What have you sent for me lately?

It's been a tough couple of weeks for my postman / email provider! Here are some of the lovely items that have entered the blue box of late.

The Gospel of Bucky Dennis, by J.R. Parks (Ding Fleet Press, 212pp). A collection of southern gothic tales, including one that I'm proud to say originally appeared in TQF.

Doctor Who: A Shard of Ice, Paul Magrs (BBC Audio, 1xCD, 1hr30). The latest Baker/Magrs extravaganza. I'm a bit behind on reviewing these, but I've been enjoying them: will have to do a big catch-up.

Catastrophia, ed. Allen Ashley (PS Publishing, 284pp). An anthology of short stories concerning the apocalypse. I interviewed Allen about this project for my last issue of Dark Horizons.

The Bone Sword, Walter Rhein (Rhemalda Publishing, 230pp). Not the most impressive cover, but it's short so there's always a chance of us reading and reviewing it.

The Dracula Papers, Reggie Oliver (Chomu Press, 474pp). Very happy to have started receiving books for review from Chomu Press, who have a very admirable approach: providing collectible content at affordable prices. (It was the announcement of an upcoming Brendan Connell book, among others, that prompted me to get in touch with them.) Not entirely sure what this chunky book is – a novel, short stories, or PJF-style fictional non-fiction? – but I look forward to finding out. Will have to read Dracula first, though.

Roman Hell, Mark Mellon (Amber Quill Press, 242pp). I think this is a supernatural novel set in Roman times, but it's possible the blurb was metaphorical!

Engineman, Eric Brown (Solaris, 512pp). We haven't contacted many of the larger publishers regarding books for review; it's easy to get buried under books you're not really all that interested in. But I did love the look of these Solaris books, and I loved Eric Brown's book for PS Publishing, Gilbert and Edgar on Mars.

The Age of Ra, James Lovegrove (Solaris, 448pp). For years I thought James Lovegrove was a pseudonym of Michael Moorcock. No idea why. This looks like fun.

I Wonder What Human Flesh Tastes Like, Justin Isis (Chomu Press, 336pp). Sadly the cover of my paperback ARC isn't as saucy as this one. A collection of short stories, due out mid-January.

DC Comics: the 75th Anniversary Poster Book (Quirk Books, large format paperback, 208pp). This is a nice chunk of book. One to add to your wishlists in time for Christmas. The only problem with receiving it for review is that to review it properly I'm going to have to rip one of the posters out, to test the perforations. Poor old me!

The Worlds of Philip Jose Farmer: Protean Dimensions, ed. Michael Croteau (Meteor House, pb, 264pp). I started reading bits of this the moment it arrived! Bits and pieces from PJF's filing cabinet – interviews, speeches, etc – together with new fiction by the likes of Rhys Hughes.

A Discovery of Witches, Deborah Harkness (Headline, 594pp). As I mentioned on Twitter when this arrived: the trade paperback ARC of this weighs 838g, while the Kindle weighs 222g. I'm grateful to have received a copy of the book, but I'd much rather read it on the Kindle.

Randalls Round, Eleanor Scott (Oleander Press, 176pp). A book of supernatural tales republished by a press specialising in books about climbing the buildings of Cambridge at night.

A Roomful of Machines, Kristine Ong Muslim (Searle Publishing, 124pp). Kristine's one of the most prolific and widely-published poets in science fiction.

Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine #48 (132pp). The latest issue of this highly ambitious magazine. They're going quarterly from the next issue.

Thanks to all the publishers and writers who have been so generous as to send us material for review. Apologies in advance for anything we don't get around to reading!

Night of the Living Trekkies, Kevin Anderson and Sam Stall

Zombies wouldn't really be that big a threat in the Star Trek universe – they're basically disorganised, disconnected, weaponless Borg who wouldn't even be able to pilot a starship! Dr Crusher or the emergency medical hologram would take minutes to whip up a retrovirus to sort them out. Perhaps that's why the living dead in this book aren't zombies in the ordinary sense. What they are exactly is revealed in the course of the book; what they do is infest a Star Trek convention, as well as the surrounding city, leaving security chief and former soldier Jim Pike (get it?) with very few options in his efforts to save his little sister.

This is straightforward silly entertainment, with few ambitions beyond raising a chuckle, giving the odd thrill, and diverting the reader for a few hours. It's not a laugh riot – the tone is primarily serious – but there are lots of in-jokes. Like the hero's name they aren't particularly clever ones: a hotel named Botany Bay doesn't make much sense when it isn't in Botany Bay. The chapters take their names from Star Trek episode titles. Most of the best lines are lifts from Star Trek or Star Wars dropped into appropriate situations, but others caught my eye too. "He'd only just met this guy, but he'd already disliked him for years," says Pike of sleazebag Matt.

It's not all that frightening – apart from one brilliant scene where zombies in nearby buildings notice the survivors through the hotel windows - but the action moves quickly and efficiently. Klingon merchant Martock is at the convention to sell replica weaponry, and the survivors put the bat'leth and lirpa to good use. Pike is a resourceful and compassionate hero, with only one blind spot: for some reason, though he discovers early on that taser shocks have an explosive effect on the infections, he doesn't think of applying this method to fresh bites to prevent people turning.

There is a very good sense of place, with the hotel's layout being used cleverly. For example, using the stairwells to get around is a good plan, since the zombies struggle with doors – but what if the fire door on one floor was left open and zombies spilled out from that floor? Another sequence where the survivors move through a series of interconnected rooms is strategically intriguing, each room presenting a new challenge, the heroes learning from their early mistakes.

This isn't an official tie-in, and "any personnel claiming otherwise will be sentenced to one year of hard labour in the penal colony of Rura Penthe", but I doubt that will prevent it from finding appreciative readers among Trek fans. Once you've seen the cover and chuckled at the concept, actually reading the book doesn't add a great deal, but for what it is, it is done well, and if you like the idea enough to consider buying the book you're unlikely to be disappointed.

Night of the Living Trekkies, Kevin Anderson and Sam Stall, Quirk Books, pb, 254pp. Reviewed from a paperback ARC.

What Will Come After, Scott Edelman

What Will Come After is a collection of very literary zombie stories – and one excellent play – from Scott Edelman. The stories aren't interconnected, but they are more or less consistent in their approach to zombification. It isn't a plague passed on by bites – in most of the stories everyone who has recently died returns to life; undeath, rather than death, becomes the complementary state to life. (Understanding this helps to make sense of the first story, in which otherwise it's not clear how the narrator knows he is about to change.) Each zombie is extremely strong, able to rip humans and animals apart, and in most of the stories they display a shark-life sense for discovering their prey. In most the world goes on living, more or less, people coping (or not) with this new disaster just as they coped (or didn't) with all the others.

The collection begins with "What Will Come After", a stunning, poetic tale told in the future tense, where a writer describes what will happen after he turns. In "Live People Don't Understand" a young wife wakes to find herself beneath the ground, and decides upon revenge. "The Man He Had Been Before" concerns domestic violence. People find it hard enough to leave abusive partners in our world; how much harder to do it after the apocalypse? "Almost the Last Story by Almost the Last Man" finds a writer holed up in a library, in which he writes story after story, trying to find some kind of sense to it all. In a way it's the most traditional zombie story in the collection, with a protagonist ensconced in an impromptu fortress, having to make decisions about when and how to venture outside, but it's also the most expansive and playful of the stories.

"Live People Don't Understand" is built upon the plot and characters of "Our Town", a play by Thornton Wilder, and two of the very best pieces here also play with earlier texts. "Tell Me Like You Done Before" is a superb sequel to Of Mice and Men, which sees poor George pursued by undead mice and men across the dustbowls. Recommended to anyone who thought Steinbeck's ending too cheery. "A Plague on Both Your Houses" is a play in five short acts, a Romeo and Juliet of the living and the undead which I would love to see performed. (My own impromptu performance went down badly with the family.) Recommended to anyone who thought Shakespeare's ending too sad.

The remaining stories suffer only in comparison to the high standards of this collection; in most other books they would have been outstanding. In "Goobers" a projectionist working in a cinema showing nothing but zombie films finds an unusually appreciative audience, but the abrupt ending didn't satisfy. "The Human Race" concerns a woman who lost her family in the London 7/7 bombings, and learns to live again when surrounded by the dead. "The Last Supper" is eaten by the zombie who hunts down the last living human, in a story that reflects, I think, our own overwhelming greed with regard to the resources of our planet.

Stories like "Tell Me Like You Done Before" and John Kessel's "Pride and Prometheus" demonstrate that what's come to be known dismissively as the mash-up isn't the sole domain of quick cash-in artists; in the right hands it can produce works of art that have value beyond a catchy title and a chucklesome cover. This book shows, if it needed to be shown, that while we can in complete fairness be dismissive of particular books, and even dismayed by particular trends in publishing, it's always, always a mistake to dismiss an entire category of fiction. What Will Come After stands as an outstanding example of the literary potential of genre fiction.

What Will Come After, Scott Edelman, PS Publishing, hb, 194pp. Reviewed from a pdf ARC. Available in the PS Publishing store.

Isabelle, Andre Gide – and reading in French on the Kindle

Reading and reviewing The Translation of Father Torturo, with its themes of Catholicism and amorality, left me fancying a little Gide, and so here I am. A review of an established classic such as this seems rather redundant, and indeed part of my reason for reading it was to read something I wouldn't have to review, giving me a chance to catch up on all those reviews that are currently unfinished. But reading this book was a revelation to me, for reasons noted at the end of this post, and I was determined to share my discovery. Before that, I will say a few words about it; to do otherwise about such a marvellous book would almost be criminal.

This was a excellent short novel, though Gide himself I think would have described it as a recit (please excuse the lack of accents throughout this post). It concerns Gerard Lacase, who upon visiting an abandoned house with friends tells them how he first came there as a young man. His professed purpose in visiting le chateau de la Quartfourche was for research, towards a degree, but other things were on his mind from the very beginning. "Je sais de reste ce qui l'attend sur le sentier de la vertu; mais l'autre route?... l'autre route..."

The less virtuous path is that of the novelist: "des qu'on se croit ne romancier on s'accorde aussitot toux les droits". From the house and its occupants he wishes to extract every possible morsel of material for his fiction. Upon discovering the image of an absent mother, Isabelle de Saint-Aureol, he becomes determined to meet her, and to win her confidence. He pursues her as if in love, and the reader may wonder as to the lack of effect that the revelations of her poor character has upon his ardour.

This is a woman, for example, who has abandoned her disabled son to the care of her parents; a son disabled, it is implied, because she strapped down her stomach to keep her unplanned pregnancy a secret. ("On attribue l'infirmite de Casimir aux soins que sa mere avait pris pour dissimuler sa grossesse ...") Gerard watches her steal jewellery from her family, and yet his attraction to her is undiminished.

The answer is that his interest in her isn't truly that of the lover, it's that of the novelist, romancier rather than romancer. "Cette nuit que vous l'attendiez, prete a fuir avec lui, que pensiez-vous?" he asks with a particular lack of sensitivity about the night her lover died. An alternative reading is perhaps possible – he does after all say to himself disappointedly, realising the impossibility of eliciting love from cruel, selfish Isabelle,"est-ce la comme elle savait aimer?"

But he then says of her, "Je ne sentais plus aucun desir de la questionner davantage; subitement incurieux de sa personne et de sa vie, je restais devant elle comme un enfant devant un jouet qu'il a brise pour en decouvrir la mystere ..." Her mystery revealed, her story told, his interest evaporates, he moves on.

She is unchanged, and perhaps unchangeable, but he is not. His experiences have after all led him to the path of virtue: a real affection for young Casimir, for whom he provides a home. The novel suggests there is yet hope for those of us who, seeing someone in distress, has first or second the thought: this would make a good story.

However, my original reason for blogging about this book lies not with its content, but with the way in which I read it. What I realised here was that I could buy a French dictionary for the Kindle, set it temporarily as the default dictionary, and so use it to instantly look up the words I didn't know while reading a French novel. For anyone studying a foreign language, that makes the Kindle an utterly essential purchase.

Of course, little of this will come as a surprise to our American friends, who have had Kindles for years, but it's only been out in the UK for a few months, so we're still catching up.

The dictionary I bought was the Merriam-Webster French-English Translation Dictionary. I would have preferred a French-only dictionary too, because it's better when reading in a foreign language to stay within that language as far as possible – to build a framework of words that stands alone, rather than one requiring the scaffold of your English – but I'm sure one will be available before long.

As well as helping English people to read French books, how phenomenally useful the Kindle and its built-in dictionary must be for people learning English as a foreign language!

If using the Kindle in this way, I recommend upping the font size quite a bit, making it easier to zip around the page to find definitions.

The selection of French books on Amazon is not terrific as yet, the vast majority being texts also available for free via Project Gutenberg, so that's a good place to start. Bookmark http://m.gutenberg.org/ on your Kindle for easy access to the mobile version. Here are direct links to Flaubert, Dumas, Stendhal and Jules Verne.

Isabelle, Andre Gide, Project Gutenberg, Kindle edition, 1215ll.

The Translation of Father Torturo, Brendan Connell

Father Xaviero Torturo is, like many of the protagonists in Connell's later collection Unpleasant Tales, a man obsessed with change, though the changes he desires extend beyond himself and into the world in which he lives. He is a priest who, tired of being "the begrimed receptacle" for the offences of others, applies the philosophy, dedication and ruthlessness of the family trade – assassination – to his work.

"As a child he had been brutal, a kicker of cats, a resolute swatter of flies..." His parents savagely murdered, this boy is taken in by Uncle Guido, their avenger, a kindly murderer who would see him enter the church. Torturo's education is thus entrusted to cigar-fancier Father Falzon, who encourages the young prodigy to read very widely, and gives him a piece of deathbed advice: "Don't give yourself away. Not until you have them check-mated."

As Torturo's career within the church first falters, and then progresses at pace, he follows that advice to the letter, even withholding his plans from the reader. Though we are able to guess his intended destination – "playing the faithful servant", he hopes to "usurp the master" – his purpose and methods remain obscure. This allows us to appreciate the fruition of his plans all the more.

I almost felt as if I should have read this book in French – it reminded me very much of reading Gide. I can easily imagine it in Gallimard's Collection Folio alongside books like Les caves du Vatican. Perhaps that stems from the shared subject matter – Catholicism and amorality – but I think also there's a similarity of tone and a similar intellectualism.

The book's dedication nods to another gay writer of that period, Baron Corvo, on whose Hadrian VII this is roughly patterned. This novel could perhaps be criticised for its portrayal of homosexuals – Bishop Vivan, an early ally of Father Torturo, is something of a giggly, effete stereotype – though a defence is that the main characters, good and bad, are Catholic priests, not generally an occupation in which you would expect to find healthy, happy gay men.

The Translation of Father Torturo dates back to 2005 but is now available for the first time on Kindle, published I think by the author; a few typos and formatting glitches did no real harm. Some Roman Catholics might be pleased by its assumption or at least implication that the sacred relics of the saints hold actual, magical power; others might choose to find the perverted, corrupt priests that populate the book offensive. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this provocative and grimly amusing book to everyone else.

The Translation of Father Torturo, Brendan Connell, Kindle, 3417ll.

Fifteen authors who influenced you

Denis, Denis!

It's probably obvious that many of the non-review items on this blog began life as Facebook or forum posts that got a bit out of control… Here's another in that line, a little something to distract me from a backlog of reviews in various stages of composition.

It's the usual kind of thing: fifteen authors (poets included) who've influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first fifteen you can recall in no more than fifteen minutes. An acknowledgment here to Tej Turner, who tagged me with this on Facebook.

I'm not really a writer these days – or at least not a writer of fiction. It's been a few years since I last completed one of my terrible novels, and I've never really been one for writing short stories. But these are the fifteen writers I came up with, fifteen writers who have done a great deal to shape my thinking about writing, and, by extension, reading.

Jean Racine – for his plotting, his approach to the dramatic unities. In my memory his plays are structured like arrowheads, shiny, sharp and ruthless. I've never written anything like that, but I always begin with that intention.

Jack Vance – for the humour, the creativity, the language, the cruelty, the shared universe of his science fiction. There's very little I don't love about Jack Vance's writing.

Michael Moorcock – for writing novels in three days, and for writing even better ones when he took a bit longer. Stormbringer, The Final Programme, A Cure for Cancer, Count Brass, Byzantium Endures – every one of them was a revelation.

Lionel Fanthorpe – for showing how easy it is to write novels; he taught me to think about what could come next, rather than what should come next. (I have yet to learn how to write good novels.)

Diana Wynne Jones – for being so interesting, for never repeating herself, even in sequels.

Denis Diderot – for Jacques le Fataliste. Its narrative playfulness astonished me. In English, Tristram Shandy played similar tricks, but I didn't read that until much later.

Gustave Flaubert – for the care he took over his prose, and Bouvard et Pecuchet. He's not a writer I would ever have had the patience to emulate, but he's important to me nevertheless: Flaubert and Fanthorpe stand at either end of a scale which measures the care you take over your writing.

Stendhal – for the novels, of course, but also for his acceptance of the fact that not everyone would like his work: to the happy few. One particular comment about his work impressed me deeply; whether it was one of my tutors at university, or an essay , or an introduction to his work, I'm not sure: that his sentences will often end with a word or phrase that changes the entire sense of what you thought you had been reading.

Jean-Paul Sartre – for plays like Les Mains Sales and Huis Clos. Sartre had an immense effect on my life: an excellent GCSE essay score persuaded me to study French literature at sixth form and degree level. I should really have studied maths, IT or science: I would have been an awesome accountant. My spoken French, however, is so poor that as I left the oral for my degree I heard the examiners begin to laugh.

John Brunner – for his perfect little Ace books. I would love to write short novels exactly like them in every regard.

Grant Morrison – for constant invention, and never writing down to his readers. He's written comics that didn't work, or were a bit confusing, or where his late scripts have caused problems with the art, but I've never read a Grant Morrison comic that felt pointless, average or dull.

Rhys Hughes – for writing the kind of thing I would like to write, saving me the trouble! And for making me feel better about my over-enthusiastic use of exclamation marks!

Terrance Dicks – for the spare emptiness of his prose. I grew up a fan of the Doctor Who novels as much as the television series.

Roland Barthes – for the relationship between the author and the text, and the interpretation of the text – and indeed the interpretation of everything else, from advertising to clothes. I doubt a day goes by without me thinking a thought influenced by Barthes.

Robert Silverberg – for the brilliant short novels of the fifties and sixties. If I have a true ambition left, it's to write a serious and profound short novel in that style.

I realise now that I should probably have included Philip K. Dick (for his reality-bending), Harry Harrison (for his humour and action), Russell T Davies (for his approach to rewriting) and Philip Jose Farmer (for his big ideas), but too late now. I had fifteen minutes to make my list, and these are the names I came up with!

I'm sure in some cases I've got the wrong end of the stick about a writer – are Racine's plays really as well-structured as I remember them? would Terrance Dicks even be readable now I'm an adult? – but it is after all how I remember them, faultily or not, that influences me.

Is the apocalypse too depressing for TV?

Like almost everyone else, I loved episode one of The Walking Dead. So why haven't I got around to watching episode two yet? For that matter, why did I never get around to watching season two of Jeremiah, or those last half dozen episodes of Jericho? I didn't get more than five minutes into Survivors!

I've read lots of post-apocalypse books and comics, and watched lots of post-apocalypse films. Usually I love that stuff. Give me a radioactive wasteland and a band of hungry mutants and I'm happy as Larry. I don't mind being made miserable once in a while – it's bracing! – but I think I'm reluctant to sign up for something that'll make me unhappy week-in, week-out.

I don't think it's just me: I was trying to think of a post-apocalypse programme that lasted more than three seasons, and didn't have much luck:

The Survivors - 3 series
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century - 2 seasons
The Tripods - 2 series
Jeremiah - 2 seasons
Three Moons Over Milford - 1 season
Jericho - 1.5 seasons
Survivors (remake) - 2 series

Maybe the problem is that the apocalypse is a nice place for a holiday, but not somewhere you'd like to live. TV shows become a part of the fabric of your life, and perhaps the apocalypse isn't well-suited to that.

The only programme I've been able to think of that broke the curse was the remake of Battlestar Galactica, which began with a nuclear holocaust and lasted five seasons (if you include the mini-series). Perhaps because, although it was gruelling and miserable, it was so good you couldn't possibly miss it.

I'm pretty sure I'll keep watching The Walking Dead until they stop making it, but, like BSG, it'll probably be one of those programmes I save up and watch in bursts.

Have I missed any programmes that lasted longer? Is The Walking Dead doomed to a fatal second season drop-off in the ratings, or can quality win out, like it did with BSG?

Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #34

It's been a long time coming, but finally it's here! Unfortunately there are no female contributors to this issue, as previously discussed, but at least that means we don't have to talk about our feelings. Except for manly feelings about war and death and stuff, that is, and a bit in the convention report where grown men blub. But at least there are no girls around to see our tough facades crack!

What we do have though is a series of terrific stories, an indulgent editorial, our first ever convention report, and a huge review section: twenty-two books, seven movies, three audio reviews, one comic and one game. The cover is once again by the wonderful Howard Watts.

If you fancy taking a look, you could download the free pdf of this issue from us here (it's the perfect size for reading on an iPad), ebook versions are available for free from Feedbooks (including Kindle and epub versions), and the original version, a 156pp paperback, is available from Lulu for £3.99 (they also have a slightly higher resolution pdf available for free download).

Editorial:

• Why Aren’t I Reading My Paper Books Any More? Stephen Theaker

Fiction:

• The Chapel on the Headland, Rafe McGregor
• The Needs of the Dead, Jon Vagg
• The Frog God’s Chosen, Steve Cotterill
• The Free Dynamos and the Lone Island in the Sky, Mike Phillips
• Of Kith and Kin, Howard Watts
• Barney Wilson, Kevin R. Bridges
• Glass Houses, David Tallerman
• Name the Planet, Ross Gresham

Convention report:

• Mr Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction Goes to FantasyCon, Stephen Theaker

Reviews:

• Doctor Who, The Daleks’ Master Plan, Part II: The Mutation of Time
• Doctor Who and the Terror of the Autons
• Doctor Who 133: City of Spires
• Blind Swimmer: an Eibonvale Press Anthology
• Blood Oath
• The Collected Connoisseur
• Crack’d Pot Trail
• The First Collected Tales of Bauchelain and Korbal Broach
• The Cult of Osiris
• Dinosaur Park
• Doctor Lerne, Subgod: the Scientific Marvel
• Fiction of Maurice Renard, Vol. 1
• The Empathy Effect
• Flirt
• Futile Flame
• Hell’s Belles!
• The House of Canted Steps
• Johannes Cabal the Detective
• The Library of Forgotten Books
• Ms Wildthyme and Friends Investigate
• The Occult Files of Albert Taylor
• Quartet & Triptych
• Rare Unsigned Copy
• The Terror and the Tortoiseshell
• Twisthorn Bellow
• Unpleasant Tales
• Magic Mirror: A Compendium of Comics 1983–1998
• Perfect Dark
• The Dinner Party
• Hunter Prey
• Ju-on: White Ghost / Ju-on: Black Ghost
• Iron Man 2
• A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
• Pandora and the Flying Dutchman
• The Storm Warriors

Here are the brilliant people who made this issue possible:

Kevin R. Bridges lives in the Pacific Northwest. (I would expand on Kevin’s bio to explain that the Pacific Northwest is part of the United States of America – but according to Feedbooks’ analytics the vast majority of our readers are actually American…)

Steve Cotterill lives and works in Birmingham.  He’s just starting out as a writer but his work has also appeared on the Horrorbound website and he is starting to plan his first novel.

Jacob Edwards is currently indentured to Australia’s speculative fiction flagship Andromeda Spaceways, as Jack of all Necessities (Deckchairs and Bendy Straws). To this issue he contributes a book review.

John Greenwood is the co-editor of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, as well as its most frequent contributor. His blog on rare and unusual books can be found at http://oxfambooksandmusicmoseley.blogspot.com.

Ross Gresham lives in Colorado. His contribution to this issue is “Name the Planet”. He previously contributed the excellent “Beyond the Fifth Sky” to Dark Horizons #54.

Rafe McGregor is is a crime fiction author who spends far too much of his time rereading the work of H.P. Lovecraft and M.R. James. He lives with his wife in a village near York.

Douglas Ogurek’s Roman Catholic faith and love of animals strongly influence his work. He lives in Gurnee, Illinois with his wife and their pets. To this issue he contributes a pair of movie reviews. To TQF33 he contributed the astonishing “NON”.

Mike Phillips grew up on a small farm in West Michigan, where every summer he would tend sheep, mend fences, garden, build furniture, chop wood, and goof off. The time remaining he spent reading.

David Tallerman is the author of around a hundred short stories, numerous poems, reviews, comic scripts, and at least one novel.  Publication highlights so far include appearances in Chiaroscuro, Space and Time, Flash Fiction Online, and John Joseph Adams’s zombie best-of anthology The Living Dead. For more see http://davidtallerman.net and http://davidtallerman.blogspot.com.

Stephen Theaker is the eponymous editor of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction. He wrote many but not all of this issue’s reviews, as well as the News & Notes and Contributors sections.

Jon Vagg mainly writes educational and coffee-table books. He is socially isolated, works late into the night and suffers from a highly deviant imagination. His stories have appeared, among other places, in Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #30, Ignavia 3.2 and Ballista #7.

Howard Watts is an artist from Brighton. He has previously supplied covers for Pantechnicon, Dark Horizons and TQF.

So that's that! We're now hoping to do another two issues by the end of the year, catching us right up, and then next year we'll settle into a regular quarterly schedule.

Paid to blog?

Amanda Rutter of Floor to Ceiling Books has admitted being paid to blog about Steven Erikson's Malazan books for Tor.com.

The posts originally appeared on the Tor.com website, where you wouldn't necessarily have assumed that they were impartial, but more problematically some also appeared on her own blog, where she called the series "one of the premier fantasy series of recent times".

I've really enjoyed reading her blog, and the Erikson books I've read were fantastic, but this isn't good, and I hope that paying bloggers to read books isn't a widespread practice.

In this case I think Tor.com were clearly commissioning the pieces for their own website, and it was only enthusiasm that saw them carried over to the personal blog too.

Just for the sake of being open and transparent on my own part, nearly all the books, films and audios reviewed on this blog, at least from the last year or so, were provided to us for review.