Published inAdam’s NotebookStar Wars: Crash 2“A car crash harnesses elements of eroticism, aggression, desire, speed, drama, kinesthetic factors, the stylizing of motion, consumer…Mar 15Mar 15
Published inAdam’s Notebook“Everything Everywhere All at Once” (dir. Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, aka ‘Daniels’ 2022)Every review everywhere all-of-them agrees on the excellence of this movie, and I’m certainly not going to disagree. It is (maybe) a tad…Mar 14Mar 14
Published inAdam’s NotebookBrian Aldiss, ‘Life in the West’ (1980)It’s not science fiction, this novel, although it includes some discussion of science fiction, and a few glancing SF-ishnesses. Life in the…Feb 23Feb 23
Published inAdam’s NotebookIain M. Banks, “Inversions” (1998)I bought Inversions from Methven’s Bookshop (remember them?) in 1998 when it came out; £16.99 which-was-a-lot-of-money-back-then, signed by…Feb 13Feb 13
Published inAdam’s NotebookHow I Define “Science Fiction”[The original 2017 publication of this post, in a now defunct blog, carried this headnote: “I’m just back from the Edinburgh Book Festival…Jan 93Jan 93
Published inAdam’s NotebookDante and Clive (Live)I re-read some Dante, in part because I was kicking around the idea that Tennyson wrote his Maud on Dantean lines (you can read the post…Dec 3, 2024Dec 3, 2024
SubstackshipsThings are quiet around here now, because I’ve started a Substack and that’s where I’m posting the kinds of things I used to post here…Nov 27, 2024Nov 27, 2024
Published inAdam’s NotebookThe Stream of Consciousness‘Consciousness flows. A “river” or a “stream” are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let…Oct 22, 2024Oct 22, 2024
Published inAdam’s NotebookMartial 1.35: Two TranslationsMartial’s epigram doesn’t have a title, but we could, if we wanted, call it ‘A Poem Needs A Cock’. Here it is, and my literal translation…Oct 16, 2024Oct 16, 2024
Published inAdam’s NotebookMatthew Arnold, ‘Requiescat’ (1853)Strew on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew! In quiet she reposes; Ah, would that I did too!Oct 14, 2024Oct 14, 2024
Published inAdam’s NotebookA Table of Green FieldsI love the phrase ‘a Table of green fields’. Indeed, I have inserted it more than once into my fiction. I talk a little about why I love it…Oct 12, 2024Oct 12, 2024
Published inAdam’s NotebookBrave New WorldI’ve undergone, speaking personally, something of a volte face with respect to the role SF fandom, and more specifically that fan-labour of…Oct 7, 20241Oct 7, 20241
Published inAdam’s NotebookSome Saturns‘Saturn,’ says Ross Anderson, ‘is the best planet.’Oct 2, 2024Oct 2, 2024
Published inAdam’s NotebookDavid Gilmour, ‘Luck and Strange’ (2024)Irrelevant preamble: on only one occasion in my life have I been in the same room as David Gilmour. In 2018 Polly Samson was inducted as a…Sep 28, 20241Sep 28, 20241
Published inAdam’s NotebookAd Bellum PurificandumKenneth Burke’s epigraph to his Grammar of Motives (1945) is ‘Ad bellum purificandum’— ‘for the purification of war.’ Mark Edmundson quotes…Sep 26, 2024Sep 26, 2024
Published inAdam’s NotebookMoney, it’s a Gas/Grab That Cash With Both Hands and Make a StashA while back, fifteen years or so, I started writing a story for kids. Children’s literature, or YA, has never been my thing: not because I…Sep 24, 20243Sep 24, 20243
Published inAdam’s NotebookThe Earthquake God SpeaksAnd it is also creative, this mad Restlessness of men. I shudder down their cities; They build them up again.Sep 22, 2024Sep 22, 2024
Published inAdam’s NotebookDumas’ Electric MusketeerAlexandre Dumas’s Les Trois Mousquetaires (1844) first introduces us to d’Artagnan, a young man up from the provinces to Paris, hoping to…Sep 21, 20241Sep 21, 20241
Published inAdam’s NotebookChristina Scull and Wayne G Hammond (eds) ‘The Collected Poems of J R R Tolkien’ (HarperCollins…A big book, in three volumes: fully 1500 pages of Tolkienian verse. It’s a very handsome piece of book production: good quality paper, well…Sep 13, 20241Sep 13, 20241
Published inAdam’s NotebookViktor Rydberg, ‘The Freebooter of the Baltic’ (1857)Viktor Rydberg was, perhaps, the most important Swedish novelist of the nineteenth-century, though he’s little known in the UK, what with…Sep 12, 2024Sep 12, 2024
