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Oxford University Press is excited to be welcoming Professor Steve Furber as the new Editor-in-Chief of The Computer Journal. In an interview between Justin Richards of BCS, The Chartered Institute of IT and Steve, we get to know more about the SpiNNaker project, ethical issues around Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the future of the IT industry.

The post Conversations in computing: Q&A with Editor-in-Chief, Professor Steve Furber appeared first on OUPblog.

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by Jack Higginswith Justin RichardsPenguin / Speak 2009Bond movies were the first place I encountered the idea of a story starting with an action sequence that was unrelated (or tangentially at best) to the rest of the story. The idea was to get the blood pumping with Bond in some perilous chase, have him come out victorious, slide into the title sequence, then into the story at hand.It's an

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Justin Richards' Doctor Who: Monsters and Villains and Doctor Who: Aliens and Enemies are two non-fiction books published to coincide with the first and second seasons of the New Doctor Who series.

For over forty years, the Doctor battled against the monsters and villains in the universe. Monsters and Villains brings together the best or rather the worst of his enemies. It's possible to discover why the Daleks are so deadly; how the Yeti invaded London; the true secret of the Loch Ness Monster; and how the Cybermen have managed to survive. The reader will learn who the Master was, and above all, how the Doctor defeated each and every one of them. This book provides a wealth of information about the monsters and villains that have made Doctor Who the tremendous success it has been over the years. This is a good book - very detailed and contains a lot of extra information about the "modern" villains and monsters supplied by the chief writer of the new series, Russell T Davies. The reader will learn more about the Forest of Cheam and just who "The Lady Cassandra" was originally ("The End of the World"), discover more about The Face of Boe ("The End of the World", "New Earth"), and more about the planet Raxacoricofallapatorius, home to the Family Slitheen ("Aliens of London", "World War Three", "Boom Town"). There are a wealth of photos included in this book, including concept drawings for the various Monsters and Villains) and script extracts as well.

Picking up where Monsters and Villains left off, Aliens and Enemies (another fully illustrated guide) documents the return of the metal menaces known as the Cybermen - the Doctor has fought them on many occasions during his ten lives. Other foes, including the Sycorax, the Gelth and the Reapers are discussed. Also making a return are the baddies from the Classic Who series, such as the Celestial Toymaker, Sutekh and the Robots of Death. Unfortunately Aliens and Enemies doesn't contain the extra information from Russell T Davies that Monsters and Villains has, and that's a shame, but this is still an interesting book for those who are fans of this phenomenal series as a result of the work of Russell T Davies and his incredible team at BBC Wales, or those who remember watching the Classic series from behind the sofa in their childhood. If you've got a young Doctor Who fan in the family or your circle of acquaintance, I can recommend both these books - I'm sure they'll be fascinated.

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Confession time - I'm completely hooked on Doctor Who at the moment: not just the TV show but the books as well, so expect more Who-related reviews.

Justin Richard's The Clockwise Man is one of the earliest of the new Doctor Who Adventures books and it features the Doctor and Rose as played by Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper in the series from BBC Television. And I have to say, I don't Richards has done as good a job of capturing the voice of the ninth Doctor as he did of capturing the voice of the tenth Doctor in The Resurrection Casket (which I recently reviewed).

The Doctor and Rose arrive in 1920s London, intending to visit the British Empire Exhibition and instead find themselves caught up in the hunt for a mysterious murderer; someone has been going around killing the servants of prominent Londoners. But whoever is doing the killing isn't necessarily human, as the bodies turn up with marks on their necks that look as if they've been made by a metal implement, not hands. There are a number of secrets hidden behind various locked London doors. Just who is the Painted Lady and why is she so interested in the Doctor ? How exactly can a cat return from the dead ? Can anyone be trusted to tell, or even to know, the truth ?

I confess, this book reminded me quite a bit of The Girl in the Fireplace, which just happens to be my favourite episode from Season 2 of Doctor Who, and I didn't feel that Justin Richards had written as good a story as Steven Moffat did, even allowing for the fact that they've written for two different Doctors - and it's a different medium for which they're each writing.

The Clockwise Man is also available from Amazon.com.

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Justin Richard's The Resurrection Casket is the ninth in the New Series Doctor Who Adventure books.

This adventure takes place on Starfall, a world out on the edge, where smugglers and crooks hide in the gloomy shadows and modern technology refuses to work - which includes the TARDIS. The zeg is a huge field of Electro Magnetic Pulses that quite literally puts a dampner on the TARDIS, leaving the Doctor and Rose stranded, for the time being, on Starfall, where the only technology is steam-powered, not electrical.

The pioneers who used to be drawn to Starfall in the hope of making a fortune from the mines find there are easier pickings elsewhere, but a few still come for the romance of it, or for the old-fashioned organic mining. And a few more come in the hope of finding the lost treasure of Hamlek Glint, that pirate scourge of the spaceways - a privateer, adventurer and bandit. His ship the Buccaneer is somewhere lost in the zeg, abandoned by its band of cut-throat pirate robots who had already been sold for scrap when Glint finally decided to retire.

The Doctor and Rose offer to help Drel McCavity (who's not a local dentist) search for Glint's lost treasure, which includes the fabled Resurrection Casket, supposedly the key to eternal life. In return, the TARDIS will be taken out of the influence of the zeg, so that the Doctor and Rose can board her again. Unfortunately for them, not all of Glint's robots were scrapped - and they're determined to find the Resurrection Casket so that they can bring Glint back to life and persuade him to resume his old killing ways.

This is a fun book - Richards has done a good job of capturing the voices of Rose and David Tennant's 10th Doctor - and children will certainly enjoy the piratical theme - especially those children who are also fans of Captain Jack Sparrow and the Pirates of the Caribbean films. The Resurrection Casket is also available from Amazon.com, and as a 2-CD audio book, which is read by David Tennant and includes an interview with Justin Richards (running time 2:30).

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Justin Richards has been writing Doctor Who novels for some time, but I've only read one of them: Doctor Who: The Resurrection Casket (it features the Tenth Doctor and Rose). However, Richards also writes novels featuring original characters and Time Runners: Freeze-Framed is the first in a new series, aimed largely at pre-teen or early teenage boys.

12 year old Jamie Grant's story begins:

"Let me tell you about the day my life ended. I remember it as if it was yesterday which, maybe, it was. Or perhaps it will be tomorrow. I lose track. After all, it was a long time ago."

Initially Jamie just thinks people are ignoring him when his classmates, his teacher and even his own mother suddenly start acting as if he's not around. He find he's fallen off the register, people don't reply when he speaks to them, and he's not showing up in family photos. Only his 5 year old sister Ellie and the mysterious yet friendly 14 year old Anna are aware of him. Anna explains to him that he has ceased to exist. His parents believe they only have one child, little Ellie, and no one else knows him. Anna reveals that Jamie has fallen through a "time break" and is now living outside of time in a parallel world. Fortunately Jamie does discover that although he's outside time, he possesses the power to control time. He and Anna are employed as Time Runners to fix the time break into which he has fallen, but they have to work against the Dark Runners, especially the Darkling Midnight, who, like all Dark Runners, wants to change history radically. Although his aim of having fewer wars is admirable, his means of achieving it is to remove free will from all of humanity for all time, and to set himself up as a global ruler. He wants Jamie to join the Dark Runners as he senses that Jamie has sufficient power over time to become an Adept as Midnight is - and Adepts are very rare.

Thus Jamie and Anna have a race against time to repair the time break that occurred and took him outside of time before it can take everyone outside time - and they must figure out how to repair the time break before Midnight can coerce Jamie into becoming a Dark Runner. Even if they succeed in their task, however, Jamie will still be outside of time, just as Anna is and has been since 1955, so the Time Runners will be Jamie's only family.

You can find out more about the Time Runners series at its website. This book is out in March so I received a proof-copy and was received for review from Nikki Gamble at Write Away.

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