The Space Merchants

"Contemporary sf often feels fixated on a pessimism that peers into the world of tomorrow and sees the apocalypse looming. At a time when simply reading the news is an exercise in exhaustion, anxiety, and fear, it’s no surprise that so many of our tales about the future are dark amplifications of the terrors of the present. But now more than ever, we also need the reverse: stories that inspire hope..."

I've got a spare ticket for this on Saturday at Barbican Centre, if anybody wants? Face value.

"The best science fiction has always been that which most powerfully disrupts our expectations. If adding more, and more varied, depictions of female life helps uncover new ideas in sci-fi, from hard to soft to the genre-skimming hybrids, that makes for better books."

“This isn’t climate change – it’s everything change.”

"For A Scanner Darkly it was slightly different due to the huge amount of ideas and scenes I liked and wanted to put forward. I usually only have one or two per image but with this I had around a dozen ideas for each of the seven illustrations."

“The general aim of these science fiction writers is to frighten the people into a state of paralysis or psychological incompetence bordering on hysteria.”

“I’m not a prophet... let’s get rid of that idea right now. Prophecies are really about now. In science fiction it’s always about now. What else could it be about? There is no future. There are many possibilities, but we do not know which one we are going to have.”

"The fantastical elements of genre, from alien beings to magical ones, allow writers to confront controversial issues in metaphor, granting them a subversive power that often goes unheralded."

"Today the Toronto Public Library’s collection of speculative fiction is said to be Canada’s largest, as well as one of the finest in the world. It is Canada’s only collection of its kind that is open to general public as well as the academic community."

"Traditionally in science fiction, writers working with STEM-field predictions have been classified as “hard SF” and those working with social science predictions—people like Gene Wolfe, Samuel Delany, C.J. Cherryh, Thomas M. Disch, Raphael Carter, and Ursula Le Guin—have been defined more as “soft SF.” But there's no good reason to maintain that kind of prejudice."

"With “The Nine Billion Names of God” (1953), Childhood’s End (1953) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) he has a fair claim to have produced the best short story, novel and screenplay in 20th-century SF."

"Riddley Walker is an unusual book, written in a strange dialect, set in a mysterious, post-apocalyptic world and full of brutal, surprising and unsettling events. So it’s all the more striking that one of the very weirdest scenes in the book describes something familiar to most contemporary British readers: a Punch and Judy show."

“African science fiction’s blood runs deep, and it’s old, and it’s ready to come forth. And when it does, imagine the new technologies, ideas and sociopolitical changes it’ll inspire"

Reminder that I'll be selling my wares at the autumn Paperback & Pulp Book Fair on Sunday.
I'm prepping everything now - 100s of vintage paperbacks and magazines for just £1/£2!

"Experts in the ten major Pulp genres chart for the first time the complete history of Pulp magazines - the stories and their writers, the graphics and their artists, the publishers, their market, and readers"

Save the date! I'll be selling my wares at the autumn Paperback & Pulp Book Fair, Sunday 29th October.
I'm in the process of downsizing, so expect bargains.

“All his work starts with the basic assumption that there cannot be one, single, objective reality... everything is a matter of perception”
Three novelists pick their favourite Philip K. Dick story.