Craig Hodgetts: 'Joining the throngs of the faithful as they jostled for a better view of his paintings, and searching in vain for even one fellow architect, one could not help wondering why the place was not swarmed by young designers. And one was reminded once again of just how insular the architects of the “Me Generation” had become. On display were images depicting cityscapes and buildings that might have been snatched from the most recent international competitions. Lustrous metallic surfaces, twisting towers, parametric volumes, all hauntingly beautiful, and all bearing dates—wait for it—from the early 1970s and ’80s!'

On Alejandro Jodorowsky's ill-fated attempt to film Dune, including a look back at his career both before and afterwards. Full of moments of utter insanity, such as: "Dalí then insisted that he be paid $100,000 an hour to sit on [the throne]. He also deemed it essential that we see the Emperor defecating and micturating in the film — but a body double would have to do that for him." They don't make them like that any more. (Well, they didn't then either, to be fair...)

"In the game of folly versus lolly David Lynch's version of the Frank Herbert science fiction novel Dune played and lost. Now revived as part of a BFI Southbank retrospective on the director, it is often regarded as a patchy, incomprehensible failure. Andrew Stimpson challenges this consensus." Well worth a read (but then I've always had a soft spot for the film).

A guest post from Cat Valente on why Star Trek (with particular reference to Deep Space Nine) looks not like the future, but the not-so-recent past.

via Damien Walter's Guardian column: "Ted Chiang's brilliant and insightful novella about the emergence of Artificial Intelligence was originally published in a beautiful limited edition from Subterranean Press. It is now available as a free read from the publisher's website. Chiang explores a terrifyingly plausible scenario for the arrival of a new form of life in our midst."

"Science fiction is almost the only way that recognition of this vast non-human reality impinges on literature and the arts. In mainstream fiction, unless the plot requires Australia, the Earth might as well be flat."

Get past the slightly annoying headline and this looks to be well worth a read. "Her current novel, Momentum, is a fast-paced thriller set in a post-oil age of energy crises and police crackdowns on freedom. It follows two novels, The Carbon Diaries 2015 and 2017, which tackle carbon rationing and environmental meltdown through the eyes of a teenage girl and her family."

An interview with China Miéville in the Guardian, talking about genre fiction, London, politics, and all sorts of other things.

A story about privacy, law, the internet, and the future. Go and read it (if you haven't already).

"One of the most venerable dreams of science fiction is that people might become immortal by uploading their personalities into some kind of lasting storage." Rudy Rucker with an imaginative take on personal archives and personality simulation.

"It seems to me that one of our besetting problems these days is that there's a shortage of utopias on offer." To summarise the post would be to drain it. Just go and read it.

One of the better parts of the quite long Coyote saga, this is a fairly good standalone short story. "Perhaps Dr. Okada was busy helping the others emerge from biostasis. Yet he could hear nothing save for a subliminal electrical hum; no voices, no movement. His next thought was: Something’s wrong."

"the main argument of Postproduction fits Moon very well. It is a post-sampling film; it exists, in some way, as a remix of past futures." Toby Litt on science fiction. (Seems like this is of New Statesman is quite heavy on this sort of commentary; there's also a Bonnie Greer review of the new Atwood book, as well as the Banks interview.)

Ken Livingstone interviews Iain Banks, although really it's his science-fiction writing M persona that takes up the lion's share. Of course, politics gets a mention too.

"I am proud to host the first images of the forthcoming feature film "Moon" Directed by Duncan Z.H. Jones and starring Sam Rockwell and Kevin Spacey. On this project, I was contracted to complete a large amount of art support spanning many different disciplines. My primary roles are that of Chief Production Concept Artist and Visual Effects Supervisor.

I'm linking to the io9 pointer to Jonathan Wright's piece in the Guardian rather than the original because it has a comment by JMS on it. Anyway, from what I've seen of Torchwood (the first half of season one and the whole of Children of Earth), the arc series worked far better than the standalone ones.

"His latest book is set 6.4m years in the future, he admits to stealing other writers' ideas - and he's just secured a £1m book deal. Stuart Jeffries enters the fantastic world of Alastair Reynolds" (I've mangled the headline a bit.)

Today's "idea from science fiction" in the news - cover downtown Houston in a dome to keep the temperature down. (Well, actually, this was posted a couple of weeks ago, not today, but it's the first I've seen of it.)

"This was a serious attempt to make an adult science fiction series that hewed firmly to the laws of physics and tried to realistically depict what a lunar outpost of the 21st century would really be like." (On Wikipedia, one of the creators is quotes as saying they "overdid the grimness and forgot about the sense of wonder that science fiction is all about". Hmm.) An episode is on at the BFI in London in July.

'that intent, pretentious or not, is entirely undercut by seeing a Jeep double page ad in this week's People magazine that features a Terminator robot standing in a stream, fishing, with the tagline "Everyone can use a little break from judgment day."'

"I then took it upon myself to expand the idea that these books were all thematically connected and named the trend Barleypunk in reference to the Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker sitcom Nathan Barley" "[Barleypunk's] roots are in the low levels of SF that have been seeping out into mainstream culture since the appearance of the Star Wars and Star Trek franchises." Is it bad that I want to read a lot of these?

"The Accord is not only Brooke's best novel to date, but one of the finest to broach the subject of virtual reality."

Iain M Banks gets adapted for radio. I thought it worked fairly well.

Jeff Noon's story to accompany Dominique Gonzales-Foerster's piece in Tate Modern, TH2058. Indirectly via Dan Hon, who notes there's an entire story-writing competition.

"These days, science can be stranger than science fiction, and mainstream literature is increasingly futuristic and speculative. So are the genre's days numbered?" Speaking of 'speculative', I do wish they hadn't let Atwood off the hook so easily, but then I do get grumpy. There's more on the web than in the magazine, and it all seems to be free (usually NS have a paywall), so that's good, at least.

"Here’s something I don’t often do: put a free story up on this blog. But. Hey. Economic meltdown. Elections. Topicality. Too late to shop it. So, here you go . . ."

Bruce Sterling's... well, maybe not his... keynote to the Austin Game Developers Conference a couple of days ago. Or something. You'll work it out. The line about MMORPGs is very good. Go on, read it.

Neal Stephenson interview/promo piece in Wired this month, on the occasion of the release of Anathem, a (shock!) actual science fiction novel. It's as big as you'd expect (900 pages) and I still don't trust him to finish a story, or indeed have had any editing, but I'll get the hardback anyway.

One to watch later, perhaps: two of the Scottish science fiction authors I like talking to each other at a literary festival earlier this year. Of course, being video, I don't know if it's any good yet, but hopefully it won't turn out to be a waste of time. (Oh for transcripts.)

A series of questions and answers for Iain Banks. The one I particularly like is the "how do we get to be the Culture" one; I'd always thought AI but maybe GM is better. Of course, we'd have to figure out far more about the brain first...

"Scriptwriter Steven Moffat was today named lead writer and executive producer on hit BBC1 drama Doctor Who [replacing] Russell T Davies." About time too. Here's hoping for less use of the Tardis as deus ex machina, then.

Free PDFs of stories by Ken Macleod and Greg Egan, who, handily, are two of the people whose work I particularly enjoy. Hurrah!

I've heard his writing described as being like a technical manual, but I never thought there was much wrong with that. So long, and thanks for all the monoliths.

A short interview (with a long title, which I've excised) to go with their review of Matter. Not much new, and I'm almost a little sad that Banks won't write the "Culture Hampstead" novel, even if he's right that it'd be dull.

Minor spoilers (and narrative unrolling) in this somewhat uncritical review of Matter from the io9 kids. I did enjoy the book, like they say you will, but the more I think about it the less happy I was with it.

This tries to be an introduction to the Culture, but flubs it with a bunch of errors and spoilers in their book descriptions. Either that, or as a Proper Signed Up Fanboy I'm too touchy to read such things.

A review of Matter, the new Iain M Banks novel (as also published in the Guardian, but this is prettier and has comments). He pretty much nails the biggest problems (pacing and naming) without too many spoilers.

An Iain Banks interview, touching on his passport (he's got one again), the socialism of the Culture, and whether Iraq influenced Matter, amongst other things.

A good review, largely free of spoilers, for the new Iain M Banks Culture novel, "Matter". It's a good read, but it does spend a bit too long setting things up, and it's not for the non-fanboys. Worth hardback? If you're a really big fan, yes.

candace's pocket review of The Red Men, a sci-fi novel set in Hackney that she just finished. I suspect I'll borrow this and finish it off; sounds good (if badly proof-read).

I've liked MacLeod since The Star Fraction (the socialist remnants of a British republic fighting back; how could I not?) and I'm looking forward to the Execution Channel, albeit in paperback.

"we’re up to approximately 35 tonnes, 80% of which is flying ... we’ve got a little bit of a lifestyle problem here" Cory Doctorow's 2006 flights analysed, with the promise of a repeat for 2007 coming up.

Adam Greenfield on science fiction's urban futures, and in particular near-future overcrowding dystopias. There's stuff here I haven't read that I should look for.

Is it deeply geeky of me to think these would work better if they were properly in-universe retro, ie from the first war fifty years before the reimagined series? They'd need to change the Enemy poster, but that's about it.

John Brunner writing in the New Scientist in 1993 on predictions, SF and readers.

Lovely poem about being watched over by AIs, Culture-style. I wonder if Ryman would dismiss this as an adolescent fantasy, too? It probably is. That doesn't stop it being seductive.

Geoff Ryman talk in which he expands on his "mundane SF" manifesto and explains why FTL, mind downloads and alien intelligences are so much escapist nonsense. I think that's his point, anyway.

"they're not *all* British" but most are. He misses a couple of author blogs, but not a bad list. Spoilt only by comments from idiots who think this is a list of the best still-alive scifi authors, as opposed to new(ish) ones.

Nice stuff here. I think the film was a bit grim for my tastes at the cinema but if I'd waited for the DVD I'd have raved more about it. The design stuff here is *very* good.