Catmachine

The world seems to have a schizophrenic attitude towards science fiction, fantasy and horror these days. It could be argued there has never been a better time to make genre films and TV.  Back in the bad old days you could probably count all the examples of science fictional TV and film on the fingers of a very small collection of hands and even after Star Wars arrived you could still, for a while, keep up with all the imitations that seemed to spring up overnight. But in recent years it has become impossible. There is simply too much of the stuff for one person to keep track without spending all their waking hours watching DVD box sets. And yet a love of genre books is, as it has been for a long time now, considered far less of a good thing.  Admit to this and one still runs the risk of being considered a "nerd" or "geek" with all the negative associations that entails. Even those who don't make such rash generalisations still wonder whether it isn't perh...

It is surprising how seriously some people take fiction sometimes. The word canon  originally meant the books of the Bible that were official and contained the true scriptures as laid down by the various churches and faiths who concerned themselves with such things. It has since been sequestered by the enthusiasts of various fictional worlds to mean the events and stories that officially "happened" in that universe. When a fictional world or universe is created often additional spin off fiction is produced - initially to capitalise on any possible popularity of the franchise and turn a tidy buck. Some early examples of such works were the Star Wars novels Splinter of the Minds Eye  and Han Solo at Stars End  which were churned out shortly after the success of the original Star Wars film (the one that is now rather dully referred to as A New Hope ). Despite claims on the covers that these novels were " from the adventures of Luke Skywalker " they really d...