I’ve started singing to the cat when I feed her. I sort of improv each time I come back from work. So far, my favourites have been the 1930’s ballroom crooner ‘Oh Leila (what a swell gal)’ and the Beach Boys-inspired ‘Leila Kitty Beach Party’. I’ll run out of material sooner or later but I’m […]

On The Way Home From Work

WWI Body Armour: An inspirational anachronism

I think genre writers and artists can find real inspiration in history’s cul de sacs, its conceptual still births. How would things be if they had seized the world’s imagination and become the norm? It’s a great launchpad for both worldbuilding and tone. The European powers, desperate to remedy the hellish stalemate of the trenches, […]

My Worldcon Saturday In A Mobility Scooter

I was somewhere in the exhibition hall when the liquorice began to take hold. Sugar-coated stuff, metre-long, hanging from my mouth like a tongue as I pushed the mobility scooter full-tilt across the wide and depopulated floor. Sure, there were people, a few, but most of us had gone, readying for the Hugos. I could […]

The super-rich have damaged our world while asset stripping it and the people of the Caribbean, Texas and Bangladesh are having to pick up the tab. If change doesn’t come through rationality and sense in the next ten years it’ll come through blood and violence in the next fifty. We’re an early stage planetary civilisation […]

Author Interview: Tim Susman (aka Kyell Gold)

Tim Susman is a speculative fiction author who lives in sunny San Francisco (If you’re not familiar picture Clacton-On-Sea with classier burger joints and wider roads). Like a lot of authors in this digital age he’s recently branched out into having more than one name. Those of you into the anthropomorphic, or ‘furry’, literature scene will no […]

Leila: Angelic and Sinister Settings

Yes, I should update this blog with something substantial. Posting cat photos is usually a sign of that, isn’t it? Still, she is a purdy lil’ one. I’ve been living with Leila now, since moving into new lodgings, for about two months. I think she’s happy I’m here by the way she’ll climb on […]

Close Encounters of the Thirds Kind

Was watching Close Encounters Of The Third Kind the other day and, maybe I’m imagining it, but there’s loads of shots that work on the principle of the screen being in thirds: three vertical thirds (roughly speaking). Either they’ll be something of interest in each third or the focus will be on one third with […]

Starship Troopers: Full Metal Homoeroticism

So I picked up a copy of Starship Troopers a while back and I’m most the way through reading it. My SF-reading pals typically divide into two groups: ‘Read Troopers, it’s a classic’ and ‘keep well clear of its fascist ass’. Way I see it, anything that divisive earns at least a looksie. Generally speaking, […]

Thirteen year old fiction

Just reading through a ‘horror’ story I wrote when I was thirteen. Good god. Here’s some choice quotes: “I am Harvey Christian, a known figure in the field of science. They say I am a young upstart. But soon they will learn to recognise me!” “We sat and had roast beef for dinner. Only after […]

J.L. Worrad

Fantasy And Science Fiction Author