Mars Needs Babies is my response to the challenge of writing a future shaped by Elon Musk. If you’d like a new piece of short fiction delivered to your email every month, please subscribe to my newsletter. Gwynne concentrates on breathing gently as she secures the suit seals. They’ve never been worn in and you can’t […]
Elon Musk presents a dilemma for the liberal science fiction writer and space enthusiast. He’s everything we hate, doing everything we need to deliver a human future in space. How do you write that future without falling towards hagiography or lazy caricature? From maracas to MAGA to Mars Or…Why Elon Musk is a gift to […]
Partial gravity — anything that’s not the same as Earth — used to be a special effects expense that no-one wanted. It’s 2024, we have cheap SFX, so why does everywhere in space still look like it’s either zero-g or on Earth? After all, there’s just one place in the universe — our home — […]
Animals in space don’t have a happy history, but more than half of humans share their lives with an animal companion. Space pets will be a thing, even if they’re rarely found in science fiction. Laika and her doomed Soviet space dog chums, the NASA chimps, and the countless small animals sent to experience things […]
The Book Corner season 5: Book vs film. Episode 5: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro Ishiguro’s sixth novel was published in 2005 and its film adaptation, scripted by Alex Garland, was released in 2010. Read on, and I’ll explain why the novel is a great example of bad storytelling that the film fails […]
Space archaeology is a real job, but how did it combine with the sci-fi classic Alien to help me write better characters? Next time you’re watching a film or TV show set in the future, see how many personal items you can find. I’ll wager it’s very few. Real life isn’t like that. Our cars, […]
Season 5 episode 2: The Dark Tower vol 1 — The Gunslinger, by Stephen King The original concept for this season was “great book, shit film”. The Gunslinger certainly qualifies for the latter half and while The Dark Tower series has a passionate fanbase, “great” has to do a lot of heavy lifting for the […]
The zero-g fryer is bubbling, the smell of fresh bread fills your spacecraft and a bell chimes the shift change. The crew gathers in the ship’s mess. We’ve gone from growing food and making meat to off-Earth cooking, so what will meal times look like in space? The first question is when to eat. In […]
Growing vegetables in space is one thing, but it’s no place for the animals that most of us still rely on for key nutrients. Will space-faring humans be forever denied the joy of a bacon sandwich? Is the true cosmic horror a solar system populated by evangelising veganauts? I never thought I’d be pondering these […]
Astronauts in 2023 take almost everything they eat with them. Future space travellers will need to grow plants in space without regular supply rockets. What’s happening in space agriculture today that I can throw forward a hundred years for my WIP, In Machina? Escaping the gravity well Getting anything into space is governed by “the […]