“So… Do Protons Die?” and Other Musings About the End of the Universe

“So… Do Protons Die?” I never imagined asking this question, but I had to. The logic underpinning the time travel technology in my novel Machine City 2050 depends on light. And therefore, photons, and further, protons. So, I asked are protons mortal? The short answer is that protons are practically eternal. The Standard Model of […]

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Visual Excellence and Scott McCloud

Scott McCloud wrote the seminal volumes Understanding Comics, Reinventing Comics and Making Comics. Each book — themselves in the format of graphic novels — are guidebooks on visual storytelling. I’m not an illustrator, but I am a storyteller and I’ve returned to these texts over the years to understand how we meet story. McCloud’s genius is […]

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Transformers

The trees told me they work together as a large transformer. They stand on a hill above a reservoir, and they act as a conducive source of information from the cosmos. The nature reserve is full of walking tracks and picnic tables. This grove of trees is on the same land, but it’s different. It rarely sees people. […]

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Writing About Robots

Last month I published a few pages of an early draft of my novel The Robot And The Fall of Evelon. My novel is about a man called David Taylor from Chicago who wakes up on a distant planet as a robot. It’s about David’s journey in a robot body, which sets in motion a chain of events and a landscape in which to discuss […]

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On Artistry, Tori Amos ‘I Can’t See New York’

Artistry doesn’t come more distilled than through the work of Tori Amos. Her albums — from ‘Little Earthquakes’ to ‘Night of Hunters’, including her seminal album ‘Under The Pink’ and its international hit Cornflake Girl — have always inspired me. Tori’s music has intentional doors with locks that make some of her work inaccessible, and I’m drawn to that. She doesn’t give it all […]

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