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Two years ago I made a new years' resolution not to internet-search myself, and I've pretty much managed to stick to it. This has been good for my mental health, but it does mean I can be a bit behind if someone else points me towards something. : in February, the science fiction magazine SFX featured an all-horror issue which, as this blogger points out, had some serious lapses in its gender balance: naming few prominent women in its features and interviewing thir...

Chatting about Beverly Cleary on a discussion forum today, I went to look up my favourite author of childhood to see if she was still alive. Well, wouldn't you know it? She is. And today is her ninety-fourth birthday.

If any author ever deserved a long life, it's Beverly Cleary.

Children's authors have been more on my mind of late, as I'm beginning to think in terms of bedtime reading for my expected son. (Yes, according to the sonographer, I'm going to have a little boy!) Bedtime stories were,...

Aside from being a producer of lots of really cool stuff, the BBC is the only media institution we have in this country that's owned by the British public rather than a corporate body - which is to say, it's the only outlet for media that has to stay relatively neutral about politics if it's going to serve its mandate rather than being owned by a hyper-rich conglomerate who have a strong interest in putting out a message that's as right-wing and corporate-friendly as possible. 
Under pressure ...

Sophie Morel wrote: As I'm French and a mathematician, anything involving France, or the French language, or mathematics would be nice. Or the Beatles. I really like the Beatles.

The result - I do not know how to do accents or circumflexes in this thing, so please try to imagine them out of the kindness of your hearts. Aussi, je crois que je parle Francais vraiment pire que vous, Sophie; je suis desolee.

Kit: Mika, ma cherie?

Mika: What?

Kit: Est-ce que tu parle Francais?

Mika: Is lunchtime?

Kit:...

Some time ago, the British Science Fiction Association sent me a questionnaire as part of a survey they were doing, on the subject of, well, British science fiction and how I related to it as a writer. For those who are interested, .

Hands up those of you who've seen Max Frisch's play from 1953, The Fire Raisers.

No? Okay.

is a dark comedy originally written in German, set in a town where a gang of arsonists has been at work burning down houses. Biedermann, our respectable protagonist, finds himself with two lodgers on his hands who keep bringing in and storing barrels of flammable liquid, fuses and other combustibles; when he asks them what they're playing at, they cheerfully tell him that they're fire rai...

Here's a fact: the British Board of Film Classification, which determines which films can be released uncut, which have to be cut and which can't be released, has to make its decisions about what's obscene based on the Obscene Publications Act: a work that has a tendency to deprave and corrupt a significant proportion of its likely audience.

The film critic Mark Kermode, whose reviews I always find enjoyable even when I don't agree with them, about how some people p...

My second novel, In Great Waters, treats of the subject of mermaids (as many of you know, and if you don't, oh boy are you missing a treat. Really. Go buy the book. Go on, I'll wait.)

As points out*, I take an unsentimental view of them, seeing them as, well, creatures who live in the sea. And if you've seen The Blue Planet, you'll know that the sea is not a sentimental place. I decided to present them as closer to cetaceans than to fish: if mermaids, or 'deepsmen', as ...

The request from Jarred L. Harris: I'd love to see a Mikalogue in which she reflects on humans. I'd love to see more of how she perceives human behavior, possibly that of the humans she behaves.

The result:
Treatise on Human Behaviour by Mika The Scientific

Observation: Humans behaviour is sometimes feedin Mika and sometimes ignorin.
Hypothesis: Feedin behaviour can be encouraged and ignorin behaviour discouraged.

Experiments to date:
1. Singing the Feed Me Song on its own.
Observation...