Editorial – April 2026

There is a keen sense of history being made in Wales right now. Ever since devolution, the Labour Party has held a vice-like grip over the Senedd. But there is an election happening next week and, thanks to Kier Starmer’s massive right-ward shift in policies, and the sense of utter betrayal felt by most of the British electorate, that is about to change.

In England, the Green Party is rapidly gaining around from Labour, as they are seen as the only viable left-wing party. But in the rest of the UK it is a very different matter. May’s elections could see Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland all having devolved governments run by parties in favour of independance from England. Scotland, of course, has had this for some time, but for Plaid Cymru in Wales this is a 100-year-old dream come true.

However, votes are yet to be counted. The English media, from the BBC to the Daily Mail, are all shilling for Nigel Farage and his billionaire-backed neo-Fascist party. The polls say that they are neck-and-neck with Plaid. Thankfully Wales has Proportional Representation (though it is probably the worse possible PR system ever devised and the voters are going to hate it when they find out how it works). There should be enough non-Fascist members in the new Senedd to prevent Farage’s bullies from forming a government. But Farage probably doesn’t care much of he loses. His objective is not to govern Wales, but to destroy it, and he can do a lot of that work simply by being the official opposition.

With all this going on, it seemed like an ideal time to look at the two most famous science fiction novels written in Welsh. Both of them imagine dystopian futures for the country, though one offers an utopia as well. English translations of both books are available.

Next month I will be off to Finland for Åcon. I hope to get a lot of reading done while traveling, though much of that is going to be the next batch of novels from Wizard’s Tower.