Unofficial list of material that's eligible for fantasy awards in 2013

If anyone would like to contribute to a completely and utterly unofficial list of 2012 material that might be eligible for fantasy awards in 2013, here you go:

Fill in the form

And it'll appear on the list.

Doesn't matter if you're a member of any particular society or a convention goer, or if it's your own work, or something you published, or anything like that. Do try to suggest things that you think are good, though!

Note that this is completely unofficial and not even slightly endorsed by any particular organisation.

If you spot a mistake or a miscategorisation on the list, point it out using the "Correct something" option on the form.

I hope this'll end up producing quite a useful list of relevant 2012 releases, but if not it'll at least be handy for me. Already had a few contributions to the list, and been spurred to think of a few myself.

Bricks by Leon Jenner – reviewed by John Greenwood

How to review a book that is categorised by its publisher as fiction ("All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental") but which refutes its own fictitiousness?

I hope you listen and do not see them [the words in the book] as entertainment. They are true. This is not fiction, even if they make me sell it as such.

To confuse matters further, the only two named characters in the book are historical persons, Julius Caesar and Paulinus, although the accounts of their struggles against the Celts of Britain are indeed highly fictionalised. Moreover, the novel, if it is such, contains two lengthy appendices full of historical source material and philosophical discussion. The reader will find very little descriptive narrative here, apart from a few chapters in the middle which rewrite the Roman invasions of Britain as a triumphant victory for the indigenous people.

The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories, by Dr Seuss – reviewed by Jacob Edwards

The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories, by Dr Seuss (HarperCollins, hb, 72pp). Left foot, left foot, left foot, right, feet in mourning, feat in spite. Few people who have grown up to read (or write) speculative fiction will have done so without a childhood encounter or two with author/illustrator Theodor Geisel—alias Theo LeSieg or, more famously, Dr Seuss. In fact, so iconic are Geisel’s surrealist drawings and rhyming verse that ever since his death in 1991 the children’s book industry seems to have placed an indefinite moratorium on any work even remotely imitative. It’s as if some publishing god (or perhaps just the Geisel Estate lawyers, who reputedly are as hard-lined as the Yooks and the Zooks of Seuss’s Butter Battle Book) sent out a rhyming memo—something to the effect of:

Rhysop’s Fables by Rhys Hughes – reviewed (sort of) by Stephen Theaker

Having just finished reading Rhysop’s Fables by Rhys Hughes (Gloomy Seahorse Press, ebook, 2593ll), a squirrel decided to visit his friend the blue whale. He rode on a train, jumped a few fences, and climbed a few trees, and in the time it takes to say as much he was looking his immense friend in the face.

“Good morning,” said the whale.

“Good morning,” said the squirrel.

“Good morning,” said the hundreds of thousands of krill that were trying without success to escape the whale’s baleen plates.

The whale shook his head sadly. (The squirrel gripped the sides of his little sailing nut as it was buffeted by the resulting waves.) “I’m so tired of krill, so tired of water sloshing around my mouth all day. I envy you, squirrel, with your diet of nice dry nuts, I really do.”

“Come stay with me a while then,” said the squirrel. “I’ve plenty of nuts stored away.”

“That sounds wonderful,” said the whale. “A change would be as good as a vest.”

“A vest? Don’t you mean a rest?”

“Have you been in the ocean lately? A good set of thermals is what I really need, but since they aren’t available in my size, a change will have to do.”

The squirrel nodded, and the two of them climbed a few trees, jumped a few fences, and rode on a train. In the time it takes to say as much they were sitting on a branch outside the squirrel’s hole.

The branch immediately broke. The whale fell to the ground and bruised his tail. The squirrel, however, managed to grab onto another branch and saved himself.

¶ The high life isn’t for everyone, especially not blue whales!

The squirrel placed a cold compress upon his friend’s tail.

“You wait here,” he said, “and I’ll go and get the key to my nutty cupboard.”

He scampered up to his little hole, went to his little bed, and slipped a golden key out from under his fluffy little pillow. He carried it down the tree and unlocked the little red door to his nutty cupboard.

The blue whale gasped in amazement. Inside there were one hundred and fifty gorgeous, golden nuts. Some were tiny, some were medium-sized, but all looked blinking delicious.

“Nice, eh?” said the squirrel. “Would you like to try one?”

“Would I?” said the whale. “Of course! Just poke a hole in my baleen and push it in!”

It was the most delicious thing the whale had ever tasted. The squirrel had one too, and then closed and locked the little red door.

For the rest of the day the two of them chatted as old friends will, their conversation covering such topics as politics, the environment, gossip about their mutual friends and enemies, films they had seen and books they had read.

The blue whale liked the sound of Rhysop’s Fables and decided to buy himself a copy, but, that aside, his mind was on just one thing: to eat more of those nuts.

Before long his friend went to bed, and once the whale could hear happy little snores drifting down from the tree top he climbed the tree himself, squeezed into the squirrel’s hole, sneaked over to the squirrel’s little bed, and slipped his hand under the squirrel’s fluffy little pillow.

The golden key! He had it!

When the squirrel awoke he climbed down the tree to see the red door to his nuts wide open, the store obviously depleted, and his friend the whale gingerly holding his tummy. The squirrel was sad.

“I’m sorry,” said the whale. “I ate seventy-four of your nuts, one after the other. I just couldn’t stop pushing your nuts into my mouth. Consuming each one made me want another just like it, and now here we are, our friendship betrayed by my whale-sized greed. I’m so sorry. Will you still be my friend?”

“All you had to do was ask,” said the squirrel. “I should have realised that while one nut was enough for me, it couldn’t possibly be enough for a big fellow like you. As long as you enjoyed them all, that’s the main thing.”

“I did, I did,” said the whale. “Although after fifty or sixty the fun went out of it. It began to feel rather mechanical. Maybe the nuts toward the back of your store aren’t as tasty as those at the front.”

The squirrel took one of the remaining nuts and tried it. “No,” he said. “As lovely as the rest. You just let your palate get jaded, and forgot to take the time to enjoy each individual nut. Having said that, I’ve never eaten so many in one go, and now I’m wondering what it would be like.”

And with that the squirrel and the whale ate the remaining seventy-three nuts, and thoroughly enjoyed them. When the store was empty the whale thrashed his tail a bit, causing eight large nuts to fall from the trees. They enjoyed these as much as the others, but took their time with them.

¶ If you squirrel everything away, you’ll never have a whale of a time. And though nuts, like jokes, wisdom and fables, can be most effective when taken in small quantities, let yourself have the pleasure of gorging on them once in a while.

Your morning cup of what the heck…?

Just received an email from someone offering to write for us:

"The good news is that I'd be able to offer my services at no charge; the only thing I would ask in return is that I'm able to include a link to a company within the article. Nothing adult or in bad taste, just one of the professional businesses for which I freelance."

She was kind enough to provide links to her work, letting us see who took her up on the offer, some of them even publishing the work under their own names (assuming that she's telling the truth).

See if you can spot the paid links…

• http://www.blackpresence.co.uk/2012/01/remembering-a-legend-gil-scott-heron/
• http://www.shaanhaider.com/2012/01/urine-controlled-video-games.html
• http://www.eyebridge.in/blog/looking-stylish-in-the-mobile-world-mobile-first-design/
• http://probablydontlikeyou.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/the-very-definition-of-i-dont-give-a-damn/
• http://www.myinfosecjob.com/2012/01/how-to-sell-the-value-of-information-security/

What a world…!

A few comments on the shortlist of the British Fantasy Awards 2012

The British Fantasy Award shortlist for 2012 has been announced. It's the product of BFS/FantasyCon members making up to three recommendations in each category (two sets of three in best novel), the top four in each category going through, and the juries then adding up to two "egregious omissions". Here are the nominees and a few of my thoughts. I have to admit I didn't recommend much this year, not having read much contemporary fiction in 2011.

Note that I'm just using that picture to the right because this lot are nominees, not us: we missed out this year!

NOVEL

Two awards will be made out of this one category, one for horror and one for fantasy. As many people have commented on Twitter, it’s an odd set-up, but that’s what most BFS members voted for. The explanation given before the vote was this, and I think the way the new BFS awards admin who inherited the new rules has handled it makes sense. Although the voting was divided into fantasy and horror, all those votes were counted together at the end. So four of these were the books that got the most votes, regardless of genre. Half the novel votes being ringfenced that way for fantasy does seem to have led to a more varied shortlist. The judges added two titles to this category – the books by George R.R. Martin and Jo Walton, I'd guess. I didn't read many novels from 2011 during 2011, but I went for Revenants by Daniel Mills. Though it didn't get in here, I hope it might still have a shot at best newcomer.

• The Heroes, Joe Abercrombie
• 11.22.63, Stephen King
• Cyber Circus, Kim Lakin-Smith
• A Dance with Dragons, George R.R. Martin
• The Ritual, Adam Nevill
• Among Others, Jo Walton

NOVELLA

Four nominations from one book! The jury added two titles to this category. I'd guess at Elizabeth Hand and Lavie Tidhar, but I could be completely wrong. I'm reading Gorel now, and it's very good, but haven't read any of the others.

• Terra Damnata, James Cooper
• Ghosts with Teeth, Peter Crowther (from A Book of Horrors)
• Alice Through the Plastic Sheet, Robert Shearman (from A Book of Horrors)
• Near Zennor, Elizabeth Hand (from A Book of Horrors)
• The Music of Bengt Karlsson, Murderer, John Ajvide Lindqvist (from A Book of Horrors)
• Gorel and the Pot Bellied God, Lavie Tidhar

SHORT FICTION

Another two nominations for A Book of Horrors; launching at FantasyCon always stands you in good stead for the BFAs. The jury added one title to this shortlist, but I couldn't guess which. I was expecting at least one story, maybe more, from last year's winner in this category, so I was pleasantly surprised by that. (And, okay, a little disappointed, because I don't like being wrong.)

• Dermot, Simon Bestwick (from Black Static)
• King Death, Paul Finch 
• Sad, Dark Thing, Michael Marshall Smith (from A Book of Horrors)
• Florrie, Adam Nevill (House of Fear)
• The Coffin-Maker’s Daughter, Angela Slatter (from A Book of Horrors)

ANTHOLOGY

I have to admit, Ranjna and I recommended The Weird – a very, very lengthy book – at least partly out of devilry. But glad to see it’s on there. I haven't read the others.

• A Book of Horrors, ed. Stephen Jones
• House of Fear, ed. Jonathan Oliver
• The Weird, eds Jeff and Ann Vandermeer
• Gutshot, ed. Conrad Williams

COLLECTION

I thought Zombies in New York and Other Bloody Jottings was a definite for this category, so that shows how little I know! I'm disappointed that Cat Valente's Ventriloquism didn't make the list, but I hadn't heard any other BFS members talking about it, so it was a bit of a long shot.

• Rumours of the Marvellous, Peter Atkins
• Mrs Midnight, Reggie Oliver
• Everyone’s Just So So Special, Robert Shearman
• A Glass of Shadow, Liz Williams

SCREENPLAY

This category has five titles listed because there was a tie on number of votes and first place choices. I'm utterly amazed that no Doctor Who episodes made the shortlist: I thought "The Doctor's Wife", especially, a dead cert, given that Neil Gaiman wrote it and how much he is loved by BFS members. In fact I thought we’d have an all- or near-all Who shortlist. There were fourteen episodes of Who on last year, so maybe the vote got split. We’ll have a better idea when the BFS releases its complete list of everything that was recommended. I’m delighted to see Midnight in Paris on there (which was my pick), and Attack the Block too. I haven’t seen the others yet. Kill List doesn’t look like a fantasy film; but I'm afraid to ask about it in case finding out about the fantasy element turns out to be a spoiler!

• Midnight in Paris by Woody Allen
• Attack the Block by Joe Cornish
• The Awakening by Stephen Volk and Nick Murphy
• Melancholia by Lars Von Trier
• Kill List by Ben Wheatley and Amy Jump

MAGAZINE/PERIODICAL

That last one is cruel - T, H, E - wait, what, where’s the A-K-E-R?!! Obviously I'm biased here towards the two magazines I've written for (albeit not during 2011), Interzone and Black Static, and hope that one of them wins. I have to admit I know Jeani Rector best from her battles with Dave Byron, but the zine looks to have some decent contributors. I used to love SFX – I bought the first issue the day finals began, and have the first hundred or so in binders. I stopped subscribing after they stopped putting any text on the subscriber covers. Sounds like a little thing, but it made them look so boring. Plus, I could never resist ripping open the spoiler section. In a member vote this would have gone to Black Static, no doubt, but a jury could go any way.

• Black Static, ed. Andy Cox
• Interzone, ed. Andy Cox
• SFX, ed. Dave Bradley
• The Horror Zine, ed. Jeani Rector

COMIC/GRAPHIC NOVEL

This category has five titles listed because there was a tie on number of votes and first place choices. The Walking Dead was my vote here, but I was kicking myself for not recommending Clint, which had a great year, and Kirby Genesis, which I just love. I've enjoyed what I've read of Locke and Key and the new Animal Man.

• Animal Man, Jeff Lemire and Travel Foreman
• Batwoman, J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman
• Locke and Key, Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez
• The Unwritten, Mike Carey and Peter Gross
• The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard

SMALL PRESS

It still seems completely inappropriate to me that the BFS decided to let the sponsors of this category pick the entire jury, but I have to admit they've picked good people. No disrespect to the other contenders, who have all produced interesting stuff, but it’s hard to see anyone but Chômu winning this award, given the quality and quantity of their books.

• Chômu Press
• Gray Friar Press
• NewCon Press
• Spectral Press

ARTIST

Nothing to say about this one – all super artists.

• Ben Baldwin
• Vincent Chong
• Les Edwards
• Daniele Serra

NON-FICTION

This category has five titles listed because there was a tie on number of votes and  first place choices. Generally a very quiet category for recommendations; last year I think the longlist was shorter than the shortlist, though I might be misremembering! Good job no one went for the SF Encyclopedia – I was kicking myself the day after voting for not recommending it – or the jury would have had an awful lot to read. It’s funny how I’m more surprised by the things that I didn’t vote for that didn’t get in, than I am by the things I did vote for that didn’t get in. This looks like a very readable shortlist to me.

• Lest You Should Suffer Nightmares: A biography of Herbert Van Thal, Johnny Mains
• Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero, Grant Morrison
• Nightmare Movies: Horror on Screen since the 1960s, Kim Newman
• Studies in Terror: Landmarks of Horror Cinema, Jonathan Rigby
• Case Notes, Peter Tennant (from Black Static)

More general thoughts....

Well, it’s a typically BFS shortlist! The focus hasn't broadened that much from previous years - most nominations have still gone to writers and/or publishers who are FantasyCon regulars, to horror, and to men. I don't think those things will change without taking BFS members out of the equation, and we wouldn't want to do that. But it does look like the juries might have been using their powers to balance those things out, which is brilliant.

The absence of much of the small pressier stuff – which led one writer to declare "Order is restored"! – is probably down to there only being four nominees from the membership, instead of five. All those nominations for stories from one book, that was launched at FantasyCon by three BFS stalwarts, look just as cliquey as anything that happened last year. The difference being, I'd imagine, that this book is much better.

Looking at the numbers, the shortlist was produced by 952 recommendations from BFS members across 14 categories (fantasy and horror were listed separately on the recs form), with each person able to give I think up to 38 recs (three in twelve categories, one in each of the two special awards). So 952 recommendations is the equivalent of about 25 people using all their recs in each category.

It's odd to compare that with 2010, where we had 999 votes across twelve categories in the final round, or 2011, where 1248 votes were cast – and in both those cases people could only cast one vote per category, not three.

Membership has apparently soared since then. More members, allowed to cast three times the votes, but actually casting fewer in total – why would that be?

The difference can be explained, I think, by there being a big difference between proffering a recommendation, and voting for something off a list. Most people wouldn’t generally think to recommend something they hadn’t read, but asked to choose from a checklist they’ll draw on whatever knowledge they have about the books to make the best decision they can.

Anyway.... good to know that it comes down now to people actually reading the books. I was always really disappointed in previous years to see BFS members saying they had cast their votes the second the shortlist was announced. If I get time I'd love to work my way through some of the nominees as usual, even if this year it won't make any difference to the results.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim – reviewed by Howard Watts

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I enter cautiously, and with some apprehension. The place is a mess. Plates, saucepans, goblets are strewn everywhere—the place looks as though it hasn’t been cleaned for hundreds of years. Cobwebs adorn the corners of the rooms, adding softness. Dirt and dust has gathered in dunes along the edges of the walls, sculpted by the shuffling footfalls of the cursed occupants.

Not a description of one of the many hundreds of locations I’ve found playing Skyrim, unfortunately an embarrassing snapshot of my neglected home, Skyrim having seized my attention like no other game I’ve played before. I’d like to make one thing clear from the beginning of this review: I’m not a huge fan of fantasy games. I prefer a blaster or BFG in my hands as I explore the perfect angular starship passageways of the many SF first/third person shooter games—I even traded Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion following a few minutes of play when I bought my first (now sadly deceased) PS3, due to its low graphic quality. Thankfully (I may regret using that word), Skyrim is a different beast altogether. It’s not as pretty as say the Uncharted or Call of Duty series of games, its colour palette somewhat lacking across the spectrum in comparison, but what Skyrim achieves perfectly is playability, and from that point of view it is unsurpassed—the game is quite simply astonishing.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Reading The Island of Doctor Moreau a year or two ago I was struck by how it wasn’t about what I had thought it was about: the animals are made humanoid by way of plastic surgery, rather than forced mutation or cross-breeding. Because these books are so famous, because we encounter references to them at every turn, we feel we understand them without reading them, and that often isn’t the case.

I’d always thought Fahrenheit 451 (The Folio Society, hb, 176pp) by Ray Bradbury to be a novel about censorship, and to some extent it is. The firemen who burn the books do work for the government. But to a greater extent it’s a novel about dumbing down, the numbing effect of mass entertainment, and—this came as a real surprise—political correctness gone mad.

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #40 – now available for free download!

It's springtime! Don't you deserve to be happy? Then download issue forty of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction – or buy a print copy if you're so inclined!

This issue features our last seven micro-fictions from Rhys Hughes in  “The Delusions and Tangents of Thornton Excelsior”, Lewis Gesner's strange little fable “The Journey of Toil Ling; a Folkish Tale”, a man coping with memories of off-world troubles in “Homecoming” by Mitchell Edgeworth, and thirty-odd pages of reviews by Stephen Theaker, Howard Watts, Jacob Edwards, John Greenwood and Douglas J. Ogurek. Cover art is by Howard Watts and interior art is by Ben Ludlam.

The World House by Guy Adams, reviewed by John Greenwood

What is it about dreams that makes them so hard to remember later? For a start, they're not easily woven into the story of one's waking life. Every night the mind channel-hops to the murkier end of the EPG where you’ll find a mixture of repeats and experimental drama before normal service is resumed the next morning. What was that mad foreign film I was watching last night? Wolf Maggots was it? Can't quite recall. Never mind, back to the 24-hour rolling news and travel.

Partly it is the anarchy of dreams that induce rapid forgetting. They're notorious for ignoring well-established rules of physics. How come that dog could levitate? Well, I was wearing my brother's sweater in the dream, which seemed to explain a lot.

Five silly novels – now on Kindle!

  

My last post here was to apologise for our lack of activity, and this one's to announce we've published four new ebooks, as well as finally producing the Kindle version of an old favourite! Quite a turnaround! So what's going on? Well, these four NaNoWriMo novels appeared in our magazine in our early days, and we'd always meant to publish them as books, but never made the time. And in truth, they weren't really worth the effort! But that didn't stop them clogging up our publishing plans, and getting in the way of us doing more interesting projects. So, I thought, let's just get the buggers out and move on.

None of them are particularly good, and all bear the scars of having been written in under a month, but there's a good joke every twenty pages or so in each of them. (It's only the one joke, but it is recycled mercilessly.*) I ummed and ahhed for a while about whether to publish Howard's novels under his own name, but, you know, he did gamble away all his rights in them to me in a late-night game of Carcassonne. Putting my name on them just makes the admin easier.

Links are to Amazon UK, but the books are available on Kindle worldwide. All these ebooks are Kindle exclusives for now.

Quiet, the Tin Can Brains Are Hunting! – a semi-sequel to Professor Challenger in Space, this was originally published as a Rocket eBook all the way back on 22 January 2001. Mrs Challenger sends a mismatched team of heroes and villains out on a mission to stop the tin can brains.

The Fear Man – the President of Earth battles the universe to get his unborn daughter back. Great idea, poor execution!

Howard Phillips in His Nerves Extruded – following the events of the as yet unpublished (and largely unwritten) Howard Phillips and the Ghastly Mountain Howard is looking for more members to join his band. He has hired beautiful actresses to carry him around on a palanquin.

Howard Phillips and the Doom That Came to Sea Base Delta – Howard goes on a mission to a haunted undersea base.

Howard Phillips and the Day the Moon Wept Blood – the worst writer in the world mounts a literary takeover of England, seizing control of our bookshops and making his base at the British Library.

*And like most of the jokes in these books, that line was stolen from Groo the Wanderer.

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!

Sketch Monsters, Vol. 1: Escape of the Scribbles – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

A little girl draws out her problems—quite literally, in a sketchbook—and then has to deal with them when they come to life and start tearing up the neighbourhood. Aimed at very young kids, and they’ll probably enjoy it, but there’s not much in this short book to interest adults. Should do well in primary schools, so long as the binding is good and sturdy.

Sketch Monsters, Vol. 1: Escape of the Scribbles, by Joshua Williamson and Vinny Navarrete (Oni Press, hb, 40pp)

Rascal Raccoon’s Raging Revenge – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Rascal Raccoon is locked in an eternal struggle with Jumpin’ Jackalope, and one day, despite the terminal unreliability of his mail-order death-traps, he manages to kill him. Sort of: a pair of trucks do most of the hard work. Rascal is now a hero to other meanies, a monster to the merries, and a source of mixed feelings for Jackalope’s curvaceous widow Janey, who did once agree to go on a date with him. At something of a loose end without a nemesis, he agrees to help her find their creator and get him to draw Jackalope back to life, a mission that brings them into the “real” world.

Power Lunch, Vol. 1: First Course – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Joey, the new weird kid at school, gets powers when he eats particular foods; which power he gets depends on which food he eats: trail mix gives him super-speed, white food leaves him unaffected. Jerome, the previous weird kid, needs help with Bug, a bully who spends his quiet time burning ants with a magnifying glass. Jerome encourages his friend to try out for the soccer team, but that means he must walk home alone.

Power Lunch is a good little book, as long as it lasts, with bold, colourful illustrations, and like Sketch Monsters should do well in schools and libraries, but there’s not much here for adults. Older kids may find the lack of substance underwhelming; younger children might be upset by the bullying scenes. To get a kid’s-eye view, I asked my daughters to take a look, but it failed their first test: “Is there a girl in it?”

Power Lunch, Vol. 1: First Course, by J. Torres and Dean Trippe (Oni Press, hb, 44pp).

Before Watchmen: F— Alan Moore

Art for Minutemen
by Darwyn Cooke

The row over Before Watchmen – a rolling bunch of mini-series in the style of Seven Soldiers of Victory – carries on, and probably isn’t going to go away until the project does. Most reaction to it seems to have been very negative, in principle (while acknowledging that the art looks pretty good), but there’s a bunch of people who seem to think Alan Moore is a hypocrite, and that DC has every right to do whatever it wants with these characters.

The thing they don’t seem to get is that Watchmen is a novel. DC Comics has asked the authors of that novel, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, to write a follow-up, and they have declined.

Orcs: Forged for War, by Stan Nicholls and Joe Flood – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Two sets of humans are at war: the monotheist Unis, waging a “crusade against the vermin that infest this land”, and the pantheist Manis, who have allied themselves with the fantastical races. The orcs of the title are a band of brothers (and one sister) fighting for the Manis: the Wolverines. Whichever set of humans win, the magical races know their time is limited. The Wolverines are orcs (and one dwarf) on a mission, Dirty Dozen-style. Having successfully blown up a bridge (or rather, dissolved one of its legs with a magical potion to make it collapse), they are sent by merciless witch queen Jennesta (who for some reason we get to see topless) on an escort mission, taking goblin sorcerer Eegett-Qinx on the road to test a powerful new weapon.

Conan the Barbarian: The Mask of Acheron – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

This unmemorable comic acts as a prequel to the film starring Jason Momoa, who was so brilliantly menacing in Game of Thrones. The comic contains forty-eight story pages detailing the quest of Khalar Zym and his daughter to restore the all-powerful Mask of Acheron, eight text pages about the empire of Acheron, six adverts and a two-page map of Hyboria; by far the most interesting of those pages being, unfortunately, the adverts for Munchkin Conan and a new Angel & Faith comic.

I might give it another read after watching the film, to see where everyone came from (Conan is forced to drop boiling metal on his poor Dad’s head), but there’s no other reason to read this over the frequently superb Conan comics Dark Horse have previously published, especially at a premium price. (The creators are uncredited in my pre-release pdf; I’ve taken their details from Dark Horse’s website.)

Conan the Barbarian: The Mask of Acheron, by Stuart Moore and Gabriel Guzman (Dark Horse, one-shot, 64pp).

Theaker’s Fab Five #3: The Wedding Present, Romana and Mogwai

Time for another round-up of the dazzling discs dominating my five-CD stereo (which is beginning to show a few worrying signs of wear and tear – if it breaks down it’ll blow as big a hole in my work routine as, well, the day I found I could access Facebook via https, thus circumventing all my carefully laid keyword blocks at the router).

1. The Wedding Present: Search for Paradise: Singles 2004–5

Last time I did a round-up I was having a big catch-up with New Order, and this time it’s been the turn of The Wedding Present, inspired by the imminent release of their new album, Valentina. This bundles up the four singles from Take Fountain, together with their b-sides, and a trio of lovely acoustic versions. Not everyone is keen on David Gedge’s voice, but I love it, for its sincerity and heart, yes, of course, but also because it’s easy to sing along with! I’ve tried singing along with David McAlmont and the results were not pleasant. I was intrigued enough by the added vocals on the Klee remix of “I’m From Further North Than You” to buy one of their EPs, and it’s very nice indeed, even if I can't sing along (whatever I learnt while taking GCSE German has been long forgotten).

2. The Wedding Present: The Complete Peel Sessions, CD Three

Includes sessions nine, ten, eleven and twelve, covering the period from the Hit Parade to Take Fountain. Only just bought this box set, and so far this is the only CD I’ve listened to. At the time, I was a bit disappointed by the Hit Parade, when The Wedding Present released a hit single every month – I couldn’t bring myself to buy “Boing” – and Watusi, because to me they felt like a retreat from the more serious, grinding music they had produced with Steve Albini. But listening to them on here along with the excellent songs from Saturnalia and Take Fountain, the ups and downs of changing production styles evened out by consistent BBC engineering, it turns out I’m really keen on all these songs. Feels sometimes like the album I’d hoped they’d make after Seamonsters (one of my favourite albums of all time). The one thing that could have made this better would have been a few snippets of John Peel, like the one that introduces Mogwai’s Government Commissions.

3. The Wedding Present: El Rey

I must look anxious, 'cause she fixes me with this gaze.
“Face it tiger, you’ve just hit the jackpot,” she says.

Can’t go wrong with a Spider-Man reference! This one’s in “Santa Ana Winds”. Add to that a bit of Seinfeld in “Soup” (chorus: “No soup for you! No soup for you!”), production by Steve Albini, and this has been an instant winner. I’ve been singing the wonderful track nine all around the house, changing the lyrics to “The Thing I Like Best About Me Is My Ranjna”. I think a lot of people would agree with that. Wish I’d heard about this album when it first came out. Somehow I missed it till now and I am well on the way to adoring it.

4. Doctor Who: Companion Chronicles: The Invasion of E-Space

The supply of new audio adventures has dried up a bit since I stopped reviewing for the British Fantasy Society, but I have a few older ones that I didn't get around to before: Big Finish are an extraordinarily productive company! This one features Lalla Ward as Romana, telling the story of an adventure with the fourth Doctor and Adric. I think it’s fair to say that my opinion of most of these has been more or less the same: never awful, never mind-blowingly brilliant, but always enjoyable. Review to appear in Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #40.

5. Mogwai: Earth Division EP

The one music CD to survive the avalanche of Wedding Present and Cinerama purchases! (I bought the superb Cinerama Peel Sessions set too.) I like this, but coming straight after the Big Finish CD doesn’t do it many favours, since the first track, “Get to France”, sounds an awful lot like Big Finish’s incidental music. It always takes me a minute or two to realise it’s Mogwai. "Hound of Winter" is unusual for Mogwai, being a proper song with words, but is rather fab, while “Drunk And Crazy” is lovely and noisy. “Does This Always Happen” is classic Mogwai, but with strings.

At one point last month all five slots were taken up by Moby albums, so I carefully avoided doing a Fab Five round-up then. They’re great for working to, but I don’t think I could ever truly love them.

Away from the five-CD stereo, I’ve been listening to the Aphex Twin’s brilliant acid house collection Chosen Lords on the iPad. I’ll be buying the full set of Analord EPs just as soon as my bank balance recovers from paying last year’s income tax. I’ve also been listening to Ghosts I by Nine Inch Nails, which is pretty good, but not quite good enough to get me to fork out for Ghosts II–IV just yet.

The Wedding Present’s new single, “You Jane”, is out now, and there should be a video below. It’s a grower, honest, even if the video's not that great.

What contributors did next #1

Rhys Hughes contributed Thornton Excelsior adventures to TQF38 and TQF39, and I'm pleased to announce that there will be another set of them in issue forty. There's a new interview with him on the Horrifically Horrifying Horror Blog. I'm currently reading his new book, Rhysop's Fables, and it's rather fab.

Bob Lock contributed the Halloween-flavoured "Jack" to TQF25, and what's more his new book, Eclectic Sheep That Androids Never Dreamed Of, features a number of my hand-drawn sheep on its cover! Guess which ones are mine and you'll be able to see why I stopped doing illustrations for our magazine.

KJ Hannah Greenberg contributed "Just One Case of Flash: Another Chimera Tale" to TQF30, and her newest poetry collection, A Bank Robber's Bad Luck With His Ex-Girlfriend, is out from Unbound CONTENT. Readers who use the code "sentiment’s chowder" on their order form will get a 10% discount. It's also available from Amazon.