delete

British Science Festival 2011

Over the weekend, I hopped up to Bradford to take part in a panel discussion on “Science fiction and religion”. You can read more about the panel and my excellent co-contributors here. (Make sure you read the comments from the Doctor’s parish priest!) It was a very enjoyable session; lots of enthusiasm for Doctor Who, and some great discussion about, for example, how a theologian might approach writing sf, what sociology can bring to the mix, and much more. Here’s the text of my talk. Alien conmen and mad computers: Doctor Who, Star Trek – and...
delete

Alien Nation

Last week I went up to Newcastle for Alien Nation, a two-day conference on telefantasy (i.e. British SF, fantasy, and horror television). James Chapman’s Inside the TARDIS and Catherine Johnson’s Telefantasy battled for citation supremacy, but surely the fairy godmother of the conference was Network DVD, purveyors of retro television series to the discerning. Gone are the days when washed out Nth generation video copies of UK Gold repeats were the only available window onto childhood memories. Network, we salute you. (Warning: clicking on the link to Network...
delete

The future must not be beige

Oh Outcasts, with your big budget, your fabulous cast, your lovely starscapes – why were you so bad? [1] What in the name of God happens in our near-future to make human beings so humourless and interchangeable? Why do they all buy their clothes at Gap? Why was there a stupid conversation in which a man and a woman complained to each other (respectively) about women and men? How does Gap survive the apocalypse? And why oh why would anyone paint the future magnolia? Gods of the Tellybox, why do you taunt me? Last year, I all but convinced myself that television – an...
delete

Comfort and inspiration for a nation

delete

Impossible Worlds, Impossible Things

Impossible Worlds, Impossible Things: Cultural Perspectives on Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures Edited by: Ross P. Garner, Melissa Beattie and Una McCormack The successful regeneration of Doctor Who in the twenty-first century has sparked unprecedented popular success and renewed interest within the academy. The ten essays assembled in this volume draw on a variety of critical approaches—from cultural theory to audience studies, to classical reception and musicology—to form a wide-ranging interdisciplinary discussion of Doctor Who, classic and new,...
delete

The King’s Dragon – prelude

My Doctor Who novel, The King’s Dragon, is published on Thursday, and you can read an exclusive Amazon prelude, linked from here.