Asimov and the Foundations of Fantasy Seventy years have passed since Isaac Asimov penned the first of his Foundation stories. Tens of thousands of years in the future, humanity has colonised far beyond the Solar System and established a galaxy-wide empire, dependant for trade and communications on faster-than-light travel. One single planet, Terminus, is beginning …
Author: Andrew G Lockhart
My name is Andrew Lockhart and I grew up in Coatbridge, Scotland. I studied at Glasgow University. After spending three decades in planning, statistics and international sales and marketing, I am now an author, family historian and owner of Magda Green Books. Apart from writing (and reading great books) and blogging, my other interests are science, music of all sorts, and traveling the world.
Harper Lee 1926-2016
Obituary The literary world is mourning tonight the death of one of its most illustrious yet enigmatic authors. It is a sadness that will be shared by lovers of good literature everywhere. Nelle Harper Lee was a literary phenomenon. For a novelist whose body of published work consisted -until last year - of only one …
Do you know what your books do when you're sleeping?
Thanks to Anastasia at 'Read and Survive' for this gem! https://youtu.be/SKVcQnyEIT8
Imagined Light
All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr The market in literature never ceases to amaze me. One moment, we can be in the dark, hidden corners of the human imagination, inhabited by nightmare monsters, the next in a sunlit park, on a wave-lapped beach, or wherever delight and fancy take us. Then, we …
Storm Island
Eye of the Needle by Ken Follett I used to devour thrillers, sometimes two or three a week. Stories by Alistair McLean, Ian Fleming, Desmond Bagley, Hammond Innes, Jeffrey Archer, Michael Crichton and others were often read at a sitting. That being so, it is strange that I waited nearly twenty years after seeing the …
A Vampire with Heart
Bad Blood by Nicky Peacock A Review ‘Modern vampires don’t believe in anything. They strut around with a new self-worth, declaring themselves to all and sundry. They’ve been brainwashed by TV and books into thinking being a vampire is cool.’ I’m way past my teens and vampire horror is not my usual genre. So, when …
Dreaming the Impossible
‘If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales’ [attributed to Albert Einstein] We live in a universe of wonders and possibilities. The ancients looked up into the night sky and saw bright lights formed into the shapes of …
Jane's History
The History of England from the reign of Henry the 4th to the death of Charles the 1st by Jane Austen [Henry the 8th] ' . . . [his] last wife contrived to survive him, but with difficulty effected it.' [James the 1st] '. . . had some faults, among which & as the most …
Gaia Revisited
Lovelock - where is our species headed? When James Lovelock sprang to the attention of the wider public in the 1970s with his Gaia hypothesis, not all mainstream scientists were enthused. The idea that the Earth, its atmosphere and all life upon it is a self-regulating mechanism was, for some, too like science fiction. Other …
Odyssey
Reflections on the Space Race I have been following with interest the space "mission" of British astronaut Tim Peake. Yesterday, he became the first Brit to do a space walk. That, and an article in last week's Sunday Times, reminded me that more than half a century has passed since we humans first sent one …
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