You May Be Pretty Sith But You Ain’t No Clauswitz

Presumably the name ‘The First Order’ refers to their level of stupidity. Isn’t it obvious by now, after 40-odd years of Galactic civil war, after THREE attempts, that a giant planet-killer star base is a strategically near-useless waste of oppressed tax payers money? There’s something unique about the dark side that lops off all military […]

Why I’m For The 10,000 Character Limit

I think Twitter introducing the ability to tweet anything up to, 10000 characters will be a good thing. For starters it streamlines the tweet/blog combo (if you should wish it). A lot of peeps on my feed, being writers and critics and such, have all, almost in union, quipped ‘Yeah, we call it a blog. […]

SF Conventions And Aging

There’s a lot of talk about the crowds at science fiction conventions ageing and what can be done about that. But I think there’s a factor here so huge everyone overlooks it: the demographics of the entire western world (and beyond) is ageing. Most days, we can avoid that fact by hanging out with people […]

I tried to watch a clip of a Yazidi woman giving evidence to the UN about suffering under ISIS but the clip stopped and wouldn’t load because the website hosting it wanted to show me an advert for fair-trade artisan chocolates first. And I thought ‘Christ, that’s the 2010’s perfectly summed up in one moment […]

Circle Of Two (5Minute SF Film)

Here’s a film I helped write. It’s only five minutes and is SF so you may well dig it. Here’s director Keith Allot’s description of the project and, as you’ll see, it’s making was quite unusual… Originally created for the Colchester Film Festival 60 Hour Film Challenge, the first edit I submitted was […]

ISIS: Frantically Hand Waving

A factor behind the Paris attacks (edit: and now Lebanese attacks) might be ISIS attempting to control the world’s media narrative. See, if reports are to believed they’ve just had to give up the entire Shingal region after sustained attack from the Peshmerga (plus bombing support). ISIS haven’t had a strategic victory in some time […]

On That World Fantasy Award Trophy And Lovecraft

Much as I love HPL’s fiction and as much as I generally admire the mind that comes across in his letters, this is the right thing to do and a long time coming. I find Lovecraft’s bigotry infuriating as I do vile: he had a bright, flexible intellect in almost every other area but pigheadedly and […]

Follow Your Writerly Dreams, or, Better Still, Don’t.

As a boy, the poet Ovid would talk in rhyme as he went about his day on the family farm. His dad would clip him about the ear and tell him to stop, saying “Do not be a poet, my boy! Homer died but a poor man!” (How Ovid senior knew this is a mystery- […]

What The Alien Megastructures Would Mean To Me

It’s almost trite to say I want that anomaly around that star to be ‘megastructures’. Everyone does, just about. We’ll never contact them of course- they’re simply too far away- but the knowledge of the existence of alien civilisation far beyond our own in it’s achievements would have a profound effect on us. It’d be […]

My James Bond pet theory and how Skyfall ruined it!

Much as I quite like the new Bond stories they messed up giving him an origin story. How do you explain the next actor and all the actors before? To me, the name James Bond was a cover name agents took along with the 007 number (it would explain why he’s so carefree giving his […]

J.L. Worrad

Fantasy And Science Fiction Author