchy. We get his take on a few issues with respect to share and sharing alike.

MTToday we interview Peter Watts, a Canadian science fiction author whose name popped up three times in our underrated writers Brain Parade a while back. His debut novel Starfish is one of the best science fiction novels I’ve read in the decade. I pestered Peter about his upcoming novel Blindsight.

It’s been a while since we’ve had some science ficiton related content on the blog but we’re making up for some lost time with an interview with young turk science fiction author and coolio blogger John Scalzi.

Today we interview The Guardian’s Technology editor Charles Arthur on the Free Our Data campaign, aimed at persuading the British government to stop charging for non personal data collected at the taxpayers expense. To read the original article that started the campaign go here. (link)

Today we get a head start on the week with an interview with science fiction author Mark Budz. I talk to him about science ficiton, writing, military robots and his latest novel Idolon.

Times are-a-changing, it wasn’t that long ago (four weeks in fact) when I probably couldn’t name a single Australian science fiction author. Now I’ve corresponded with two, the first is Russel Blackford and the second is Joel Shepherd who I’ve just interviewed.

Today we interview Keith Brooke the British science fiction author behind Genetopia (link), Green Party candidate and the man behind curtain at Infinityplus.co.uk. I asked him a few questions about his work and his politics.

I kick the week off with a short exchange with technology writer Paul Gilster author of Centauri Dreams: Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration on the subject of spaceflight.

Hal Duncan is a Scottish writer author whose debut novel Vellum has been generating a lot of very good buzz lately. He was kind enough to oblige us an interview. Enjoy.

TodayI bring you the fruition of my latest bit of science fiction author pestering. My latest victim is american SF author Nick DiChario. Nick has been nominated for the John W. Campbell Award, the World Fantasy Award, and two Hugo Awards. His first novel, A SMALL AND REMARKABLE LIFE has just come out.

Lest you think we’ve forgotten that we blog about speculative fiction as well as speculative politics I bring you an interview with science fiction author Adam Roberts. I asked him a few questions about his latest novel Gradisil and his writing in general.

We’re keeping it political today with a mini interview with Jamais Cascio who is the co-founder of Worldchanging (link), one of my favourite blogs. I got some commentary from Jamais for some of upcoming Brain Parades but I also took the oppurtunity to ask him some non-Brain Parade questions as well the answers to which I relate to you here:

We wrap up a heavy week of blogging with Chris Roberson a young turk who has been making waves with Paragea a new SF novel that’s getting quite a buzz on the SF blogosphere. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to get my hot little hands on a copy on this side of the Atlantic yet but I’m a big fan of pulp and Chris Roberson is at the forefront of what seems to be a resurgence of 21st century pulp action in SF.

‘ve interviewed a number of transhumanists here over the past few weeks. Today I bring you an interview with Paul Hughes (no related to Dr. J Hughes) the editor of Future Hi. Paul is a pscyhedelic transhumanist, part of a movement that combines elements of spirituality, pschedelic culture and transhumanist thought.

I interviewed another British researcher stationed at Halley Research Station in Antarctica about his life there. Mark Wales is an electrician currently wintering over in Britains most remote Antarctic research station.

One thing I like about this blog is that I get to ask just about all kinds of brainy types questions that have been nagging me. Today I have a short interview with Daniela Cerqui. She’s an anthropologist currently conducting research at the University of Reading’s Cybernetics dept

Today we pick David Louis Edelman’s brains. He’s the author of the brand spanking new novel Infoquake (link) an active blogger who maintains his own blog (link) and also has his fingerprints on Deepgenre (link) and SFnovelists (link)

You’ve probably noticed that blogging Canadian SF writers are overepresented here. Well that trend continues. Today I bring you Mark Rayner a hilarious blogger and new kid on the block in the Canadian SF scene. His debut novel is Amadeus Net, you can read more about it here (link) Here’s our exchange:

We’ve interviewed a number of transhumanists over the past month. This week we interview technoprogressive Dale Carrico, a lecturer with the Department of Rhetoric at the University of California. I’ve read some of his writing on the IEET (link) and am impressed by his point of view.

We kick the week off with a chat with Robert Charles Wilson author of Spin.

MTHow is work coming along on Axis? I realize its probably too early to ask you about it, but… Can you tell us anything about it?

John Shirley is the author of numerous novels and books of stories, including the novels Cellars, Wetbones, City Come A-Walkin’ , Eclipse, A Splendid Chaos, the collection Black Butterflies (which won the Bram Stoker award and which was chosen by PW as one of the best books of that year), and the collection Really Really Really Really Weird Stories from Nightshade.

Today I pester science blogger Jennifer S Griffin on biological and molecular kinds of things.

MT How do you feel about the way science is portrayed in science fiction?

JG There is a very wide range of science fiction, and some of it is brilliant and fascinating.

Today we take a different tack and interview an editor rather than a writer on the subject of science fiction. John has his fingers in a lot of different pies, he’s assistant editor of Fantasy and Science Fiction

Robert Peckyno has been a lecturer for the “Introduction to Space Studies” course at the University of North Dakota as well as the webmaster for Volcano World for the past four years. He is currently leaving UND to begin PhD work at Oregon State focusing on Martian volcanism and geomorphology.

As promised I’m following up on reader feedback from our Brain Parade on Underrated Science Fiction writers (link). One of our readers nominated Susan, I’d credit him here with a link but he commented anymonously. Susan was gracious enough to submit to a few pesky questions about her work

I’m continuing the robots and ethics thread that I started with that Kevin Warwick interview last week (link). This week I bring you the perspective of Daniel Wilson author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising, a funny and informative book on the future of robotics that reads like a quirky non-fiction take on science fiction.

Gavin A. Schmidt is a climatologist and climate modeller at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). He works on the variability of the ocean circulation and climate and how changes related to varying forcings relate to variations due to intrinsic (unforced) climate variability, using general circulation models. He was kind enough to answer a few questions for us on the subject of climate change.

We kick the week off with an interview with Jeffrey A. Carver. Jeff’s novel The Infinity Link was the first science fiction hardcover I ever owned so this interview was something of a treat for me. He was kind enough to answer a few questions about his work and his take on the writing life.