Packing for Mars – Book Review

In science fiction trips to the stars often seem to be almost routine. The problems that make real space flight so difficult are ignored. I don’t mean nitpicking points like the apparent impossibility of travelling that fast. I’m talking about the real problems. Being stuck in cramped conditions with a handful of people or having to live on pouches of mashed up food. How do you wash when water floats away in balls? And of course there is every schoolchild’s favourite question for astronauts. How do they go to the toilet in zero gravity? In Packing for Mars Mary Roach investigates these problems and a host of others connected with the basic fact that human beings are totally unsuited to life in space. (Read more…)

Reviewing “Moon Over Soho”

Yar, I has reviewered Ben Aaronovitch‘s Moon Over Soho!

In honour of it being our sixtieth piece of content, as well as in honour of the piece: get it, you s***!

Affect and effect

Daryl. L. Houston – “Affect” and “effect”

As usual, Daryl Houston’s help is actually helpful!

It’s not just us!

RT @robinince: writing a short horror story & have just had idea for much better one, too late now, it will become my big horrible novel (never completed)

Stuart: A Life Backwards – Book Review

In this unique biography Stuart’s life story spirals backwards. We meet him as a homeless man living on the edge of society. As his life unfolds in reverse we trace this chaotic human being back to the “happy-go-lucky little boy” he once was.

Into the Wild – Book Review

By Jon Krakauer

Reviewed by Alan Green

One day Christopher McCandles gave away his savings, got rid of his few possessions, changed his name to Alexander Supertramp and set out looking for adventure. He spent two years travelling around America before he started the final part of his journey. The experience that he had been building up to all along. He headed into the Alaskan wilderness to live his dream of surviving off the land. A way of life he saw as offering perfect freedom in contrast to the lifestyles of all the ‘plastic people’ who just follow the usual paths through life. A few months later Alex / Chris died of starvation, alone in the icy wilderness that he had dreamed about for so long.