I recently recorded a podcast episode of ‘Changed My Mind‘ with Luke T Harrington, talking about how I went from seeing Harry Potter as nothing but trashy fun, to seeing it as a bona fide children’s classic. I’ve been enjoying listening to Luke’s show, so it was great fun to go on it to talk […]
The current series of Doctor Who is self-consciously styling itself as a “dark fairytale”, even to the point of having characters describe it as such within the stories. Terry Pratchett recently criticised Doctor Who as not being science fiction. This got me thinking – is it possible to tell a story that is both fairy […]
I had a look at the blog’s visitor statistics, and noticed that I’d got a slight bump in hits from one particular site. Investigating further, I found that someone had linked to my post on Fantasy and Imagination from The Comics Journal Message Board, where a very interesting and articulate discussion on Making Superheroes “Mature” […]
When someone accused J R R Tolkien of writing escapism, Tolkien apparently replied: “Maybe, but it’s not the escape of a deserter from the front lines, but of a prisoner from a cage.” These two types of escapism are a good description of the two ways that stories can function. Borrowing from Andrew Fellows from […]
Last year, I rather hurriedly adapted a short story into a radio play for Xpress Radio in time for their two weeks on FM radio. It was a bit hurried in both script and production, and there are some rough edges that could have done with improving, but I’m fairly pleased with it under the […]