Author Archives: Matt Hill
Science fiction, technology and Twitter
If science fiction’s not dead, it’s not quite the same now we’ve bombed the moon. After all, we’ve done space travel and beaten communism. We got to the stars, and went past plopping pulp heroes on Mars when we crashed robots into it. We worried about plugging ourselves into each other before the internet; feared [...]
Canterbury tale
I get into Canterbury East early evening, half expecting to find nothing but flower gardens, Chaucer graffiti and giddy vicars. Actually I don’t see a wrinkle for half an hour, surprised by the amount of road traffic, the number of fringes, and how green stuff is.
Posted in Places Leave a comment
Flat viewing
The estate agent is a special kind of bastard: a kid in a suit from most angles, late by an hour from the rest. The shirt’s nice at least, but his collar’s tight, rolling his neck up into his face – and the wispy moustache makes you wonder if he’s snorted the cat with the [...]
Posted in Living 2 Comments
Balls to Kindle: I have a bookshelf
Torn from its spine and squashed flat for scrollbars to browse, a book in an e-reader is the same as another, clinging to its title on a unit that’s basically a homologous hive-pile of words. And I don't want one.
Selfish reasons for not reading Eoin Colfer’s ‘And Another Thing’
Unlike the time I used a deckchair as a toilet, fully clothed, in front of my then-girlfriend’s parents, I don’t remember where I was when somebody gave me a copy of the Hitchhiker’s Guide trilogy. But I remember reading it.
The thing with Douglas Adams’ writing is that you laugh the first time round, and spend [...]
Posted in Writing Leave a comment
Blogging’s always dead
A wise man said ‘never let a crap blog bleed out’, but after four years-plus on Blogger, I did, and there was that.
So now, I’ve moved, full-term and fully-dilated, to a self-hosted, baffling internet called Wordpress.
I brought some old posts with me. Just a few. The rest’s been archived and deleted, so it can’t trouble [...]
Posted in Writing 4 Comments
Double-plus unbook
For those still wondering about my book, which was due to be published next month: there is no book. It’s available to pre-order on quite a few websites now — but please, please, don’t pre-order it. I pulled it in May, and it remains pulled. You’d only be ordering a bad rumour.
Owing to circumstances, I’m [...]
Posted in Uncategorized Leave a comment
Prague
They say break a mirror and you’re looking at bad luck for seven years – but drink a hot chocolate in Prague and you’re looking at bad spots for twelve.
That’s about the best way to sum up Prague. It’s all hyper-tourism meets snogging couples via beautiful, astonishing architecture. It’s the dregs of Communist fashion saying [...]
Stockport
I don’t really know if Stockport’s trying to be a city or a big town, and you get the idea that it doesn’t have a clue either.
See, Stockport’s the bit that missed the toilet — bounced off the rim, the M60, the Manchester ringroad that is — and settled into the carpet halfway between the [...]
Suit fitting