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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…
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Granada
Good Dog mentioned a couple of classic series and broke a memory… I was a Presentation trainee in Granada’s Manchester studios when they were making The XYY Man, and one of our control room monitors was hooked to the studio feed. So I saw everything the studio cameras saw, both during and between takes. I…
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Man in a Suitcase
I just finished working my way through the boxed set of the 1967-68 ITC series Man in a Suitcase. It’s taken me longer than I expected it to, and it’s provoked some mixed feelings. It’s a show that I was enormously impressed by, the first time around. And I still am, but in a qualified…
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Gallic Noir
I just got back from a few days in Paris (and if that doesn’t make you even a little bit jealous, then I can only suppose it’s a place you’ve never visited yet). As soon as I got to my hotel room I did what comes naturally to every visitor to a distant city. I…
Hauling Like A Brooligan
Stephen Gallagher
