Originally posted on Paul Sutton Reeves:
In a previous post, I wrote about the exiled narrator of my novel-in-progress and the ten sounds he misses from his homeland, “the chatter of the liitraavn in Rezistanzskvaar, the two-stroke clatter of Noorskii-SEATs…” and so on. My friend and fellow writer, Mari Biella, has very kindly taken the…
Once upon a time, it must have seemed like a dream. A truly egalitarian and inclusive dream, not so much international as transnational, in which information, ideas and opinions could be freely exchanged, discussed, examined and argued. A modern-day agora, where free speech was not so much a right granted from on high, but simply… Continue reading Free Speech, Fake News and the Internet
Fear. It’s an instinct that appears to have changed little since we first emerged from our caves, or indeed since we first climbed down from the trees. It’s necessary for our survival, of course – it alerts us to danger and prepares us to either fight or run like hell – and yet it also… Continue reading The Fear Factor
Mysteries. Oddities. Things that do not fit neatly into preconceived systems of logic or accepted frameworks of reality. Such things have, to me, always been the object of endless fascination.
I wrote the bulk of the following post before the recent attack on a Christmas market in Berlin. I was planning a jolly, festive post, full of Christmas cheer … which, in the circumstances, hardly seems appropriate. Of course, life must go on, along with all the activities that make up a life – reading being one… Continue reading Christmas Crackers: The Best Festive Reads
Some years ago, I published a book, Loving Imogen, in which one of the characters, a photographer, says this: “A photographer is by virtue of what he does, and these days I really manage to do very little at all.”
It’s been a strange summer, and a hideous one in many ways. Terror attacks, an earthquake, all manner of predictions of doom and gloom … our world is not a particularly happy place at the moment, but then it very rarely is. On a personal level, I almost managed to drown in about three feet… Continue reading Men, Machines, and Augmented Reality
Time. It’s part of our lives, as inescapable as the three dimensions of the physical world, as seemingly natural and intuitive as the idea that up is up and down is down. Yet it may also be an illusion, albeit a necessary one if we’re to live in the kind of world we’ve created. Time… Continue reading The Tragedy of Time
I’ve always been a bit of a recluse in my heart of hearts. I don’t like social occasions much, and only just about find them tolerable with a drink or two inside me. I don’t like big crowds and noise. I prefer to connect with just one or two people at a time and, even… Continue reading Company in my Solitude
I haven’t been very much in evidence for the past two weeks or so. In the unlikely event that anyone is wondering why, it’s because I’ve been away on a work trip. I’ve just returned from accompanying a group of over fifty Italian teenagers on a trip to Brighton and, as you can no doubt… Continue reading Out on the Street
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