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!

British Fantasy Awards 2018: the winners (and my guesses!)

The British Fantasy Awards have just been announced, at FantasyCon 2018 in Chester. I kept my thoughts about what might win to myself until now, since I might be thought to have inside knowledge about the juries I wasn't on. I didn't – there was no crossover between the jury I was on and any of the others – but better safe than sorry. Note that the jurors given below are those that were originally announced; I haven't seen any announcements that anyone dropped out or was replaced, but it is possible. So here, after the fact, are the guesses I made, and more importantly the actual winners:

Anthology
Winner: New Fears, ed. Mark Morris (Titan Books)
My guess: New Fears, ed. Mark Morris (Titan Books)
Jurors: Adam Baxter, Pauline Morgan, Pete Sutton, Maz Wilberforce, Virginia Wynn-Jones

Artist
Winner: Jeffrey Alan Love
My guess: Victo Ngai
Jurors: Ruth Booth, Alex Gushurst-Moore, Helen Scott, Catherine Sullivan, Tania Walker

Audio
Winner: Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman, adapted by Dirk Maggs for Radio 4
My guess: Tea & Jeopardy (Emma Newman and Peter Newman)
Jurors: Susie Prichard-Casey, William Shaw, Allen Stroud

Collection
Winner: Strange Weather, by Joe Hill (Gollancz)
My guess: Tender: Stories, by Sofia Samatar (Small Beer Press)
Jurors: Richard Barber, Peter Coleborn, Katherine Inskip, Shona Kinsella, Laura Langrish

Comic/Graphic Novel
Winner: Monstress, Vol. 2, by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda (Image)
My guess: Tomorrow, by Jack Lothian and Garry Mac (BHP Comics)
Jurors: Ed Fortune, Emily Hayes, Elaine Hillson, Kiwi Tokoeka, Susan Tarrier

Fantasy Novel (the Robert Holdstock Award)
Winner: The Ninth Rain, by Jen Williams (Headline)
My guess: The Ninth Rain, by Jen Williams (Headline)
Jurors: David Allan, Rebecca Davis, Michaela Gray, Caroline Hooton, Kirsty Stanley

Film/Television Production
Winner: Get Out, by Jordan Peele (Universal Pictures)
My guess: The Good Place, Season 1, by Michael Schur et al. (Netflix)
Jurors: Kimberley Fain, Theresa Derwin, Craig Sinclair, Gareth Spark, Paul Yates

Horror Novel (the August Derleth Award)
Winner: The Changeling, by Victor LaValle (Spiegel & Grau)
My guess: The Changeling, by Victor LaValle (Spiegel & Grau)
Jurors: Charlotte Bond, Sarah Carter, Amy Chevis-Bruce, Ross Warren, Mark West

Independent Press
Winner: Unsung Stories
My guess: Unsung Stories (George Sandison)
Jurors: Stewart Hotston, Georgina Kamsika, Aleksandra Kesek, Joni Walker

Magazine/Periodical
Winner: Shoreline of Infinity, ed. Noel Chidwick
My guess: Black Static, ed. Andy Cox (TTA Press)
Jurors: Colleen Anderson, Helen Armfield, Dave Jeffery, Alasdair Stuart, Chloë Yates

Newcomer (the Sydney J. Bounds Award)
Winner: Jeanette Ng, for Under the Pendulum Sun (Angry Robot)
My guess: R.J. Barker, for Age of Assassins (Orbit)
Jurors: Eliza Chan-Ma, Elloise Hopkins, Steven Poore, Erica Satifka, Neil Williamson

Non-fiction
Winner: Gender Identity and Sexuality in Science Fiction and Fantasy, ed. F.T. Barbini (Luna Press)
My guess: No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters, by Ursula K. Le Guin (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Jurors: Laura Carroll, Lee Fletcher, D Franklin, Emeline Morin, Graeme K. Talboys

Novella
Winner: Passing Strange, by Ellen Klages (Tor.com)
No guessing required, I was on this jury, and it was a very enjoyable experience!
Jurors: Joel Cook, Alicia Fitton, Susan Oke, Rosanne Rabinowitz, Stephen Theaker

Short Fiction
Winner: Looking for Laika, by Laura Mauro (Interzone #273)
My guess: Four Abstracts, by Nina Allan (New Fears)
Jurors: Andrew Hook, Terry Jackman, Juliet Kemp, Tim Major, Sam Mohsen

The Special Award (the Karl Edward Wagner Award)
Winner: N.K. Jemisin
My guess: I had no idea.
Jurors: the BFS committee (currently Katherine Fowler (BFA admin), James Barclay, Phil Lunt, Andy Marsden, Lee Harris, Shona Kinsella, Tim Major, Allen Stroud, Helen Armfield, Neil Ford, Karen Fishwick, Allen Ashley and Christopher Teague; though not everyone necessarily takes part and the committee can change over the course of the year).

A Legends of FantasyCon award was also announced. This isn't a British Fantasy Award; it's awarded by the FantasyCon committee. The winners this year were Alasdair Stuart and Marguerite Kenner.

I haven't read N.K. Jemisin's work yet, but she seems like a perfect choice for the Karl Edward Wagner Award. I do think it's a problem, though, that the BFS membership wasn't invited to make suggestions, contrary to the award rules.

Last year I guessed six right, this time only four. The current system is based on people, usually BFS members or FantasyCon attendees but perhaps less so this year, sitting down to read the nominees and deciding the awards on that basis, and that makes it hard to predict (and indeed quibble with) the results unless you've read all of them too. And this year there were more jurors than usual that I didn't know, making it even harder than usual to predict what they would like. Next year I'm going to try reading a few of the categories: it'll be interesting to see if that helps my guesswork!

Anyway, 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 awards administrator, who once again pulled it all together. I think it is a very respectable list.

Nominations for the British Fantasy Awards 2018!

This year's nominees in what are now my second-favourite set of awards, the British Fantasy Awards, were announced last Friday, July 6.

Don't get excited, we are not nominated, I'm afraid! I did however contribute in the tiniest of ways to three of the five nominees in the magazine/periodical category during the relevant period – to the magazines Interzone (three reviews, I think) and Black Static (four reviews), and to the website Ginger Nuts of Horror (they were kind enough to host my piece shilling our Red Nose Day fake reviews). So you know who to root for!

The BFS's announcement is here, although note that at the time of writing it isn't quite accurate regarding the voting process: same as in previous years since 2011, there was only one round of voting from the members of the British Fantasy Society and FantasyCon 2017 and 2018, not two.

That was preceded by anyone interested contributing to a crowdsourced suggestions list – mostly writers, editors and publishers, looking at the way it built up day by day, in little clumps of related books and stories. I spent quite a lot of time researching suitable suggestions, checking word counts and publication dates and things like that, and it's been cheering to see many of those make it through to the shortlists.

Make sure your work is on there next year, and make sure it's in the right category!

After the voting was over, the four best-placed eligible items in each category went forward as the provisional shortlist (or five where there was an unbreakable tie), and then juries had the opportunity to add up to two additional items as egregious omissions (which could be on the grounds of quality, genre relevance, gender balance, etc).

The resulting nominees are:

Best Anthology
2084, ed. George Sandison (Unsung Stories)
Dark Satanic Mills: Great British Horror Book 2, ed. Steve Shaw (Black Shuck Books)
Imposter Syndrome, ed. James Everington & Dan Howarth (Dark Minds Press)
New Fears, ed. Mark Morris (Titan Books)
Pacific Monsters, ed. Margret Helgadottir (Fox Spirit)

Best Artist
Ben Baldwin
Jeffrey Alan Love
Victo Ngai
Daniele Sera
Sophie E. Tallis
Sana Takeda

Best Audio
Anansi Boys (by Neil Gaiman, adapted by Dirk Maggs for Radio 4)
Brave New Words podcast (Ed Fortune and Starburst Magazine)
Breaking the Glass Slipper podcast (Lucy Hounsom, Charlotte Bond & Megan Leigh)
Ivory Towers (by Richard H Brooks, directed by Karim Kronfli for 11th Hour Audio Productions)
PseudoPod podcast (Alasdair Stuart and Escape Artists)
Tea & Jeopardy podcast (Emma & Peter Newman)

Best Collection
Norse Mythology, by Neil Gaiman (Bloomsbury)
Strange Weather, by Joe Hill (Gollancz)
Tanith by Choice, by Tanith Lee (Newcon Press)
Tender: Stories, by Sofia Samatar (Small Beer Press)
You Will Grow Into Them, by Malcolm Devlin (Unsung Stories)

Best Comic / Graphic Novel
Bitch Planet Vol 2: President Bitch, by Kelly Sue DeConnick, Taki Soma and Valentine de Landro (Image)
Grim & Bold, by Joshua Cornah (Kristell Ink)
Monstress, Vol. 2, by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda (Image)
Tomorrow, by Jack Lothian and Garry Mac (BHP Comics)
The Wicked + The Divine Vol 5: Imperial Phase Part 1, by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie (Image)

Best Fantasy Novel (the Robert Holdstock Award)
Age of Assassins, by R.J. Barker (Orbit)
The Court of Broken Knives, by Anna Smith Spark (HarperVoyager)
The Ninth Rain, by Jen Williams (Headline)
Under the Pendulum Sun, by Jeanette Ng (Angry Robot)

Best Film / Television Production
Black Mirror, Series 4, by Charlie Brooker (Netflix)
Get Out, by Jordan Peele (Universal Pictures)
The Good Place, Season 1, by Michael Schur (Netflix)
Star Wars: The Last Jedi, by Rian Johnson (Lucasfilm)
Stranger Things, Season 2, by Matt & Ross Duffer (Netflix)
Twin Peaks: the Return, by Mark Frost & David Lynch (Sky Atlantic)
Wonder Woman, by Zack Snyder, Allan Heinberg & Jason Fuchs (Warner Bros.)

Best Horror Novel (the August Derleth Award)
Behind Her Eyes, by Sarah Pinborough (HarperCollins)
The Boy on the Bridge, by M.R. Carey (Orbit)
The Changeling, by Victor LaValle (Spiegel & Grau)
The Crow Garden, by Alison Littlewood (Jo Fletcher Books)
Relics, by Tim Lebbon (Titan Books)

Best Independent Press
Fox Spirit
Grimbold Books
NewCon Press
Salt Publishing
Unsung Stories

Best Magazine / Periodical
Black Static, ed. Andy Cox (TTA Press)
Ginger Nuts of Horror, ed. Jim Mcleod
Grimdark Magazine, ed. Adrian Collins
Interzone, ed. Andy Cox (TTA Press)
Shoreline of Infinity, ed. Noel Chidwick

Best Newcomer (the Sydney J Bounds Award)
R.J. Barker, for Age of Assassins (Orbit)
S.A. Chakraborty, for The City of Brass (HarperVoyager)
Ed McDonald, for Blackwing (Orion)
Jeanette Ng, for Under the Pendulum Sun (Angry Robot)
Anna Smith Spark, for The Court of Broken Knives (HarperVoyager)

Best Non-Fiction
Gender Identity and Sexuality in Science Fiction and Fantasy, ed. F.T. Barbini (Luna Press)
Ginger Nuts of Horror, ed. Jim Mcleod
Luminescent Threads, ed. Alexandra Pierce & Mimi Mondal (12th Planet Press)
No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters, by Ursula K. Le Guin (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of 70s and 80s Horror Fiction, by Grady Hendrix (Quirk)
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me, by Maura McHugh (Electric Dreamhouse Press)

Best Novella
Brother’s Ruin, by Emma Newman (Tor.com)
Cottingley, by Alison Littlewood (NewCon Press)
The Murders of Molly Southbourne, by Tade Thompson (Tor.com)
Naming the Bones, by Laura Mauro (Dark Minds Press)
Passing Strange, by Ellen Klages (Tor.com)
A Pocketful of Crows, by Joanne Harris (Gollancz)

Best Short Story
The Anniversary, by Ruth E.J. Booth (Black Static #61)
Four Abstracts, by Nina Allan (New Fears)
Illumination, by Joanne Hall (Book of Dragons)
The Little Gift, by Stephen Volk (PS Publishing)
Looking for Laika, by Laura Mauro (Interzone #273)
Shepherd’s Business, by Stephen Gallagher (New Fears)

Lots of cool stuff, even if this year only five out of forty-two things I voted for made it to the shortlist! I think that's my lowest score for a while. I had really hoped to see The Adventure Zone in the audio category, and the Coode Street Podcast. I thought Amatka by Karin Tidbeck might have squeaked into best fantasy novel. Same for Legion in film/television, though that category is very strong. I thought The Book of Swords might make it into the best anthology category, but I have to admit I haven't read it yet. Bit of a shame to see two two all-male shortlists, but many categories are well-balanced.

The one real oddity I'm aware of is that Stephen Volk's domestic thriller The Little Gift is up for best short story, because as far as I could tell there wasn't any fantasy in it at all (it's about a bloke who has an affair). Maybe other people thought the mean cat was a demon or a reincarnation or something? There is another thriller on the best horror novel shortlist, but I was assured by none other than Ramsey Campbell that there is a fantasy element to that one.

The jurors have also been announced:

• Anthology: Adam Baxter, Pauline Morgan, Pete Sutton, Maz Wilberforce, Virginia Wynn-Jones
• Artist: Ruth Booth, Alex Gushurst-Moore, Helen Scott, Catherine Sullivan, Tania Walker
• Audio: Susie Prichard-Casey, William Shaw, Allen Stroud
• Collection: Richard Barber, Peter Coleborn, Katherine Inskip, Shona Kinsella, Laura Langrish
• Comic/Graphic Novel: Ed Fortune, Emily Hayes, Elaine Hillson, Kiwi Tokoeka, Susan Tarrier
• Fantasy Novel (the Robert Holdstock Award): David Allan, Rebecca Davis, Michaela Gray, Caroline Hooton, Kirsty Stanley
• Film/Television Production: Kimberley Fain, Theresa Derwin, Craig Sinclair, Gareth Spark, Paul Yates
• Horror Novel (the August Derleth Award): Charlotte Bond, Sarah Carter, Amy Chevis-Bruce, Ross Warren, Mark West
• Independent Press: Stewart Hotston, Georgina Kamsika, Aleksandra Kesek, Joni Walker
• Magazine/Periodical: Colleen Anderson, Helen Armfield, Dave Jeffery, Alasdair Stuart, Chloë Yates
• Newcomer (the Sydney J. Bounds Award): Eliza Chan-Ma, Elloise Hopkins, Steven Poore, Erica Satifka, Neil Williamson
• Non-Fiction: Laura Carroll, Lee Fletcher, D Franklin, Emeline Morin, Graeme K. Talboys
• Novella: Joel Cook, Alicia Fitton, Susan Oke, Rosanne Rabinowitz, Stephen Theaker
• Short Fiction: Andrew Hook, Terry Jackman, Juliet Kemp, Tim Major, Sam Mohsen

There are a lot of names I don't recognise, but that's not a bad thing. I don't subscribe to the idea that the jurors need to be famous writers – they just need to be keen readers. Great to see lots of female jurors involved. Interesting that there is a quartet of BFS committee members on the juries this time, something the society has often tended to avoid, given the conflict of interest concerns that led to the introduction of the jury system.

I'm there on the best novella jury. It's been an extremely enjoyable experience – an excuse to prioritise reading! We had only a fortnight or so to consider our egregious omissions, so I had a hectic time reading as many likely candidates as I could. Once that was over, it only took a couple of days to read all the nominees, so I've been idling rather since then. A big difference from last year, where I had a year's worth of 2000 AD to read at this stage!

Fun as it has been both times, I don't think I'll volunteer again next year. Other people should get a chance – if you have the same people on the juries over and over things can get stale – and also because I'd like to do what I did back in 2009, and read and review a category or two as a summer reading challenge on the blog next year.

Anyway, best of luck to all the nominees! The winners will be announced on October 21, at FantasyCon 2018. Ticket information here. If you would like to vote in next year's British Fantasy Awards, join the British Fantasy Society. A bargain at £20!

Interzone #261: coming soon!

Interzone #261 will be out soon, and it features my review of If Then by Matthew De Abaitua, plus lots, lots more that you can read about here.

I've also been putting together BFS Horizons #2, which features among many other things a cover from our own Howard Watts. The only way to be sure of getting a print copy of that is to join the society before the issue goes to press, but, if you can't join right now, ebook versions will be available in the society's archive.

Pork pies in the gardens: my FantasyCon 2014

FantasyCon 2015 is coming up soon. Not sure yet if I'll be there this year, but if you're on the fence about going and wondering what it's like, here's my report on last year's event, originally written in November 2014 for the BFS Journal #13.

Eating a pork pie in the lovely grounds
of the Royal York Hotel.

Friday

I wasn’t in a great mood heading off for this year’s FantasyCon, which took place from September 5 to September 7. The plan had been to go with Mrs Theaker and both children, but a school entrance exam on Saturday torpedoed that plan, and so I made my way to York alone. The hotel (a charming Premier Inn five minutes from the convention hotel) already had the children’s beds ready, so that made me rather glum.

But the 75% reduction in Theakers at the convention had some benefits: I saved a good deal of money, and I didn’t have to wait till the kids were back from school to set off. So I arrived at the hotel in good time for the opening ceremony. It was overshadowed by the absence of Graham Joyce, obviously not a good sign given what we already knew of his health. FantasyCon chair Lee Harris filled in, and introduced us to Kate Elliott, Toby Whithouse, Charlaine Harris and Larry Rostant, each of them taking a turn to make a few comments.

The first panel I attended was the end of Doctor Who: Space Messiah, where Guy Adams, Mark Morris, Juliet E. McKenna, Caroline Symcox and Joanne Harris were being moderated by Jonathan Oliver. I wasn’t there long enough to hear much, but what I heard was interesting.

Paul Cornell and Caroline Symcox hosted a FantasyCon edition of Pointless, which was very good fun. Lots of audience participation, good-natured hosts, challenging questions – even the crying of a hungry baby couldn’t spoil things. It was nice to see an event at which regular attendees (as the contestants) were the main focus of attention.

I didn't spend much time in the dealers' room, not having much money free to spend or anywhere in the house to keep any books I might buy, but I was surprised to see one blogger selling off pristine, unread review copies and ARCs for a pound each. Selling ARCs is frowned upon at the best of times, never mind doing it in direct competition with booksellers and publishers in the same hall.

In the evening I was on my first panel since 2010 (panels not being something I ever volunteer for), my first ever as an actual panellist, on “Awards and their value. What are they good for? Which are the important ones? Who really benefits?” The moderator was Glen Mehn, who did a brilliant job of bringing everyone into the conversation. The other panellists were publisher Simon Spanton, agent Juliet Mushens, and author Charlaine Harris (who talks exactly like Sookie in True Blood), which meant there was a wide range of views on the panel. Apologies if I spoke too loud – I didn’t realise there were microphones!

What I learnt then about preparing for a panel is to focus on your own position and perspective; that’s why you’re there. The publisher, author and agent talked about how awards affected them, so all my notes covering those angles were useless. I should have concentrated on what awards mean to me as a reader, a fan and an awards administrator.

There wasn’t much programming at this convention for later in the evenings, certainly none of the entertainingly blotto midnight panels I’ve attended in the past. I spent a bit of time in the Joel Lane bar, where a karaoke began. Many attendees proved to be skilled in the art of making tuneful noises come out of their mouths, not least the FantasyCon chair himself.

Once it got to the point that most of the singers taking part were young women, I felt any further interest I showed in the event might be open to misinterpretation, and headed up to the main bar to send some maudlin texts to Mrs Theaker and make notes for the AGM. I got a delicious pizza from the bar, and had a good chat with the BFS’s new events organiser Richard Webb, who seems like a very sensible chap, as well as some other nice people whose names I failed to note.

Saturday

“The Pen vs the Sword” (“Writers who also happen to be swordfighters discuss the myths and realities of the sword in fiction – and demonstrate their skills with the blade!”) featured Marc Aplin as moderator, with Fran Terminiello, Juliet E. McKenna, Adrian Tchaikovsky and Clifford Beale on the panel. The discussion was fascinating, and extremely useful for anyone whose fiction features people fighting with melee weapons. (So pretty much everyone at FantasyCon!)

Fran Terminiello and Juliet E. McKenna
show us how to fight.

The only problem was that they left it a bit too late to get onto the meat of the practical demonstration, and took it into the adjoining room, which tempted away much of the potential audience for guest of honour Charlaine Harris’s conversation, and it made quite a racket until the doors were solidly closed.

Adele Wearing soldiered on, and did a great job of interviewing Harris, who cheerfully laid out the failures that led to her current success. It was good as well to hear that her political differences with Alan Ball, and the direction in which he had taken True Blood, hadn’t affected her respect for him as a writer.

I left the panel “Surprise!” (“Why do some shock twists leave an audience in awe and others make them feel cheated?”) as soon as a panellist said “I’m sure everyone knows the ending of…” because it was clearly going to be a spoiler-heavy hour, and I’m the kind of person who doesn’t read the Radio Times listings till after I’ve seen Doctor Who. My own silly fault: what was I expecting?

Charlaine Harris and Adele Wearing
in conversation.

“Beyond Grimdark” (“Is the trend for mud, misery and moral bankruptcy on the wane in SFF, and if so, what’s next?”) featured a certain amount of eyerolling on the panel as one panellist explained why his novel really did need a rape scene, because it was an integral part of his female character’s story.

“She Ain’t Heavy, She’s My Sister” was I think my least favourite event of the convention, with the moderator Roz Kaveney and one panellist talking at length between themselves, even to the point of leaning back to literally talk behind the back of the panellist sitting in the middle. It didn’t feel well-prepared, the moderator not having many questions, and the panellists unable to offer many examples of female friendships in fantasy and seeming to assume they don’t exist.

All seemed a bit odd to me, given that my television had been tuned by the children to the “female friendships in fantasy” channel for the whole of the school holidays: Winx Club, Monster High, Ever After High, the Tinker Bell movies, The Wizards of Waverley Place, Aquamarine, H20: Mako Mermaids, Rainbow Magic, Every Witch Way, etc.

I haven’t read any books by guest of honour Kate Elliott yet, but listening to her in conversation was enough to make me want to change that. (The forthcoming Very Best of… looks like a good place to start.)

I left the panel “Who’s Missing?”, a discussion about authors you should be reading, fairly soon after it began, because my stomach was threatening to drown out the panellists. After eating, I arrived late for “Tea and Jeopardy” with Toby Whithouse, and entrance was denied (or at least discouraged) because it was so full. A shame for me, but good that the event was so popular. I suppose if you asked the three hundred or so people at FantasyCon for their favourite writers, you’d get hundreds of different replies, but podcasts are more like television and films, in that they are not so numerous and there’s more commonality.

Latimer, the butler from Tea and Jeopardy, stayed on to be scoremaster for my favourite part of FantasyCon, “Just a Minute”, hosted by Paul Cornell. The guests were Kate Elliott, Stephen Gallagher, Gillian Redfearn and Frances Hardinge, and what made it so enjoyable is that this year they played it for real, with challenges flying thick and fast. Stephen Gallagher’s win was well-deserved.

If my fellow Theakers had been there, the FantasyCon Disco (sponsored by Gollancz) might have been another highlight of the convention. As it was, I looked on with a frown for a few seconds and scarpered upstairs.

That took me to the Super Relaxed Fantasy Club, a long, free-form event at which I felt rather like an intruder. At the beginning, everyone sat in a circle and took turns to say who they were, receiving a round of applause in return. It felt a bit culty, a bit happy-clappy, but it was a good event to have at FantasyCon, because it got lot of people talking and gave anyone (like me) who didn’t fancy the bar scene a chilled-out, friendly place to go. The interview with Gollancz’s Simon Spanton was fascinating, with readings from Laura Lam and Edward Cox being warmly received. The latter talked about how his novel had been completely rewritten to make it more commercial.

By the second break in SRFC I was pretty worn out and approaching a certain level of grumpiness, and I had the AGM in the morning, so I headed back to the hotel and watched Solomon Kane on TV. (Not a great movie, but better than expected.)

Sunday

Sunday morning we had a short meeting of the BFS committee in the bar, and it was good to meet the people I’ve been working with for the last year. The AGM (on a bit later this year, at 11 a.m.) was rather less fun, because I refused to change one of my proposals to suit everyone else, leading one attendee to yell, “They’re not your awards, Stephen!” No, but it was my proposal and I’m glad I didn’t change it, even if that meant it failed! I’d rather have the proposal I wanted fail than have a proposal I didn’t want go through in my name.

The awards ceremony was in the afternoon, after the banquet. I missed the beginning of the banquet, because I was gluing the names of the award-winners onto the awards – which were still a bit sticky. Next year we’ll know to get them unpacked sooner so that they have time to dry. But I soon caught up and the food was the best I’ve had at a FantasyCon banquet. The ceremony itself went a bit haywire at first, with the PowerPoint setup getting muddled up – at one point thumbnails of all the slides appeared on screen at once. But host Paul Cornell handled it all with grace and aplomb.

I had to go on stage to accept the prize for best comic or graphic novel, on behalf of Becky Cloonan for Demeter. Slight panic in that Paul, when reading out the nominees, did not say the name Demeter in the way I’ve said it all my life. What to do? Say it his way or mine? I assumed he was right and said it his way, but felt my inner nine-year-old scowling at my capitulation. He knows I’m always right, even when I’m wrong.

So that was my FantasyCon. I’m not really a convention person, I think. I’m not a pub person either, and the social side of a convention feels like a big pub to me. But there were lots of interesting panels to attend, lots of interesting panels I didn’t have time to attend, and a very pleasant, welcoming atmosphere. It was good to see so many new faces on the panels. Elsewhere, I was constantly amazed at how generous people were with their time (and how often talking to people would garner choice nuggets of gossip!). It’s not really my thing, socially, but approached as a work convention for my publishing hobby I found it very useful.

I was right about one thing, the Very Best of Kate Elliott was a very good place to start – I recommend it highly! FantasyCon 2015 will take place 23–25 October 2015, at the East Midlands Conference Centre and Orchard Hotel, Nottingham, UK. FantasyCon is one of the cheapest conventions around, especially for BFS members, and even more so if you book early. Even now, tickets are only £55 for BFS members. Join the convention here.

BFS Journal #11: out now!

Sorry that things have been so quiet on the TQF blog this year – paying work has been keeping me very busy (can’t and won’t complain!) but work is progressing on the next issue of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction – and about 25 reviews I have at various stages of unreadiness.

One distraction has been that I was asked to help out on the BFS Journal for a couple of issues after it had stalled, to give the new managing editor time to train up. You can only get this 184pp paperback if you’re a BFS member, but we’ve ordered a handful of extra copies, so if you join today there’s still a chance of getting it.

Sarah Newton is the editor of this issue’s fiction:

• The Switch, Mark Lewis
• Electricity, Gary Couzens
• Pawnarchy, Mark Huntley-James
• The Eden Paradigm, Allen Ashley and Madeleine Beresford
• A Barrow on the Border, Rima Devereaux
• The Need to Create, Emma Newman
• The Lost Name, Sandra Unerman
• Baby 17, Jonathan Oliver
• The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, M.E. Lerman

Stuart Douglas edits the non-fiction:

• Jennie Gyllblad, interviewed by Max Edwards
• Freda Warrington, interviewed by Alex Bardy
• The Adventures of Brak, Mike Barrett
• Tim Powers, interviewed by Stuart Douglas
• Nick Campbell on The Child Garden
• Forbidden Fruits, Ray Cluley

And Ian Hunter edits the poetry:

• Cybernetic Mary, Deborah Walker
• Protecting Veil, Megan Kerr
• A Paranormal Romance, Allen Ashley

There’s also a controversial editorial by Max Edwards, a controversial chairman’s chat by Mark Barrowcliffe, and a BFS news section that has not yet attracted any controversy (but maybe no one has read it yet). Cover art by Jennie Gyllblad.

BFS Journal #10, out soon

During January I helped out on organising and typesetting #10 of the BFS Journal. It’s one hundred and sixty-eight pages of fantasy fun, weirdness and even a dash of controversy, edited by Max Edwards, Sarah Newton, Stuart Douglas and Ian Hunter.

Contributors include Al Kratz, Allen Ashley, Anne Lyle, Anne Shah, Anton Sim, Cav Scott, Clare Le May, David Buchan, David Gullen, Erik T. Johnson, Gary Budgen, Jaine Fenn, James Barclay, Juliet Boyd, Juliet McKenna, Mark Barrowcliffe, Mike Chinn, Paul Magrs, Pye Parr, Richard Farren Barber, Stuart Douglas, Tammy O’Malley, Zoe Gilbert and frequent TQF contributor Douglas Thompson.

The cover art, originally from Blood and Feathers: Rebellion by Lou Morgan, is by Pye Parr, who is interviewed by Cavan Scott about his work on that and other books.

BFS periodicals aren’t generally available to non-members. However, we ordered 25 spares and they will be sent out to new members and renewals as long as stocks last, along with two BFS exclusive hardback anthologies, The Burning Circus and Unexpected Journeys, edited by Johnny Mains and Juliet McKenna respectively. Contributors to those books include Kate Elliott, Stephen Volk, Muriel Gray and Adam Nevill. Join here.

British Fantasy Awards 2014: add your favourites to the eligibility list!

I'm running the British Fantasy Awards again next year. I plan for voting to begin on 1 January 2014, so now is the time to add your favourite works of 2013 to the BFS's eligibility list:

Submit your items here: http://tinyurl.com/suggestions2014

They will appear on the list here: http://tinyurl.com/list2014

You do not have to be a member to contribute to the list.

The list is especially short on newcomers, magazines, films/tv, comics and artists, so get racking your brains. Last year I could tell that a lot of voters were using the list – the text of many votes had been copied and pasted from it.

And check the list for your own work. Let me know about any mistakes, typos, misattributions, etc you spot so that I can correct them. Last year a mention of "Subterannean Press" made it all the way to an actual awards envelope before I finally noticed it. Some proofreader I am!

Unfortunately this great magazine of ours, all the marvellous stories and non-fiction and artwork we publish, and any books we put out are all ineligible, because of my involvement. I know, it sucks, we'd be sure to win otherwise. But anything fantastical you've published elsewhere during 2013 is eligible.

Theakerly thoughts #6: audiobooks on Kindle, author firewalls, Mike Barrett

Thought 1. I’d forgotten how much I liked listening to audiobooks on my Kindle v.3 (the grey ones, now renamed Kindle Keyboards). Unlike an iPod it has little speakers that are fine for speech, and there’s a headphone jack for playing the books out to stereos, speakers and headphones. The older Kindles are even compatible with Audible files, and keep your place in them. Best of all, you can’t do anything else with the device while you’re listening. I have a bad habit of playing an audiobook on, say, the iPad, then wondering what else I could do while listening, and five minutes later turning off the audiobook because I’m reading a newspaper article and not paying the book any attention. You can’t do that with the old Kindles.

Thought 2. Ironic that the staunchest defender of an author who dived into a comment thread to set a reviewer straight is the same fellow who said this last May when explaining why he doesn’t review self-published books:

“We don’t know how you’ll react. The erratic behaviour of the author mentioned in [another article] is a strong illustration of why we don’t read self-published authors. We don’t have a firewall between us and the writer. Books from publishing houses that don’t have any self-published books give a level of detachment between what we write and the reaction we’ll get.”

So last year it was all about firewalls and detachment from the author’s reaction, this year “I welcome author’s [sic] comments” and those who don’t are bullies. Perhaps it’s different when the author is relatively famous.

Thought 3. During the all-too-brief time I edited Dark Horizons for the British Fantasy Society, some of my favourite articles were those by Mike Barrett on the history of fantasy and horror publishing. Some of those articles, plus several others, have now been collected in an Alchemy Press collection, Doors to Elsewhere, with an introduction by Ramsey Campbell. The articles were carefully researched, educational and well worth your time. More information here.

What contributors did next #2

Last April I interviewed Rhys Hughes for the British Fantasy Society’s journal. Due to production problems the journal wasn’t published until September, and Rhys finally received his contributor copy this month. All a bit frustrating, but the interview turned out well and Rhys blogs about it here.

Ace reviewer Jacob Edwards takes a turn as Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine editor with #55, and includes fiction from Tom Holt, Stephen Gallagher, Deborah Kalin and Lisa A. Koosis, among others, as well as an interview with Glen Duncan and a “musical interlude” with Richard O’Brien. More details here.

David Tallerman’s novel Crown Thief is now out, a sequel to the very enjoyable Giant Thief (reviewed by me here), and a third in the series will follow soon. He’s written an interesting article on his late realisation that the first two books failed the Bechdel test: read it here.

(I realised a while ago that there was a similar problem with my Howard Phillips novels, and became quite maudlin till I realised it gave me an excellent plot for the fifth book. Well, I say excellent – excellent by the standards of my Howard Phillips novels..!)

Richard Ford, who contributed “Dead Gods” to Dark Horizons #55, has a new novel Herald of the Storm coming from Headline. It’ll be out in April this year. For more info see his blog: www.richard4ord.wordpress.com.

Our cover artist extraordinaire Howard Watts has set up a DeviantArt page, including some TQF cover pieces. Prints available! Here’s the link: http://hswatts.deviantart.com/

Shelflings #4: one hundred and fifty pages of fantasy reviews!

An email will shortly going out to BFS members with download links for issue four of Shelflings, the BFS's electronic reviews ezine. In response to popular demand there is now a pdf version available as well as the usual mobi and epub ebook versions.

This 150pp issue collects reviews originally appearing on the British Fantasy Society website in October, November and December 2012, by Carl Barker, Catherine Mann, Chris Limb, Craig Knight, David Brzeski, David Rudden, Elloise Hopkins, Glen Mehn, Guy Adams, Jim McLeod, Katy O’Dowd, Laurel Sills, Mario Guslandi, Matthew Johns, Pauline Morgan, Phil Ambler, Phil Lunt, R.A. Bardy, Rebekah Lunt, Steve Dean and Stewart Horn.

They consider the work of (deep breath) A.E. Rought, Alexander Mackendrick, Allen Ashley, Amanda Carlson, Arkane Studios, Benedict Jacka, Billie Sue Mosiman, Brent Weeks, C.L. Werner, Chris Butler, Chris Pauls and Matt Solomon, Chris Wraight, Christian Dunn, Christopher Hivner, Corey Grant, Dale Fabrigar and Everette Wallin, Dan Abnett, Danie Ware, Darius Hinks, David Hair, David Tallerman, Dean M. Drinkel, Eddie Robson, Edward M. Erdelac, Eric Brown, Eric J. Guignard, Esan Sivalinhgam, Evie Manieri, Frank P. Ryan, Freddie Francis, Gary McMahon, Geoff Nelder, Graeme Hurry, Graham McNeill, Guy Adams, Hannah Simpson, Hannu Rajaniemi, Hayao Miyazaki, Jaine Fenn, Jake Arnott, James Swallow, Jason Arnopp, Jasper Fforde, Jeani Rector, Joe Knee, John Ajvide Lindqvist, John Charles Scott, John Dorney, Jonathan L. Howard, Joseph Khan, Juan Martinez Moreno, Julie Armstrong, Kate Griffin, Kevin Connor, Laini Taylor, Laura Lam, Laurell K. Hamilton, Lee Collins, M.E. Brines, Marcel Schwob, Mark Morris, Martin Powell, Martin Smits and Erwin van de Eshof, Massimo Dallamano, Maynard Sims, Michael A. Nickles, Michael Croteau, Nicholas Ahlhelm, Nicholas Briggs, Nicholas McCarthy, Paco Plaza, Percival Constantine, Peter Heller, Peter Mark May, Philip José Farmer, Philip Purser-Hallard, Rachel Kendall, Ramsey Campbell, Rhys Hughes, Robert Hamer, Ross M. Kitson, Rowena Cory Daniells, Saladin Ahmed, Sam Stone, Sarah Newton, Scott K. Andrews, Sean Egan, Stefan Grabinski, Stephen Deas, Stephen Jones, Stevan Mena, Suzanne Johnson, Terry Brooks, The Butcher Brothers, Theresa Derwin, Toshiya Fujita, Val Guest, Will Hill and William Meikle.

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.

Issue three features over 30,000 words of reviews by Catherine Mann, Chris Limb, David Brzeski, David Rudden, Elloise Hopkins, Glen Mehn, Guy Adams, I. O’Reilly, Jeff Jones, Jim McLeod, Katy O’Dowd, M.P. Ericson, Mario Guslandi, Matthew Johns, Mike Chinn, Patrick Henry Downs, Pauline Morgan, Phil Ambler, Phil Lunt, R.A. Bardy, Sandra Scholes and Steve Dean.

In this issue the team considers the work of Aaron Dembski-Bowden, Adam Baker, Alan Bundock, Barnaby Edwards, Beenox, Buddy Giovinazzo, C.J. Henderson, C.L. Werner, Christian Dunn, Christopher Nolan, Christopher Paul Carey, Chuck Wendig, Curtis and Sarah Lyon, Daniel O’Malley, Daniel Polansky, David A. Colón, David Mazzoni, David Moody, E.J. Alvey, Frank Henenlotter, Graeme Hurry, Graham McNeill, Ian Sales, James Edward Raggi IV, Jason A. Wyckoff, Jennifer Brozek and Alan Bundock, Jim Beard, Joseph Goodman, Justin Richards, Lamberto Bava, Lloyd Kaufman, Luke Geddes, Margarita Felices, Mark Valentine, Matt Codd, Michael Cisco, Mike Lee, Mike Shevdon, Myke Cole, Nicholas Briggs, Nick Kyme, P.R. Pope, Peter George, Peter N. Dudar, Philip José Farmer, Robot Entertainment, Rowena Cory Daniells, Shaun Hutson, Simon Guerrier, Stephen Amis, Stephen King, Steve Dean, Tad Williams, Tim Pratt, Tom Mattera, Tom Pollock, Tony Lee, Vicky A. Beaver, William Gallagher, William Lustig and Zach Welhouse.

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.

Creators and editors whose work is reviewed include (deep breath!) Adrian L. Youseman, Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill, Alex Miles, Alison Littlewood, Andy Chambers, Anne Lyle, Anthony Reynolds, Armand Rosamilia, Ben Counter, Bev Allen, Brian-Joseph Baker, Joshua D. Brice, Dillon Langlands and John Bromley, Charlaine Harris, Chris F. Holm, Chris Wraight, Christopher Priest, Courtney Taylor-Taylor and Jim Rugg, Dan Abnett, David A. Sutton, David Elroy Goldweber, David Rix, Deborah Harkness, Frances Hardinge, Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows, Gary Fry, Graham McNeill, Howard Hopkins, James Brogden, Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee, Jilly Paddock, Jim Beard, John Charles Scott, John Dorney, Jonathan Morris, Joseph Nassise, Justin Gustainis, Kim Lakin-Smith, Lee Batters, Madeline Ash, Magnus Aspli, Dave Acosta, Jeremy P Roberts, Goran Kostadinoski and Alex De-Gruchy, Mark C. Scioneaux, R.J. Cavender, Robert S. Wilson, Matthew Clements, Maynard Sims, Michael Croteau, Nancy Kilpatrick, Nick Kyme and Gav Thorpe, Paul Dini, Carlos D’Anda and others, Paul Magrs, Paul S. Kemp, Peter Bell, Phil and Kaja Foglio, Reggie Oliver, Richard Davis, Richard Ford, Richard Morgan, Rob Sanders, Sarah Newton, Scott Sigler, Shaun Jeffrey, Simon D. Smith, Simon Yates, Terrance Dicks, Trevor Jones and Liz Williams, and William King.

Shelflings #2 is available to download from these links: in epub format and in mobi format. [Links removed! Turned out the issue had been made publicly available by mistake rather than design.]

Sword Man on a one-star Goodreads rampage!

Returning to the blog for a minute – and no, my novel isn't going well at all, thanks for asking! – to note that Goodreads has got itself an amusing new anonymous member, going by the moniker of Sword Man, who has been handing out one star reviews like he or she bought a big box of them at a fire sale.

See if you can spot a connection between the people whose books are getting slammed:

• The Taken, Sarah Pinborough
• Torchwood: Into the Silence, Sarah Pinborough
• A Matter of Blood, Sarah Pinborough ("Really badly written")
• Zombie Apocalypse, Stephen Jones (ed.)
• Mammoth Book of Zombies, Stephen Jones (ed.)
• Mammoth Book of Vampires, Stephen Jones (ed.)
• Shadows Over Innsmouth, Stephen Jones (ed.)
• The Art of Coraline, Stephen Jones 
• Department Nineteen, Will Hill
• The Deluge, Mark Morris ("Weak")
• The Silent Land, Graham Joyce ("Dull Characters and an unoriginal setting")
• TQF36, Stephen Theaker [and John Greenwood] (eds.)
• TQF Year One, Stephen Theaker (ed.)
• TQF Year Two, Stephen Theaker [and John Greenwood] (eds.)
• TQF Year Three, Stephen Theaker [and John Greenwood] (eds.)
• TQF Year Four, Stephen Theaker [and John Greenwood] (eds.)

Most of the reviews were posted on October 16, with a few more added today after I started following his/her reviews. S/he has also voted two of Sarah Pinborough's books onto the Worst Books of All Time list.

But you'll be glad to hear Sword Man is not all negative!

Sword Man has, just in case you haven't made the connection to the BFS awards brouhaha yet, given five star reviews to Sam Stone ("She calls hersle the New Queen of Vampire Ficion on her website and I'm inclined to agree"), Raven Dane ("Well written and a golly good read") and Rules of Duel from Telos.

The highlight for me is the one-star review of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction: Year Two, which states:

"This man really has no clue at all when it comes to reviews and reviewing. It seems to me that Theaker enjoys writing self-indulgent twaddle - nasty gibes - and spends most of his time writing negative, not informative reviews. I haven't seen one he's written that I would say I agreed with."

The funny thing is that there are no reviews in that book. None whatsoever!

Sword Man strikes – and fails!

The irony is that this is exactly the kind of behaviour that seems to have got the BFS and its awards into hot water into the first place. So while Sword Man may feel like s/he is hitting back, s/he is really just confirming that people were right to suggest that there might be a bit of a problem.

The British Fantasy Awards kerfuffle: a view from a former awards admin

My post from September 2010 on Withdrawing TQF from the British Fantasy Awards now seems unfortunately prophetic, given the doorway the BFS and its awards walked into at FantasyCon a year later. Among other things I said (emphasis added in bold):

"The BFS is now taking recommendations for next year's awards, and I've decided to withdraw Theaker's Quarterly Fiction from the Best Magazine/Periodical award for as long as I'm the awards administrator, or as long as I'm the editor of the magazine – whichever tenure comes to an end first. …

That's partly because I'd have been profoundly embarrassed to win the award over a shortlist that included for example Black Static and Interzone, magazines to whom, for all our good qualities, we can't hold a candle. But also because a win for us in that category would have cast not just my integrity into doubt, but the integrity of the entire awards."

Hard to believe now that some people thought I was over-cautious. (In the event I had resigned from the post of British Fantasy Awards admin by the time this year's awards got seriously underway. I did offer to stay on until the AGM, but luckily (for me, at least) I was given permission to leave straight away.)

Of course it wasn't just the results of this year's awards that caused all the fuss. It was also the people chosen to present the awards (the chair's partner, her close friend, and other friends and colleagues of theirs), the toe-curling scripting of the entire ceremony, the scolding of the MC when she went off-script, etc. The lack of any accounts at the AGM caused a lot of concern. There had also been rumblings before the event: there seems to have been some ongoing quarrelling between the BFS chair and the FantasyCon organisers, and about a week before the event the BFS cancelled all its rolling PayPal memberships, because they wanted to be able to increase fees each year more easily. Not the best PR move in the world.

But the results played a pretty big part. I've said before that I think this year's results would have been the same had I still been running them, which in a way is more depressing than the idea that they were down to one dodgy geezer. It's hard to find anyone who has actually said they believe the results were falsified – although since that suggestion was made in the newspapers, the BFS should have done a full audit, as allowed for by the awards constitution, before declaring that they absolutely, definitely hadn't been in a statement that seems unreliable, to put it kindly, in other respects.

BFS committee members have said that the results were counted electronically, as if that automatically removes any opportunity for wrongdoing (or error). It doesn't, of course. For example, in 2010 TQF got onto the shortlist as a result of a non-member vote being disqualified by the secretary at the last minute (I don't think the other magazine lost its place on the shortlist – the lost vote created a tie which took us both on). It's not hard to imagine a situation where the disqualified vote would have knocked my magazine out of the nominees. Who would have known if I decided to leave that vote in?

The "electronic counting" in question is just using Gdocs or Excel to count up the results, or at least it was in previous years: that most definitely does not exclude the possibility of wrongdoing, even if we don't think it happened. The awards admin could get up to any old nonsense if they were so inclined - excluding valid nominees, creating fake voters, excluding valid voters, etc.

And there's always room for error. Last year a couple of items were initially left off the longlist after I lost them in a mail merge. The previous year there was a novella on the shortlist for best short story. This year, we know that there was at least one very significant mistake at the shortlisting stage: the awards admin forgot to count up the write-in votes.

In the end, though, we don't need to look for wrongdoing or error to explain the results. After all, if you look at the 2010 nominees, when I was running the awards, a lot of the same people show up in similar categories.

What happened this year, I would imagine, is simply that a smallish group of BFS members and FantasyCon attendees wanted to see particular people win, for reasons of business, friendship or their own contributions to the nominated works. There's nothing unusual or evil about voting for someone because they are your chum - but it becomes a problem for the organisation when that has the appearance of having been the deciding factor in many of the awards given out. That's why there has been such a demand for reform this year.

As I said on the BFS forums, I hope that the reaction to this year's results will have a positive effect even if the rules don't change a great deal, because it will encourage people to think twice before helping to push someone they are friendly with into a potentially awkward and embarrassing position. The results of these awards come under intense scrutiny every year, and if the winning material struggles to stand up to that scrutiny, questions are always going to be asked about how it came to win.

Anyway, the BFS is now consulting BFS members and attendees of FantasyCon 2010 and 2011 on the direction the awards should take. The tricky thing, I think, is that there are competing urges, both coming out of the negative reaction to the results of this year's awards.

On one hand, there's a desire to see the best nominee win. I hadn't read all of the items in every category this year, but as far as the short story category goes, it's practically impossible to believe that anyone who had read all five of the short stories could have voted for the eventual winner in good conscience (four of them were available for members to read online). If a panel read the shortlisted works, that wouldn't necessarily lead to the best in the category winning (remember M People winning the Mercury Music Prize?), but we would at least know that the decision was an informed one. If the result was odd, we would know exactly who to blame for it! However, the idea that one item out of a bunch of usually very good nominees can be categorically described as the best has its own problems. During the couple of years I ran the BFS short story competition, it wasn't at all unusual to see stories given 5/5 and 1/5 by different readers. One would praise the elegant style, the other decry the purple prose.

On the other hand, and perhaps more significantly in the context of the BFS, is the desire to see winners of whom BFS members and FantasyCon attendees approve. Part of that, unfortunately, is that a lot of BFS people like to see awards go to people who attend FantasyCon, something you can see in the ridiculous decision this year to abolish the film and television awards (consistently among the most popular with voters since their introduction). It's clear, watching the YouTube videos of this year's awards, that there was a great deal of unhappiness at the event about the results, in particular best novel, which was greeted very quietly indeed, rather than the rapturous applause of the last couple of years. A preferential voting system, or a 3/2/1 points system (as used at the longlist stage), would at least ensure that each winner had the backing of many members. Even if those members hadn't actually read any of the nominees, they'd be happier with the result. But is that something we should settle for?

The BFS's survey can be found here. Tough choices to make!

Perhaps it would help a little if we stopped being quite so polite about the nominees - if we did actually make the effort to discuss their relative merits. It's just a little awkward when so many of the writers, publishers and editors are on the BFS forums too.

Mr Johnny Mains got quite a bit of criticism a couple of years ago for saying exactly what he thought of one winner, but as I said back then: we've all moaned when a film we think is rubbish wins the Oscars. That's an essential part of the fun of awards! Does it make a difference when we know the people involved? Should it? There is a definite double standard, where people are happy to slag off the work of Stephen King on the BFS forums, assuming he won't read any of it, barely even acknowledging that he's a human being, but call it bullying if anything at all critical is said about the work of people they know. If more people had been a bit less polite about the nominees this year, the principals involved might have had their feelings hurt a bit, but they would have been better prepared for the reaction to the wins, and better prepared to manage the situation.

Certainly, although I loved running the British Fantasy Awards, and it broke my heart to see what happened to them this year, I'm very glad to be free of the need to appear neutral, and glad to have the freedom to say what I actually think of the nominees I've read. If anything, I wish I'd been a bit less subtle, and come out and said outright how crap I thought some of them were. Next year, when the shortlist is announced, let's have a thread on the BFS forums, saying "What do we think of the nominees?" It will be easy for the nominees to stay out of it if they want to protect their feelings.

The British Fantasy Society

The British Fantasy Society is going through a rough patch at the moment, which has prompted me to get out this piece I wrote for the FantasyCon 2010 souvenir booklet; perhaps it might encourage people to get involved with the society. The publications and people have changed, as has my own level of involvement, but my feelings about the society haven't. 

Thanks for coming to FantasyCon, the annual convention of the British Fantasy Society. If you’re not a member of the Society, no worries, you’re more than welcome – like Radio 4, we judge ourselves by our reach as much as our ratings! But if this weekend you enjoy the camaraderie of FantasyCon, note that being a member of the Society means you get that happy feeling all year round – or at least in four quarterly mailings.

We’re a really ambitious little society. For our size we really try to do a little too much at times: ten or so publications a year, fourteen awards, a three-day annual conference, a short story competition that’s doubled in size two years running, and other events through the year and around the country, not to mention a website and forum. This past year we’ve been stretched quite thin, but I hope you’ll agree that this convention was worth a few hiccups in other areas.

For our promotional postcard for the World Horror Convention this year I picked out a quote from Stephen Jones, from our anniversary book, The British Fantasy Society: a Celebration. “Whenever a fledgling horror or fantasy writer comes up to me, at a convention or somewhere else,” he wrote, “and asks me how they can get their work published, I invariably advise them that their first step should be to join the British Fantasy Society.”

Joining the BFS isn’t enough on its own to make you a great writer, of course (at least it hasn’t worked for me!), or to get you published, but that isn’t what he means. What it will do is give you the opportunity to talk (or at least listen, which is perhaps the better option at first) to experienced writers, editors, publishers and artists, and learn from them. People like Jo Fletcher, Peter Crowther, Les Edwards, and our glorious President-for-Life Ramsey Campbell.

And those are the professionals: the BFS is also rich with people doing all the same things for fun in their spare time. You couldn’t spill a pint of beer at FantasyCon or a BFS Open Night without drenching someone who’s up to something creative! Writers, actors, jewellers, sculptors: the BFS is a social network – a creative network – that began to bring interesting people together thirty years before Facebook opened for business.

One other great thing about the BFS: it’s a really easy society to get involved with. I’d been a member for just a year before being offered the editorship of Dark Horizons in March 2008, and a member less than three years when I became chair (albeit temporarily), after Guy Adams stepped down to concentrate on this year’s convention. It’s a cliché that working on a committee like this is thankless, but that’s not been my experience at all: there’s the odd complaint here and there, many of them perfectly justified, but I’ve had bucketfuls of gratitude as well.

(And when the complaints you get are from people like Robert Silverberg (he was chasing up a book), bring them on! Though perhaps that’s a bad example: he could have been emailing to insult my children and I’d still have been delighted.)

And if all of that sounds far too much like hard work, just sit back and appreciate the results of our hard work: we’ll send you a bundle of varied reading materials every three months. Prism contains dozens of reviews every issue, often of unusual books and films that don’t attract the attention of other magazines. Dark Horizons and New Horizons leapfrog through the year, the former bringing poetry, fiction, articles and art across all the fantastic genres, the latter focusing on slipstream, new writers and new approaches. And once or twice a year we produce special publications to stop things getting too routine. Recent years have brought chapbooks, calendars, literary criticism, original fiction, and all sorts of unusual, collectable items.

But that’s what we do, rather than what we’re about. Ours is a society built very much on love. Stop laughing. It is. It may seem like we argue quite a lot for people in love (though as Brian Keene recently observed, we argue very politely!) but that’s because we’re all in love with slightly different things, and have very strong ideas about them. Science fantasy like Moorcock and Vance, weird fantasy like Machen or Lovecraft, heroic or high fantasy like Howard or Tolkien: this is a society that was founded to celebrate all of them. Even more, it’s here to help people discover new books and new writers in a similar vein.

In the age of the internet, is there a need for a fantasy society – can we not just congregate on websites? Well, we can, and we do, but a society feels so much grander! Once upon a time, Conan and Cthulhu appeared in the same magazine, Weird Tales. As bookshops and publishers push us apart, slotting authors and books into ever-narrower, more easily marketable categories, the BFS is needed more than ever, to bring us back together again, to celebrate the fantastic genres as a whole, and, sometimes, to celebrate those writers who don’t fit neatly into boxes.

Stephen Theaker
September 2010

www.britishfantasysociety.org
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A few thoughts on BFS Journal #4

The new issue of the BFS Journal arrived in the post this week, looking very handsome in its Clive Barker cover art. I haven’t read any of the fiction yet (it generally takes me ages to get around to reading it all), so I won't review it properly, but here are my thoughts so far...

I’ve enjoyed David Riley’s seven Prisms (although I’m very pleased that his replacement will be Lou Morgan). For one thing, he’s published an awful lot of my writing! This issue’s Prism section, his last, has a solid seven pages by me (pages 57 to 63), all written at speed over a weekend thanks to a last minute deadline change.

Reading them now, they didn’t turn out too badly, although in my Game of Thrones review a reference to “the elegant tedium of a Carnivale” has been changed to “the elegant tedium of Carnivale”. A tiny change, but one that affected the sense of what I was saying a little bit (i.e. that I find most HBO dramas elegant but dull, not just Carnivale).

As usual a handful of mistakes caught my eye in the Prism reviews - “lead” for “led”, “Tolkein”, stuff like that. One or two reviewers seem to be pulling their punches, and some reviews spend a bit too long summarising the plot, but I enjoyed reading them all.

The highlight of Prism for me was Mark Morris’s account of writing a professional novel NaNoWriMo-style - I'd love to see more of this kind of thing in Prism. The ironic thing about the article is that Mark's adaptation of the game Dead Island, though written in a month, is likely to be better than the game, which took six years or so. (From the 3/10 review in Edge it sounds like a complete duffer.) John Probert’s column on retitling of movies is also an interesting one.

There are quite a lot of reprints in the Dark Horizons section (34 pages out of 60, I think), but it’s all new to me. I enjoyed the comic by Jay Eales and mpMANN (originally from The Girly Comic), but haven’t read the rest yet. Peter Coleborn, editor of the Dark Horizons section, has also stepped down - the Christmas issue of the Journal will be his last.

New Horizons editor Andrew Hook is also leaving, and the section is being allowed to fade into history. The material spread across the four issues of the BFS Journal so far would have been #6 and #7 of the standalone magazine, I think, which Andrew had been planning as his last for some time. I’ll miss his work with the BFS; I liked the fiction he published; but I understand why he’d want to spend more time on his own writing.

It’s not hard to see why New Horizons has been discontinued in the context of the journal - it made little sense having two separate fiction sections in the same magazine. On the other hand, New Horizons was originally introduced to spread the workload, so that each journal editor had six months between issues. I suspect the BFS might find it difficult to find a reliable editor to produce a decent-sized journal every three months.

I couldn’t have done it, not without putting TQF on hold. Although I produce TQF every three months, that’s my main hobby. The thing with the BFS is that almost everyone who volunteers is already doing something creative with their hobby time (writing, a zine, a small press, a blog, making films, etc), and then they have to find time for their BFS duties on top of that.

The BFS has also sent out this week Full Fathom Forty, a 500pp collection of fiction from BFS members and friends. Like Dark Horizons, it’s mostly reprint (27 or so out of 40 stories) but all are new to me. There are some very good contributors - e.g. Conrad Williams, Nina Allan, Robert Shearman, Cate Gardner, Christopher Fowler and Alison Littlewood - so I bet the anthology as a whole will be excellent.

On missing FantasyCon 2011...

I'm trying to convince myself that missing FantasyCon - going on this weekend in Brighton - is a good thing. You know, even though pretty much everyone I know in the writing world will be there. Mrs Theaker didn't want to go this time, and didn't fancy me going away for up to four days, and in a moment of "niceness" earlier in the year I said I wouldn't go. I don't know what I was thinking! So here's what I'm telling myself:

• By staying at home, there's no chance of me getting drunk and acting silly. I'm still cringing about asking horror impressario Johnny Mains to high five me last year! I don't even enjoy drinking; I only drink at FantasyCon to get over my nervousness. 
• There's no chance of me going to the Annual General Meeting, at which there would be a danger of (a) getting into an argument (the BFS AGM can be very frisky) or (b) signing up for the time-consuming drudgery of a BFS committee post.
• I can spend the weekend finishing off Theaker's 38. It's going to be a good one!
• I won't catch any con crud. Or rather, since I'm already a bit poorly, I won't pass it on. 
• There's no chance of me being caught on camera rolling my eyes if a British Fantasy Award goes to a less than deserving winner!
• I would have felt a bit out of it this year; at last year's convention I was right at the centre of things, doing admin for the event and umpteen BFS committee jobs, including chair. Maybe having a year's break is good because I can go back as a fan.
• Mrs Theaker really owes me one and has to be really nice to me all weekend. Unfortunately she has the same poorliness as me, only worse, so it's not as if she's going to be heading to the bakery for doughnuts or anything. I'll be lucky to get a cup of tea out of her...
• If I had been going, I would probably have had to cancel anyway, because of Mrs Theaker's poorliness, so I guess this way I've kept my hotel deposit.
• I get to watch the last episode of Doctor Who with an audience of appreciative fans (i.e. Mrs Theaker and the little Theakers) rather than those guys who spend every Sunday morning moaning about it on Facebook!

That last one is actually pretty convincing!

I hope everyone at the convention is having a super time. I'm watching enviously on Twitter. The line-up is brilliant - Brian Aldiss, for crying out loud! - and it all seems to be very well organised. Really wish I was going. Next year it's going to be much closer to home, so I'll be able to nip over on Saturday morning, come back on Sunday evening. Already looking forward to it - hope to see you there!

BFS Journal #3 – coming soon

I'm not as involved with the BFS as I used to be – I went from doing eight or nine jobs for them to none in the space of six months (and by gum that made Mrs Theaker happy!) – but I'm still very excited about each new mailing.

The third issue of the BFS Journal has just been announced as coming out in late June. The line up, if you can't quite make it out on the cover, is as follows:

• Chairman’s Chat by David J Howe
• BFS News

PRISM:

• Editorial by David A. Riley
• Ramsey’s Rant by Ramsey Campbell
• Book Reviews edited by Jan Edwards and Craig Lockley
• Graphicky Quality edited by Jay Eales
• Media Reviews edited by Mathew F. Riley
• The Mark of Fear by Mark Morris
• Profondo Probert Column 5 by John Llewellyn Probert
• Mary Danby Interviewed

NEW HORIZONS:

• In The House of Answers by Allen Ashley
• Grey Magic For Cat Lovers by Jan Edwards
• The Sound Down By The Shore by Douglas J. Ogurek
• Beached by Eric Boman
• The Hawthorne Effect by Adrian Stumpp

DARK HORIZONS:

• Heaven & Helvetica by Gavin B. Nash
• Late in the Day by Adam Walter
• Mostly in Shadow: Lesser-known Writers of Weird Fiction, Part 2 by Mike Barrett
• Ten Things We’re Going to Have to Live Without After the Apocalypse by Allen Ashley
• The Pet Peeve by Rick Kleffel
• Cellar by J.R. Salling
• ‘Don’t Let the Bedbugs Bite’ by Clint Smith
• A Guttering of Flickers by Michael Kelly
• The Secret in the Village of Dragonsbreath by Annie Neugebauer
• The Last Dance of Humphrey Bear by James Brogden

I'm very glad to see the return of the Chairman's Chat and BFS News to the journal – I do think it's good to have something in the mailing that makes us feel like members of a society rather than just subscribers to a magazine. (Although I remember struggling to find the time to write the three Chats of my brief but glorious reign!)

I'm a big fan of all the columns, especially The Mark of Fear, and I'm really happy to see a story from TQF contributor Douglas Ogurek in there. Mike Barrett's articles are never anything less than fascinating.

I only had one review ready in time for issue two of the journal (a scintillating piece on cine-classic Death Race 2), but I sent in seven for this issue:

• Doctor Who: The Paradise of Death (AudioGo)
• Doctor Who: The Perpetual Bond (Big Finish)
• Doctor Who: The Edge of Destruction (AudioGo)
• Doctor Who: Cobwebs (Big Finish)
• Altitude (film)
• Shock Labyrinth 3D (film)
• The Gift of Joy, Ian Whates (NewCon)

Not sure how many of them will have made it in – the current BFS chair is a big fan of Doctor Who (and a very distinguished one!) but other members might find their patience tested by so many reviews of Doctor Who audio adventures!

As ever, if you want to get hold of this issue, there's only one way: join the BFS!

BFS Journal #1 – now going out to members!

The first issue of the new BFS Journal has been going out to members this week. If you're not a member, I believe there are a few copies in reserve, but join quickly or it'll be gone for good!

I'd been writing up to a quarter of some recent issues of Prism, but there's not as much as usual by me in this first combined publication; a combination of the deadline jumping forward and a bit of doubt about whether reviews would appear in the journal at all. But pages 93 to 97 of the journal are by me – all the dull BFS news! – and page 130, a review of Doctor Who: City of Spires.

Pages 62 to 87 print the runner-up and winner of the BFS Short Story Competition 2010, which I organised – "The Song" by Travis Heermann and "Omar, The Teller of Tales" by Robin Tompkins – but because of the way the competition works I haven't actually read them yet: I'm looking forward to that.

The journal certainly looks nice – unsurprisingly, if you spend twice as much on a publication, it looks twice as good! – but structurally it needs some work. It feels like three different publications stuck together between hard covers, which is exactly what it is. Giving the sections of a journal issue numbers seems redundant: we've already had a Dark Horizons #57, for one thing!

The next issue should be much better in that regard, this one having been pulled together in a rush. There's a lot of potential: once it settles down, and drops the pretence that it's three magazines rather than one, I think it will be very impressive. It's very handsome, nicely designed, and the full-page artwork looks brilliant. It feels very laid-back.

I haven't read much of it yet, but in Prism it seems very odd that David Riley has chosen to publish his review of Wine and Rank Poison under a pseudonym (or at least that's what I assumed – the comments are very similar to those made on his blog and on forums, and Ian Redfern is a pseudonym he's used in the past), but uses his own name for more positive reviews.

He's explained on the BFS forums that it was someone else using his pseudonym, making it an anonymous review, in which case it should have been printed as such (or not, which I think would be the decision of most editors), rather than being printed under a pseudonym to give it the cloak of respectability.

Giving books bad reviews isn't pleasant, and giving bad reviews to books by people you know is even worse, but if the reviewer doesn't respect their own opinions enough to stand by them, why would anyone else respect them? A grave misjudgment there by both reviewer and editor, if indeed they aren't one and the same.

On a more positive note, I enjoyed the interview with Kari Sperring – reading Living With Ghosts I was strongly reminded of Dumas, in particular La Reine Margot, by its images of people wandering through the streets of a city in chaos. I had no idea she was actually a Dumas scholar. Score one for me!

Six whole pages are given over to reprinting this ramble from Des Lewis's blog, which I expected to be annoyed by, but it worked very well in the context of a journal.

More comments when I've actually read it!