Doctor Who shocker

If you want to conduct the Doctor Who theme tune, it seems all you need is a couple of Tesla coils and 500,000 volts.  You could say that it is an electrifying performance...

Neil Gaiman meets Dr Who

The rumours excitedly circulating the blogosphere have finally been confirmed: Neil Gaiman has written (and delivered) a Doctor Who story for the next series.

Mieville on The City & The City

This month's book is China Mieville's award winning and rather strange police proceedual set in twin eastern european citys. Actually, all his books are strange; it would be strange if they were not. Here China himself discusses his work

Three Science Fiction Writing Exercises

Since many of you who visit website are also science fiction authors yourselves, I thought it might be fun to offer a few writing exercises to help get your creative juices flowing. Instead of focusing on a plot or a character, here are a few things that you can develop that might exist within your story.

The City & The City

by China Miéville

When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he investigates, the evidence points to conspiracies far stranger and more deadly than anything he could have imagined.

2010 Nebula Awards winners

The SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) have announced their 2009 award winners.

The Lester Dent Pulp Paper Master Fiction Plot

This is a formula, a master plot, for any 6000 word pulp story. It has worked on adventure, detective, western and war-air. It tells exactly where to put everything. It shows definitely just what must happen in each successive thousand words.

No yarn of mine written to the formula has yet failed to sell.

A coalition of equals

Our next meeting is in a week's time (which is a long time in politics) and will be at David's house. We will, of course, be officially discussing The Forever War, but I suspect the forever election may crop up as well.


Mindful that we have a number of postal members that we should not disenfranchise, I have some suggestions for the coming months that we might discuss in advance.

Who will win the Hugo or Nebula?

This year there are six books up for the Nebula award for best novel and likewise six books for the Hugo best novel, making not twelve, but nine books in total.