The Arthur C. Clarke Award winner was announced last month from a short-list of six. This award was originally established by a generous grant from Sir Arthur C. Clarke with the aim of promoting science fiction in Britain. The annual award is presented for the best science fiction novel of the year, and selected from a list of novels whose UK first edition was published in the previous calendar year. The winner is Dreams Before the Start of Time by author Anne Charnock

The three  Shadow World  short stories have proven to be quite popular on this blog and I thank you for your interest. I have moved this series of short stories to my  Wattpad  profile. You can read them   HERE . I would really appreciate if you would ' vote ' on each chapter. To do this just tap or click on the star icon. Doing this will support my work by getting it out to more people. If you never heard of  Wattpad  before, don't worry you can read my stories on the same device you are currently viewing my website.   Wattpad  it is community for readers. It also helps writers to publish stories in so many different genres. It aims to create social communities around stories for both amateur and established writers. When I was younger I tried my hand at writing short stories, but gave up before turning 20. You can find a shorten version of why in this article . I thought I had lost all of this work until rece...

Looking Back - The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2017 Today my children were discussing time travel and what might be needed to do so, my daughter decided all she needed was ' Some soft comfy cushions for the floor and something to snuggle in case you get scared! ' What great advice! Lets do some time travelling ourselves by taking a look back over 2017 and see what the best selling Science Fiction and Fantasy books were. I've reviewed Amazon's and Barnes and Noble's best selling list and compiled a list of the top five . Two omissions which I was surprised didn't make the list was Nineteen Eighty Four , where sales of this book rose, in January 2017, these sales were seven times more than same time last year, 2016, and also The Handmaid’s Tale which Amazon Charts listed as the Most Read book of 2017. I've only read the last book on the list, Norse Mythology , but most of these are on my list of books to read in the near future. Which on...

The Man in Black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. This is the first line of The Gunslinger and is an excellent summary of everything that happened in this book.

The three  Shadow World  short stories have proven to be quite popular on this blog and I thank you for your interest. I have moved this series of short stories to my  Wattpad  profile. You can read them   HERE . I would really appreciate if you would ' vote ' on each chapter. To do this just tap or click on the star icon. Doing this will support my work by getting it out to more people. If you never heard of  Wattpad  before, don't worry you can read my stories on the same device you are currently viewing my website.   Wattpad  it is community for readers. It also helps writers to publish stories in so many different genres. It aims to create social communities around stories for both amateur and established writers. When I was younger I tried my hand at writing short stories, but gave up before turning 20. You can find a shorten version of why in this article . I thought I had lost all of this work until recently...

Such a fantastic story.  I read the entire trilogy back-to-back (during May 2016), and thoroughly enjoyed it. There have been times when I've done this with other trilogies or series and sometimes this would produced a story fatigue. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about this is where reading starts to become a chore, and you end up ploughing through just wanting to see how it all wraps up. Or alternatively you need to put it down for a while, which means you may not pick it up for some time. Not with this story. It was compelling and Stephen changed point of view enough to keep it fresh and had you wanting to read more.

The three  Shadow World  short stories have proven to be quite popular on this blog and I thank you for your interest. I have moved this series of short stories to my  Wattpad  profile. You can read them   HERE . I would really appreciate if you would ' vote ' on each chapter. To do this just tap or click on the star icon. Doing this will support my work by getting it out to more people. If you never heard of  Wattpad  before, don't worry you can read my stories on the same device you are currently viewing my website.   Wattpad  it is community for readers. It also helps writers to publish stories in so many different genres. It aims to create social communities around stories for both amateur and established writers. When I was younger I tried my hand at writing short stories, but gave up before turning 20. You can find a shorten version of why in this article . I thought I had lost all of this work until recentl...

Any book by J.R.R Tolkien is worth a read but this one, Beren and Lúthien , is pretty special. JRR's son, Christopher draws out a key love story from his father's book The Silmarillion . The story is about an immortal elven maiden, Luthien, sacrificing her immortality in order to marry a mortal man, Beren. The earliest version of this tale of Beren and Lúthien was written in 1917, when Beren was an Elf not a Man and the equivalent of Sauron was a large evil cat. The story underwent considerable revision throughout Tolkien’s life, and was reworked in both prose and poetry. This new book will demonstrate this evolution. An interesting fact is that Tolkien related his courtship and marriage of Edith (his wife) to this story. Edith gave up Anglicanism and converted to Catholicism in order to marry JRR, which did take a toll on her. Tolkien self-consciously equated Luthien with Edith and himself with Beren based on a walk they took in a wood while he was recuperating f...

I love a good myth. I grew up reading Greek Mythology and became interested in Norse Mythology after finding out about Beowulf. Neil Gaiman is an award-winning author (American Gods, Coraline, Neverwhere, Sandman) and this book is his interpretations of the classic Norse myths. I'm especially interested in the way he gathers the myths and weaves them together in a novelistic tale about the adventures of Thor, Loki, Odin and others in their realm.

I was immediately attracted to this book when I read a comment made by one of the Penguin editorial staff, Gillian. She put it quite nicely when she said The Bear and the Nightingale is a fantasy novel in the same way that The Martian was a science fiction novel; Katherine's beautiful writing gives it universal appeal. I've given it to people who would never read fantasy, and every one has loved it. Even thought Andy Weir's The Martian wasn't the sort of science fiction novel I would pick up, I was thankful that I did, so hopefully this endorsement holds true. If you've read it let me know what you think.

This book is part of the Christian Encounters series. A series of biographies that highlight well known people from all ages and areas of the Christian Church. Some are familiar faces, like our friend J.R.R. Tolkien. Others are unexpected guests. This is the first book I've read in this series and I found it to be an approachable biography, mainly due to the fact that it's a short and quick read (about 130 pages), unlike some of the other biographical tomes out there. So while it's not too in-depth we still get a comprehensive overview of J.R.R Tolkien's life and I was left with a more intimate idea of who he was. My favourite part was the final section which looked at Tolkien's influence and legacy. It was really concise and, if anything, I would have loved to spend more time exploring that area. I would recommend this as a starting point for those wanting to read a biography on J.R.R. Tolkien. In a sense, the history of Middle-earth was his own version o...

Sturgeon's Revelation: In Defence Of Science Fiction TL:DR? Want a short concise article about this? Try  Sturgeon's Revelation: In Defence Of Science Fiction . I've loved science fiction (SciFi) for as long as I can remember. The stories of spacemen flying around in space ships and fighting off B.E.M's* with ray-guns fired up my imagination more than anything else. But apart from my family only two other people really encouraged me to read science fiction and Fantasy, my Year Six teacher who encouraged my imagination and my Year Seven English teacher who pointed me in the direction of some great classics. Everyone else either dimissed the genre or openly mocked it. I'd hear taunts from peers like: " At least sports-ting is something real, McTavish, not like your Buck Rogers stuff!, that's for people who can't handle the real world."  Or from Teachers I'd hear, " Science fiction is not real literature, this is why we're...

What is Sturgeon's Law Sturgeon's Revelation first appeared in the March 1958 issue of Venture (a science fiction magazine) and is a defence of Science Fiction (or SciFi). It is Sturgeon's Law that is in the most common usage which says " ninety percent of everything is crap ". Although I believe  the word he used was ' crud '. I repeat Sturgeon's Revelation, which was wrung out of me after twenty years of wearying defense of science fiction against attacks of people who used the worst examples of the field for ammunition, and whose conclusion was that ninety percent of  Science Fiction  is crud. Using the same standards that categorize 90% of science fiction as crud it can be argued that 90% of film, literature, consumer goods, etc. is crud. In other words, the claim (or fact) that 90% of science fiction is crud is ultimately uninformative, because  Science Fiction  conforms to the same trends of quality as all other artforms. Theodore St...

I had a fun 3 month journey trying my hand at vlogging and video production again. I enjoyed doing this and am hoping to do more in the future. I think the hardest video for me was The Wheel of Time one trying to answer a question on a series I'd never read as well as trying to do something different instead of standing in front of a book shelf. It's difficult to say which one was my favourite, it would be a draw between the Star Trek Kelvin Timeline as well as the Shakespeare one. As a way of saying thanks for joining me in this journey here is a  fun video. Thanks again for your support, your views and your comments, not just over the last three months but to all my regular readers.  I really appreciate it. If you have any ideas as to content you'd like to me explore I'd be interested in hearing from you. Thanks heaps .

It's that time of year when Amazon releases their list of The Best Books of the Year 2016 . Among the top list was one Science Fiction and Fantasy Novel called The Wolf Road  by Beth Lewis, which was nice to see.  A dystopian adventure, of course, The Wolf Road is an intimate cat-and-mouse tale of revenge and redemption, played out against a vast, unforgiving landscape—told by an indomitable young heroine fighting to escape her past and rejoin humanity.  That story does look interesting, but what about the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of 2016? True to form Amazon had list of the best of, for most genre so I headed over to see what was there and was surprised.  I only knew about 2 or 3 of the twenty books in the list.  I took a look through and saw four which interested me.     Ninefox Gambit (Machineries of Empire Book 1) by Yoon Ha Lee was on that list so I haven't listed it below. You can find an entire post dedicated to it here ( Up...

Here's an urban fantasy which looks interesting, firstly because it's set in the City of Brisbane and secondly because one of the plot devices include and illegal wine made from the tears of human children.  A book to enjoy with maybe an Australian Riesling? Vigil is the first book in award-winning author Angela Slatter's Verity Fassbinder series.

What is this book about? Besides knights riding dinosaurs?  Who cares? There are Knights and there are Dinosaurs! What else could make it better? 

Because I like reading and watching Science Fiction and Fantasy related novels and films I often get asked questions about these topics so I thought that I would try to answer some of these frequently asked questions in this new series Ask Wolf.  I'm here to help and I'll try to answer any questions related to my interests. Tim writes “Why does Robert Jordan set up big scale battles and then tell us nothing about the battles.”

This book was listed in the Science Fiction & Fantasy section for Teen & Young Adult.  But it was the cover that caught my attention and the rest of the book is illustrated similarly.  It's a retelling of the story of St. Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio from the wolf's perspective. It's getting a lot of interest and is a Nominee for 2015 INDIEFAB Book of the Year, Juvenile Fiction.  A book to be enjoyed with a hot chocolate before bed.

How I met Harry Potter and one of the challenges I encountered running a Christian bookstore which didn't stock J.K. Rowling's books...