It's better once you realise that it's a conventional Atwood novel (a simpler A plot in the 'present' and a complex B plot in the past) that happens to have a sci-fi setting. Still great though.

I still really liked it, but Cibola Burn was the one book where the antagonist seemed a bit too evil (without a reason) to be entirely believable.

I feel Nemesis Games does break away from what was beginning to become a formula as well.

I think he did actually write it with the movie in mind, and has written the screenplay for the forthcoming adaptation.

It's not my favourite yet, that is Alias Grace, but I feel it might be on a re-read - I was distracted last time and I want to give it another go to see if I like it better (although it already is one of my favourites…)

Have you read Jingo? It's a riff on the Iraq War (first one that is, the book was written in 97) and colonialism in general. While it doesn't deal with racism necessarily, it does look at xenophobia and the illogic of hating someone purely because they're from a different place.

Same - for me the Watch is Discworld in a way. Probably just because they were my first, because there are so many other wonderful characters.

SPOILERS FOR THIS AND ATONEMENT

Or "Bela Lugosi" in Plan 9 From Outer Space…

He also bought the domain "www.therabidpuppies.com" and uses it to link onto stuff like a support group for online abuse victims and a library charity.

Don't tell 'im Pike!

It's in the filmmakers' best interests to postpone it, as well. As it stands I doubt many would have wanted to watch it and the optics aren't good regardless.

I feel like a half-hour semi-autobiographical comedy is a lot easier to multitask on than a big stylistic drama like this, though.

Wait, so you literally meant that we're not making the actual movie Casablanca?

I don't know why, but it just feels super distasteful to me.

I wish, but really 90% of British comedy is absolute shite. I wish it was all The Thick of It, Spaced, and Black Books but that is far from the truth…

When I saw him last month he closed with an acoustic version of Thunder Road. Really brought out the wistfulness and emotion. He had tears in his eyes by the end of it.

And The Expanse! Man, SyFy is really doing pretty well at making fun and reasonably clever sci-fi shows at the moment - what happened?

He says it's a teenage wasteland.

I think, Jar Jar aside, it's a fairly solid space-opera. Not going to say the prequel trilogy was secretly great, though.