BFS Journal #11: out now!

Sorry that things have been so quiet on the TQF blog this year – paying work has been keeping me very busy (can’t and won’t complain!) but work is progressing on the next issue of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction – and about 25 reviews I have at various stages of unreadiness.

One distraction has been that I was asked to help out on the BFS Journal for a couple of issues after it had stalled, to give the new managing editor time to train up. You can only get this 184pp paperback if you’re a BFS member, but we’ve ordered a handful of extra copies, so if you join today there’s still a chance of getting it.

Sarah Newton is the editor of this issue’s fiction:

• The Switch, Mark Lewis
• Electricity, Gary Couzens
• Pawnarchy, Mark Huntley-James
• The Eden Paradigm, Allen Ashley and Madeleine Beresford
• A Barrow on the Border, Rima Devereaux
• The Need to Create, Emma Newman
• The Lost Name, Sandra Unerman
• Baby 17, Jonathan Oliver
• The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, M.E. Lerman

Stuart Douglas edits the non-fiction:

• Jennie Gyllblad, interviewed by Max Edwards
• Freda Warrington, interviewed by Alex Bardy
• The Adventures of Brak, Mike Barrett
• Tim Powers, interviewed by Stuart Douglas
• Nick Campbell on The Child Garden
• Forbidden Fruits, Ray Cluley

And Ian Hunter edits the poetry:

• Cybernetic Mary, Deborah Walker
• Protecting Veil, Megan Kerr
• A Paranormal Romance, Allen Ashley

There’s also a controversial editorial by Max Edwards, a controversial chairman’s chat by Mark Barrowcliffe, and a BFS news section that has not yet attracted any controversy (but maybe no one has read it yet). Cover art by Jennie Gyllblad.

Zenith Lives! ed. by Stuart Douglas – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

M. Zenith the Albino is from the rogues’ gallery of Sexton Blake, although a book with the variety and quality of Zenith Lives! (Obverse Books, pb, 2425ll, edited by Stuart Douglas, fourth entry in the Obverse Quarterly series), attracting such high quality contributors as Michael Moorcock and Paul Magrs, makes one wonder whether he might outlive his opponent. I won’t pretend to be an expert on Zenith: all I knew till reading this book was that he had inspired the appearance of Elric of Melniboné; I didn’t even know of his connection to Sexton Blake. Luckily, a couple of stories in, my interest piqued, I was able to refer to Blakiana, a superb website maintained by Mark Hodder, another of the contributors to this book. From there I learnt that the original conception was one that we might now think rather old-fashioned, in that Zenith turned to evil out of bitterness over his albinism, but that aspect isn’t one on which these stories particularly dwell. Unlike Elric, he’s not a weakling; in these stories we read of “his powerful muscles and extraordinary sense of balance”.