is there one writer or novel in paticular that has “cranked” your head open?
No suprises to longtime readers here but for me its Larry Niven. Back in the 1970s growing up in suburban Toronto culture was like water at the Burning Man festival unless you trucked some in with you, you went without. You basicaly […]

There’s a somewhat silly question (ok maybe not so silly for some) that pops up in writer’s interviews. And that’s the question of writer’s block. I’ve not used it in any of our author interviews but as an experiment I’ve put together a mini-Brain Parade on the topic:
Do you get “writer’s block”? And if so […]

This is the second parter of a Brain Parade we ran back in September. Just to refresh your memory here’s the question:
Is the Enlightenment ideal on the rocks or is it merely a bit shaken?
The range of responses we’ve had to this one ranging on this one partly because the Enlightenment is also joined at […]

The third season of Battlestar Galactica has featured characters using suicide bomber tactics, using temples to hide weapons and generally behaving like the Enemies of Freedom. This is pretty incendiary stuff but as near as I can tell the fans are lapping it up just fine.
On the other hand a BBC show Spooks had […]

New SF novelist on the block and one of my favourite blogging authors David Louis Edelman caught my attention with a frivolous post 20 Reasons Why I Want to Live in a Cheesy SF Dome City. He’s talking about Logan’s Run style Domed Cities here, probably the best of the cheesey SF movie Domed […]

I have to apologize from the erratic blogging. Me and Rosie are still reeling from a variety of things. Rosie mainly is buried under a mountain of work and I’m still playing catchup from the internet blackout I experienced while on vacation.
Our last Brain Parade closed off with commentary from a Nobel Prize winning […]

Rosie: Apologies for the erratic blogging at the moment but Jose’s in Spain and I’m buried under a mountain of reading for my course, as well as working on a lot of really exciting statistics concerning non tariff barriers and tariff equivalents in China for an EU trade delegation in about two weeks time (I think this probably makes me a capitalist running dog).

This is a bit unusual but I’m actually doing a normal blog post today. Please bear with me, this feels a bit strange. I’m reacting in large part to a ball that’s being kicked around today, largely by Lou Anders who is Getting Medieval on Reality’s Ass (and just to show you how incestous the […]

Science has come under fire from some people on religious grounds. Some scientists (eg. Richard Dawkins) have returned fire by criticising religion. Is this productive? Or should scientists avoid talking about the merits of religion?
This is the second parter of a Brain Parade we ran over a month ago. You can read the first installment […]

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 […]

What ethical dilemmas posed by future technology or social changes would you like to see explored more thoroughly in contemporary Science Fiction?
I’ve got a lot of things I want to say on this one (so its a good thing it’s a two parter). And its especially apt since I just watched the first two […]

Outside of your field, what advances/research excite you the most?
This is a touch one for me to answer. I’m not a scientist so I don’t have “a field” but I’m not going to let a lack of qualifications stop me. To me the most exciting thing going on right now is what is being referred […]

What’s the next wonder gadget you want in your home?
I’m not much of a gadget freak myself. I’m pretty happy with my PC, boombox and my mp3 player. I’d like a wondrously high capacity storage wifi internet device that I can use to stream music and video onto all kinds of devices everywhere I go […]

Sorry for not posting yesterday, we were out getting sloshed. Bad bloggers.
We kick the week off late with a bit of a cheeky one…
With the help of a friendly timelord you’ve assembled a poker game with some of the greatest minds in history. Who did you invite and why?
I’ve just come back from the […]

It’s with quivering anticipating that I bring to you five steaming examples of prose most purple. It was with heavy hearts that we whittled the voluminous mountain of glittering submissions to this portentous content. The whole experience was a drama of Odysseian proportions that may have left us surprisingly unchanged for the rest of our […]

Out of the ethical dilemmas that Science Fiction has explored in the past which ones have been your favourite(s)? Are they still relevant in the same way today?

It seems a bit silly but today’s question is something that I’ve picked away at ocassionaly from time to time since I was a kid….

What would the world be like if Science Fiction authors ran it? If you had to pick one Science Fiction author to run the world, who would you choose?

Today we bring you the first part of another two parter. As before it’s a two parter because it was a question I liked asking…

Out of the ethical dilemmas that Science Fiction has explored in the past which ones have been your favourite(s)? Are they still relevant in the same way today?

The real world is a messy place, often defying human comprehension and imagination and almost always requiring that you think rather hard to figure things out. Now a lot of people have been eagerly awaiting Virtual Reality and more recently Altertered Reality or GreaseMonkeyed reality.

Yesterday we were serious and now we get silly again with the second parter of one of my favourite Brain Parades. That’s right its manky towel wielding time travelling author time again. For those of you who missed out first installment “manky” is British for used, worn out and filthy.

The Purple Planet contest to write the most appallingly cheesy opening paragraph to a science fiction, fantasy or horror novel is now closed. Thank-you to all those who entered, the standard has been execrable (but in a good way). Jose and myself shall be plowing through the entries some time over the next few days, and we hope to publish the winners next week.

I’m making a habit of pestering people on Stumbler with pesky questions. Today I bring you a few answers on a Science Fictional question:

Has Science Fiction had an impact on your worldview? And if so how? Is there one writer or novel in particular that has “cranked” your head open?

We continue reviewing books that are unavailable in stores.

A Brain Parade of reviews of Science Fiction books with a small twist, none of the books review here actually exsists. These books may not have the advantage of exsisting but at least we’ve done you the favour of giving you a sneak peak as to what you’re missing.

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.

Have you ever taken perverse pleasure in killing a character off in your writing? If so which one of your characters did you enjoy killing the most?

MT: Sorry for those of you who visited over the weekend only to find a huge gaping void of nothingness where memetherapy should have been. Unfortunately our host had a problem at their datacenter and the site was down for the whole of Sunday some of Saturday and some of Monday morning. However we’re back up now and normal service has been resumed.

For your money what’s the most underrated Science Fiction film of all time?
This post is going to be dangerous as I’m very drunk but just like last Friday I’m going ahead with it anyways. 2001 is my favourite SF flick and it’s frequently dissed (mostly proximaly here by Rosie) but I can’t call it underated […]

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 […]

Thanks to all those who have already sent in their entries for the Purple Planet writing contest I have been disgusted and appalled at the sheer awfulness of what has been landing in my in-box.
For those of you who missed the first post the goal of the contest is to write the opening paragraph […]

Time for another silly one…

The forces of Fate have decided that the world will come to an end. Fortunately Fate is a drinking buddy of yours and she let’s you pick the means of the world’s destruction. Do you take her up on her offer? And if so please provide gory details.

Today we tackle a tricky question: Do you think advances in technology may spell the end for asymmetric warfare? And if so is this necessarily a bad thing?
Asymmetric warfare as defined by Wikipedia:
Asymmetric warfare is a term that describes a military situation in which two belligerents of unequal strength interact and take advantage of their respective strengths and weaknesses. This interaction often involves strategies and tactics outside the bounds of conventional warfare.

There’s been talk of putting up Fiction on Meme Therapy. Right now it’s just late night living room murmurings. But as a warm up to a potential fiction stream here at Meme Therapy we’ve decided to showcase some truly awful writing. That’s where you, gentle reader, can help us out, by participating in our Purple Planet Writing Contest:

Is it becoming harder to imagine a plausible utopia evolving from the world as it stands today? Which do you find more compelling, the carrot of Utopia or the stick of dystopia?

MT: I think the idea that we’ll ever get close to a utopia is a pretty dubious one given human nature and fallibility, and personally I can’t think of any that I’d actually want to inhabit (even Aldous Huxley’s Island would grate after a while despite the sex and psychedelics).

Is Science Fiction entering a new Golden Age? Authors Jay Lake, Mark Chadbourn, Kelley Esteridge and M.J Young seperate the wheat from the hype.

Me and Charlie had a drunken conversation about the “Does Science Fiction have a Job?” Brain Parade last night. Charlie didn’t like the question initiately because he thought the answer was obviously no. And of course he’s right, just about all the responses we got on that Brain Parade were basicaly variations of “no”.

As you know we don’t normaly do linkage but there’s two new Science Fiction sites that I’d like to give a shout out to:

The first is a new free ezine but out by one of my favourite authors and bloggers Rudy Rucker titled Flurb.

This is the second installment of the Brain Parade we kicked the week off with. You can see the first installment here.

We asked the question: What is the job of contemporary SF? Does it have a job?

Today we cover odd facts that authors dig up when they’re researching stories. Here’s the question I posed to todays commentators:
What’s the oddest thing that you learned while researching a story?
Find out what weird factoids our pick of authors have discovered while researching for their books.

We ask a bunch of our favourite Brainiacs if there are any places that give the impression they were ripped out of the pages of a science fiction or fantasy book.
This is the second part of this brain parade, read the first part here.

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.