Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #43 – now out!

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #43 is now out! It's available as ever for free download, and in response to popular demand with this issue we've made it available once again in epub and pdf format. That means you'll have to pay to get it in the Kindle store, I'm afraid, but we have a free mobi version available here too.

This issue features five science fiction stories: "Diving Bird" by Madeleine Beresford, "Through the Ages" by Gary Budgen, "Quasar Rise" by Douglas Thompson, "Dodge Sidestep’s Dastardly Plan" by Howard Watts, and "Flight" by Mitchell Edgeworth, plus my accidentally topical editorial about leaving Facebook and two dozen reviews from Jacob Edwards, Douglas J. Ogurek, Howard Watts, John Greenwood, Harsh Grewal and me.

The cover is by Howard Watts, illustrating his own melodious, murderous fiction confection.

Reviews in this issue: Counter-Measures, Series 1, Adam Robots, Celebrant, A Coming of Age, A Conspiracy of Alchemists, Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks, The Dog Stars, Moscow But Dreaming, 9 Tales of Henghis Hapthorn / The Gist Hunter, Randalls Round, A Red Sun Also Rises, A Town Called Pandemonium, Batman: Knightfall, Vol. 2: Knightquest, Doctor Who: The Crimson Hand, Dreadstar Omnibus, Vol. 1, Aliens: Colonial Marines, Borderlands 2, Battlestar Galactica: Blood & Chrome, Cloud Atlas, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Rise of the Guardians / Hotel Transylvania, Twilight: Breaking Dawn, Part 2 and Warm Bodies.

Links

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

Contributors

Douglas Thompson is by now a TQF 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. “Quasar Rise” will appear in the latter. For more information on Douglas see: http://douglasthompson.wordpress.com.

Douglas J. Ogurek reviews Breaking Dawn, Part 2, Warm Bodies and The Hobbit for this issue. His work has also 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.

Harsh Grewal reviews Randalls Round in this issue. His work hasn't previously appeared in TQF, but he contributed to our previous magazine New Words in the nineties.

Howard Watts is a writer, artist and composer living in Seaford who provides not just the cover to this issue, but also the story it illustrates and a pair of reviews! One review is of Borderlands 2, a game so good that when I finished it and sent it back to Lovefilm, after hanging on to it for three months, I bought a copy of my own.

Gary Budgen grew up and lives in London. He has had about twenty or so stories published in magazines and short story anthologies including Interzone, Dark Horizons and the Where Are We Going? anthology from Eibonvale Press. He can be found online at http://garybudgen.wordpress.com.

Jacob Edwards supplies us with many excellent reviews this issue, but 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 reviews Adam Robots and The Dog Stars in this issue, in addition to his wide-ranging co-editorial duties.

Madeleine Beresford is a writer of speculative fiction, SF and fantasy. She lives in North London and is a member of London Clockhouse Writers. Four of her six-word stories appeared in the most recent BFS Journal.

Mitchell Edgeworth is a young writer living in the western suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. His fiction has been published in The Battered Suitcase and SQ Mag. He tweets as @mitchedgeworth and keeps a blog at www.grubstreethack.wordpress.com.

Stephen Theaker is the eponymous co-editor of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, and supplies many reviews to this issue. His (my) reviews have also appeared in Interzone, Black Static, Prism and the BFS Journal.

Hope you enjoy it – let us know if you don't!

Expiry of silveragebooks.com: email and web addresses affected

Hi folks. Just a note to let you know that we're not going to bother renewing our silveragebooks.com domain name this year, since we aren't publishing under that name any more and tend nowadays to point people directly to the blog instead.

So if you have this blog bookmarked under www.silveragebooks.com, change over to http://theakersquarterly.blogspot.com, and if you have our email address down as theakers@silveragebooks.com, switch over to using theakersquarterlyfiction@gmail.com.

Our original, wonderfully yellow website is still available at www.silveragebooks.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk.

Your co-operation has been noted!

Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks by Ben Aaronovitch – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks by Ben Aaronovitch (50th Anniversary Edition, BBC Books, ebook, 2778ll). The plot, in brief, for Whonewbies among you: the seventh Doctor, accompanied by teenage explosives enthusiast Ace, draws the Daleks to Earth – in particular to the area around Totter’s Yard and Coal Hill School, where the programme first began – to acquire the Hand of Omega, a stellar manipulator, which for mysterious reasons of his own he wants them to have. But things get rather out of control when not one but two Dalek factions turn up, both burning with hatred for the Doctor, both with special weapons at their disposal, and both desperate to get their plungers on the Hand.

Fringe, Season 5 – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Fringe, Season 5 (Sky 1/Fox). Now that it’s over, like sister show Alias just five years into its run, Fringe (in which a special division of the FBI investigates crimes, deaths and other incidents with a weird science element) must be seen as a decent programme that despite many fine moments never quite caught fire, never blossomed into more than the sum of its parts, never became the programme you wait all week to watch. Part of the problem was that the romance between its lead characters never quite convinced. Much as you wanted them to be happy, it was never clear why they wanted to be happy together. It wasn’t down to the actors (Anna Torv and Joshua Jackson): Peter Bishop’s relationship with the alternate, naughty, smiling Olivia Dunham from another dimension had all the spark the usual couple lacked.

A Conspiracy of Alchemists by Liesel Schwarz – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

A Conspiracy of Alchemists by Liesel Schwarz (Del Rey, hb, 384pp) is essentially teenage urban fantasy with a light drizzle of steampunk. The heroine’s father has been kidnapped by scoundrels, seemingly in connection with a courier job of hers that went south. She is Miss Elle Chance, a nerveless but youthful airship pilot in an altered, magical 1903, and the story wastes no time in throwing her into the arms of Marsh, a warlock also known as Lord Greychester, for a jaunt across Europe. They are searching for her father, of course, and also hope to thwart the ambitions of a gaggle of uppity alchemists looking to upset the balance between the worlds of shadow and light, but that all amounts to little more than background colour: the trip’s narrative purpose is to accelerate the relationship of Marsh and Elle, keeping them in close company, forced to endure each other through trains, hotels and restaurants until the rose of romance blossoms among the thorns of mutual dislike.

Batman: Knightfall, Vol. 2: Knightquest – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Batman: Knightfall, Vol. 2: Knightquest (DC Comics, tpb, 656pp) picks up the story from, naturally, Knightfall Volume 1, though many readers may (like me) have read those same stories in the older Knightfall collections Broken Bat and Who Rules the Night. They left Bruce Wayne nursing a very bad back and Robin wondering whether he can trust the new guy in the batsuit (well, a batsuit, one that only ever looks good when it’s in full shadow): Jean Paul Valley, former knight of Saint Dumas and vanquisher of Bane. He’s a brutal fighter rather than a detective, violent, unpleasant and at times repulsive (his inner monologue when meeting Catwoman is stomach-churning), and has little time for Robin or Wayne Manor, bricking up the entrances to the Batcave. Not a fan of the Batmobile, he prefers the cool but impractical subway Bat-rocket.

Ten reviews that didn't sprout

Not all acorns grow into oak trees, and some notes never resolve themselves into proper reviews. Sometimes it might be a lack of time, sometimes a lack of anything interesting to say, and sometimes it's just that by the time I come to write the review I've forgotten most of what happened!

So: I've taken ten of those bits mouldering at the back of my reviews closet and put them up on Goodreads. Don't expect much and you won't be disappointed!

• Star Trek: The Next Generation / Doctor Who Assimilation2, Vol. 1, which unusually for me I read as single issues as they were published, got three stars, mainly for "including a team-up between two of the greatest ever hosts of Have I Got News for You".
• Witch Doctor: Under the Knife also gets three stars: "the first story is very derivative of the Necroscope series"
• Strontium Dog: Search/Destroy Agency Files, Vol. 1 is another enjoyable three-star comic: "I adored Wagner and Grant’s stories for Doctor Who Weekly; I wish I’d known back then that there was practically an entire comic of their work over at 2000AD every week."
• The Sticky Situations of Zwicky Fingers by Rhys Hughes: "Full of ideas and imagination."
  
• I didn't get far into or get on with Isis Unbound by Allyson Bird, though "there were some good things in the parts I read".
  
• Saga, Vol. 1 by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples, another one I read as single issues, got four stars from me: "I'm happy this exists."
• Red Sonja Digital Omnibus, Vol. 1 by Mike Carey and lots of others got three stars: "Quite good fun, despite Sonja’s occasional tendency to talk out of her bum".
• The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Century 2009: "Anyone could put Emma Peel and Mina Harker together in a comic, but only Alan Moore could make it so worthwhile."
  
• The Boys, Vol. 8: Highland Laddie: "Best use of a tapeworm since Simon Louvish’s Your Monkey's Schmuck."
  
• The Boys, Vol. 9: The Big Ride: "I’m slowly being driven mad by 'discreet' being spelt 'discrete' in all of these books."
  

NB: none of these books and comics were submitted to us for review – these were all things I bought. Once we've read something submitted for review, it gets a proper review, even if it takes us years and we do have to read the whole blinkin' thing again!

British Fantasy Awards 2013: last chance to vote!

If you are a member of the British Fantasy Society (congratulations on your wise choice of association!) or if you attended the glorious celebration of fantasy that was FantasyCon 2012 in Brighton (wasn't the weather good for October?), today is the final day to cast your votes in the British Fantasy Awards (which I'm running again now).

Every vote matters! In every category!

If there is nothing you wish to vote for this year, or if you are not keen on awards in general (because, let's face it, the idea of pitting one book against another in mortal combat is, while fun, not without its ridiculous aspects), I would be grateful even for empty voting forms, just so I know we reached you.

Be strong, be vigilant, be voting!

VOTE HERE!

Adam Robots, by Adam Roberts – reviewed by John Greenwood

Adam Robots is a real book - I have it here next to me on the desk in paperback format. Adam Roberts is, as far as one can trust the many internet witnesses to his physical existence, a real writer (although he has been known to use pseudonyms for the several literary parodies he has perpetrated). And despite rumours to the contrary, I am not myself one of Stephen Theaker's pseudonyms. I say this simply to forestall the possibility of meta-fictional regression. In the tradition of Borges, Calvino and Lem, Roberts has included in his first collection of short stories, a meta-review of Denis Bayle: A Life, the fictional account of an imaginary book dealing with the life of a non-existent science-fiction author, from the standpoint of a made-up reviewer Thomas Hodgkin (not to be confused with his namesake, the very real Oxford don and Marxist). So we are putting a stop to that right now.

Doctor Who: The Crimson Hand – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Doctor Who: The Crimson Hand by Dan McDaid, Martin Geraghty, Mike Collins and chums (Panini, pb, 258pp) is the long-awaited (especially by those of us who didn’t notice its publication in 2012) follow-up to The Betrothal of Sontar and The Widow’s Curse, finally completing the reprints of the tenth Doctor’s comic strip adventures from Doctor Who Magazine. This volume collects the strips from issues 400 to 420, plus one from 394 and another from an annual. According to the introduction by Russell T Davies, rights issues held up its publication, presumably related to the not-entirely-awful Who comics being produced by IDW over the pond or the graphic novels being produced for younger readers by BBC Books. Whatever it was, the roadblock is gone, and this book has been followed swiftly by the first collection of eleventh Doctor DWM strips, The Child of Time (#421–441), with a seventh Doctor collection forthcoming: Nemesis of the Daleks, featuring the return of Abslom Daak, Dalek Killer! I’m only an occasional purchaser of the source magazine – it’s a terrific, well-written publication, but I’m not quite such a fan of the show that I need to read a magazine devoted to it every four weeks – so these Panini volumes are full of fresh stories for me, all fourteen of them to date instant, unthinking purchases up there with new Nick Cave albums, Jack Vance novels, or Muji to-do-list pads.

Mere Anarchy, by Woody Allen – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Mere Anarchy (Ebury Press, ebook, 1816ll) is a collection of Woody Allen’s humour pieces for the New Yorker, some of which have fantastical elements. A slight glitch in the ebook has the annoying effect of indenting all the text to the same extent as the introductory extracts that inspired Allen’s pieces: a New York Times article about Veerappan, a magazine article on technologically enhanced clothing, items in church newsletters – the everyday things that set him thinking.

It’s not a book in which you’ll get every joke, and they can be relentless, but if you catch enough to make them count it can be a funny book; just one that’s best read a chapter at a time. In all honesty, two thirds of the way through I was sick to death of it. I took a break, gave it another chance, and I was in fact thoroughly sick of it! But I plugged away to the end and it was a decent book. Not one I’d outright recommend buying, but give the Kindle preview a try.

Warm Bodies – reviewed by Douglas J. Ogurek

Introspective zombies? Hell yeah! R, the zombie protagonist of Warm Bodies (directed by Jonathan Levine), moves his finger in a circular motion and mumbles “more real” (I think it was) to explain to love interest Julie (a human) his preference for vinyl records. In this simple gesture, R captures the message of the zombie apocalypse/romantic comedy crossover Warm Bodies.

In an era of texting and tweeting and so many other technological temptations, this film gives credence to something that has taken a backseat in recent years: the face-to-face, technology-free relationship.

9 Tales of Henghis Hapthorn / The Gist Hunter, by Matthew Hughes – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

9 Tales of Henghis Hapthorn (self-published, ebook, 4412ll) collects eight adventures that were not included in the superb trilogy of novels about that character – Majestrum, The Spiral Labyrinth and Hespira, all previously and gushingly reviewed in these pages – and one story that was. He is a detective of the far future, a Sherlock of the Old Earth, whose investigations invariably lead to entertaining banter with his integrator and his outspoken intuition, and direct him to the unavoidable conclusion that the rumours are true: the underlying principle of the universe is on the cusp of changing from science to magic. How can he eliminate the impossible from his investigations when he has seen the impossible happen with his own eyes? The stories interweave with the novels, and include crucial moments in Hapthorn’s life, making them essential (and very pleasurable) reading for his fans.

The God Engines by John Scalzi – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

The God Engines by John Scalzi (Subterranean Press, ebook, 1223ll, originally published in 2009) opens with a classic first line: “It was time to whip the god.” That job falls to Captain Ean Tephe. The Righteous is powered by an enslaved god who must be punished if recalcitrant, with a whip whose handle is carved from the bone of a god, whose leather is godskin embedded with “first-made” iron, born in the heart of a star and never buried in the ground of a planet. Wounded gods can be healed with blood of the faithful, and thus each ship bears a complement of priests and acolytes; the book has no mention of engineers. The god worshipped by Tephe and his people long since enslaved his rivals, establishing dominion over this part of the galaxy, but the god powering the Righteous is not unique in his rebellion. The Righteous is thus sent on a mission to a world of people who do not yet worship any god (despite my groans when this world was first mentioned, it isn’t Earth!), whose faith will thus be of the most powerful kind: first-born, freely given. Mission success will gain Tephe a promotion but take him away from his sweetheart; a happy outcome for him seems unlikely.

Counter-Measures, Series 1 – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Doctor Who spin-off Counter-Measures, Series 1 (Big Finish, digital audiobook, c.4 hrs, plus 65 mins of bonus features) follows on from one of the seventh Doctor’s best television adventures, Remembrance of the Daleks. Some of the soldiers and scientists who helped him face down two Dalek armies, in particular Group Captain Ian Gilmore (Simon Williams), Professor Rachel Jenson (Pamela Salem) and Alison Williams (Rachel Gledhill), come together again to form a special counter-measures group for responding to such “insurgencies”. As you might expect from that, it’s quite reminiscent of Torchwood, if it were set in the sixties, or English black and white science fiction films of that period.

Cloud Atlas – reviewed by Jacob Edwards

Drawing together and falling apart through six degrees of separation. Cloud Atlas (directed by Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer and Andy Wachowski), released 26 October 2012 (US); 22 February 2013 (UK).

1. Returning to slavery-era San Francisco from the Chatham Islands, a convalescent Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess) must put his faith in either the sickly smiling Dr Goose or a Moriori stowaway; he keeps a diary while wrestling with his conscience… 2. Acting as an assistant to a famous but cantankerous old composer, bisexual wunderkind Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw) finds Ewing’s diary and is inspired to complete his own great work; when Frobisher commits suicide, he leaves the finished composition to his lover, Rufus Sixsmith… 3. Now an old man and a nuclear physicist, Sixsmith (James D’Arcy) shares a broken elevator with journalist Luisa Rey (Halle Berry), who then becomes embroiled in a plot to cover up a nuclear accident-in-waiting; she subsequently drafts a novel based on the conspiracy… 4. Ne’er-do-well publisher Timothy Cavendish (Jim Broadbent), having dismissed Rey’s manuscript, receives his karmic comeuppance when he finds himself on the run and imprisoned in a bogus nursing home; later, he writes a screenplay based on his ordeals… 5. Sonmi-451 (Doona Bae), a clone manufactured to work in a fast food joint, watches a snippet of Cavendish’s film after being liberated by union rebels; awakened to her plight, and that of her fellow clones, Sonmi broadcasts a public incitement to rebellion… 6. Living in a society where Sonmi-451 now is seen as a divine entity, post-apocalyptic goat herder Zachry (Tom Hanks) must choose between “Old Georgie” – a devilish vision whose whispered goads once saved him from cannibals – and Meronym, a “prescient” who would use her knowledge of the old technologies to send a distress signal to distant planets; ultimately, Zachry’s fate is determined by ripples spreading through time…

Moscow But Dreaming by Ekaterina Sedia – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

The recurring themes of Moscow But Dreaming (Prime Books, pb, 286pp) by Ekaterina Sedia are not happy ones. These are stories of drudgery, degradation and misery, of people with nothing to live for, and women worn away to nothing, like the ghosts of murdered young women in “Tin Cans”, or the unnamed protagonist of “Zombie Lenin”, numbed by misery, followed by a zombie Lenin since she was a little girl, and institutionalised for talking about it, or the protagonist of “Citizen Komarova Finds Love”, an aristocrat before the Russian Revolution, who now works in a consignment shop in the town of N. and gets involved with a cavalryman. “With him, he brought the cutting wind and the sense of great desolation”, not to mention a horse’s leg in a burlap sack, but compared to most men we meet in this book he’s George Clooney carrying a Marks & Spencer’s ready meal for two.

Dan Dare, by Garth Ennis and Gary Erskine – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Rather than a reboot or a re-imagining, Dan Dare (Dynamite, ebook, 198pp), by Garth Ennis and Gary Erskine, is a sequel in seven chapters to the original adventures of Frank Hampson’s Eagle character. Dare has retired to a virtual country village on a piece of class six spatial debris (asteroid #2333419, to be precise). His peace won’t last. Old friends like Digby miss him, and soon they’ll need him. Professor Peabody is Home Secretary, working for a Prime Minister with echoes of Blair (based in Millbank, “he’s been in too long … he’s shrugged off too much bloody wrongdoing”) who took charge of the world after the USA and China blew each other to bits. There are treens on the western approaches of the solar system, and they’ve brought two devastating weapons with them: a black hole, and the malign intelligence of the Mekon.

Clementine by Cherie Priest – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

As Clementine by Cherie Priest (Subterranean Press, ebook, 2508ll) begins, the American Civil War has ground on for twenty-four years or so, rather than lasting from 1861 to 1865 as it did in our history. Airships sail the American skies: from huge armoured battleships down to speedy two-seaters (for passengers who don’t mind a stiff breeze). Slavery persists in the south, and strange things are going on up in Seattle. Across these disunited States, in a tiny, nameless airship, flies Captain Croggon Beauregard Hainey – one of the twelve Macon Madmen, who “made a big, nasty show of escaping from the prison there in ’64” – and his two men Simeon and Lamar, in pursuit of the Free Crow. His ship has been stolen by the scoundrel Felton Brink, renamed the Clementine, and sent cross-country with a mysteriously heavy load. Southern lady Miss Maria Isabella “Belle” Boyd has been sent to stop him by the Pinkerton Agency, but an encounter with an old friend will bring her older loyalties to the fore.

The White City by Elizabeth Bear – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

The White City by Elizabeth Bear (Subterranean Press, ebook, 1669ll, originally published in 2010) stars Sebastien de Ulloa. Though that’s just one of many names used by this “wampyr, hobbyist detective, peculiar old soul”, it’s the one he’s using in 1903, at the time of this trip to Moscow. He is travelling with what we are told is an unusually small court: “lady novelist” Mrs Phoebe Smith and “forensic sorcerer” Lady Abigail Irene Garrett Th.D. (Abby Irene for short). There is a murder in a house where he was planning to feed, quite consensually, on Irina Stephanova, an old friend; though he is found on the scene by police, suspicion gives way to his reputation as “The Great Detective” and he and Abby are enlisted in the search for the murderer. A second strand describes events six years earlier in the same city, where Jack Priest, a young member of Sebastien’s court who has since been killed, gets involved with Irina and the circle of artists among which she moves; again, there is a murder.