Off Topic: This year’s UK Eurovision entry really reminded me of one of the weird classics of sci-fi

Eurovision was lovely this year. Ukraine won, the UK came second, and our entry, from Sam Ryder was a sort of My First Prog. What more could I want?

I was watching it all, watching Sam sing inside a kind of luminous geometric cage, when I started to realise something. I’m up in space, man… I’ve searched around the universe… what does this song remind me of?

What it reminds me of, I think – it took me a while to put it all together – is Star Maker, a 1937 novel by Olaf Stapledon, and one of the weirdest, most ambitious science fiction novels I’ve ever read.