Category Archives: Writing Journal

Writing for The Guardian about science fiction was a mixed blessing. One of my small number of “haters” likes to claim I must have had “connections”. The truth is I argued my way into The Guardian, starting from the comment section, until the editors invited me to contribute “above the line”, all driven by myContinue reading “The ancient book of wisdom at the heart of every computer MEMBER PREVIEW”

Among the things I’ve done to pass 45 years on planet Earth is spend 10 of those years reasearching…story. One outcome of that research was my course The Rhetoric of Story, which now has over 50k students worldwide. Another outcome is my small consultancy working with a select set of businesses on brand storytelling. It’sContinue reading “Brand = Product + ?”

Members of the Science Fiction podcast can read the full script for the video essay on Philip K. Dick and narrative warfare. Sign in or Join for access.

Every generation gets The Batman it deserves. 40s Batman was a hardboiled PI. 60s Batman was a hipster for the hippy beats. 80s Batman was a city slicker. And 00s Batman was literally the American Psycho. Now in the 2020s the archetype of The Batman has reached its darkest manifestation literally…did this movie have anyContinue reading “Incel Batman”

Science Fiction Season 2 The season break is over, Science Fiction returns this weekend with a major new video essay on Star Citizen, the false paradise of the Open World, and the meaning crisis.

Answering some of the repeat objections to my Three Body Problem video This Is Clickbait – there’s a huge amount of uncritical coverage of 3BP, very few people have taken the time to question the pro-authoritarian stance of the book. I think the gushing essays and videos saying “this is how hard SF should be”Continue reading “Answering some of the repeat objections to my Three Body Problem video”

Us. My “Writing Hacks” course includes 11 “hacks” or heuristics to improve your writing. 3 of these heuristics are in the 4 word title The Last of Us. – small words pack a punch – load meaning into the last word of a sentence – pronouns are powerful Us. A pronoun at the end ofContinue reading “The US in The Last of Us”

Why do many Star Wars fans insist that George Lucas did not know that Vader / Anakin were the same person? Lucas is 100% clear in interviews that he knew the Star Wars backstory at the time of shooting the first Star Wars movie. And the Vader / Anakin reveal is clearly foreshadowed through AContinue reading “The lie that makes Star Wars sublime”

Tony Gilroy has said that Andor wasn’t meant to be political, and any meaning came through “instinctively”. He’s also said Cassian Andor’s story is directly based on the life of Jospeh Stalin. So. Deliberate or not, Andor has Marxist ideology baked into its core. The story of a protagonist-of-color, from a native tribe destroyed byContinue reading “Andor is a Marxist story”