Knit The City

Knitting, as the old song has it*; what is it good for?  Absolutely nothing! I was forced to knit as a small child at school.  I embarked on a scarf (or was it a sock?) but after a few rows it went all wonky and I cast aside my yarn and needles in disgust, feeling that I'd been taught a valuable lesson; knitting is rubbish, and if you want a scarf you should go to a shop and buy one ...

Cyber Circus

I don't suppose I would ever have read Kim Lakin-Smith's Cyber Circus if I hadn't met its lovely author at BristolCon this autumn, because I had seen it described here and there as 'Steampunk', and assumed it would be yet more alternate-Victoriana japes, of which I've read (and written) enough.  Actually it's something far richer and rarer. According to the subtitle at the start of Chapter One, ...

Nelson

Nelson is a new comics anthology from Blank Slate Books, in which 54 leading UK comics artists come together to tell one 250 page story, following a character called Nell Baker from her birth in 1968 to the present day. Each artist gets to write and draw one four page chapter, telling the events of a single day in a particular year, and gradually building up not only the story of Nell's life but a ...

'The Recollection'

By Philip Reeve I loved Science Fiction when I was a teenager, and sometimes since I've gone looking for books that would recapture that Sense o' Wonder from the stories I read then.  Having been away from the genre (at least in its written form) for the best part of thirty years, however, it's difficult to know where to start.  I sometimes get the feeling that I fancy reading a good, old-fashioned, ...

Agatha Parrot and the Floating Head

The Bee has had a long old summer break, mostly because I couldn't find anything much I wanted to write about.  But I can't not review Agatha Parrot and the Floating Head, can I?  It's the first in a new series by Kjartan Poskitt (although according to the title page it's actually by A. Parrot herself, and Poskitt has just 'typed it out neatly'.) Naturally this isn't going to be a very ...

A Conversation with Toby Frost

Ten Thousand Cheers for the Internet!  Now when we find new authors whose books we enjoy, we needn't just sit patiently waiting for them to write the next one: oh no, we track them down on Facebook and bombard them with impertinent questions*.  By way of example, Philip Reeve has been talking to Toby Frost, author of the Space Captain Smith series of sci-fi comedies. *Not that I mind if ...

Space Captain Smith

By Toby Frost Reviewed by Philip Reeve Most of the books which the Bee has recommended recently have been aimed at children, so please note that Toby Frost's Space Captain Smith isn't, containing as it does industrial quantities of smut and innuendo. Space Captain Smith is set in the 25th Century in a region of space dominated by the 'Great Powers' of Earth, including a revived British Empire ...

Cowboy Jess

Reviewed by Philip Reeve I have to declare an interest here: Cowboy Jess is dedicated to my son Sam, and Geraldine McCaughrean is one of my all-time favourite authors (I doubt that I would have ever got around to writing my own novels at all if I hadn't read Fire's Astonishment and Vainglory). She is best known for her magnificent children's novels, which include The White Darkness, A Little ...

Big Daddy vs Giant Haystacks

Review by Philip Reeve. Last year I reviewed Those Magnificent Men, Brian Mitchell and Joseph Nixon's brilliant little play about Alcock and Brown, which used the story of those pioneer aviators to explore history, the nature of fame, and the recent trend for using real-life figures as the basis for plays which explore history and the nature of fame.  Their latest work, Big Daddy vs Giant ...

One is now Hitched...

By the Bee's Royal Correspondent, Andrew Gorton. “Are you following the Royal Wedding today?” I asked the Scottish manager of my Norfolk village shop when I popped in on the day of the event.  “Why should I celebrate a family that raped and pillaged my family and forced them out of their country?” he replied, less than half-jokingly. “I've spoken with family in the Highlands, and their kids ...

A Conversation with Mark Robson

If you've attended a UK secondary school during the past ten years there's a high likelihood that you've met Mark Robson, author of rip-roaring fantasy adventures and a tireless and inspiring teacher and speaker to schools and book-groups.  He started out publishing his own books (the high fantasy Darkweaver Legacy quartet) before Simon and Schuster picked up his Imperial sequence set in the ...