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How relevant is the singles chart these days? [*Note: The numbers used in this article refer to UK sales/streams only.] Now that streaming is counted along with sales (which is currently 150 streams to equal one ‘sale’), the charts have ...

Sports show humanity at our best and worst. On the one hand, they provide an insight into what people can achieve with perseverance and dedication, and on the other, they show how competition can drive us to behave unconscionably (look ...

This year has been a strange one for films. Very few films I’ve seen this year have made me shout with joy and it is the first year I’ve walked out of several films halfway through. Perhaps with age I’m becoming ...

Rogue One is out and, as a fitting follow-up to last year’s The Force Awakens, it turns out to be dreadful. We now have a track record being set. Under Disney’s management, the trends of the new Star Wars productions ...

Publishing industry insiders are predicting that 2017 will find readers turning to happier tales of escapism and hope. As a result, genre publishers are talking about the This is a big shift from the pessimistic dystopias that have dominated bestseller lists ...

Within three years, Ridley Scott created one of the best science fiction films of all time and one of the worst fantasy films. How did this happen? What was he thinking? And why was Legend (1985) so awful? When the ...

I’ve seen a number of recent articles discussing Westworld, asking whether or not it can ‘do for science fiction what Game of Thrones did for fantasy’. The idea being that Game of Thrones brought the fantasy genre into the mainstream ...

We’re now in November (at least at time of writing), so the early ruminations on what will feature in my Best of and Worst of 2016 list has begun. There is every chance that I will see something to slot ...

From witches to succubi to super-powered femme fatales, female villains in SFF have long been defined by their sexuality. With skimpy outfits and powers derived from their sexuality or used to enhance their sexual attractiveness, these villainous women seem incapable ...

Among the many baffling decisions taken in the lacklustre X-Men: Apocalypse, the audience was treated to the great revelation about Charles Xavier’s baldness. Rather than his hair simply thinning and receding with time, providing a realistic transition from James McAvoy’s ...