Welcome to Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #80: Station, edited by Stephen Theaker and John Greenwood. Our third issue in five months!
The stories begin with “The Naval Cadet: A Case of Identity” by Rafe McGregor, another in his series of mind-bending mysteries. “Great Central Station”, by Harris Coverley – his longest published story to date, in any venue – will appeal to anyone who enjoyed Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom by Sylvia Plath. “A Beckoning Star” is by Michael W. Thomas, who I think was the first ever external contributor to our magazine and “The Green Perplexity”, by Charles Wilkinson is perhaps the best story yet by one of our most consistently excellent contributors. “Across the Ages” by Soramimi Hanarejima is a time travel story with a difference.
In The Quarterly Review, Douglas J. Ogurek and Stephen Theaker review books by Paul Tremblay, Aron Beauregard, Zoraida Córdova, Martin Munks, and the films Kalki 2898 AD, M3GAN, Renfield and The Super Mario Bros Movie.
The cover art adapts Shantum Singh’s “Abandoned Railway Station in Delhi, India”, used under licence via Pexels.
I hope you’ll enjoy this issue as much as I did.
Here are the exceptionally patient contributors to this issue.
Charles Wilkinson’s publications include The Pain Tree and Other Stories (London Magazine Editions, 2000). His stories have appeared in Best Short Stories 1990 (Heinemann), Best English Short Stories 2 (W.W. Norton, USA), Best British Short Stories 2015 (Salt), Confingo, and London Magazine, and in genre magazines/anthologies such as Black Static, Interzone, The Dark Lane Anthology, Supernatural Tales, Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, Phantom Drift, Bourbon Penn, Shadows & Tall Trees, Nightscript and Best Weird Fiction 2015 (Undertow Books). His collections of strange tales and weird fiction, A Twist in the Eye (2016), Splendid in Ash (2018), Mills of Silence (2021) and The Harmony of the Stares (2022), appeared from Egaeus Press. Eibonvale Press published his chapbook of weird stories, The January Estate, in 2022. He lives in Wales. His stories have previously appeared in TQF41 (“Notes on the Bone”), TQF44 (“A Lesson from the Undergrowth”), TQF46 (“Petrol-Saved”), TQF48 (“A Thousand Eyes See All I Do”), TQF54 (“Septs”), TQF56 (“Mr Kitchell Says Thank You”), TQF59 (“The Constant Providers”), TQF60 (“Evening at the Aubergine Café”), TQF64 (“September Gathering”), TQF70 (“July Job Offer”), TQF73 (“The Arrival of an Acquaintance”) and TQF76 (“Controlling the Lights from Above”).
Douglas J. Ogurek is the pseudonymous and sophomoric founder of the unsplatterpunk subgenre, which uses splatterpunk conventions (transgressive/gory/gross/violent subject matter) to deliver a positive message. His short story collection I Will Change the World … One Intestine at a Time (Plumfukt Press), a juvenile stew of horror and bizarro, aims to make readers lose their lunch while learning a lesson. Ogurek also guest-edits the wildly unpopular UNSPLATTERPUNK! “smearies”, published by Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction. These anthologies are unavailable at your library and despised by your mother. Ogurek reviews films and fiction for that same magazine.
Harris Coverley has had more than a hundred short stories published in Penumbra, Hypnos, JOURN-E and The Black Beacon Book of Horror (Black Beacon Books), amongst many others. He has also had over two hundred poems published in journals around the world. He lives in Manchester, England. His stories have previously appeared in TQF70 (“See How They Run! See How They Run!”), TQF72 (“Father Figure”), TQF73 (“The Scorpion”), TQF74 (“Kung Fu Sue: Origins”), TQF75 (“Kleptobiblia”), TQF76 (“The White Body”), TQF77 (“Kung Fu Sue and the Circle of Broken Bones”) and TQF79 (“Kung Fu Sue and the Drug Lord’s Elephant”).
Michael W. Thomas’s latest poetry collection is Nothing Louche or Bohemian, a collaboration with poet Tina Cole (Black Pear Press). His most recent solo poetry collection is A Time for Such a Word (Black Pear Press). His latest novel is The Erkeley Shadows (Swan Village Reporter). His work has appeared in, among others, The Antioch Review, Critical Survey, The London Magazine and The TLS. He is on the editorial board of Crossroads: A Journal of English Studies (University of Bialystok, Poland). Website: www.michaelwthomas.co.uk. Blog: http://swansreport.blogspot.co.uk/. Socials: @thomasmichaelw. Instagram: michaelwthomas5. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=549139910. His most recent appearance in these pages was in TQF68, with “The Erkeley Shadows”.
Rafe McGregor is a critical theorist publishing on Anglophone culture, political violence, and policing. He is the author of twenty books, including Reducing Political Violence: Narrative Accounts of Crime and Harm (2026), Anthropocide: An Essay in Green Cultural Criminology (2025) and The Adventures of Roderick Langham (2017).
Ever yearning to be spellbound by ideas of a certain fanciful persuasion, Soramimi Hanarejima often meanders into the euphoric trance of lyrical daydreams, some of which are chronicled in the neuropunk story collection Literary Devices for Coping.
As ever, all back issues of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction are available for free download.
