Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus, Vol. 6 / review by Stephen Theaker

The seven volumes in this series look very smart lined up on my bookcase, but that made me forget that I hadn’t yet read Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus, Vol. 6 (Dark Horse, tpb, c.400pp) (or its sequel), so I’ve put that right with great pleasure. Taken as a set, the seven omnibus volumes make a fantastic companion to the television programme, especially since their contents have been arranged in chronological order. The stories in these issues come from around the time that the Initiative was in town, so Buffy is dating Riley, Spike has a chip in his head, Willow is exploring witchcraft and romance with Tara, and Xander is with Anya. On television that felt like a sad time in the characters’ lives, even if they were all falling in love, because Buffy, Xander, Willow and Giles, the original gang of four, were drifting apart, and frequently unhappy with each other. That made perfect sense in the show, but it’s nice that here in the comics everyone is still good and chummy. The writers include Christopher Golden, Tom Fassbender, Amber Benson and Jane Espenson. It’s odd that the kind of three-issue stories that seemed trivial when gathered together in flimsy graphic novels of under a hundred pages are satisfyingly substantial when run together as big, long stories in these books. It helps that this volume comes from the later, better period of the comic. The art, mostly by Cliff Richards, is good to great, the dialogue funny, the plots, well, maybe not brilliant but in the right enough ballpark that it felt authentically like Buffy.  ***

John Brunner by Jad Smith / review by Stephen Theaker

Sarah Pinborough once said that “anyone who thinks any writer, bestseller or on the breadline, writes for the money, is a fool”, but it would be equally foolish to think money has no effect on what they write – and especially on what we get to see of their work. This book on John Brunner (University of Illinois Press, hb, 196pp), who gave up scholarships and well-paying jobs to concentrate on writing, but frequently focused his efforts on fulfilling the particular needs of the market, illustrates both sides of the coin. Smith draws a picture of him as a writer often stranded in “interzones” (a word used here so frequently that a review in these pages was surely inevitable): too pessimistic and unpredictable for American readers, too market-orientated for the new wave; a devoted fan (after leaving the RAF he hoped to “spend a year at home writing ... and fanning”), but apparently unpopular on the convention scene.

Adventures with the Wife in Space by Neil Perryman / review by Stephen Theaker

“… imagine if you could convince someone who hasn’t seen the episodes to sit through them all? Someone who wouldn’t know if a story was supposed to be good or bad before they’d even sat down to watch it; a person who didn’t know what was coming next; a person who’d agree to watch the whole thing with an open mind and without prejudice. That’s where you come in, Sue.”

Jagannath by Karin Tidbeck / review by Stephen Theaker

Karin Tidbeck is a Swedish writer who, frustrated by a lack of local opportunities, began a few years ago [before this review was originally published] to translate her own work into English, leading to appearances in Weird Tales and other US magazines. A previous Swedish collection – Vem är Arvid Pekon? – included all but four of these fourteen stories, but this is her first book in English. There are many points of similarity here with Ekaterina Sedia’s similarly strong collection, Moscow But Dreaming. Both write stories set in parts of the world and featuring legends and character types not yet reduced to cliché by English and American writers, stories that can be rather miserable, about ground-down people and the difficulty of finding love and support in a heartless world; both are part of a tradition of fantasy that takes in Kafka but sidesteps Tolkien.

Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #49: now out!

Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #49 is now out, at last! Sorry to all the contributors for how long it’s taken me to finish this one off. It features novellas by Ross Gresham (“Ut in Fumum!”) and Michael B. Tager (“Nebuchadnezzar”), and an Oulippean story by Antonella Coriander (“Beatrice et Veronique: Tunnel Panic!”), plus cover art by Howard Watts, reviews by Tim Atkinson, Jacob Edwards, Rafe McGregor, Stephen Theaker and Douglas J. Ogurek, and an interview with Kathryn Allan and Djibril al-Ayad.

Reviewed this issue: Adventures with the Wife in Space by Neil Perryman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus Vol. 6, City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett, Daredevil by Mark Waid, Deliver Us from Evil, Glorkian Warrior: The Trials of Glork, Guardians of the Galaxy, I Killed Rasputin, I Need a Doctor: the Whosical, Infidel by Kameron Hurley, Lucy, The Making of Star Wars by J.W. Rinzler, Mr Mercedes by Stephen King, Penny Dreadful, Season 1, Return to Armageddon by Malcolm Shaw and Jesus Redondo, The Seventh Miss Hatfield by Anna Caltabiano, The Spectral Link by Thomas Ligotti, Turbulence (the audiobook) by Samit Basu, The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar, World of Fire by James Lovegrove, and Yesterday’s Kin by Nancy Kress.

Here it is: free epub, free mobi, free pdf, print UK, print USA, Kindle UK store, Kindle US store.

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Here are the artisans who wove those wonderful tapestries:

Antonella Coriander has (in this reality, at least) only ever been published in Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, to her great dismay. Her story in this issue is the third episode of her ongoing Oulippean serial.

Douglas J. Ogurek’s work has appeared in the BFS Journal, The Literary Review, Morpheus Tales, Gone Lawn, and several anthologies. He lives in a Chicago suburb with the woman whose husband he is and their five pets. In this issue he reviews the film Deliver Us from Evil. His website: www.douglasjogurek.weebly.com.

Howard Watts is a writer, artist and composer living in Seaford who provides the cover art for this issue.

Jacob Edwards is a steward on Australia’s speculative fiction flagship Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, but he moonlights with us when in port. This writer, poet and recovering lexiphanicist’s website is at: www.jacobedwards.id.au. He also now has a Facebook page (www.facebook.com/pages/Jacob-Edwards/467957066679321), where he posts poems and the occasional oddity. He can be liked and followed. (More than that, he should be!) In this issue he reviews The Making of Star Wars.

Michael B. Tager’s work has appeared in the Atticus Review, Typehouse Literary Magazine, Schlock! and The Light Ekphrastic. He likes Buffy, the Orioles and theatre. His debut appearance in the magazine is with a forty-page novella, “Nebuchadnezzar”.

Rafe McGregor, absent from these pages for far too long, reviews Mr Mercedes and The Spectral Link in this issue. So good to have him back!

Ross Gresham teaches at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. His stories have previously appeared in #34 (“Name the Planet”), #41 (“Milo Don’t Count Coup”), #44 (“Milo on Fire”), and #46 (“Wild Seed”). “Ut in Fumum!” is I think the longest in the Milo and Marmite series yet. You’re going to enjoy it!

Stephen Theaker is both human and dancer. Someone should tell The Killers that there’s no need to choose. His reviews have also appeared in Black Static, Interzone, Prism and the BFS Journal. His hobbies include watching television and reading books. His ambition is to completely clear his backlog of reviews in TQF50.

Tim Atkinson lives, reads and works in the West Midlands. Sporadically he jots down thoughts about SFF and more at www.magpie-moth.blogspot.co.uk". In this issue he reviews Infidel by Kameron Hurley and The Violent Century by Lavie Tidhar.

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Bonus! To celebrate this new issue, all our Amazon exclusive ebooks will be absolutely free this week: Professor Challenger in Space, Quiet, the Tin Can Brains Are Hunting!, The Fear Man, Howard Phillips in His Nerves Extruded, Howard Phillips and the Doom That Came to Sea Base Delta, Howard Phillips and the Day the Moon Wept Blood, The Mercury Annual and Pilgrims at the White Horizon.

As ever, all back issues of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction are available for free download.

Forthcoming Theaker

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #49 will be with you on Friday. (Sorry for the delay!) While you're waiting, here is information on three other forthcoming publications that feature my work, as well as the contributions of many other people whose names you may recognise:

Interzone #255: includes my review of a fascinating book of essays, Black and Brown Planets, edited by Isiah Lavender III, plus columns by Jonathan McCalmont and Nina Allan, a story by Thana Niveau, and much, much more.

Black Static #43: includes my review of The Unquiet House by Alison Littlewood, as well as many, many more reviews by the peerless Peter Tennant, stories by Ralph Robert Moore, Andrew Hook and Aliya Whiteley, and loads more.

BFS Journal #13: will contain quite a few bits by me, thanks to a bit of a crisis at BFS Towers, including an interview with Lavie Tidhar, a piece going through the results of the BFS president's recent survey, an article about my experiences at FantasyCon 2014, and a round-up of responses from former BFS chairs to my questions about that hot seat. Almost two hundred pages of stories, poetry and articles! The link for this one will take you to the Join the BFS bit of the BFS website, because that's the only way you can get hold of this fine publication. I'll be sending it to press on November 17, more or less, so make sure you've joined by then to get onto the mailing list. The cover (selected by the outgoing editor) is by our own Howard Watts.

The Wurms of Blearmouth by Steven Erikson / review by Stephen Theaker

Lord Fangatooth Claw the Render, insane lord sorceror of West Elingarth’s Forgotten Holding, celebrates dominion over Spendrugle village with daily tortures of his brother, his rule upheld by three iron golems with buckets for heads, at least one of whom took him five months to create. By his law, being a stranger is punishable by death, which suits the villagers since it leaves no survivors of the shipwrecks from which they draw their pocket money. But the new folks brought in by the tide are the kind that take a fair bit of killing. Most dangerous are the first to arrive: Bauchelain and Korbal Broach, necromancers, one sharp and expansive, the other taciturn and brutal, both ready to kill at the twitch of an eye.

Seven Wonders by Adam Christopher / review by Stephen Theaker

The supervillains of the world are gone – defeated, retired, arrested – leaving two to fight the bad fight: The Cowl, billionaire industrialist by day, conscience-free killer by night (and sometimes by day too), and Blackbird, his untrustworthy sidekick with a heart of ice. Gangs throughout San Ventura, California wear his omega tag with pride. The city cowers. With no other supervillains to battle, the world’s superheroes have retired too, leaving just the Seven Wonders – Aurora’s Light, Bluebell, Sand Cat, Linear, Hephaestus, SMART and The Dragon Star – to deal with The Cowl, a job they handle with staggering and apparently wilful ineptitude.