Writer, Editor, Architect of…
A series of blogs, articles, and speculative conjectures
“Literacy is the path from slavery to freedom. But there are many kinds of slavery and many kinds of freedom. But reading is still the path.”
- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
“I believe in the power of the imagination to remake the world, to release the truth within us, to hold back the night, to transcend death, to charm motorways, to ingratiate ourselves with birds, to enlist the confidences of madmen.”
- JG Ballard
The Metaphor Equation
About Mark
I write with a social and environmental conscience, hoping to redress the balance in favour of Mother Nature. Often found deep in the woods of magical realism, in the company of wolves and other metamorphic creatures, or in the literary edgelands not far from the sea. My other passion is star gazing and writing about space – its history and cultural impact.
My writing has appeared in The Caterpillar, Paper Lanterns, The Ecologist, Canopy, Legerdemain, Spaceflight, Spelt, The Norman Mailer Journal, Sonder, The Dawntreader, Ellipsis Zine, AGENDA, Black Bough Poetry, Hyacinth Review, Parakeet Magazine, Aimsir Press, Suburban Witchcraft and the Storms Journal.
I am the editor of Odyssey - the Science Fiction, Space Art and Cultural Magazine of the British Interplanetary Society.
I am lucky enough to live on the South Downs, where my non-human companions includes foxes, badgers, deer, and a wide variety of avian acquaintances.
Writer
I have published a number of novels and short story collections and these can be found here:
Comnissions
I am happy to write on a wide range of arts and culture issues, as well as on Nature, space, or astronomy; feel free to get in touch.
Editor
In my capacity as Editor of the BIS’s Odyssey magazine I have interviewed some of the biggest names in speculative and dystopian fiction including Kim Stanley Robinson, Ronald Wright, Larry Niven, and Ben Bova. The most recent occupant of our virtual interview chair is Helen Sharman, the UK’s first astronaut.
Advocate - my personal manifesto
I believe in
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books and reading and lifelong learning
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the power of doing a little often as the way of reaching goals
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that there can be no life on the land if there is no life in our oceans, and that there is no greater priority than to protect and conserve our seas
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that Icarus had the right idea, just the wrong equipment
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that everyone should look up at the stars more often and that the “high frontier” should be open to all regardless of gender, ethnicity, privilege, influence, and wealth
Inspirations
Those who inspire me
Arthur C. Clarke
JG Ballard
Angela Carter
Ronald Wright
Sylvia Earle
David Attenborough
Jaques Cousteau
All those who volunteer or work for Sea Shepherd
Any and all who work in and for the NHS
Featured Articles
A Wide Surmise - The Cabinet of Angela Carter
Microblogs
Such as
The Drought by JG Ballard
Essays
"To the Moon and Back in a BIS Spaceship."
Read the remarkable story of the BIS design specifications that might have carried British astronauts to the Moon in the 1930s!
Haunted Libraries and Rocket Summers
The late Ken Gatland may not be as famous as Ray Bradbury, but the two writers had much in common – they both shared dreams of “rocket summers” in which such machines stood waiting, white vapours trailing from their tail fins, to take explorers and settlers – or just the curious and the restless – to new worlds. One wrote fact, the other fiction but the notional destination was often the same. One wrote about small-town middle America in the 1950s and ’60s, the other lived in a small town in suburban Surrey and wrote richly illustrated pocket compendiums about spacecraft, probes and planetary landers.
If the two of them had ever met – Ken and Ray – they would have had a lot to talk about, possibly over a glass of dandelion wine, a bowl of golden apples on the table beside them. Read the full article on the above link.