Wisdom 2.0 has grown very fast in only four years. From its first panel discussion in May 2010, between Google VP Bradley Horowitz and zen teacher Joan Halifax, the conference has stayed focused on its signature blend of technology and spirituality. In February 2013 Wisdom 2.0 filled the Concourse Exhibition Centre in San Francisco with [...]
News of secret courts being introduced in the world’s oldest democracy should scare any rational human. The right to a public trial has survived feudalism, Henry VIII and the industrial revolution, but couldn’t stand up to the forces of global capitalism. Secret courts could be an idea from Alan Moore’s polemic on Thatcher’s Britain, V [...]
I arrived in Leicester in the late ‘90s as a student, a year after losing my mother to cancer. Having little support, I worked my way through university as a street sweeper, a factory worker, a waiter, a barman, a door-to-door salesman, a cleaner, recycling operative and grill chef. I wanted to be a writer [...]
The community of SF writers has reason to dislike digital copying, or “piracy” as it’s commonly labelled in the tabloid press. Genre writers exist, by and large, in the publishing mid-list, where mediocre sales might seem most easily eroded by the spectre of illegitimate downloads. SF, fantasy and horror are also the literature of choice [...]
I am closed to print editions of books to review for the time being. Read on for more information why. At some point after I started writing for the Guardian books blog, people started sending me books. When I started writing my own column, more people started sending me books. A couple of years on, [...]
2012 has been a year of transition for science fiction and fantasy literature. SF’s reputation as home of the Bearded White Male hides a more interesting story. SF is the literature of geeks, and today, geeks run the world. Geek culture isn’t infiltrating the mainstream: it is the mainstream. And geeks come in all ages, [...]
Philip K Dick’s partially autobiographical chronicle of 70s hippie drug culture takes place under the eternal sunshine of southern California. Even the book’s nighttime is saturated with the electric glare of strip mall lighting and the glow of the television screen. And in a society that never switches off the lights, the dark has become [...]
It is significant that all of our great religions were born in the face of oppression. Moses led the Israelites from slavery under the Egyptians. Jesus challenged the power of Rome. The Islamic calendar begins with the migration of Muhammad and his followers to escape the persecution of Meccan tribes. Even the awakening of Gautama [...]
Mystery is the doorway to fantasy. Dark forests, far away galaxies, roads that wind into the distance: any space that allows our imagination to play without the interference of mundane reality can be a portal. And there are few places more expectant with mystery than cities. Every road, building and doorway is a new unknown. [...]
The power of Le Guin’s work will surely guarantee it an audience for centuries to come. A century from now people will still be reading the fantasy stories of Ursula K Le Guin with joy and wonder. Five centuries from now they might ask if their author ever really existed, or if Le Guin was [...]
