Theakerly thoughts #3: female avatars, Abrams, worst son ever

Thought 1. The new MGMT single “Your Life Is a Lie” has taken a little while to grow on me, but now I’m loving it, and singing it till my family begs me not to, albeit with slightly altered lyrics (”Your life is a lie / I like to eat pie / Aeroplanes fly / You’re making me cry”). It must be hard when your first big single is such a definitive rock statement. Where do you go from that? Well, I think they’ve found some interesting places.

Thought 2. Apparently it’s a thing that lots of men don’t like playing games with female avatars, to the point that the female Commander Shepard in Mass Effect and its sequels has acquired a separate label: FemShep. Supposedly only a small proportion of men play as her. This baffles me, and not for feminist reasons. Quite the opposite: lecherous reasons! If I’m going to spend thirty hours in a third-person game staring at a character’s bottom, I’d rather it was a female bottom! And ideally my wife’s! In pretty much every game where I could choose a customized character (Mass Effect, Oblivion, Skyrim, Saints Row the Third, etc), I’ve created one that looks an awful lot like Mrs Theaker. Okay, so sometimes I give her green skin, or blue hair, but that makes her easier to spot in the thick of battle. So I find it really weird that dudes are so adamant about playing as blokes. Perhaps they need to identify more closely with the player character than I do. Maybe they play online more than I do, and prefer an online avatar that will closely resemble them. Or maybe it’s a variety of homosexual panic: playing as a female character means you tend to attract romantic interest from male characters. Well, whatever. Doesn’t matter what those guys think of Commander Ranjna Shepard, they still owe their lives to her bravery!

Thought 3. An old thought, this. A review begun a long time ago but out of date before it was published. My thoughts from last year on watching the first few episodes of Person of Interest:
     Long-time readers will probably have guessed that I disagreed with Howard Watts’ scathing assessment of J.J. Abrams’ television productions in his review of Alcatraz, in particular when it came to Lost, which I’d rank among the very best programmes I’ve seen. Many people have an inflated idea of how many mysteries in Lost were left unanswered, possibly because they were answered as the programme went along with little fanfare, and so the masses who turned up for just the last episode thought they hadn’t been answered at all. In fact, there’s an irritatingly stubborn and just plain irritating idea abroad that the last episode revealed the whole programme to have been set in purgatory, which of course it didn’t. (The “purgatory” bits were a sequel to the events of the island, not an explanation for them. Their main purpose, I felt, was to show us the characters in different situations, letting us distinguish which of their characteristics were the result of circumstances, which were innate.) Alias and Fringe were brilliant at times, and even Felicity had its moments!
     I didn’t get around to watching Alcatraz (it was still piling up on the TiVo when it was cancelled), so I’ll defer to Howard’s opinion on that one, but I have been watching Person of Interest, Season 1, executive produced by Abrams, but created and written by Jonathan Nolan, co-writer of the Batman film trilogy.
     John Reese (Jim Cavaziel) is a war veteran living on the streets recruited by mysterious, wealthy Finch (Michael Emerson) to intercede in situations where someone is going to die, the twist being that he doesn’t know if the name he’s got is the victim or the murderer. It’s been excellent so far, the premise a successful cross between The Equalizer and Quantum Leap, with potential for one-off stories and longer arcs. Maybe it’s just my knowledge of the programme’s writer talking, but it’s not at all far off a Batman television series, albeit with the money transferred from Batman to Alfred, as Reese monitors each situation from the shadows before unleashing his violence skills at the crucial moment. He has some marvellous dialogue, my favourite from episode one being the warning he gives a crooked police officer: “I don’t particularly like killing people, but I’m very good at it.” One to check out, even if subsequent episodes tended more to the procedural than the exceptional.

Thought 4. Because the person who writes an FAQ has to write down the question as well as their answer, FAQs can sometimes provide an interesting opportunity to consider the difference between the questions that are being asked, and the questions someone thinks they are being asked.

Thought 5. Another old thought. Two hundred words on the subject of Once Upon a Time, that I decided weren’t suitable for publication as a review, given that I’d only half-watched the half of it that I watched:
     Once Upon a Time, Season 1 (Five) hasn’t been essential viewing for me, but the three female quarters of our family love it, and each casting announcement for season two (Mulan, the Little Mermaid, Captain Hook, and so on) has been a big deal for them. Superficially very similar in concept to the comic Fables, with fairytale characters living in our world (in this case in the town of Storybrook), it has played out very differently, with much of the focus being on events back in fairyland, which has the odd consequence that the programme’s lead character (Emma Swan, daughter of Snow White, sent to grow up in our world Superman-style) only appears in its best bits as a baby. Structurally it’s very similar to Lost, with the flashbacks focusing on a character at the heart of that episode’s current-day story, with revelations about that character’s history toying with your expectations of how that story will resolve. My favourite episode so far featured Grumpy the dwarf, born from a giant egg, and his doomed romance with a fairy (played by Amy Acker). The present day stories were at first a bit ordinary and repetitive when contrasted with the invention and magic of the fairytale stories, but as memories of that other world return it’s all becoming more interesting overall. Worth a look.

Thought 6. I’ve bought a wired Xbox 360 controller and the Xpadder software to let me use the controller on my PC. Not to play games, though maybe I will eventually, but more for when I want to lean back (or stand up) and read something on the PC screen without being tied to the keyboard and mouse. It’s taken a bit of customization, but it’s working quite nicely now. As with many of my previous brilliant office innovations (battle board, laboratory coat, daily scores out of ten), the family have mocked me for it.

Thought 7. Noticing that today was the first day of September, I realised that meant last month was August. Then thought, hang on, isn’t my mum’s birthday in August? No!!! I’m the worst son of all time. But every item on her Amazon wishlist is now on the way to her. And now I need to pluck up the courage to phone her.

Theaker’s Fab Five #4: soundtracks

Been over a year since I did one of these, and that’s because I’ve gone through one of those periods where I don’t use my stereo much, other than to output meekly the sound from other devices. First I went through a phase of recording lots of radio on the TiVo, and running it through a long audio lead into my office. Then I realised how many good BBC and NPR podcasts there are now, and had a brilliant time listening to those. I signed up to an Audible monthly plan again and listened to lots of audiobooks. And I’ve pretty much stopped buying CDs, because I don’t have anywhere left to put them. Amazon MP3s are very convenient, downloading automatically or available in the cloud wherever I need them, and they’re often very cheap, so I’ve taken to them in a way I never did with iTunes.

But this week I was in the mood to stick in CDs and leave them to play, and so we have a new Fab Five filling the five slots of my five-CD stereo. Let’s hope it never dies.

1. The Definitive Horror Collection, CD3: 1983–1977

The newest CD here, one I bought out of sadness that there was never a science fiction follow-up to the three volumes of Silva Screen’s Space and Beyond (see below); this was the closest thing I could find. The four CDs work their way back into the history of horror, this one starting in 1983 with Mark Ayres’ version of the Nightmare on Elm Street theme and ending in 1984 with Ghostbusters. Haven’t had much of a chance to get into it yet, but I was a little disappointed that some of the tracks seem to be repeats from the Space and Beyond series (Ghostbusters, Aliens), and a noisy instrumental version of “Bad to the Bone” from Christine drags on a bit too long. On the other hand: The Thing! Halloween! The Fog!

2. Alien Invasion: Space and Beyond II, CD1

One of my favourite CDs of all time, with suites from The Day the Earth Stood Still, Dune, Star Trek: The Motion Picture (how could music as vibrant as Jerry Goldsmith’s “Klingon Attack” emerge from such a ponderous film?), When Worlds Collide, The Thing from Another World and the original Battlestar Galactica. I’ve been enjoying it so much I bought The Definitive Horror Collection, above, and sought out a CD copy of the original Space and Beyond (featuring Lifeforce, Capricorn One, The Black Hole, Enemy Mine and lots of Star Trek), to replace one of the very few cassette albums we hadn’t yet thrown away.

3. Final Fantasy S Generation, Official Best Collection

Strange listening to this again. I know these tracks, composed by Nobuo Uematsu and selected from the first three Final Fantasy games on the Sony PlayStation (hence S Generation, as opposed to the companion album’s N (for Nintendo) Generation), used to mean something to me, but now they just remind me that I used to feel something when I heard them, rather than making me feel anything again. Instead, listening to this makes me reflect sadly on how little I enjoy most Japanese games these days, with their frustratingly jobsworthian approach to game saves, cut scenes and grinding. (“These days” in this context meaning: since we had children.) I haven’t finished a game in this series since Final Fantasy VIII. Having said that, “Liberi Fatali” and “One-Winged Angel” still give me a bit of a shiver, just on their own merits.

4. Space 3: Beyond the Final Frontier, CD1

Aliens, It Came from Outer Space, Robocop – I love the music on here. The recordings are so clear, use stereo so well, and sound so brilliant played quiet or loud. There are a few reviews of these albums on Amazon that go on about them not being the original versions. Pshaw! That’s what I like about them. The original versions are usually out there if you want them, in crackly mono in stop-start sequences that make little sense in isolation and feature a handful of refrains repeated ad nauseum. This is something different, with the highlights of the soundtracks made into short, elegant suites, played by the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, and mastered to perfection. A Space and Beyond IV pulling together some of the best science fiction and fantasy themes of the last decade would be brilliant.

5. Doctor Who at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, Vol. 2: New Beginnings, 1970–1980

I barely remember listening to this before, which makes me think it must have been a Christmas or birthday gift, quickly overlooked in the rush of new toys! It includes “music, effects, atmospheres and ambiences” from four Doctor Who stories from the Pertwee years, “Inferno”, “The Mind of Evil”, “The Claws of Axos” and “The Sea Devils”, compiled, produced and remastered by Mark Ayres, who was also involved with the three Silva Screen albums mentioned above. The Pertwee era isn’t my favourite period of the show (although oddly I loved the Target adaptations, perhaps because the overlong stories made for fast-paced books), but this works well as an album, spoilt only by featuring five too many variations on the theme music.

Theakerly thoughts #2: Netflix, broads with swords

Thought 1. I am loving the new My List option on Netflix UK. I can see why Netflix were against its introduction at first, on the grounds that if you are adding films to it to watch later, that means you don’t actually want to watch them now, and quite possibly never will, especially after you get tired of seeing them in your list every day. Books that have just arrived are always more exciting than those already on your shelf. So I won’t add any films to it, but it’s brilliant for television shows, creating what we’ve always dreamed of: your own custom channel.

Thought 2. In yesterday’s Theakerly thoughts I mentioned a con that had decided against having an official policy on sexual harassment, and it turns out they’ve been just as unimpressed by the idea of panel parity, and responded rather bluntly to a writer who asked if it might be applied to the panel onto which he had been invited. And today we hear they’ve invited a feminist writer to appear on a panel called “Broads with Swords”. Gah!

Some parts of the UK scene do seem to have a mediumly old-fashioned view on these things, i.e. they’ll agree of course that sexism is a bad thing, but disagree with the idea that any action is required. The problem for those parts of the UK scene is that the internet is bringing them into regular contact with more progressive elements, whose use of social media tends to be rather more adept.

After John and I attended a convention panel last year on sexism, he noted wryly that the eminent writer who pooh-poohed the idea that anything should be done had kept a microphone to himself for the entire panel, leaving three women – including the panel moderator – and one right-on fellow to share two between them, meaning he could break in at any time (and did), while the women on the panel had to negotiate before speaking.

Thought 3. Don’t think from the above that I’d consider myself a good feminist. My wife would assure you that I have a long, long way to go. But dudes, we should at least try. Or at least try to look like we’re trying.

Theakerly thoughts #1: games for kids, cons, French Kindle

I don’t know whether this will be a new regular feature on the blog or a one-off embarrassment, but a tip of the hat to Peter Tennant’s “Thoughts for a …” posts at Trumpetville for the format I’m copying. The appeal is that it gives me somewhere to write down these thoughts, things I can’t put to any practical use elsewhere, but I’d like them out of my system so I can think about other things! Let’s clear my cache.

Thought 1. It’s funny how many games whose content makes them totally unsuitable for children feature mechanics that make them utterly perfect for children. Saints Row the Third features obscenity and violence by the bucketload, but it also lets you create a totally customised player character of either gender, dress them in a variety of wacky clothes, choose from dozens of fun hairstyles, and then pick four cool friends to run around with. And there’s a kitten car! Tekken 6 is all about smashing each other in the face, but give it to a toddler and they’ll soon discover that every single button on the controller makes something unique and interesting happen on the television screen. Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare does feature zombies, swearing and lots of unpleasantness, but you can also have a really nice long ride on a selection of horses. In Borderlands 2 you regularly meet mutants who are keen to cut you up and eat your entrails, but the jump-in, jump-out co-operative split-screen mode works perfectly, death brings instant resurrection and missions don’t reset when you die. There was justified controversy when the mechromancer character was described as having a “girlfriend mode”, but the idea of a character specifically aimed at less confident gamers is long overdue and very well implemented (you customize your robot and it does most of the fighting for you). And yet when you play games specifically aimed at children they are nearly always (the very best Lego games being the exception), unpleasant, unresponsive, counterintuitive, maddening and just plain awkward to play. No wonder kids want to play our games! The creators of children’s games need to look harder at adult games and see why they work for children. And the creators of adult games should consider creating cut-down cleaned-up kids versions. In the meantime, I’ll keep letting our children have a supervised go, with the sound turned down, on selected portions of the above games.

Thought 2. John Scalzi’s pledge regarding sexual harassment at conventions was a typically clever and principled move. Over a thousand people then co-signed his pledge, but how many of them meant it (which Scalzi clearly did), and how many signed because they want to be seen as one of the good guys? It’ll be interesting over the next year or so to see how many people will stick to the pledge if conventions refuse to post (and be prepared to enforce) sexual harassment policies. Hopefully that won’t be an issue, because most conventions will see the sense in the request, but at least one convention has declined to post a policy on its website, and though it may well be probably completely unrelated, one prominent publisher, a co-signer of the pledge listed as an attending member on the con’s website, has recently said they won’t be there after all.

Thought 3. Matt Hughes, one of my very favourite writers at the moment, has temporarily reduced the price of 9 Tales of Henghis Hapthorn to next to nothing. I reviewed it here, but at that price you should really just buy it!

Thought 4. Because I like games, I’ve always liked gamifying my work. Earlier this month I used a dusty copy of Lord of the Rings: Risk to set up a battlefield in my office. The idea is to focus on whether jobs are on my desk, or off my desk. A figure is assigned to each job, and stuck with blu-tack to a card with that job’s name. Figures representing the jobs on my desk are placed threateningly in Eriador (near The Shire), figures for the hobby jobs (BFS, TQF, TTA reviews) on my desk get as far as Arnor (Bree, Rivendell), while the figures representing jobs I’ve got off my desk lurk in Rhûn (the lands beyond Mirkwood). Needless to say this has provoked much ridicule from my family, but I’ve found it jolly useful.

Thought 5. I wonder if there would have been such a fuss about “former child” Miley Cyrus’s performance at the VMAs if she hadn’t looked like she was having such a laugh! The outfit and the routine were kind of tacky, but it was meant to be. I remember taking one daughter to see Miley’s Hannah Montana concert film in 3D, and being appalled by a scene where Miley states flatly after an accident that she won’t do a dangerous lift again, only for her mother to say, yes, you will. I don’t think she would put up with that now.

Thought 6. I read a blog post a month or two ago by a writer who had been writing and working for free for various big companies – contributing to blogs, reviewing, slush reading, I guess – and in the post he talked about how upset he was that none of them had given him paying work. I felt sorry for him, but it seems to me that if someone’s already working for free, giving them a job would mean you don’t get that free work any more. You might as well hire someone whose skills you can only get by paying for them. I don’t mind writing for free – it’s my hobby, and it’s good to have an outlet. But I won’t write for free for a company that is making money out of it.

Thought 7. Not sure when they appeared, but I’ve only just noticed all the new French books in the UK Kindle store, and I’m a bit giddy about it. It looks like all the big French publishers are on there now (Folio, Gallimard, etc), and what’s more my Kindle has at some point acquired a French language dictionary (much better than a French-English dictionary, since it encourages you to think in that language rather than waste time mentally translating). I’m currently reading La Vallée Infernale in Tout Bob Morane 1 on a Kindle Paperwhite and it’s been brilliant to tap on difficult words and get instant definitions. Shame to hear modern language learning is in decline in the UK, because there’s never been an easier time to do it. When I was first learning French at school, the first book I remember being given to read was a Sartre play! Much as I loved it, I’ll never understand why they didn’t start us on the equivalent of a Ladybird book and let us work our way up.

Thought 8. Ben Affleck as Batman! No one saw that coming! Except all those articles a while back that said he was in talks to star in and direct a JLA movie. He’ll be brilliant. Batman being in Man of Steel 2 suggests the thing I was most troubled by in Man of Steel (you know, the bit towards the end) wasn’t a poor film-making decision, but rather the set-up for a fascinating second film, an event with consequences, like the destruction of [spoiler] and [spoiler] in J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek. If anyone could send Superman to the naughty step, it’s Batman.

Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #44: now out!

Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #44 is now out! It features five stories, arranged roughly in the chronological order of their settings: “A Lesson from the Undergrowth” by Charles Wilkinson, “Snow Crime” by Allen Ashley, “The Return of the Terrible Darkness” by Howard Phillips, “Black Sun” by Douglas Thompson, and “Milo on Fire” by Ross Gresham.

You’re going to love them. (Except the Howard Phillips one.)

The review section isn’t quite as long as last issue’s, but it still features five books (Dodger, A Game of Groans, Martian Sands, Señor 105 and the Elements of Danger and Star Wars: Scoundrels), three films (The Host, Star Trek Into Darkness and World War Z), and two television programmes (Astronauts and Doctor Who: Shada).

The editorial explains why I’m not retiring the magazine just yet, and the cover is once again by Howard Watts.

Links

Paperback edition: Amazon UK / Amazon US
Epub version (free)
Mobi version (free)
PDF version (free)
Kindle Store: Amazon.co.uk / Amazon.com

Contributors

Allen Ashley is currently editing Astrologica: Stories of the Zodiac for The Alchemy Press, and has stories due in the next BFS Journal and the Eibonvale Press anthology Rustblind and Silverbright. (Four contributors to this issue appear in that book: Allen Ashley, Charles Wilkinson, Douglas Thompson and John Greenwood.)

Charles Wilkinson’s short stories have appeared in Best Short Stories 1990, Best English Short Stories 2, Midwinter Mysteries and London Magazine. A collection, The Pain Tree and Other Stories, was published by London Magazine Editions.

Douglas J. Ogurek’s work has appeared in such publications as the BFS Journal, Dark Things V, Daughters of Icarus, The Literary Review, Morpheus Tales and WTF?! He lives in Gurnee, Illinois with the woman whose husband he is and their five pets. His website: www.douglasjogurek.weebly.com.

Douglas Thompson is a Theaker’s Quarterly veteran, several of his stories having appeared in these pages. He is the author of seven books: Ultrameta (Eibonvale, 2009), Sylvow (Eibonvale, 2010), Apoidea (The Exaggerated Press, 2011), Mechagnosis (Dog Horn, 2012), Entanglement (Elsewhen, 2012), with Freasdal and Volwys & Other Stories due in late 2013 from Acair and Dog Horn Publishing respectively. See: http://douglasthompson.wordpress.com for more information about his activities – plus poetry!

Howard Phillips is one of this magazine’s most prolific contributors, though he has been absent from its pages for far too long, or, those of you who have read his work might say, not long enough. Poet, musician, philosopher: he does it all, though none of it well. In this issue’s instalment of his memoirs he must face his own sexism.

Howard Watts is a writer, artist and composer living in Seaford who provides the cover to this issue. (I spent much of June and July reading his unpublished but fascinating novel, The Master of Clouds. I hope a publisher picks it up soon, because it irks me no end to have read a book that cannot be included on my Goodreads list.)

Jacob Edwards supplies us with several in-depth reviews this issue: Dodger, Star Wars: Scoundrels, Star Trek Into Darkness and Astronauts and Doctor Who: Shada. However, he remains indentured to Australia’s speculative fiction flagship Andromeda Spaceways, editing #45 and #55 of their Inflight Magazine. The website of this writer, poet and recovering lexiphanicist: www.jacobedwards.id.au.

John Greenwood performs his usual co-editorial duties on this issue, and his own fiction has appeared recently in Rustblind and Silverblight, Bourbon Penn and The Ironic Fantastic (forthcoming), receiving such good notices that Stephen now regrets disabusing people of the notion that John is merely a pseudonym adopted for his more scathing reviews.

Ross Gresham teaches at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. Other instalments of the Milo/Marmite saga have appeared in TQF34 (“Name the Planet”), TQF41 (“Milo Don’t Count Coup”) and M-Brane SF (“Spending the Government’s 28”).

Stephen Theaker is the eponymous co-editor of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, and supplies fewer reviews than usual to this issue, unless he writes more in the gap between putting this section together and sending this issue to press. His reviews have also appeared in Interzone, Black Static, Prism and the BFS Journal. He has two lovely children and an indulgent, supportive wife.

Arctic Rising by Tobias S. Buckell, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Arctic Rising by Tobias S. Buckell (Del Rey, pb, 340pp) is set the day after tomorrow, in a world much changed by the melting of the ice caps. Our protagonist is Anika Duncan, who enters the book with a season three feel; this might be her first book, but it isn’t her first adventure. She’s in the middle of an exciting life, and would have had plenty to tell us about even if the book’s main plot didn’t kick in, from a past as a mercenary to her budding relationship with an almost-legal drug dealer. But none of that is why she’s in trouble: it’s because of her conscientious approach to her work.

Saga, Vol. 2, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Saga, Vol. 2 (Image Comics, tpb, 152pp) continues a comic that has been outstanding from the very first issue. Writer Brian K. Vaughn and artist Fiona Staples are producing a science fantasy space opera that, for this reader at least, felt like Star Wars for adults – and this volume is very adult indeed, including towards the end the fellatio and ejaculations that caused such consternation at the Comixology offices! They are displayed on the television screen face of Prince Robot IV, one of many pursuing Marko (from the moon of Wreath) and Alana (from the planet Landfall), starcrossed lovers with a brand new baby (who narrates the series), across the galaxy. Bounty hunters are on the way too, once they’ve wrapped up their own storylines, but first to catch up with the couple in this book are the paternal grandparents, horns and all. They’re under the impression that their son has been kidnapped – because why else would he go on the run with one of the “evil fucks with the wings”? – and so they sold the house to buy themselves teleportation devices.

Ten programmes we gave up on before the end

Ten programmes we (Mr and Mrs Theaker) gave up on before the end:

1. Heroes
2. Sliders
3. Earth: Final Conflict
4. Andromeda
5. Xena: Warrior Princess
6. Red Dwarf
7. Bugs
8. Star Trek: Deep Space 9
9. Smallville
10. V (2009)

Wednesday is list day. This is list #5.

The Conjuring, reviewed by Douglas J. Ogurek

Scare Magician Wan Conjures Up another Haunted House Hit

Just before The Conjuring started, my wife said, “I dropped my wedding ring.” When the theater darkened, we still hadn’t found it. We decided to resume our search after the film. Unknowingly, we also challenged director James Wan (and writers Chad and Carey Hayes) to take our minds off our dilemma for a couple hours by cranking up the scares, like Insidious did.

In the early seventies, renowned demonologist/paranormal research duo Ed and Lorraine Warren confront their most frightening case. It starts when the financially strapped Perron couple and their daughters move into an old Rhode Island house. True to the haunted house formula, creepy things – Wan’s forté – start to happen. Carolyn Perron (Lili Taylor of The Haunting) reaches out to the Warrens.

Ten programmes we watched from the beginning to the very end

Ten programmes we (Mr and Mrs Theaker) watched from the beginning to the very end:

1. Babylon 5
2. The X-Files
3. Star Trek: Enterprise
4. Fringe
5. Alias
6. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
7. Battlestar Galactica (2004)
8. Firefly
9. Dollhouse
10. Highlander

Wednesday is list day. This is list #4.

Fifteen albums I bought without hearing a single song by that artist, and whether I like them now

Fifteen albums I bought without hearing a single song by that artist, and whether I like them now:

1. Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts, M83 (yes)
2. Digital Dump, The Jackofficers (no)
3. Volume Two, Echoboy (no)
4. Surfing on Sine Waves, Polygon Window (yes)
5. Compilations 1995-2002, Hood (no)
6. This Is the Day, This Is the Hour, This Is This! Pop Will Eat Itself (yes)
7. Possessed, The Balanescu Quartet (yes)
8. Alpha Centauri, Tangerine Dream (yes)
9. Unreleased? Fire! with Jim O'Rourke (yes)
10. 69 Love Songs, The Magnetic Fields (yes)
11. Decade, Neil Young (yes)
12. Avant Hard, Add N to (X) (yes)
13. Endtroducing, DJ Shadow (yes)
14. You Make Me Real, Brandt Brauer Brick (yes)
15. The Noise Made By People, Broadcast (yes)

Wednesday is list day! This is list #3.

World War Z, reviewed by Douglas J. Ogurek

Zombies storm the box office, again. Last winter, romantic zomedy Warm Bodies reached number one at the box office. This summer, a different breed of zombie film clambered its way to the top.

Something threatens the fate of the world. Cities burn. Monuments crumble. In government control rooms, dumbed down charts and maps glow with death tolls and devastated regions. One man will make a difference. We’ve seen it with weather. We’ve seen it with disease. We’ve seen it with aliens. We’ve seen it with robots. But we haven’t seen such worldwide chaos with zombies. And, we haven’t seen it with Brad Pitt. Until World War Z (directed by Marc Forster). Or perhaps a more fitting title would be World War GQ.

Ten actors who might have played Dr Who on film had Peter Cushing regenerated

Ten actors who might have played Dr Who on film had Peter Cushing regenerated:

2. Peter Sellers
3. Jane Fonda
4. Sean Connery
5. Sigourney Weaver
6. Gary Oldman
7. Morgan Freeman
8. Ewan MacGregor
9. Johnny Depp
10. Michael Sheen
11. Gael Garcia Bernal

Wednesday is list day. This is list #2.

What contributors did next #3

John Greenwood, TQF co-editor, has begun to submit stories elsewhere. "Consumer Testing" appears in Bourbon Penn #7 and "Didcotts" appears in the forthcoming Rustblind and Silverbright, edited by David Rix and published by Eibonvale Press.

Bruce Hesselbach, who all the way back in 2007 contributed three stories to our magazine, has a new steampunk novel out from Cogwheel Press, Perpetual Motion.

The Not Yet by Moira Crone, which I reviewed for Interzone #240, reached the shortlist of the Philip K. Dick Award. Very interesting novel, well worth a look.

I have a review of Jad Smith's book John Brunner in Interzone #245, and the new Interzone #247 includes my review of Shadows of the New Sun: Stories in Honor of Gene Wolfe.

David Tallerman has a second Easie Damasco novel out, Crown Thief, with Prince Thief due this October.

Douglas Thompson has published Entanglement via Elsewhen Press.

While I'm here, apologies for the quietness on the blog this past month. I've been reading TQF cover artist Howard Watts' as yet unpublished (and very good) novel Master of Clouds and submissions for our next issue, so I haven't read much for review, while work and other responsibilities have kept me from blogging. But new reviews and a new issue are coming soon, so hang in there!

Ten albums I bought as presents that I was chuffed to get via Amazon Auto-Rip

Ten albums I bought as presents for other people that I was chuffed to get an MP3 copy of via Amazon Auto-Rip:

1. 5:55, Charlotte Gainsbourg
2. Fever Ray, Fever Ray
3. Has Been, William Shatner
4. Mr. Machine, The Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble
5. Oracular Spectacular, MGMT
6. Room on Fire, The Strokes
7. Scott Pilgrim vs The World, Various Artists
8. Total Life Forever, Foals
9. Witchazel, Matt Berry
10. You've Stolen My Heart, Kronos Quartet and Asha Bhosle

Wednesday is now list day on this blog! This is list #1.

Randalls Round by Eleanor Scott, reviewed by Harsh Grewal

Randalls Round (Oleander Press, pb, 176pp) collects several well-written tales of horror and suspense. They were written by Helen M. Leys, under the pseudonym Eleanor Scott. They were first published over eighty years ago and feature highly articulate posh people being scared – or worse. The stories were apparently inspired by the author’s dreams, though one suspects the sexual aspects of the dreams have been somewhat diluted.

The author isn’t as fascinatingly keyed-up as Poe, nor as brilliantly off her rocker as Lovecraft, and there is generally little to distinguish her from other writers in the genre, but the last two tales, with female protagonists, are interesting. Honor Yorke and Annis Breck are smart and cool, shrewd, with a dislike of girls who get giddy and terrified and scream for help. It’s a shame there isn’t more like this here from an author who was herself an emancipated Oxford woman.

British Fantasy Awards 2013: the nominees!

I'm back running the British Fantasy Awards this year, and the nominees have just been announced:

Best Fantasy Novel (the Robert Holdstock Award)
Blood and Feathers, Lou Morgan (Solaris)
The Brides of Rollrock Island, Margo Lanagan (David Fickling Books)
Railsea, China Miéville (Macmillan)
Red Country, Joe Abercrombie (Gollancz)
Some Kind of Fairy Tale, Graham Joyce (Gollancz)

Best Horror Novel (the August Derleth Award)
The Drowning Girl, Caitlin R. Kiernan (Roc)
The Kind Folk, Ramsey Campbell (PS Publishing)
Last Days, Adam Nevill (Macmillan)
Silent Voices, Gary McMahon (Solaris)
Some Kind of Fairy Tale, Graham Joyce (Gollancz)

Best Novella
Curaré, Michael Moorcock (Zenith Lives!) (Obverse Books)
Eyepennies, Mike O’Driscoll (TTA Press)
The Nine Deaths of Dr Valentine, John Llewellyn Probert (Spectral Press)
The Respectable Face of Tyranny, Gary Fry (Spectral Press)

Best Short Story
Our Island, Ralph Robert Moore (Where Are We Going?) (Eibonvale Press)
Shark! Shark! Ray Cluley (Black Static #29) (TTA Press)
Sunshine, Nina Allan (Black Static #29) (TTA Press)
Wish for a Gun, Sam Sykes (A Town Called Pandemonium) (Jurassic London)

Best Collection
From Hell to Eternity, Thana Niveau (Gray Friar Press)
Remember Why You Fear Me, Robert Shearman (ChiZine Publications)
Where Furnaces Burn, Joel Lane (PS Publishing)
The Woman Who Married a Cloud, Jonathan Carroll (Subterannean Press)

Best Anthology
A Town Called Pandemonium, Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin (eds) (Jurassic London)
Magic: an Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane, Jonathan Oliver (ed.) (Solaris)
The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women, Marie O’Regan (ed.) (Robinson)
Terror Tales of the Cotswolds, Paul Finch (ed.) (Gray Friar Press)

Best Small Press (the PS Publishing Independent Press Award)
ChiZine Publications (Brett Alexander Savory and Sandra Kasturi)
Gray Friar Press (Gary Fry)
Spectral Press (Simon Marshall-Jones)
TTA Press (Andy Cox)

Best Non-Fiction
Ansible, David Langford
The Cambridge Companion to Fantasy Literature, Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (eds) (Cambridge University Press)
Coffinmaker’s Blues, Stephen Volk (Black Static) (TTA Press)
Fantasy Faction, Marc Aplin (ed.)
Pornokitsch, Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin (eds)
Reflections: On the Magic of Writing, Diana Wynne Jones (David Fickling Books)

Best Magazine/Periodical
Black Static, Andy Cox (ed.) (TTA Press)
Interzone, Andy Cox (ed.) (TTA Press)
SFX, David Bradley (ed.) (Future Publishing)
Shadows and Tall Trees, Michael Kelly (ed.) (Undertow Publications)

Best Artist
Ben Baldwin
David Rix
Les Edwards
Sean Phillips
Vincent Chong

Best Comic/Graphic Novel
Dial H, China Miéville, Mateus Santolouco, David Lapham and Riccardo Burchielli (DC Comics)
Saga, Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
The Unwritten, Mike Carey, Peter Gross, Gary Erskine, Gabriel Hernández Walta, M.K. Perker, Vince Locke and Rufus Dayglo (DC Comics/Vertigo)
The Walking Dead, Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard (Skybound Entertainment/Image Comics)

Best Screenplay
Avengers Assemble, Joss Whedon
Sightseers, Alice Lowe, Steve Oram and Amy Jump
The Cabin in the Woods, Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro

Best Newcomer (the Sydney J. Bounds Award)
Alison Moore, for The Lighthouse (Salt Publishing)
Anne Lyle, for The Alchemist of Souls (Angry Robot)
E.C. Myers, for Fair Coin (Pyr)
Helen Marshall, for Hair Side, Flesh Side (ChiZine Publications)
Kim Curran, for Shift (Strange Chemistry)
Lou Morgan, for Blood and Feathers (Solaris)
Molly Tanzer, for A Pretty Mouth (Lazy Fascist Press)
Saladin Ahmed, for Throne of the Crescent Moon (Gollancz)
Stephen Bacon, for Peel Back the Sky (Gray Friar Press)
Stephen Blackmoore, for City of the Lost (Daw Books)

Thanks to everyone who voted and all the jury members. The winners will be announced at the Fantasy Awards banquet at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton on Sunday, November 3, 2013.

UPDATE: If any nominees would now like to attend WFC, the banquet, or even just the awards ceremony, a small number of places have been reserved for a limited period of time. Email me via bfsawards@britishfantasysociety.org for details. Information about the convention here: http://www.wfc2013.org, and about the awards banquet here: http://www.wfc2013.org/banquet01.html.

Double Feature: Rise of the Guardians and Hotel Transylvania, reviewed by Jacob Edwards

Double Feature: Rise of the Guardians / Hotel Transylvania. Accentuate the positives. Whether from the last, clutching vestiges of British Empire, the nearer, star-strangling embrace of Uncle Sam, or merely the white-capped tyranny of distance, Australian accents seem particularly susceptible to being subverted and then cinematically or televisually remodelled. House’s Jesse Spencer just about held his own as Chase (although, given that producer Bryan Singer didn’t realise at first that Hugh Laurie wasn’t American, the “Australian-ness” of Spencer’s character equally could have been recognised only after the fact, and so necessarily made more subtle than the quintessential Ozzie Norm), but for the most part there have been only Rolf Harris and Crocodile Dundee-styled tyre marks to follow, and so Australian personas have tended to be about as true to life when depicted abroad as are the on-screen dead-pigs-in-pokes that seems to constitute your average writer/producer/director’s conception of an intellect-defining game of chess… Brisbanite Janet Fielding, for instance, drawling the short straw as Tegan Jovanka in Doctor Who (Seasons 18.7 through 21.4); or crocodile hunter Steve Irwin as— well, okay, he really was like that; but now Hugh Jackman, his born-and-bred Australianness belied by an injection of “strewth” serum and the poor man being forced to wrap his Adam’s apple in coloured foil as a rough-as-guts Easter Bunny from Down Under.

Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 – reviewed by Douglas J. Ogurek

The filmgoer hoping to evade Edward Cullen’s (Robert Pattinson) constipated-while-sucking-on-a-lemon smile or Jacob Black’s (Taylor Lautner) shirtless torso in Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 (directed by Bill Condon) is out of luck. However, despite those and a few other minor irritations, the film combines suspense, violence and commendable acting to gracefully conclude the Twilight saga.

Heroine Bella Cullen (Kristen Stewart) must hone her newly-acquired vampiric powers. That means not only resisting the intense desire to drink human blood, but also keeping safe her newborn daughter Renesmee. The Volturi, an Italy-based coven of vampire rule enforcers, erroneously suspects that Renesmee is an immortal child (i.e. a human child turned vampire) with the potential to go on a bloodsucking blitzkrieg. That threatens the secrecy the Volturi strive to maintain among vampires. However, with their black cloaks and cadaverous faces, the members of the Volturi are not exactly the epitome of inconspicuousness.

Martian Sands by Lavie Tidhar, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

In Martian Sands by Lavie Tidhar (PS Publishing, hb, 224pp), Mars has been settled. The New Israelis are governed by a succession of simulacra, Jewish leaders of the past recreated to act as figurehead prime ministers, but their new Golda Meir isn’t sticking to her programming. “Something is fundamentally flawed with reality,” she tells Miriam Elezra, the woman who commissioned her. There are rumours of time travel experiments, rumours the reader knows to be true having already seen Bill Glimmung in the Oval Office on December 7, 1941, the day before the first death camp opens, offering weapons to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in return for preventing the Holocaust. And yet on Mars we see that Bill Glimmung is a character from the film Martian Sands, “Elvis Mandela’s second masterpiece”. Carl Stone, who built the Golda, has four arms, two extras grafted on to reflect his status as “a Martian warrior, reincarnated in an alien world”. His Revolutionary Brotherhood of Martian Warriors share Barsoomian dreams, visions supposedly sent by their emperor. The most mysterious beings on Mars are the Others, artificial intelligences sometimes ferried by compliant humans, sometimes controlling host bodies. All roads lead to a remote kibbutz in the FDR mountains, the same kibbutz to which Josh has just made the kind of manure sale that could do wonders for his career.