The winner of the 2020 Sir Julius Vogel Award reviews the sci-fi and fantasy anthology of the moment. Putting together an anthology is a balancing act. You’re making a statement: this is what the genre or scene looks like to me, and I’d like to think it looks that way to you too. Victoria University … Read more
One of our finest speculative fiction writers on how the Lord of the Rings fandom is damaging mana whenua. There are kākā on my porch. They are circling each other, fanning their beautiful green and red feathers. They’ve found the pāua shell my flatmate picked up on the beach last week. It is shiny, so … Read more
Sascha* Stronach’s new book The Dawnhounds is about queer folk who refuse to ‘die pretty’. Here, he heralds a queer revolution in science fiction and fantasy. It’s an archetype we’re all familiar with: the tragic and noble LGBTQIA character who shows up to support the hero, and then dies beautifully while the straight folks run … Read more
What’s the once staunchly metal hacker convention Kiwicon doing swapping skulls for stuffed toys, and what’s the deal with the new con on the block? Alex Stronach reports. It starts with hackers, pyrotechnics, and an alpaca in a party hat. No, wait, let’s rewind. It’s June 2019, and every Kiwi pundit is grappling with a … Read more
A vulnerability has hit users everywhere, New Zealand included, and it reveals something very troubling about the way the tech world works New Zealand Schools, district health boards and even perhaps the halls of power have found themselves compromised by a vulnerability in a video conference app called Zoom. The exploit allows any user to … Read more
The process by which information from the Treasury website was extracted has been the subject of much speculation, and a lot of confusion, writes Alexander Stronach in a post that has exploded since originally being published at The Understatesman The Treasury data breach has been a shitshow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bigger disconnect between … Read more