Tuesday 30 April 2024

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #76: now out!

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Welcome to Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #76, edited by Stephen Theaker and John Greenwood!

Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #76 features four short stories, a non-fiction article, and fifteen reviews. In “The White Body” by Harris Coverley, shipwrecked sailors encounter a dread being on the open seas. Scottish master of surrealism Douglas Thompson provides “The Apparatus of Yearning” and “Cupid and Psyche”. “Controlling the Lights from Above” by Charles Wilkinson is a tale concerning the long-term consequences of workplace bullying. In “Cultures of Climate Change, Changes of Climate Cultures”, Rafe McGregor considers fiction’s role in the face of ecological disaster. Then Stephen Theaker and Douglas Ogurek review books by Adam Cesare, Grady Hendrix, Kazuo Ishiguro, Rumaan Alam and C.J. Cooke, plus the films Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, The Creator, Dream Scenario, Godzilla Minus One, No One Will Save You and Office Invasion, and the television shows Ahsoka, Doctor Who, Invasion and Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.

The cover art for this issue was generated using Wombo Dream.


Here are the contumacious contributors to this issue.

Charles Wilkinson’s publications include The Pain Tree and Other Stories (London Magazine Editions, 2000). His stories have appeared in Best Short Stories 1990 (Heinemann), Best English Short Stories 2 (W.W. Norton, USA), Best British Short Stories 2015 (Salt), Confingo, London Magazine and in genre magazines/ anthologies such as Black Static, Interzone, The Dark Lane Anthology, Supernatural Tales, Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, Phantom Drift (USA), Bourbon Penn (USA), Shadows & Tall Trees (Canada), Nightscript (USA) and Best Weird Fiction 2015 (Undertow Books, Canada). His collections of strange tales and weird fiction, A Twist in the Eye (2016), Splendid in Ash (2018), Mills of Silence (2021) and The Harmony of the Stares (2022), appeared from Egaeus Press. Eibonvale Press published his chapbook of weird stories, The January Estate, in 2022. He lives in Wales. His work previously appeared in TQF41 (“Notes on the Bone”), TQF44 (“A Lesson from the Undergrowth”), TQF46 (“Petrol-Saved”), TQF48 (“A Thousand Eyes See All I Do”), TQF54 (“Septs”), TQF56 (“Mr Kitchell Says Thank You”), TQF59 (“The Constant Providers”), TQF60 (“Evening at the Aubergine CafĂ©”), TQF64 (“September Gathering”), TQF70 (“July Job Offer”) and TQF73 (“The Arrival of an Acquaintance”).

Douglas J. Ogurek is the pseudonymous and sophomoric founder of the unsplatterpunk subgenre, which uses splatterpunk conventions (transgressive/gory/gross/violent subject matter) to deliver a positive message. His short story collection I Will Change the World … One Intestine at a Time (Plumfukt Press), a juvenile stew of horror and bizarro, aims to make readers lose their lunch while learning a lesson. Ogurek also guest-edits the wildly unpopular UNSPLATTERPUNK! “smearies”, published by Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction. These anthologies are unavailable at your library and despised by your mother. Ogurek reviews films and fiction for that same magazine.

Douglas Thompson has published more than twenty short story and poetry collections and novels from various publishers in the UK, Europe and the Americas, including The Brahan Seer from Acair Books (2014) and most recently Stray Pilot from Elsewhen Press (2022). He won the Herald/Grolsch Question Of Style Award in 1989, 2nd prize in the Neil Gunn Writing Competition 2007, and the Faith/Unbelief Poetry Prize in 2016. His work previously appeared in TQF28 (“Anatomy of a Wounded House”), TQF29 (“Madame Mortadore & the Clouds”), TQF37 (“Apoidroids”), TQF39 (“Escaladore”), TQF41 (“DogBot™”), TQF43 (“Quasar Rise”), TQF44 (“Black Sun”), TQF60 and TQF61 (“Yttrium”). See https://douglasthompson.wordpress.com/ for more details.

Harris Coverley has had more than a hundred short stories published in Penumbra, Crimeucopia, JOURN-E, and The Black Beacon Book of Horror (Black Beacon Books), amongst many others. A former Rhysling nominee, he has also had over two hundred poems published in journals around the world. He lives in Manchester, England. He previously appeared in TQF70 (“See How They Run! See How They Run!”); TQF72 (“Father Figure”); TQF73 (“The Scorpion”); TQF74 (“Kung Fu Sue: Origins”) and TQF75 (“Kleptobiblia”).

Rafe McGregor is a critical theorist publishing on culture, climate justice, and policing. He is the author of thirteen books, including Literary Theory and Criminology (2023), Narrative Justice (2018), and The Adventures of Roderick Langham (2017). He can be found online @rafemcgregor.

Stephen Theaker’s reviews, interviews and articles have appeared in Interzone, Black Static, Prism, Dark Horizons and the BFS Journal. His story “The Reader-Queens of Tranck” appeared in the BFS anthology Emerging Horizons, edited by Allen Ashley. He has written many novels, none of them well-regarded. The full range of his enthusiastic literary endeavours may be viewed on his ISFDB summary bibliography: https://isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?137563.


As ever, all back issues of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction are available for free download.

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