The Buried Life by Carrie Patel, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

In The Buried Life (Angry Robot, ebook, 4443ll) Carrie Patel tells the story of two women. Jane Lin is a laundry woman trusted by the height of high society to deal with their dirtiest and daintiest unmentionables. Liesl Malone is a police officer, currently getting used to a new partner with a theatrical background. They are brought together by a series of murders: Malone is shut out of the investigation – at least officially – but won’t let that stop her getting at the truth, while Jane is knocked unconscious after literally stumbling across the body of a Mr Fitzhugh during a late night laundry run. A conspiracy is afoot!

Injustice: Gods Among Us, Ultimate Edition, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Injustice: Gods Among Us (Xbox 360) begins in the aftermath of the nuclear destruction of Metropolis by the Joker. He’s in custody, being roughed up by Batman, when Superman turns up and gets uncharacteristically rougher. Then we cut to a scene of the Justice League fighting various villains, and, if we didn’t already know, we discover at last what kind of game this is: a 2D fighter, like The Way of the Exploding Fist without the tranquil backdrops. Each chapter of story mode lets us fight a few bouts as a well-known character, as “our” JLA is thrown into the dark dimension now ruled by a dictatorial Superman.

The Winds of Gath by E.C. Tubb (audiobook), reviewed by Stephen Theaker

The Winds of Gath (4 hrs 55, Wildside Press, Audible edition) is the first book in the long-running Dumarest Saga by E.C. Tubb. This is a new audio version produced by Wildside Press, and read by Rish Outfield. It could, however, have been book six or seven just as easily, since when we join Dumarest for this first time he is already an adult, already searching for Earth, already tested by circumstance and hardened by experience. This first novel is the most derivative of those I’ve read – it copies Dune very closely, with its own Bene Gesserit (the Matriarchs of Kund), mentats (the Cybers), a duel with a beautifully sculpted muscle man, a bedroom encounter with a flying assassin, etc. But it’s much shorter than Dune, much less portentous, and subsequent volumes do head off in new directions.

Deliver Us from Evil, reviewed by Douglas J. Ogurek

Demonic possession/police procedural mash-up delivers, but doesn’t stand among most hallowed horror films

A mysterious hooded figure hanging out at a zoo coaxes a woman into attempting to kill her child. So begins an investigation that will call into question Bronx cop Ralph Sarchie’s (Eric Bana) faith (or lack thereof) and sanity. 

Deliver Us from Evil (2014), directed by Scott Derrickson, adds a police procedural twist to levitate the film to above par status in the overdone demonic possession subgenre. During Sarchie’s journey, the viewer encounters a horde of proven scare tactics: disturbing video footage, creepy wall text and symbols, basement explorations, toys moving on their own, faces and bodies popping onto the screen, and sinister noises.

Terra Obscura: S.M.A.S.H. of Two Worlds, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Terra Obscura: S.M.A.S.H. of Two Worlds (Vertigo, tpb, 336pp), written by Peter Hogan, collects two mini-series set on Earth, though not our Earth, nor the Earth of Tom Strong, although he has visited. He dubbed this Terra Obscura. It mimics his home in many ways, and provides a home to super-heroes from the forties who have fallen out of copyright and trade mark protection, like the atomic-powered American Crusader, The Liberator, The Woman in Red, The Green Ghost and the Scarab.

A.B.C. Warriors: The Mek Files 01, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

The stories in A.B.C. Warriors: The Mek Files 01 (Rebellion, tpb, 308pp) are all written by Pat Mills, with artwork from a superstar cast of artists that includes Kevin O’Neill (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), Dave Gibbons (Watchmen), Brendan McCarthy, Mick McMahon, Carlos Ezquerra, Brett Ewins, and Simon Bisley (the only one I hadn’t heard of before is the mysterious S.M.S.). With a line-up like that you’d expect the book to be much better than it is, but it’s still pretty good.

Justice League of America, Vol. 1, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Justice League of America, Vol. 1 (DC Comics, tpb, 192pp) is mostly written by Geoff Johns, with most art by David Finch. It presents us with an all-new JLA B-team in the post-Flashpoint DC Universe, where, on the evidence of this book at least, continuity has quickly become as knotty as it was in the old one. The team is led by Steve Trevor, apparently fresh from romantic disentanglement with Wonder Woman, and also features Green Arrow, Katana, Vibe, Martian Manhunter, Stargirl, Hawkman, a ludicrously undressed Catwoman and a new (to me) Green Lantern.

Would save if my house burned down: Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer #bookaday

Why People Believe Weird Things by Michael Shermer (subtitled Pseudoscience, Superstition and Other Confusions of Our Time), is the book I would save if my house burned down, without a doubt. Not because it's a terrific book, although of course it is – chapter three in particular should be taught in schools - but because it is one of the first books on the first bookcase when you enter our house, on a shelf at chest height, and it sticks out from the other books on there.

Maleficent, reviewed by Douglas J. Ogurek

Mistress of All Evil repackaged as multidimensional heroine

Excepting the horror genre, not many films are named after a villain. Villainesses are even rarer. Moreover, it’s hard to find a fully developed hero in a contemporary special effects-heavy blockbuster.

Maleficent (2014), directed by Robert Stromberg, fills these gaps exquisitely by recasting the iconic Mistress of All Evil as a fairy born into a privileged, human-free life of gallivanting amid an idyllic forest filled with magical inhabitants. Then she meets the boy Stefan, who ultimately betrays her to assume the throne. Jilted lover Maleficent slaps a curse on King Stefan’s daughter: before her sixteenth birthday, Aurora will prick her finger on a spinning wheel needle and fall into an eternal sleep, lest she be awakened by true love’s kiss.

The one I have reread most often: The Slings & Arrows Comic Guide #bookaday

Doctor Who: The Television Companion by David J. Howe and Stephen James Walker was my first thought here. I must have read it all a dozen times over, bit by bit. You start by looking up a transmission date, then begin reading the analysis, and next thing you know it's time to go to bed and you're wondering where the day has gone.

Other Doctor Who books were contenders too - Planet of the Daleks, The Discontinuity Guide, The Claws of Axos (which I got in exchange for some marbles at middle school), Day of the Daleks (77p at Millers), and Image of the Fendahl (borrowed from the town library three or four times and read in a single night each time).

Then I thought about novels, like Planets for Sale by A.E. van Vogt and E. Mayne Hull (which led me to read loads of tedious A.E. van Vogt books before realising I should probably have been looking for E. Mayne Hull books), The Duelling Machine by Ben Bova, The Time Trip by Rob Swigart, The Stainless Steel Rat for President by Harry Harrison, or Biggles in France by Captain W.E. Johns.

But no, it had to be the second edition of The Slings & Arrows Comic Guide, edited by Frank Plowright, a wonderful series of critical essays surveying American comics from the 1930s to the present day. The other books I've read several times, but this book I've never stopped reading. It was published in 2003, over 3800 days ago, and I'd estimate I've read from this book on at least three quarters of those days.

Bought at my fave indie bookshop: Bone and Jewel Creatures at Weightless Books #bookaday

Millers in Keighley was my favourite independent bookshop as long as I lived there. It had a great mix of new and secondhand titles at a wide range of prices. It fed my hunger for science fiction for years. I would walk into town to save my bus fare so that I could afford to buy a 15p comic or three 5p books from the discard box. I bought loads of books there – lots of Moorcock, Doctor Who, Star Trek, The Sword of Shannara. Their new books had often been sitting on the shelves a while so they still had old prices on, making them more affordable than in other shops.

Her, reviewed by Jacob Edwards

Love bytes.

The Goodies episode “2001 and a bit” (1976) is perhaps the most fantastically offbeat of all the Goodies satires, extrapolating a violent yet progressive, absurdist future from the social mores and concerns of the mid-1970s. Each Goodie plays the lookalike son of one of the others – they were equally fond of Raquel (Welch, the picture from One Million Years B.C. would suggest), so when triplets came along they guessed and took one each – and in revealing whatever it was that became of Graeme, Tim confesses that, “He was put away for having an unnatural relationship [half-pause] with his computer.” Never mind that such an affair already had been the subject of “Women’s Lib” (1971), one memorable scene of which sees Graeme and his desk-sized desktop skipping hand-in-hand through the woods. In 1976 the idea still was ludicrous enough to power a good one-liner.

Want to be one of the characters: Plague Ship by Andre Norton #bookaday

For day twenty-seven of #bookaday we are asked for a book where we would want to be one of the characters. After rolling this around for a while I came up with Plague Ship by Andre Norton, and the other books in the Solar Queen series, Sargasso of Space and Postmarked the Stars.

I bought the pictured copy of Sargasso of Space this month in a secondhand bookshop on a seaside trip, got a chapter or two into it on the way home before realising I’d read it, and carried on anyway. Not sure where my Plague Ship is (I think it’s an ex-library yellow Gollancz edition) but I’ll add a photo if it turns up.

I love stories about science fiction traders, have done ever since playing Elite for the first time on a BBC Micro and reading Robert Holdstock’s tie-in novella The Dark Wheel. (Plug: see the Black Swan series by Mitchell Edgeworth in recent issues of TQF for another fine example of the type!)

The crew of the Solar Queen are capable and hard-working, and if I was forced to live in a place as dangerous as the interior of a novel, they'd be good people to be around. They understand the importance of good training and procedures, come up with good ideas, and are always ready to take advantage of a lucky break.

I considered James White’s Hospital Station and the Sector General series for similar reasons (plus it’d be nice to live in a galaxy like that where all problems have solutions), but the Solar Queen won out. I'd struggle with the pleasant bedside manner, and no one expects that of a space trader.

Should have sold more copies: Giant Thief by David Tallerman #bookaday

In doing this series of blog posts it seems polite to avoid promoting our own work, so I won’t pick The Mercury Annual, Pilgrims at the White Horizon, Five Forgotten Stories or any of our other titles, all of which should have sold more than the handful they did, and almost certainly would have if they had been published by a more active publisher!

So I’m going to pick instead Giant Thief by David Tallerman, the story of a thief who steals a giant and sets off on the world’s most exciting piggyback. I’ve no idea how well or otherwise it did, although two sequels were released. But it stands here for all the interesting books that Angry Robot have been publishing over the last few years.

Never finished it: Edge of Light by Robert Silverberg #bookaday

Today the #bookaday request is for a book you've not finished.

As you can see below, I had quite a lot to choose from. I'll get around to finishing all one hundred and thirty-six of them eventually, but I've gone for Edge of Light by Robert Silverberg as my book of the day.

It's an omnibus of five novels. I read the first two, and they were brilliant, but I never read the other three. (I've read a lot of his other books in the meantime, just not those ones.)

I love an omnibus, but as shown below I hardly ever finish them. Many of these are books I'm very fond of, like Songs of the Dying Earth.

(Titles and credits are from Goodreads and not checked; only first credited contributor listed; apologies for any errors in titles or attribution.)

• 52: Companion, Grant Morrison
• A Journey: My Political Life, Tony Blair
• A Logic Named Joe, Murray Leinster
• A Long Night at Abu Simbel, Penelope Lively
• A Pair From Space, James Blish
• Army of Darkness Omnibus, Volume 1, Sam Raimi
• Avant l'Incal (l'intégrale), Alejandro Jodorowsky
• Barnacle Bill The Spacer, And Other Stories, Lucius Shepard
• Be a Sex-Writing Strumpet, Stacia Kane
• BFS Journal Spring 2011, Allen Ashley
• BFS Journal Autumn 2011, Peter Coleborn
• BFS Journal Autumn 2012, Ian Hunter
• BFS Journal Spring 2012, Lou Morgan
• BFS Journal Summer 2011, Peter Coleborn
• BFS Journal Winter 2010, Sam Stone
• BFS Journal Winter 2011/2012, Peter Coleborn
• Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams, C.L. Moore
• Book of Prefaces, Alasdair Gray
• Bull Running for Girls, Allyson Bird
• Carmen et autres nouvelles, Prosper Mérimée
• Cities In Dust (Wasteland, #1), Antony Johnston
• Citizen Rex, Mario Hernandez
• Clarissa, or, the History of a Young Lady, Samuel Richardson
• Colomba et autres nouvelles, Prosper Mérimée
• Complete Stories, Rudy Rucker
• Darkness, Mist And Shadows: Volume 1 And 2: The Collected Macabre Tales Of Basil Copper, Basil Copper
• Do Not Pass Go, Joel Lane
• Doctor Who: The Child of Time, Jonathan Morris
• Doctor Who: Vanishing Point, Stephen Cole
• Don Juan, George Gordon Byron
• Don Quixote de La Mancha, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
• Edge of Light: The Robert Silverberg Omnibus, Robert Silverberg
• Empire Star / The Tree Lord of Imeten, Samuel R. Delany
• Essential Killraven, Vol. 1, Neal Adams
• Essential Punisher, Vol. 1, Gerry Conway
• Essential Works of Foucault (1954-1984), Volume 3: Power, Michel Foucault
• Fever Dream And Other Fantasies, Robert Bloch
• Filboid Studge, The Story Of A Mouse That Helped, Saki
• Four Gothic Novels: The Castle of Otranto; Vathek; The Monk; Frankenstein, Horace Walpole
• Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, Douglas R. Hofstadter
• Gotrek & Felix: The First Omnibus, William King
• Great Stories of Crime and Detection Volume II (The Twenties and Thirties), Various
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Harry Potter, #7), J.K. Rowling
• How I Escaped My Certain Fate, Stewart Lee
• Isis Unbound, Allyson Bird
• La Compagnie des glaces 1, Georges-Jean Arnaud
• Let the Galaxy Burn, Marc Gascoigne
• Lieut. Gulliver Jones: His Vacation, Edwin Lester Arnold
• Lion Time In Timbuctoo (The Collected Stories, Volume 6), Robert Silverberg
• Maps and Legends, Michael Chabon
• May We Borrow Your Husband & Other Comedies of the Sexual Life, Graham Greene
• McSweeney's #10, Michael Chabon
• McSweeney's #27, Dave Eggers
• McSweeney's #45, Dave Eggers
• Mrs. Pepperpot Stories, Alf Proysen
• Nancy Drew Files: #66,96, Carolyn Keene
• Night Watch (Discworld, #29), Terry Pratchett
• Noddy: A Classic Treasury, Enid Blyton
• NOS4A2: A Novel, Joe Hill
• Odyssey, William Shatner
• Postscripts 14, Nick Gevers
• Ragmop, Rob Walton
• Rain, Conrad Williams
• Rainbow Six, Tom Clancy
• Rising Stars Compendium, J. Michael Straczynski
• Rupert: A Collection Of Favourite Stories, Alfred Bestall
• Rustblind and Silverbright - A Slipstream Anthology of Railway Stories, David Rix
• Sea-Kings of Mars and Otherworldly Stories, Leigh Brackett
• Selected Stories of Rudyard Kipling, Andrew Rutherford
• Showcase Presents: Ambush Bug, Keith Giffen
• Showcase Presents: Green Arrow, Jack Kirby
• Showcase Presents: Jonah Hex, Vol. 1, John Albano
• Showcase Presents: Justice League of America, Vol. 2, Gardner F. Fox
• Showcase Presents: Phantom Stranger, Vol. 1, Robert Kanigher
• Showcase Presents: The House of Mystery, Vol. 1, Len Wein
• Showcase Presents: The Unknown Soldier, Vol. 1, Joe Kubert
• Showcase Presents: The War That Time Forgot, Vol. 1, Robert Kanigher
• Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honour of Jack Vance, George R.R. Martin
• Space War (Professor Jameson Space Adventure #3), Neil R. Jones
• Star Trek: Logs 7–10, Alan Dean Foster
• Starstruck Deluxe Edition, Elaine Lee
• Stonewielder, Ian C. Esslemont
• Teatro Grottesco, Thomas Ligotti
• Test Pattern: Jonathan Hickman Collection, Volume 1, Jonathan Hickman
• The Amber Spyglass (His Dark Materials, #3), Philip Pullman
• The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories, John Kessel
• The Best American Comics 2011, Alison Bechdel
• The Best Of Fritz Leiber, Fritz Leiber
• The Best of McSweeney's, Dave Eggers
• The Book of the Thousand and One Nights. Volume 1, Anonymous
• The Burning Circus, Johnny Mains
• The Carl Hiaasen Omnibus: Tourist Season, Double Whammy And Skin Tight, Carl Hiaasen
• The Centauri Device, M. John Harrison
• The Chandler Collection: Volume 1, Raymond Chandler
• The Collected Stories, Katherine Mansfield
• The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard, Elmore Leonard
• The Dark is Rising Sequence, Susan Cooper
• The Dirty Dozen: The Best 12 Commando Books Ever!. Edited by George Low, George Low
• The Drawing of the Three (The Dark Tower, #2), Stephen King
• The Dudley Smith Trio, James Ellroy
• The Ends of the Earth, Lucius Shepard
• The Expelled (Penguin Mini Modern Classics), Samuel Beckett
• The Finder Library, Volume 1, Carla Speed McNeil
• The Five Great Novels Of James M. Cain., James M. Cain
• The Halfling: And Other Stories, Leigh Brackett
• The John Franklin Bardin Omnibus, John Franklin Bardin
• The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 19, Stephen Jones
• The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 16, Gardner R. Dozois
• The Mammoth Book of Contemporary SF Masters, Gardner R. Dozois
• The Matrix Comics Vol 1, Geof Darrow
• The New Avengers Vol. 1, Brian Michael Bendis
• The New Nature of the Catastrophe (Tale of the Eternal Champion, #9), Michael Moorcock
• The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
• The Planet of the Double Sun (Professor Jameson #1), Neil R. Jones
• The Polish Officer, Alan Furst
• The Richard Laymon Collection, Volume 4: Beware / Dark Mountain, Richard Laymon
• The Sam Gunn Omnibus, Ben Bova
• The Savage Sword of Conan, Volume 3, Roy Thomas
• The Shockwave Rider, John Brunner
• The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Stories (Penguin Classics), Robert Louis Stevenson
• The Very Best of Gene Wolfe, Gene Wolfe
• The Weird: A Compendium of Dark and Strange Fictions, Ann VanderMeer
• The World Treasury of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics, Timothy Ferris
• Them: Adventures with Extremists, Jon Ronson
• Time Patrol, Poul Anderson
• Un Lun Dun, China Miéville
• Uncle Tungsten, Oliver Sacks
• Unexpected Journeys, Juliet E. McKenna
• Unlikely Stories, Mostly, Alasdair Gray
• Valérian et Laureline l'Intégrale, volume 2, Pierre Christin
• Voice of the Fire, Alan Moore
• War and Peace (Konemann Classics), Leo Tolstoy
• Warlock, Andre Norton
• Yesterday's Tomorrows, Rian Hughes
• Young Miles (Vorkosigan Omnibus, #2), Lois McMaster Bujold
• Zombies in New York and Other Bloody Jottings, Sam Stone

Hooked me into reading: Star Trek 10 by James Blish #bookaday

Today I have to choose a book that hooked me into reading.

I could have gone for the Peter and Jane books, or the works of Enid Blyton, particularly The Enchanted Wood, The Magic Faraway Tree and The Wishing Chair. Or the Target Doctor Who books. They all played a huge part in giving me a love of reading and teaching me how to do it.

But I decided instead to highlight Star Trek 10 by James Blish, a true watershed book: the first book I got out from the big library!

True Detective, Season 1, reviewed by Stephen Theaker

Is True Detective, Season 1 (Sky Atlantic, TV, 8 episodes) a crime programme or a supernatural programme? Even by the end I wasn’t entirely sure, though I suppose the title is a clue. I’ll hedge my bets and call it horror.

The series tells the story of two police officers in Louisiana working together for the first time. Marty Hart (Woody Harrelson) is a family man cheating on his wife (Michelle Monaghan). Rust Cohle, played by an incandescent Matthew McConaughey, is a loner with a bare apartment who cribs his bleak philosophy of life from the likes of Thomas Ligotti. They don’t get on – a shame given how much time they’ll spend stuck in a car together.

Made to read at school: Les Mains Sales by Jean-Paul Sartre #bookaday

Not many books could be said to have truly changed my life, but my pick for day 23 of #bookaday is one. Unlike John, I wasn't very good at French, but when we studied Les Mains Sales by Jean-Paul Sartre I (a) loved it and (b) got straight As for my GCSE essays about it.

As a result of this surprising development I took French at A-Level, and after that at degree level, which is bizarre given that I was never any good at understanding or speaking the language. The oral exam for my degree went so badly that bellows of laughter broke out as I left the room! I used English words at one point!

Out of print: Philip Jose Farmer conquiert l'univers #bookaday

Day 22 of #bookaday, and we're supposed to name a book that's out of print. This one probably is: Philip Jose Farmer conquiert l'univers by Francois Mottier.

I found this on a secondhand bookstall in Tourcoing, near Lille, while spending a year there as a teaching assistant. I was terrible at it. Never have so many pupils played so many games of hangman.

Summer read: The Best of Archie Comics #bookaday

Day 21 of #bookaday (though I only started on day 4 and began blogging about it on day 5) is for naming summer reads. When I'm on holiday I try to avoid reading anything that gives me work to do, i.e. books I'll owe a review. It's a time for reading magazines, Doctor Who books, Penguin 60s and mini moderns, non-fiction, humour, and most of all: comics.

So my pick today is The Best of Archie Comics, a cheap four-hundred page collection of stories about everyone's favourite two-timer and his chums.

Archie comics are bright and cheerful and require absolutely no thought or effort - perfect for holidays. They are available in vast quantities at cheap prices, which is exactly how I like my comics. And best of all, our children often buy them with their own pocket money. Sometimes these even make me laugh out loud, usually when Jughead is involved. How does he keep his figure?