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.

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!

The Best Horror of Dark Horizons

I was very chuffed to see that no less than eight stories and poems from Dark Horizons 55–57 appeared in Ellen Datlow's online list of honourable mentions for best new horror of the last year or so. It’s a very, very long list, but it was a really nice surprise to see some stuff I published on it.

Stephen Bacon, “The Other Side of Silence”, Dark Horizons 57

This was a cracking story about an apocalypse of deafness and blindness, and a survivor getting the chance to experience sight and sound again. The part that sticks with me is the husband and wife together, knowing they have been struck by the plague, unable to do anything to stop it.

Niall Boyce, “The Frames”, Dark Horizons 56

A lost young man, trying to make sense of his childhood and life, is haunted by the image of a girl in a train window. I loved this moody, eerie story; one of the artsier pieces I published in Dark Horizons.

Mike Chinn, “Sailors of the Skies”, Dark Horizons 55

I’d mentioned to Mike Chinn how much I’d enjoyed his book The Paladin Mandates, my only disappointment being that the hero didn’t spend enough time in the air. Imagine how delighted I was to receive this new story in the series; easily the longest story I published in Dark Horizons, and worth every page. (I was strongly reminded of it when watching Altitude last week.)

Charles Christian, “Taking Tea With the General”, (poem) Dark Horizons 56

Ian Hunter takes the credit for selecting this for publication rather than me, but I can take the credit for appointing Ian as poetry editor! A smart poem; wish I’d given it more room in the layout.

Ian Hunter, “The Circle”, Dark Horizons 55

And here is Ian too! I published a series of stories by Ian in Dark Horizons, all different, all interesting. This was one about a group of villains gathered to undergo a vampire initiation rite.

Philip Meckley, “Faithful Midnight”, Dark Horizons 56

I think this was the most traditional supernatural story to appear in my issues of Dark Horizons. It was so well written and the ending was brilliant. Faithful Midnight, the canine ghost patrolling the house every night, was unforgettable.

Ralph Robert Moore, “In the Tunnels of the Agogs”, Dark Horizons 55

Of all the stories I’ve published in Dark Horizons and TQF, this is perhaps my favourite. In fact, it’s one of my very favourite short stories ever. An expedition is mounted to rescue a woman from the Agogs, cow-like beasts that swallow humans in their huge mouths, to live in their stomachs. The premise sounds silly, but it’s written with such gripping seriousness and intensity that it’s utterly terrifying. So proud to have published this story.

Ralph Robert Moore, “Rain Turns to Snow”, Dark Horizons 56

Another superb story by Ralph Robert Moore. Shame we couldn’t get this out in a Christmas issue (Dark Horizons published in September and March during my period in charge); it was about a couple terrorised by cruel, intelligent snowmen. And inside the snowmen’s heads? Real brains.

Well done to all those marvellous writers! And look out for the book itself. If these excellent stories only made the longlist, the stories in the book itself, The Best Horror of the Year Volume 3, must be real corkers.

List, part 1: http://ellen-datlow.livejournal.com/334109.html
List, part 2: http://ellen-datlow.livejournal.com/334359.html

There are no stories by women in the next TQF...

Peter Tennant, having read literally thousands of anthologies for the latest review column in Black Static, has produced a fascinating analysis of the gender balance in them: see Women in Horror Anthologies.

Peter asked Best New Horror editor Stephen Jones about this issue in an interview for the most recent Black Static, and coincidentally I asked Catastrophia editor Allen Ashley about it too, in an interview for the last issue of Dark Horizons, and both gave pretty much the same reply: I choose stories by quality, I don't have a quota system, etc.

This stuff is on my mind at the moment: there are no female contributors to the next issue of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction. And both books by women reviewed in this issue get a bit of a pasting.

I'm a bit unhappy about how that looks, but I do think our ratio of acceptances of stories by women is pretty much in proportion with our ratio of submissions by women.

When larger magazines make that point, the answer is usually that they should reach out to female writers and encourage them to submit, but that's not really an option for a non-paying zine like ours.

And even with bigger magazines that can be awkward: asking someone to submit puts you in a difficult position if the story they submit – the one they have written especially for you! – is not their best work.

On the website of Mslexia there's a thought-provoking article on women in writing, one which I think anyone working in the field should at least read: Three Cures for Mslexia.

One thing in particular caught my eye, in the context of discussing lower submission rates from women:

"The only exception we found was for writing competitions, where for some reason women seemed less inhibited: perhaps because competitions seem more of a lottery, and so less personally threatening; perhaps because it’s easier for them to find the time to complete a single poem or short story for a competition."

My experience with the BFS bears out the idea that women submit in greater proportions to short story competitions. 43% of the entries to the BFS short story competition this year were from women, while only 15% of submissions to Dark Horizons in the same period were.

(The competition and the magazine were both open to all fantastical genres. The same person was in charge of both, and both received roughly 150 submissions in that period.)

I don't want to go very far in speculating why the difference is so huge, but I think the perception that a competition is fairer must be a factor. The short story competition rules get disseminated further, through competition magazines and websites, so that might be another. Is losing en masse more appealing than being personally rejected? Does the prize make a difference? Are men just more willing to give their work away to non-paying markets?

Trying to answer some of those questions could very quickly lead the unwary onto dodgy ground. But it does seem to me that from examining the differences in submission rates, and the reasons for those differences, a way might be found to encourage more submissions from women, and hence publish more stories by women – which would be brilliant.

The sun sets on Dark Horizons...

 

Or at least my version of it!

I didn't know it at the time, but number 57 was my final issue of Dark Horizons for the British Fantasy Society – and the final issue of Dark Horizons in its current format. A new hardback journal is planned to replace all the current BFS publications, effective immediately, and although I was offered a contributory role in that, editing a Dark Horizons section, it wouldn't have been the same.

It's been a nice little run, though, and I was planning to hang up my boots at the end of the season, so I can't complain.

So thanks to all the contributors who made issue 57 such a good one to bow out on. If I'd known it was my last issue I'd have said goodbye in the editorial, but otherwise I wouldn't have changed a thing. Thanks also to everyone who contributed to previous issues, and for that matter to every single person who submitted a story. I'm sorry I had to reject any of them!

I've had a brilliant time as Dark Horizons editor. I've made lots of new friends, gained lots of experience, and gained a bit of confidence. Thanks to Marie O'Regan and the 2007–8 committee for giving me the post, to Peter Coleborn (one of the preceding editors) for getting me off on the right foot with a very useful handover email, and to everyone since then who has offered advice and support. Ian Hunter gets my thanks both for his expertise as poetry editor and for his excellent contributions.

I must also thank frequent contributors like Jim Steel, Douglas Thompson, Rafe McGregor and Andrew Knighton for some of my favourite stories; Mike Barrett for a series of fascinating articles; wonderful, generous artists like John Shanks, Inna Hansen, Martin Hanford, David Bezzina, and Alf Klosterman, to name just a few; and Jan Edwards, Louise Morgan and Jenny Barber for some excellent interviews. Finally, thanks to Bob Loader and his team at Good News Digital Printing for delivering all five issues in good time and well under budget. Thanks to everyone!

It also seems at the moment that reviews for the BFS will no longer appear in print, which is a bit of a shame. I've really enjoyed contributing to Prism's review section over the last couple of years – it's been a real apprenticeship for me – and it was an excellent way for new members to contribute to the society. But no worries: maybe it will prompt more people to figure out how to work the BFS website!

The benefit of course is that I can now give Theaker's Quarterly and our books the attention they deserve. I really have neglected you guys!

Dark Horizons #57

The new issue of Dark Horizons should be on its way out to members of the British Fantasy Society fairly soon. I'm very pleased with this one…

It features fiction:

• Colonies, Jim Steel
• Moonlight on the Northern Seas, Malcolm Laughton
• The Other Side of Silence, Stephen Bacon
• The Apocalypse Has Been Good to Us, Charlotte Bond
• Resistance: a Love Story, Zachary Jernigan

And articles:

• Mark Charan Newton, interviewed by Louise Morgan
• The Sign of the Unicorn’s Head: the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series, Mike Barrett
• Aliette de Bodard, interviewed by Jenny Barber
• Catastrophia: Allen Ashley, interviewed by Stephen Theaker

And poetry:

• TWTMC, Allen Ashley
• Pretty Little Things, and Blood Pearls, J.R. Salling
• Folded in Darkness, Graylin Fox
• Circe Poisoning the Sea, Sarah Doyle
• The Giftshop Off the Multiverse, Ian Hunter
• Younger Gods, Roy Gray
• Witnessing’s End, Alessio Zanelli
• Addendum, Rick Coonrod

And more illustrations than ever before, from:

• Martin Hanford (who provides the stunning cover)
• John Shanks
• Inna Hansen
• Alf Klosterman
• David Bezzina
• and Les Edwards (whose cover artwork for Catastrophia is included).

It's Christmas, your birthday and the time you found a ten pound note on the street, all wrapped up in one hundred and twelve pages…

New works from Jim Fuess

Jim Fuess, cover artist of Dark Horizons #53, has updated his website (www.jimfuessart.com) with eight works in the new collision series from the Sticks and Stones show at the Watchung Arts Center, including Collision #8, Collision #3, The Brain in Color, Wave #5, Orange and Purple Abstract and Jump.

The show was organised by the New Art Group.

Dark Horizons #56

Dark Horizons #56 was recently sent out to members of the British Fantasy Society.

This 128pp bumper issue featured stories by Val Gryphin, Ian Hunter, Jim Steel, Niall Boyce, Philip Meckley, Rafe McGregor, Ralph Robert Moore, Patrick Whitaker and Andrew Knighton, interviews with Brian Stableford and Simon Bestwick, and poetry by Charles Christian, Jan Edwards and Peter Coleborn, Diana Lewis, Allen Ashley and Ian Hunter, and illustrations by Inna Hansen, Mark Pexton and Howard Watts, who was responsible for the cover.

The guest editorial, on gender bias in fantasy and the BFS in particular, came from Jenny Barber, while Mike Barrett provided sundry observations on Arkham House.

Dark Horizons #55

Twelve short stories, from blood-soaked battlefields to drowning futures! Three articles, on the most beloved of writers and the utterly unknown! Twelve poems! Seven contributing artists! One hundred and sixty exciting pages! Seventy thousand thrilling words! Yes, the editor got a bit carried away when putting together Dark Horizons 55… but it looks like it’s turned out all right in the end. His wife is still speaking to him (just) and the issue has gone to the printers, wrapped in its marvellous cover by Arthur Wang, to be despatched with the British Fantasy Society's September mailing. 

Fiction:

• Dead Gods, Richard Ford
• The Sunflower at Dusk, Naoko Awa (tr. Toshiya Kamei)
• Despoina’s Sorrow, Alex Davis
• Escape from the Shadow Moon, Mike Phillips
• Sarkless Kitty, Alison J. Littlewood
• The Beating Heart, Jim Steel
• The Circle, Ian Hunter
• Sailors of the Skies, Mike Chinn
• In the Tunnels of the Agogs, Ralph Robert Moore
• The Skeleton in the Cupboard, Astrid Klemz
• Bugs, Shaun Jeffrey
• Vivienne’s Garden, Douglas Thompson

Articles:

• Two Forgotten Disciples: C. Hall Thompson and Clifford Ball, Mike Barrett
• A Loud Whisper: in Appreciation of Charles L. Grant, Paul Campbell
• Dumarest: the Coming Event? Craig Herbertson

Poetry:

• Ten Poems, Michael Fantina
• Dreams in the Nebula of Ghosts, Wade German
• After the End of the World, Victor D. Infante

BFSQ&A:

• Lev Grossman and the Magicians

With artwork from Arthur Wang, David Bezzina, Jackie Burns, Mark Pexton, Dominic Harman, John Shanks and Ally Thompson.

Contributors

Naoko Awa (1943–1993) was an award-winning writer of modern fairy tales. As a child, she read fairy tales by Grimm, Andersen, and Hauff, as well as The Arabian Nights. She earned a bachelor’s degree in Japanese literature from Japan Women’s University.

Mike Barrett first contributed to Dark Horizons in the 1970s. Recently he has taken to writing again, and is a member of the SSWFT amateur press association. He is also a regular contributor to The New York Review of Science Fiction and has had pieces published in Wormwood, Fantasy Commentator and Studies in Fantasy Literature. He lives in Kent and works in the pensions industry in London.

David Bezzina’s favourite artists are Alan Lee, Barry Windsor-Smith, Chris Foss and Frank Frazetta… “Getting my second wind (artistically) and really enjoying my painting at the moment,” he says. He is online at www.myspace.com/davidbezzina.

Jackie E. Burns. Astronomical and SF&F artist living and working in Essex. Semi-regular EasterCon and WorldCon art exhibitor. Work shown at Kennedy Space Center and Massachusetts University, USA. Fellow and past European Vice President of the International Association for Astronomical Artists (www.iaaa.org). Accredited member of the Guild of Essex Craftsmen.

Paul Campbell was born in the early seventies and lives in Lanarkshire. He writes book reviews for Prism, our news magazine.

Mike Chinn’s short fiction has been published in Birmingham Noir, The Black Book of Horror and The Mammoth Book of Dracula, with new material forthcoming in Postscripts and Raw Terror. His books include Writing and Illustrating the Graphic Novel, Create Your Own Graphic Novel, The Paladin Mandates and Swords Against the Millennium, and he is helping expand the fantasy world he created in Starblazer for the Starblazer Adventures RPG supplement, Legends of Anglerre.

Alex Davis is a horror writer and gothic poet based in Derby, with several pieces currently published in magazines, webzines and anthologies. He is currently working on two novellas, “Ceriano” and “Dead Meat”, as well as a number of short stories. He has also read and performed at a number of venues in Derby and beyond.

Michael Fantina has been writing for many years and has had scores of poems published in North America (Romantics Quarterly, The Lyric) and in the UK (Candelabrum Poetry Magazine, Harlequin). He has also had fantasy and horror tales published in the US and several through Rainfall Books in the UK.

Richard Ford’s work has appeared in The Cold Hand of Betrayal and Heroes of the Space Marines, Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 anthologies respectively. His first novel, The Dragons of Lencia, is now available through Mongoose Publishing.

Wade German’s speculative poems can be found in Space and Time, Dreams and Nightmares, Black Petals, Star*Line, Scifaikuest, Moonlit Path, Moonset and Strange Sorcery, among others.

Craig Herbertson’s novel, School: The Seventh Silence, was published by Immanion Press. His work has appeared in The 29th Pan Book of Horror Stories and in three volumes of the Black Book of Horror.

Dominic Harman has worked for major publishers around the world, producing art for books by Clive Barker, H.G. Wells, Philip Pullman, Naomi Novak and George R.R. Martin.

Ian Hunter has moved into the 20th century with his website, www.ian-hunter.co.uk. From issue fifty-six he will be the poetry editor of this very journal.

Victor D. Infante is a poet, editor and journalist living in Worcester, Mass., USA. His first full-length collection of poetry, City of Insomnia, was released in 2008 from Write Bloody Publishing, and he is also the editor in chief of The November 3rd Club, an online literary journal of political writing.

Shaun Jeffrey has had one horror novel published, Evilution, over forty short stories in both amateur and professional markets, and a collection, Voyeurs of Death. His latest short story sale was to Cemetery Dance, and his second novel, The Kult, was published by Leucrota Press.

Toshiya Kamei, with the permission of Naoko Awa’s family, is translating her work into English. The translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Crow Toes Quarterly, Fairy Tale Review, Kyoto Journal, Marginalia, Metamorphoses, and elsewhere.

Astrid Klemz’s story, “The Skeleton in the Cupboard”, was the runner-up in the British Fantasy Society Short Story Competition 2008. The winner of the 2009 competition will be announced at the British Fantasy Awards at FantasyCon.

Alison J. Littlewood has contributed to Read by Dawn Vol. 3, Black Static, Dark Horizons, Aoife’s Kiss and the Midnight Lullabies anthology. She lives in West Yorkshire, England, where she spends far too much time dreaming and writing strange notes to herself on scraps of paper. Her website is at www.alisonlittlewood.co.uk.

Ralph Robert Moore’s fiction has been anthologised in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror 19, Revelation III, Dark Distortions and Read By Dawn, and has appeared in Collages and Bricolages, Lullaby Hearse, Lunatic Chameleon, Midnight Street, and many more. His new collection is now available: Remove the Eyes. See his website Sentence at www.ralphrobertmoore.com.

Mark Pexton recently provided the cover art for Peckinpah by D. Harlan Wilson; a deviant monster truck racer and cardboard box fiddler, he likes physics, comics and Brussel sprouts. His work is online at http://superego-necropolis.deviantart.com/journal. 

Mike Phillips grew up on a small farm in West Michigan. Each year during summer vacation, the television was turned off. This meant much of summer was spent reading. Mike hopes that through his writing he can, in some small way, share this gift with others.

John Shanks has previously provided covers for TQF16 and TQF26. He has his own website – Homegrown Goodness – from which you can request bespoke cartooning, or purchase his hilarious animal encyclopedias.

Jim Steel has had stories in recent issues of Cutting Teeth, Polluto, Premonitions, Twisted Tongue, Dark Horizons and Beeswax. More should turn up soon in Supernatural Tales and Arkham Tales. He’s the reviews editor for Interzone, and he also reviews for Vector, The Fix, The Zone, VideoVista, Soundchecks and formerly Whispers of Wickedness.

Stephen Theaker didn’t leave himself room for an editorial in this issue, but he hopes you still enjoy this special marriage-threatening double-length issue. He was responsible for the blurry photograph of a mushroom that slightly spoils this issue, and conducted the BFSQ&A interview with Lev Grossman..

Ally Thompson is a prolific neo-surrealist artist whose work has graced many galleries and homes and private collections in America and Europe since he graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1980. 

Douglas Thompson’s stories have appeared most recently in Ambit, New Writing Scotland, Subtle Edens, Dark Horizons and TQF. “Vivienne’s Garden” is from his second novel, Sylvow. His first, Ultrameta, is due to be published this month by Eibonvale (see www.glasgowsurrealist.com/douglas).

Arthur Wang is an art major in college. He loves all things imaginary, wondrous and grand or dark and disgusting. He loves ideas, “what-if’s” and the way that being an illustrator puts him in contact with other people who share his passion. Visit http://arthurwangart.com/projects.html.

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #28

| pdf | epub | mobi | print UK | print US |

This is one of our most interesting and varied issues yet. It starts in the best possible way with "Quadrant Five" – a bunch of people on a spaceship going who knows where. That's followed by the next riveting instalment of Newton Braddell and a short-short from Josie Gowler, "Soldier", before things get rather literary with the double-barrelled strangeness of "Breaking Out of Sleep" and "Anatomy of a Wounded House", from Barry Pomeroy and Douglas Thompson respectively. Then John Hall wonders whether you dare descend "The Stairs in the Crypt", and Jason Hinchcliffe tells the saga of the "Bloodbegotten". I round out the issue with a bunch of my famously perspicacious reviews – what have I decreed to be "well-written", "brilliant" and "superb" this time around?

---

In Love Again

When I first saw the Sony Reader in Waterstones I was really impressed by the e-paper screen, the way the text looked as if it was printed on the surface – it looked really easy to read. But I wasn’t impressed by how sluggish it was – it took ages to move from one option to another. And I made myself look a bit stupid by trying to choose options by touching them with my finger (the Rocket eBook has a touchscreen).

I decided to wait for the Kindle. And wait… And wait…

Eventually my patience ran out and I spent some money I don’t really have on a Sony Reader. It’s turned out to be the best money I shouldn’t have spent since I got a TiVo!

I absolutely love it. What makes all the difference is that where the Rocket eBook was heavier and more cumbersome than most books, the Sony Reader is lighter and less cumbersome than most of them.

The bundled software from Sony is pretty much unusable, and gave me a few early jitters of buyer’s remorse, but once I downloaded Calibre the love affair was on. It’s now stuffed to the gills with classics from the free CD from Sony, creative commons and out-of-copyright sf from Feedbooks, newspapers created from The Guardian and BBC websites via Feedbooks, epub files from Project Gutenberg, submissions and proofs for TQF and Dark Horizons, pdf review copies from PS Publishing and Eibonvale, ebooks from Fictionwise, not to mention a bunch of music and photos.

I’m stunned at how brilliantly it handles pdf files – I wouldn’t have thought it possible. At the smallest magnification setting it shows the pdf as is, and then at medium and large it blows up the main text, doing a marvellous job of ignoring white space and page numbers. It even manages to deal pretty well with a multi-column layout like the one in Dark Horizons.

One of the other brilliant features is the ability to have collections, dividing up the files by keywords so you can quickly find any of them. The Sony software doesn’t work well with them, but with Calibre you can just edit the keywords of the files on the Reader itself to sort them out directly.

Very happy with it indeed…

And then I found the Baen Books free library! Well over a hundred books (many of them omnibuses and gigantic collections) for free download. It left me in tears of joy. I ended up downloading half a dozen books I already own, just because it’ll be so much easier reading them this way.

If I’d found those same books going cheap in a bookshop, I admit that I would still have bought them. But I would have had a problem finding somewhere for them to go. I long ago reached the point where I had no more room for books in the house. I’ve got (checks Goodreads) 1,131 paper books to read, and another thousand or two that I’ve already read. There’s nowhere to put any new books, and any time I do put a book down, chances are I’ll lose it. For example, I’ve got a review copy of Conrad Williams’ One to read, but I’ve lost it half a dozen times already… On the other hand, I can find any ebooks on the Sony Reader in about ten seconds, and store unlimited numbers of books on the computer.

I’m now free to buy and collect books again without worrying about where to put them. I can donate a lot of the classics I own to charity shops, since they’re all on Gutenberg. It’s really nice, too, to be able to request review copies and not worry about what it costs someone.

I wrote a bit about this in my editorial for the new Dark Horizons – before I got my Reader – and I do still agree with what I said there, that for most people this’ll be a solution to a problem they don’t have. But for me personally, it’s a huge improvement in my life – a lifehack as big as getting TiVo or buying my first PC.

The other day I went over to my wife’s parents’ house with it, and started reading a book. Then two kids jumped in my lap and I switched to Little Wizard Tales of Oz from Gutenberg and read that to them. Then my father-in-law came in, so I let him read the BBC news on it. Eventually the room was empty apart from me so I could concentrate properly and I got started on reading some submissions. It’s every book I need it to be…

I’ve even got the perfect bag to put it in – the Bagbase mini reporter. It’s like I’m wearing a tricorder…

Some people talk about the feel and smell of paper books. I can understand that to some extent, but that isn’t a love of the literature within those pages: it’s fetishism for the way they are presented. The story counts more than the format. The question about the format is how much of a barrier it puts between me and the story, how much it gets in the way, how it holds up my reading. We’re used to the inconveniences associated with paper books, but, really, they are anything but comfortable and relaxing. Think of all that bother holding the thing open, for starters, especially when reading in bed… Trying to find the right angle to catch the light properly… Keeping your place in the book… Peering at the words sinking into the spine…

After using ebooks for a while even turning the page seems like a time-consuming chore! Reading an ebook (on the right device) can be much more immersive and quite a bit quicker than reading it on paper – it’s just you and the story, with no hassle. I’ve found I read things about 20% faster on the Sony Reader, and it’s not because I’m rushing, it’s because there are fewer distractions from the actual reading.

I doubt anyone would really find reading a 500pp+ paperback, let alone hardback, more comfortable than reading the same thing on a Sony Reader. Look at it this way: anytime you find yourself needing two hands to read a book, that’s a hand more than you need for the Sony Reader!

Another point is that books, just like music, tv, films and photographs, are so much more accessible as files. Then think about the ease of actually buying the books that you want to read. Within a year or two buying any book ever published could take just minutes, instead of years spending trawling second-hand bookshops and eBay.

As far as cost goes, taking into account things like Feedbooks, Project Gutenberg and Google Books – plus initiatives like the Baen Books free library – the average cost of an ebook is much lower than paper books, since anything published more than a hundred years ago is totally free.

The one thing I miss is being able to add notes to what I’m reading (which I could do on the Rocket eBook), but apparently you can get some special accessories for the Sony Reader – a “pen” and “paper”. I’ll report back on these novelties in a future editorial, though at first glance they seem much more awkward than using a keyboard…

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Editorial

• In Love Again, by Stephen Theaker

News & Comment

• China Mieville at Forbidden Planet
• The Very Best of Gene Wolfe
• The Tombs of Telos Are Opened Once More
• Iris Wildthyme to the Rescue!

Science Fiction

• Quadrant Five, by Anne Marie Gomez
• Newton Braddell: a Constant, Gnawing Hunger, by John Greenwood
• Soldier, by Josie Gowler
• Breaking Out of Sleep, by Barry Pomeroy

Horror

• Anatomy of a Wounded House, by Douglas Thompson
• The Stairs in the Crypt, by John Hall

Fantasy

• Bloodbegotten, by Jason Hinchcliffe

The Quarterly Review

Books

• The Babylonian Trilogy
• Gunpowder
• The Kill Crew
• The Best of D.F. Lewis
• Curious Men
• Doctor Who: The Writer’s Tale
• First and Last
• The Forbidden Tower
• The Airlords of Han
• The Oz Suite
• Thanks and Have Fun Running the Country: Kids’ Letters to President Obama
• The Time Traders
• The Witnesses Are Gone

Comics

• Aliens Vs. Predator Omnibus, Vol. 1
• Powers: Definitive Collection, Vol. 1
• Showcase Presents: Legion of Super-Heroes, Vol. 2
• Showcase Presents: Supergirl, Vol. 1

Television

• Who Wants to Be a Superhero?
• Being Human
• The Quest of Dick & Dom
• Demons

Also Received

• But Not Yet Reviewed

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Here are the people who made this issue so enjoyable to put together…

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Anne Marie Gomez owns a business that designs custom gardens for people’s homes. She also raises a variety of flowers from seed and enjoys sharing the seedlings with other home gardeners. Her free time is devoted to writing, writing, and then more writing.

Josie Gowler has had short stories published in Delivered and Linkway magazines. Her specialties are weird tales set in the East Anglian Fens and science fiction short stories; sometimes the two overlap.
She’s currently working on a trashy coming-of-age space opera. To pay the bills, Josie works as an accountant in the Civil Service, but please don’t hold that against her, she asks.

John Greenwood propped TQF up for many years, keeping the magazine going with his generous contributions until it was ready to take its first steps into wider world. His stories can be found in most previous issues.

John Hall is best known as a Sherlockian scholar, and a member of the International Pipe Smokers’ Hall of Fame. His numerous literary interests include Raffles, Sexton Blake, H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James. He is the author of Special Commission, a medieval murder mystery. Previous stories by John appeared in TQF23 (TQF#23) (“Shaggai”), TQF25 (TQF#25)(“In the Vale of Pnath”) and TQF26 (TQF#26) (“The Burrower Beneath”).

Ever since Jason Hinchcliffe was a kid growing up in the middle of a forest in Cayuga, Ontario, he’s had dreams of becoming a writer. Not much has changed since then, except instead of being a geeky and funny-looking child, he’s blossomed into a geeky and funny-looking adult. To support himself, Jason works as an editor at a legal publisher in Markham. If it wasn’t for the Bank and all their pesky rules (pay the loans, pay the mortgage), he’d spend his time reading Dickens novels, writing, and watching all the movies that having a job tends to prevent a person from watching. This year has been an incredible writing-year so far – stories are forthcoming in Kaleidotrope, 580 Split, the Nashwaak Review, and also Candlelight, a Dark Anthology of Horror, Science Fiction, and Fantasy. Jason owns two cats that sleep way too much.

Barry Pomeroy is an itinerant English professor, boat designer and builder, traveller, carver, sometime mechanic, carpenter, and web designer. As a writer he is responsible for Multiple Personality Disorder, a long poem in dialogue, and the novel Naked in the Road, and his shorter work has been or will be published in magazines such as Cosmetica, Bards and Sages, Insolent Rudder, Tart, Tiny Globule, Writing Shift, Ulterior, Oddville Press and Word Catalyst. “Breaking out of Sleep” is from the short story collection Isolates and Survivors.

Douglas Thompson won the Grolsch/Herald New Writing Award in 1989, and second prize in the Neil Gunn Writing Competition in 2007. His stories have been widely published in magazines and anthologies, most recently Ambit, New Writing Scotland, Subtle Edens and Dark Horizons. “Anatomy of a Wounded House” is from his first novel/collection Ultrameta which will be published in August 2009 by Eibonvale (see www.glasgowsurrealist.com/douglas).

Stephen Theaker is the eponymous editor of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction. He wrote all of this issue’s reviews, which explains their reliance on words such as superb, exciting and well-written. He is also the editor of Dark Horizons, the journal of the British Fantasy Society.

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #27

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TQF27 presents a marvellous novel in full: Operation 1848 by Mike Schultheiss! Plus two short stories: "Orchid Strangelove and the Kiss of the Taipan" by Sam Leng and "Lost Futures" by Cyril Simsa. The issue is rounded out with the usual half-baked reviews, news and editorial musings. A complete novel! Another brilliant cover! It must be Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #27!

I see this issue as the beginning of Phase III of this magazine. Phase I began with issue four (issues one to three were little more than mock-ups), our first proper issue. Phase II began with issue sixteen (our first printed via Lulu) or seventeen (our first external and international contributors). Phase III, I think, is marked by two things: the change to a paperback format, and the availability from publication on Feedbooks. Phase IV, of course, will involve lots and lots of ants.

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Welcome to the first issue of our new-look Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction! The changes are cosmetic, to be honest: it’s still the same old TQF you’ve come to know and love, just in a single column and shaped like a book. Our approach is unchanged, although there may be fewer of my terrible illustrations, since I’m happier leaving the occasional blank space in a book.

The reason for the change was mainly to make for easier on-screen reading. I was putting the stories into a single-column format to proofread, because it’s tough to read three columns of text in a pdf, and I began to wonder why we put our theoretical readers to such difficulty.

Having thought about making the change, I realised that it would make typesetting each issue much easier. And it’s also going to let me (and you!) build up a lovely Silver Age bookshelf: TQF is the now the same shape and size as our forthcoming range of books.
If you've been in the habit of printing TQF out to read, this smaller size might lead to a bit of wasted paper. All is not lost, though – head over to Feedbooks and you can run off a customised pdf of this issue in whatever size and shape you prefer.

Another change is that we’ve now put a permanent logo on the cover. I’ve always enjoyed playing around with the layout, but looking at back issues I couldn’t help thinking that if I’d spent less time on the logo, the covers might have been substantially better overall.

There’s one further change, a consequence of the others: with all the extra pages comes a rise in printing costs. We’ve never sold very many copies via Lulu (understandably, when we give the magazine away free on the net), so we decided not to worry too much about the price of a printed copy going up a bit. We’ll be the main ones affected! So we've dropped the fixed cover price, and each issue will now be as cheap as we can make it. To balance the price rise a bit, we’ve lowered the prices of back issues to be as low as possible.

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I forgot to note this in the editorial, but another novelty in this issue resulted from a writer complaining about us reviewing a book we hadn't finished… Of course, we had been completely open about that in the review (that was sort of crucial to the point being made…) but once someone's saying things like "one reviewer didn't even read the book" it could well make people question our integrity – and we can't have that, since it's all we've got. We may be lazy, inept, novice reviewers, but at least we're honest! So we've added an Also Received section at the end of the reviews, where we'll round up everything we've received for review, and note our comments about anything that we aren't ready to review in full.

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Editorial

• Good Reading in 2008, by Stephen Theaker

News & Comment

• Richard K. Lyon (1933–2008)
• Graham Joyce Writing for Doom 4
• Dark Horizons – Issue 54
• Doctor Who: We Got It Wrong!

Science Fiction

• Operation 1848, by Mike Schultheiss
• Lost Futures, by Cyril Simsa

Fantasy

• Orchid Strangelove and the Kiss of the Taipan, by Sam Leng

The Quarterly Review

Books

• The Age of Chaos: the Multiverse of Michael Moorcock
• Armageddon 2419 A.D.
• Badge of Infamy
• Derai (Dumarest of Terra #2)
• The Hub: Dangerous Territory
• Planet of Mystery
• The Rights of the Reader
• Shakespeare Wrote for Money
• Shrike

Comics

• Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus, Vol. 4
• The Filth
• JSA, Vol. 7: Princes of Darkness

Games

• Fable II

Television

• Dead Set
• Fringe
• Knight Rider

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Here are the people who made this issue so enjoyable to put together…

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Mike Schultheiss contributes an entire novel to this issue, “Operation 1848”, a follow-up to “Darwin’s Corridor” (TQF#22). It’s the “Demon Breed” to his “Trouble Tide”, and will thoroughly entertain anyone who enjoyed the previous story. He grew up in Grass Valley in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, but is currently trapped in Davis with a B.A. in Anthropology. His interests are many and eclectic: besides natural and human history he enjoys good coffee, Japanese and German beer, Australian wine, and English gin. His all-consuming ambition is to be a full-time novelist. (I’ve advised him therefore to stop giving his novels away!) He is currently working on the second draft of his vampire fantasy novel Blood Moon Queen. Befriend or stalk him online at facebook, where he prowls under the pseudonym Torbjorn Nordhagen.

Sam Leng lives in Yorkshire, England with Worzel Gummidge and a biscuit barrel. Her fiction has recently been published in Sinister Tales, 94 Creations and Bloody October. She will have more stories published in 2009, in Twisted Dreams and The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica (Vol. 8). She publishes her own fiction and poetry magazine at www.neonbeam.org. To this issue she contributes a lengthy detective-romance-supernatural-library story about two-fisted matchmaker to the monsters Orchid Strangelove. Fingers crossed we’ll see Orchid return to these pages again one day.

Cyril Simsa is a British writer/translator, currently resident in Prague. He has published articles and translations in a variety of books and magazines, plus a rather smaller number of stories in the small press. His most recent credits have been stories in Premonitions and Starship Sofa, and an longish article in Faunus. To this issue he contributes “Lost Futures”, a Moorcockian tale of dimension-hoppers looking for purpose – or maybe it’s love.

R.L. Carter provided the astonishing artwork for this issue’s cover. If we’re not careful people are going to be tricked into thinking this is a real magazine! Go see his Deviantart gallery!

Stephen Theaker is the eponymous editor of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction. He wrote all of this issue’s reviews. He is also the editor of Dark Horizons, the journal of the British Fantasy Society. He needed to think of something else to say about himself to fill the last few lines on the page, so... His album of 2008 was Third by Portishead. TV show: Doctor Who. Radio show: Adam & Joe. Comics: Savage Sword of Conan, Vols. 1–2.

Dark Horizons #53

Dark Horizons 53, produced by us for the British Fantasy Society, contains nine short stories of fantasy, horror and a smidgen of science fiction, arranged very roughly in chronological order; from days of yore to near-future apocalypses:

• In a Shining Hall, by Ian Hunter
• Sir Cai, the Shining Knight, by Andrew Knighton
• The Eagle and Child, by Alison J. Littlewood
• The Tyranny of Thangrind the Cruel, by David Tallerman
• The Boy in the Andersens’ House, by Peter Van Belle
• Timeless, by Paul Campbell
• Fleet, by Rafe McGregor
• Beholders, by Allen Ashley
• A Jar of Pickled Nightmares, by Richard Hudson

Interspersed among the stories are eight poems:

• November Dusk, Star Streams, Savage Spires and The Sunken City by Michael Fantina
• Shapechanger, by J.S.Watts
• Kali’s Kiss, by Karl Bell
• The Inhabited Man, by Douglas Thompson
• A Little Piece of Your Life, by Ian Hunter

Then there's an article taken from a forthcoming book on Terry Pratchett, plus an interview with the book’s author, Lawrence Watt-Evans. Later in the issue, the BFSQ&A section makes its first appearance, covering various burning questions of the day, such as: Is the BFS biased towards horror? Who reads Margit Sandemo? Why join the BFS? And why make a fan film? The issue comes to a triumphant close with our updated submission guidelines, the advertising prices, and a list of BFS email addresses!

Jim Fuess provides the cover art for this issue, while six other wonderful and generous artists allowed the use of their work to illustrate the issue’s fiction: Lara Bandilla, Dominic Harman, Steve Cartwright, Michelle Blessemaille, Paul Campion and Alfred R. Klosterman.