The Spoons That Are My Ears!

I have been reliably informed that a transformer is a "robot in disguise". This news startles me, for I previously assumed that a transformer was merely an electric circuit for stepping voltages up or down. The concept of a robot in disguise is astonishing enough on its own: how does one make Velcro sideburns stick reliably to a surface of steel or crystal?

In recent months I have finally set up my own website. It's still under construction but already it features lists, pictures and blather. Click on this link to view it. Utilising the same sort of deception habitual to transformers, it is actually a blog disguised as a website! Nonetheless it's a useful hub for transport to my other blogs as well as containing more information about my work than you'll ever need to know.

Talking about robots reminds me that the latest issue of Postscripts 22/23 (The Company He Keeps) is now available and that it contains my robot story 'The Forever Forest'. I enjoy writing robot stories. I get a buzz out of robots in general. This latest issue of Postscripts is easily the finest so far, so beautifully produced that it came in its own velvet-lined box and so enormous that it can be used for the torso of an authentic man-sized robot. Mind you, some of the best robots in fiction are bigger or smaller than the biggest or smallest men, and a few even have shapes that are incomprehensible.

My favourite robot fiction of all is probably Stanislaw Lem's Cyberiad, which is a sort of compendium of robot myths from the future. Myths from the future are a relatively recent invention. Lem is a master of the the artform. Moorcock's Legends from the End of Time are also among the best of this extremely unusual subgenre. I've written a short piece praising Lem's magnificent book here.