Five Favourite Books of 2016
Read about 45 this year, plus shitloads of academic articles, and watched an abundance of film and television. I’ll stick to books here, other than to say that, for mine, The Expanse was the best TV of 2016.
In no …
Tag: Tim Napper
Best. Music Video. Ever.
I cannot stop watching this. I just can’t stop.
And the 80s, apparently, was the primo decade for movies. In twelve moves you can go from Empire Strikes Back, to Aliens, to Predator, Die Hard, Lethal Weapon, Mad Max 2, …
Quick Reviews: Daredevil, Seasons 1 – 2; Vikings, Seasons 1 – 2; Person of Interest, All Seasons; Troll Hunter; Broadchurch, Season 1; Peaky Blinders, Seasons 1 – 2; BoJack Horseman, Seasons 1 – 3; Better Call Saul, Seasons 1 – 2
Vikings Season 1 – 2 (Canadian – Irish production)
Vikings is a bloody, meat-tearing, bare-arsed and tits-bared trek through Viking culture, mythology, and 
history. Ragnar Lothbrok’s (Australian Travis Fimmel) stare is enough to make shield maidens swoon and Saxons …
Good Intentions Are Not Enough
Writing about other cultures is bloody difficult. It’s also important, and speculative fiction writers in particular should always be thinking about different realities. But it is not something to be taken lightly.
I don’t want to talk about Lionel Shriver. …
Three Years a Writer
Facebook told me the other day that It’d been three years since I’d sold my first short story. So, aside from the general unease that comes from knowing how much personal information I’ve willingly – and unwillingly – given to …
The Writer’s Training Regime, Part 5 (The Con, Revisited)
Coming up for air after Conflux (the Canberra SF Writer’s Convention), I looked back on the first article I wrote on Conflux and Cons in general a couple of years back. Things have come along quite a bit for me …
New Story and Southeast Asian Science Fiction
A few years back when I’d first arrived in Vietnam, and was still very new to writing, I produced The Four Deaths of Taylor Ngo. Set in a jazz bar in Ha Noi (and, yes, based on a real …
Aussie SF Snapshot
I was recently interviewed by David McDonald for the 2016 Aussie Speculative Fiction Snapshot.
Undertaken every two to three years, the Snapshot is an informal census of the local genre scene. A tonne of cool authors and editors are …
The Hollywood Kowtow
The US culture industry wants the Chinese market. The only way is through the Chinese government, which restricts the number of foreign films allowed in the country each year – thirty-four only. To get one of those precious slots, Hollywood …
Is your newspaper reading you?
There is a meme that circulates every few months. A picture, black and white, the 1950s perhaps, everyone on a train with their head buried in a newspaper. It comes with a subtitle along the lines of: ‘All this technology …