LEXX 3.3: Gametown

We’re in LEXX: The Soft-Porn Zone this episode, and before you can say “isn’t that every episode?”, the series answers “not this porny, it isn’t,” as Kai takes a shower with a naked lady, Prince gets up close and personal with Xev, and Xev stops Stan saying something he might regret with her breasts. No. Really.

Plot? Oh, yes, there was one. Kai visits Gametown, whose inhabitants spend all day playing Pyramid (the sportsball game from Battlestar Galactica, and yes, it is the same sportsball game) with very few clothes on, and May turns out to be working for Prince. That’s about it.

LEXX 3.02: May

I’d expected the series to play with parallel storylines– Stan and Xev on Fire, Kai and 790 on Water– for longer, but Kai finds a damsel in distress, the titular May, and before you can say “that makes sense in the context of developing parallel narratives, Prince as a love-interest for Xev and May for Kai,” Kai is off Water and meeting up with the others pretty fast, so that’s the end of that.

We don’t actually learn a lot about Water, and certainly it’s unclear which, if any, of the narratives the characters spin about it are true (May, apparently the Water equivalent of Prince, is no less manipulative). We do learn that Prince can regenerate, and possibly May can too. Kai definitely gets all the lines this episode, but Xev seems to have developed a terminal case of naivete, apparently falling in love with Prince despite him being clearly dodgy AF. I should say, though, that I’m really being won over by Xenia Seeberg’s performance as Xev; she slithers about like a lizard and sniffs people and things in a credibly non-human way.

Finally, the crew of the LEXX appear to have abandoned their mission to roam the universe trying to get laid, presumably because they’ve got enough opportunities where they are.

A Dog’s Tale

New story out! It’s “Lucky”, an artificial intelligence retelling of the legend of faithful dog Hachi, and you can read it at Every Day Fiction.

My Eastercon schedule

I’m at Eastercon this weekend! It’s online (albeit on British Summer Time) so please come join me at https://confusion2021.uk for the events below!

Phantoms for Free

Some exciting news just dropped. To celebrate becoming a monthly magazine, Shoreline of Infinity are making next issue pay-what-you-can (including free)– and it includes my story The Ghosts of Trees!

If a story about eerie supernatural happenings on a terraforming project in the Nevada Desert sounds like your thing, get your copy for whatever you want to pay at this link.

Robots for Christmas!

My Christmas story “The Island of Misfit Toys”, about homelessness, robots and hope during the holidays, is now available to read for free at Clarkesworld magazine. Click the link!

November Special

To celebrate the re-launch of Driving Ambition as an independent publication, I’m selling the ebook at $2.99/local equivalent for the month of November. Click the link for a tale of murder, labour relations and self-driving cars at an unbelievably low rate!

Print copies are also available; contact me via the form on the left-hand side of the page for details.

Interview with Hod Lipson

I interview artificial intelligence expert Hod Lipson over at Vector, the journal of the British Science Fiction Association! Read it here.

Automotive Dreams

I’ve made a small chapbook of seven of my early short stories available as an ebook! Including the BSFA Award-nominated “Jolene”, and the origin story of the self-driving car mysteries, “The Little Car Dreams of Gasoline”.

If you enjoyed Driving Ambition (my novel! Available in print or electronic formats!), or if you want to get a sense of the sort of thing I write– well, it’s only the price of the proverbial cup of coffee!

Buy or download it here.