Born on the 30th of May 1978. This is my earliest sci-fi memory. I adored this TV show. It was displaced by Metal Mickey, and my Saturday mornings were never the same again. At my insistence, the pilot was the first thing my parents recorded on the VHS recorder. Nostalgia helps this win out over the reboot for me. Grabbed me when I was about six, and still hasn’t let go. The Original Trilogy has probably had the most profound effect when it comes to my love of sci-fi. Every Christmas I have Star Wars day, watching the original three films back-to-back. The first sci-fi book I ever read. Some of it was baffling, but I loved it. I’ve a great fondness for old sci-fi, with Forbidden Planet being one of my favourites. I still have very fond memories of this. My introduction to the 40K universe, and what an introduction it was. Twinned with Space Marine this made for some epic tabletop battles. I adored this as a kid, and I’d take the original Japanese version of Godzilla over the Western version any day. At ill home one today, my Mum asked what I wanted from the video store. Robocop please! I was 12. Don’t judge. There was an advert for this on the English classroom wall. I was transfixed by it and it was first book I bought myself. I still enjoy returning to it every now and again. At 13 I discovered The Prodigy. G-Force (Energy Flow) is still a monumental track. Spawned from the superb tabletop game, these novels were my first foray into dystopian sci-fi. So good, and such a shame that it has now been shoved aside as part of the Legends series. I wonder what Episode 7 could have been if it had walked this path? I’ve revisited this a couple of times over the years, mainly the original mini-series and V: The Final Battle, and I still find it incredibly captivating. Loved it then. Still love it now. It was the visions of the future that really captivated me. And the need for a Phased Plasma Rifle in a 40 Watt range. My love of all things Cyberpunk started a bit earlier than this, with playing the Mike Pondsmith Cyberpunk pen & paper RPG. But it was Ridley Scott’s vision that firmly stamped the Cyberpunk aesthetic into my brain. If my love of Cyberpunk started with Bladerunner, then Neuromancer made sure that it was permanently burnt into my consciousness. We used to cane this card game for hours and hours. It was seriously addictive and probably one of the reason that I find Hearthstone so appealing nowadays. I prefer this to Alien. There. I said it. The Matrix stole whole rafts of ideas from this, demonstrating how visionary it was. It still stands up as an exceptional film today. Like Ghost in the Shell crossed with Neuromancer. Seek it out. The first Techno album I bought. Techno & sci-fi are inextricably linked for me. I think the film is better than the book, and there’s nothing you can do about it. During the mid to late nineties, Channel 4 showed a lot of Anime, not least of which is this. It’s still absolutely incredible. One of my all-time favourite PKD books. Love the film too, although the book is better, naturally. I knew nothing about The Matrix before sitting down in the cinema, and it blew me away. If only they’d made a sequel… The first Ian M. Banks book I read. Amazing. And that twist, woah! Way ahead of its time as the first MMOFPS. It still hasn’t been beaten when it comes to scale and complexity. And even after all these years, only PlanetSide 2 has attempted to capture what made this so amazing. The first Peter F. Hamilton book I read. Chapter 13. Enough said. Dan Abnett is one of my favourite writers. This is an amazing series. The kinetic energy and action from the Warhammer universe is something I try and incorporate into my own work. I’ve been reading this series for years. Will it ever stop? I’ve been a dedicated gamer since I was six, but there aren’t many games responsible for helping to shape my writing, apart from this. I really need to play all three back to back at some point. Prawn cocktail will never be the same again. After getting nowhere with music production, I really wanted to give something creative another chance and see if I could make a career out of it. So I decided to write a book. I mean, how hard can it be, it’s just writing… I really should have known better. November 2014. I finished seven months of outlining my first novel: Superstruct. After 60K words on Superstruct I paused my writing to go through the Read Worthy Fiction course to learn about story craft. It was an amazing epxerience, and over 12 weeks I worked on a brand new piece of work. One of the major benefits of completing the RWF course… A finished prequel novella for my Instant Reality series. It is untitled at the moment, and will sit between Hypercage and Superstruct. To help establish myself as a new author, I decided to create a few short stories before returning to my novel after completing the read worthy fiction course. By Feb 2016, I’d completed three short stories: Hypercage, Transmit and Theatre of Death. On the 29th of February 2016, I submitted Transmit to the Sci-fi and the Medical Humanities writing competition. Twenty winners out of 500 will be featured in a special anthology as part of the British Medical Journal. The Theatre of Death is under heavy revision following developmental feedback from my editor. June 2016: 50% completed on Superstruct. I can’t wait to let people read it.
Born
Battle of the Planets
BattleStar Galactica
Star Wars
The Game Players of Titan
Forbidden Planet
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century
Adeptus Titanicus
Godzilla
Robocop
Icewind Dale Trilogy
The Prodigy
Dark Future
The Thrawn Trilogy
V
Total Recall
Terminator
Bladerunner
Neuromancer
Jyhad
Aliens
Ghost in the Shell
Cyber City OEDO 808
Surgeon – Communications
Dune
Akira
A Scanner Darkly
The Matrix
Use of Weapons
PlanetSide
Pandora’s Star
Gaunt’s Ghosts
The Horus Heresy
Mass Effect
District 9
Should I write a book?
Outlining complete
Read Worthy Fiction course
Novella complete
Strategy switch: Short stories
Three shorts
Transmit submitted to BMJ
The Theatre of Death
Superstruct
