Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #65: UNSPLATTERPUNK! 3: now out in paperback and ebook!

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GUEST-EDITED BY DOUGLAS J. OGUREK

Vicious parasites, punctured flesh, eyeball trauma, severed limbs, theatrical licking. The TQF UNSPLATTERPUNK! series returns with its third instalment. Six subversive stories, including an all-new tale by unsplatterpunk luminary Drew Tapley, aim to keep the reader entertained and aghast, while delivering a positive message.

A soon-to-be father focuses on helping others amid a Martian base massacre that shows the repercussions of human intrusion. Outraged women unite to stop a high-ranking male oppressor, and in the process, unravel the key to combating male chauvinism and its disastrous effects. A woman, certain of the upstanding life she’s led, learns a lesson that will seal her postmortem fate. Support group bloodshed leads to a scientific breakthrough. Three brothers on an Irish farm dismantle a brutal patriarchy… and chop off body parts. Back-of-theatre make-out sessions plunge to new slimy depths in an exploration of the pressure teens feel to become sexual legends.

So put on your coveralls and jump into the carnage and debauchery… You’re going to get filthy, but you’ll also emerge with a sense of hope.

Also includes reviews of books by Aliette de Bodard, John Llewellyn Probert, Laurie Penny, Pixie Britton and William F. Temple, and of the films Aquaman, Crawl, Every Day, Glass, It Chapter Two, Mary Poppins Returns, Ready or Not, Under the Skin and Us, and of the television series Carnival Row.

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Here are the gore-unsplattered contributors to this issue:

Chris Di Placito is a writer living in Fife, Scotland. His work has appeared in magazines such as Litro, BULL, Porridge, Ink In Thirds, STORGY and Structo.

Douglas J. Ogurek is the pseudonym for a writer living somewhere on Earth. Though banned on Mars, his fiction appears in over fifty Earth publications. Douglas’s website can be found at www.douglasjogurek.weebly.com and his Twitter account is at www.twitter.com/unsplatter.

Drew Tapley is a British copywriter, journalist and filmmaker based in Toronto.

Garvan Giltinan is a recovering Irishman with a fascination with the bizarre/grotesque/puerile. His work has appeared in the anthologies New England: Weird, Triggered, and Fatal Fetish. Forthcoming publications include the novel Backdoor Carnivore (JEA Press) and the short story “Titty Kitties” (Thicke and Vaney Books). Giltinan has an MFA in Creative Writing from Pine Manor College, and really weirds out his wife with the subject matter of his stories.

Jacob Edwards also writes 42-word reviews for Derelict Space Sheep. His website is at www.jacobedwards.id.au, his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/JacobEdwardsWriter, and his Twitter account is at www.twitter.com/ToastyVogon.

Joanna Koch writes literary horror and surrealist trash. Author of the novella The Couvade and other short fiction, Joanna has been published in journals and anthologies such as SYNTH #1: An Anthology of Dark SF, Honey & Sulphur and In Darkness, Delight: Masters of Midnight. Joanna is a Contemplative Psychotherapy graduate of Naropa University and lives near Detroit. Follow their monstrous musings at horrorsong.blog.

Rafe McGregor lectures at Edge Hill University. He is the author of two monographs, two novels, six collections of short fiction, and two hundred articles, essays, and reviews. His most recent work of fiction is The Adventures of Roderick Langham, a collection of occult detective stories.

Stephen Theaker is the co-editor of TQF and shares his home with three slightly smaller Theakers, one of whom provided the art for this issue's cover. His reviews, interviews and articles have also appeared in Interzone, Black Static, Prism, BFS Horizons and the BFS Journal.

Manchester, UK-based Tom Over is a writer of dark, speculative strangeness. He grew up loving all things horror and has been suckling on the gnarled teat of weird fiction ever since he was knee high to a Mugwump. He generally divides his time between watching cult movies with his girlfriend and working on his first collection. To date, his work has appeared in CLASH Media, Aphotic Realm, Crystal Lake Publishing and Horror Sleaze Trash amongst others. His first collection is due for release in early 2020 from NihilismRevised.

Zeke Jarvis is a professor of English at Eureka College. His work has appeared in Moon City Review, Posit and KNOCK, among other places. His books include So Anyway…, In A Family Way, Lifelong Learning and the forthcoming The Three of Them.

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

The Man in the High Castle, Season 4 | review by Rafe McGregor

The John Smith Show

In my review of The Man in the High Castle, Season 2 in 2017 I summarised the events of the first two seasons and praised Amazon Studios for the particularly skilful narrative closure employed, a rare artistic achievement in which the series could either have concluded there and then or continued into a third season.  One of the most noticeable changes in popular culture in my lifetime has been the development of television into a serious, artistic mode of representation, which seems to have occurred in tandem with the technological changes related to streaming.  Television series like HBO’s Band of Brothers (2001) and True Detective (2014-2019) were inconceivable in the nineteen eighties. The development of a genuine televisual art was accompanied by a narrative development, which is so obvious and commonplace that it may be regarded as essential to the medium rather than a studio choice for those who didn’t grow up with nineteen eighties television: most series appear to be created for a two-season run. I’ve noticed two consequences of this.  First, if a series doesn’t progress to the second season, it rarely concludes in a satisfying manner. In this respect, Netflix’s Mindhunter (2017) was a rare exception (the series concluded rather than terminated with the last episode of season one, though a second was released in 2019). Second, if there is a third season, it is often disappointing – often, but not always, because the plot is tangential to that of the first two seasons. History’s Vikings (2013) is a particularly good (i.e. bad) case in point. Aside from the potential for literal loss of plot, many third seasons also suffer from a particularly potent combination of production problems: viewer interest typically begins to wane at precisely the same time as actors feel confident enough to demand higher salaries. With respect to The Man in the High Castle, the announcement of a third season was made together with the announcement of a fourth, which would also be the final season. I found season 3 something of a let-down on my initial viewing, although having revisited it since I’m not entirely sure why.  

World of Water by James Lovegrove | review by Stephen Theaker

Dev Harmer died at Leather Hill, the worst battle of a terrible decade-long war between humanity and Polis+, AI zealots who see an atheistic humanity as their natural enemy. The war ended in a truce, Harmer's consciousness was saved, and now he is downloaded by Interstellar Security Solutions into one genetically modified host form after another. His job: to foil the plots of spies and saboteurs working for Polis+. This is the second book of his adventures, but like the Dumarest books of E.C. Tubb you could begin with any of them. He was having adventures well before the first book began, and he'll have many more after this one ends, unless he earns enough credit at last to buy himself a new copy of his original body.

Maleficent: Mistress of Evil | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Maleficent’s coming to dinner! Elegant antihero meets regal villain.

One can’t help but be drawn in when Maleficent’s (Angelina Jolie) vampiric face fills the screen. It is impassive, cadaverous. Shockingly prominent cheekbones frame snakelike eyes. And the lips… they’re red enough to stop traffic. Unlike the physically expressive Joker (her top box office competitor), Maleficent is perfectly poised… even, it seems, when she’s angry.

Joker | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Other comic book-based movies laughable in comparison to masterpiece that emphasizes character, explores social stigma on mental illness

A Joker movie poster depicts the villain dressed in his full regalia and leaning back triumphantly at the top of an outdoor staircase. However, near the film’s beginning, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix), depressed, tired and undernourished, sluggishly ascends that same staircase. Thus, director Todd Phillips establishes a pact with the viewer: I will show you, he implies, the transformation of this struggling nobody into Batman’s vibrant archenemy.

Lone Wolf 30: Dead in the Deep | review by Rafe McGregor

Lone Wolf 30: Dead in the Deep by Vincent Lazzari and Ben Dever
Holmgard Press, hardback, £19.99, June 2019, ISBN 9781527240797

Given the many trials and tribulations experienced by Joe Dever in securing a reliable publisher for the New Order series (21 onwards) of his Lone Wolf gamebooks from the mid-nineties, my main concerns whenever a new book is released are whether I will receive it and what kind of production values it will have. The details of the first two decades of Joe’s struggle can be found in my review of Lone Wolf 21: TheVoyage of the Moonstone and the last two years in my review of Lone Wolf 29: The Storms of Chai. While I was writing the latter in November 2016, the series and its considerable fan base suffered the ultimate setback in Joe’s untimely death and it seemed like his Holmgard Press would close after less than a year in operation. The press has, however, been relaunched at www.magnamund.com and appears to be run by his son, Ben, who is jointly responsible for the completion of the series (books 30 to 32) with Vincent Lazzari. The ordering process from the website is simple with safe if not speedy delivery following. Dead in the Deep is a hefty tome (there are no page numbers in consequence of the sections used for gameplay, but it is over two inches thick) and although the paper used is of lower quality than the Collector’s Editions published by Mongoose and Mantikore, the finished product makes for a neat fit with the rest. In keeping with almost all of the series to date, Dead in the Keep consists of three hundred and fifty sections and you can perhaps imagine my disappointment when I discovered sections 319 to 330 were absent from my copy, a repeat of sections 233 to 251 appearing in their place. I contacted Holmgard about the problem and received a very quick response to the effect that a replacement would be sent to me without any extra charge or a requirement to return the defective copy (I always resent either of these inconveniences if the fault lies with the publisher or the supplier). I received the replacement in due course and I only relate the complication as evidence of why I am confident in recommending Holmgard Press to any and all potential readers. At present, they also offer the Collector’s Edition of Lone Wolf 23: Mydnight’s Hero (£16.99) and twenty-five very attractive art prints that look like alternative book covers. The Collector’s Edition of Lone Wolf 24: Rune War (also £16.99) is the next book due for release (no date given).

British Fantasy Awards 2019: the Winners!

The British Fantasy Awards have just been announced, at FantasyCon 2019 in Glasgow. I had a go at reading this year's nominees and failed abysmally, only finishing three categories. All the other half-finished blog posts will be repurposed into reviews for a future issue!

The British Fantasy Awards are decided by juries, who before reading the nominees have the option of adding up to two additional items to those placed on the shortlist by the votes of British Fantasy Society members (including me) and FantasyCon attendees (not me this time).

Note that the jurors given below are those that were originally announced to BFS members. I haven't seen any announcements that anyone dropped out or was replaced, but it does happen sometimes, when people realise that there's a conflict of interest. (12/12/20 update: The minutes of the 2019 BFS AGM, released today, disclosed that two jurors did in fact leave, one due to illness, one due to disagreements with the rest of the jury.)

Here are the winners:

Anthology: Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 5, ed. Robert Shearman & Michael Kelly (Undertow Publications)

The jurors were Roz Clarke, Ian Hunter, Susan Oke, Steve J. Shaw and Joni Walker. Always a bit disappointing when year's best volumes win this award, after cherry picking the best of work that was already eligible the previous year, but despite much debate they are still eligible and so you can't blame the jurors, who have to pick the best of what's on the shortlist.

Artist: Vince Haig

The jurors were Astra Crompton, Alexandra Gushurst-Moore, Kaia Lichtarska, Catherine Sullivan and Paul Yates.

Audio: Breaking the Glass Slipper (www.breakingtheglassslipper.com)

The jurors were Alicia Fitton, Thomas Moules, Susie Pritchard-Casey, Abigail Shaw and Neil Williamson. I only got around to listening to one of the nominees in this category, Blood on Satan's Claw, based on the film. It had terrific sound design.

Collection: All the Fabulous Beasts, by Priya Sharma (Undertow Publications)

The jurors were Ben Appleby-Dean, Amy Chevis-Bruce, Marc Gascoigne, Laura Newsholme and Chloë Yates. The only book I managed to read in this category was Lost Objects by Marian Womack, which was excellent. Looking forward to reading the winner and other nominees.

Comic/Graphic Novel: Widdershins, Vol. 7, by Kate Ashwin

The jurors were Kate Barton, Emily Hayes, Steven Poore, Alasdair Stuart and Kiwi Tokoeka. I read everything in this category and this is an utterly baffling decision. How could anyone possibly conclude that this nice enough book was better than Hellboy: The Complete Short Stories, Vol. 1? Suppose it could have been worse: one of the other nominees in this category was a prose novella.

Fantasy Novel (the Robert Holdstock Award): The Bitter Twins, by Jen Williams (Headline)

The jurors were Sarah Carter, Shona Kinsella, Devin Martin, Pauline Morgan and Andrew White. (13/12/20 update: it would appear that Sarah Carter and Pauline Morgan were the jurors who stepped down; they don't appear on a later version of the list of jurors.) I only read Empire of Sand in this category.

Film/Television Production: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Phil Lord & Rodney Rothman

The jurors were Rebecca Davis, Pat Hawkes-Reed, Rachelle Hunt, Robert S. Malan and Sammy Smith. My pick for this one, having watched them all, would have been Annihilation, but my guess was that Into the Spider-Verse would win. And for once I was right!

Horror Novel (the August Derleth Award): Little Eve, by Catriona Ward (W&N)

The jurors were Charlotte Bond, Emeline Morin, Gareth Spark, Mark West and Zoe Wible. Little Eve would have been my pick of the three I read in this category. I listened to the audiobook and Carolyn Bonnyman's reading of the audiobook added immensely to the atmosphere. The Way of the Worm is the one I haven't finished yet, but I'm enjoying it very much so far.

Independent Press: Unsung Stories

The jurors were Helen Armfield (chair of the BFS), Andrew Freudenberg, Daniel Godfrey, Elaine Hillson and Georgina Kamsika. I'm currently reading a new book from this publisher, Always North, by Vicki Jarrett.

Magazine/Periodical: Uncanny Magazine

The jurors were Jenny Barber, Peter Blanchard, Theresa Derwin, James T. Harding and Rym Kechacha.

Newcomer (the Sydney J. Bounds Award): Tasha Suri, for Empire of Sand (Orbit)

The jurors were Colleen Anderson, Rosie Claverton, Lee Fletcher, D Franklin and Peter Sutton. I'm stunned by this result: it's one of the most tedious, bloviated books I've ever read. My pick of the four books I read in this category would have been Marian Womack for Lost Objects, but my guess was that Tomi Adeyemi would win for Children of Blood and Bone, which was a lot of fun and packed solid with adventure. The books I hadn't read yet were Lost Gods and The Traitor Gods.

Non-fiction: Noise and Sparks, by Ruth E.J. Booth (Shoreline of Infinity)

The jurors were Laura Carroll, Megan Graieg, Katherine Inskip, Kev McVeigh and Graeme K. Talboys.

Novella: The Tea Master and the Detective, by Aliette de Bodard (Subterranean Press)

The jurors were Ruth E.J. Booth, Elloise Hopkins, Stewart Hotston, Steve Howarth and Laura Mauro. Unusual to have something I voted for actually win the award! And I guessed correctly that it would win, although my pick, after reading the other nominees too, would have been The Land of Somewhere Safe, by Hal Duncan. I'm glad the award didn't go to either of the ineligible nominees; that would have been awkward.

Short Fiction: "Down Where Sound Comes Blunt", by G.V. Anderson (F&SFMarch/April 2018)

The jurors were Donna Bond, Amy Brennan, Andrew Hook, Richard Webb and Mairi White.

The Special Award (the Karl Edward Wagner Award): Ian Whates

The jury for this award is the BFS committee (currently: Katherine Fowler, James Barclay, Andy Marsden, Lee Harris, Shona Kinsella, Tim Major, Helen Armfield, Karen Fishwick, Allen Ashley, Sean Wilcock and Christopher Teague; though not everyone necessarily participates and the decision could have been taken at any point in the course of the year). For the third year running, the BFS membership wasn't invited to make suggestions, contrary to the rules of this award, putting a question mark over its validity, but Ian Whates would be a deserving winner.

There was no mention on Twitter of a Legends of FantasyCon being awarded: I'm told the announcement was delayed as the recipient did not attend the convention.

The physical award has changed this year: rather than the handmade bookends used from 2014 to 2018, the new award, also handmade, looks like this. They were created by Morag Hickman, who describes them as "a bolted sandwich of laser-cut acrylic, containing the archway and rocks in birch plywood and layers of hand-cut green vellum ivy leaves".

Congratulations to all the winners, and all the nominees, and as a BFS member, thank you to the jurors who devoted so much of their summers to helping out with our society's awards, and also to Katherine Fowler, the British Fantasy Awards Administrator, for doing a fine job again.

I don't think I will try to read all the nominees again next year. It was interesting to do once, but it was quite expensive and took a lot of time. Next time I think I will just pick out a few nominees that look good and review those as normal.

BFA Shadow Juror: Film and Television Productions

One last post in this failed series before the actual awards are announced!

An odd thing about this category is that it is an all-male shortlist, meaning that the jury was presented with an all-male preliminary shortlist, and despite the idea of egregious omissions being to rectify such situations, they decided to add two more items written by men. Perhaps they felt that the items they added were just so good that they had to be considered egregious omissions, regardless of the creators’ sex. Anyway, here's what I thought of the nominees:

Inside No. 9, series 4. This is such a great show. Innovative in its structure and storytelling, and telling a wide variety of stories. There's a wonderfully-observed story about a former comedy duo that went bad. Another about a house full of dead bodies, told in reverse. The problem with regard to this award, though, is that only one of the six is a fantasy story, and this is a fantasy award. A Halloween special out in 2018 was a supernatural story (and a very good one too), but isn't part of series four. Even if included, that would still only be two episodes out of seven: a typical example of the tendency of BFS and FantasyCon members to treat these as awards for things and people they like, regardless of genre. My rating: five stars. To-win rating: 1/10

The Haunting of Hill House, season 1. I started watching this when it came out but stopped after a couple of episodes, not at all grabbed. Watching it now for this project, it was definitely better than I had thought at first. Watching on my own late at night gave the scares quite a boost, but also it all become more meaningful once I had a handle on which kids were which adults. It had some extremely effective scares, both jump scares and slow creeping terror scares. Episode six, with what gives the impression of being one long shot for its first half, is an absolute tour de force. Some of the ghostly appearances are made even more frightening by being so subtle and unnoticed by the protagonists. But the ending isn't great: it gets quite soapy, there isn’t much of a pay-off for some things, and by the end the house starts to feel rather like a retirement home. My rating: three stars. To-win rating: 5/10

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. I thought this was very good fun, though it felt like the Superior Spider-Man was missing – it might have been hard to work him into the film, but the tension he created in the original comic was one of the best things about it. Maybe they’re saving him for the future. And where were the monsters eating spider-people? As a comics fan, it did feel a bit like this was praised to the heavens for doing things that actual comics have been doing for decades. It was a nifty film, though, and all the spider-people in it were a lot of fun. My children have watched it lots of times and still want to watch it again. My rating: three stars. To-win rating: 6/10

Avengers: Infinity War. Most of you have probably seen it. It’s a stunning achievement in film-making. It’s the culmination of a decade of big budget storytelling on a scale that cinema has never seen before. And it’s fine. I enjoyed watching it a lot. It made me laugh lots of times. It had lots of my favourite characters. It had that astonishing ending, the kind of ending you can only have when you know that there’s going to be a sequel. I appreciate that it showed me things no other film could have managed. But Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Thor: Ragnarok were just that bit better. My rating: three stars. To-win rating: 7/10

Black Panther. After watching this, I said to my family that what Jack Kirby was to comics in the twentieth century, he might well be for cinema in the twenty-first. Now we also have New Gods, Eternals and one hopes a real Fantastic Four film on the way. I thought this was by far the most Kirby-esque of Marvel’s films I had seen at that point, in look and feel and kineticism, and as well as all that it was a good adventure with an excellent villain and supporting cast. Black Panther himself was maybe a bit overshadowed. My rating: three stars. To-win rating: 7/10

Annihilation. I loved this film. It was beautiful and strange, with a tremendous cast doing brilliant work. More than any of the other nominees it addressed our future, and the likelihood that there will come a point where we’ll lose control of our environment and be faced with the necessity of adaptation. I really would love this to win. My rating: four stars. To-win rating: 8/10

Will that win? I’m guessing it probably won’t. It’s been a bit of a marmite film, and some people really don’t like the last bit. It would be barmy for Inside No. 9 to win, and I don’t think Hill House was quite good enough to win, but I think it could go to any of the three Marvel films. I’ll guess Spider-Verse, because the people who love it really, really love it.

My children (having seen everything but Hill House and Annihilation) reckon that Spider-Verse should win, but that She-Ra and the Princesses of Power should have been on the shortlist and it is better than any of them. ("Obviously!")

Hunters & Collectors by M. Suddain | review by Stephen Theaker

The mother of Jonathan Tamberlain threatened to kill him if he ever squandered his gifts on criticism, and she wasn't just speaking metaphorically, he tells us, she told him exactly how she would do it. She was an art collector, his father a poet; the two of them met at a boxing match. Sparring with his father left Tamberlain in a coma, and he woke up with an amazing nose, one that can catch the scent of a wine from half a mile away.

It Chapter Two | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Blockbuster horror soars when it clowns around, stumbles when it gets serious

Any horror aficionado worth his salt will scoff at a horror film that shows adults holding hands and chanting or, even worse, partaking in a group hug… unless, of course, those things are meant to be humorous. Unfortunately, both handholding and a group hug appear in It Chapter Two (directed by Andy Muschietti), and it’s this reviewer’s opinion that neither of them is meant to be funny. These two more glaring horror faux pas encapsulate the key shortcoming of the film: sacrificing silliness, the film’s strength, for touchy-feely posturing.

Carnival Row, Season 1 | review by Rafe McGregor

Detection on Different Levels?

In his latest book, Allegory and Ideology (2019), Marxist literary critic Fredric Jameson describes the patristic allegory as a system composed of four levels. The idea is that there is a single story that operates at four levels of meaning simultaneously. The first level is the literal, which in the Scriptures referred to an historical event and in the case with which I am concerned here is the steampunk world represented in Carnival Row. The second, secret, level is the hidden meaning concealed within the literal level, requiring either a mystical revelation or imaginative deciphering (or, in Carnival Row’s case, perhaps a little more enciphering). The third, moral, level is concerned with individual salvation or existential experience and the fourth, anagogical, level with the Last Judgement or the future of humanity as a whole. Taking the philosophical rather than religious route we have the literal, secret, moral, and collective meanings of an allegory. At the literal level, Carnival Row is a narrative about the consequences of the battle for Tirnanoc (from the Gaelic Tír na nÓg), the land of the Fae, fought between two human powers, the covetous Burgue and the genocidal Pact. As the war progresses, the Fae begin fleeing to the Burgue for safety and the stream of refugees increases when the Burgue are defeated and withdraw from Tirnanoc. When the series opens, many of citizens of the Burgue, spanning all social strata, are displeased by the influx of “Critch”, a derisive term used to describe all Fae regardless of their species, and pursue some combination of making their lives as miserable as possible, proposing anti-immigration legislation, and using all available means to keep them offshore. In the age of Trump’s wall and Johnson’s Brexit it is very easy – perhaps a little too easy, as the didacticism is sometimes rather heavy-handed – to read the second level of meaning as being about the Coalition Forces invasion of Iraq, the subsequent destabilisation of the Middle East, and the consequent Syrian refugee crisis. The parallels between London or New York and the Burgue on the one hand and Islamic State and the Pact on the other are almost exact. The question I am interested in is not whether the secret meaning of the allegory is too obvious, but whether the simplistic similarities preclude it from reaching the moral and collective levels of meaning.

Ready or Not | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Think you’ve heard the worst wedding night catastrophe? Think again. 

Ready or Not, with its cozy mansion and eccentric characters, brings to mind the comedy/mystery Clue (1985). However, this time it’s comedy/horror, and directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett dispose of the mystery, escalate the intensity, and align the viewer with one character: young bride Grace (Samara Weaving), who’s brought into the fold of the wealthy Le Domas dynasty or, as one member prefers to call it, “dominion”. The family has built its fortune in games: playing cards, board games, and eventually, the ownership of sports franchises.

Interview Questions: Tim Major

In the first of what we hope will be a regular feature, Stephen Theaker asks Tim Major a few questions.

What do you use for note-taking in preparation for new writing – paper, apps, or is it all in your head till you begin? If you use notebooks, do you have a favourite brand?

I’m not at all particular. My current notebook is a cheap lime green one that came in a multipack, but is usually used for notes at lectures or conferences rather than writing ideas. I tend to jot things in the Notes app of my phone, which is frustrating and impractical, but I’m more likely to actually note down the idea if the means to do so are always on my person. I rarely need much of a description to be able to retain an idea until the next time I’m at my desk.

In terms of more detailed preparation, I work entirely onscreen. I write copious notes in Word documents, as well as transcriptions of imagined conversations with myself whenever plot obstacles arise, if my wife is too busy to engage in that sort of conversation.

Where do you do your writing?

On my computer, at my desk in the attic of my house. It’s where I conduct my day job (I’m a freelance editor) so I can switch freely between work and writing. There’s a very thick soundproofed door at the bottom of the attic stairs so it’s nice and calm up here. I work on a laptop hooked up to a monitor with an extended desktop, and my laptop screen is a more or less permanently a display for Spotify.

What type of desk do you use when writing, and what type of chair?

Cheap Ikea desk, but it’s stable; swivel chair I got for free from my brother-in-law, but it’s comfy.

What do you write on, or with? What software or apps do you use?

I use Scrivener for anything longer than a short story. I’m evangelical about the software, despite the fact that I use barely any of its functionality. The ability to see a folder-structure overview of scenes of a my novel on the left-hand side of the screen is enormously important to me, so that I’m always clear of the context of the scene I’m working on, at any time. I’ve become more and more of a planner when I’m preparing novels, creating long synopses, so I rarely need to reorder scenes and I usually know where I’m going. But knowing where I am is just as important.

What time of day do you usually write, and how often do you write, and for how long? Do you write year-round, or does it tend to be in spells?

As I say, the hours allocated to my writing and my day job tend to be fluid. Also, my wife and I share the childcare of our two young children, so my desk time is rarely more than half of each week day. But when I’m in the midst of a novel I like to prioritise writing, usually managing an hour and a half just after doing the nursery drop-off. I usually write between 1000 and 1500 words an hour, so drafts tend to accumulate fairly quickly and satisfyingly. I write all year around, though this year is my first parental experience of school summer holidays, and I can tell you that my productivity has taken a big hit.

Who are your inspirations? Whose writing career would you like to have?

There are a lot of writers I love, of course. I came to SF as an eleven-year-old via John Wyndham and H.G. Wells, and their novels echo throughout all my work, I suspect. I love the playfulness of Vladimir Nabokov and Italo Calvino and the precision of John Updike. I think Patricia Highsmith’s character work is outstanding and I adore Shirley Jackson’s unsettling tone. This is a terrible admission, but until seven or eight years ago, I rarely read modern novels. I do now, of course, and if I had ambitions of simulating a writer’s career it would be somebody working currently, as it’d be fruitless to yearn for an entirely different industry and readership, and different expectations of sustainability. The people I most envy are those who have many strings to their bow, producing novels, short stories, non-fiction books and also editing anthologies and performing other roles on that side of the editorial divide. I love being a freelance editor, but the closer I can bring my hobby and my more “legitimate” work, the happier I’ll be.

Imagine that a hundred years from now, a researcher into the work of Tim Major discovers this interview. Can you tell us something that she would be delighted to learn?

Oh, good grief. I don’t want to be too self-effacing, but that doesn’t strike me as a plausible scenario at all. I’m not a surprising person. I’m honest, I think, and I’m tenacious in a professional sense. Although this isn’t scandalous or surprising, I don’t think I’ve mentioned it in a writing interview before: I’m a decent bassist. The band I was in, The Hired Sportsmen, was named after a children’s book by Russell Hoban, who also wrote the SF classic Riddley Walker. When we played on the radio show hosted by Paul Heaton (the lead singer of the Beautiful South, who was very friendly), the studio wasn’t really set up for live performances of bands, so me and the drummer were relegated to performing in the bathroom, not even able to see the other band members.

You've co-edited three issues so far of BFS Horizons with Shona Kinsella for the British Fantasy Society. How has that been, and what have been your favourite stories so far?

It’s been lovely. Shona’s terrific to work alongside, and we had no trouble finding a groove in terms of responsibilities from the start – and more importantly, we tend to agree on story selections. I wouldn’t want to pick favourites, though I will say that I was very pleased that we decided to print Val Nolan’s story “Green Skies” in the most recent issue (#9) – it was a much longer story than our submission guidelines encourage, but we were both determined to include as soon as we read it. It’s a terrific story.

Is there a kind of story that you don't see enough of in the BFS Horizons submissions?

Fantasy stories, oddly enough! This isn’t a complaint, exactly, and of course fantasy is a very broad genre that can be defined in all sorts of ways. But it always strikes me as strange that we get so much weird fiction, SF and horror, but far fewer examples of traditional epic fantasy, say. Also, humour. We always look for lighter stories to balance out the grimmer stuff, but there never seem to be many to choose from.

Is there anything you can tell us about upcoming issues?

Not much, no! As soon as one is delivered we turn our attention to the next, but right now we’re at the very start of the process for #10. I do know that the cover is going to be great, though.

I loved the story you let us publish in TQF61, “To Ashes, Dust”: what of your other work would you recommend to people who enjoyed that one? Is any of your other work in the same continuity?

Yes, that story is one of several all set on the same nostalgic, idiosyncratic version of Mars, many with loosely interrelated elements. I’ll have to check my own website to figure out how many there are – bear with me… Ah, there are eight short stories so far, maybe nine at a push. Four of them have been published in Shoreline of Infinity, the excellent Edinburgh-based SF magazine that won Best Magazine at the British Fantasy Awards in 2018 and is nominated again this year. Two of the Mars stories (“The Walls of Tithonium Chasma” and “Throw Caution”) have been selected for successive editions of Best of British Science Fiction, published by NewCon Press. I’ve recently completed a novella in the same series – a Martian murder mystery – but that doesn’t have a home yet.

Could you tell us about your recent novel, Snakeskins? It feels so rare now to see a standalone novel from a new science fiction writer published by a mainstream UK publisher.

Do you know what? That hadn’t occurred to me, about standalone SF titles being rare. I would say that Titan Books, who published Snakeskins, may be bucking the trend on that score. I’m a huge fan of their recent output – novels by writers such as Nina Allan, Matt Hill, Helen Marshall, James Brogden and many more, all of which are standalone.

Anyway. Snakeskins is an SF thriller about a group of British people who have inherited the ability to rejuvenate every seven years, and in the process produce a short-lived “Snakeskin” clone of themselves, which possesses all of their memories and characteristics and may live for minutes, hours or days. So it’s about identity – the shock of coming face-to-face with yourself, and wondering whether you’re the most effective version of yourself. But it’s also a political novel. Over generations, this strange power has had the effect of Britain shutting itself off from the world to protect its secrets, and the corrupt British Prosperity Party now rules uncontested. So, without fear of giving away too great a spoiler, it’s about Brexit too.

Congratulations on your PS Publishing book about the film Les Vampires being up for a British Fantasy Award! How does that feel? (Nine years since our last nomination so we've forgotten!)

Thank you! It feels very nice. I don’t think of myself as a non-fiction writer, and it felt like a huge indulgence being allowed to spend so long thinking about a film I love, but I’m proud of the book. My approach wasn’t wholly academic – while I did a lot of research, I spent an equal amount of time trying to unpick and explain my fascination with the film, which is a 10-part silent crime serial from 1915–16. There are also ten pieces of weird fiction included in the book, one following each episode of the serial, and I’m very fond of those. They’re very weird. But hey! You should find a copy of the film and watch it, which would be the most satisfying outcome of the book getting attention. Les Vampires has everything: proto-horror, car chases, sequences that rival David Lynch for weirdness, plus Musidora, the greatest female action star of all time…

Finally, the most important bit, your newest book: And the House Lights Dim. What can you tell us about it? And is that a cover by the esteemed Daniele Serra?

Yes, it is a Daniele Serra cover! I love the image so much, and I was floored when Daniele allowed Luna Press to use it. A copy of the painting is hanging on the wall beside my desk, next to an illustration of Musidora, in fact.

And the House Lights Dim is a short story collection, featuring stories written over a four-year period (plus another three written solely for the collection), spanning the years in which my two sons were born. That timing explains the thematic through-line, I suppose – the stories are all concerned with houses, homes and families. One story is actually narrated by a sentient house, and there’s also a lonely space station guarded only by a married couple, a post-apocalyptic holiday village, a supernatural Greenland shark that threatens a mother and her son, a camping trip that turns a family feral… it’s all very jolly. The Greenland shark story, “Eqalussuaq”, was selected by Ellen Datlow for Best Horror of the Year, so that’s a solid recommendation, and the novelette “Carus & Mitch”, which was one of my first publications, was shortlisted for a This is Horror Award back in 2015. Also included in the book are commentaries on the origin of each story, and also links to a couple of soundtracks to accompany the two longest stories – I produce book soundtracks for any of my longer work, an obsession that sometimes takes almost as long as editing the manuscript!

For more information:

Website: https://cosycatastrophes.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/onasteamer

ISFDB: http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?207943

BFS Horizons submission guidelines: https://www.britishfantasysociety.org/bfs-journal-submission-guidelines

BFA Shadow Juror: Comics and Graphic Novels

I've finished reading the items nominated for the British Fantasy Award 2019 for comics and graphic novels, and thought about how I would rate and rank them, if I were on the jury for this category.

The usual disclaimer: this is entirely unofficial and purely for fun. I have no involvement in the real awards this year, other than as a member of the society and thus a voter. I have no insight into what the current juries are saying, the criteria they will apply or the methods by which they will come to their decisions.

Also worth saying that if I were actually on the jury, I'd be talking to people who had also read the books and so I would go into more detail with regard to specific events, but here I want to avoid spoilers.

That said, here are my thoughts:

100 Demon Dialogues, by Lucy Bellwood. Enjoyable, for the ten minutes it takes to read it: rather than a comic or graphic novel, it's a book of single-panel cartoons, with no sequential storytelling, other than that each individual cartoon takes place on a different day. And it only barely counts as fantasy: it's an apparently autobiographical book where the demons are a metaphor for the author's more downbeat thoughts. There's nothing to suggest that they are actually real, that the protagonist is living in a fantastical world any different from ours. So although I thought it was good, perspicacious and wise, it's a bit surprising that it made the shortlist. Plus, it was first published in November 2017, according to its copyright page, so that makes it ineligible. My rating: three stars. To-win rating: 0/10

The Prisoner, by Robert Malan, illustrations by John Cockshaw. A guard interrogates an odd prisoner over thirty thousand words of miserable prose. Art is used to illustrate a few of his dreams. It would be ludicrous to call this a comic or a graphic novel, and downright offensive to vote for it as the best one of the year. From the suggestions list, it looks as if the publisher (or a supporter) submitted this for both the novella category and the comics category at the same time. It didn't make the novella shortlist, and it definitely shouldn't have made this one. It's not a comic, it's not very fantastical (what few fantasy elements there are could be explained away by the influence of drugs), and it's not terribly good. My rating: two stars. To-win rating: 0/10

Widdershins, Vol. 7: Curtain Call, by Kate Ashwin. Seems to begin in the middle of a story, with a large cast of rather too similar-looking characters dashing about the town of Widdershins, trying to catch the deadly sins. Inoffensive and pleasant, but a bit out of its depth here. Quite odd to see a book on the shortlist which is only available to buy from the author's own website. Probably much more enjoyable for people who have read the previous six volumes. To a new reader it feels like a lot of running around, all busy work without a lot of depth. My rating: three stars. To-win rating: 3/10

Saga, Vol. 9, by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughan. About a family of people from both sides of an interplanetary war. It's usually hard to say much about this comic without giving away lots of spoilers for previous volumes, but in this one, basically, everyone waits for a news story to be published. I loved this comic when it began. Now it's not so much like it's gone off the boil, it's more like someone switched off the kettle. Art is still terrific, but I can only imagine that inertia is what's kept it on the shortlist for another year. My rating: three stars. To-win rating: 4/10

B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth, Vol. 1, by Mike Mignola and chums. After Hellboy got fed up of working with the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Development, he went on his way alone while his former colleagues (Abe Sapien, Roger the homunculus, firestarter Liz Sherman and ectoplasmic spiritualist Johann Kraus) spun off into their own comic, which rather like Xena ended up being even more epic than the original. This book sees them dealing with the aftermath of the Plague of Frogs storyline, and a proliferation of new monsters. Guy Davis's artwork is especially great. As with Hellboy, there were several more volumes of this out last year, all of them eligible and equally good. My rating: five stars. To-win rating: 9/10

Hellboy: The Complete Short Stories, Vol. 1, by Mike Mignola and chums. The collected work of one of comics' greatest geniuses. I considered, for a very brief moment, whether to rate this lower because of its contents having been previously published in other books, but that seemed unfair when the British Fantasy Awards didn't have a comics award at all when most of these stories were first published, or even when they were first published in books. In any case, new collections of previously published material are eligible for this award, and at least some of the other nominated works in this category could have been nominated for previous publications too. So although it's an omnibus, it's not a second bite of the cherry. Artistically, creatively, this and B.P.R.D. tower over the other nominees. It'll be a surprise if I read anything better in any of the categories. What's more, there were I think five more omnibus volumes of Hellboy out in 2018, all of them fantastic, all of them better than the rest of this shortlist. My rating: five stars. To-win rating: 10/10

Will that book win the award? It'll be a massive shock if Mike Mignola doesn't win the award for one book or the other. My bet is on Hellboy. Saga is the only other serious contender, but it would be a surprise to see something so far off its peak win against the definitive editions of two of the greatest fantasy comics of all time. And Mike Mignola is due a win in this category: his combination of fantasy, horror and science fiction is as BFS-orientated as it is possible to be! But surprises do happen. After all, two of these books were added as egregious omissions (unless there was a draw after the members voted and more than four books went through): fair enough if they were Hellboy or B.P.R.D., but a jury that picked any of the others as egregious omissions might well choose an unexpected winner.

Next: Not sure which will be the next shortlist I finish. I'm currently reading one of the collections and one of the horror novels, both good so far.

Crawl | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Quarter-sized brains and close quarters: gator flick swamped with suspense

Monster films sometimes suffer from several maladies: a too-large cast of players, lack of character depth, bad acting, horrible dialogue, and an attempt to mask these shortcomings with elaborate settings.

BFA Shadow Juror: Novellas

I thought it might be fun this summer to read as many of the British Fantasy Award nominees as I could, as a kind of one-man shadow jury. That is, reading the nominees that the actual jurors do and applying the same criteria to them that I would if I were on the jury, but posting my (spoiler-free) thoughts here for people to read instead of keeping them secret.

Last time I did something similar was with the best novel category back in 2009, and the surprise then was how few of the nominees featured any fantasy at all, let alone being what anyone would call fantasy novels. One was a London detective novel, and another was a historical novel about Vincent Van Gogh, both by authors with strong ties to the BFS and FantasyCon.

BFA juries use a lot of different methods to come to their decisions: the awards constitution doesn't set out a specific way. Here I'll use one that consistently seems to work well, where each member (after a group discussion of the nominees) rates each out of ten for how much they want it to win the award, taking everything into account.

"Everything" would include how good the item is, of course, but also whether the nominee fits the category (e.g. is an item nominated for best magazine actually a magazine? is a publisher nominated for indie press actually independent?) and whether it is fantasy, given that these are fantasy awards.

The BFS takes a wide view of fantasy, taking in science fantasy, weird fantasy, dark fantasy, literary fantasy, and so on. Fantasy, science fiction and horror get specific mentions in the society's constitution, which explains why the latter two show up in the nominees more often than you might expect for a fantasy award.

For me, certain types of horror count as fantasy, but others don't. Friday the 13th (last few minutes aside): not fantasy, because the killer is human. Halloween: fantasy, because Michael Myers is said to have no soul (and hence also I guess lives in a world where souls are real). I would regard aliens, ghosts, demons, elves, gods etc as fantastical elements.

Just in case a disclaimer is needed: this is entirely unofficial and purely for fun. I have no involvement in the real awards this year, other than as a member of the society and hence a voter. I have no insight into what the current juries are saying, the criteria they will apply or the way that they will come to their decisions.

Anyway, I've started off by reading the nominees for best novella. Here are my thoughts on how I would vote if I were on that jury:

The Last Temptation of Dr Valentine, by John Llewellyn Probert. The highly entertaining story of a serial killer with a flair for the cinematic, and the people trying to catch him. I loved its wit and its structure: a chapter will often act as a macabre short story focused on a particular victim. I enjoyed this as much as any of the other books on the shortlist: it was a pure, over-the-top audience pleaser. And I'll definitely be going back to read the first two Dr Valentine stories. But this is a fantasy award and this isn't a fantasy story. It's about a serial killer who adopts unusual methods; there are no fantastical elements at all. So for me this wouldn't be in the running. Also, the ebook version seems to be about 45,000 words long, and this category is for stories up to 40,000 words, so unless the initial print version was much shorter I don't think it's eligible. My rating: three stars. To-win rating: 0/10

Binti: The Night Masquerade, by Nnedi Okorafor. Third adventure of the girl who leaves her home in Africa to attend a university on another planet, and then comes back again with an alien friend. It's just as good as the others. I'll keep reading these as long as the author keeps writing them. I would have given this quite a high rating, because although it might be a bit impenetrable for new readers it's full of ideas and very good. But by my reckoning it's over 47,000 words long, so it's ineligible for this category. Blame people like me who voted for it in the wrong category without checking the word count. My rating: four stars. To-win rating: 0/10

Breakwater, by Simon Bestwick. Kind of an unofficial sequel to The Kraken Wakes, this very short novella scrapes into this category by a couple of hundred words, and feels very slight compared to the rest. Two women try to escape an undersea base following the latest attack by an unseen ocean species, while taking the time to comment on each other's bottoms, e.g. "Move that sexy bum of yours, Doc." It's an old-fashioned way of writing about women given a pseudo-progressive spin by having another woman say it. This isn't really good enough to be on an awards shortlist, but at least it's eligible. My rating: two stars. To-win rating: 1/10

The Only Harmless Great Thing, by Brooke Bolander. Elephants are more intelligent than in our world, and were made to work with radioactive materials. This was the second Tor.com novella I've read this year that presents terrorists attacking a civilian target as righteous and justified. The idea of more intelligent elephants is interesting (and can also be found in Binti: The Night Masquerade), and the prose is good, but there's very little distance between where the story begins and where it ends, and a big part of it is driven by an idea that makes very little sense: to make elephants glow when they are near radiation, to warn future generations of humans to stay away. My rating: two stars. To-win rating: 3/10

The Tea Master and the Detective, by Aliette de Bodard. Sherlock Holmes and Watson recast in the far future as Long Chau and The Shadow's Child (the mind of a spaceship), team up for the first time to investigate a corpse found in the deep spaces. It's very good, though the mystery takes a back seat to the origin story of the partnership. I hadn't realised that the same author's In the Vanishers' Palace was also from 2018 when voting. This is good, and I'd be very happy to see it win, but that would have been an even stronger contender, being much more fantastical. My rating: three stars. To-win rating: 6/10

The Land of Somewhere Safe, by Hal Duncan. On a shortlist with four science fiction books and one horror novel, it's good that there is at least one outright fantasy novella. A boy and girl shipped out from London during World War II get involved in the adventures of a gang of eternal, archetypal urchins, mashing up Peter Pan, Narnia, the slippery slide from the Magic Faraway Tree and lots of other bits and bobs from children's literature. This author's Susurrus on Mars was my absolute favourite of all the novellas I read in the course of judging this category for real last year, but it didn't make the final shortlist. I'm glad this one did. But while the story is full of adventure and scrapes, derring-do and ideas, it's not an easy read, thanks to being told by one of the urchins, with a plethora of slang, phonetic spellings and neologisms. I thought it was worth the effort. I also thought it was the best of the novellas, and the one I would most want to win. My rating: four stars. To-win rating: 8/10

Will that book win the award? I don't know - bear in mind that even if I were on the jury, I would be just one person among five, and to win a book needs some degree of support from all or most of the jurors, and the narrative style of that one might put some people off. A previous Dr Valentine book won the award so that would clearly be in with a shout if it were eligible. I think my bet would be on The Tea Master and the Detective, but since two of the books on the shortlist seem to be ineligible we might well see two new novellas thrown into the mix before the jury makes its final decision.

Next up: comics and graphic novels!

The Caped Crusade: Batman and the Rise of Nerd Culture by Glen Weldon | review by Stephen Theaker

Glen Weldon is a respected writer on books and comic books for NPR, the American equivalent of Radio 4, and a panellist on their excellent weekly podcast, Pop Culture Happy Hour, where his enthusiastically lugubrious voice, ad hoc taxonomies, and ever-readiness with an overarching theory make his contributions always entertaining. Though this sadly isn't a review of the audiobook edition, his distinctive voice can still be heard in every sentence, making this book (Simon & Schuster, hb 336pp, £16.99) a real pleasure from start to finish. Literally to the finish, since the bibliography is annotated with comments from him, and because he's a very interesting chap those comments are very interesting too.

British Fantasy Awards 2019: nominees

The nominees in my favourite awards were announced today!

A bit of boring stuff first: note that the announcement on the BFS website (not, I think, posted by the awards administrator, whose email to BFS members did not contain the same mistakes) is once again incorrect as regards the nomination procedure. What actually happens:

1. Anyone, including authors, publishers, editors, fans and passers-by, can contribute to a list of suggestions. (It was only open quite briefly this year.)
2. BFS, FantasyCon 2018 and FantasyCon 2019 members vote for their three preferred items in each category.
3. The top four eligible items in each category (occasionally more if there’s an unbreakable tie) go through to the shortlist.
4. The jurors are appointed and are able to add up to two further items as egregious omissions to the shortlist. This gives them the opportunity to fix the shortcomings of the list: a lack of any fantasy books, of any books by women, of (to be blunt!) any books that are actually good, etc, whatever the jury feels is missing. This has to be done unanimously, though the unanimous decision can be made by a vote.
5. The administrator checks the eligibility of everything, and the shortlists are announced.

And here they are!

Best Anthology (jurors: Roz Clarke, Ian Hunter, Susan Oke, Steve J. Shaw and Joni Walker)

The Devil and the Deep: Horror Stories of the Sea, ed. Ellen Datlow (Night Shade Books)
Humanagerie, ed. Sarah Doyle & Allen Ashley (Eibonvale Press)
New Fears 2, ed. Mark Morris (Titan Books)
This Dreaming Isle, ed. Dan Coxon (Unsung Stories)
Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 5, ed. Robert Shearman & Michael Kelly (Undertow Publications)

Best Artist (jurors: Astra Crompton, Alexandra Gushurst-Moore, Kaia Lichtarska, Catherine Sullivan and Paul Yates)

Vince Haig
David Rix
Daniele Serra
Sophie E. Tallis

Best Audio (jurors: Alicia Fitton, Thomas Moules, Susie Pritchard-Casey, Abigail Shaw and Neil Williamson)

Bedtime Stories for the End of the World (endoftheworldpodcast.com)
Blood on Satan’s Claw, by Mark Morris (Bafflegab)
Breaking the Glass Slipper (www.breakingtheglassslipper.com)
PodCastle (podcastle.org)
PseudoPod (pseudopod.org)

Best Collection (jurors: Ben Appleby-Dean, Amy Chevis-Bruce, Marc Gascoigne, Laura Newsholme and Chloë Yates)

All the Fabulous Beasts, by Priya Sharma (Undertow Publications)
The Future is Blue, by Catherynne M. Valente (Subterranean Press)
How Long ’til Black Future Month?, by N.K. Jemisin (Orbit)
Lost Objects, by Marian Womack (Luna Press Publishing)
Octoberland, by Thana Niveau (PS Publishing)
Resonance & Revolt, by Rosanne Rabinowitz (Eibonvale Press)

Best Comic/Graphic Novel (jurors: Kate Barton, Emily Hayes, Steven Poore, Alasdair Stuart and Kiwi Tokoeka)

100 Demon Dialogues, by Lucy Bellwood (Toonhound Studios)
B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth, Vol. 1, by Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, Guy Davis, Tyler Crook & Dave Stewart (Dark Horse)
Hellboy: The Complete Short Stories, Vol. 1, by Mike Mignola and others (Dark Horse)
The Prisoner, by Robert S Malan & John Cockshaw (Luna Press Publishing)
Saga #49-54, by Brian K Vaughan & Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
Widdershins, Vol. 7, by Kate Ashwin

Best Fantasy Novel (the Robert Holdstock Award) (jurors: Sarah Carter, Shona Kinsella, Devin Martin, Pauline Morgan and Andrew White)

The Bitter Twins, by Jen Williams (Headline)
Empire of Sand, by Tasha Suri (Orbit)
Foundryside, by Robert Jackson Bennett (Jo Fletcher Books)
The Green Man’s Heir, by Juliet E McKenna (Wizard’s Tower Press)
The Loosening Skin, by Aliya Whiteley (Unsung Stories)
Priest of Bones, by Peter McLean (Jo Fletcher Books)

Best Film/Television Production (jurors: Rebecca Davis, Pat Hawkes-Reed, Rachelle Hunt, Robert S. Malan and Sammy Smith)

Annihilation, Alex Garland
Avengers: Infinity War, Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely
Black Panther, Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole
The Haunting of Hill House [season 1], Mike Flanagan
Inside No. 9, series 4, Steve Pemberton & Reece Shearsmith
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Phil Lord & Rodney Rothman

Best Horror Novel (the August Derleth Award) (jurors: Charlotte Bond, Emeline Morin, Gareth Spark, Mark West and Zoe Wible)

The Cabin at the End of the World, by Paul Tremblay (Titan Books)
Little Eve, by Catriona Ward (W&N)
The Way of the Worm, by Ramsey Campbell (PS Publishing)
Wolf’s Hill, by Simon Bestwick (Snowbooks)

Best Independent Press (jurors: Helen Armfield, Andrew Freudenberg, Daniel Godfrey, Elaine Hillson and Georgina Kamsika)

Fox Spirit Books
Luna Press Publishing
NewCon Press
Unsung Stories

Best Magazine/Periodical (jurors: Jenny Barber, Peter Blanchard, Theresa Derwin, James T. Harding and Rym Kechacha)

Black Static
Gingernuts of Horror
Interzone
Shoreline of Infinity
Uncanny Magazine

Best Newcomer (the Sydney J Bounds Award) (jurors: Colleen Anderson, Rosie Claverton, Lee Fletcher, D Franklin and Peter Sutton)

Tomi Adeyemi, for The Children of Blood and Bone (Macmillan Children’s Books)
Cameron Johnston, for The Traitor God (Angry Robot)
R.F. Kuang, for The Poppy War (HarperVoyager)
Tasha Suri, for Empire of Sand (Orbit)
Marian Womack, for Lost Objects (Luna Press Publishing)
Micah Yongo, for Lost Gods (Angry Robot)

Best Non-Fiction (jurors: Laura Carroll, Megan Graieg, Katherine Inskip, Kev McVeigh and Graeme K. Talboys)

The Evolution of African Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Francesca T Barbini (Luna Press Publishing)
The Full Lid, by Alasdair Stuart (alasdairstuart.com/the-full-lid)
Ginger Nuts of Horror (www.gingernutsofhorror.com)
Les Vampires, by Tim Major (PS Publishing)
Noises and Sparks, by Ruth E.J. Booth (Shoreline of Infinity)

Best Novella (jurors: Ruth E.J. Booth, Elloise Hopkins, Stewart Hotston, Steve Howarth and Laura Mauro)

Binti: The Night Masquerade, by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com)
Breakwater, by Simon Bestwick (Tor Books)
The Land of Somewhere Safe, by Hal Duncan (NewCon Press)
The Last Temptation of Dr Valentine, by John Llewellyn Probert (Black Shuck Books)
The Only Harmless Great Thing, by Brooke Bolander (Tor.com)
The Tea Master and the Detective, by Aliette de Bodard (Subterranean Press)

Best Short Fiction (jurors: Donna Bond, Amy Brennan, Andrew Hook, Richard Webb and Mairi White)

"Down Where Sound Comes Blunt", by G.V. Anderson (F&SFMarch/April 2018)
"Her Blood the Apples, Her Bones the Trees", by Georgina Bruce (The Silent Garden: A Journal of Esoteric Fabulism)
"In the Gallery of Silent Screams", by Carole Johnstone & Chris Kelso (Black Static #65)
"A Son of the Sea", by Priya Sharma (All the Fabulous Beasts)
"Telling Stories", by Ruth E.J. Booth (The Dark #43)
"Thumbsucker", by Robert Shearman (New Fears 2)

Seems like a good list at a glance, but then I would think that: sixteen things I voted for made the shortlist, compared to only five last year! The m/f balance of the nominees is surprisingly good: about half of the nominees have male creators, slightly under half have female creators, and a few per cent have both male and female creators.

Looking at the jurors, there are a lot of names I don't recognise, though that isn't necessarily a bad thing if it keeps it fresh. It looks like about three-fifths of the jurors are female, and about two-fifths are male. The BFS chair is on the independent press jury, and I think that's inappropriate (have we forgotten 2011 already? the whole reason juries were introduced?), but at least there's only that one committee member on there this time, a big improvement on last year.

Though we aren't nominated ourselves, there is some interest for TQF readers, thanks to two contributors making the shortlist. Allen Ashley co-edited Humanagerie with Sarah Doyle, up for best anthology, and Tim Major's book Les Vampires is up for non-fiction. Best of luck to both of them! And as usual I wrote a tiny percentage of Interzone, up for best magazine.

Worth noting that all but nine of the nominees were on the suggestions list, so be sure to add the stuff you like (and your own stuff!) to that list next year. The nine not on the list were Bedtime Stories for the End of the World, The Future is Blue, 100 Demon Dialogues, Saga, Widdershins, The Children of Blood and Bone, Binti: The Night Masquerade, "Down Where Sound Comes Blunt" and "In the Gallery of Silent Screams". I'm guessing that quite a few of those were added as egregious omissions, but I could easily be wrong.

It’s a bit frustrating to see categories with only four nominees, meaning that those juries passed up the chance to add anything. But the decision has to be unanimous, and if one juror digs their feet in, there’s nothing that the rest of the jury can do about it. I remember one juror who thought it was in principle wrong to add egregious omissions, because it was overriding the will of the BFS membership, and I had to explain at no doubt boring length that it was the BFS membership who gave the juries that power, and explain why we did it: so that the juries could make up for our myopia.

To be fair, last year the juries were only given a couple of weeks to decide their egregious omissions. If that was the case this year, it meant that the jurors would have had a lot of work to do very quickly. Not adding anything is perhaps most understandable in the horror novel category, where only fifteen suggestions in total were put forward for the award this year.

Having made those excuses, the best artist category is a shocker. I admire David Rix of Eibonvale Press and the work he does very much, but he produces a handful of covers for his own books each year. In that context, a jury that couldn't come up with any full-time, professional artists who were egregiously omitted wasn't doing its job properly.

Anyway, the winners will be announced at FantasyCon 2019 on Sunday, October 20, in Glasgow. So that gives me ninety days to read, watch and listen to as many of the categories as I can, as my summer reading challenge, acting as a kind of one-man shadow jury. I’ll talk about the nominees, and what I’d be voting for and why if I were on the jury.

It won’t be in any order other than when I get my hands on the material. I won't be as brutal as the juries can be, given that the authors could read the blog. And it won't give you any indication at all of what might win, because jurors can have such wildly different tastes, and indeed the juries might choose entirely different ways to come to their decisions. But it should be fun for me to do. I've started reading the best novella nominees first.

If Then by Matthew de Abaitua | review by Stephen Theaker

James is the bailiff of Lewes. When the Process decides that people – a village, a family, a child – must be removed, he cannot resist for long the urge to put on the armour and abandon himself to it, stomping around the countryside, scooping up those who refuse exile. He tries the peaceful approach first, popping round for a chat to see if they will leave freely, but of course even then he wears personal body armour in case of ambush.

Us | review by Douglas J. Ogurek

It’s unexceptional. It’s brilliant. A mixed review for Us.

Writer/director Jordan Peele follows his captivating directorial debut Get Out with Us, another horror film that has garnered critical acclaim. I wasn’t blown away by the film, but I understand why many others praised it.

The British Fantasy Society's monthly pdf chapbook series

Did you know that British Fantasy Society members have been getting an exclusive pdf chapbook every month for the last three years? And that they are edited by none other than Allen Ashley, one of our contributors? Did you know that anyone who joins the society can download all 36 of them from an archive? It's all true, and it only costs £20 for a digital membership!

I've been working (very slowly) on a article for TQF (or maybe a booklet) to celebrate the society's 50th anniversary in 2021, and as part of that I made the following list of Allen's short story series:

• #1: Journal of the Eldritch Plains by Allen Stroud. 20pp.
• #2: The Drinker of Tears by Sandra Unerman. 14pp.
• #3: Poison Tree by Gary Couzens. 16pp.
• #4: Feast of Fools by Nicky Peacock. 17pp.
• #5: The Travellers by M.D. Kerr. 17pp.
• #6: Mind of its Own by Geoff Nelder. 13pp.
• #7: The Rat Catcher's Dance by Andrew Knighton. 13pp.
• #8: Summer of Ants by Pauline E. Dungate. 15pp.
• #9: You Have Reached Your Destination by Peter Sutton. 15pp.
• #10: Ella by Jemma Picken. 18pp.
• #11: Ash Flower by James Brogden. 12pp.
• #12: Empire Is No More by Nigel Robert Wilson. 20pp.
• #13: Putting on a Brave Face by Rowena Harding-Smith. 10pp.
• #14: Mycul Zas by Clint Wastling. 26pp.
• #15: The Contract by Lisa Farrell. 19pp.
• #16: Milk by Rowan Bowman. 14pp.
• #17: Only the Broken Remain by Ian Steadman. 12pp.
• #18: Our Ghost by Sandra Unerman. 15pp.
• #19: Elise Ridley, There Are Castles in the Sky But Not for You, M.M. Lewis. 16pp.
• #20: The Final Act by Edmund Glasby. 17pp.
• #21: The Boom Show by Anne Wrightwell. 13pp.
• #22: Coquetry, She Disdained by Stephen Theaker. 16pp.
• #23: Daddy by Rowena Harding-Smith. 8pp.
• #24: Five Black Bolts by Michael Button. 13pp.
• #25: The Gaze of the Abyss by Edmund Glasby. 13pp.
• #26: Bicycle by Marilyn Thompson. 12pp.
• #27: The Silence by Lisa Farrell. 11pp.
• #28: Emeralds of Eros by Clint Wastling. 25pp.
• #29: Lenore! by Cheryl J. Sonnier. 15pp.
• #30: The Curse of Narcissus by Suzy A. Kelly. 16pp.
• #31: The Manual by Robin Lupton. 15pp.
• #32: Soul Cages by Lucy Stone. 17pp.
• #33: Next in Line, by A.N. Myers. 9pp.
• #34: Afore the Master by Suzy A. Kelly. 7pp.
• #35: Ice Heart by Marilyn Thompson.
• #36: Monster for Hire by Jason Gould. 20pp.

Worth £20 on their own, quite apart from the other benefits of BFS membership, and I hear that #22 is particularly good!

Armada by Ernest Cline | review by Stephen Theaker

Zack Lightman’s dad died in an explosion at a sewage treatment plant, and it made the papers so everyone knows. That was back in 1999. A bully called Douglas Knotcher once took the mickey about it, and got battered to a pulp after Zack went into a blind rage. He’s been trying to live it down, but it hurts to miss his dad so much while finding his death so humiliating. His mum kept all his dad’s stuff in boxes up in the attic. Zack watched his videos, played his games, and wore his jacket covered in high score patches.

Contributor news: The Autist by Stephen Palmer

Stephen Palmer, who contributed "The Mines of Sorrow" to Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #46 (that was an excellent issue!), has a new novel out from Infinity Plus: The Autist.

"Data detective Mary Vine is visiting relatives when she uncovers a Chinese programme of AI development active within her own family.

Ulu Okere has only one goal: to help her profoundly disabled brother, whose unique feats of memory inspire her yet perturb the community they live in.

And in a transmuted Thailand, Somchai Chokdee is fleeing his Buddhist temple as an AI-inspired political revolution makes living there too dangerous.

In 2100 life is dominated by vast, unknowable AIs that run most of the world and transform every society they touch. When suspicions of a Chinese conspiracy seem substantiated, Mary, Ulu and Somchai decide they must oppose it. Yet in doing so they find themselves facing something the world has never seen before..."

Available on Amazon here for UK readers, and here for US readers.