Baby, it’s cold outside – as the old song has it. At least, it is for those of us in the North. And as winter starts to bite, here’s a selection of stories to remind us how much nicer it is to stay indoors by the fire. Helliconia Winter by Brian Aldiss As we’re looking […]

The 1950s is often reckoned to be the Golden Age of science fiction. It was a time when all the great names of the genre, like Asimov and Heinlein, Clarke and Bradbury, were at their peak, and before the New Wave of the 1960s started turning the genre in a new direction. A good time […]

Our leisurely tour around the world of science fiction brings us to the Low Countries, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands (though, apart from being the birthplace of Hugo Gernsback, Luxembourg doesn’t really feature in this story). The old name for the region, “The Low Countries”, and the more recent name, “Benelux”, both suggest that this […]

Back in the early 1950s, when the Hugo Awards were born, Worldcon organizers had much more liberty to choose what was and was not included in their programme. So after the 1953 Worldcon decided to introduce the awards, the following year’s convention chose not to repeat the idea. It wasn’t until the 1955 Worldcon that […]