Warren Ellis has contributed to the debate about the slow, sad decline of science fiction as a publishing powerhouse with an interesting notion: that we should stop building ‘castles in the air’, as he says - ie writing about wild and wacky futures - but concentrate on the world around us with an SF writer’s eye for detail and extrapolation…because we are living in a science fictional age. Read more here.

That is, essentially, the premise of the TV series I’ve been developing for the BBC. I think it’s bang on the nose as a way to pull science fiction back into mainstream consciousness. But quite what all those people who love stories about Big Machines will make of it is a different matter.

For anyone having trouble accessing the forum at markchadbourn.net, it was hacked last night. Web boss Ariel will have a new, security-conscious forum up-and-running in no time so keep checking back over the next day or two.

At the moment, I’m looking at a completely new forum rather than a re-build of the old one, which frankly had reached the end of its shelf life in technological terms. That means you will probably have to re-join, but at least it wil make life more difficult for the spammers.