Girl Power! Women deserve the vote and the right to a life of crime! This is the potted history of a criminal gang operating out of London. It's full of villainesses, shoplifterixen, and thievettes. A disreputable bunch of complex characters on a crime-spree fuelled by women's lib and abject poverty. Each biography could be its own movie - forget Peaky Blinders, this is the true story of an…
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Food is transcendental. All cultures venerate it, a shared meal is the universal symbol of hospitality, the business of food shapes our entire planet. This book was originally written in the 1980s and updated in the 1990s - but it is a timeless classic. Visser talks us through how a simple meal came to be, its history, and its consequences. Much Depends on Dinner, the chronicle of a simple…
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Nuclear power was sold to the world as a safe, clean, and economically viable source of electricity. We were told that it would be "too cheap to meter". Even the most ardent proponent of nuclear power will have to admit that hasn't come to pass. Construction costs for nuclear power stations are dwarfed only by their decommissioning costs. Yes, politics and regulation conspire to increase the…
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Is it possible to write a time-travel story which makes sense? Probably not - but this comes close! It's a bit of a slow-burn; not revealing its secrets until it is good and ready. If you've read a lot of time-hopping sci-fi you won't find anything too surprising; nothing can escape the long shadow of La Jetée. It is a lushly plotted and surprisingly prosaic look at the reality of living on the …
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The best thing about Shakespeare is that you can endlessly redefine the stories. Romeo & Juliet works as well set in NYC to a musical score as it does set in fair Verona. The Tempest is just as good whether the action takes place on an island or an alien planet. Shakespeare can be set in any number of high-schools without dampening its power. And so, Hamlet is now HAM(let) - Humanoid…
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Was the polymath John von Neumann an alien? Did he travel back in time to help us invent the future? Or was he just a complex man with a knack for building networks of interesting people? Ananyo Bhattacharya's well-researched book presents a tangled view of the man and his legend. It leaps back and forth between von Neumann's various projects, which can make it slightly confusing to follow. …
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My friend Dr Joanna has written a marvellous book! Full of bone-eating snot flowers, stuffed with silly footnotes about antlions, and gorgeously illustrated. This is a quick rattle through over a hundred weird - and not-so-weird - animals. It is always amusing and occasionally gross. Banana Slugs, man... YEUCH! It is surprisingly adult in places, probably best for older teens who will snigger…
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I made my own tofu a few weeks ago. I got soy milk, heated it, mixed in coagulants, drained it, pressed it, sliced it, then cooked it. And, you know what? I'm not sure it was worth the effort. It tasted basically fine - no different to any shop bought tofu. It wasn't noticeably cheaper, it wasn't more nutritious, nor was it easier to store and prepare. I'm sure that if I spent several…
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World War 2 was won by many men with big guns and feats of daring-do. Sure, the boffins in Bletchley might have helped a bit - but it was bombs, muscles, and blokes which saved the day. Well, that's what we're all taught, right? Would it surprise you to learn that a significant contributor to Victory in Europe was a woman? Britain's first "James Bond" wasn't a suave man leaping from building to…
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I genuinely think that USB-C might be the defining feature of the 21st century. A little port which is cheap enough to add to the most trivial of devices, and that can carry an impressive amount of power and data. All of my gadgets have it - phone, eReader, headphones, laptop, thermal printer, battery, games console - and now, my mosquito bite zapper! This is the "heat it" - it's about £30 on …
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I don't usually back Kickstarter campaigns - but I love sci-fi & fantasy, and I don't think I've previously read any from Ukraine. So this was an instant buy - and it is a delight. As with any translation, you have to accept that the phrasing may sound a little "foreign" and you won't immediately get all the idioms and references - but that's all part of the fun, right? A tiny drumming sound…
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Let's do the time warp again! If you're new to the blog series, this is where I attempt to identify all the mobile phones used by The Doctor and their companions. The 2023 shows were an absolute blast. Some classic stories and a whole lot of running around. But were there any phones? Oh yes! The Star Beast First up, we get a gaggle of extras filming and taking selfies with the spaceship…
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