And Professor Xavier (so the person who blogged here under the name of Professor X is choosing a new alias as a mark of respect.) And Sejanus. And King Richard the Lion-Heart. And so many others. Iconic actor Sir Patrick Stewart, of Star Trek, X-Men, I Claudius, and so many roles from Shakespeare to the stars has died aged 86. Sir Patrick died at his home in Los Angeles on 28 October after "a brief and poignant journey" with Alzheimer's disease and Lewy Body Dementia, according to a statement shared on his social media. “His sonorous voice and singular talent will forever be synonymous with indelible performances in every genre,” the statement reads. In a career that spanned seven decades, Sir Patrick won multiple Emmys and Golden Globes, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth II. He was not only a great actor, he was also a great man. Rest in Peace

The main aim of this site is to review works of science fiction and fantasy. Today we are posting a link to a review of a book by a former British Prime Minister: a book which, sadly, belongs in the latter category. The tragedy of Liz Truss is not that she was either a bad person or a stupid one: nor was the problem with Liz Truss her analysis of Britain's problems at the time she became PM. There were quite a lot of valid points in that analysis and indeed one of the worst things about her legacy is that she may have discredited some genuinely good ideas. The problem with Liz Truss was her " Damn the torpedoes, full ahead ," or in her own words, " move fast and break things " approach to solving those problems. In one sense it was to her credit that as PM she did exactly what she promised she would do when standing for the position. However, her opponent in the election, (and subsequent successor as Prime Minister,) Rishi Sunak, predicted at the time exactly h...

Remember that British Summer Time in the UK comes to an end tonight and the country goes back to Greenwich Mean Time. Consequently, in the UK and indeed in most of Europe, the clocks go back an hour overnight. So in the UK at 3am, it jumps back to a second 2am. By popular demand we are republishing this a handy guide to putting your clocks back tonight:

" Gimme, gimme, gimme a knight after midnight " and other examples of how musicians from the middle ages might have performed Abba's music ...

Almost every good work of Time Travel science fiction addresses the issue which is sometimes called the "Grandfather Paradox" and most of them conclude that going back in time and changing the past must be either impossible extremely difficult extremely dangerous or more than one of the above. This goes back a long way. In 1933, American author Nathaniel Schachner published a short story titled " Ancestral Voices " in Astounding Stories. In it, a time traveller goes back 5,000 years, accidentally kills one of his own direct ancestors in a brawl, and immediately fades out of existence. The modern form of the "Grandfather Paradox" was first formulated ten years later by René Barjavel (1943): Barjavel was the first to distil this concept into the exact family dynamic we reference today, presenting a character who travels back to deliberately eliminate his grandfather before his parents are conceived. There are at least four opposing theories about what happen...

Although " Bikinis Forever " by Michael Dalton does not come into the category of books this site was set up to review, it is very closely related to a large number of books which are, and the manner in which it deals with that relationship is interesting. "Bikinis forever" is the sixth, and the final non-supernatural,"Unconventional Romance" in the "Bikini Days" series. The Amazon series page can be found at:   Bikini Days (6 book series) Kindle Edition "Unconventional Romance" is code for "Haremlit" e.g. the romantic elements involve a man with multiple partners, which seems to be a popular meme among some, mostly but not exclusively male, authors and readers at the moment. Michael Dalton has written a large number of fantasy books, most but not all of which also fall into this category. The books in this series are: 1)  Bikini Days: An Unconventional Romance 2)  Bikini Nights (Bikini Days Book 2) 3)  Bikini Dawn 4)  Bikini ...