>Not all that much has been happening in the world of Steve this week, I must confess. I’m currently submerged in the important ‘thinking stage’ that comes before starting work on any new story. It’s at this stage that a writer spends most of his time in a combination of daydreaming and research – basically, it’s the fun part!

When I was at primary/elementary school, my teachers complained to my parents a number of times about how much daydreaming I seemed to do in class. The fools! Couldn’t they see I was already in training for a career as a pulp SF writer?

Life is more than just writing, of course. I’ve had some great training sessions this week (plenty of scrapes and bruises to show for it, thanks to Hide-san, my current sparring partner). I’ve also just finished watching the first season of Battlestar Galactica on HD-DVD (the recent re-make, not the original series).

I was an early adopter of Toshiba’s HD-DVD and was sorry to see it lose the recent high-definition format war. Despite the format being officially dead now, I haven’t actually regretted buying into it for a minute. I’ve got a great little collection of films on HD-DVD that I genuinely love (like King Kong, Batman Begins, The Thing, The Matrix, etc.).

Battlestar Galactica was a joy to watch in high-def and, if you haven’t seen the series but love quality science fiction TV, I strongly recommend that you see it. Give it a few episodes to grow on you, though. The characters don’t really become sympathetic or engaging until the latter half of the first series, but stick with them. It’s worth it.

If you have any recommendations for great sci-fi series that just have to be watched, why not post a comment and let us all know?