THE SKINNER

Damn and buggeration. I’ve just discovered that David Gemmell is dead at the age of 57. He’d had a heart bypass a couple of weeks ago, but o...

Ah I see the cover for Brass Man is up on amazon.com, but sadly it’s not out in America until January, and sadly The Line of Polity isn’t c...

While on holiday I read three books, all of which were enjoyable. First was courtesy of Stefanie Bierwerth at Macmillan – one time oppo of ...

Here’s a little bit more, but that’ll be all. The thing about sunny slothful holidays is that really, there ain’t a lot to say other than: ...

9/7/06 Nice apartments we’ve found ourselves in: path leading up to our veranda and front door surrounded by a garden full of lemon and p...

Okay, I haven’t put anything in here for a while because Caroline and I have been sunning ourselves in Skiathos. I said nothing about this ...

Max Part Three What was going to happen to Max? With Marjorie being moved into a ‘recovery home’ for an indeterminate period, he surely c...

From 800 years in the future, a runcible gate is opened into the Polity. Those coming through it had been sent to take the alien 'Maker...

My thanks to bascule for pointing me to this: http://barrybeelzebub.blogspot.com/ I'm a rank amateur compared to this guy. I've be...

Warning: political rant. I would say that in today’s Labour Party we are seeing the results of a road wreck where the juggernaut called i...

Further warnings from nanny government. Hospitals have to prepare for an influx of boiled lobsters and additional to the warnings about wha...

Nanny government has just issued a hot weather warning. We need to wear adequate sunscreen, avoid drinks like coffee and alcohol and drink ...

At last an enjoyable episode of Dr Who after two rather awful ones. The low moment came last week with that ridiculous tossing of a cigar-s...

Max Part Two. Marjorie had been deteriorating for some time, really wasn’t well, and it seemed possible she might get worse. Don’t get th...

It's pretty picture time again. Here first is the original cover of The Engineer published by Tanjen. ‘A thought-provoking operatic r...

Ah, and there's another one I neglected to mention: Karl Schroeder. Try his 'Sun of Suns' http://www.kschroeder.com/

I’ve mentioned this elsewhere, but I’ll do the same again here. This year has been pretty good (to me) for new SFF. The first is Blindsight...

Global sea-level rise … apparently, over the last 18,000 years since the peak of the last Ice Age, global sea-levels have risen more than 1...

Sir Richard Branson wants to turn Virgin trains into the greenest in Britain by running them on biodiesel rather than pure diesel – 15% fro...

Moving swiftly on, here, for reader interest is the Polity chronology I'm presently working with: 2050 – 2250 Expansion into the sola...