Keith Stevenson's Blog, page 8

You can't plan to be creative

Back in 2003, I wrote ‘Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?’, an editorial for Aurealis #31, where I interviewed a number of Australian speculative fiction authors about the well-spring of their creativity. The answers, which you can read here were diverse but also shared a common thread -- the ability to be open to the world around us and to recognise the potential of what we find. A recent

Last minute Christmas reading suggestions

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The Rise of Anti-Science

One of the most inspirational scenes in the movie The Martian was where Matt Damon’s astronaut, marooned on the red planet and facing certain death, decided to ‘science the shit’ out of his problem. It encapsulated the strong belief that used to dominate our world: that science can solve our problems. Right now, we’re seeing the rise of a new breed of populist politicians who ignore the

Life on Venus

The golden age of science fiction often imagined Venus as a jungle world, steamy and wet, where shipwrecked astronauts were driven insane by the incessant pounding of tropical downpours, as in Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Long Rain’. The reality of Venus is a world that’s searingly hot, covered in toxic clouds and with a corrosive atmosphere that’s inimical

Big Brother 21st Century Style

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Will AIs want to kill us?

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Review - World of Trouble - Ben H Winters

World of Trouble by Ben H. Winters My rating: 4 of 5 stars I've enjoyed the single-minded investigations of Hank Palace, resolutely sticking to his job while society disintegrates around him in the face of an impending and world-ending meteor strike, and World of Trouble rounds out the trilogy nicely. Ben Winters has done a tremendous job balancing light and dark throughout the series and he

Free SF short story collection - Out There

New subscribers to my Beyond newsletter can now download Out There a free ebook of my collected short stories including: '... They First Make Mad' - Travel advisory: time-travel can seriously damage your health.'To That Which Kills' - Is humanity only good for destroying things?'A Mirror, Darkly' - Isobel didn't want to be lonely any more. Her mirror had other ideas... Beyond is

Review - Use of Weapons - Iain M Banks

Use of Weapons by Iain M. Banks My rating: 3 of 5 stars Use of Weapons marks a departure for Banks from the more linear storylines of Consider Phlebas and Player of Games to what is effectively a character study of Cheradenine Zakalwe: a non-Culture human who has been recruited by Special Circumstances to... do what SC do. There were a lot of elements I liked about the book, providing as it

Deadly supernovas

Richard Cowper’s 1974 science fiction novel The Twilight of Briareus is one of the weirdest alien invasion stories I’ve read. It made a big impression on me as a teenager, and the central idea of the book is still very strong (although when I re-read it recently its storytelling hadn’t stood the test of time). The Briareus of the story is a star 130 light years from Earth that goes supernova.