Elvenquest: The Complete Second Series, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Elvenquest: The Complete Second Series (Audible edition, 2 hr 46) by Anil Gupta and Richard Pinto, sees the questers – Lord Vidar the elf, Dean the dwarf, Penthiselea the Amazon princess, Amis the chosen one (a former dog), and his owner Sam – unapologetically sent back to square one in their quest for the sword of Aznagar. It is once more abroad in the land! The subsequent adventures of this daft bunch are typically caused by their greed, lust, laziness and selfishness, and a general lack of appreciation for each other. Plots come second to jokes.

Meanwhile, villainous Lord Darkness, having made his way back to this world from another dimension, must recover his lost immortality, persuade bankers to lend him enough money to pay his mighty armies, and deal with personnel issues – the infernal horde find him a bit intimidating. His conversations with assistant Creech (similar to those of Blackadder and Baldrick) provide many of the programme’s funniest moments.

Makes me laugh: Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams #bookaday

Today's #bookaday question asks for a book that makes me laugh. Naturally, my first thought went to Groo the Wanderer, which is probably the funniest thing in the world.

Then I thought of Asterix. I often do! A couple of weeks ago, when someone asked for the dimensions of the new British Fantasy Award, my first impulse was to say, larger than the pen of my aunt, but smaller than the garden of my uncle. (My second impulse was to say, just the usual three. But that isn't a quote from Asterix.)

I pretend to (or might give the impression I) have read it: McSweeney's Quarterly Concern #bookaday

Today's #bookaday challenge is to name a book I pretend to have read. I can't think of a proper example of that. Obviously, at university there would be the occasional tutorial about a book or play I was supposed to have read, but I would usually be able to read ahead fast enough in class that I never needed to actually fib.

But here's my confession: much as I adore it, I haven't finished reading very many issues of McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. I've finished #22 (with the magnets), #26 (new stories from home and overseas) and #28 (the little hardbacks), but that's about it. The rest are doomed to eternal dipping.

In fact, I finish very few anthologies at all, and the same goes for fiction magazines. It's not that I don't enjoy them, it's just that after a couple of stories a novel nuzzles its way in and I never get around to reading the rest. That's why you don't see many reviews of magazines or anthologies on here.

It's especially odd when you consider that McSweeney's #10 (the Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales) inspired me to start this zine in the first place. Forty-seven issues of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction later, I still haven't finished the book that inspired it. Shame on me!

Secondhand bookshop gem: The Dying Earth by Jack Vance #bookaday

Today's #bookaday challenge is to declare one of your books a secondhand bookshop gem. So many to choose from on my shelves! Apologies for the poor quality photographs that follow – these are all from my own collection.

Should I go for bona fide classics like the works of Philip K. Dick, Michael Moorcock, and Brian Aldiss? Here are The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, The Lives and Times of Jerry Cornelius and Barefoot in the Head.

R.L. Fanthorpe or Perry Rhodan, titans of the secondhand scene? Here are The Unconfined and UFO 517 (Fanthorpe there writing as Bron Fane) and Perry Rhodan 20: The Thrall of Hypno.

An American book that found its way to a UK bookshop in the days when that was still unusual, like Henry Kuttner's Return to Otherness? Or the kind of books you only ever seem to see second-hand, like Casca (a Roman soldier who stuck the spear into Jesus's side and is cursed to immortality) and Venus on the Half-Shell (by Kilgore Trout, as channelled by Philip Jose Farmer)?

Unread curios like On the Symb-Socket Circuit, Blood Sport and The Game of Fox and Lion by Kenneth Bulmer, Robert F. Jones and Robert R. Chase? What are these books, why did I buy them, and should I read them?

Lesser known works by superstar authors like Ursula K. LeGuin, Christopher Priest or Robert Silverberg, like Planet of Exile, Fugue for a Darkening Island and World's Fair 1992?

What about the mindblowing Best of Cordwainer Smith, found in a mysterious bookshop at a farm in Reading? A shop I only ever visited once, and yet I struck gold! Just reading the introduction was enough to knock me for six. I even wrote a poem about it.

All good contenders, but in the end there can be only one, and it's got to be The Dying Earth by Jack Vance, found in a junkshop in Keighley, bought for 5p and read in full on a coach trip to France. I might possibly have read the Planet of Adventure omnibus first, I'm not absolutely sure of the dates, but this was the book that made Vance one of my all-time favourites, and I could so easily have missed it. The shop I bought it in doesn't even exist any more.

Reminds me of someone I love: Little Miss Lorelei and Telzey Amberdon #bookaday

Today's #bookaday challenge is to find a book that reminds you of someone you love. Two books today, because I can't choose a book that reminds me of one daughter without choosing a book that reminds me of the other, or there will be hell to pay!

The first book here, Little Miss Lorelei, reminds me of my older daughter, which is hardly a surprise since I wrote and drew it as a present for her! Took an absolute age, because I sketched, then pencilled, then inked, then digitally coloured every page, but it was worth the effort. For obvious reasons this book has never been on sale, but you can help yourself to a free pdf copy if you want to laugh at my terrible drawings! (It's just a bit of fanfiction, but of course I'll take it down if the Roger Hargreaves estate or anyone owning the relevant trade marks or licenses asks me to.)

The other book I'm choosing is Telzey Amberdon by James H. Schmitz, which is where we found the name for our younger daughter. I was a bit unsure about using the name at first, because from one point of view the fictional Telzey becomes a bit dodgy, manipulating people's minds in a way you'd normally associate with a villain. But never mind. We took it on a playground test before making our final decision, taking our first daughter to the park and telling her that her name was Telzey for the hour to see if we would feel embarrassed about shouting it out. We did not, and the rest is Theaker family history.

The Clockwork Muse by Eviatar Zerubavel, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

I wish I had read The Clockwork Muse (Harvard, pb, 112pp) by Eviatar Zerubavel a decade or so ago. If I had, maybe I’d have an MA from the OU now instead of a measly postgraduate diploma. My dissertation work was interrupted by our first baby – boo-hoo, poor me! – but this would have taught me to plan properly for that interruption, and to keep pushing forward, rather than waiting for an endlessly receding week off when I would catch up on everything.

It is a short but intensely useful book about the importance of scheduling time for writing and making an ongoing effort instead of relying on unpredictable bursts of inspiration. As the title indicates, it’s an unromantic view of the creative process. Who would want a clockwork muse, you’d think? But as the subtitle says, this is “A Practical Guide” to getting the book done, a guide to doing the job without leaving blood on the keyboard and a trail of broken marriages in your wake.

Film or TV tie-in: Doctor Who: Death and Diplomacy by Dave Stone #bookaday

The #bookaday challenge for today is to name a film or TV tie-in. Not a struggle! I looked up at my bookshelves and the first one I saw was Death and Diplomacy by Dave Stone. I haven't read it, but it features a post-Ace seventh Doctor with new companions Bernice Summerfield, Roz Forrester and Chris Cwej.

According to a rough search of my Goodreads list, I've read two hundred and twelve Doctor Who books. I own another eighty-seven that I haven't yet read, including Death and Diplomacy, and there are two that I haven't finished. Must get around to all of those sometime! If history's anything to go on, it'll be when I'm supposed to be revising for exams.

I first got into the Doctor Who New Adventures during my final year of university after finding a brand new copy of Lucifer Rising among the discards for sale at Reading Library. I hadn't even watched the later Sylvester McCoy years. Loving that one, I bought as many as I could find in that town's excellent secondhand bookshops and devoured them, all out of order.

At the moment I'm greatly excited about the forthcoming War Doctor novel, Engines of War.

Have more than one copy: Fountain City by Michael Chabon #bookaday

Today's #bookaday challenge is to name a book of which you have more than one copy. I don't buy second copies of many books. I had to read books twice all the time as a kid, but I'm spoilt for choice now: there are 1294 unread books on my shelves, plus 192 review copies and 136 unfinished books! I once had two copies of La petite marchande de prose (one bought solo, one in a box set) by Daniel Pennac, but I'm not sure I do now. And I didn't want to count books where I happen to have two review copies, because they aren't a permanent part of my collection.

Forgot I owned it: Diary of a Spaceperson by Chris Foss #bookaday

Today's #bookaday is to think of a book that you forgot you owned, and what came to mind for me was Diary of a Spaceperson by Chris Foss.

I completely forgot about this art book until it came up last year in my review of The Resurrectionist. Before that review went live I wanted to check who had written the text of Spaceperson, and began to wonder if I still had the book.

After a bit of rummaging, I found it in the spare room, along with similar books by Chris Achilleos and Boris Vallejo.

This a weird book. I love the spaceships and robots, which I knew best from his wonderful covers for writers like Isaac Asimov and E.E. "Doc" Smith, and they're all in here, often displayed in epic double-page spreads. If that was all there was to the book, it would be one of my all-time favourites.

However, it also contains lots of awkward black and white illustrations of women with their tops off, and text to link it all together that is all in italics. It's to make it look like a handwritten diary, but still:  an entire book in italics! It made it very hard to read.

Nevertheless, I was very glad to find I still have it. It's not the kind of book I'd normally have been able to afford in my school days, so my thanks go to the late-lamented Fantasy & SF Book Club, with its wonderful joining offers in the Radio Times.

British Fantasy Awards 2014: the nominees

I'm running the British Fantasy Awards again this year, which has been a fair bit of work, let me tell you! Here are the 2014 shortlists:

Best Fantasy Novel (the Robert Holdstock Award)
Between Two Thorns, Emma Newman (Angry Robot)
Blood and Feathers: Rebellion, Lou Morgan (Solaris)
The Glass Republic, Tom Pollock (Jo Fletcher Books)
The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Neil Gaiman (Headline)
A Stranger in Olondria, Sofia Samatar (Small Beer Press)

Best Horror Novel (the August Derleth Award)
House of Small Shadows, Adam Nevill (Pan)
Mayhem, Sarah Pinborough (Jo Fletcher Books)
NOS4R2, Joe Hill (Gollancz)
Path of Needles, Alison Littlewood (Jo Fletcher Books)
The Shining Girls, Lauren Beukes (HarperCollins)
The Year of the Ladybird, Graham Joyce (Gollancz)

Best Novella
Beauty, Sarah Pinborough (Gollancz)
Dogs With Their Eyes Shut, Paul Meloy (PS Publishing)
Spin, Nina Allan (TTA Press)
Vivian Guppy and the Brighton Belle, Nina Allan (Rustblind and Silverbright)
Whitstable, Stephen Volk (Spectral Press)

Best Short Story
Chalk, Pat Cadigan (This Is Horror)
Death Walks En Pointe, Thana Niveau (The Burning Circus)
Family Business, Adrian Tchaikovsky (The Alchemy Press Book of Urban Mythic)
The Fox, Conrad Williams (This Is Horror)
Golden Apple, Sophia McDougall (The Lowest Heaven)
Moonstruck, Karin Tidbeck (Shadows & Tall Trees #5)
Signs of the Times, Carole Johnstone (Black Static #33)

Best Collection
For Those Who Dream Monsters, Anna Taborska (Mortbury Press)
Holes for Faces, Ramsey Campbell (Dark Regions Press)
Monsters in the Heart, Stephen Volk (Gray Friar Press)
North American Lake Monsters, Nathan Ballingrud (Small Beer Press)

Best Anthology
End of the Road, Jonathan Oliver (ed.) (Solaris)
Fearie Tales, Stephen Jones (ed.) (Jo Fletcher Books)
Rustblind and Silverbright, David Rix (ed.) (Eibonvale Press)
Tales of Eve, Mhairi Simpson (ed.) (Fox Spirit Books)
The Tenth Black Book of Horror, Charles Black (ed.) (Mortbury Press)

Best Small Press
The Alchemy Press (Peter Coleborn)
Fox Spirit Books (Adele Wearing)
NewCon Press (Ian Whates)
Spectral Press (Simon Marshall-Jones)

Best Non-Fiction
Gestalt Real-Time Reviews, D.F. Lewis
Doors to Elsewhere, Mike Barrett (The Alchemy Press)
Fantasy Faction, Marc Aplin (ed.)
Speculative Fiction 2012, Justin Landon and Jared Shurin (eds) (Jurassic London)
"We Have Always Fought": Challenging the "Women, Cattle and Slaves" Narrative, Kameron Hurley (A Dribble of Ink)

Best Magazine/Periodical
Black Static, Andy Cox (ed.) (TTA Press)
Clarkesworld, Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace (ed.) (Wyrm Publishing)
Interzone, Andy Cox (ed.) (TTA Press)
Shadows & Tall Trees, Michael Kelly (ed.) (Undertow Books)

Best Comic/Graphic Novel
Demeter, Becky Cloonan (Becky Cloonan)
Jennifer Wilde, Maura McHugh, Karen Mahoney and Stephen Downey (Atomic Diner Comics)
Porcelain, Benjamin Read and Chris Wildgoose (Improper Books)
Rachel Rising, Terry Moore (Abstract Studio)
Saga, Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples (Image Comics)
The Unwritten, Mike Carey and Peter Gross (Vertigo)

Best Artist
Adam Oehlers
Ben Baldwin
Daniele Serra
Joey Hi-Fi
Tula Lotay
Vincent Chong

Best Film/Television Episode
Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor, Steven Moffat (BBC)
Game of Thrones: The Rains of Castamere, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (HBO)
Gravity, Alfonso Cuarón and Jonás Cuarón (Warner Bros)
The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro (Warner Bros)
Iron Man 3, Drew Pearce and Shane Black (Marvel Studios)

Best Newcomer (the Sydney J. Bounds Award)
Ann Leckie, for Ancillary Justice (Orbit)
Emma Newman, for Between Two Thorns (Angry Robot)
Francis Knight, for Fade to Black (Orbit)
Laura Lam, for Pantomime (Strange Chemistry)
Libby McGugan, for The Eidolon (Solaris)
Samantha Shannon, for The Bone Season (Bloomsbury)

The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony at FantasyCon 2014 in York in September.

Doctor Who: The Web of Fear, reviewed by Jacob Edwards

Consigned to white noise for forty-five years, now lumbering forth and dusting off the cobwebs. (BBC Worldwide, 2014, dir. Douglas Camfield, first broadcast 3 February – 9 March 1968.)

Anybody not familiar with the BBC’s notorious junking policy should, of course, make every effort to remain in that blissful state of ignorance. Most Doctor Who fans, however, are all too well acquainted with the directive that set ruthless (if occasionally scatter-brained) Terminators to work tracking down and erasing old black and white recordings, not only from the BBC Archives themselves but seemingly also from anywhere else where the footage might have taken shelter. Several William Hartnell serials and a tragic number of Patrick Troughton adventures were consigned to oblivion, the abject result being that when the Doctor Who: Lost in Time collection was released in 2004, gathering together orphaned episodes and foreign-housed refugees from the great purge, fans didn’t so much cry tears of joy as weep dolefully at the sight of their televisual Shroud of Turin reduced to such moth-eaten tatters. And yet, every once in a while, a lost piece of Doctor Who will turn up. In 2013, four of the five missing episodes from The Web of Fear were tracked down in Nigeria (an erstwhile purchaser of BBC exports) and repatriated with a suitable mixture of pomp, ceremony, embarrassment and fingernails-down-the-blackboard angst. Available previously only in novelised form (by Terrance Dicks, writing against the clock and to a strict word limit), and as an audio recording with explicative narrative by Frazer Hines (Jamie), this fondly remembered story now may be salivated over in (nearly) all its glory.

The one I always give as a gift: Adventures in Oz by Eric Shanower #bookaday

Today's #bookaday asks us to pick a book we always give as a gift. This was an easy one for me: Eric Shanower's Adventures in Oz. We must have bought this book six or seven times by now, once for our kids and then the rest for nieces, nephews and the children's schoolfriends.

This has many of the attributes of a great book present: I've read it and know how brilliant it is; it's not terribly well-known in the UK so the chances are small that anyone will already have it; it has the heft of a proper present; it's very colourful; it goes down well with parents because it looks quite fancy; and if the child likes this it could be their gateway into lots of other books.

It's currently available in two chunks, as Little Adventures in Oz Book 1 and Little Adventures in Oz Book 2.

Doesn't belong to me: Doctor Who: The Encyclopedia #bookaday

The Borough Press, a HarperCollins imprint, has started a daily meme asking people to name a book a day. You can see the full list of questions here. Not really worth writing a blog post about, but it's late, I'm a bit worn out after working very hard, and I don't want to break my writing streak, so an undemanding meme fits the bill very nicely.

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

In The Goblin Emperor (Tor, ebook, 6853ll) Katherine Addison (a name which is, as the dedication hints, a pseudonym) introduces us to Maia, an angry young man exiled to the middle of nowhere with a violent, oppressive guardian: his cousin Setheris. He wakes to the news that his father and older brothers have perished in an airship disaster, the Wisdom of Choharo having crashed with no survivors on the way back from a wedding.

His deadbeat dad was Varenechibel the Fourth, 208th emperor of the Elflands. His mother, Chenelo Drazharan, was a goblin, married off to the emperor for political reasons. Maia was the accident of the marriage’s single act of consummation. In looks, he takes after his mother, which would draw the distrust of the elves even if they weren’t faced with him becoming their new emperor.

New Amsterdam by Elizabeth Bear, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Technology has changed reading in many ways, and one of them is that it’s rarer now to read a book in ignorance; we frequently come to books having read, or at least glimpsed from the corner of our eyes, dozens of Amazon or Goodreads reviews, seen breathless recommendations from Twitter users, or even watched the trailer. And so New Amsterdam by Elizabeth Bear (Subterranean Press, ebook, 4797ll), which I bought in epub from the Weightless bookstore on the basis of its wonderful cover by Patrick Arrasmith, was able to give me a pleasure I had long-forgotten: beginning to read a book, and slowly realising it’s in the same series as another book I liked a lot! It took me back to reading The Last Battle as a child, and part-way in thinking, Hang on, wasn’t this Aslan guy in that cartoon I saw at Christmas?

Costume Not Included by Matthew Hughes, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

When last we left him, Chesney Arnstruther had set himself up as a superhero – The Actionary – found himself a nice girlfriend, Melda McCann, and caused significant problems for the bad guys, up to and including Lucifer himself. It was trouble twixt heaven and hell that got him his super-powers in the first place, a by-product of a negotiation between the two post-mortem destinations. That all happened in The Damned Busters, book one in the To Hell and Back series, reviewed in #37. Costume Not Included (Angry Robot, ebook, 4432ll) is book two, and it continues from the first book pretty much directly.

Godzilla (2014), reviewed by Stephen Theaker

By my count the new Godzilla, directed by Gareth Edwards, is the twenty-third I’ve seen, the first being King Kong vs Godzilla on Saturday morning television as a child, the most recent Godzilla, Mothra, King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, a week before this new American production came out. This is the first appearance of the monster since Godzilla: Final Wars, which underperformed at the Japanese box office but did give us the pleasure of seeing baby Godzilla ride in a truck and Roland Emmerich’s female Godzilla fighting her Japanese inspiration. (It wasn’t a long fight.) For the uninitiated: there are three runs of Japanese Godzilla films: the original Shōwa series, from Godzilla in 1954 to Terror of Mechagodzilla in 1975, the rebooted Heisei series, from Godzilla 1984 through to Godzilla vs Destroyah in 1995, and lastly, after the America Godzilla of 1998 failed to produce any sequels, the Millennium series of standalone films, from Godzilla 2000 in 1999 through to Godzilla: Final Wars in 2004. Most Godzilla films are entertaining (even the really bad ones, like Godzilla vs Hedorah), though the lack of variety does make you wonder why quite so many of them were made.

Interzone #252 coming soon (featuring a page by me)

Interzone #252 is out soon, including my review of Nnedi Okorafor's Lagoon. Appearing in Interzone will never stop being exciting, even if it is jolly hard work - I can't quite blather, gush or rant like I do in my more self-indulgent reviews for TQF.

Other reviewers in this issue are Nick Lowe, Tony Lee, Andy Hedgecock, Jo L. Walton, Paul F. Cockburn, Paul Kincaid, Duncan Lunan, Simon Marshall-Jones, Matthew S. Dent, Maureen Kincaid Speller, Jack Deighton, Barbara Melville, Lawrence Osborn and Peter Tennant.

There are six stories in this issue: The Posset Pot by Neil Williamson, The Mortuaries by Katharine E.K. Duckett, Diving Into The Wreck by Val Nolan, Two Truths And A Lie by Oliver Buckram, A Brief Light by Claire Humphrey, Sleepers by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam. And those are illustrated by Richard Wagner, Warwick Fraser-Coombe, Wayne Haag and Martin Hanford.

There's also the next instalment of Jonathan McCalmont's excellent and provocative Future Interrupted column, David Langford's Ansible Link, and an interview with Neil Williamson about his new novel The Moon King (which is already on my Kindle).

More information and subscription details on the TTA Press website.

PS. Look out too for Black Static #40. Doesn't feature me this time, but it's from the same publisher and is produced to the same high standard.

Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #47 – out now!

Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #47. Didn’t think we would get this far, did you? You thought we’d fall for your pathetic little traps. The giant toothpicks in the walls. The pits filled with rabid badgers. The radioactive bananas.

But we survived all of that, and here we are with another issue of probably the best fantasy zine in the world! (Though once again we missed out on a Hugo nomination. It’s almost as if the voters don’t know we exist! Either that or we seem so utterly professional that we must surely be a semiprozine, if not a fully-fledged magazine! Yes, that must be it.)

So here is Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #47, unburdened by awards, and bouncing with glee, ready to make you slightly happier than you already are: free epub, free mobi, free pdf, print UK, print USA, Kindle UK store, Kindle US store.

It features four stories. “Abandon” by Mitchell Edgeworth takes the Black Swan into spooky territory. Antonella Coriander, who almost definitely exists, and is almost definitely not a pseudonym used to disguise our woeful lack of female contributors, begins her new serial Les Aventures Fantastiques de Beatrice et Veronique with “Bike Ride to Peril”.

In Chris Roper’s story “Witchinga” a guy finds out that there are worse things than losing your job, even in the USA. And finally Anthony Malone’s satire “Zombie & Son” does its best to get us into legal trouble with a parody of beloved members of the British establishment which almost certainly does not reflect the real nature of any of the persons concerned.

The issue also includes reviews by Stephen Theaker, Douglas J. Ogurek and Jacob Edwards of: Divergent, Doctor Who: The Web of Fear, Elvenquest: The Complete Second Series, The Exploits of Engelbrecht by Maurice Richardson, Ghost Train to New Orleans by Mur Lafferty, The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza by James Kochalka, Her, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, I, Frankenstein, Justice League of America, Vol. 1, New Amsterdam by Elizabeth Bear, Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, Template by Matthew Hughes, Terra Obscura: S.M.A.S.H. of Two Worlds, The Winds of Gath by E.C. Tubb, and Wonder Woman Unbound by Tim Hanley.

These swanky shoes are brought to you by the following elves:

Anthony Malone’s fiction has been published in Murky Depths, The Delinquent, Lowestoft Chronicle, The Quotable, Mad Swirl, Litro Online, Bull Magazine and many others and his short stories are included in the anthologies Villainy (Halls Brothers Entertainment), Dieselpunk (Static Movement), Cup of Joe (Wicked East Press) and others. He has read at numerous Live–Lit events and recorded for London Link Radio. He lives in London. Website: www.anthonymalone.co.uk.

Antonella Coriander has not previously been published, to her great dismay. Her story in this issue is the first in what we hope will be a new ongoing Oulippean serial.

Chris Roper writes, teaches and takes photographs in Vietnam.

Douglas J. Ogurek’s work has appeared in the BFS Journal, The Literary Review, Morpheus Tales, Gone Lawn, and several anthologies. He lives in a Chicago suburb with the woman whose husband he is and their five pets. In this issue he reviews Divergent, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, I, Frankenstein and Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones. His website: www.douglasjogurek.weebly.com.

Howard Watts is a writer, artist and composer living in Seaford who provides the lovely cover art for this issue, illustrating a hypothetical moment of rest from Antonella’s story. His DeviantArt page is here.

Jacob Edwards belongs in truth to Australia’s speculative fiction flagship Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, but we’re happy to be his bit on the side. This writer, poet and recovering lexiphanicist’s website is at: www.jacobedwards.id.au. In this issue he reviews Doctor Who: The Web of Fear and Her.

Mitchell Edgeworth has recently left Australia for pastures new. His fiction has been published in Pseudopod and SQ Mag, as well as here. He keeps a blog at www.grubstreethack.wordpress.com and tweets as @mitchedgeworth. “Abandon” is the latest in his Black Swan series to appear in these pages. Like everything we publish, it can be read quite happily in isolation, but if you want to find out how the Black Swan got off the ground and into business, see his stories in #40 (“Homecoming”), #42 (“Drydock”), #43 (“Flight”) and #46 (“Customs”).

Stephen Theaker reviews a bunch of interesting things in this issue: Elvenquest: The Complete Second Series, The Exploits of Engelbrecht, Ghost Train to New Orleans, The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza, Justice League of America, Vol. 1, New Amsterdam, Template, Terra Obscura: S.M.A.S.H. of Two Worlds, The Winds of Gath and Wonder Woman Unbound. He liked some of them very much. For those readers who care about such things, four of those were purchases, four were supplied by the publishers via NetGalley, one was supplied by the publisher via Audible, and one was a birthday present. Theaker’s work has also appeared in Black Static, Interzone, Prism and the BFS Journal.

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Bonus! To celebrate this new issue, all our Amazon exclusive ebooks are absolutely free this week (the offers should kick in over the course of the day): Professor Challenger in Space, Quiet, the Tin Can Brains Are Hunting!, The Fear Man, Howard Phillips in His Nerves Extruded, Howard Phillips and the Doom That Came to Sea Base Delta, Howard Phillips and the Day the Moon Wept Blood, The Mercury Annual and Pilgrims at the White Horizon.

All 46 back issues of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction are available for free download.

The Strange Talent of Luther Strode, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

You would be forgiven for thinking that The Strange Talent of Luther Strode (Image, tpb, 162pp) must be related to getting himself published despite the poorness of his book. As well as his megamuscles and talent for ultraviolence, he must be extremely persuasive. Either that or writer Justin Jordan and artist Tradd Moore know where the Image Comics skeletons are kept.

As the book begins, Luther has just been shot seven times in the chest, but he’s caught the bullets in his muscles, and works out how to push them back out. He’s also just killed half a dozen guys by kicking and punching them so hard they exploded. And he’s got X-ray vision, which helps when he’s looking for weak spots.