Catmachine

As you may be aware, on 1 June an anthology was published that included a short story I'd written. The anthology, The Root Cellar and Other Stories , is available for purchase as an eBook right now should it take your fancy.  It also contains are twelve other dark tales aside from mine, all of which are well worth reading and which cover a wide range of subjects. Anyway, as a result of this in common with all the other contributors I gave a short interview, answering a series of questions about my story and other related matters which I hope you might find mildly diverting: nerinedorman.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/five-minutes-with-chris-limb-2012-sa.html I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

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...

I have come in search of evil. This place looks the part. No-one notices me step from the crowd and mingle with the journalists and photographers outside the courthouse, their anticipation my aperitif for the feast to come. They're waiting for the appearance of a monster and so am I. We malevores have probably existed since the first time a human being picked up a weapon to use against his own kind. For millennia we gorged, harvesting the baleful mental produce that was abundant wherever mankind went about his business. On the battlefield, in the torture chamber and pouring from the mouths of priests and prophets like manna from hell. Things have changed in recent years. There's a famine on. It's not enough for us that people think bad thoughts - they have to express them and act on them. These days they're loath to do so for fear of what others might think. In these desperate times we have had to take up emotional husbandry. Given enough encouragement and a nudge in...