I’m not convinced by the idea of AI throwing everyone out of jobs or taking over the world, but I thought I should read up some thoughtful writing on the subject, so I turned to Neil Lawrence’s 2024 ...

There has been much fuss and flapdoodle about a company called Colossal Biosciences that aims to use the wonders of modern genetic technology to call extinct species back from the other side of the ...

I am at a loss to understand how these actions are consistent with a code of conduct that requires Fellows to have “due regard for the statement of values developed from time to time by Society”, ...

While researching a recent tome I discovered much about the wonder that is mammalian hearing. As the so-called mammal-like reptiles of the Triassic shrank, from the size of large dogs to small dogs to ...

Watling Street services, just off the A2, is my local petrol station. You might stop there as you head east from the M25 towards the North Kent coast. It’s cheaper than any of the places further out, ...

This was the first time I have attended a music library conference. I’m an old hand at libraries generally but a novice in terms of music libraries, so I had a curious mix of feelings. I felt a ...

This year I read 64 books, the first time since records began (2014) that the number has exceeded my age in years (I am 62). The total might be inflated, though, as some of the books have been ...

Graeme Hall: All Dogs Great and Small My dogs’ favourite TV show is Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly, in which genial, tweed-waistcoat-and-cravat-wearing Yorkshireman Graeme Hall sorts out the problematic ...

Edward Gibbon: The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume 4 (Folio Society Edition). We arrive at last at the Fifth Century and the agonising collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Assailed by ...

The thing is, the noir styling suits what elsewhere in Reynolds’ fiction can grate — that is, the habit of the characters to talk to one another in pithy, sarcastic asides. Here is suits the text down ...

Johannes Krause and Thomas Trappe: A Short History of Humanity. You’ll both be aware that I’ve been reading quite a few horses’-mouth accounts of the latest work in understanding human evolution. See ...

Here I am in my home studio, Flabbey Road, which serves double triple multiple duty as office, library of SF, repository of ancient and medieval literature, reptile room, and man cave, just about to ...