My dear friend Mark seems to being having success upon success with his Wired FM show ‘Cult Friction‘, a “new programme charting the wonderful surreal world of Science Fiction, Horror and all things cult from Movies to Comic Books, TV shows”. Using his nordie wiles, Mark has succeeded in conning his way into some notable award ceremonies, winning brief interviews with impresarios like Jonathan Ross, Rory Bremnar, Robert Webb and Charlie Brooker.

Mark recently posed the shows wonderful jingle (embedded above), which reminded me of the jingle I lovingly crafted many …

At P Con last week they ran a fun little contest. The idea was to produce a complete short story (SF, horror or fantasy) in just 100 words.
In the end my efforts didn’t place, though I’m egotistical enough to suspect the judge didn’t grok them what-so-ever. Perhaps he just preferred the story about the farting dragon…
In any case, it was a fun little writing excercise. Here are two brief tales I entered. Interestingly enough, I think this is one contest that might be significantly easier in “mainstream” fiction, …

Lawrence Lessig has consistently been one of the most important figures in the debate over copyright reform, ‘piracy’, and remix culture over the last decade. He’s recently switched his energies to battling the corrupting effect of PACs, lobbyists and outright bribery in the US political system, so it’s rare these days to hear him talk about how the law is prohibiting the development of culture, criminalising creativity and creating and extremism on both sides of the debate. A development that Lessig argues, has led to the social normalisation of copyright …

Display of ‘vintage’ science fiction titles in Chapters window
Arthur C. Clark once called science fiction “The only genuinely mind expanding drug”, proof positive that he hadn’t tried any of the others. And yet, there’s something to this flippant quote. SF is the literary genre, next to the romantic novel, most often demeaned; despite this, it is perhaps the genre which has most influenced our recent history – inspiring technological and social change as varied as mass transit systems, space travel, and urban promiscuity.
Science Fiction is a kind of architecture of …

Barcelona from dbspin on Vimeo.
A few weeks ago I travelled to Barcelona, capitol of the Spanish province of Catalonia. On the last day, I cycled through the city and took a few low quality videos with my phone. These were too shoddy to post anywhere, so I had a play with them in final cut. The track is ‘The Weight of My Words’, by King of Convenience. Remixed by Fourtet. Most of these videos were taken in the cities oldest quarter, the Barri Gotic.

After Broken Social Scene’s initial tryptic carried the collective Toronto scene to international acclaim, the Kevin Drew / Brendan Canning centred alt-pop collective had the wit, canny and sheer cynicism to launch a series of ‘Broken Social Scene Presents:’ records – beginning with Kevin Drew’s ‘Spirit If’, a riotously experimental indie rock record, twinkling with wide eyed valiance – and near enough as collaborative as the original Broken Social Scene project. The second BSSP record has now hit. ‘Something For All Of Us…’ provides a platform for Drew’s cofounder, Brendan …

The latest album from savage one man lo-fi outfit ‘Dublin Duck Dispensary‘ is out today for free, from the bands netlabel Rack and Ruin. The band recently made their live debut with an ultra brief but fantastic set at the poorly organised Hard Working Class Heroes festival. The album is called Luanqibazao (pronounced Loo – an – zi – ba – zow), from a Chinese word meaning ‘a complete mess’. Haven’t had a chance to listen to the rest of the LP yet, but the first ’single’, (i.e.: the first …