A review of Stephen Hawking's, "The Universe In A Nutshell" by my friend and fellow author, Ben Slythe in which he outlines why it is that he enjoyed the late, great Stephen Hawkings' then latest book. In it he outlines how the book, presented with lots of pictures and plenty of whitespace around a great deal of amusing and interesting information, is mostly successful in attempting to explain the universe to the general public.

An absolutely appalling ending to a series that had once held so much promise, as it came back to bite us in the "ass" in the worst possible way. There are a lot of people out there who still like BSG and despite its brilliant start, I'm not one of them. I kid you not, if you love good TV, good storytelling, the way I do the ending of this series will make you spit, swear, stomp and generally want to smash things.

From the "Lensman" series, through "Skylark" and, a rarity these days, even some of his standalone novels, I have read a lot of Edward Elmer Smith's (better known to his fans as "Doc") material. Yes, he had his flaws, most notably his politics (though they were probably a feature of the times as much as anything else), but he had his strengths too. E. E. "Doc" Smith was a brilliant writer, not so much in a literary sense, but one capable of writing science fiction that spanned solar systems, galaxies and universes. Though his philosophies represented a bygone age, his technology was imaginative and carried me, as a young boy, into realms I had never before visited. There have, undoubtedly, been writers of his calibre (and far better) since but I am not sure anyone ever had as much scope in their stories.

I've seen enough reviews in my lifetime to realise that reviewers are often heavily swayed by their emotions and, whilst there will always be an aspect of personal preference, I felt some sort of objective method of comparison was necessary. This article outlines the self-developed method I now use and the categories I use to do them and all of the reviews on this site follow this method. I gave this idea some thought and my intent to create a consistent approach to reviews that is entertaining yet that little bit more objective.

I first saw "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (1981) on the BBC and instantly loved it whilst somehow managing to hate the fact that Arthur never took that damned dressing gown off. This review compares the much loved 1981 BBC TV version of The Guide to the more recent 2005 film version.