Monday 31 December 2012

Snow White and the Huntsman – reviewed by Jacob Edwards

Oscar, Oscar on the wall, what’s the fairest sex of all? Snow White and the Huntsman, directed by Rupert Sanders.

It is not uncommon for the discerning movie-goer to bypass certain films on the big screen and instead proceed directly (if belatedly) to watching them on video (as those of us who remember wrist watches persist in calling it). Maybe the movie clocked up a mediocre score on IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes. Perhaps it merely appeared dubious through dint of an overzealous poster campaign, the proliferation of which hinted at some nail-biting desperation from marketers behind the scenes. But in either case, a small screen outing often can be more forgiving, and in rare and sometimes joyous instances can turn up an overlooked nugget (gold, not fluff-covered chicken) of movie-making par excellence.

Monday 24 December 2012

Looper – reviewed by Jacob Edwards

Looper (dir. Rian Johnson). It’s not lupus. It’s never lupus.

In the world of 2044, economic collapse has given rise to social degradation and the predominance of organised crime, wherein the mob from thirty years further into the future abducts people and dumps them back in time to be executed. The men who carry out these hits are called “loopers”, so named because their job entails early retirement and a payout sufficient to keep them living the highlife for thirty years, whereupon each man will be strapped to his own bonus and sent back thirty years to be shot by himself – his final kill. So far, so good for Joe Simmons (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), but by the year 2074 a ruthless new mafia boss has emerged and is closing all the loops. Joe already has his future planned, but his older self (Bruce Willis), having lived that life, then decides that he’s not quite ready to die…

Monday 17 December 2012

Dredd 3D – reviewed by Howard Watts

Dredd 3D certainly deserves its 18 rating. Now, I’m not a great fan of 3D – I find it false from a film POV, an augmented reality akin to Google’s project glass: https://plus.google.com/+projectglass/posts – a Sinclair C5 for the noggin, with apologies to William Gibson. Wearing those huge 3D glasses makes me feel like a participant at a Buggles convention, thankful for the darkness of the cinema. It’s not reality, and for me not how film should be presented. Dredd bears this out with abundance, many scenes not tailored specifically for the 3D effect suffering (as have other 3D films in recent years) from foreground distractions and blurry black artefacts.

Dredd is brutal, unrelenting, graphically violent on screen, implying it off. It’s full on – but lacks colour, favouring the grey tones of despair. The soundscape thunders around you, a marching drum of determination, punctuating its claustrophobic setting. Sight and hearing are bombarded – perhaps to the point of admitting, “too much!” Hardly a Buggles convention.

Friday 14 December 2012

Dreadstar Omnibus, Vol. 1, by Jim Starlin – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Dreadstar Omnibus, Vol. 1 by Jim Starlin (Dynamite Entertainment, ebook, 377pp) begins poorly, with a long recap of events that took place in the Marvel graphic novel Dreadstar (not included), as well as hinting at a bigger story that preceded it (explained more fully in chapter eight). Vanth Dreadstar is, as far as he knows, the sole survivor of the Milky Way, and arriving in the Empirical galaxy he did his best to ignore the two hundred year-old war between the Monarchy and the Instrumentality, found a wife, became a farmer, and lived a quiet life among peaceful cat-people until the Monarchy decided to wipe them out. His wife dead, Dreadstar decides there’s work be done, gathers a band of rebels, and that’s where we come in, ready to read twelve chapters originally published as the first twelve issues of Marvel’s ongoing Dreadstar.

Monday 10 December 2012

The Long Earth, by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter – reviewed by Jacob Edwards

You say potato, I say Sir Francis Drake wandering off-course with a sack full of sprouting ideas. The Long Earth, by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter (Doubleday, 2012).

When plans for Willis Linsay’s “stepping” device are posted online, humanity suddenly discovers the capacity to travel “east” or “west”, one world at a time (without iron but with quite some nausea) across a seemingly infinite number of parallel Earths, all of them untouched by humankind. For Joshua Valienté, a “natural” stepper who can traverse the Long Earth at will, this offers the chance to seek out the Silence that has called to him ever since his somewhat unusual birth, while for the rest of the populace it brings turmoil, upheaval and the bittersweet prospect of an endless frontier. Accompanying the ever-evolving super computer Lobsang, Joshua embarks on a voyage to uncover the cosmic significance of the many worlds opened up by Willis Linsay . . . and to find out what strange force is driving other humanoid life back towards the “Datum” Earth.

Wednesday 5 December 2012

Interzone #243 (ft. Theaker) – out on Kindle

The latest issue of Interzone is now out on Kindle. It features fiction by Jon Wallace, Jason Sanford, Priya Sharma, Chen Qiufan and Caroline M. Yachim, colour illustrations by Richard Wagner, Warwick Fraser-Coombe, and Martin Hanford, an interview with Adam Roberts, and much more.

But of course the very, very best reason to buy it is that it also features a review by me, of The Wurms of Blearmouth, Steven Erikson's latest Bauchelain and Korbal Broach novella.

Links:

Interzone #243 on Kindle UK
Interzone #243 on Kindle US
Print subscriptions to Interzone (and other TTA magazines)
The Wurms of Blearmouth on PS Publishing's website

Monday 3 December 2012

The Super Barbarians, by John Brunner – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

The first paragraph of The Super Barbarians by John Brunner (SF Gateway, ebook, 2655ll) sets the scene; it’s fifty years since our first interstellar war was lost, twenty-five since the Great Grip was loosened, ten since humans were accorded rights on Qallavarra, home planet of our conquerors. The Vorrish have an elaborate social structure and a convoluted language to match, but despite their military superiority they seem lacking in certain areas: their cars are imported from Earth, there are members of their nobility who cannot read or write, and superstition runs rampant. All are things that Gareth Shaw, a lowly human in the Household of Pwill, begins to realise he can turn to his advantage—and that of all humans.

Friday 30 November 2012

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #42 - out now! (Plus two free books!)

Not a dream, not an alternate reality, this is your real life and this is really happening: Theaker's 42 is here, at last!

Fiction: “The Powers That Be”, Sophia-Karin Psarras; “Drydock”, Mitchell Edgeworth; “Old Men Who Reach into Guitars”, R.M. Fradkin. Plus the Quarterly Review, by Jacob Edwards, Stephen Theaker and Howard Watts.

Books reviewed: Clementine, The Ebb Tide, The God Engines, The Long Earth, Mere Anarchy, The White City, The Yellow Cabochon, Dan Dare. Films reviewed: Dredd 3D, Looper and Snow White and the Huntsman.

There are two big changes this issue. Although Lulu and Feedbooks have been brilliant for us over the last few years, from this issue we’re moving the print version to Amazon POD, for the sake of improved distribution and cheaper postage for readers, and the ebook into the Kindle store, to give us a little more flexibility with the ebook formatting.

Delivery from Amazon is free with Super Saver delivery, or if you're a Prime member, effectively cutting three or four pounds off the cost of buying an issue.

Moving the ebook to the Kindle store does mean there's a minimum price for it, but our plan is to make each new issue free on Kindle for the first five days of its release, and then again whenever a new issue is released. If we end up accidentally selling a few copies in the spaces inbetween, we’ll tuck the money into Christmas cards for contributors.

If you are a fan of the epub and pdf formats of the magazine, our plan is to make them available as a bonus to anyone who gets the Kindle or print editions. Just send an email quoting the relevant code (see the editorial) to theakersquarterlyfiction@gmail.com and we’ll send a download link.

I hope that our next issue will be out in December, back on schedule, so see you again very soon.

Links:

Kindle edition (UK)
Print edition (UK)

Kindle edition (US)
Print edition (US)

Contributors

Howard Watts is a writer, artist and composer living in Seaford who provides the cover to this issue and a review of the film Dredd 3D.

Jacob Edwards is currently indentured to Australia’s speculative fiction flagship Andromeda Spaceways, editing #45 and (most merrily and in time for Christmas 2012) #55 of their Inflight Magazine. The website of this writer, poet and recovering lexiphanicist: www.jacobedwards.id.au.

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.

R.M. Fradkin currently lives and works in Italy. The one thing she expects to be constant in her life is writing: not doing so “would be like living with laryngitis for the rest of my life”.

Sophia-Karin Psarras is a sinologist who, through no fault of her own, has recently become inextricably caught in a web of doctors (and all secondarily-related species).

Stephen Theaker is the eponymous co-editor of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, and writes many of its reviews. He has also reviewed for Interzone, Black Static, Prism and the BFS Journal.

FREEBIES

To celebrate each new issue of TQF we offer a book or two free on Kindle. This time it's Michael Wyndham Thomas's extraordinary The Mercury Annual and my entirely ordinary Quiet, the Tin Can Brains Are Hunting!

The Mercury AnnualKindle UK, Kindle US
Quiet, the Tin Can Brains Are Hunting!Kindle UK, Kindle US

The War of the Worlds (XBLA) – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

I’ve been meaning to review The War of the Worlds (XBLA) for quite a while, but to do that I felt I had to finish the game, and that hasn’t happened; in fact, I don’t think I’ve got anywhere near the end. Written by Christopher Fowler, and narrated by Patrick Stewart, this side-scrolling platformer sets the story in 1950s London, which puts a very interesting twist on the narrative. For example, the player hears BBC radio broadcasts announcing the invasion. Though it was a game I bought less to play than because I thought it would be interesting to review, I was surprised by how good it was, at least at first; a bit slow, maybe, but diverting, beautiful, and often quite frightening.

Monday 26 November 2012

Le Voyage dans la Lune, Air – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Le Voyage dans la Lune (EMI, CD, 32 mins plus DVD, 17 mins) isn’t the first soundtrack work by Air (that would I think be The Virgin Suicides (2000), an album so heartbreaking I could only listen to it once)—but it is nevertheless very special. The music began as pieces to accompany the restored colour version of Georges Méliès’ 1902 film, which is included here, and so, before discussing the music, a few words for the film. Though most right-thinking people have a natural abhorrence of the colourisation of black and white films, this is something rather different; it was made at the same time as the original film under the supervision of Méliès himself, with every frame of the story hand-painted: the debate at the academy and the preparation of the rocket; the journey to the moon; the hallucinatory sleep sequence; the battles with the insectoid lunar inhabitants; the triumphant return home. Every bit of it is visually astonishing, and the colour is amazing, the brush strokes clearly visible. The film has lost none of its interest or entertainment value: the only disappointment for my children was its short length. If someone made the same film today you’d be impressed by their cleverness; that Méliès did it in 1902 is beyond belief. Or rather, it would be, if we didn’t have the evidence on DVD. And what about that Jules Verne, eh? Inspiring hit films for over a century now! (Shame they’re not all as good as this one.)

Friday 23 November 2012

Drokk: Music Inspired by Mega-City One – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

As part of Portishead, Geoff Barrow has created four of my favourite albums of all time. Drokk: Music Inspired by Mega-City One (Invada UK, 56 mins), in collaboration with film and television composer Ben Salisbury, may be a side project, but it is very nearly as superb as his other work. This isn’t actually the soundtrack to the forthcoming Dredd, whose composer is Paul Leonard-Morgan. But it did apparently begin there, as exploratory sketches, and it says a lot for the music that although they didn’t end up working on the film, the musicians involved felt those ideas were too good to leave unexplored, and came back to finish them off.

Monday 19 November 2012

Super F*ckers by James Kochalka – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Super F*ckers by James Kochalka (Top Shelf, digital collection, 146pp) is one of the most puerile things I’ve ever read, and therein lies its charm. Its characters throw swears around like they’ve just learnt them, dumb teenagers who have realised they can make their peers laugh with mindless abuse despite a lack of wit. The book is a spoof on teams like the Legion of Super-Heroes, the Justice Society of America and the Teen Titans, with their club houses, rule books and membership try-outs.

Friday 16 November 2012

The Cosmic Horror Colouring and Activity Book! by Jess Bradley – reviewed by Lorelei Theaker

The Cosmic Horror Colouring and Activity Book! by Jess Bradley (self-published, 28pp) is great for kids any age. They will love this book because it has fun activities and brilliant colourings of Cthulhu and his enemies/friends. At the end of the book there are some snap cards to cut out and play with. Also provided, two photos of Cthulhu, one of him graduating and a normal photo of him. One of the fun activities is doing a maze to move Cthulhu somewhere, but you could get trapped in a picture of Cthulhu or a dead end.

All kids will absolutely adore this activity/colouring book. It will be fun because they can do some of the activities over and over if they don’t write on them and the fun will never stop. And the pictures are great and the illustrator has done great detail. And again, every kid will adore it!

Wednesday 14 November 2012

The A to Z of your online life

Type each letter of the alphabet into your browser’s address bar and note the results to draw a self-portrait with your favourite websites…

Here’s my list...




I think the search engine ones are where I haven't been to a site beginning with that letter so it just threw up something random. That hipster quiz is just a random quiz link from Facebook that I never actually did…

Monday 12 November 2012

The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar (Angry Robot, ebook, 4253ll plus extras), is the first in a series that has so far run to three volumes (the sequels being Camera Obscura and The Great Game). It’s set in a world much changed since Amerigo Vespucci landed on the island of Shakespeare’s play The Tempest. Caliban’s people, Les Lézards, have installed themselves as the rulers of our island nation, whales sing in the Thames, the police are supported by automatons, airships fly overhead, and Moriarty is Prime Minister. Orphan is a young poet given to literary mischief, rebel rather than revolutionary, but when tragedy strikes a mission to Mars his need to set things right throws him into an adventure that will take him from London to the Mysterious Island of Jules Verne, and leave the future of the planet in his hands.

Friday 9 November 2012

The Darkness Compendium, Vol. 1 – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Even James Kochalka’s Super F*ckers seems grown-up compared to The Darkness Compendium, Vol. 1 (Top Cow, digital collection), which is 1169 pages of anatomically incorrect pin-ups, misogyny and lumpy dialogue. Possibly the worst comic I’ve read, and certainly the worst comic of which I’ve read almost twelve hundred pages, it did become moreish after a while, in the sense that it never asked anything of my brain, except when it came to grasping the dangling strands of a bunch of daft crossovers. It’s telling that the book’s most significant events (aside from Jackie gaining his powers at the age of 21) occur outside its pages, in a Batman crossover that isn’t included here.

Monday 5 November 2012

Jago & Litefoot: The Bloodless Soldier by Justin Richards – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Henry Gordon Jago is a theatrical impresario who has lost his theatre, Professor Gordon Litefoot a respectable doctor who helps the police when they have a body to examine. They met for the first time on television, in The Talons of Weng-Chiang, one of the fourth Doctor’s best-regarded stories. Jago & Litefoot: The Bloodless Soldier by Justin Richards (Big Finish, 1×CD, 50 mins) is the first in a series of audio adventures, sold in box sets of four stories. Their “investigations of infernal incidents” have been successful enough to reach a fourth series, but I’m starting at the beginning. Or almost the beginning; they were previously to be heard in The Mahogany Murders, one of the Companion Chronicles, but I missed that one. Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter return as Jago and Litefoot, respectively, their full-blooded, plummy tones giving the story an instant gravitas. They play their roles with complete conviction, approaching the material with the same seriousness they might give to a Radio 4 adaptation of a classic literary novel. The relish with which they discuss the food and drink served up by Ellie at their favourite pub made this listener wish he was right there at the table with them. The word I’m looking for is gusto!

Friday 2 November 2012

Prometheus – reviewed by Howard Watts (*spoilers*)

It was around 1980/81 when my mother sneaked me into a flea pit with her in Brighton to see Ridley Scott’s A L I E N, and I’d like to make it perfectly clear from the outset: I’ve been waiting for someone to address the origins of the “Derelict” and its occupant, the “Space Jockey”, for umpteen years since walking out of the cinema way back then. In advance of seeing the film I was familiar with the imagery from various books such as the Alien Photostory and The Making of Alien. Even then, Hans Rudi Giger’s “Space Jockey” seemed to me to be such a grand figure fused to his chair, peering into what seemed to be either a telescope, or perhaps a weapon. He appeared lonely, as if his proud appointment somehow involved a great sacrifice on his part. Despite the mystery surrounding his true purpose, I wanted to know more about him…

Monday 29 October 2012

Doctor Who: The Essential Companion – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Doctor Who: The Essential Companion (BBC/AudioGo, 2×CD, 160 mins), written by Steve Tribe and narrated by Alex Price, stitches together snatches of dialogue from the fifth full season of new Who, from The Eleventh Hour through to The Big Bang. It introduces us to the eleventh Doctor and his companions, Amelia (later Amy) Pond and Rory Williams, and then introduces them (or the Doctor and Amy at least, Rory often being dead, left at home, or erased from the space/time continuum) to countries built on space whales, daleks serving cups of tea, crashed spaceships full of weeping angels, alien vampires in Venice, the dream lord, silurians, Vincent Van Gogh, football and the Pandorica: all the things that made season five so wonderful.

Friday 26 October 2012

Prometheus – reviewed by Jacob Edwards

Ridley, Riddled, Didley, Diddled. In Greek mythology Prometheus was a trickster god who betrayed his own kind and allowed the Olympians to gain ascendancy over the Titans. He championed mankind (as then it was, prior to Pandora), not only saving them from destruction at the tempestuous, lightning-wielding hands of Zeus but also giving them (or giving them back) the secret of fire and—to pull further on the thunder god’s beard—duping Zeus in perpetuity out of the meat of all sacrifices offered to him. In punishment for his duplicity Prometheus was chained to a rock and had his liver torn out daily by an eagle, forever and ever until even Franz Kafka lost interest and declared this ongoing repetition to be thoroughly pointless.

Monday 22 October 2012

Worldsoul, by Liz Williams – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Worldsoul is a city somewhat adjacent to our world, and the subject of a fine novel by Liz Williams (Prime, tpb, 312pp). A year ago the Skein left Worldsoul, leaving its inhabitants to fend for themselves, but so far, despite the burning flower attacks from unknown enemies, they haven’t found a way to work together. The factions are too busy battling each other to deal with the problems the city faces. Mercy works in the Great Library of Worldsoul, strapping on weapons before going into the stacks to fight anything that escapes the books. She’s worried about one of her mothers, who sails the Liminality in hopes of finding the Skein, but won’t let it interfere with her work. Jonathan Deed is the Abbot General of the court, performing magic with the aid of grimoires, demons and gods, who wants control of the city. Shadow is an alchemist, more involved than she would like with Suleiman the Shah, and then even more involved with an ifrit. Mareritt is an ice queen, perhaps the original ice queen, who rides through legends in a sleigh that carries the severed heads of kings. Ancient myths, the nightmares of our oldest ancestors, are escaping from the stories that held them, and though “the mind is the best weapon of all”, ancient celtic swords, powerful magic and ninja skills will come in handy too.

Friday 19 October 2012

The Dark Knight Rises – reviewed by Jacob Edwards

And whereand whereand where is the Batman? The Dark Knight Rises, directed by Christopher Nolan, released July 16, 2012.

Gotham City is at peace and Batman hasn’t been seen in the eight years following the tumultuous events of The Dark Knight. With the vilification of his alter-ego and the financial losses suffered by Wayne Enterprises in pursuing then abandoning a clean energy project with unforeseen destructive potential, Bruce Wayne has sunk into a reclusive abstinence from society, mourning the life he could have lived with Rachel Dawes had she not been killed by the Joker. When Commissioner Gordon and rookie police officer John Blake uncover a villainous new threat lurking in Gotham’s sewers, and cat burglar Selina Kyle then allows Wayne’s fingerprints to be used to disastrous ill-effect, Batman must emerge to save his city from the fanatical machinations of Bane—a cogent, Herculean villain who trained under Wayne’s former mentor, Ra’s al Ghul. The menace is palpable but the Batman has aged and Wayne Enterprises is vulnerable. As Bane’s ruthlessly conceived schemes play out, both Gotham and her maligned protector will fall to new depths of despair and helplessness.

Friday 21 September 2012

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

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

Monday 17 September 2012

Alcatraz, Season 1 – reviewed by Howard Watts

Alcatraz. JJ Abrams is a sensationalist. A sensationalist in a genre that doesn’t need him. He’s muddying the waters of good storytelling, breaking the time honoured traditions laid down centuries ago, creating a dumbed-down environment where it’s deemed acceptable to produce sub-standard, unfinished, not thought out work, masquerading as revolutionary.

Agreed, he creates circumstances that hook—which is part and parcel of our genre, any genre for that matter. However, his fictional circumstances are contrived and will never reward those foolish enough to go the distance with him.

Saturday 15 September 2012

Shelflings #3 is imminent!

Shelflings is a British Fantasy Society members-only ezine compiled by me from reviews edited by Craig Lockley, Phil Lunt and Jay Eales for the BFS website.

Links for downloading issue three will soon be emailed out to members, so, if you're one of them, make sure the BFS has your current email address on file, especially if you didn't receive the emails sent out for previous issues. Send updates to the BFS membership secretary at secretary@britishfantasysociety.org. If you're not a member, this would be a perfect time to join.

Friday 14 September 2012

Goliath by Tom Gauld – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

The Goliath of the title (Drawn & Quarterly, hb, 96pp) is the one from the Bible, and this is Tom Gauld’s version of his ill-starred battle with David, or rather the build-up to it, the actual confrontation and its aftermath taking up just the last seven pages of the book. Goliath is part of the Philistine army, but he’s not the mighty warrior of legend. In fact, he’s the self-confessed “fifth-worst swordsman” in his platoon. Reading the challenge he must make to the Israelites, his first response is to faint. Upon waking he says, “I do paperwork! I’m a very good administrator.” He isn’t a coward, exactly; he’s just sensible and doesn’t like fighting.

Monday 10 September 2012

The Lorax – reviewed by Jacob Edwards

“I am the Lorax, I speak for the trees, but cutesy sells tickets, so do what you please.” The Lorax. Directed by Chris Renaud (with Kyle Balda).

Twelve year old Ted Wiggins (Zac Efron) lives in Thneed-Ville, an artificially happy and colourful bubble city with inflatable trees and commercialised fresh air. To win the affections of girl-next-door Audrey (Taylor Swift), he must first brave the wasteland outside of Thneed-Ville and speak to the crotchety, reclusive old Once-ler (Ed Helms), then plant a Truffula Tree in defiance of the nefarious and unscrupulous Mayor O’Hare (Rob Riggle). As the Once-ler confesses the details of his greedy, younger day Thneed-mongering and ecology-cruelling defiance of the Lorax (Danny DeVito), Ted’s determination to bring back a Truffula Tree comes to be shaped as much by environmental concern as by his romantic interest.

Friday 7 September 2012

A Woman of Mars by Helen Patrice – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

A Woman of Mars, by Helen Patrice (hb, 48pp, available here) is the sixth collection of poetry from PS Publishing’s Stanza imprint, telling the story of a fifteen year-old girl who falls for a handsome twenty-six year-old astronaut—“Only from within his eyes, / did I see clear / for the first time, / a future of steel and stars” (“The Stirring”)—and travels to Mars in the spaceship he pilots to join the founding of a colony. Hence the subtitle: the poems of an early homesteader. The story it tells, of dust storms, disasters and terraforming, isn’t particularly novel, but its point of view is, as shown by the title: she’s a woman of Mars, not a princess, warlord or god; it’s the story of what a normal life might be like, lived on Mars, coping with life and with death, and the subtitle suggests that these are not just poems about her, they are to be taken as poems by her. Not every poem is in the first person—“Buried”, for example, imagines a series of messages sent out to Station five during a sandstorm (“Mining station five, / the storm is abating. / What is your status?”)—but most are, and we see both old and new Mars through the prism of her life and relationships.

Monday 3 September 2012

Brave – reviewed by Jacob Edwards

And so the spoils…Brave, directed by Brenda Chapman, then Mark Andrews.

Tenth century Scotland is ruled by King Fergus of the Clan DunBroch, but remains united largely through the diplomatic nous of his wife, Queen Elinor, who keeps the high-spirited squabbling of Fergus and his three most powerful allies (Lords MacGuffin, Macintosh and Dingwall) from escalating into pride-fuelled clan warfare. Elinor is schooling her teenage daughter, the Princess Merida, in the ways of queenliness, but Merida is as independent as her hair is red, and when she baulks at the prospect of being married off to whichever of the three clans’ firstborn sons should compete for her least ineptly in a betrothal contest, there develops between she and Elinor a mother/daughter rift that threatens not only the happiness of the Clan DunBroch but also the sanctity of Scottish traditions, upon which balance (somewhat precariously) the brotherly affections and rivalry that define Fergus and his fellow clan leaders. Merida hot-headedly bargains with a witch to “change” her mother, but must then deal with the consequences of that (over-literal) change and put things right before the scrambled yolk of second dawn breaks its permanency upon her wish.

Friday 31 August 2012

The Orphan Palace by Joseph S. Pulver Sr – reviewed by John Greenwood

What would be an effective method to convey a character’s emotion of overwhelming hatred, say for his parents? Here’s how Joseph S. Pulver Sr goes about it in The Orphan Palace (Chômu Press, pb, 376pp):

“The HATE…The HATE…grinding…The HATE…LARGER…LARGER…hatehatehatehatehate…”

These are techniques that Pulver uses throughout the novel: ellipses (more than in any other book I’ve read), sentence fragments or just single isolated words, words capitalised for emphasis, words run together, and of course repetition (of the fourteen words in this fragment, eight are just the word “hate”). It doesn’t express, it just reminds us what the author should have found some means of expressing.

To describe The Orphan Palace as experimental fiction doesn’t give much of an indication of how Pulver organises his material. “Stream-of-consciousness” isn’t a term that helps much either, because the chains of sentence fragments, strung along long threads of ellipses like a funky gothic necklace, are not merely an attempt to reproduce the inner monologue of the protagonist. This is fairly typical:

“The stiff wall of Nightblack frozen forever takes all of you into its disaster of old rage… 
The monster mask growls, hungry knife-thorn swallows dawn.
Smears ointments of blind worm seed and dead tongue curse on crouching hearts smashed on Null…
The blind moon-tempest mask ringing with translations of All Fall Down-rises, its seven torch-eyes writhe…shines as a shadow drinking the tear-miles of open blood veins…”

I suppose you could call it a prose-poem, or beat poetry, but what it brings to mind most readily is the lyric sheet of a heavy metal band. Like an extended rock opera, there are whole pages where no line reaches the other side of the page, and no sentence finds its full stop, on occasion even using the “/” character to break the line. Pulver quotes Springsteen before the book gets going, and lists his preferred soundtrack at the end. Since the advent of Spotify it would be possible for readers to listen to Pulver’s recommended tracks while working through the book, but the artists he cites (from Kronos Quartet to Steve Earle) have little in common with his unvarying vocabulary of blood, death, sexual predation and insanity, familiar to me from early eighties metal bands (Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Accept, Dio, early Metallica) but no doubt still the core business of contemporary metal and goth bands. When not staring into the Abyss, Pulver has us adrift in a small-town America of sleazy bars and cheap motels, whisky slugged from the bottle and cold coffee from paper cups, easy girls drawn to the mysterious drifter (morphing into the iconography of Hair Metal).

It’s not all improvised coda: there is a plot, and it concerns Cardigan, ex-inmate of an occult, abusive orphanage, hard-drinker, arsonist and serial killer, who is making his way East across the USA, shooting up lonely gas stations, burning down motels, picking up women in bars before murdering them and mutilating their bodies. He’s on a mission of revenge against the evil Dr Archer, whose obscure but depraved experiments on the kids in his charge have turned Cardigan into a monster. Along the way, Cardigan tries to penetrate the mystery of a series of pulp noirish novels he finds in every motel room he visits, and is advised along the way by a number of supernatural or perhaps hallucinatory mentors.

A lot of strange things happen: plot devices are introduced (such as a coin to magically detect lies, and a ghoulish impregnation) and are promptly forgotten about. Stranger still, Cardigan, who is seen casually slashing up women for fun in the first half of the book, is by the second half almost one of the good guys, at worst troubled, if rather more than misunderstood. An old friend from the orphanage urges him to give up his quest and settle down to run a beachside bar with him, as though we had switched channels from American Psycho and found ourselves in the closing scenes of The Shawshank Redemption. His violent outbursts start to take on a more moralising intent. He murders a man who tries to hit a dog in a park, and I got the impression that I was invited to applaud this vigilante justice. He confronts a violent pimp and sets the prostitutes free, imploring them to go and seek the light. Oddest of all, Cardigan shoots the pimp’s bodyguards, only to find them alive and well on the next page, and slays them again.

Over and above such slips, any reader without amnesia or psychopathy should be wondering how this is the same character who was driving around with a woman’s severed nipple in his pocket just a few days previously. And despite over three hundred and fifty pages of impulsive slaughter, theft and arson, the police only appear in the book once, and show no interest in Cardigan’s rampage. While I wasn’t expecting social realism, the complete lack of consequences in The Orphan Palace gives it the feel of somebody who has discovered a cheat to turn off the cops and gain powers of invincibility in Grand Theft Auto.

The best that can be said of The Orphan Palace is that it has a restless, grotesque fecundity, like the random strings of images and words that one is aware of just before sleep descends:

“…a face in the bridal chamber mirror…Baby…HER FACE…BABY…a serpent with seven eyes…I LOVE YOU…the skull of an angel kissed by the mysteries of the worm…she bellows…I will possess your demon art…I knit gloom with your October fables…fly back to the Stygian dew of my texture spread in regal luster…”

But the language sticks so closely to the clichés of Lovecraftian gothic horror that it becomes predictable. The slackness of the narrative, combined with these long stretches of formless ranting about the Hounds of Tindalos and other such touchstones of weird fiction, make The Orphan Palace a slog through well-trodden territory with little compensation other than the grim satisfaction of having made it to the last page.

Still, you have to hand it to Chômu Press. Since 2010 they have been publishing unclassifiable out-on-a-limb fiction on a punishing schedule (twenty books at my last count), in elegantly strange covers that ought to be the envy of mainstream publishers. Like specialist species of insect hiding away in their narrow ecological niches, small presses have traditionally thrived in very well-defined sub-genres where there is a limited but proven supply of readers. Chômu (Japanese for “dreaming butterfly”) is a different creature altogether, willing, one might even say anxious, to take chances on authors who are similarly drawn to such risky behaviour in their writing. Sometimes these risks pay off (see the review of Justin Isis’s collection of short stories from TQF35), but not here.

Monday 27 August 2012

Doctor Who: Shada by Gareth Roberts – reviewed by Jacob Edwards

DNA, the Doctor, and another punt at Cambridge. Doctor Who: Shada by Gareth Roberts, based on the original scripts by Douglas Adams (BBC Books, hb, 407pp).

When Chris Parsons, in an attempt to impress a girl he’s serially failed to declare his love for, borrows some books on carbon dating from retired Cambridge don Professor Chronotis, he has no idea that the Professor is actually a Time Lord, that Chronotis’s college room is the inside of a TARDIS, or that one of the books Chris has borrowed is, in fact, the most dangerous book in the entire universe. As the coldly villainous Skagra appears on campus, armed with a mind-sucking sphere, and intent on unlocking the secret of Shada (the long-lost prison planet of the Time Lords), Chris finds himself embroiled in it all and, to his own enduring bafflement, hitchhiking through time and space with a long-scarfed eccentric known to all and sundry (even the college porter) as the Doctor.

Friday 24 August 2012

The Moon Moth by Humayoun Ibrahim and Jack Vance – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Adapted by Humayoun Ibrahim from the short story by Jack Vance, The Moon Moth (hb, 128pp) is another interesting comic from First Second, who previously published the very decent Orcs: Forged for War and seem to be making a praiseworthy habit of looking beyond the obvious candidates for adaptation into graphic novels. An opening introduction to Vance’s work by Carlo Rotella is not uninteresting—especially insofar as he actually visited Vance to interview him—but like Brandon Flowers discussing the Pet Shop Boys in A Life in Pop he seems rather too embarrassed about his enthusiasm for his subject. Never mind, the main course is the actual comic, and that is excellent.

Monday 20 August 2012

The Avengers – reviewed by Douglas J. Ogurek

During the opening weekend of The Avengers (Avengers Assemble in the UK), directed by Joss Whedon, Americans plunked down $207.4 million to watch their beloved Marvel superheroes join forces. The earnings, to borrow a term from the Hulk’s lexicon, “smashed” the previous record-holder, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, by over $38 million. Worldwide, The Avengers brought in over $650 million in 12 days.

Frenetic, heavy on special effects, and one-dimensional, The Avengers achieves its success by giving easily-distracted contemporary moviegoers what they crave. And this film didn’t simply materialise through a portal in the sky; it is built on a foundation of several stand-alone films that show what each Avenger is capable of independently. “And now they’re coming together?” thinks the common man. “I’ve got to see that!” Brilliant marketing.

Wednesday 15 August 2012

Shelflings #2 - NOT available for free download from the British Fantasy Society!

The British Fantasy Society has made issue two of its reviews ezine available for free [accidentally, as it turns out - see below] to the general public. That means you!

SHELFLINGS #2 has been compiled by Stephen Theaker (me!) from reviews edited by Craig Lockley, Phil Lunt and Jay Eales for the British Fantasy Society website. It features almost 30,000 words of reviews by Carl Barker, Chris Limb, Craig Knight, David A. Riley, David Brzeski, David Rudden, Elloise Hopkins, Glen Mehn, Jacob Howard, Jay Eales, Katy O’Dowd, M.P. Ericson, Mario Guslandi, Matthew Johns, Mike Chinn, Pauline Morgan, Phil Lunt, R.A. Bardy, Rebekah Lunt, Selina Lock, Steve Dean and Stewart Horn.

Tuesday 7 August 2012

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller - reviewed by John Greenwood

In the world of The Dog Stars, humanity has been decimated by a combination of killer flu and a HIV-like blood disease, with only zero point something of the population surviving the apocalypse. The survivors, at least in the USA where the novel is set, can be divided into isolated homesteaders and marauding bands of scavengers. Amateur Cessna pilot Hig is one of the former, and together with his gun-obsessive friend Bangley, he defends a tiny rural airport against any feral remnants of humanity who make it over the mountain. Together they make an effective, if inharmonious team. Hig can't stomach the killing, and Bangley the ruthless tactician cannot secure their perimeter without regular flights to check for intruders approaching their borders. But after nine years of this successful strategy, Hig suffers a shock that leads him to follow a faint transmission from another airport situated beyond his fuel supply's point of no return.

Sunday 29 July 2012

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #41 – plus two free books!

I bet you're going on holiday soon, aren't you? And you probably haven't got anything to read. And if you have, I bet you'll read the first page and immediately get bored of it! Why take the chance! Download issue forty-one of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction – or buy a print copy if you're so inclined! – and you'll be assured of a brilliant holiday! And if you don't get a copy I'm going to keep using exclamation marks until you do!

Friday 22 June 2012

Super Dinosaur, Vol. 1, by Robert Kirkman and Jason Howard – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Super Dinosaur, Vol. 1, by Robert Kirkman and Jason Howard (Image Comics, tpb, 128pp). Derek Dynamo is a cocky kid genius whose best friend is Super Dinosaur, a genetically-modified Tyrannosaurus Rex. As Rexes go, he’s quite small—only about 300 cm—but he’s intelligent, tough and wears cybernetic harnesses that provide him with weapons, wings and best of all a decent pair of fists, for punching the dino-men minions of Max Maximus, monsters like Terrordactyl, Dreadasaurus and Breakeosaurus. Derek’s dad, Doctor Dynamo, has been a bit fuzzy-minded since the first great battle with his arch-nemesis, but the boy genius has secretly been taking up the slack.

Monday 18 June 2012

Monkey vs. Robot by James Kochalka – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Originally published in 2000, Monkey vs. Robot (Top Shelf, digital graphic novel, 150pp), written and drawn by James Kochalka, sees a group of monkeys react angrily to the pollution being caused by a factory and the robots who work for it. The pages are square with one to four panels each. There is very little dialogue—a robot declaring “The future is now” early on, and the factory computer begging for its life towards the end, for example—and that makes it a very quick read (so much so that one feels almost guilty to see it took a year to create). It’s a sad tale: imagine the stormtroopers of Return of the Jedi mounting a comeback against the ewoks, drawn with heartbreaking cuteness. The monkeys are essentially murderous eco-terrorists, but one does want them to win. It looks smashing on the iPad, and is available on Comixology at a remarkably cheap price. Good stuff. I could see myself becoming quite a fan of James Kochalka.

Friday 15 June 2012

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Wolves at the Gate – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

One of my very favourite television programmes continues in comics form in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season Eight, Vol. 3: Wolves at the Gate (Dark Horse, tpb, 136pp), collecting issues eleven to fifteen of the comic. Most of this book is written by Drew Goddard, but it opens with a single issue story by Buffy creator Joss Whedon, “A Beautiful Sunset”, in which Buffy encounters the Big Bad for this season, Twilight. He’s a dangerous fellow—he throws a steeple at her!—whose plan is to take away Buffy’s invincible armour: “her moral certainty”. (It would certainly slow her down a bit if she didn’t just assume all vampires were naughty by nature.) There’s a tease of his identity that would have been cleverly tantalising had I not learnt it already from the Amazon description of volume eight.

Tuesday 12 June 2012

Interzone and Black Static on Kindle (ft. Theaker)

Three Theaker-tastic magazines from TTA Press are now available on Kindle: Interzone 239, Interzone 240 and Black Static 27. Theaker-less issues are also available!

I joke, as usual, but you cannot imagine how proud I am to have written for these magazines. I first read Interzone when I was at school, long, long decades ago. Having my first review appear in there was the greatest writing achievement of my life so far.

In issue 239 I review Andy Remic's Theme Planet, and in issue 240 there's a Theaker double-bill, reviewing Jane Carver of Waar and The Not Yet by Nathan Long and Moira Crone respectively. In issue 27 of Black Static I review Alison Littlewood's A Cold Season.

The issues also feature fiction, reviews, interviews and columns from Lavie Tidhar, Elizabeth Bourne, Stephen Volk, Jim Steel, Suzanne Palmer, Peter Tennant, Stephen Bacon, Nick Lowe, Ray Cluley, Tony Lee and many more brilliant people.

Monday 11 June 2012

Cobra Gamble (Cobra War, Book 3) by Timothy Zahn – reviewed by Jacob Edwards

Cobra Gamble (Cobra War, Book 3), by Timothy Zahn (Baen Books, 308pp). The second labour of a latter day Hercules—third head, twice removed.

Timothy Zahn first introduced the concept of Cobras—cybernetically enhanced warriors with built-in weaponry—through the novelette, “When Jonny Comes Marching Home”, in the January 1982 edition of Analog. A trilogy of novels soon followed—Cobra (1985), Cobra Strike (1986), Cobra Bargain (1988)—in which Zahn further explored not only the military but also the social and political implications of mankind’s having created soldiers who are permanently armed; in effect, living weapons. Although Zahn then moved on to other projects—most famously, perhaps, his Thrawn trilogy, which relaunched the Star Wars franchise in written form—he has returned twenty years later with a second Cobra trilogy (Cobra War) and has even set the stage for a third (Cobra Rebellion). With his country (the USA) continuing to embroil itself in a series of political/cultural/military conflicts, Zahn (and his readers) might well regard the Cobras as being even more relevant now to society than they were thirty years ago.

Sunday 10 June 2012

Amazon reviews – even more corrupt than you thought, thanks to Fiverr?!

First, introductions! This reviewer on Amazon and Goodreads seems to be this user on Fiverr, who offers reviews of books at five dollars a pop. And this reviewer on Amazon is, I reckon, this guy on Fiverr, who will for his five dollars produce a video review, for another five add your book to Listmania lists, and, for five dollars more, buy your book so that he shows up as a verified purchaser. Sneaky!

Friday 8 June 2012

Giant Thief by David Tallerman – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Stories by the author of Giant Thief (Angry Robot, ebook, 4314ll), David Tallerman, have appeared twice in our magazine, and twice more in my issues of Dark Horizons, so of course you must bear my potential bias in mind when reading this review. That said, on to the book. Easie Damasco is the thief of the title, who finds himself dragooned into the army of ruthless warlord Moaradred, who’s on his way to capture the crown of Castoval. Key to Moaradred’s plans are his contingent of giants, kept under his evil thumb by his possession of an object just small enough to be accidentally stolen by a thief hustling his way into the tent. Riding Saltlick, the giant to which he has been assigned, straight off the battlefield and into the hills, Easie is somewhat surprised by the persistence with which he is pursued—and subsequently, the keenness with which he and his huge new friend are courted by the resistance, particularly Estrada, female mayor of Muena Palaiya.

Monday 4 June 2012

Doctor Who: The Invasion of E-Space – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

In Doctor Who: The Invasion of E-Space (Big Finish, 60 mins plus extras) Romana tells a story that happened somewhere between Full Circle (where the Tardis acquired an Adric) and Warriors’ Gate (where the Doctor and Adric escaped E-Space, leaving Romana and a K-9 to fight for Tharil liberation). Lalla Ward is helped in her narrative duties by Suanne Brown, playing Marni Tellis, who has been investigating a series of murders on her home planet Ballustra. Those deaths were the prelude to an attack by Farrian raiders, who are invading from our universe by way of an artificial charged vaccum emboitment.

Friday 1 June 2012

Reasons why we will review your self-published book (maybe)

Inspired by a post on Gav Reads, giving his reasons why “Reviewers Won’t Read Your Self-Published Book”, here are a few (sometimes overlapping) reasons why we might well review your self-published (or self-published by proxy) book:
  1. It’s not too long.
  2. It’s the kind of thing we like.
  3. It’s the kind of thing our readers might like.
  4. The concept is interesting.
  5. The approach seems novel.
  6. It doesn’t look like a knock-off of something else.
  7. The first few pages weren’t boring.
  8. Your prose isn’t utterly pedestrian.
  9. We read something else you wrote and it was good.
  10. It looks rubbish, but in an interesting or amusing way.
  11. We haven’t had to deal with a nutter lately and we’ve begun to forget what a minefield reviewing self-published authors can be.
  12. You haven’t had a public meltdown over previous reviews.
  13. You, your publisher and your friends don’t harass reviewers on Goodreads and Amazon.
  14. The reviews on Amazon and Goodreads aren’t by your publisher, friends and family pretending they don’t know you.
  15. You know how to use punctuation.
  16. The first few pages of your book are not so full of errors that reading the book would clearly be something of a trial.
  17. We’re not in the right mood for any of the hundreds of books we’ve previously been sent (or the thousands that we own).
  18. Your Twitter, Facebook or blog posts are funny, intelligent or engaging, and that made us wonder what your books are like.
  19. You don’t use a pseudonym on forums to recommend your own books, or generally get up to scuzzy, underhand behaviour.
  20. We haven’t seen you swearing on Facebook every time you get a bad (or even mildly critical) review.
  21. You’re not pretending that the book was “traditionally published”, when your “publisher” is simply a paid provider of publishing services.
  22. Your email was polite, well-written and not full of daft claims about your book.
  23. It’s not book 5 in a series of 13.
  24. You’re not just in it for the money.
  25. You haven’t made a huge financial investment in the book that you're desperate to recoup.
  26. You sent us a proper ebook or a pdf of the typeset book, not just a pdf printed out from a Word file.
  27. You supplied the version of the book that is actually on sale, not an early draft.
  28. You didn't send us the book at all, but we bought it. 
  29. Having read it, we thought of something to say about it.
Pretty much the same reasons we decide to review (or read) anything… The chances of us reviewing any particular self-published book are pretty low, given the number of books we receive, but I think there tends to be at least one reviewed in each issue. If your book looks interesting, and you're not a complete jerk, we don't care who published it. Give us a try.

Empowered, Deluxe Edition, Volume I – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Empowered, Deluxe Edition, Volume I (Dark Horse, hb, 712pp), written and drawn by Adam Warren, collects three previously released paperbacks together with a selection of bonus materials. Empowered—or Emp for short—is a novice hero whose tendency to get captured by villains—and tied up, usually with a ball gag in her mouth—has made her a laughing stock in the superhero community. Not to mention the subject of many, many embarrassing photos and internet videos. She’s not completely useless, it’s just that her figure-clinging suit’s power declines sharply as it gets damaged, and it is a very, very delicate suit. Early strips have little more than that to them, but Emp soon makes two good friends and one good enemy who improve the book immensely. Thugboy is a professional henchman with a dangerous history of ripping off super-villains—he falls for Emp and vice versa while he’s tying her up. Ninjette is a sexy bad girl with her name on the bum of her shorts. The fourth member of their little gang is the funniest, Emp’s one great conquest, the Caged Demonwolf, captured in an alien bondage belt and now given to issuing dire threats from the coffee table, frustrated by the reluctance of the dirty mammals to let him watch their filthy coupling. While the addition of these characters doesn’t lessen the saucy elements of the book, it does create a much nicer vibe and introduces some slow-burning plots. One of the book’s sweetest moments is when Thugboy says to Emp, following one of her many humiliations, that she’s the bravest of superheroes, because she goes out to fight despite knowing how vulnerable she is.

Monday 28 May 2012

Roger Waters: The Wall Live – reviewed by Jacob Edwards

Roger Waters: The Wall Live, Brisbane Entertainment Centre, 2 February 2012. “I’ve got a big black pig with my poems on.”

Few lovers of speculative fiction would hold anything but affection for progressive rock band Pink Floyd (or, as they were billed in their psychedelic early days, The Pink Floyd). From Syd Barrett’s typically edgy brainchild “Astronomy Domine” through warp-driven and ethereal juggernauts “Interstellar Overdrive” and “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”, the Floyd were like a hippie’s conception of spaceflight.

(Mind you, one doesn’t have to be stoned to hear echoes of Ron Grainer’s Doctor Who theme materialising in and out across the background of “One of These Days”. Just listen closely. It’s particularly evident in the Delicate Sound of Thunder live recording.)

Friday 25 May 2012

Supernatural, Season 6 – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

It took Sky Living a long time to get around to showing Supernatural, Season 6, and once they had it took me a little while to get around to watching it. The conclusion to season five felt like such a natural place to end the programme—series creator Eric Kripke left at that point, after tying up many long-running storylines—that I wasn’t in a hurry to see it start up again. But this season hasn’t been the pale imitation I expected, nor has it unpicked old storylines to rehash them, it’s done what almost every season of Supernatural so far has done, providing a significant new chapter in its heroes’ lives, while never letting the story arc get in the way of a good scare or a funny joke.

Monday 21 May 2012

Chronicle – reviewed by Douglas J. Ogurek

Chronicle, Josh Trank (dir.). Suppressed rage + newly acquired super powers = compelling story.

The found footage technique has emerged as a highly effective strategy for genre films. The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Paranormal Activity (2007) were masterpieces of minimalism that broke new ground in horror. Cloverfield (2008) brought the technique to science fiction by creating a disturbingly realistic alien invasion. Chronicle continues the found footage winning streak as a psychologically rich and culturally relevant urban fantasy.

Friday 18 May 2012

Falling Skies, Season 1 – reviewed by Stephen Theaker

In my review of the Falling Skies graphic novel I said I didn’t plan to watch the programme, but the summer television drought left me high and dry, and reading my review after publication, I thought it seemed a bit unfair. A programme about the aftermath of an alien invasion, and I wasn’t going to watch a single episode? I could hear my ten-year-old self screaming at me from the wastelands of eighties television. (Dunno what he was complaining about—I let him watch a series and a half of the new V.) Ultimately, I didn’t love Falling Skies, Season 1, but I did enjoy it much more than expected. I’d have been very disappointed if a second season hadn’t been forthcoming.