We posted yesterday on the need for Exercise. This weekend sees the 40th anniversary Swimathon week, the UK's largest charity wwim. The 40th anniversary Swimathon has been taking place at more than 450 pools around the UK from Friday 20th – Sunday 22nd March 2026. Since 1986, Swimathon has united swimmers of all ages, abilities, shapes, and sizes in a national celebration of swimming and fundraising. 2026, marks 40 years of this iconic event. One of our friends and occasional contributors, who also acts as the Grand Admiral's human avatar on the Island of Adventure (a.k.a. Stormshot Island) did the swim this afternoon. 💛 Swimathon helps fundraise for charities that matter. Over the last four decades, Swimathon has raised over £50 million for charities. In 2026, it is proud to support: Cancer Research UK – advancing the fight against cancer Marie Curie – supporting people living with terminal illness, and, Swimathon Foundation – Encouraging people to swim for fitness and health...

For reasons which will become clear, it seems particularly appropriate this weekend to post a clip explaining Admiral Thrawn's views on the need to keep fit and exercise.

"The Mote in God's Eye" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle is probably the best "First contact" SF novel ever written to date. As you can read in the top left of the image from the cover of the original; paperback edition, the late Robert Heinlein, himself no mean writer of Science fiction, described this story as " The best novel about human beings making first contact with intelligent but utterly nonhuman aliens  I have ever seen, and possibly the finest science fiction novel I have ever read. " Heinlein was not exaggerating. this brilliant 1974 novel really is that good, and in the 52 years since it was published I don't believe that any other first contact novel has surpassed it, though there have been some other very good ones. The early stages of the fictional universe in which this novel is set, Jerry Pournelle's "Future History" series, has suffered a little from the actual late 20th and early 21st centuries developing in a wa...

 A gentleman called Paul Krause posted on X today, " What is the best sci-fi novel you've read? There are many good ones. Great ones. Not just because he recently passed away, but Hyperion by Dan Simmons has to be up there for everyone who has read it .. " The people who replied nominated more great books than we could easily list. Far better to let you look for yourself, so here is the link. Paul Krause on X: "What is the best sci-fi novel you've read? There are many good ones. Great ones. Not just because he recently passed away, but Hyperion by Dan Simmons has to be up there for everyone who has read it..." / X  

"Cadets. Many cultures expel their young males at your stage of hormonal development into the wilderness, to mature on their own ... or die . We are not one of them. Currently." A Vulcan instructor shuts down an argument between two testosterone-fuelled cadets in the second episode of "Star Fleet Academy."

The novelist Len Deighton, author of Spy novels like "The Ipcress File," dystopian alternative history novels like "SS-GB" and a couple of superlatively detailed and accurate war novels, "Fighter" and "Bomber," has died at the age of 97. Born in 1929, he was a boy in London during the blitz, and once discovered an air-raid shelter which had been hit and contained 20 bodies. Another memory from the war which influenced his writing came when Special Branch raided the house next door and arresting his neighbour, a 38-year-old Russian emigre named Anna Wolkoff. She had fled to England in 1917 after the Revolution, with her parents. Secretly, she was a Nazi spy. Among her targets was the US ambassador, Joseph Kennedy. Wolkoff was sentenced to ten years for relaying secrets to Berlin. After the war, he served in the RAF before studying art at St Martin's College in London and the Royal College of Art. He spent a year as a cabin steward with the air...

"What do you do when after 444 lifetimes of grinding the faces of the poor, despoiling civilisation, fighting and killing heroes, you find that being the epitome of evil has become ... boring?   Is there a way for a lord of evil to actually - retire? "  This is the story of how an evil Demon ruler took the path of Cincinnatus. " The Demon Overlord's retirement plan " by MH Foster is one of the funniest science fiction or fantasy novels I've read in the past year or two. It's up there with the best of the " Dumb luck and dead heroes " books by Skyler Ramirez. This is the first part of a trilogy called "A Gentle Apocalypse" which consists of 1) " The Demon Overlord's retirement plan "   (October 2025, available from Amazon at Demon Overlord's Retirement Plan (A Gentle Apocalypse) : Foster, M. H.: Amazon.co.uk: Books ) 2) " Love, Politics, and Other Acts of War "   (January 2026, available at   Love, Politics,...

On this day in 1995, the last clan chief in history known to have led his men into battle died at the age of 83. Simon Fraser, the 15th Lord Lovat, was the Chief of Clan Fraser. He was described by Winston Churchill, quoting a phrase from an earlier century, as “ the mildest-mannered man that ever scuttled ship or cut a throat. ” The Scottish Commando chief whom Hitler placed a 100,000 Reichsmark bounty on, dead or alive. He was a well respected man who already had a serious war record before D-Day.  The night before D-Day, Lovat addressed his men. He closed with this: “A hundred years from now, your children’s children will say - they must have been giants in those days.” Then came June 6th, 1944. Sword Beach, Normandy. As Brigadier of the 1st Special Service Brigade, Lord Lovat waded ashore leading 3,000 commandos into hell. And behind him came the sound that made the whole scene unforgettable. The War Office had strictly banned bagpipes in battle. They said it was too conspicuou...

The Grand Admiral has let it be known that he was most disappointed to learn that the Imperial War Museum (IWM) had decided to permanently close the "Extraordinary Heroes" gallery housing Lord Ashcroft's collection of gallantry medals, and others.  When it was opened in November 2010, The Lord Ashcroft Gallery was the Imperial War Museum's first major permanent gallery for ten years, It was paid for by a £5million donation from Lord Ashcroft, and housed the Extraordinary Heroes exhibition containing the world’s largest collection of Victoria Crosses (VCs). The 164 awards from his collection, which range from the Crimean to the Falklands wars, went on public display for the first time alongside 48 VCs and 31 George Crosses (GCs) already held by IWM. The VC is of course Britain and the Commonwealth’s premier award for extreme gallantry in the face of the enemy, while the GC is Britain’s most prestigious civil decoration.  But in February 2025 IWM announced it was "...

"Yonder in the Stars" by Skyler Ramirez is a standalone "Western Sci-Fi adventure" by Skyler Ramirez. It does not appear to be linked to the author's "Four Worlds" quartet and certainly has no connection to any of the novels set in the "Dumb Luck and Dead Heroes." It's set on a world near enough to our Earth that the hero and narrator's father, one of the few men on the planet who remembered that humans are not indigenous, pointed out to his son Gavin Brigham (Gav) a visible star and told him that this was Sol, where their ancestors came from. We'll try to avoid spoilers for why the world is the way it is: let's just say that the original human colonists consciously based the society they created on the 19th-century US Western frontier. Their descendants refer to the planet as "Earth" and most of them are under the impression that it is their planet of origin. There IS an indigenous intelligent species, with most of ...

Working through a list of books for which we will be posting reviews. This week there has been a lovely exchange on X between a reader who posted about " Ender's Game " by Orson Scott Card, and the author. Social media is so often an outpouring of rage and hate, but every so often it redeems itself, and this was an example. We also read that book many years ago, and loved it, and have since read he other three books of the "Ender" quartet and other works set in the same universe, so we have added " Ender's game " to the list of books we will be reviewing on this site.

In 1951, the great SF writer Arthur C Clarke published the short story "Superiority" which is narrated by the former Supreme Commander of the forces on one side in a space war, describing how a strategy of relying on their scientific superiority for victory went horribly wrong. To quote from the description in Mike Vendetti's audiobook version of the story,  "The crux of this story lies in the concept of "superiority"--not just in terms of technology but in understanding how that technology can be effectively employed. Clarke explores the hubris inherent in underestimating one's enemies and the danger of overreliance on assumed technological advantages. The protagonist reflects on their miscalculations, emphasizing that true military prowess extends beyond mere possession of advanced weaponry. As the protagonist attempts to clarify the real reasons for their defeat, we see them confronting not just the failure of their forces but also a broader commenta...

 

It has been announced that 7th July 2026 will see the publication of the fifth novel in the "Manticore Ascendant" Honor Harrington universe prequel saga, which will be " A call to deception " by David Weber, Timothy Zahn and Thomas Pope. We are enormously looking forward to this as the "Manticore Ascendant" books have been some of the most entertaining in the "Honor Harrington" military SF series (or "Honorverse").  Originally the Honorverse companion book "House of Steel" stated that in 1538 PD (e.g. 3641 AD/CE) there had been an attack on the Manticore system by a force of mercenaries hired by a huge interstellar corporation called "Axelrod of Terra."   That book went on to say that, quote, " Examination of one of the ships captured after the battle" then "revealed the true reason for the attack: Axelrod had realised the Manticore binary system was almost certainly home to a major wormhole junction. ...