Writing on the edge of reality

As a journalist covering the global space sector, I’ve spent years reporting from the 'edge of reality' – where science meets imagination, and sometimes vice versa.

I’ve had the privilege of interviewing dozens of amazing astronauts and, while their missions and motivations always differ, one experience unites them all. The profound, emotional impact of seeing Earth from orbit.

As well as sparking my own career, that view – the 'Blue Marble' of Apollo fame – helped catalyse the modern environmental movement.

I’ve also written extensively about the science of climate change for many years: from rising seas and extreme weather to attending landmark international conferences on sustainability. 

The evidence is overwhelming. Yet mostly, in everyday life, the danger feels remote. Facts alone, however, don’t often stir the soul.

A one-degree temperature rise? A few millimeters of sea level? These sound trivial – until they flood your home, destroy your crops, or make communities unlivable.

Our human brains aren’t wired to feel urgency from statistics but I believe fiction can bridge the gap between scientific consensus and human experience, exploring what lies beyond the data and what life could be like.

It can show, not tell. It makes climate change real – not in charts or headlines but in lived, personal stories. So that’s why I’ve written a climate fiction novel.

‘Flood Waters Down’ sees the Fens of eastern England vividly reshaped by the effects of anthropogenic climate change, societal fracture and greed. It’s not dystopian just for dramatic effect. It’s grounded in science and extrapolated from today’s trajectory.

We say we understand the climate crisis. But do we feel it?

In today's world climate fiction matters. Not as escapism, but as a tool – to challenge, warn and, above all, connect.

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Posted in response to Guardian Editorial (21 March 2024) which can be viewed on this link - The Guardian view on climate fiction: no longer the stuff of sci-fi

Painting pictures with words

THE window from my hotel room high on the tenth floor offered a truly spectacular view over the city of Lisbon whatever time of day or night.

Awake early, I pulled back the heavy curtains and my eyes were immediately drawn across shadowy trees in the park below to a sinister block of a building with brilliant red warning lights on its roof, flashing in unison every few seconds.

In the half-light before dawn their brightness and intensity was strangely unnerving.

No matter we were close to the landing path for Lisbon airport, it triggered my imagination and helped me complete a short description I had already penned as part of an early chapter in my novel 'Flood Waters Down'.

Tulip Haven’s twin towers, once giant cooling chimneys, still dominated the otherwise featureless landscape for mile upon mile in every direction. During the hours of darkness the building’s angular and functional architecture loomed menacingly, its red warning lights blinking in unison. 

To the casual onlooker their brightness and intensity seemed to convey a strange sense of hidden power, as if from a sinister lighthouse overseeing a forbidden landscape and somehow delivering a subversive message to humanity itself.

So, if you are a budding writer or author, my message is always take ideas from what you see in your everyday environment.

Develop a writer’s eye and jot down some free-flow prose whilst observing your surroundings. You never know where a moment’s inspiration might take you.

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Note: This author is seeking contact with agents or publishers for his first novel Flood Waters Down, a dystopian futuristic eco thriller set in the Fens of eastern England, a first draft of which is now nearing completion.

A reviewer of some initial chapters described it as "extremely evocative” with a "poetic and atmospheric writing style" that draws the reader "with a sense of unease and anticipation".

Make contact here: Clive Simpson

A sense of place

Early morning walks - Two Plank Bridge across the Vernatts drain

As well as writing for a living, the author of this blog is also a keen photographer and many of my blog articles are illustrated, where possible, by my own photos. Some of my pictures are also published alongside magazine and online media articles.

It's a useful trait as a freelance journalist to be able taken your own pictures on occasion for either a news or feature article - and it often helps when pitching a piece.

Of course, unless the photo is of extreme or uniquie news value, I'm not talking about shots grabbed on a smartphone camera, though I have to confess I have recently witnessed local reporters using such.

It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words, so I thought it would be good to end a year of blogging, writing and reporting by publishing some of my photos taken during 2014.

It's a rather random selection of a few favourites, and I've called the piece 'A sense of place' as most of the pictures evoke that in some way. Enjoy!
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Peace and tranquility on a summer's day in the Fens

Waiting for its catch - a beach tractor at Cromer in Norfolk

Looking the other way - from Niagara Falls viewing tower

Fenland barn and treescape on my way to Peterborough

Great dining at the top of Toronto's very high CN Tower

Toronto skyscrapers and the tower from across Lake Ontario

Early Sunday morning in downtown Detroit

Inside Detroit's opulent Fisher building

Big music came from a little house

Detroit's derelict and eerie Packard Motors plant

Coming to life - Willow Tree Fen nature reserve near Spalding

Premiership promotion - 2015 might be our year

Farewell to the Bittern 4464 - at Spalding on 30 December

Fenland sunsets - big skies make them unbeatable

I hope you liked my selection. And here's a final thought for the year - if a picture is worth a thousand words then a few well-written words might also be worth a thousand pictures.

So if you are ever stuck for words in 2015 - whether it be for a business or company website, blog, article, news item or even a book - I'm here to help. Please do get in touch. And in the meantime, have a very happy and prosperous New Year!