While cinema gets bigger every year: bigger budgets, bigger battles, bigger explosions, and a bigger box-office, the ideas and ambition of the medium steadily get smaller. The idea that cinema can be a transformative experience, the notion that movies can …
The apocalypse is easy. The zombie plague, the uncontrollable pandemic, the meteorite hitting earth – these are the easy catastrophes. They are dramatic, tragic, and most importantly, no-one is responsible. The catastrophic event is merely a plot point, an a …
It’s the perfect storm for the struggling writer: average author income is collapsing, social mobility is in decline across nearly all wealthy countries, and inequality is on the rise. These structural changes are leading to an inescapable reality: it is …
I’m very pleased to have found a second sale to the excellent Interzone magazine. The full title of the story is: An Advanced Guide to Successful Price-Fixing in Extra-terrestrial Betting Markets. It’s probably the weirdest one I’ve ever written, …
Writer’s conventions have powerful utility for the aspiring author. I suspect they are pretty damn helpful for seasoned writers, as well.
I recently spent a long weekend at Conflux, the annual speculative fiction writer’s conference held in Canberra. I’ve been …
Existentialist literature is the purest form of noir, but it isn’t the best.
Noir film and novels, according to various definitions, usually involve a morally ambiguous main character, a seedy underworld, femme fatale, corrupt system, bleak ending, and lots of …
Without wanting to be judgemental, anyone who enjoyed The Amazing Spider Man 2 is a bad human being, and any critic who thought it was okay needs to resign from their profession in shame. The film desecrates cinema, insults the …
Update: as you’ll see on the right, the art accompanying my story for the upcoming issue of Interzone looks
remarkable (click for larger image). The rest of the preview for the September-October issue is available here. I believe it …
Fathers are just as capable as mothers at rearing a child. As a stay-at-home father, this seems like a statement of the obvious to me. Rhetorically, it is something we are hearing more and more. 
Yet, culturally, deep prejudice persists …
Snowpiercer is one of the most visually stunning, violent, and at turns bizarre science fiction films of the past few years. It is rich with ideas, originality and intelligence, and as such, is the rarest of flowers in an otherwise …
