Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 339

That Synching Feeling

The future isn’t what it used to be.

When the future was imagined on shows like ‘Tomorrow’s World’ or in speculative magazines, it always showed single systems that would change our lives. Nobody mentioned that these single systems would be subdivided into a complex maze of ringfenced copyright systems.

This morning my phone notified me that [...]

Name That Tube

Flicking around the interweb main news stories and finding nothing but lying politicos, dying crop yields and economic slumps I thought ‘What we really need is a game to take our minds of the encroaching winter depression’, and Lo, here’s something suitably silly from the site Look For Longer. There are 75 tube stations hidden [...]

Cheer Up, TfL!

Transport for London doesn’t like them but everyone else seems to – the stickers appearing all over the tube are purchased online and use the same logo/ typeface as london Transport.

Join The Club? No Thanks!

Groucho Marx famously didn’t want to be a member of any club that would have him as a member. If he’d been around now he would have had no choice. Every day we’re enrolled in clubs we don’t want to be a part of.

Yesterday I went to buy some Nespresso coffee capsules. The fancy coffee [...]

A Horror Story Waiting To Happen?

Here’s a tale from the New York Times that disturbed me.

I’ve always had a strong affinity with Americans, which is why I ended up living there for several years. But it’s said that in US politics, the hard left starts where the British hard right ends. In particular, the right to bear arms is so [...]

On Being A Professional Writer No.4: Creating Characters

Classics are good for you, like losing weight and eating vegetables, which is why no child wants to read them. But you don’t just learn from the classics. I learned a lot from reading ridiculously square-jawed adventures as a child, particularly the stories of Jules Verne and virtually lost novels like ‘Coral Island’ and ‘The [...]

Two Psychos Are Better Than One

At the Leicester Square Theatre this October, Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 PSYCHO will be shown simultaneously with Van Sant’s 1998 remake. This fascinating experiment apparently ‘provides a unique insight into the nature of directorial technique and the role of actors’ interpretation, while asking the question: can a story be told exactly the same way twice?’

Or it [...]

What Admin Does When He’s Not Writing/ Blogging

This is all the more alarming because the shot hasn’t been tampered with. I’ve been told I look like a tall Daniel Craig before, but when I went to Manchester to interview Patrick Mower on stage on Saturday I’m fairly sure I sat inside the train.

Books On Reading & Writing

Lately there have been quite a few books about the process of reading and writing. Certainly the addition of e-reading to formats has helped to develop this debate. How do we perceive the classics now? Why are books that are hard to read still on the curriculum? How can we read and improve our comprehension? [...]

Why Aren’t Our Political Debates This Much Fun?

America knows that sometimes democratic argument needs to be made more fun. The admirable Jon Stewart VS The arrogant and clearly deranged Bill O’Reilly feature here in an impartial debate. What’s not to love? Stewart is weakened when he turns serious points into jokes, O’Reilly is just unbelievably nasty and self-righteous.