Eating at the trash bin of Ideology

Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter franchise) might be the last person you’d expect as the lead in the type of frenetic action movie usually frequented by the likes of Jason Statham (Crank 2) or Gerald Butler (Gamer), and you’d be right… and that’s exactly the point of Guns Akimbo.

Wedged in between those modern masterpieces of

Charting the Cosmic Hero’s Journey

These days you’d have to strap me to a bed to make me watch all the Marvel movies. Five years ago, that was a different story. Bed-ridden, recovering from major surgery, I wasn’t going anywhere and needed some serious escapism – watching every single Marvel movie plusthe short films, doped to the gills did the job. It wasn’t watching the heroes level up to become Supers and defeat the Villains…

Maralinga Pieces

Concept and camera: Jessie Boylan Edit: Anthony Kelly Music: Genevieve Fry

Between 1952 and 1963 the British Government performed highly secretive nuclear weapons tests at Maralinga and Emu Field in South Australia and on the Monte Bello Islands off the coast of Western Australia. A total of twelve major nuclear tests were performed, and up to 700 minor ‘dirty’ trials were also conducted. The area was massively contaminated with radioactive materials and cleanups were attempted in 1967 and 2000. However, examinations after these cleanups found that many of these sites still remain radioactive.

Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe is a powerful, compelling work that achieves its dual aims: showing just how complex and well-developed the civilisation managing the Australian continent was prior to European contact and subsequent colonisation, and the lengths that have been gone to erase this vital pre-history from the collective minds of the current occupying Australian civilisation.

It brings…

HeirBNB / The Communism Of The Rich

A short note on just how good The Good Place is.

Athenians, as we’ve seen, seemed to assume that a gentleman normally lived a step or two ahead of his creditors. Roman politicians were little different. Of course much of the debt was money that members of the senatorial class owed to each other: in a way, it’s just the usual communism of the rich, extending credit to one another on easy terms…

Life on the Moon

Welcome, puny humans, to a true tale about life on the Moon.

Relax, this isn’t some freshly woven piece of conspiracy theory fit for a post-truth world; everything in this piece is 100% based on science and contains no trace of nuts.

Sure, my housemate may repeatedly tell me how he read ‘on the internet’ that the moon landings were faked—which would be far more interesting if he was talking about…

My interview with Corey J. White is out now in Aurealis #111

A few weeks ago I sat in Corey J. White‘s backyard and spent a solid hour talking about everything from his Void-Witch Saga books to why Capitalism is consuming the planet.

The product of that conversation is a profile piece published in the latest issue of the Australian SF & Fantasy magazine, Aurealis, and looks something like this:

The issue also features original fiction and an article on…

In praise of scary books.

There is a book that should be taught in every classroom, that you won’t find in any public library in here bar one.

I bought a copy of this book, but have been too afraid to read it.

That’s not true. I could read it right now. No, really, I could!

And yet, it’s there, still unread, just out-of-reach, sitting stoicly amongst the research library I’ve assembled, dedicated to the task of…

Cosmic Horror: From H.P. Lovecraft to Thomas Ligotti

This is the text and slides from a short talk I gave last week.

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