All posts in Blog
The Japanese Wuthering Heights – Arashi ga Oka (1988)
Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights is a really odd book. On the surface it’s the first bodice-ripper – a passionate tale of doomed love set among the Yorkshire Moors. Yet our […]
Frank Frazetta
I’m still waiting for Conan. The first Arnold Schwarzenegger film was kind of OK, and had one or two impressive moments. The second was dire and I still can’t bring […]
Minecraft Memory Palace
I’ve been a fan of memory systems for years, especially the Memory Palace method of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Known as the ‘System of Locii’ this is based on […]
The Castle of Otranto
There’s one school of thought, kicked off by Brian Aldiss in his book A Billion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (1973), that says that Science Fiction and Fantasy […]
Aeon Flux – the animated series
I stumbled across Cyberpunk when living in Tokyo. This had both its advantages and disadvantages. Half the time it felt like I was living in a true William Gibson world, […]
White Tiger (2012)
Spoiler Alert – if you haven’t seen the film and plan on doing so, watch it first then read this. This is a very odd Russian symbolist fantasy set during […]
Shakespeare Beyond Doubt
I’ve just finished reading the collection of essays Shakespeare Beyond Doubt, edited by Paul Edmondson and Stanley Wells. The book is designed to counter the increasing number of what it […]
Thumb available in paperback!
Thumb is now available in paperback from Amazon, priced $9.99 in the US, £7.99 in the UK and €11.17 in Europe. I confess to being biased but I’m really happy […]
The Singing Ringing Tree
For a certain generation in the UK, The Singing Ringing Tree, an East German take on a Grimm-style fairy tale is indelibly carved on our psyches, giving us all the […]
Thumb – Out Now!
The universe is empty. The stars are dead. The worlds are no more. The last humans struggle to create a god to save them from the utter end. In the […]
Countdown to Thumb
A flat singularity carried the unfinished body of God through an empty universe. The colossus lay on his back, a being so vast he might easily have put his arms […]
German Expressionist Flyer
I’ve been working on some art/visualisation pieces for Thumb. As I mentioned before I wanted to capture the feel of the German Expressionist artists and films of the 1920s and […]
The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke – Richard Dadd
From the mid-nineteenth century onwards British painting bore little resemblance to its European counterpart. While the French Impressionists forged ahead with their bold experiments in light and composition, English painters […]
In search of the perfect notebook
When I worked for Scotland Yard in the 1980s I had a Filofax, which was pretty standard for people living in London at the time. I took it with me […]
Concept art for Thumb
In the Wastelands at the end of time stands a house that contains the secret to humanity’s survival.
The Monster of Lake LaMetrie
Following on with the Victorians and Dinosaurs theme, one of the strangest science fiction stories I’ve ever come across is The Monster of Lake LaMetrie by Wardon Allan Curtis, first […]
Cartoonophobia by Jim Barker
I wanted to give this blog post over to a friend of mine who is a brilliant independent cartoonist; Jim Barker of Jim Barker Cartoons and Graphics. Having lived in […]
Life Before Man
On my last trip up to Yorkshire I found one of my favourite childhood books, Life Before Man, by Zdenek Burian (pictures) and Zdenek V. Spinar (text), published in 1972 […]
Tangerine Dream – Phaedra
I started reading science fiction round about the same time I got into music, and so being a fairly literal minded so-and-so I immediately embarked on a quest to find […]
Jean Cocteau’s Orphée, (1950)
Last year I wrote about Jean Cocteau’s beautiful re-telling of the story of Beauty and the Beast, La Belle et la Bête (1946). In many ways it was a perfect […]
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