Shakespeare Wrote for Money, by Nick Hornby – reviewed

This came from the McSweeney’s Book Club at a good time for me. I’ve been writing a lot of reviews lately, both here and elsewhere, and I’ve started to get a bit self-conscious about them. I got it into my head that it was best to be totally objective, to aim for apparent omniscience, to try to ignore my own reading experience in order to provide a more balanced view. Clearly I’ve never gone very far in that direction, but the thought that I should had been nagging at me a bit.

So it was great to read this book of columns, and find a very respectable literary figure talking about books in just the way I like to, writing about them in context; in the context of his life, of other books he’s reading, and of books he’s not reading. Obviously talent-wise I’m a million miles away from Nick Hornby, but that shouldn’t stop me from trying to learn from his example.

I remember reading Fever Pitch in a single night (in a bedsit in Lille while on a year as a teaching assistant) and this book was just as more-ish. It arrived in the morning and I finished it before bedtime. Hornby’s observations on books are highly entertaining, and at times even quietly inspiring. It made a good companion piece to Daniel Pennac’s The Rights of the Reader, a book I read a couple of weeks before this one, and one which Hornby coincidentally has some kind words for in here.

This book has certainly made me want to read more of the magazine the columns come from. In my heart I know the Believer is pretty much a Sunday supplement on fancy paper, but fancy paper counts for a lot with me. I hate having inky fingers.

Shakespeare Wrote for Money, by Nick Hornby. McSweeney’s, pb, 132pp.

Fringe, episodes 1–5 – reviewed

The premise: Olivia Dunham is an FBI agent who investigates strange events with the help of addle-pated scientist Walter Bishop and his estranged son Peter. As you might expect, the strange events turn out to be connected.

Fringe begins well, with a very good pilot. The budget is huge, there’s lots going on, and it all looks astonishingly lovely. Going on the evidence here, there’s nowhere in the world so lovely as Boston under snow. Subsequent episodes, though, have tended to be ever so slightly boring. Crucially, there are about twenty minutes in the middle of every episode where they get bogged down in some ludicrous experiment; that’s the twenty minutes that would be spent running around fighting monsters in The X-Files or Supernatural.

But all it would take to fix that problem would be one good script. Fringe’s bigger problem lies in its characters and their dynamics.

John Noble, as Walter Bishop, would be the best reason to watch the programme at the moment if it wasn’t so frustrating to spend half the episode stuck in the laboratory with him. He’s funny, annoying and driven, and if you’ve ever rued the fact that an older actor is unlikely to play the Doctor in the current series, you’ll enjoy this performance.

Olivia begins well, as a very strong (if somewhat irrational) character, but tails off quickly, and by episode five is asking some truly idiotic expositionary questions.

The bigger problem, though, is that they desperately need to give Joshua Jackson (as Peter) something to do. Ever since Dawson’s Creek it’s been clear that he’s a charismatic actor with a lot of potential. Fringe needs to give him a gun and let him be a protagonist – let him be a man instead of just his dad’s son. At the moment the male lead is a moaner and a follower, and they need to change that. Hopefully episode four, though not a great episode in itself, marked something of a turning point in that regard.

What you have here is pretty much the Hartnell Doctor with Ian and Barbara. But the Doctor can’t leave the Tardis, Chesterton has to babysit him there and doesn’t get to beat anyone up, and Barbara goes off on her own into adventures for which she’s rather ill-equipped.

Fringe is also reminiscent of more recent Doctor Who – Walter Bishop, like the seventh and tenth Doctors, already knows everything about every problem they encounter. In Doctor Who that’s a shortcut to get the action moving, but in Fringe half of each episode is spent waiting for Bishop to remember the things he already knows; solving the case is just a matter of waiting for him to recall his original research. They can’t keep doing that for long before it becomes very annoying.

One other problem is that the music needs to be toned down. At the moment the drama of every scene is amped up ridiculously by the soundtrack, leaving you too often with the feeling that something exciting is going to happen, and an entirely unnecessary sense of disappointment when it doesn’t.

J.J. Abrams’ name is the one being used to sell the programme, but it’s just as interesting to see Darin Morgan, an X-Files graduate, turn up in the credits. Like Supernatural, another programme providing a home for ex-X-Files staff, Fringe faces the challenge of finding fresh territory: the X-Files ran for nine seasons, there isn’t much it didn’t do. Supernatural has found its feet with a grand Moorcockian clash between law and chaos (and a good deal of humour, thanks to Ben Edlund), while Fringe’s fresh territory seems to be corporate villainy: in particular, what if Microsoft had technologies they weren’t telling us about? Not exactly thrilling stuff.

Fringe has been picked up for a full series, which is a good thing. It could easily have gone to the same early death as Threshold, another show that just couldn’t kick some bad habits, despite excellent production values, great behind-the-scenes pedigree and a strong cast. If Fringe continues to move in the right direction, it could be a great show, but for now it’s just a very pretty one. The snow in this programme is second-to-none!

Fringe, Episodes 1–5, Fox. This review originally appeared, in slightly different form, in Prism, the newsletter of the British Fantasy Society.

Dead Set, written by Charlie Brooker – reviewed

The idea behind Dead Set is that the Big Brother compound would be as safe a place as any in the event of a zombie attack. Though the writer of Dead Set, Charlie Brooker, is best known for his comedy writing – notably TV Go Home, the under-rated Nathan Barley and the unmissable Screen Burn – this is an 18-rated drama with a satirical edge and some incidental humour, much like the original Dawn of the Dead, rather than an outright comedy.

A zombie film set entirely in the Big Brother house didn’t seem like a brilliant idea when first announced – the potential for cheesiness was immense – but it gives the programme something that’s a huge benefit for any survival horror (or indeed any battle sequence): a convincing sense of place. We know the layout of the house interior, the way the camera runs surround it, and the way it’s all fenced off. If the viewer already knows the layout, they don’t waste any time trying to figure it out, and can spend all their time being scared. That’s where the special edition of Aliens wins out over the original version, and it turns out to be one of Dead Set’s greatest strengths.

The satire is of Big Brother itself, and is surprisingly harsh given the appearance of Davina McCall and the use of the actual Big Brother house, logo and music – for example there’s a scene where a producer literally rips the flesh from a contestant to feed him to the “public” as a distraction. Big Brother at its best is all about getting under the skin of contestants, and at its worst is all about throwing them to the mob – well done to Brooker for realising how well both elements lend themselves to zombie horror.

Dead Set is really well made, with a very strong cast. The director is perhaps a little too fond of 28 Days Later and its sequel, but there are worse films to imitate. Simon Pegg, writing in The Guardian, has criticised Dead Set’s zombies for running around (in imitation of the infected in those movies), but from what Brooker wrote in the same newspaper it sounds like the running got the programme into production after a long delay, so it would be unfair to be too critical on that point.

As a television event, it’s likely to be remembered by the general public for its premise rather than its plot or characters, but like the BBC’s Ghostwatch, that premise is good enough to ensure that it will be remembered.

It was scary, exciting, well-made and very unusual for British television, but it’s unlikely to knock the socks off aficionados of zombie horror. Dead Set is a skilled, frightening entertainment rather than a wholesale reinvention of the genre.

Dead Set, written by Charlie Brooker, E4. This review originally appeared, in slightly different form, in Prism, the newsletter of the British Fantasy Society.

Knight Rider, episodes 0–6

In this sequel to the original series Mike Traceur (he soon adopts the Knight surname) is played by Joey Tribbiani. Some readers may remember him from Days of Our Lives or from Mac and C.H.E.E.S.E, or for his role opposite Gary Oldman in…

Okay, so really he’s played by Justin Bruening, but you’ll be hard pushed to spot the difference – and that’s not totally meant as a criticism. As the episodes roll on, Mike and KITT (played by Val Kilmer) develop a comfortable tough guy/soft boy chemistry that isn’t a million miles away from Joey and Chandler.

This version of KITT has more tricks than Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He’s often compared to the Cylons, but the technology in this programme leaves that in BSG way behind: for example in episode two KITT reveals his 3-D object generator, a magic glove box! As the occasion demands, KITT’s a tank, a CSI lab or a submarine, and I’m sure that by the end of the season we’ll see him flying into space. That’s part of the fun – there’s a Thunderbird 2 factor, in that you never know what the gimmick will be in each episode.

As to the actual episodes, the initial two-hour pilot was dreadful and dull, but since then the programme has slowly but steadily improved, in entertainment value if not quality. A Fast and the Furious episode was followed by a Point Break episode, and then by another that had a touch of Queen & Country about it. Bikinis make frequent appearances.

There are lots of signs of behind-the-scenes wrangling. For example, in episode one Mike’s death is publicly staged, but then in episode two he bumps into an old friend, blowing the secret identity out of the water. There are two sets of cast members in the backroom staff – those from the pilot, and then those brought in for the ongoing series, which makes the base seem rather overstaffed. (In fact, as I write this it’s been announced that three of the cast – the three oldest, of course – are to be axed for the second half of season one.) Unlike some programmes, though, the changes seem so far to be taking Knight Rider in the right direction.

Like the original, this is a programme about a big doofus with a cool car getting into trouble. It’s dumb but fun. It would be a tragedy if everything on US TV went back to being this stupid and silly, but there should be room on the schedules for an hour of daft action. And it gets some things right: in contrast to Fringe, say, the heroes do at least take an active and determined role in events.

If the programme has nothing else to recommend it, in episode six it joins Family Guy, The Middleman and The Big Bang Theory in paying tribute this year to Doctor Who. A transparent attempt to win over the geeks who have been giving Knight Rider so much grief? Probably, but it went down very well in our house!

Knight Rider, Episodes 0–6, NBC. This review originally appeared, in slightly different form, in Prism, the newsletter of the British Fantasy Society.

JSA, Vol. 7: Princes of Darkness, by Geoff Johns, David S. Goyer, Leonard Kirk et al – reviewed

An enjoyable book, but I’m pretty muddled now after reading a few of these JSA books out of order. Writing a review of this one a couple of weeks after I read it is quite tricky. For example, I had to look at the description on Goodreads to remind me that Eclipso, Obsidian and Mordru are the three princes of darkness in question.

But what I am sure of is that I’m already looking forward to re-reading the series in order, and that the superheroes in this book are some of the most well-rounded, rich and interesting in the DC universe.

I rather wish that Oliver Queen, Barry Allen and Hal Jordan had been given their own group title in which to grow old gracefully, instead of being shoehorned back into their old titles.

JSA, Vol. 7: Princes of Darkness, by Geoff Johns, David S. Goyer, Leonard Kirk et al. DC Comics, tpb, 256pp.

Fable II (Xbox 360) – reviewed

Fable II is an action role-playing game set in the medieval fantasy world of Albion. It welds the simple action of a game like Viking: Battle for Asgard and the character interactions of The Sims to an RPG structure that plays like a hugely simplified and truncated version of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. That isn’t to say it’s a bad game. It’s a lot of fun, the design is wonderful, and the voice work is excellent (in particular Stephen Fry, who should play evil more often).

But it’s underwhelming, far too short, and anticlimactic. You spend most of the main quest gathering the three other great heroes of the age, but once you’ve pulled them together they help you in one big battle and that’s pretty much it for them. You’re left with the feeling that you could probably have sorted everything out without their help. And once that’s done, the game pretty much dribbles away…

Oblivion, on the other hand, had several separate quest threads, some of them nearly as substantial as the main story. What quests there are in Fable II lack variety (as do the clothes, weapons, people and creatures) – nearly every mission is simply a matter of whacking a few baddies with a weapon. Never mind Oblivion, Fable II is substantially shorter than even Mass Effect, and even then it’s padded out by collectathons and chores. A few days in, and even the holiest of heroes may find themselves trying to persuade their wives into a ménage à cinq, just to give themselves something to do.

The game world is described as open, but it’s actually very limited – the landscapes are beautiful, but you’re nearly always restricted to narrow pathways. There is very little of the joyous bounding across the landscape that characterises a truly open game world. That’s reflected in the maps – a series of tiny, discrete discs that are pretty much useless for anything.

Its biggest strength, aside from offering an accessible role-playing experience to newcomers to the genre, is probably that it really does feel like role-playing. In many RPGs the main character is little more than a cursor that you move around the screen. To an extent that’s true of your avatar in this game (the customisation options are very limited), but what truly takes you into the role is the interaction with other characters (silly as it can be), and especially with your family. Playing as a female character, I picked up a husband quite early on; you realise the game has something special to it once find yourself thinking, “I must go and see my husband” or “Why isn’t my husband wearing the new shirt I gave him?”

But its most innovative elements are also its most ludicrous – you can walk up to almost any stranger, and (as long as they swing the right way) get a proposal of marriage out of them after five minutes of farting, whistling and sock puppetry. You can take a job to pay the bills, but a well-qualified bartender can earn enough in a single night to buy the entire pub. You can get married, but even if your spouse is ready to divorce you for a lack of sex you will struggle to do anything about it until you buy a special book which teaches you how to say “Come back to my place”. You carry on earning rent from the properties you own, even when the Xbox is off – but as a result the best way to progress is often to stop playing!

The game is already notorious for some of its bugs. (Listen to the abbot when he’s talking to you – if you don’t the game is said to break entirely!) I was hit by only one, but it was a heartbreaker: my daughter wandered into a dangerous cave, but wouldn’t follow me out, and when I tried to go back in to get her the mission reset. After several attempts I had to leave her there to be feasted on by goblins, after which the game criticised my parenting skills. I still haven’t been home to face my husband. (Though my three wives have been very consoling, both individually and in concert.)

Overall, a great rental: it’s good fun, but you’ll have seen most that it has to offer after a week or so of playing it.

Fable II, Lionhead (dev.), Xbox 360. This review originally appeared in slightly different form in Prism, the newsletter of the British Fantasy Society.

Shrike, by Quentin S. Crisp – reviewed

The shrike is a bird that impales its prey upon thorns. This book concerns Brett, a would-be writer in his mid-thirties who travels to Japan after a relationship fails. He becomes obsessed with the idea that there’s a shrike in the garden.

I’m a bit torn with this book. It’s very well-written, there is some fascinating discussion of Japanese literature, there are lots of lovely details, and the central relationship, between Brett and an elderly widow, is touching and unusual. It’s a fine piece of writing.

However, Brett himself is spectacularly annoying and self-obsessed, the type of man you wouldn’t want to sit near in a coffee shop, let alone read about for a couple of hours, the type who talks endlessly about the things he’s going to do and all the trials he must go through to do them, but who never actually does anything at all. He’s a huge drama queen, basically.

That’s not necessarily a flaw: great books are written all the time about people much worse than Brett. But it does feel as if the book is on his side. A long time ago I read a bit of Barthes, and I did understand the point that the author’s intentions shouldn’t make a difference to our interpretation of the text of the book. Nevertheless, knowing the author’s intentions might have made a big difference to my feelings about Shrike.

If it was meant as a satire or even an unsympathetic portrait of a particular type of self-obsessed and obsessive man, then I loved it; it was absolutely spot on. The astonishing 5,000-word dream sequence (in a book of just 37,000 words) supports this reading, for one thing. It arrived at just the right time, too, just as the book was becoming almost unbearably maudlin. I found the book laugh-out-loud funny in other places, though I’m not sure if it was supposed to be. For example, in one crucial passage we read:

“Brett eyed the thicket curiously, as if for the hidden shrike. ‘Shrike,’ he said quietly, now looking about himself. ‘Shrike? Where are you, Shrike? Shrike … I think you’re a god.’”

If the book’s meant as a serious portrayal of a tortured artist, I’d be inclined to think it was all rather silly and overwrought – but then I thought exactly the same thing about Notes from the Underground and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. There are some comments about praying, at least, that seem to be meant seriously:

“And those who did not pray? It was none of his business, of course, but it seemed to him that they must be like people who imagine they are watched every moment of their lives, and so cannot relax their guard at any point and do anything so embarrassing as … praying. They lived in fear of defeat by a non-existent observer – a strange attitude for those who protested more than most that there was no ultimate observer …”

The narrator takes atheism to be a pose, rather than an honestly held belief (or an honestly held lack of belief, I should say). But then Brett is a terrible poseur, and poseurs do tend to assume that everyone else is playing the same game. It would be a naive mistake to assume that every author shares the opinions of his or her narrator, but in passages like this (and I’m aware of not being able to articulate this very well) I didn’t feel any tension between the narrator and the author. It felt that the book was with Brett on that point, that this was a chunk of wisdom dropped into the text like the educational bits on Japanese literature.

So, for the time being, my opinion of the book is in the box with Schrodinger’s cat: I both liked and disliked it. Whatever happens when that box is opened, Shrike is undeniably a stimulating and provoking piece of writing. The critical consensus will almost certainly be that this is a very good book indeed; it just didn’t quite do it for me.

Shrike, by Quentin S. Crisp. PS Publishing, hb, 112pp.

The Rights of the Reader, by Daniel Pennac – reviewed

Very bracing. Aimed at teachers and parents, but anyone who likes books enough to use Goodreads, say, will get something out of it. It’s rather hard to believe his stories of getting young people to read the classics, but you can’t argue with experience.

The passage where Pennac talks about difficult books, about there being the right time to read them, was interesting for me, since I’ve a set of his books (in French) that I’ve never managed to get into. Maybe it’s time to give them another try.

The Rights of the Reader, by Daniel Pennac. Walker Books, pb, 174pp.

Planet of Mystery, by Terry Bisson – reviewed

Two astronauts land on Venus, but it’s not the superheated sauna they expected – it’s much more like the place Carson Napier visited. And that’s impossible… They try to make sense of what’s going on, and cling to the hope of getting back to Earth. There’s an adorable robot, plus centaurs, UFOs, and disturbing orange panties.

Planet of Mystery is a playful, frivolous, serious and thoughtful book. If it has a flaw it’s that the reader may conclude early on that he or she has already seen this particular episode of Farscape (or Stargate, or Star Trek), but ignore that feeling, it’s much more interesting than that.

This is a story that operates on the subconscious level, using repetition and startling imagery to create a dream-like effect. It’s also very sexy.

In my sf reading I’ve pretty much gone straight from reading seventies-era paperbacks (and reprints of even earlier material) to bang-up-to-date review copies like this one. I haven’t read much from the intervening period, so this was my first book by Terry Bisson. I’m guessing it’s fairly untypical, but I’ll soon find out since it’s left me wanting to read more. After this trip to Venus, a voyage to the red planet seems appropriate.

Planet of Mystery, by Terry Bisson. PS Publishing, hb, 108pp.

The Hub: Dangerous Territory, by James H. Schmitz – reviewed

This is volume four of the collected works of James H. Schmitz. I paid fifteen pounds for a battered, dirty copy of this book, to complete my seven-volume set, and it was absolutely worth every penny. If I hadn’t already found that copy, after reading the previous three books I would have paid whatever it took to acquire this one.

The highlights are the two Nile Etland stories: “Trouble Tide” (a novella) and “The Demon Breed” (a novel). Both are tremendously entertaining. Schmitz had a rare knack for combining thrilling action with hard, soft and pseudo science, not to mention a genius for creating strong, independent, intelligent and capable women (of which Etland is yet another example) and believably alien psychologies. Both stories save gently amusing twists for their closing pages, another Schmitz signature.

Having read the other stories quite a while ago (before losing the book for a while), I don’t have much to say about them now. They weren’t quite Schmitz’s best, but they were good. I got stuck on “Balanced Ecology” – and then, weirdly, got stuck on it again in the anthology Bug Eyed Monsters – but after gritting my teeth and forcing myself to focus (it’s a tough one to read late at night) it turned out to be one of the best stories I read all year.

Reading the back of this book, it’s easy to be put off: “thousands of rough, ornery and tough-minded human worlds … when Trouble comes Hubward in large doses, there are an awful lot of armed citizens waiting for it…”

But don’t be put off! It may sound like recommended reading for right-wing libertarians, but Schmitz makes it clear that this is no utopia – there’s a terrible price to pay for that liberty: ordinary, non-violent people are never safe. They are plagued by villains and cut-throats, with no interplanetary police force to come to the rescue. And that’s where Schmitz’s heroes come in!

I very, very rarely think this about books any more, having so many still to read, but I would say it’s a virtual certainty that I’ll be reading this book again.

I’d like to express my immense gratitude to Eric Flint and Guy Gordon for putting this series of collected works together. They’ve done a wonderful service to this reader (and many others I’m sure), but also paid the most perfect tribute to a very special writer.

The Hub: Dangerous Territory, by James H. Schmitz. Baen, pb, 480pp.

Derai, by E.C. Tubb – reviewed

My rating of this book shows me to be a bit of a hypocrite… I recently criticised Chosen by Jerry Ibbotson for not bringing anything new to the table, and for being a little humourless, and then on Goodreads I gave this book four stars (and very nearly five) despite there being barely a single word or idea in it that was new to me, and certainly nothing that made me crack anything other than a wry smile.

The difference I guess is that this kind of space adventure is my absolute favourite kind of book, and E.C. Tubb nails it on the head. Everything the book does, it does with superb efficiency and skill. It reminds me of Jack Vance’s space adventures, and there is nothing I like to be reminded of more. Even if you’ve eaten a hundred chocolate biscuits before, the next one looks just as nice. This kind of stuff is my comfort food…

Derai (Dumarest of Terra #2), by E.C. Tubb, Arrow, pb, 188pp (1968).

Armageddon 2419 A.D., by Philip Francis Nowlan – reviewed

Who’d have thought that Wilma Deering predated Buck Rogers, but here she is, as frosty as she ever was in the TV series and palling around with Buck’s prototype, Anthony Rogers. It’s like finding out that Watson had adventures with Sheriff Holmes before teaming up with Sherlock!

Readers may also be surprised by other differences from the Gil Gerard-powered thrill-machine they know and love. Principally, this Rogers is fighting the Chinese, who live in floating cities above the US, leaving the Americans to scoot around in the forests below like overgrown Ewoks.

One thing that baffles is why, if the Chinese live on synthesised food and never set food on the ground, they would choose to park their floating cities over America rather than some nice part of China. Maybe it’s the sunsets! Or maybe they’re mining some natural resource not mentioned in the book. Or maybe the book does explain this point, and I missed it through reading late at night.

Modern readers may be rather shocked by one of the great victories of the Rogers-led resistance: they bring down a passenger liner and massacre everyone on board. Yay for the resistance…

This is a fast-paced, exciting, action-packed book. It stopped a little too early in the campaign for my liking (and in fact casually mentions how the campaign will conclude about half-way through, presumably to stop readers getting too anxious) but there is at least one sequel so I look forward to finding out what’s next for Rogers and his merry band of murderous terrorists. Free to read on Feedbooks.

Armageddon 2419 A.D., by Philip Francis Nowlan, Feedbooks, ebook, c.195pp (1928).

The Filth, by Grant Morrison and Chris Weston – reviewed

Sleeper agent Greg Feely is activated in order to fight the rising tide of anti-persons in a hilarious wig. But who’s going to look after his cat while he’s away?

You get the impression here that Grant Morrison is writing the kind of comic he really wants to read, or maybe the kind of comic his characters would like to read. He seems to be having a very good time, as if the need to keep The Invisibles at least semi-intelligible (in order to keep enough readers to keep it going to the end) was a hobble he could cast off for this thirteen-issue series. It’s bizarre, difficult and challenging, but also very good fun. At times I got the same feeling I had when reading 2000AD as a kid: they shouldn’t really be letting me read this!

The artwork by Chris Weston is the best I’ve ever seen by him. This must have been quite a hard book to work on, and he does brilliantly. Whenever the words get overwhelming or just a bit too baffling, you can rely on the art to keep you ticking over.

The Filth, by Grant Morrison, Chris Weston and Gary Erskine. Vertigo, tpb, 320pp.

The Age of Chaos: the Multiverse of Michael Moorcock, by Jeff Gardiner – reviewed

This is a well-written overview of Michael Moorcock’s complete works, published by the British Fantasy Society with an introduction by Moorcock himself. Moorcock has written hundreds of books, so covering them all in under 120pp is obviously going to leave some underserved. Although the chapters on Moorcock’s early and later periods are detailed and fascinating, the heroic fantasy for which he’s still best known gets extremely short shrift (quite oddly, given the publisher), being crammed into one nine-page chapter. There’s little room for anything more than brief summaries of Elric, Hawkmoon, Corum and the rest. The complete chapter given over to Gloriana, in contrast, seems extremely generous.

Nevertheless, this is an ideal book for anyone looking to get a quick critical grasp on Moorcock. The lack of footnotes may limit its academic usefulness, but a useful reading list is provided. The discussion of Behold the Man contains a couple of odd comments (apparently “Moorcock does not deny the truth of the crucifixion”) but is still very illuminating.

It was a perfect book for me: in my twenties I read everything I could that Moorcock had published up till then; now a new pile of his books has accumulated and I find myself a little daunted. Reading The Age of Chaos has left me primed to have a crack at the pile; recurring themes, characters and in-jokes have been dislodged from my memories and reactivated.

On the other hand, will that help me enjoy Moorcock’s new books? It’s the critic’s job to trace the connections between an author’s various works, to identify the themes and preoccupations, and Gardiner does an excellent job of that. But these books are already awfully interconnected; they lock together like chainmail. By stressing the connections this book gives an impression of sameiness and repetition.

But maybe it’s just me, an impression I was left with after reading far too many of them all at once a long time ago, an impression revived by this book, but not derived from it.

After all, reading Gardiner’s description of The City in the Autumn Stars, I didn’t recognise a thing: my overwhelming memory is of thinking, right, there’s Tanelorn, there’s Jerry, there’s Von Bek, and so on. Gardiner’s account has tempted me to re-read it: it’s entirely possible that I read it as a fan, looking for the things that fans look out for, rather than paying attention to everything that was new.

Still, I’m probably not alone in thinking Moorcock’s books would benefit from being pushed apart a little bit. When I first read most of them they were short, easily digestible books. Then some began to be collected in omnibuses. And then they were all gathered together into a fourteen-volume series of gigantic paperbacks. While I appreciated the value for money, it felt as if they were being drawn closer and closer together, like the stars at the end of the universe.

The Knight of the Swords, The King of the Swords, The Sword and the Stallion and The Hollow Lands were all winners of BFAs for best novel, but now they are permanently reduced to chunks of larger volumes. Even an important literary novel of ordinary length like A Cure for Cancer is only available as part of an omnibus, which is utter madness. (Shouldn’t it be a Penguin Modern Classic by now?) These books could really do with being treated as individuals again, given some room to develop separate identities. Maybe if ebooks take off and economies of scale stop being so all-important, that will happen.

The Age of Chaos: the Multiverse of Michael Moorcock, by Jeff Gardiner. BFS Publications, pb, 120pp (2002).

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus, Vol. 4 – reviewed

Enjoyable stories, but pretty forgettable on the whole – evidenced by the fact that I know I’ve read some of these issues before, but none caused any sparks of recognition. There’s too much focus on action, too little on character and dialogue. I understand why it worked out that way – how much characterisation can you manage when the show is still airing? All you can do is echo what’s already been shown on screen. But one of the great things about Buffy was that things changed, and since that can’t happen here a big chunk of the programme’s appeal is missing. Plus, this isn’t quite the Buffy of the TV series – she’s too fluffy.

There’s a funny bit towards the end where Angel gets strangled. His response – “Grip… So tight… Losing air…” (p. 358) – somewhat contradicts his discovery that upon becoming a vampire (p. 235): “I… I can’t breathe!” I’ll claim a no-prize for suggesting that the soul collector’s attack in the later story is psychological rather than physical.

Despite my griping, it was still good to spend bonus time in the company of the Scooby Gang. It was like eating a packet of bourbon biscuits – enjoyable, but nothing like eating chocolate Hobnobs.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus, Vol. 4, Andi Watson et al. Dark Horse, pb, 368pp. Amazon US.

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #27

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

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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

---

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

---

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.

The Savage Sword of Conan, Vol. 2, by Roy Thomas and friends

The character Conan and the stories about him are sometimes seen as primitive versions of the fantasy stories that came later. Part of that is a matter of chronology; part of it is his similarity to characters like Tarzan; part of it is that he’s a pretty primitive fellow himself. But I think it’s also because Conan is a character without any checks or balances. In roleplaying games, for example, you generally have to specialise, to choose one area in which to excel, and that often has implications for other aspects of your character. Conan has no such limitations. He’s the strongest, and also the fastest. He’s the biggest, but also the sneakiest. He’s the best hand-to-hand fighter, but also the best general. He’s the best at absolutely everything, even as a youngster, no matter how much different abilities might seem likely to clash with each other. He’s a superhero, basically.

This must have been said before, but he is also, metaphorically, a phallus, pushing his way through the cloth of these adventures in search of women. His primary characteristic isn’t his strength or his agility, it’s that he can’t be cockblocked: anyone who tries will feel the length of his sword (oo-er). When he meets a woman he wants, he knows he will have her, and so does everyone else. The message of his loincloth, like Tarzan’s, is that sex is never more than a second away; it’s both a threat and a promise. In fact, the entire book is a call to the reader’s groin: a chance to let your imagination wander where your sense would never let you; a chance to luxuriate in fantasies of sex and violence.

That doesn’t stop if from being hugely entertaining. In fact, reading this book was one of the most sheerly enjoyable, uncomplicated reading experiences of my life. Somewhere in the middle of it I stopped reading it for the sake of my ten-year-old self (for whom every Conan book and comic he could find was a priceless treasure), and started to read it for myself.

There was a lot to enjoy, even as a (relatively) mature adult: this volume is even better than the previous one. For one thing, the magazine settles down to a series of full-length stories, forty and even fifty-page epics. It also benefits hugely from the presence of John Buscema, contributing to almost every issue, bringing both continuity and, of course, brilliant artwork. There’s a craftmanship and artistry to these comics unusual for comics of the time, evident both in the art and in the writing of Roy Thomas. (Sometime I’d like to compare the comics with the stories to see how much of that writing is Roy Thomas and how much is Robert Howard – but even if turns out that all the writing I admire in these comics is from Howard’s pen, credit would still go to Thomas for knowing not to interfere with it, and translating prose to comic so expertly.)

If there is one problem with the art, it’s that the reverse C-shape panel layout is used too often – i.e. where panel one is above panel three, with panel two stretching vertically across them at the right. It’s very confusing. But when a book contains some of the most befuddlingly attractive women ever created by a pencil, it seems ungrateful to complain about the layouts!

The original magazines had black and white interiors, so almost nothing has been lost from the artwork by printing these in the Essential/Showcase format (though I often think comics look better in black and white anyway, given how primitive comics colouring was until relatively recently). The exception would be the magazine covers, which deserve a colour book of their own to show them at their best (as has happened with the Commando reprints). Those paintings are simply stunning, even in greyscale.

The centrepiece of the book is “The People of the Black Circle”, a one hundred and twenty page adaptation of the Howard story, which was serialised across four issues of the original magazine. It’s absolutely marvellous, but then so are nearly all the stories in the book (though I could have done without the one about the cannibals, which must have seemed dated even in the seventies).

I had mixed feelings about a later story, “The Pool of the Black One”. Conan always shows a reckless disregard for the lives of others – he’s happy to kill guards and the like, if they’re in his way, even if they aren’t individually his enemies. In “The Pool of the Black One”, however, he commits a murder, plain and simple, just for his own convenience. Having not read the original Howard stories (I thought I had, till I came to catalogue them on Goodreads), I was a bit surprised by the story. It wasn’t a nice guy he murdered, but it was someone who had saved his life. It seemed to me that Conan crosses a line in that one.

But then that’s what he’s for – he’s for crossing the line, doing what we wouldn’t. He’s the unrestrained killer, the irresistable lover, the epitome of the male stereotype. He’s what women would like men to be, but would despise them for being; he’s the image men can’t live up to, and the image they can’t live down.

We were a bit short of money the month I read this book, to the point where I had to cancel our Sky subscription – maybe that’s why I found a bit of Conan so compelling; he wouldn’t have to worry about anything like that. I feel bad that I had to cancel Sky, but also bad that something as trivial as affording Sky feels like the measure of my manhood… Jeepers, listen to me… I’ll be going hunting to make up for my inadequacies next…

The Savage Sword of Conan, Vol. 2, by Roy Thomas, Barry Windsor-Smith, John Buscema et al, Dark Horse, tpb, 544pp.

Showcase Presents: Challengers of the Unknown, Vol. 1, by Jack Kirby and friends

The Challengers of the Unknown live in a world where anything can happen, and, best of all, there aren’t any superheroes flying around to grab all the fun. If something weird is going on in their world, they’re the people you call. It doesn’t matter that they’re just four better-than-average humans – or five, once June becomes a very welcome distaff member – they’re the best this world has to offer, and they always give it their best shot. You have to love the spirit of four guys whose go-to move, when confronted with giants of all varieties, is to run at them in a big gang shouting things like: "Let’s all hit him — together!"

The big problem with this book is that it can be very difficult to tell the Challengers apart in black-and-white. Usually their hair would help (red, blonde, brown and that strange hair colour only found in comics, the Superman blue-black), but in black-and-white, you’ve just got two blonde guys (one beefy, one slim), and two black-haired guys (one beefy, one slim), all in identical costumes. It got very frustrating, to the point that I began to think about getting my daughter to colour them in for me.

I never expected to say this about a comic, but it became much more readable once Jack Kirby stopped drawing it. What appalling heresy!

At the time, I thought it was down to the change of artist (to Bob Brown), but looking back through the book, I’m hard pressed to spot a really significant change in the way the Challengers are drawn. It’s more down to the (usually uncredited) writing.

In the early issues the Challengers are pretty interchangeable, apart from their specialised skills (pilot, diver/boffin, climber, wrestler). Then for a few issues after Kirby leaves the art, they suddenly develop personalities, ones that oddly enough aren’t a million miles away from those of the Fantastic Four (Kirby’s next book). The climber develops a bit of a Johnny Storm look and attitude, and starts poking and teasing the wrestler, who’s turned into a bit of a Ben Grimm. Towards the end of the book, unfortunately, they revert to being totally characterless, but by that point June’s role has become more prominent, which balances it out.

I’m a huge fan of the Essentials and Showcases. They’ve let me read and enjoy hundreds of comics that I would never have shelled out for in more prestigious and pocket-gouging formats like the Masterworks or the Archives. And as someone who grew up reading the black-and-white British comics of the seventies, I’ve never felt the lack of colour to be a huge problem. But in this case, it comes very close to spoiling the book.

What saves it is the Kirby streak that runs through all his comics: the feeling of freedom, of imagination left to follow its nose. If you want to find out what lies beyond the realms of possibility, he’s your man…

Showcase Presents: Challengers of the Unknown, Vol. 1, Jack Kirby et al, DC Comics, tpb, 544pp.

Showcase Presents: Batman and the Outsiders, Vol. 1, by Mike Barr and Jim Aparo

Whereas the Challengers of the Unknown showcase volume really suffered from the black and white printing, this book glories in it. When these issues were originally published (1983–1985) comics printing was at its most cheap and rubbishy (ironically the title went to pieces after graduating to fancy Baxter printing). Here the artwork is perfectly clear and very attractive. Jim Aparo does some wonderful work on the title, while Bill Willingham and Trevor von Eeden take enjoyably different approaches on fill-ins.

(I can’t wait for the JLI showcase volumes that we’re bound to see one day. If ever wonderful artwork was buried under unsympathetic printing it was then.)

As for the stories, written by Mike Barr, I think the Slings & Arrows Guide says it best (as usual): “pedestrian, but generally entertaining”. There’s nothing amazing here; it’s run-of-the-mill team stuff, and the characters and their relationships aren’t all that great. But despite that I’ve always had a soft spot for the Outsiders (to see them at their best check out The Nail, the JLA graphic novel by Alan Davis). If you’re in the mood for a simple, self-contained team book, this’ll do the trick.

For me the best thing about the book is Batman himself, or The Batman, as he is usually called here. He’s not the affable duffer of the 1950s and 1960s comics, nor yet is he the middle-aged tough-love foster parent of the modern comics. He’s as young as I’ve ever seen him portrayed – you’d think him in his mid-20s in some panels – and he’s flawed, passionate, and still finding his way. He’s a hero working with his peers; he’s the best trained and best equipped of them, but they don’t worship him. This was a Batman I really enjoyed reading about.

Showcase Presents: Batman and the Outsiders, Vol. 1, by Mike Barr and Jim Aparo, DC Comics, tpb, 552pp.

Rick Random: Space Detective

This book contains ten adventures of Rick Random, Space Detective (a character I hadn’t previously heard of) from the pages of the Super Detective Library of comic books, digests similar in style to Commando and Starblazer. It contains issues 44, 49, 123, 127, 129, 133, 137, 143, 153 and 163. Some stories have been reprinted from their later appearances in Buster Picture Library (the reprint titles have been used instead of the originals).

The book puts the stories in very little context. There are no creator credits, and we’re not even told when they were published, apart from a comment on the back that Rick Random first appeared in 1954. The introduction says that Harry Harrison worked on the title, and that that was when the title came into its own, but it’s not clear if he wrote any of these stories. Similarly, the back cover seems to say that all these stories were drawn by Ron Turner, but the introduction mentions several other artists as well.

The artwork, whether it’s all by Ron Turner or not, is generally very good. Backgrounds, spaceships and technology all look marvellous. The figure work is a bit looser than mainstream comics readers would be used to nowadays, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing (though you’ll have to search hard in this book for a pretty girl). In certain panels you could think you were looking at work by Bryan Talbot or David Lloyd.

Since the stories date from the fifties, it’s hardly surprising that it’s a bit old-fashioned in some ways. The earlier stories have some oddly fascistic overtones. For example, everyone has an identification number tattooed on their arms, which even in 1954 would surely have raised eyebrows, and in “Kidnappers from Mars” Rick is point man on an invasion of a world which refuses to join their World Federation of Powers.

It’s old-fashioned in other ways, too. In “Emperor of the Moon”, said emperor has “dumb African slaves”. Post-colonial critics would also have a ball with “Planet of Terror”, where people say things like, “These primitive people have many gods, Rick” and “Don’t most primitives have a human sacrifice on occasions like this?” In “Threat from Space” Rick Random works his way through twenty cigarettes, possibly more. He loves his cigarettes! In “Perilous Mission” blue whales are farmed to feed Earth’s population – though I’m not entirely sure if that’s old-fashioned or visionary! And in “The Kidnapped Planet” Rick leads a “terrorist campaign” against giant-sized invaders. I suppose the only old-fashioned thing about that is that the story doesn’t put a more positive spin on his bombings!

But being old-fashioned isn’t always a bad thing. While I could have done without the smoking and the colonialism, there’s a cosiness here that made for a very comfortable read. Reading these little-known stories made me feel as if my grandad had found them in the attic and brought them down for me. Some things may be a bit dated, but that generally adds to their interest rather than detracting from it.

As to the other stories, “Robot World” is an unashamed imitation of Asimov’s The Naked Sun, while “Frozen World” deals with the theft of gold from banks. (The frozen world of the title is Neptune.) Scientists recently suggested that the dilemma at the end of The Italian Job could have been resolved by superheating the gold to turn it into a gas – at one point in this story (a mention of ventilation) I thought I’d found the scientists’ inspiration! Unfortunately not, but it was nice to be surprised by the plot at least once: though these stories are often reminiscent of James H. Schmitz’s hard-boiled science fiction, not least in their interest in ecology, expectations here are very rarely reversed. Everything is usually pretty much as it seems.

“Killer in Space” seems to be a bit inconsistent with the other stories. In that one it’s the early days of space travel, and Venus has to be close to Earth to permit interplanetary travel, while usually Rick hops around between solar systems without any trouble. But then again, we have buses and planes in our world, but that doesn’t mean buses can fly. Interstellar travel may be practical for Rick, but not for passenger ships. And anyway, consistency with old stories shouldn’t get in the way of telling new ones (something Doctor Who has recently remembered, but Star Trek needs to learn).

Overall, reading the book was thoroughly enjoyable. The stories were exciting and entertaining, and full of variety: Rick’s job gives him a great deal of latitude both in the cases he takes on and the approach he takes to them. This book is never boring. The dialogue is clipped and to the point. The art and storytelling is dynamic and efficient. Let your attention drift for a page or two and you’ll be lost – every panel counts. If I’ve focused on what might be seen as flaws, it’s because I found them fascinating. I’d very much recommend this book to anyone who fancies a bit of straightforward, traditional science fiction adventure.

I hope we’ll see many more science fiction collections to join this one – of Starblazer, in particular. It’s marvellous to see British comics other than 2000AD being collected.

Rick Random: Space Detective, ed. Steve Holland, Prion Books, pb, 656pp.