About

Me with Louise Jameson (Leela in Doctor Who)

I  have started this blog because I enjoy reading  science  fiction and have done so for  over 50 years.

I still read  and watch a great deal of it, past and present, and thought I would like to share  this passion with others. I  have taken the title of this blog  from H. G. Wells as  this  is what he himself called his work; he  never called it  “science fiction,” a  term  then unknown. In 1921,  in  a preface to  a new edition of The Sleeper Awakes, published by Odhams Press,  Wells wrote :  “It is the first of a series of books I  have written at intervals…they are all “fantasies of possibility”; each one  takes some great creative tendency, or group of tendencies , and develops its possible consequences  in the future.”

I think Wells summed  up  what has always attracted me to the genre: the ideas and imagination which at their best can make you look at the world in a different way.

Apart from this I research and write history books;  teach courses on  history, particularly the history of radical women 1790-1970; and lead  history walks around Manchester from time to time.  You find out more about these activities on my other blog: Red Flag Walks

In January 2015 Five Leaves Press published a pamphlet I had  written:  Doctor Who and the Communist: Malcolm  Hulke and his career in television.  Mac, as he was known, was a successful writer for more than 20 years on television, writing the Pathfinders in Space serials, contributing episodes to The Avengers and Danger Man,  and writing seven serials for Doctor Who, mainly in the Jon Pertwee era,  for which he is best remembered.

In the spring of 2015  I   taught  an evening class in the spring of 2015  on The History of Doctor Who at Aquinas College, Stockport. You can see a short news item about this  here.

If you have any comments about this blog  I would be delighted to hear from you, my email address is fopsfblog@gmail.com

My Twitter account is @mjherbert