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(1997-06-01)Films:Apocalypse Now, L'Atalante, Barbarian Queen (much funnier than Plan 9 From Outer Space), The Blues Brothers, Le Boucher, Casablanca (surprise), Catch-22, Citizen Kane (another surprise!), The Conformist, Dark Star, Delicatessen, Die Hard, Doctor Strangelove, Duck Soup, Les Enfants du Paradis, The General, The Performance, Pulp Fiction, Queen Christina, Raising Arizona, The Searchers, Star Wars, The Untouchables, The Wages of Fear...and,umm...lots of others I can't think of right now but any one of which, if mentioned at this point, would cause me to strike my forehead and go Doh! in a distinctly Homerish sort of way. As for my musical tastes, they can be easily gleaned from a close reading of my non-SF books. Have you read the Lord of the Rings? Yes, a long time ago: so long ago that I read it because I liked the look of the weird red-on-grey (if I recall correctly) covers the three big hardbacks had when I spotted them in the library, not because I'd actually heard about the work before. Is your next science-fiction novel going to be set in the universe of the Culture? Ah.Probably not. But then I haven't decided what the next book's going to be about yet, so I wouldn't take my word for it. Who is your hero? I don't think I have a genuine hero, but I think if I had to choose somebody it would Noam Chomsky for his intellectual clarity and fearlessness. Are you happy? Yup.According to my mum I always was a happy wee boy, and frankly nothing much has changed. (Least of all my level of maturity, but that's my problem.) 
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