Tuesday 31 December 2019

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

free epub | free mobi | free pdf | print UK | print USA | Kindle UK | Kindle US

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.


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 ReviewPosit and KNOCK, among other places. His books include So Anyway…In A Family WayLifelong Learning and the forthcoming The Three of Them.


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

Monday 9 December 2019

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.  

Sunday 1 December 2019

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.