Author Interview – Matt Abraham
Today's author interview is with Matt Abraham, his novel is superhero noir, a supervillain turned PI. How long have you been writing for and what made you start writing? I’ve been writing for about ten years, but most of that time I was producing a lot of “blah blah”. It was only in the last three that I’ve produced what I consider well-crafted fiction. I started again because I was tired of stories that were either a redo, sequel, or reboot. I crave originality, like most people I imagine, so I set out to make my own world. Do you write for a living, or do you also do other work? I write for a living, but my lifestyle is heavily subsidized by my wife. See next question for a more extensive response. How did you get into being a…
More on 21st Century Policing
Police Technology Greater Manchester Police officers in Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester, England. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) Last week I wrote about some general trends in the future of policing and touched a little on the use of drones to help enforcemnet and make it easier for the police to catch fleeing criminals. This week I'm going to look at some of the personal kit that police officers are likely to come equipped with as standard. First some key assumptions stupid criminals will still try to stab/shoot/injure police officers, so armour is here to stay British policing by consent will require our police to have faces, to interact with the public and to walk the beat in busy public places Regulations on evidence will remain, possibly updated in light of new technology and possibilities (although the fact that PACE has lasted thirty years…
Book Review – Firefall by Peter Watts
Firefall by Peter Watts My rating: 5 of 5 stars This is an epic science fiction first contact piece that left me wondering about sentience, consciousness and whether I could trust anything I saw, heard or felt. It is certainly the best book that I have read so far in 2015. Peter Watt's acceptance speech at the Hugo Awards ceremony in 2010. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) The book is an expansion of a previous novella, which is about half of the story. It's set in an advanced human spaceship travelling out to make contact with some suspicious anomalies in the outer solar system a few years after a massive extraterrestial probing of Earth, the firefall of the title. The mission is lead by a vampire (Peter Watts has a novel take on vampires, and they're not the traditional blood drinking horrors,…
Author Interview – Peter Bailey
This week's interview is with Peter Bailey, a British based author of horror stories. How long have you been writing for and what made you start writing? I wrote my first ‘story’ way back in March 2011, and story is in quotes because it was a completely factual report of a disastrous trip to Las Vegas – but written in a deliberately comic style loosely based on Dave Barry (And if you’ve never read Mr Barry, please do!) The review is still online at and has gathered over a hundred replies. Now this was very surprising , It had never occurred to me that anyone might be interested in what I had to say, and once the idea had formed there was no turning back. The review became a short story, later stories were printed online and in ‘real’ books…
Mid 21st Century Policing
English: Metropolitan Police officers on patrol in London's Trafalgar Square (Photo credit: Wikipedia) I've been thinking about how policing in the UK might evolve over the next few decades. This is a combination of evaluating the background I've done for Perfects and also looking at perhaps running some more near future police roleplaying over the summer. I'm going to pick an arbitrary date of 2040, 25 years in the future. One thing I'm sure won't change is the concept of policing by consent. It's a fundamental plank of how we do things in Britain, and we know that it works. Other things that I think are given are budget pressures (the perennial more with less cry) the adoption of new technology to transform how policing happens visible policing with people on the ground So it's an evolution of traditional policing…