While I was traveling, I caught up with some recent pop-culture blockbusters (by watching them on airplanes), and now I have a question: Where did all the damn solemnity come from? When you watch a genre film, there are certain things you have a right to expect from that genre.  And when you find that these […]

This week I was on the John Mac Radio Show, and I talked for nearly an hour.  If this is of interest, I urge you to check it out. I was late in turning up for my own interview, so there’s a certain amount of vamping at the start, for which I apologize.

Our last day in France, so perhaps it’s appropriate we visit a cemetery.  (Or maybe we’re celebrating Day of the Dead a little late this year.) This is the rather odd cenotaph of Charles Baudelaire, whose actual grave is elsewhere in the Montparnasse cemetery.  He’s got two effigies: squatting all scowly up top, and wrapped […]

I am in lovely Nantes, the hometown of Jules Verne, for Utopiales, France’s largest SF convention. I’m heavily programmed, but then I got a free trip to France so I can hardly complain.  In any case, I’ll either be working or having fun, and unlikely to be composing any thoughtful essays in this space. Have […]