Has anybody seen much 1950s-era Hollywood sci-fi? By 1950s I mean more than just 1950-59 (or 1951-60, depending on how you count) – I mean a mind-set that broadly kicked off at the end of the 1940s, which lasted at least until the early 1960s – and which spawned a whole era of amazingly silly … More Hollywood fifties sci-fi – a tribute to the golden age of cheesiness
Does anybody remember Gerry Anderson’s Stingray – the marionette-and-sci-fi show that preceded Thunderbirds. It was a bit before my time, but I picked it up on TV repeats when I was a kid. I haven’t seen much of it since, but I remember it having the design and style of the James Bond movies of … More The awesome retro-future of… Stingray!
The other day I discovered somebody has remade Thunderbirds. Not the Weta remake. Another one – old school and old style, using the ‘Supermarionation’ techniques pioneered by Gerry Anderson and his team fifty years ago. I’m kind of late to the party: it’s a project by Stephen le Riviere that sprang from a book and … More Thunderbirds lives again – 1965 style
I am a great fan of science fiction that’s plausible enough to be ‘scientific’, but which doesn’t take the ‘science’ so far as to be boring. In the miniseries that launched the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica a decade or so ago, Galactica took a direct hit from a nuke and survived with near-undiminished fighting capacity. Is … More Sci-fi writing tricks: balancing drama with plausibility
One of the best sci-fi novels I’ve read is Stanislaw Lem’s The Invincible. It’s short, sharp and deals with fundamental questions of humanity and the nature of the human condition, versus machines. Where will our technology – and our arrogance about the powers it gives us – lead us? It’s one of those deep-concept things … More Invincibly lost in translation
OK, so I went to Armageddon this weekend – the annual sci-fi festival held in my city of Wellington. I hadn’t actually been to an Armageddon event before, though I am a bit of a sci-fi fan. This year’s star guests included Ted Raimi and a lot of people I hadn’t heard of. So I’m … More And so I went to Armageddon
My novella ‘Missionary’ was released a few weeks back in paperback, following the Kindle-only advance release last year. It’s part of a seven-story anthology – Endless Worlds Vol. 1 – by Endless Worlds Publications, a Brisbane-based publisher. My novella is about ordinary people finding the strength in themselves to do extraordinary things. On a spaceship. … More Six things you didn’t know about my novella ‘Missionary’
Last year my sci-fi novella ‘Missionary’ was published in Endless Worlds Vol 1, part of an anthology of seven sci-fi, fantasy and horror stories. That was an initial release pending the issue of the full publication. And that’s out now – paperback, e-book and a very cool new cover. The thing about anthologies is that … More Why sci-fi anthologies are a Good Thing…
Last year my sci-fi novella ‘Missionary’ was published in Endless Worlds Vol 1, part of an anthology of seven sci-fi, fantasy and horror stories. That Kindle-only issue was a pre-release ahead of the full publication, and it fielded some great reviews: “Endless possibilities. Dark natures and some dark solutions. Endless worlds gripped me from the … More Hot news about the full release of ‘Endless Worlds’
In my mis-spent early twenties, a friend and I created a fantasy world map for our RPG sessions. Yes, I played Dungeons and Dragons – and later a game we invented ourselves to get around the sillier D&D ideas. The world was designed around what we might call the ‘rule of funny’, with place names made up mostly of … More Three rules for naming your fantasy world
Matthew Wright 
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