A review of "Mickey 17", Bong Joon Ho's first film since his Oscar-winning "Parasite" where Mickey (Robert Pattinson) is exposed to various lethal dangers and, for the good of the mission, fated to die repeatedly aboard a spaceship set to colonise a new planet before being shoved into a furnace and "reprinted".

The Needletail fighter shuddered, alarms sounding, and Drake's console erupted in a sea of bright red and orange indicators. The craft's nose dipped as it plummeted towards the sea kilometres below.

'Dammit!' Hauling on the joystick, Drake tried to pull out the dive. He glanced at his rear camera monitor as his enemy, the wingman of the craft he'd shot down minutes earlier, settled hard on his tail. Swearing, he jinked to starboard, hearing a couple of thuds as enemy fire punched holes across his port wing.

The second in my series of short stories; a squad of highly trained and armoured men prepare for the rigours of a high-level atmospheric drop onto the planet of New London. "Boiling to death," Marines were fond of saying, "as you're shot down into increasingly thick atmosphere, isn't a great deal of fun!"

A short story inspired by the poetry of my late brother-in-law, Terry. This story is the first of a series of shorts, most of which will be science fiction and, usually, a metaphor for moral or societal issues.

Herbie is sent on a mission to destroy hostiles, interlopers or terrorists who are challenging the rightful rulers of the land.

Persuading myself to buy Peter Cawdron's book, "Cold Eyes (First Contact)" took a while, the description was intriguing but I was unsure. I shouldn't have been; it is one of the best books I have read in recent years. The plot was excellent, intelligently researched and Cawdron ended up writing a book that is optimistic, hopeful and reflects the kind of human race I would like us to be but, unfortunately, usually aren't.

Starting with a simple event, the appearance of a stone man in central Coventry which subsequently starts walking with no regard for people or property, Smitherd tells a stunningly addictive tale. Using interesting characters, including a rather charming female Brigadier in a British Army that has transitioned to greater equality, Smitherd develops his plot from that rather nicely.

Last year (2021), I saw the Goodreads writing challenge and it seemed like a pretty good idea so I decided to have a go. I was already enjoying E C Tubb's thirty-three book "Dumarest" series (twenty-one books in) and was planning a re-read of some my favourite "Doc" Smith books so surely, I thought, it would be a doddle.

Like most authors, we have problems concentrating. In these days of the internet, of social networking, it is easy to get distracted. Facebook, Twitter and other social networks never sleep, they’re always there, always calling us; we decide to check our newsfeed (or whatever) and what seems to be a two-minute tasks leads us down the rabbit hole and ends up being an hour or more. The solution, it seems to me, is to block access to such sites during specific periods but blocking software is expensive. So I decided to turn some of my scripting skills to creating a system that would act as a barrier to such sites.

English is a weird language and G Nolst Trenité's poem, "The Chaos", demonstrates that only too well. Written from the point of view of a non-English student of the language, the poem emphasises how difficult it is for the foreign learner to pronounce many English words which is, of course, problematic since English is arguably the most important global language.

I'm a geek, an atheist and [somewhat] pro-science but I still love Christmas so is it any surprise that I love humorous pieces like this one? It's arguably one of my all-time favourite pieces of Christmas fun. Bear in mind this was first published way back before the millennium so some of the figures are a little dated; for example, there are probably around two and half billion children in the world today compared to a mere two billion back then.