Ditmar Awards 2022

It’s the time of year where the Australian Ditmar Awards are open for nominations - ie voting (lasting until August 7th). These are fan-voted awards where anyone active in fandom can vote. If you read Sci-fi/Fantasy/Spec Fic, you’re probably eligible to nominate. If you've been to a convention, even better. If in doubt, you can... Continue Reading →

Go Set a Watchman

Imagine you love writing and have managed to have a few short stories published and a friend says, "Here's a year's salary, take a year off and go write a novel." While it sounds like a fantasy most authors would have, it really did happen to Nelle Harper Lee. A family she was friends with... Continue Reading →

The Answer My Friends

What is literature? Most people would answer this with reference to novels or collections of short stories. The Nobel Prize committee took a different view in 2016, causing much debate about this topic. So what did they do that was so controversial? They awarded Bob Dylan the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created... Continue Reading →

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle Poisons Himself.

On September 20th, 1879 the British Medical Journal published a letter entitled “Gelsemium as a Poison” in which Doyle recounts his use of gelsemium as a treatment for neuralgia (nerve pain). Gelsemium is also called Yellow Jasmine (or Jessamine). This was not something which had been prescribed for him. This was before he had invented Sherlock Holmes, so it... Continue Reading →

Rediscovering a “Lost Work”

The Nag Hammadi library is a collection of early Christian and Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. It is comparable to the Dead Sea Scrolls in terms of its literary significance, though less well known. Please note that what follows is a discussion of the texts and their... Continue Reading →

A Very Hungry Success Story.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a children's picture book designed, illustrated, and written by Eric Carle. The book features a very hungry caterpillar who eats his way through a wide variety of foodstuffs before going into a cocoon and emerging as a butterfly. It is one of the few childrens books I remember reading as... Continue Reading →

Inventing the Detective

Edgar Allan Poe is known for many things. His poem, The Raven, is up there as one of his most famous works, possibly because it was featured in the very first Treehouse of Horror episode of The Simpsons (brilliantly, in my opinion). Amongst several ‘firsts’ he is considered the first full-time profession writer earning a... Continue Reading →

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