The Next Century: Technologies That May Reshape What It Means to Be Human (4-5 minute read) Rather than talking about science fiction this week, I want to look at something slightly different: likely and potential scientific developments that may change the human condition over the next century. Not miracles. Not magic. Just technologies that serious researchers are already working on, with varying degrees of confidence, controversy, and momentum. I’ve broken this into three time horizons....
10 days ago • 6 min read
The Long Game (4-5 minute read) Over the last couple of weeks, a lot of commentators have been focusing on what we might expect to see happening in 2026. I decided to go long instead and look at what we might see by the end of this century. Not in a science-fiction sense. No flying cars or immortality treatments. But in terms of real, observable trends that are already locked in. The kind that unfold slowly, attract little attention, and massively reshape the world. If you fast-forward...
24 days ago • 7 min read
2026 – Reasons for Optimism (3-4 minute read) A New Year begins quietly. No matter how noisy the world feels, January always carries a moment of stillness, a short pause where the calendar resets and the future feels slightly less heavy than it did the day before. It’s a good moment to look back, briefly, and then look forward with something like cautious optimism. Last year was a very good year for us. More readers found the books, the universe expanded, awards arrived that I never expected,...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Thank You So Much For Your Continued Support Hi Everyone, This will be our last newsletter of the year, before we disappear for a short Christmas break. Lower down I have attached links to a brand-new short story, Syla Steals Christmas, which you can download for free. But before we get to that, I wanted to do something a little different. Instead of talking about what’s coming next, I thought I’d take a moment to look back, because when I stop and actually write it all down, the last year...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
Why Their Messages Might Be Invisible (3-4 minute read) Hollywood has conditioned us to expect aliens to walk on two legs and wear boots. Think of Chewbacca in Star Wars, the Cybermen in Doctor Who, the Klingons in Star Trek, or any rubber-suited extra stomping across a soundstage. It isn’t because that’s what evolution produces. It’s because that’s the shape human actors come in. But if real aliens exist, their bodies may be shaped less by arms and legs and more by the senses they use to...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
Designing the Galaxy Science fiction lives or dies by imagination, and nowhere is that more visible than on its covers. Before a reader even turns a page, the art has already whispered a promise of adventure, danger, and wonder. Few artists capture that better than Tom Edwards, whose work has become the visual signature of modern space opera and military science fiction. Over the past decade, Tom has designed hundreds of covers for some of the biggest names in the genre, from vast fleet...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
This Truth Might Surprise You (4-5 minute read) We often hear that society is sliding into chaos. News presenters speak in urgent tones, social media amplifies every frightening headline, and the old newspaper maxim still rules the day: if it bleeds, it leads. Violence makes dramatic viewing. Fear grabs attention. Anxiety keeps people watching. Advertising means that the news media have a vested interest in keeping us frightened. Yet beneath all the noise, the figures tell a very different...
2 months ago • 4 min read
First Contact Thoughts (4-5 minute read) The idea arrives quietly at first, like a ripple crossing a still lake. It has followed humanity through every age of discovery, hiding in campfire stories, drifting through the corridors of ancient libraries, whispered by astronomers staring through trembling glass. It is the thought that refuses to go away, because somewhere in our bones we know the universe is too old, too immense, and too full of possibility to leave us wandering alone forever....
2 months ago • 6 min read
The Dream Is Coming (3-4 minute read) On 20 July 1969, a human being stepped onto the Moon for the first time. I was a little boy then, watching in silence as Neil Armstrong’s boots pressed into the grey dust of another world. That image, that small step, shaped a generation. For a while, we dreamed that by now we would have cities on Mars and ships sailing the stars. But after the Apollo programme ended, the great journey outward paused. The Space Shuttle was an extraordinary machine, but it...
3 months ago • 4 min read