Here's a story about an aquarium starship that has seen better days, and the trouble that befalls it when its crew make some extremely reckless curation decisions. It's unabashed space opera, with exobiological oddness galore, as well as some more familiar beasts... I’m watching fish swim round the fake easter island head - clockwise, like they always do - when the call comes in. They’re basically fish, anyway. Eyes placed penti-fashion round a tube with a mouth at one end, a

This story was the result of a stupid hypothetical question I asked on twitter, about how many chimps turning hand cranks it would take to generate sufficient energy to accelerate an egg to the edge of lightspeed. It's very silly, but I guess you could call it hard SF. Enjoy. Brother Sidney rushes into the kitchen with wide-open eyes. “There’s been an explosion, down at the mill!” he blurts. “It’s the scramblers!” We’re just tucking into our soy - a cup & a half each each. Gr

It often gets me down that it's seen as stupid to expect anything other than looming apocalypse: while the world can look grim, a life without hope isn't great either. Here, Anna Fruen explains how optimistic SF can shine a light through the mushroom clouds. When Nate said he wanted people to write guest posts for his blog, I wanted to contribute right away. Out of charity, for the most part - I mean, the man needs SOME sort of web presence. I believe in his future, y'see. In

In my first guest post, David Thomas Moore, commissioning editor at Abaddon Books (and therefore my editor, the poor bastard), talks about running shared worlds, and the magic - not to mention bafflement - that can happen when multiple authors write in the same setting. Along the way we'll meet Macbeth as a lich king, and Frankensteins galore. When Nate said he was going to be hosting guest blogs, I threw myself bodily at the task, since I figured it would make a change to ha