This story imagines an attempt by machines to replace humans who are presumed to be extinct. It reminded me of Orwell’s “Animal Farm”, but with machines instead of animals. In the end, the answer to the question in the story’s title is given as “no machine”. However, until they realise that humans are not actually extinct,… Continue reading Who Can Replace a Man? by Brian Aldiss
UFOs in A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C. Clarke
What do science fiction fans think of the UFO phenomenon? Clarke’s novel A Fall of Moondust got me thinking about it again. The setting is around 2040 AD. A tourist bus on the moon is trapped under the surface and rescuers race against time to save the passengers before they run out of oxygen. When… Continue reading UFOs in A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C. Clarke
Poem: Omens
I should have known from the retching crow that passed on my way to the station that morning. The signs were there in the sprinkle of chocolate on my cappuccino, in the graph of plunging share prices hidden in the newspaper’s entrails. She’s gone; I should have known. The signs were there this evening as… Continue reading Poem: Omens
Poem: The Night
Alone together just this side of dawn, you asked the questions and I traced my answers on your smoothed body parchment with just enough paint and inspiration to reach the end of a line before turning back, ready to start all over again. I wrote my hope on your shoulder blades, feeling the muscles taut… Continue reading Poem: The Night
Poem: Necromancy
From one day to the next, I never know when the face will show itself again in a mirror or a pan of water, as if unearthed by the ceaseless, circling plough of my mind. It’s always the same; a happy, younger me, long gone, the dead returned to speak with the dying. I wonder… Continue reading Poem: Necromancy
Poem: Waiting at the Water’s Edge
Another day of hope and nothing slides into evening’s apologetic grey; I’m in love, but I don’t know who with. Somewhere, upstream of love and poetry’s floundering strokes, she’s sitting as fine and clear as the first gasp of oxygen. It’s getting dark and once more no one’s turned up; every day’s just a poor… Continue reading Poem: Waiting at the Water’s Edge
Poem: Thursday
And rose. And fell. Once more. Something at the corner of my eye is thrusting its bony fingers into the gaping cracks of my life, pushing its stained fingers into the empty spaces where my life should be, where all my principles and goals, my reason for being should be safely bedded down. I rose,… Continue reading Poem: Thursday
Poem: Pilgrimage
After that, it’s all a blur, just a mass of people rushing past to get somewhere that seems important, and I’m the only one going the other way; twelve years of elbows in the ribs. Places I’d seen countless times through the grimy windows of speeding trains began to seem interesting, to offer the chance… Continue reading Poem: Pilgrimage
Inconstant Moon by Larry Niven
An early 70s last night of the world story that ends up as an apocalyptic story looking forward to the post-apocalypse. Niven rigorously explores the various explanations and possibilities. The suspense (which of the above categories will we finish in?) is very well maintained. By the end, I really wanted the main characters to survive to… Continue reading Inconstant Moon by Larry Niven
Passengers by Robert Silverberg
A great story from the early 70s that still stands up really well today. Earth has been infested for three years by creatures known as The Passengers. They exist on a purely mental plane, so no one has ever seen them or knows what they are. They might be aliens or evil spirits; the story… Continue reading Passengers by Robert Silverberg
S.C. Flynn 