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Articles by Simon Ings
The day a Turkish extremist tried to murder the pope
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The day a Turkish extremist tried to murder the Pope
In Vatican City, on May 13 1981, a 23-year-old Turkish man shot Pope John Paul II. On the run from the Turkish authorities, and having made his way across the Mediterranean Sea and continental Europe with the aid of forged passports, Mehmet Ali A&gbreveca had, a couple of days prior, stepped off a train in Rome. On the fateful Wednesday, he entered Vatican City, armed with a 9mm semi-automatic pistol.
Should we still admire Stephen Hawking?
Eight years have passed since the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking died, aged 76, of complications caused by motor neurone disease (MND). It was a condition that everyone expected would kill him in his mid-20s. Hawking faced down his gathering weakness and paralysis from a “ghastly prison”, as Graham Farmelo puts it in Hawking: His Life and Work, and from there issued, over 50 years, an extraordinary stream of intellectual accomplishments.
The best new novels of June 2026
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New Scientist recommends a smart new account of human exceptionalism
“Visceral” ancient cave art in Lascaux, France Animate Michael Bond Pan Macmillan UK, Pegasus US (August) Imagine that you took an animal, tripled its lifespan, stuck the world’s knowledge in its pocket (indeed, gave it pockets at all) and, for good measure, told it about death. What might you end up with?
Why learning about your medicine’s side effects might kill you
In the opening pages of her new book, Helen Pilcher receives a cancer diagnosis. Being a science journalist, you might expect her to want to know everything there is to know. But there’s a problem: this information will, she knows, alter her condition. In fact, it could kill her.
The art of ageing
More than 30 contemporary artists have contributed to the Wellcome Collection’s latest exhibition, which asks what it’s like to age at a time of unparalleled longevity. But as so often happens at the Wellcome’s exhibitions, it’s the ephemera that draws the eye first. ‘These 2 men are the same age,’ says a leaflet advertising Kellogg’s All-Bran breakfast cereal. ‘One has driving power – energy – the will to succeed.
Seeing the trees for the wood
Ancient: Reviving the Woods That Made Britain Profile, pp.320, 25 You’re up an oak tree somewhere between Ashtead and Epsom in Surrey. Wet lichens glow as you hunt for a footing on slick limbs. From the top of the canopy, the land turns to sea and glades appear as ‘oceans between continents of trees’. A ghostly armada of dead oaks lies becalmed in a clearing – a bleached collection of hulks left from a fire that happened decades ago.
Can looking at this painting slow dementia?
As if his careers in politics, philosophy, engineering and the army were not enough, Benjamin Franklin also found time to invent the...
The turbulent life of the Marquis de Morès – the 19th-century aristocrat turned populist thug | The Spectator Australia
The First Fascist: The Life and Legacy of the Marquis de Morès Allen Lane, pp.496, 30 The Marquis de Morès (1858-96) was a man of many abilities, but balancing a chequebook was not one of them.
What does a quantum computer sound like? This artist and scientist are about to find out
“I don’t care what you say about these quantum technologies,” the French conceptual artist Pierre Huyghe told Berlin-based arts...
The science-fiction films to look forward to in 2026
Ryan Gosling in Project Hail Mary Well, those little green shoots of recovery I forecast last year have flowered. This year is set to bring tighter scripts, cheaper projects (which is good, because studios can take more chances) and a more enjoyable cinema-going experience all round. On 16 January, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple will deliver (honest) on all those promises exasperatingly kept back in 2025’s 28 Years Later.
See how fire has changed the world's largest wetland, the Pantanal
A marsh deer escaping a forest fire in Poconé, Mato Grosso, in 2020 Science Museum How can these four pictures be images of the same region? What force could possibly transform the Pantanal â a tropical wetland straddling Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay, full of jaguars, howler monkeys, caiman, marsh deer and a vast number of fish and birds â into a fire-ravaged wasteland?
The two standout science-fiction films of 2025
In The Occupant, Abby (Ella Balinska) struggles across Georgian wilds Some ideas are so compelling, so intuitive, one would sooner recycle them than take them apart to explore. So, in 1950, Isaac Asimov fixed up some puzzle stories into a fiendish, Agatha Christie-in-space sci-fi novel, I, Robot, while in 1968, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey set a high bar for films about (or at least containing) artificial intelligence.
Thrilling tales of British pluck
Mavericks: Empire, Oil, Revolution and the Forgotten Battle of World War One Bloomsbury, pp.368, 25 December 1917. For years the Ottoman Turks have been trying to spark a jihad of the world’s Sunni Muslims, hoping that Muslim subjects of the British Empire in India will rise in revolt. Now that Tsarist power in Russia has collapsed, the roads through central Asia are open and the war-weary British have virtually no resources left to prevent the Turkish empire from expanding into India.
Blue Planet Red review: This documentary is wrong about Mars - but it's surprisingly poignant
Blue Planet Red Directed by Brian Cory Dobbs, Streaming on Amazon Prime Video Blue Planets Red purports to be a documentary about Mars. The world presented by director Brian Cory Dobbs isn’t the one you and I might recognise, but it certainly has some appeal: it was home to an advanced civilisation of pyramid builders, who either couldn’t save their world from destruction or laid it to waste in an orgiastic nuclear conflict.
You’re more like a mass murderer than you think
David Gray/Reuters Paul Mullen has spent years trying to understand the internal world of the lone mass killer: the sort of person who draws their weapon in a school, on a factory floor, or at a supermarket. A forensic psychiatrist, Mullen is well-known for his research into the link between common-or-garden jealousy and the obsessional, sometimes homicidal, behaviour of stalkers. He takes a similar tack in Running Amok, a devastating compendium of mass killings arranged by locale and severity.
The 20 best sci-fi books of all time – ranked
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The 20 best sci-fi books of all time - ranked
best science fiction books Fiction is there to drive us out of our heads, and science fiction even more so: it makes the wildest notions seem pressingly relevant to us, extends our imaginations and our sympathies. I’ve not only written many science-fiction (SF) novels myself, but for years I’ve written about SF, championed it, criticised it, taught it (whatever that means) and – God help me – edited it. Here, then, is my extremely objective list of the 20 best sci-fi books ever written.
Why Britain needs the gold standard
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David Cronenberg's new sci-fi film is devastating and mysterious
The Shrouds David Cronenberg On release, UK and US Myrna (Jennifer Dale) must have had better blind dates. The edible flowers on her starter look funereal. Her table for two is hemmed in by strange shrouds in tall vitrines. And as she makes small talk with her date Karsh (Vincent Cassel), the restaurant’s owner, it becomes clear her surroundings are attached – architecturally, financially and intellectually – to a cemetery. And not just any cemetery: its headstones have screens.
Dramatic Edward Burtynsky image shows stark desert divide
Earth This shot by the acclaimed photographer, taken from a helicopter, is part of a new exhibition of his work at New York City's International Center of Photography There is no geophysical logic to the sharp partition in the middle of this picture. A US federal act, the Land Ordinance of 1785, divided North America’s vast western territories into rectilinear townships and sections.
28 Years Later review: Danny Boyle's long-awaited zombie sequel is a triumph Original
Comment The infected are back, over two decades since they first appeared in 2002's 28 Days Later — and this film is the best of the three, says film columnist Simon Ings 28 Years Later Directed by Danny Boyle, written by Alex Garland In cinemas from 20 June Here’s a bit of screenplay advice to nail above your desk: make your plots simple and your characters complicated. We can polish off the story of 28 Years Later in a couple of paragraphs.
How the US military emerged as a global authority on the environment
In 1941, as it entered World War Two, the US Army barely bested Bulgaria’s for size and combat readiness. Nor did US forces have very much idea of what conditions were like in their new theaters of operation. In the winter of 1942, hot-weather gear and lightweight machinery landed in the deserts of North Africa where hot and dry conditions were assumed to persist throughout the year. Men froze half to death, even as their digging equipment foundered in winter mud.
How the US military became world experts on the environment
Sand, Snow and Stardust: How US Military Engineers Conquered Extreme Environments University of Chicago Press, pp.400, 30 In 1941, as it entered the second world war, the US Army barely bested Bulgaria’s for size and combat readiness. Nor did US forces have very much idea of what conditions were like in their new theatres of operation.
The End review: Joshua Oppenheimer's The End is a superb musical set in the end-times
The End Joshua Oppenheimer (Streaming on MUBI) Life on the planet’s surface has become nigh-on unbearable, but with money and resources enough, the finest feelings and highest aspirations of our culture can be perpetuated underground, albeit only for a chosen few. In Joshua Oppenheimer’s unearthly drama , Michael Shannon plays the father, an oil magnate who, years ago, brought his family to safety in an old mine.
Mickey 17 review: Robert Pattinson shines in otherwise clunky sci-fi adaptation
Mickey 17 Bong Joon Ho On general release In , Robert Pattinson stars as the “expendable” Mickey. Put him in harm’s way and if he dies, you can just print another. And for human colonists on the ice planet of Niflheim, there is plenty of harm to get into. There’s the cold. And the general lack of everything, so the settlers must count every calorie and weigh every metal shaving. Most troublesome are the weevil-like creatures that chomp through the planet’s ice and rock.
When the Earth Was Green review: Gripping account of how plants and animals co-evolved
When the Earth Was Green Riley Black (St Martin’s Press (US, available now; UK, later this month)) The behaviour of plants is invisible to the naked human eye. They operate on timescales our imaginations can’t entertain, and they run roughshod over familiar categories of self, other and community. I confess that I find them boring. Luckily, others don’t – Riley Black, a palaeontologist and an occasional contributor, for one.
Companion review: Robot Iris turns out to be a straw man in this horror-comedy
Companion Drew Hancock (Warner Bros (UK and US, on general release)) Arriving at a house in the country, Iris (Sophie Thatcher) isn’t sure she is welcome. The owner, Sergey (Rupert Friend), is leery; his wife, Kat (Megan Suri), is unfriendly. It isn’t Iris she dislikes, Kat later admits, it is “the idea” of her: she makes her feel redundant. Iris’s boyfriend, Josh (Jack Quaid), is patient and encouraging, but even he finds her shyness and clinginess hard to bear.
Robot Iris turns out to be a straw man in horror-comedy Companion
Comedian’s reaction labelled ‘brilliant’ after front row heckler refuses to take his feet off the stage A British comedian has gone viral on TikTok after his 'brilliant' response to being heckled by a member of the front row audience who refused to take …
How humans evolved to think about risk may cost Earth dearly
The Gambling Animal Glenn Harrison and Don Ross (Profile Books) Insights into animal evolution used to come from studying a creature’s evolutionary relationships to its closest relatives. To lampoon this slightly: we once saw humans as a kind of chimp. Our perspectives widened and, looking across ecosystems, we began to see what drives animals who share the same environment towards similar survival solutions.
Would you have sex with a robot?
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Would you have sex with a robot?
From dating apps to long-distance relationships conducted via WhatsApp, technology is already reshaping what we mean by intimacy – and how we get it – but the revolution has only just begun. That, at least, is the hypothesis underpinning Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy, a programme of talks and screenings being held at Somerset House in London next week.
The astonishing scientists who starved to protect plants during the Second World War
The Forbidden Garden: The Botanists of Besieged Leningrad and Their Impossible Choice Simon Parkin Scribner (2024) After Simon Parkin’s account of the siege of Leningrad and the fate of the world’s first proper seed bank, after his postscript, afterword and acknowledgements, there are nine pages that — for people who know the story — are worth the rest of the book combined.
Oracles, Omens and Answers review: A revealing gaze at prediction's past
Comment A fascinating exhibition at Oxford’s Bodleian Library explores archaic ways of telling the future. It is tiny, but explores big questions about how we learned to think rationally Oracles, Omens and Answers ST Lee Gallery, Oxford, UK Until 27 April 2025 There can be few happier disciplines than the history of science: the study of how people did the best with what they had and, generation by generation, accreted better and better models of the way the world works.
The best sci-fi films for 2025: M3gan 2, 28 Years Later, and Mikey 17
When your goofy, low-budget, horror sci-fi about an AI doll that runs amok grosses $180 million, you would be foolish not to make another. Three years after M3gan cleaned up at the box office, M3gan 2 sets the tone for 2025. Yes, it is going to be a year of sequels, remakes and series continuations. Economically, this makes sense, as studios recover from covid-19, the writers’ strike and bloated budgets. Artistically, the news is better than it might appear: there is enough creativity going…
The best science fiction films of 2024
No one, looking back at a year that brought us (a Spider-Man spin-off about a clairvoyant) and the director’s cuts of parts 1 and 2 (director Zack Snyder’s take on ) could seriously claim that big-screen science fiction is in a particularly healthy state at the moment. Cinema itself is on the ropes, financially and artistically – but I will leave it to bigger boots than mine to go galumphing across the post-apocalyptic wasteland that is modern…
The best science books of 2024, from lethal technology to eternal life
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The best science books of 2024, from lethal technology to eternal life
Ariane 5, bearing the James Webb Space Telescope, lifts off from French Guiana in 2021 - Getty Generate Key Takeaways The best science books of 2024 tell an extraordinary story about life. The chance that strange lifeforms evolve in strange places has emerged to be far greater than we realised even 10 years ago.
In satire Rumours, diplomatic communiques collide with the end times
Society A stellar cast play leaders of G7 countries facing an existential crisis in Rumours, a smart film about communication, diplomatic nonsense and not coping, says Simon Ings Rumours Directors: Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson On show in the US; on general release in the UK from 6 December Leaders of the G7 nations gather on an estate outside the German village of Dankerode in Saxony-Anhalt to thrash out a joint communiqué on an unspecified (but clearly terminal) global crisis.
In satire Rumours, diplomatic communiques collide with the end times
In Rumours, world leaders tackle a crisis as only they know how Rumours Directors: Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson, Galen Johnson On show in the US; on general release in the UK from 6 December Leaders of the G7 nations gather on an estate outside the German village of Dankerode in Saxony-Anhalt to thrash out a joint communiqué on an unspecified (but clearly terminal) global crisis. They used to be the G6 but then Canada joined. No one’s too sure about Canada.
Bel Powley is fabulous in this wonderful dystopian satire
Turn Me On Michael Tyburski Truant Pictures (On digital platforms from 4 November) An Eccentric visionary has created a commune centred on a pharmaceutical “vitamin” that suppresses emotion. The cult-like venture promises contentment to its followers, and to ensure it, all memory of their lives before they join is erased. One member’s cancer treatment requires she miss her vitamin dose for just one day.
What rats can teach us about the dangers of overcrowding
Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B.
Londoners, look up – Alan Moore wants to show you a better world
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Life among the world’s biggest risk-takers
The Art of Uncertainty: How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck Allen Lane, pp.416, 22 On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything Allen Lane, pp.576, 25 The Italian actuary Bruno de Finetti, writing in 1931, was explicit: ‘Probability does not exist.’ Probability, it’s true, is simply the measure of an observer’s uncertainty; and in The Art of Uncertainty, the British statistician David Spiegelhalter explains how this extraordinary and much-derided science has evolved to the point...
Why AI isn’t as clever – or as dangerous – as we think
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Cyborg: A documentary tells the fascinating story of a man wired to hear colour
Technology Cyborg: A documentary tells the intriguing story of Neil Harbisson, who wears an antenna to “hear” colour, but it is lacking in depth and should have probed its subject more, says Simon Ings Cyborg: A documentary Carey Born First Born Films In UK cinemas on 20 September; US to be announced Neil Harbisson studied music composition at Dartington College of Arts in the UK. He was born with achromatopsia, so is unable to perceive colour of any kind.
Yuval Noah Harari isn’t like other intellectuals - but that isn’t a bad thing
Once, it’s said, when shown a new scientific paper, the Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli sighed and said: “It’s not even wrong.” Some ideas are so incomplete, or so vague, that they can’t be judged. Yuval Noah Harari’s books are notoriously full of such ideas. But then, given what the Israeli historian is trying to do, this may not matter very much.
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