Category: WRITER

Sci-fi Features Top Trump Factor

Welcome to the first one of a series of Sci-fi Top Trumps. In actual fact they will be Iron Top Trumps because that is the provisional name of my new sci-fi novel. Its set mainly on Io, moon of Jupiter and Io has an iron core. There’s something about the Iron Cross as well but don’t get the wrong idea. Also there is a deeper meaning but that will only become apparent much later if you read the story.

So what Top Trumps? For those of you that haven’t come across them before they are a pack of cards with items on which have varying numbers of points attached to them depending on the quality/attributes of the item. For instance for cars you might have a card for a Mini and an E-Type Jaguar. Clearly the Jag is heavier, faster and more powerful than the mini so it would beat it on every attribute in a game of cards where you call out your strongest attribute. So for my Iron Top Trumps the attributes are:

Coolnest
Cost
Usefulness
Futurosity (how far in the future you might have to go to get one)
Weakness (lowest score wins)

Scores are out of 10 Continue reading “Sci-fi Features Top Trump Factor” →

2 Films: Anonyma (2008), Road of No Return

Well I had a week off work last week and I watched lots of films. Some were so-so like ‘Anonyma – The Downfall of Berlin’ and others I didn’t like ‘Road of No Return’

Anonyma tells the story of a German journalist who goes back to Berlin in the last day of April, 1945 to witness the end of Nazism and gets caught up in the Russian takeover. They could have made a lot more of the fact that she was a journalist – in fact the only observation that really resonated was when she mentioned that they could feel Berlin becoming ‘Russian’ by the hour. Apparently a true story written anonymously in the 40s or 50s and the author herself was so castigated that she withdrew all further editions of the book after the first. Continue reading “2 Films: Anonyma (2008), Road of No Return” →

On Screen now: will eBooks catch on?

Before I forget, I have been reading Tolkien’s letters which I thoroughly recommend to anybody who is a big Tolkien fan, as I am. I have been reading it on screen though which I don’t recommend.

It has made me think about eBooks and whether they really will catch on. I am not (or haven’t been until now) one of those luddites who hold to the view that paper books are it and that e-books go against the grain of what a reader really wants – that sensual experience. but frankly I may change my mind. There really is something kinda (did you see what I did there?) anti-ceptic about reading on-screen. I don’t know what it is. I think in some way one feels that the computer is dictating terms in that it is ’emitting’ light and decides the format of the page as in fact the format of the page doesn’t normally seem to suit me on screen. I will have to investigate further but I just published one of my books as an e-book and I am wondering now if I should do this. Continue reading “On Screen now: will eBooks catch on?” →