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Life in Transit
The first people to find Transit found it by mistake. They got lost in the fog and, literally, stumbled inside. For centuries the only way in and out – the only known way – was on foot. As time went by the feet doing the finding included mule train hoofs, camel hoofs and, allegedly, elephants.…
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Crusoe Cast
I said I wouldn’t be leaking any Crusoe insider info on this blog and I’ve pretty much limited myself to passing on what’s already out there; this stuff also appears on NBC’s own website so I reckon I’m safe. Photo shows Anna Walton and Philip Winchester. Friday is played by the brilliant Tongayi Chirisa, whose…
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Eleventh Hour USA
I was encouraged to hear that Eleventh Hour Executive Producer Cyrus Voris told the Television Critics Association last week that “We’re trying very hard to ground our show in the real world. There was a CBS press release that described the show as ‘five minutes in the future.’ I don’t even know if it’s even…
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That’s One Bad Horse
If you haven’t caught up with it yet, today’s the day to catch all three parts of Joss Whedon’s online musical Dr Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, with Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day. It gets off to a slow start but it’s witty, glorious, and sweet. After tomorrow it’ll be taken down and you’ll…
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The Thirty-Nine Steps
I recently went back to John Buchan’s novel The Thirty Nine Steps, the template for all modern on-the-run thrillers from The Fugitive to 24 to the entire Jason Bourne trilogy. The re-reading confirmed my remembered impressions. The book has terrific narrative velocity. It also falls apart to an utterly unmemorable end, and the story doesn’t…
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What the Filk
Got to share this… Every now and again I used to walk 200 yards up the lane to my village local where I’d meet with a bunch of fannish mates who, once a month and in a more central venue, constituted the core of the Preston SF Group. PSFG meetings were open to all; the…
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Thomas M Disch
I’m sad to hear that the death of Thomas M Disch has been reported. Tom Disch was my first real-live author, by which I mean the first one that I met and talked to in the flesh at my first convention – that was Yorcon 2 in Leeds in 1981, where he was the Guest…
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Eyes Without a Face
On that trip to Paris a couple of weeks back I gave myself an excuse to browse the stock of the Bouquinistes, those riverside bookstalls along the Seine, for a copy of the source novel of one of my favourite films. All I knew of Les Yeux Sans Visage was that it was written by…
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Step Aside, Mister Bond
If ever you needed someone to save the world, I was your guy. Mind you, I was only nine at the time. I think it was an ad in one of the Man from Uncle tie-in novels that gave an address where you could write in and be recruited as an UNCLE agent. The card…
Hauling Like A Brooligan
Stephen Gallagher
