Alasdair Stuart's Blog

Well the first thing I did was realize I need to keep better track of the stuff I’m doing. And then I cleaned up some admin left over from last year, and I signed with an employment agency and cooked lots of things, but that last one we’ve already covered. So, let’s take a look at the places you could find my stuff this month:

-Duane O’Brien is a game designer, and one with a brilliant idea. Octo: Games of Spring, is a collection, print only, of one page roleplaying games from some of the best, most innovative designers on the planet. Duane’s eating printing and shipping costs and all proceeds are going to some startlingly worthy causes. I talk to him about it here.

-I interviewed Kelly Sue DeConnick, writer on the new Captain Marvel series which, to my mind, is the first time the character has been truly great in years. Captain Marvel’s kind of a hot button topic for me, because a lot of her old look neatly embodied everything that’s wrong with how comics view women. Or to put it another way, if you put a highly decorated air force pilot in a pair of black thigh highs and a leotard, people aren’t going to ask about her flight credentials. What Kelly Sue’s done is make her not only fun but human and interesting. The book’s brilliant, Kelly Sue is a fun interview subject and you should read the interview, then order the book, here and here.

-Equally brilliant is Sarah Cawkwell, Black Library author, force of nature and one of the nicest people I’ve met. I talked to Sarah about writing, how she got started with BL, what it’s like to be a woman in an area traditionally viewed as male-centric and what pieces of writing she’s proudest of. The interview is here.

-I’m a newcomer to the work of James P Blaylock and it was a pleasure to get The Aylesford Skull to review and interview Mr Blaylock. Both these pieces can be found here, and here, whilst my review for SFX is here.

-Welcome to the Empyrean. You’re dead. That’s the bad news. The good news is everyone gets to go to the Afterlife and it’s FUN. Jonathan Lock’s Afterlife Inc was, initially, one of my favorite indie comics of last year. On reflection it’s now one of my favorite comics ever. The story of the new boss in the beyond, the…odd circumstances he came to power in and what happens when Heaven isn’t a place on Earth, but you can send soldiers there, this is dizzying, massively inventive and incredibly sweet fantasy. It’s a beautiful book in every sense of the word and the review is here.

-If you’re a DC Comics fan and you like movie versions of their characters, like me, then, well…I’m really sorry. The chain of disastrous choices that DC make about every movie that doesn’t have Christopher Nolan behind the camera seemed to continue this week when it was announced that the Justice League movie would only happen if Man of Steel did well. Or did it? In a moment of slightly desperate optimis, I talk about why this might be a really good thing here.

-It has been a fine, FINE month for nerdrage. Not only did we have the fact the BBC appear (Note that word) to be pretty seriously short changing the Doctor Who 50th anniversary, the horror that a director that had touched/tainted/saved/obliterated the Star Trek series could be given Star Wars with the announcement of JJ Abrams as the director of episode 7, but we also had the confirmation that Princess Leia would not only be the star of the new Star Wars comic but fly an X-Wing! LOTS! QUICKLY! SOMEONE COVER HER ANKLES!

The responses to this ranged from welcoming to intrigued but troubled to ‘BUT SHE’S A WOMAN!’ and every repulsive derivation therein. So, myself and my learned colleague Steven Ellis put together two, two header pieces about the announcement; one a discussion, one a review. I’m all in favor of it, he’s interested but has issues, with Star Wars as a whole in fact. They’re interesting reading and can be found here and here.

-Anomaly is a vast, literally the thing’s a foot long, hardback graphic novel with staggering painted artwork, some fun AR components and a neat twist on the usual sci fantasy fare. I reviewed it here.

-The Wolfmen and Fall of The Wolfmen are a pair of excellent graphic novels set in a very nasty version of the London underworld. They’re also two of the huge range of great, varied books that Accord are putting out. I review the Wolfmen duo here.

-The Rose Black books are that rare breed; a modern vampire story that isn’t either A)A bad Twilight knockoff or B)A bad Twilight satire. Rose is a devout Christian, a spy and a vampire. She’s also in a lot of trouble in Demon Seed, in a story that neatly combines genetics with supernatural horror. Oh and if you look closely, you can see this exact book on the desk in the comic shop in Utopia, just before everything goes sideways. The review’s here

-Mephistos is another one of my favorite titles at the moment, following Maria, a quiet, friendly woman and her neighbour, who works in hell. But is actually quite nice. Even after she tries to kill him with a frozen chicken. Gentle, sweet and very funny, it’s a great book and the review can be found here.

-The nerdbait returns! Dredd has reached DVD and blu-ray (How long, I wonder, until we start saying that the other way round?) and I wrote a piece about what went wrong with the film’s marketing. The piece, in which I examine who killed the movie’s chances (Like a Judge, you see? Investigating a…crime…I’ll go), is up here.

-Finally, and also in nerdbait news, hilarity ensued earlier in the month when an interview with Rob Williams, one of the writers of Judge Dredd and on an absolute tear at the moment, was asked about ‘Closet’ an upcoming story dealing with homosexuality in Mega City 1. He was asked about Judge Dredd’s sexuality, explained how it didn’t really matter and…the quote was twisted into YOU ARE KILLING DREDD BY MAKING THIS MACHO FIGURE WEARING TIGHT LEATHER AND WIELDING A NIGHTSTICK A HOMOSEXUAL ICON! by fans who, apparently, don’t know how to read.  The piece I did about why 2000AD examining issues like this is why it’s great, is here.

-I’ve been incredibly lucky in my reading in the last couple of months. Firstly, after strep throat-induced MASSIVE insomnia for a fortnight, I was actually starting to panic about whether or not I’d be able to sleep. Which, of course, meant I didn’t sleep. Which, of course, meant I panicked and round we go. Anyway, Marguerite, being a genius and wonderful, suggested I read a chapter or so of a book before sacking out to help my brain close down. As a direct result, I’ve now read a couple of books I can see myself returning to over and over again. One of them, Warren Ellis’ frankly astonishing Gun Machine, is reviewed here.

-The new Star Wars comic I reviewed for SFX? I also reviewed for Bleeding Cool. It’s really good, sprinkles enough of the tone of the new Battlestar Galactica over the top to add some edge but is still recognisably all the bits of Star Wars I love. The review, which also re poses the age old question of which one would win, a Sopwith Camel or an F18 Hornet (It’s all in context, chaps, don’t worry), is here.

Neil Gardner, top audio producer and general all around good egg, has launched a new blog. Minifig of the Day is just that, a picture of a standard, or custom, Lego mini figure. Neil very kindly let me guest post, talking about my little Lego martial artist and what he means to me, and the piece is here.

SciFind is one of my favorite new sites, and they’re a pleasure to write for, because I’m basically completely off the chain for them. I wrote a wrap up of 2012, which gave me a perfect excuse to promote some of my favorite stuff, here. I also put together a reaction piece for them on David Bradley’s casting as William Hartnell in An Adventure In Space And Time here, and a piece about Duncan Jones getting the World of Warcraft gig here.

Who has two thumbs, speaks limited German and is the new co host of Escape Pod?! Da! Wait that’s wrong. Anyway it’s me, and I hosted three stories this month.

-Real Artists by Ken Liu is a chilling, and oddly cheerful, discussion of why certain stories have universal appeal and how they get it.

-Scout by Bud Sparhawk is a calm, considered, horrifying story about the exact nature of the self that’s lost during war.

-Concussion by David Glen Larson is equal parts sport story and desperate struggle for survival as a head injury allows a dying alien spacecraft to communicate with an American football player.

-Finally, Elias, Smith and Jones by Mark English is a glorious story about how a major propulsion breakthrough was discovered by a crew who specialized in ‘re-acquiring’ items from their owners. A must for Firefly fans, this one.

-Meanwhile, over at my true podcasting home, we had three fantastic stories hit in quick succession:

-The Persistence of Memory by William Meikle, explores grieving through music, the echoes we leave behind of ourselves and what happens when we let our past prey on us.

-Enzymes by Greg Stolze is brilliant, and unclassifiable, and sort of a love story, and sort of a tragedy and brilliant. Top five in the stories I’ve ever hosted for the show. Just amazing work.

-As is Venice Burning by AC Wise, equal parts horror story, romance, time travel and Lovecraftian fever dream. Venice has never looked so beautiful, and so very doomed.

So that was my January. As ever there’s about four or five things that didn’t quite make the date cut, but they’ll be covered next time. A good start to the year, lots of traction and I can feel my work load staying steady. In fact, a short word about that; I’m doing the Million Word Challenge, along with 11 other people. If you write 2700 words a day for a year, you hit a million words, which is widely regarded as the point after which your writing starts getting good. I’m on course for about 92,000 in January, so I’m off to a solid start. You can find out more here.

In the meantime, did I mention my book?

The Pseudopod Tapes Volume 1 is a collection of all the writing I did for Pseudopod in 2012, revised and expanded so you don’t ever have to read me ask for donations. You can just hear that. On the shows. Every week. And sometimes when you’re sleeping… It’s available in print or ebook form and it’s something I’m incredibly proud of. Adele and the crew at Fox Spirit along with superlative cover artist SL Johnson did amazing work, as did the nice people that put it on cake for the launch party. So if you fancy reading me instead of listening to me, give it a try.

Want to talk to me about the article? Or hire me? Come see me on Twitter at @alasdairstuart or email me.

Okay there was clearly sleeping and eating and Christmas, and visiting my parents (Which was lovely) and having a cold (Which was less lovely) but NONE.THE.LESS. this is what I did in December and the people I did it for.

-Blogbusters  only made one appearance this month, but it was a doozy, looking at the Naughty and Nice lists for genre fiction for 2012.

-I reviewed the wonderful Behind the Sofa, a collection of short essays by celebrities about their favorite Doctor Who memories. It’s a fantastic book, with proceeds going to Alzheimer’s Research and the review is one of the pieces I’m proudest of this year.

-My old friend Scott Harrison has a very well deserved and rapidly burgeoning career as a short fiction editor and an audio drama writer. He’s written the second of Big Finish’s excellent Confessions of Dorian Gray (Starring Alexander Vlahos, fans of Merlin!) series and I reviewed it here. It’s not, despite the frantic points-scoring in the comments, an unnecessary sequel (Although I would watch the SHIT out of The Mayor Of Casterbridge 2: The Final Battle), but rather the second in a series of short audio plays about Dorian Gray making his way through his endless centuries of decadent, beautiful, empty life. Scott nailed this, and it was a pleasure to review. I’ll be looking at Resurrection Engines, the steampunk take on classic literature anthology he edited, in the new year.

-The last year has been marked by a sudden and very welcome upswing in paranormal police fiction, with Ben Aaronovitch’s excellent Rivers of London series, Paul Cornell’s highly acclaimed London Falling (I’m sure it’s great I’ve just not had time to read it yet) and the graphic novel release of Gordon Rennie and Tiernen Trevellion‘s excellent Absalom. An aging, charmingly decrepit copper who worked with the best including Charlie Barlow and Jack Regan (The first not the second, at least so far…), Absalom runs a team which helps keep the uneasy peace between London and Hell. Steeped in the history of the city, crammed full of great dialogue and ideas and cheerfully horrible, I loved this. Now if we can just get the rest of Caballistics Inc collected…

-Professor Elemental is a steampunk British rapper. Oh and he has a comic. And it’s as brilliant as he is, which is to say rather a lot. Here’s my review of it.

-Whilst IDW continue to do great work with the Doctor Who comics, the UK-based Doctor Who Magazine have been doing them for a lot longer.Wider in scope, far more prepared to mess with the status quo as a result and frequently brilliant (The Iron Legion is still the stuff of my favorite nightmares) they’re one of the very few gems of Who fiction that remain largely hidden. I reviewed The Child of Time, a collection of the first few 11th Doctor strips and Jonathan Morris‘ first work on the character here, and it’s fantastic.

-Ecko Rising, Danie Ware‘s debut novel, does the near-impossible; making heroic fantasy interesting and grounded at the same time as avoiding sliding into the muddy booted slog that a lot of pseudo-Game of Thrones books become. It’s a stunning book, made all the more so by the fact it’s a debut, and I interviewed Danie here.

-Juliet E.Mckenna has been doing the near-impossible for a while now, with her Einarinn series of linked series mapping a fascinating, politically driven fantasy world into existence. They’re a stunning ongoing achievement and I interviewed Julie about them here.

-When I was about 15, the first Batman/Judge Dredd crossover came out and it was the single most muscular, flexed, teeth-bared comic I’d ever read. It still is, and I was delighted to see it and the three sequels collected in a nice hardback edition. I reviewed it here. I didn’t flex throughout writing the review. But I was tempted.

-I also contributed to the 25 Movies of the Year piece, getting to show some love for Sinister and Hotel Transylvania.

There’s some other stuff pending for SFX, including a couple of reviews and a look at some great small press work but this is what’s up right now.

-I didn’t so much consult on this excellent piece Brendon put together about the Star Trek Into Darkness teaser as endless watch the thing over a period of a couple of days and then provide a tiny insight into one thing. By the way, Brendon’s trailer breakdowns are extraordinary, go read this one, on Oblivion. You’ll learn stuff. Good stuff. I did.

-Thanks to him, I also got to do a little pictorial archaeology, when a series of Kevin Eastman sketches for an abandoned fourth live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie surfaced. They’re…let’s say muscular, but I had a lot of fun speculating as to what the plot of the movie would have been. Someone in the comments suggested it was going to be based on the After the Bomb RPG background and I can certainly see that.

-I also interviewed the heroic creative team on Amelia Cole and the Unknown World. I love Monkeybrain Comics‘ entire line but Amelia Cole is the standout for me and it was a pleasure to talk to the entire team, at length, about their experience on volume 1 of the book and what’s in it’s future.

It’s all go in Escape Artists Towers this month, and I’ll talk about why in…(checks watch)…about a week. In the meantime, our stories for December were fantastic, with the month kicing off with Episode 311: Flashes on the Borderlands XIV: Resistance! Flashes is our regular collection of flash stories and this was a corker, with Matthew Acheson‘s No Further (Read by my dad no less! Hello father!) followed by Jayne Chant’s The Conchie and Henry Lu’s Bitter Tea & Braided Hair. I’m very fond of Flashes, and it’s often one of our strongest features but this one is something special.

Hunter James Martin‘s chilling Feeding the Machine was episode 312, a story about work, drudgery, slavery and freedom and the point where all four meet. This is one of my favorites of the year and it’s the sort of story horror is uniquely equipped to provide, combining something relatively mundane with the fantastic to chilling effect.

Episode 313:The Dead Sexton is a J.Sheridan Le Fanu story, which, as some of you have probably already worked out, means getting hold of the author’s PayPal details proved a little…tricky. It’s an excellent piece, published in 1871 and steeped in regional dialect, set in the Lake District town Le Fanu invented of Golden Friars. It’s also an absolute beast to read so Shawn very sensibly approached my Dad again. My grandfather was from the region, so my Dad knew enough of the dialect to get by but it was still a hell of a challenge and he did fantastically well. Go have a listen, it’s a very different piece to what we normally run and a fascinating example of how horror has changed over the last century.

Episode 314 hasn’t been released just yet but you can read the outro for it early in the BOOK I HAD PUBLISHED THIS MONTH! YAAAAAY! (KERMIT ARMS)

The Pseudopod Tapes Volume 1 is a collection of all the writing I did for Pseudopod this year. Every outro I did is in there, revised and expanded so you don’t need to have just read or listened to the story to get them, and there’s also a collection of all the closing quotes and the answers to this year’s Halloween Parade. It’s available in print or ebook form and it’s something I’m incredibly proud of. One of the things I’ve always felt is a problem with my work is I never actually bloody finish it and this is a real thing, torn from my head and dragged into print by the fine people of Fox Spirit and my own hand. I love it to tiny pieces. And isn’t the cover by SL Johnson lovely? Delicious on cake too…

So if saying if you have left over vouchers from Amazon or you’re a fan? Give it a try.

That was (most of) December. Next up? Next year…

Want to talk to me about the article? Come see me on Twitter at @alasdairstuart or email me.

(Image from Helen Woodall: Freelance Editing)

The word counts have been added up and checked. I wrote 135, 703 words in November.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes you get bogged down, and sometimes, ten metres away from the try line, you slow down. I used to get that a lot, I’d be passed the ball sprint and then…slow…I was already mentally across the line, already there and every single time that happened? SACKED. Dropped like third period French.

That hasn’t happened here. Because I saw it coming. Today all I had planned was getting two blog posts done and I did that. The idea is to clear my blog backlog as well, meaning that I have something on the site every day for a week or so. Yesterday the outstanding list was four long, today it’s two. One is the Retrovirus review that already went up whilst the other is a piece I initially submitted to SFX. It’s a thought experiment asking why the decision to cancel Hellblazer with issue 300 isn’t being marked with some sort of small press fan tribute. They didn’t want it because legally they could get reprimanded for it, which is entirely fair and they were very good about it so I’ve retooled it a little, combined the two versions I did, and it’ll go up in a couple of days. I’d love to see something come of it, because 300 issues is a hell of a run and John deserves a send off but I’m not hopeful. Still, the piece is done, and it’s scheduled so tomorrow all I have to do is two more blog posts and the GenCon follow up. Then I get to talk to you about the movies.

And then two months passed, we moved across the Atlantic to Nottingham, Marguerite started attending law school and I wrote these things. How have you been?

Starting with Blogbusters,the last two months have seen us caper up and down the genre lines like a chilli-tailed rat…or…something. We’ve discussed who the best Nemesis relationship in genre fiction is, who should helm the Justice League movie, the best sidekicks in science fiction, what we’d all desperately like to see in the Whedon-fronted SHIELD TV show (First letter ‘c’ rhymes with ‘pool son’), looked at genre fiction deaths we’d like to see reversed, talked about heroes that are difficult to love and looked at zombie bug out bag inventory.

I also interview uber-talented comic writer Si Spurrier about his new superhero post-apocalypse series Extinction, the unending horror of Wish You Were Here, the Crossed webcomic he’s writing and his work on the various X-titles. In a moment which my 14 year old self is still squeeing about I then interviewed the magnificent John DeLancie about his life as Q, his upcoming documentary on My Little Pony fandom and his plans for the future.

I also reviewed the second issue of phenomenal digital comic, Amelia Cole and the Unknown World. Finally, I participated in a look at the 25 worst TV shows of all time. I remembered Manimal, so you don’t have to.

On the right hand side of the page, I reported back from the extremely entertaining Tracy Hickman panel at GenCon about his book, Wayne of Gotham. I also wrote about the trailer for the new Martin McDonagah comedy thriller Seven Psychopaths and, having seen the filming of the season finale way back at the top of the year, gave my five reasons to stop worrying and look forward to Red Dwarf X.

Over on the left hand side of the page, I reviewed the second issue of Amelia Cole and the Unknown World and the first issue of the Gambit relaunch.

We put out another of our popular Flashes from the Borderlands with (Black) Arts & (Dead) Letters, featuring the graceful body horror of Dancing by Donna Glee Williams, the horror of creativity in Lost for Words by Kenneth Yu and the brutal tempo of city life in Music on the Michigan Avenue Bridge by Mort Castle.

Just Outside Our Windows, Deep Inside Our Walls by Brian Hodge was next, mixing the fascination of art with, again, the horror of creativity and creation, as two lost children find a very different way of looking at the world.

The Squat by Sean Logan followed, a neatly balanced combination of punk attitude and Cthonic menace. And then the fun began, as, in the run up to our 300th episode, we began posting a short history of the show. It’s a very odd, very funny audio experiment and a testament to our astounding sound editor Graeme Dunlop. Parts 1, 2 and 3 can be found here. I may briefly feature introducing the second one of those too.

Of Ants and Mountains by Charlie Bookout followed, and it’s one of my favorites from the year. You often find surprising, and awful, things when you turn over rocks or look where you shouldn’t. When Mother Natures does that for you? Well, that’s when things can get very nasty…

The Long Road To The Sea by James L Sutter opened September for us and did so in style. An unusually hopeful piece of post-apocalyptic fiction from one side, a tragic story of post-human discrimination from another and a love story from any angle, it’s another one of my highlights of the year.

White As A Bedroom Door by Nathaniel Lee is intimate horror, polite, even mundane horror. It’s artfully crafted, beautifully written and drawn from the worst place you can draw these stories from; experience. It’s not an easy listen by any means but if I had to pick a story of the year, right now I’d pick this one.

Episode 300, a milestone by any lights. The Step by EF Benson is an old classic, but one with sharp teeth and a predator’s eye. This was the perfect capstone for this hundred, and it was an honor to introduce and talk about. Here’s to the next 300, eh?

The road to that next milestone began with The Last Man After The War by Erich William Bergmeier. I’m a sucker for post-apocalyptic fiction and this measured, calm, weary approach to the world’s end is a haunting and massively effective one.

Singing by the Fire by Jameson Ridenhour was our next episode. A classically designed, elegantly crafted ghost story this is another one of my recent favorites.

Most recently, we delivered more Flashes from the Borderlands with our 13th edition, Responsible Parties. A Murder of Crows by Tres Crow opens the episode in stark, effective fashion and is followed by Magnitude Seven by David Glen Larson, that explores the horrific combination of natural disasters and the supernatural. Finally, Always Grinning by Nathaniel Lee is a classic piece of apocalyptic fiction.

Finally, I pitched in at the last minute for Escape Pod, who’d had a narrator fall through. The narration itself isn’t ideal (Immediately post strep throat, huge ceiling in the room) but the story’s massive fun. Techno-Rat by Brad Hafford is the story of two car thieves in near future London, on what will either be the best or worst night of their lives. I had a blast reading it, especially as I’d just got back from seeing The Sweeney.

Want to talk to me about the article? Come see me on Twitter at @alasdairstuart or email me.

Travel, more travel, work, an awful lot of fun, packing for the big move to Nottingham and a family tragedy. It’s been an interesting, and hard, and busy, few weeks. Here’s where you can find the work I did in July.  Also, a quick note. This week I’m starting an Easter egg hunt on these posts. One link will be to something fun and slightly related to something I wrote this week. See if you can find it, and I’ll blog about why I chose it later in the week.

Starting with Blogbusters, we looked at love, war, what happens after they both wake up at noon in the same bed, and, of course, what they listen to. Sci Fi Music, Star-Crossed Lovers, a bit of the old ultra-violence and the relationship between a hero and the villain who arches him were all discussed this month.

This month also saw the launch of the superb Monkeybrain Comics, whose launch line I talked about here. I interviewed the creative teams of Amelia Cole and the Unknown World, Aesop’s Ark, Bandette, Edison Rex and The October Girl about their launches, their influences and what’s next for the books.

Keeping with interviewing, I talked to the magnificent Amanda Rutter. Amanda is the editor of Strange Chemistry, Angry Robot‘s Young Adult imprint and I talked to her about the launch, the launch titles and what attracts her to YA as a genre. I also talked to comics journalism legend Joel Meadows about his magazine Tripwire and his campaign to raise funds for a 20th anniversary hardback.

Also this month, I blogged about the Music Humble Bundle, a great fundraiser that allowed you to get a lot of top level nerd music, and help a pair of very good causes, for not very much cash.  I also broke down the finalists of the 2012 Hugo for short fiction, providing links to audio and text versions, and reviewed Kelly Sue DeConnick and Dexter Soy‘s stunningly great Captain Marvel relaunch.

Oh and I also talked about the Top Ten Non-Mad Scientists in modern science fiction, which went up today. I had a lot of fun doing this piece, especially the flavor text and some of the choices. I stand by number 1 and number 9 in particular.  Always nice to revisit fictional old friends, even if the shows they’re from were endearingly awful.

On the right hand column of the site, I looked at the new Dracula series NBC are prepping, with Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the lead and what seems to be an interesting Steampunk sensibility. However, the piece I’m genuinely very proud of is the write up of Carlo Rambaldi I was asked to do. I suppose it’s an obituary of sorts, for the man who designed ET, who helped design the Xenomorph from Alien and was instrumental in shaping our view of fictional extraterrestrial life. His career was one of quiet, elegant illusions and I found out two things about him that made me smile the whole time I was writing the piece. Carlo Rambaldi was a magician and it was an honor to talk about him.

On the left hand side of the page, I reviewed three of the best new titles I’ve read in years. Lookouts, by Ben McCool and Rob Mommaerts is an expansion of the original Penny Arcade pilot strip, and is superbly realized, all ages fantasy. I also looked at Kelly Sue DeConnick’s Captain Marvel and the Hawkeye relaunch, written by her husband Matt Fraction and drawn by David Aja. All three, whilst wildly different, are perfectly distilled pieces of pop culture; emotionally involving, carefully crafted and completely gripping.

My first piece for SciFind is part of their ongoing series which takes older, less well known properties and matches them with a currently famous writer or producer. I was handed the frankly demented old Gerry Anderson series Terrahawks and asked how JJ Abrams of Alias, Lost and Star Trek would reboot it. Here’s my answer which I had ridiculous amounts of fun coming up with.

The Total Recall remake opened this week and I found myself in an interesting position. I have no time whatsoever for the original, and fly in the face of public opinion as a result. I talked about this on Twitter and ended up agreeing to review the remake for the lovely people at Geekcentricity. This is actually the first of three reviews I’ve done of the movie, which will appear at various other locations next week.

Some great stories on Pseudopod this month, with 290, Jay Lake‘s The American Dead, a moving and deeply unsettling portrayal of what it’s like to sacrifice everything for your dreams, narrated by Roberto Suarez, co-host of the excellent Trailerclash podcast.  Episode 291, Lizardfoot, by John Jasper Owens,  was a welcome and endearingly squicky change of pace, equal parts romantic, shaggy lizard story and horrifying. John Owens, of Sonic Society and Bell’s in the Batfry, did stunning voice work too. 292, Coming Soon To A Theatre Near You was written by the legendary David J. Schow and was another change of pace, a hard-edged piece of urban splatter noir with an oddly hopeful, poetic edge. Dave Robison, a dear friend and the magnificently voiced co-host of Writer’s Roundtable and the host of Tales to Terrify did a superb job of narrating it on his first time at Pseudopod Towers.  Finally, a last minute technical hitch meant episode 294 went up before episode 293. Demon Rum by Charles M. Saplak is a late run contender for one of my stories of the year, a beautifully realised piece of maritime horror read supremely well by the multi-talented Dominick Rayburn.

I’ve been a fan of the Drabblecast for years and Norm Sherman, their host, is a flat out podcast hero of mine. Norm is endlessly wry, arch, funny, fiercely on point and can swing a pretty mean guitar. So I was massively pleased when they asked me to read part of Trifecta XXII for their 250th episode. Their Trifecta episodes are legendary, combining three drabbles under a loose theme and this particular story, The Faithful Servant, by Joel Shulkin, is a wonderful piece of very British armageddon. I had a blast reading it.

Want to talk to me about the article? Come see me on Twitter at @alasdairstuart or email me.

Because some people have asked about this, I’m going to put up some links to where I can be found online at the moment.

Podcasting

The excellent ‘Raising Eddie‘ is up at Pseudopod this week by Mark Felps and read by Cayenne Chris Conroy.  It’s a great story and as usual, I’ve done the intro and outro.

I also narrated ‘Castor on Troubled Waters‘ for Podcastle last week.  Written by Rhys Hughes it’s the story of one man, lots of pirates and a series of unlikely coincidences.

Journalism

I’m part of SFX’s team of bloggers and my most recent piece went up this week.  Called ‘Surviving the Zomblogalypse‘ it’s about the aptly named Zomblogalypse.com, a web series about traditional flat sharing concerns like doing the shopping, who does the washing up, the rise of the undead and what the exact rules of ‘meat legs’ are.

I’ve been blogging for SFX for a while now and it’s led me to some really interesting subjects including these beautiful aerial robot penguins (Yes, really) and this piece, about why geeks have in fact won and some of us have no idea what to do next.

Meanwhile my reviews of the pilot episode of Warehouse 13 and what may be the only episode of Virtuality are up at Total Sci Fi.

Fiction

I’ve been doing a lot of Twitter fiction recently.  It’s a fascinating form, telling a story in less space than most song lyrics and I’ve sold several to some of the major Twitter anthologies.  One of the first, Thaumatrope, archives its stories by author and mine can be found here.

I also sold this piece to Nanoism which is the second oddest thing I’ve ever written but still makes me smile.

Hub

Over at Hub which I’m now editing, our most recent issue features short fiction from Simon Frayne, a piece about sexuality in Torchwood, an interview with the creator of Usagi Yojimbo, Stan Sakai and reviews including Moon and Torchwood: Children of Earth, the latter contributed by me.