Apologies for lack of life

Things have been a bit quiet on the blog this month, so this is just a note to apologise. We're not shutting down or anything, I just wanted to try saving the new reviews for the magazine rather than running them on the blog first. Partly to keep the magazine special, partly to give me more time to polish my reviews – they certainly need it! – and partly to make the admin easier (I just have to email each publisher once). Once the next issue's out we'll run the reviews here on the blog as usual.

I worked a bit on issue 40 today, and it's looking very good. Howard Watts has done a marvellous cover that celebrates our reaching the big four-oh, we're up to about forty pages of reviews, and we have some wonderful fiction for you.

Look forward to it – or face my wrath!

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #39 – now available for free download!

Merry Christmas and a happy new year! In this issue we have six more stories of Thornton Excelsior from the magnificent Rhys Hughes, mutant ultraviolence from Mike Sauve, and a science fiction tale from our dear friend Douglas Thompson. Ben Ludlam illustrates a Thornton adventure, and there are lots of reviews, from Jacob Edwards, Douglas Ogurek and me. Also, a mention for two people without whom I would have struggled to keep the magazine going these last two years: Howard Watts, who with his wonderful cover art has saved me from the quarterly hell of trying to create covers myself (TQF21’s awful, awful artwork still makes me shudder), and my co-editor John Greenwood, who has read virtually all the submissions this year.

In this issue we also have our very first interview! I found the interviews I did for the BFS’s Dark Horizons (with Brian Stableford, Lev Grossman and Allen Ashley) to be a fascinating challenge, and had wanted to initiate something similar here. I was in the middle of reading three brilliant books by Matthew Hughes (see Majestrum, Hespira and The Spiral Labyrinth in this issue’s review section) and so he seemed like the perfect choice. I hope such interviews will become a regular part of the magazine, but I will try to restrict myself to people for whom I can formulate at least semi-intelligent questions.

I made one big mistake with this issue, letting unfinished reviews build up and then trying to finish them all at the last minute. It’s delayed this issue by about a week, so to avoid that in future I’ve introduced a new Theaker rule: no starting a new book till I’ve finished a first draft review of the last one. (The most important Theaker rule is that having offered a cup of tea, you must make it.) A pile of yellow Silvine exercise books will assist in this plan.

But although it made us late, we did end up with lots of reviews: of books from Matthew Hughes and E.C. Tubb, audio adventures for Dick Barton and Doctor Who, and comics featuring Atomic Robo, Conan the Barbarian, Frank Miller's Holy Terror, Ian Churchill’s Marineman, the Incredible Change-Bots, Stan Nicholls' Orcs and many more. In games we look at Borderlands: Game of the Year Edition and Warhammer 40,000: Kill Team. In film and television we review Melancholia, Paranormal Activity 3, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 1, Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead.

One previous reading rule came a bit of a cropper this quarter: Even Stephens, my plan to review books by male and female writers alternately. It worked pretty well at first, but then got quite confusing when I read some books by male writers, but not for review, and then reviewed them anyway, and then had to hold them back while I tried to get some books by female writers reviewed to catch up. What a mess! But I’ll try to do better next time, perhaps by tweaking the rule so that instead of reviewing books by men and women alternately, I read books by men and women alternately. That’ll stop me getting into a muddle.

In 2012 we have to bring you more fantastic fiction, more reviews, more artwork, more features and interviews, and if we can persuade our ducks into a line, more books. We’ll continue to be quarterly—seems to be working well—with weekly (if not twice-weekly) reviews appearing on the blog, along with comment pieces and flagrant hit-bait. Let us know if there’s anything you think we should be doing, because, to be frank, your ideas are probably better than ours!

This 96pp issue is available in all the usual formats, all free except the print edition, which we’ve priced as cheaply as possible:

Paperback from Lulu
PDF of the paperback version (ideal for iPad – click on File and then Download Original)
Kindle (free)
Epub (ideal for Sony Reader)
TQF39 on Feedbooks

More about the sweet-toothed elves who have let us steal their candy sticks this Christmas…

Ben Ludlam is an artist from the wastelands of County Durham. See http://banthafodder.deviantart.com for more of his work.

Douglas J. Ogurek’s work has appeared in the British Fantasy Society Journal, The Literary Review and Dark Things V (Pill Hill Press). He has also written over fifty articles about architectural planning and design. He contributes reviews of Paranormal Activity 3 and Breaking Dawn to this issue. He lives in Illinois with his wife and their six pets.

Howard Watts is an artist from Brighton who provides the Christmassy cover to this issue. He has previously provided covers for Pantechnicon, Dark Horizons and TQF.

Jacob Edwards is currently indentured to Australia’s speculative fiction flagship Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, as Jack of all Necessities (Deckchairs and Bendy Straws). To this issue he contributes a review of the film Melancholia. The website of this writer, poet and recovering lexiphanicist is here: www.jacobedwards.id.au.

Mike Sauve has written non-fiction for The National Post, The Toronto International Film Festival Group, Exclaim Magazine and other publications. His online fiction has appeared everywhere from Feathertale, Frost Writing and Rivets to university journals of moderate renown. Stories have also appeared in print in M-Brane, Black and White Journal, The Coe Review, Palimpsest 2010, and elsewhere.

Rhys Hughes has been a published writer for almost twenty years and in that time he has written six hundred stories, published twenty books and been translated into ten different languages. The Tellmenow Isitsöornot, a bumper ebook collection of one hundred stories, is available from Smashwords here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/88734.

Stephen Theaker is the eponymous co-editor of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, and writes many of its reviews. His work has also appeared in otherwise respectable publications such as Prism, Black Static, Spark (a long, long time ago) and the BFS Journal.

All thirty-eight previous previous issues of our magazine are available for free download, and in print, from here.

TQF: interviews and the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

A round-up of TQF-related bits and bobs you may have been lucky enough to miss...

In this interview from 2009 on the blog of Gareth D. Jones I talk a bit – or rather, at extraordinary length! – about TQF, what kind of fiction we're looking for, and why I don't think we'll go semi-pro in the near future.

In December 2010 I was interviewed by Justin Bostian, who included it in this market report for students at Columbia College Chicago. (Link is to a pdf.)

In September 2011 I was slightly less loquacious answering a few questions from Duotrope.

We got a nice write-up in the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, 3rd edition – "its real purpose is the publication of absurdist fiction which uses all of the images, tropes and concepts of science fiction and mutates them into indescribable forms" – as did one of the contributors to our most recent issue, Rhys Hughes.

I spent hours as a youngster reading the first and second editions of the Encyclopedia in the university library, so you can imagine how thrilled I was that we got a mention…

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #38 – now available for free download!

Wow! I love the artwork for this issue of TQF! Once again it's by Howard Watts, although fans of Rhys Hughes won't be surprised to learn that it doesn't actually reflect the contents of “The Lives and Spacetimes of Thornton Excelsior”! That's because I decided on the artwork before I had the story!

The issue features four other magnificent stories. “The Daylight Witch” is by Jim Steel, one of my very favourite contributors to Dark Horizons, each of his stories being completely unique.

Alison Littlewood, another Dark Horizons regular, is off to the major leagues now, having sold a novel to Jo Fletcher Books! “Off and On Again” is an odd one, in that it was previously used by dodgy geezer David Boyer without her permission, so she was keen to see it published somewhere respectable. She settled for us!

“Better than Llandudno, eh?” is an extract from Michael W. Thomas's forthcoming novel, Pilgrims of the White Horizon, a sequel to The Mercury Annual. We'll be publishing it!

“Old Preach’s Gods” is by Z.J. Woods, the one writer in this issue who is new to me, but I hope this won't be the last time his work appears in our pages.

On the editorial front, after the controversy of last issue we're back on frothy territory with “Taking a Break with TQF!”, where I discuss the profound effect that taking a break from posting on Facebook has had on my life. (I've read a lot more comics, basically.)

There are reviews of books from Paul Magrs, Reggie Oliver, Anne and Todd McCaffrey, Nathalie Henneberg, Glen Duncan, Vendela Vida, Wil Wheaton, Johnny Mains, Guy Haley, Ian Cameron Esslemont, and Catherynne M. Valente, plus seven comics, six audio adventures, five films and one game. Contributing reviewers this time include Jacob Edwards, Regina Edwards, Michael W. Thomas and Douglas J. Ogurek.

This 108pp issue is available in all the usual formats, all free except the print edition, which we’ve priced as cheaply as possible:

Paperback from Lulu
PDF of the paperback version (ideal for iPad – click on File and then Download Original)
Kindle (free)
Epub (ideal for Sony Reader)
TQF38 on Feedbooks

More about the merry folk who have let us sow the teeth of their literary dragons…

Alison Littlewood lives in West Yorkshire, England, where she hoards books, dreams dreams and writes fiction – mainly in the dark fantasy and horror genres. Alison has contributed to Black Static, Dark Horizons, Not One Of Us and the charity anthology Never Again. Her debut novel, A Cold Season, will be out early in 2012 from Jo Fletcher Books, an imprint of Quercus. Visit her at www.alisonlittlewood.co.uk.

Douglas J. Ogurek’s work appears in or is forthcoming in the BFS Journal, The Literary Review, Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, and Dark Things V (Pill Hill Press). Ogurek has also written over 50 articles about architectural planning and design. To this issue he contributes reviews of Cowboys & Aliens and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2. He contributed “NON” to TQF33. He lives in Gurnee, Illinois with his wife and their six pets.

Howard Watts is an artist from Brighton who provides the marvellous cover to this issue. He has previously provided covers for Pantechnicon, Dark Horizons and TQF. His story “Totem” appeared in TQF36.

Jacob Edwards is currently indentured to Australia’s speculative fiction flagship Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, as Jack of all Necessities (Deckchairs and Bendy Straws). To this issue he contributes a review of Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Jim Steel grew up in the countryside where, apparently, a witch had lived at one of the neighbouring farms in the sixteenth century. To get to her house you had to cross the railway where a previous occupant had committed suicide, go past the ruined church with its crypt and gravestones, skirt around the pool where yet another occupant had drowned himself, and then go through the woods where a madman had murdered a small child. So he wasn’t really worried about the witch when he was a young boy. No; Jim was much more worried about her lover who had lived in the ruined castle next to his own house. He had been a warlock.

Michael Wyndham Thomas’s work is regularly published in the UK, the US and Europe. His latest poetry collection, Port Winston Mulberry, is published by Littlejohn and Bray; a new collection is forthcoming in 2012. His most recent novel is The Mercury Annual, published in Theaker’s Paperback Library (2009). The sequel, Pilgrims at the White Horizon, is also forthcoming. Michael also reviews for TQF, The American Journal of Haiku, Other Poetry and Under the Radar. He is poet-in-residence at the annual Robert Frost Festival in Key West, Florida. His website can be found at: www.michaelwthomas.co.uk.

Regina Edwards wandered into a bookstore, during a brief stint in London, thinking idly how serendipitous it would be if she were to run into Glen Duncan signing his latest book, I Lucifer. As it happened, he was there… up until five minutes before she arrived. When not lamenting fate’s bungled intervention, Regina writes short stories and teaches maths and physics. She lives in Brisbane with her husband and son.

Rhys Hughes has been a published writer for almost twenty years and in that time he has written six hundred stories, published twenty books and been translated into ten different languages. “The Lives and Spacetimes of Thornton Excelsior” is exactly the sort of fiction he most enjoys writing; but the market for this kind of absurdist fantasy seems to be rather limited these days. If you enjoyed it, why not consider purchasing his latest ebook, a bumper collection of one hundred stories called The Tellmenow Isitsöornot, available from Smashwords here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/88734.

Stephen Theaker is the eponymous co-editor of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, and writes many of its reviews. His reviews have also appeared in otherwise respectable publications such as Prism, Black Static and the BFS Journal. He has used the word “whom” twice in this issue but isn’t entirely confident that he used it correctly.

Z.J. Woods writes and otherwise wastes time in Virginia. His strange little digressions can be found in several ezines and at his website, http://zjwoods.com.

All thirty-seven previous previous issues of our magazine are available for free download, and in print, from here.

New review of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #37!

D.F. Lewis has reviewed Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #37 story by story over the course of a couple of days: see the Real-Time Review of TQF #37.

His approach to reviewing is an unusual one, part of his goal being to turn "leitmotifs into a gestalt" – i.e. noticing bits of stories (and other things he has read and experienced), making connections between them, and describing the total effect, the sometimes interesting results lying somewhere between reader-response analysis, free association and tweeting while reading.

Okay, so it's a little odd for someone to review a magazine about which they have complained at such length and in so many places – the issue contains a review of Lewis's book Weirdtongue, and an editorial discussing his ideas about giving books bad reviews, both of which led to much complaint from Lewis – but his conclusion that TQF37 is an "incredible set of stories" cannot be faulted…

The long chase is over – mission accomplished!

People who have been reading our magazine since the early days (I like to pretend there are one or two of you – allow a fool his vanity!) will surely know that our goal for much of that period has been to catch up with McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, issue 10 of which was the direct inspiration for Theaker's Quarterly Fiction.

Despite their head start, we were bi-monthly for a few years, and it looked like we would make it! But then I got tangled in the many tentacles of the British Fantasy Society, and we were forced to go quarterly again, ending up an issue short of our goal.

Catching up with McSweeney's was a silly, arbitrary goal, but sometimes silly goals can be just as helpful as sensible ones.

Checking my bookcase, and checking their website, it looks like both magazines are now on issue 37.

I really am very happy about this. Stupidly so. Wow.

Thanks to McSweeney's for inspiring our efforts at the beginning, and continuing to provide an inspiration ever since – but where the heck is issue 38? Pull your fingers out!

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #37 – now available for free!

We have eight stories in this summer’s issue of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, and I’m immensely proud to be publishing all of them:

• “Apoidroids” by Douglas Thompson
• “Make It Sacred” by Mike Sweeney
• “The Last Testament” by Rafe McGregor
• “Curios” by Ben Kendall-Carpenter
• “The Model of a Boy” by Alex Smith
• “Harrowing of the Barrow” by Skadi meic Beorh
• “Devilry at the Hanging Tree Inn” by David Tallerman
• “The Watchman” by Chris Roper.

The editorial, “How Could a Person Up and Call a Person Wack?!”, addresses, in my clumsy way, the suggestion put to us in recent months that giving bad reviews to books is something we should avoid. I also discuss the unfortunate lack of female contributors to this issue, and set out one practical step I’m taking to improve the visibility of female writers in our magazine.

In a bit of a departure, we also have an article: “In the Shadow of Slartibartfast: Donald Cotton and Doctor Who’s Other Comedic Trilogy” by Jacob Edwards. You can see why it appealed to me.

Our review section stretches to thirty pages. In books John Greenwood and I look at The Art of McSweeney’s, The Captain Jack Sparrow Handbook by Jason Heller, The Damned Busters by Matthew Hughes, The Gift of Joy by Ian Whates, The Heavenly Fox by Richard Parks, Outpost by Adam Baker, Revenants by Daniel Mills, Spectral Press #2: The Abolisher of Roses by Gary Fry and Vampire Warlords by Andy Remic.

In the audio section I review three Doctor Who adventures: The Forbidden Time, The Sentinels of the New Dawn and The Hounds of Artemis. The film section covers Death Race 2, Insidious, Never Let Me Go, Red Riding Hood, Source Code and X-Men: First Class (three reviews by Jacob Edwards, two by Douglas J. Ogurek, and one by me). I review two comics this time: Baltimore, Vol. 1: The Plague Ships, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Eight, Vol. 2: No Future for You.

This 128pp issue is available in all the usual formats, all free except the print edition, which we’ve priced as cheaply as possible:

Paperback from Lulu
PDF of the paperback version (ideal for iPad - click on File and then Download Original)
Kindle (free)
Epub (ideal for Sony Reader)
TQF37 on Feedbooks

Which sweet fools lined up for literary exploitation this time?

Alex Smith lives in Bethesda, Maryland and he is a doctoral student of psychology at George Washington University. Alex’s poems and stories have recently appeared in Catch-Up Louisville, Food I Corp, and Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #31. He is the author of a novella titled THE BERSERK and a book of poems titled LUX. His chapbook, BLOWN, was published by Superchief in 2011.

Ben Kendall-Carpenter lives and was born in Manchester. He enjoys cricket, the work of H.P. Lovecraft and J.G. Ballard, and listening to The Smiths. He is currently working on a collection of horror stories.

Chris Roper lives in Brighton, England, with his girlfriend of three years, Sarah-Jane. When not writing he enjoys travel, normally to tropical climates in Asia, and is a keen reader of horror and science fiction.

David Tallerman’s horror, fantasy and science fiction short stories have appeared in over thirty markets, including Lightspeed, Bull Spec, Flash Fiction Online and John Joseph Adams’s zombie best-of anthology The Living Dead. Amongst other projects, David has also published poetry (in Chiaroscuro), various film reviews and articles, and comic scripts through the award-winning British Futurequake Press. David’s first novel, comic fantasy adventure Giant Thief, will be published in early 2012 by UK publisher Angry Robot, to be closely followed by two sequels. He can be found at http://davidtallerman.net and http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com.

Douglas J. Ogurek’s work appears in or is forthcoming in the British Fantasy Society Journal, The Literary Review and Dark Things V (Pill Hill Press). Ogurek has also written over 50 articles about architectural planning and design. To this issue he contributes reviews of Insidious and Red Riding Hood. To TQF33 he contributed the astonishing “NON”. He lives in Gurnee, Illinois with his wife and their six pets.

Douglas Thompson’s short stories have appeared in a wide range of magazines, most recently Albedo One, Ambit, and PS Publishing’s Catastrophia anthology. He won the Grolsch/Herald Question of Style Award in 1989 and second prize in the Neil Gunn Writing Competition in 2007. His first book, Ultrameta, was published by Eibonvale Press in August 2009, nominated for the Edge Hill Prize, and shortlisted for the BFS Best Newcomer Award. His second novel Sylvow was published in autumn 2010, also from Eibonvale. A third novel Mechagnosis will be published by Dog Horn in autumn 2011.

Howard Watts is an artist from Brighton. He has previously provided covers for Pantechnicon, Dark Horizons and TQF, including the cover for this issue. His story “Totem” appeared in TQF36.

Jacob Edwards is currently indentured to Australia’s speculative fiction flagship Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, as Jack of all Necessities (Deckchairs and Bendy Straws). To this issue he contributes three film reviews and a paean to Doctor Who’s great lost humorist.

Mike Sweeney lives in Central New Jersey. His short stories can be found here and there. He’s especially fond of the ones over at Jersey Devil Press (www.jerseydevilpress.com).

Rafe McGregor is is a crime fiction author who spends far too much of his time rereading the work of H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James. He lives with his wife in a village near York.

Skadi meic Beorh is a writer of speculative fiction who presently lives with his wife Ember on the Atlantic Coast of Florida. He is the author of the story collection Always After Thieves Watch, the poetry collections Golgotha and New Irish Poems, the dictionary Pirate Lingo, and the novel The Pirates of St. Augustine.

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #37 - not yet ready!

This is what I get for being forward-thinking – and more than a little useless! A pre-loaded blog post popped up on here today to announce that the new issue of TQF was out today, but in fact I haven't quite finished my work on it yet.

I'd like to put the delay down to paid work taking a priority, and that is a part of it, but those of you on my Xbox friends list might well note in response how many achievements I've acquired in Borderlands over the last couple of weeks…

Fingers are crossed for next Monday. I just have to finish dealing with these mutant midget shotgunners!

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #36 - now available for free download!

It's March 27, and that means today is Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #36 day! We bring you 144 pages of fiction and reviews, all available for free download. It's enough to make you wish it was March 27 every day of the year!

Our fiction this time: "The Photographer’s Tale" by Daniel Mills, "A Fable of Worcester" by Victor D. Infante, "Angeline of the Woods" by Dylan Fox, "Told in a Brothel on Darien" by Elaine Graham-Leigh, "The Burden of Proof" by David X. Wiggin, "Totem" by Howard Watts, "Huracan" by Matt Baxter and "'A' Story: an Animated Adventure" by Nicholas Rasche. It's one of our strongest ever line-ups.

The Quarterly Review takes in four Doctor Who audio adventures, books from James Lovegrove, Michael Moorcock, Brendan Connell, Stephen King, Michael Croteau and Gary McMahon, and comics from the brothers Nicolle, Black Coat Press and Dargaud. In our film section, Jacob Edwards and Douglas Ogurek review The Adjustment Bureau, I Am Number Four, Paul, Season of the Witch and Tron: Legacy.

The space-age cover is by superstar artist Howard Watts, and Ben Ludlam illustrates the story "Huracan" in the pdf and print editions.

If it weren't for the slightly lazy editorial, I'd call this our best ever issue!

It's available in all the usual formats, all free except the print edition, which we’ve priced as cheaply as possible:

• Print from Lulu
• PDF (ideal for iPad)
• Mobi (ideal for Kindle)
• Epub (ideal for Sony Reader)
• TQF36 on Feedbooks

Here are the dear people who made this issue possible:

Ben Ludlam is an artist from the wastelands of County Durham. You can see more of his work at http://banthafodder.deviantart.com.

Daniel Mills is a young writer and lifelong resident of New England. His first novel, Revenants, is available from Chômu Press. (I’ve read it, and it’s quite superb—a review should appear in TQF37.)

David X. Wiggin was born during a blizzard in Georgetown Hospital. He currently occupies the position of a living cliché as a Brooklyn-dwelling writer along with his supportive wife and two insane cats. He has previously published fiction in Steampunk Magazine and Alt Hist (edited by TQF33 contributor Mark Lord).

Douglas Ogurek’s Roman Catholic faith and love of animals strongly influence his work. He lives in Gurnee, Illinois with his wife and their pets. To this issue he contributes reviews of Season of the Witch and I Am Number Four. To TQF33 he contributed the astonishing “NON”.

Dylan Fox lives in North Wales with his partner, their cats and their laptops, and works in an office doing admin. He’s had fiction appear on the Science in My Fiction blog, Bewildering Stories and a few other places. He has a blog at www.dylanfox.net where he talks about writing, memes, living with depression, gadgets, interesting facts he stumbles across and anything else about which he needs to think aloud.

Elaine Graham-Leigh is a political campaigner, historian and trainee accountant. When not bringing down the system from within, she writes speculative fiction and has had previous stories published at Jupiter SF, Bewildering Stories and The Harrow.

Howard Watts is an artist from Brighton. He has previously provided covers for Pantechnicon, Dark Horizons and TQF, and for this issue as well as supplying the cover he provides the story “Totem”.

Jacob Edwards is currently indentured to Australia’s speculative fiction flagship Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, as Jack of all Necessities (Deckchairs and Bendy Straws). To this issue he contributes reviews of the films Tron: Legacy, The Adjustment Bureau and Paul.

John Greenwood is the co-editor of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, and before that had been its most frequent contributor. His blog on rare and unusual books can be found at http://oxfambooksandmusicmoseley.blogspot.com.

Matt Baxter is a chef who occasionally runs an online bookshop, and he lives somewhere in the Midlands.

Nicholas Rasche is a writer and comedian based in Melbourne, Australia. His fiction has appeared in various journals, including Island, Going Down Swinging and The Famous Reporter. He recently co-wrote and appeared in “Supermanchild” (with Lisa-Skye Ioannidis), presented at the 2010 Melbourne International Comedy Festival.

Stephen Theaker is the eponymous co-editor of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, and writes many of its reviews. His reviews have also appeared in respectable publications like Prism and Black Static. He is very happy with this issue.

Victor D. Infante is the author of City of Insomnia, a poetry collection from Write Bloody Publishing (http://writebloody.com/), and his poems and stories have been published in numerous periodicals, including Chiron Review, Pearl, The Nervous Breakdown, Spillway, Word Riot and Dark Horizons. He founded The November 3rd Club, an online literary journal of political writing, and will shortly be launching a new online project, Radius: Poetry From the Center to the Edge. He lives and writes with his wife and pet ferret in a triple-decker apartment in Worcester, Mass., USA and has serious opinions about reality TV cooking competitions.

Next issue due June 27!

Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #35 – now available to download!

Feeling hopeless about 2011? Here’s Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #35, 96 pages of fiction and reviews, to wash away your pain with the pain of others. “Involuntary Muscle” by Black Static contributor Maura McHugh tells of Lilly, her unhappy life made more miserable yet by surprising news. “House of Nowhere”, a novella by Matthew Amundsen, concerns brave Hully Bo, trapped in a submerged house and tortured by the mean and mysterious Conjurer.

We then have reviews of books by Justin Isis, Brendan Connell, Lucius Shepard, Johnny Mains, André Gide, Kevin Anderson and Sam Stall, Scott Edelman and Kristine Ong Muslim, and of the latest instalments of Doctor Who and Harry Potter. In the comics section we take a look at Clint #4, the wonderfully wordy Showcase Presents DC Comics Presents Superman Team-Ups, Vol. 1, and Strangers: Homicron.

The seasonal cover is by lovely Howard Watts.

Available in all the usual formats, all free except the print edition, which we’ve priced as cheaply as possible:

• Print from Lulu (only £2.64 at present, though the postage'll kill ya!)
• PDF
• Kindle/Mobi
• Sony Reader/Epub
• TQF35 on Feedbooks

Here are the magnificent people who made this issue possible:

Matthew Amundsen’s stories have been published in The Harrow, Millennium SF&F, Zygote in My Coffee, Starsong, and others. He has also published extensive music criticism for brainwashed.com and various print publications. Over the years, he has worked in film, television, and photography while living in New York, Atlanta, and Minneapolis. He now lives in Knoxville, Tennessee, where he continues to write as well as record and perform experimental music as Surface Hoar.

John Greenwood is the co-editor of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, as well as its most frequent contributor. His blog on rare and unusual books can be found at http://oxfambooksandmusicmoseley.blogspot.com. In this issue he reviews I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like and A Roomful of Machines.

Maura McHugh was born in the USA but was transplanted to Ireland when too young to protest. Her short stories and poetry have appeared in publications in the USA and the UK such as Fantasy, Shroud Magazine, Black Static, Goblin Fruit, M-Brane SF and Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2010. In 2009 her script, “Hotel Training”, was shot and premiered as part of the Hotel Darklight anthology film. She also co-juried/edited The Campaign for Real Fear horror story competition with author Christopher Fowler. In the coming months Atomic Diner will publish the graphic novel Róisín Dubh, for which Maura wrote the scripts.

Douglas Ogurek’s Roman Catholic faith and love of animals strongly influence his work. He lives in Gurnee, Illinois with his wife and their pets. To this issue he contributes a review of the latest Harry Potter film. To TQF33 he contributed the astonishing “NON”.

Stephen Theaker is the eponymous editor of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, and writes many of its reviews. His reviews have also appeared in Prism and Black Static. He wishes you all a happy new year.

Howard Watts is an artist from Brighton. He has previously provided covers for Pantechnicon, Dark Horizons and TQF, and for this issue as well as supplying the cover he has written a review of the Doctor Who Christmas Special.

Next issue due March 27!

Theaker's Quarterly in 2011

A quick update on our plans for this year.

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #35 will be out very soon – next weekend, with a bit of luck. It features a novella by Matthew Amundsen and a short story by Maura McHugh. I hope you'll enjoy it.

Issue 36 is now scheduled for the end of March, with issues appearing every three months thereafter: June (#37), September (#38) and December (#39).

We haven't been on a proper quarterly schedule since issues 5 to 8, back in 2005, and even then we also produced four issues of the ill-fated November Spawned.

So for the first time ever we'll have a clear three months between issues. We're really looking forward to taking our time over them, making them as good as we possibly can.

It means that we're always going to be one issue behind McSweeney's Quarterly Concern (long-time readers will know that our arbitrary yet oddly motivational goal was always to catch up with them), but perhaps that's the way it ought to be.

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #34

It's been a long time coming, but finally it's here! Unfortunately there are no female contributors to this issue, as previously discussed, but at least that means we don't have to talk about our feelings. Except for manly feelings about war and death and stuff, that is, and a bit in the convention report where grown men blub. But at least there are no girls around to see our tough facades crack!

What we do have though is a series of terrific stories, an indulgent editorial, our first ever convention report, and a huge review section: twenty-two books, seven movies, three audio reviews, one comic and one game. The cover is once again by the wonderful Howard Watts.

If you fancy taking a look, you could download the free pdf of this issue from us here (it's the perfect size for reading on an iPad), ebook versions are available for free from Feedbooks (including Kindle and epub versions), and the original version, a 156pp paperback, is available from Lulu for £3.99 (they also have a slightly higher resolution pdf available for free download).

Editorial:

• Why Aren’t I Reading My Paper Books Any More? Stephen Theaker

Fiction:

• The Chapel on the Headland, Rafe McGregor
• The Needs of the Dead, Jon Vagg
• The Frog God’s Chosen, Steve Cotterill
• The Free Dynamos and the Lone Island in the Sky, Mike Phillips
• Of Kith and Kin, Howard Watts
• Barney Wilson, Kevin R. Bridges
• Glass Houses, David Tallerman
• Name the Planet, Ross Gresham

Convention report:

• Mr Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction Goes to FantasyCon, Stephen Theaker

Reviews:

• Doctor Who, The Daleks’ Master Plan, Part II: The Mutation of Time
• Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons
• Doctor Who 133: City of Spires
• Blind Swimmer: an Eibonvale Press Anthology
• Blood Oath
• The Collected Connoisseur
• Crack’d Pot Trail
• The First Collected Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach
• The Cult of Osiris
• Dinosaur Park
• Doctor Lerne, Subgod: the Scientific Marvel
• Fiction of Maurice Renard, Vol. 1
• The Empathy Effect
• Flirt
• Futile Flame
• Hell’s Belles!
• The House of Canted Steps
• Johannes Cabal the Detective
• The Library of Forgotten Books
• Ms Wildthyme and Friends Investigate
• The Occult Files of Albert Taylor
• Quartet & Triptych
• Rare Unsigned Copy
• The Terror and the Tortoiseshell
• Twisthorn Bellow
• Unpleasant Tales
• Magic Mirror: A Compendium of Comics 1983–1998
• Perfect Dark
• The Dinner Party
• Hunter Prey
• Ju-on: White Ghost / Ju-on: Black Ghost
• Iron Man 2
• A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
• Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
• The Storm Warriors

Here are the brilliant people who made this issue possible:

Kevin R. Bridges lives in the Pacific Northwest. (I would expand on Kevin’s bio to explain that the Pacific Northwest is part of the United States of America – but according to Feedbooks’ analytics the vast majority of our readers are actually American…)

Steve Cotterill lives and works in Birmingham.  He’s just starting out as a writer but his work has also appeared on the Horrorbound website and he is starting to plan his first novel.

Jacob Edwards is currently indentured to Australia’s speculative fiction flagship Andromeda Spaceways, as Jack of all Necessities (Deckchairs and Bendy Straws). To this issue he contributes a book review.

John Greenwood is the co-editor of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, as well as its most frequent contributor. His blog on rare and unusual books can be found at http://oxfambooksandmusicmoseley.blogspot.com.

Ross Gresham lives in Colorado. His contribution to this issue is “Name the Planet”. He previously contributed the excellent “Beyond the Fifth Sky” to Dark Horizons #54.

Rafe McGregor is is a crime fiction author who spends far too much of his time rereading the work of H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James. He lives with his wife in a village near York.

Douglas Ogurek’s Roman Catholic faith and love of animals strongly influence his work. He lives in Gurnee, Illinois with his wife and their pets. To this issue he contributes a pair of movie reviews. To TQF33 he contributed the astonishing “NON”.

Mike Phillips grew up on a small farm in West Michigan, where every summer he would tend sheep, mend fences, garden, build furniture, chop wood, and goof off. The time remaining he spent reading.

David Tallerman is the author of around a hundred short stories, numerous poems, reviews, comic scripts, and at least one novel.  Publication highlights so far include appearances in Chiaroscuro, Space and Time, Flash Fiction Online, and John Joseph Adams’s zombie best-of anthology The Living Dead. For more see http://davidtallerman.net and http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com.

Stephen Theaker is the eponymous editor of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction. He wrote many but not all of this issue’s reviews, as well as the News & Notes and Contributors sections.

Jon Vagg mainly writes educational and coffee-table books. He is socially isolated, works late into the night and suffers from a highly deviant imagination. His stories have appeared, among other places, in Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #30, Ignavia 3.2 and Ballista #7.

Howard Watts is an artist from Brighton. He has previously supplied covers for Pantechnicon, Dark Horizons and TQF.

So that's that! We're now hoping to do another two issues by the end of the year, catching us right up, and then next year we'll settle into a regular quarterly schedule.

There are no stories by women in the next TQF...

Peter Tennant, having read literally thousands of anthologies for the latest review column in Black Static, has produced a fascinating analysis of the gender balance in them: see Women in Horror Anthologies.

Peter asked Best New Horror editor Stephen Jones about this issue in an interview for the most recent Black Static, and coincidentally I asked Catastrophia editor Allen Ashley about it too, in an interview for the last issue of Dark Horizons, and both gave pretty much the same reply: I choose stories by quality, I don't have a quota system, etc.

This stuff is on my mind at the moment: there are no female contributors to the next issue of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction. And both books by women reviewed in this issue get a bit of a pasting.

I'm a bit unhappy about how that looks, but I do think our ratio of acceptances of stories by women is pretty much in proportion with our ratio of submissions by women.

When larger magazines make that point, the answer is usually that they should reach out to female writers and encourage them to submit, but that's not really an option for a non-paying zine like ours.

And even with bigger magazines that can be awkward: asking someone to submit puts you in a difficult position if the story they submit – the one they have written especially for you! – is not their best work.

On the website of Mslexia there's a thought-provoking article on women in writing, one which I think anyone working in the field should at least read: Three Cures for Mslexia.

One thing in particular caught my eye, in the context of discussing lower submission rates from women:

"The only exception we found was for writing competitions, where for some reason women seemed less inhibited: perhaps because competitions seem more of a lottery, and so less personally threatening; perhaps because it’s easier for them to find the time to complete a single poem or short story for a competition."

My experience with the BFS bears out the idea that women submit in greater proportions to short story competitions. 43% of the entries to the BFS short story competition this year were from women, while only 15% of submissions to Dark Horizons in the same period were.

(The competition and the magazine were both open to all fantastical genres. The same person was in charge of both, and both received roughly 150 submissions in that period.)

I don't want to go very far in speculating why the difference is so huge, but I think the perception that a competition is fairer must be a factor. The short story competition rules get disseminated further, through competition magazines and websites, so that might be another. Is losing en masse more appealing than being personally rejected? Does the prize make a difference? Are men just more willing to give their work away to non-paying markets?

Trying to answer some of those questions could very quickly lead the unwary onto dodgy ground. But it does seem to me that from examining the differences in submission rates, and the reasons for those differences, a way might be found to encourage more submissions from women, and hence publish more stories by women – which would be brilliant.

Withdrawing TQF from the British Fantasy Awards

We were delighted to be on the shortlist of the British Fantasy Award for Best Magazine/Periodical this year, and I'm impossibly grateful to every one of the silly, lovely people who voted for the magazine in the first and second rounds of voting.

But as the administrator of those awards I only left it in because (a) I assumed it wouldn't get any votes and (b) a constitutional glitch meant that I couldn't ignore the votes that did come in. That glitch was all sorted out at the AGM of the British Fantasy Society – and now BFS members know why I wanted to fix it!

The winner of the award for best magazine was Murky Depths.

The BFS is now taking recommendations for next year's awards, and I've decided to withdraw Theaker's Quarterly Fiction from the Best Magazine/Periodical award for as long as I'm the awards administrator, or as long as I'm the editor of the magazine – whichever tenure comes to an end first. (Individual contributions will still be eligible, in the same way that stories from BFS publications are.)

That's partly because I'd have been profoundly embarrassed to win the award over a shortlist that included for example Black Static and Interzone, magazines to whom, for all our good qualities, we can't hold a candle. But also because a win for us in that category would have cast not just my integrity into doubt, but the integrity of the entire awards.

Of course, now I can sit back every year and say, we'd have won that. So in a sense, by withdrawing, I get to win every year... ;-)

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction 34 – terrible delays!

I'm really sorry for the lengthy delay in publishing issue 34 of our lovely magazine – and I can assure you that issue 34, when it finally sees the light of day, will be as lovely as any other!

The reason of course is that I got dragged kicking and screaming – or at least with a shrug of resignation – into handling the administration of FantasyCon 2010, and that has soaked up my weekends with little regard for any other projects I wanted to work on.

(If you haven't bought a ticket yet, get to it! Make sure issue 34's sacrifice wasn't in vain!)

But things are definitely going to run a little more smoothly from next month. David Howe is planning to take over as chair of the BFS, so that's one job off the list. I won't be involved in FantasyCon 2011, other than as an inebriated attendee, so that's another.

Once I get back from this year's FantasyCon I'll be finishing off Theaker's 34 and then rolling straight on to issue 35. John's been reading our submissions this year and he's picked some brilliant stuff for the next few issues. Thanks for your patience!

Nominated for the British Fantasy Award for Best Magazine!

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction has somehow sneaked on to the shortlist for the British Fantasy Awards. Since I'm currently the administrator of those awards it's a little embarrassing, so a pox on everyone who voted for us!

I'm won't pretend there aren't magazines out there who might have been expected to earn the slot ahead of us. For example the longlist featured brilliant publications like Weird Tales, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Clarkesworld Magazine, Dodgem Logic, Estronomicon and Fantasy Magazine.

So there's a bit of luck in it, and perhaps a bit of gratitude for the work I've done for the BFS, but I'll take it! We did publish some marvellous material last year. The other nominees are Black Static, Cemetery Dance, Interzone, Midnight Street and Murky Depths. Postscripts won the 2009 award, but competed this year as an anthology instead, so it's wide open. Good luck to everyone! Especially us!

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #33

I don't think it's at all a stretch to say that this is one of the strangest issues of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction we've ever published!

Our lead story is "NON", by Douglas Ogurek, a dizzying blur of new words, new fashions and new ideas, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as written by Anthony Burgess. I guarantee that by the end of it you'll be thinking of certain people as dreadfully uncleused.

Then we have Steve Redwood's "Nose Trek", the story of a nose that implodes upon itself, and the brave souls who go inside to investigate. What happens once the mass of mucus in a nostril has passed the Chandrasekhar limit?

"Houseguest" by D. Harlan Wilson is as odd – and exciting – as anyone who's read his other work would expect, while "El Aullido del Diablo" by Dean M. Drinkel is so entertainingly barmy that I have to confess I'm not entirely sure what it's about, but I know I enjoyed it!

By these standards, "Bird Talk" by Mark Lord is almost incongruously normal, despite its mix of witches, clerics and boozy tramps.

The issue is rounded out by a relatively normal selection of reviews (as long as you think there's nothing unusual about lengthy discussions of whether Superman can move his lips quickly and skilfully enough to mimic the softness of a human kiss, that is).

The cover is by the wonderful Howard Watts.

Download the pdf of this issue here. Ebook versions are available for free from Feedbooks. The paperback is available from Lulu.

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #32, featuring Pantechnicon #10

This is rather a sad issue for us here at Silver Age Books. For one thing, we’d hoped for many, many years that with issue 32 we would finally catch up with McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern – in terms of issue numbers if nothing else. It was a silly, arbitrary goal, but one that kept us going through the long Sundays of proofreading. But it wasn’t to be: we’ve produced this issue a bit late, and those literary rascals at McSweeney’s managed to sneak out an issue 33 just as the year turned. We could console ourselves with the thought that Hamish Hamilton have yet to release issue 33 in the UK, but it feels hollow. Blast the erudite, beautiful hide of Dave Eggers and all who work in his dungeons!

The second reason for our sadness affects the reader more directly. In this issue concludes the saga of Newton Braddell, a virtual ever-present in this magazine since his first appearance in issue 8, back in 2005. “The ship drifted like a wind-tossed seed through the long night of space.” Thus it began, and Newton never really achieved much more control over his life than was thus established. Yet his endless adventures have endlessly entertained this editor – and sustained the magazine! I have always known that should no other suitable contributions be received, there would always be at the very least a Newton Braddell episode to publish. Herein we have the final four episodes: the magazine will be forever lessened.

But new adventures ever beckon! On one hand, in the style of British comics of old, this issue features on its flipside one of the final issues of Pantechnicon, a fellow zine that ran out of steam. Though I am of course always glad to see our rivals tumble to their doom, I was more than happy to help them get their last issues out to the world.

Also, I was recently lucky enough to be appointed the caretaker chair of the British Fantasy Society… It’s a huge honour, but it does mean that this year’s issues of TQF will probably be a bit shorter than usual (like this one), so that I can do my best to stay on top of everything. Our schedule may be a little more erratic than usual. As my favourite typo has it, bare with us!

This issue's cover is by Howard Watts, an artist from Brighton who has previously supplied covers for Pantechnicon and Theaker's Quarterly.

There are just two reviews in this issue, both of Doctor Who audio adventures from Big Finish: Patient Zero and Paper Cuts.

You can get the two parts of this issue free from us from here (TQF) and here (Pantechnicon). Paper copies of the two, arranged as a fancy flipbook, are available to purchase from Lulu. They are also available from Feedbooks for free download in various formats to read on your Kindle, Sony Reader, Nook, iPad etc, and even in a simplified pdf that might be handy for anyone reading the issue onscreen.

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #1

| Free pdf |

This first issue of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction is dedicated to anyone who ever cried because they felt sad.

Being sad is a feeling, and the stories in this magazine will often be about feelings. Feelings. The way people feel, and the way that some people don’t. If you have ever had a feeling you will understand what I am talking about. If you have never had a feeling maybe the stories in this magazine will awaken one in you. That feeling might be disgust, boredom or ennui, but it might just as well be desire, excitement or amity. We shall find out together.

In this first issue of TQF I am pleased to present the first portion of my second-favourite ever novel, Professor Challenger in Space. It is not the first time it has seen publication, having previously seen print as a special folderback edition, then as a paperback, and then as a rocket ebook. But I make no apologies for recycling the same old material – this is after all one of three issues of TQF being produced retrospectively for the year of 2004, in order to bed down the format and give us all a running start at the first issue proper.

I could have course have pretended that these issues had been produced at the appropriate points of the year gone by, and thus given myself the opportunity to be regarded as a great prognosticator in the mould of Arthur C. Clarke. For example, in this spring issue, I could predict that, against all the odds, the European Championships this year will be won by footballing minnows Greece. But I won’t, because the theme of this issue is honesty – honesty and trust – and feelings.

I have another excuse for re-using my crusty old Professor Challenger novel, and that is that it finally went out of print last year, and so is at the moment only available second-hand (there are usually a couple of copies available via Amazon.co.uk).

I will not go into too much detail here about the aims of this magazine – that should really be saved for the first bona fide issue – but this issue might still be the first for someone, and to that person I say, “Hello. This is a slightly silly magazine, full of stories which may not be to your taste, and for that I make no apology. The only true purpose of TQF is to make me smile. If it makes anyone else smile (for whatever reason), that is wonderful. Smiling and happiness are good things, as long as they are not at another’s expense. But I make no allowances for you, either in my writing or in my editing of the stories selected for publication herein.”

One might hope that the person in question has the patience for long expository speeches, but that would of course be to set us on the road of making the allowances proscribed by my own exposition. Perhaps I have been too harsh. – The Editor

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This issue is also included in the bound volume of the 2004 issues: Theaker's Quarterly Fiction: Year One (#1-4), available to buy now!