Theaker's Quarterly Fiction 32

You can get the two parts of this issue free from us by clicking on the covers to the right (we've run out of free webspace here at Blueyonder – and we're too cheap to buy any – so this and future issues are shared via Google Docs instead). Paper copies of the two, arranged as a fancy flipbook, are available to purchase from Lulu. See Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #32 with Pantechnicon #10 on Lulu. They are also available from Feedbooks for free download in various formats to read on your Kindle, Sony Reader, iLiad etc, and even in a simplified pdf that might be handy for anyone reading the issue onscreen.

New Friends and Old!

This is rather a sad issue for us here at Silver Age Books. For one thing, we’d hoped for many, many years that with issue 32 we would finally catch up with McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern – in terms of issue numbers if nothing else. It was a silly, arbitrary goal, but one that kept us going through the long Sundays of proofreading. But it wasn’t to be: we’ve produced this issue a bit late, and those literary rascals at McSweeney’s managed to sneak out an issue 33 just as the year turned. We could console ourselves with the thought that Hamish Hamilton have yet to release issue 33 in the UK, but it feels hollow. Blast the erudite, beautiful hide of Dave Eggers and all who work in his dungeons!

The second reason for our sadness affects the reader more directly. In this issue concludes the saga of Newton Braddell, a virtual ever-present in this magazine since his first appearance in issue 8, back in 2005. “The ship drifted like a wind-tossed seed through the long night of space.” Thus it began, and Newton never really achieved much more control over his life than was thus established. Yet his endless adventures have endlessly entertained this editor – and sustained the magazine! I have always known that should no other suitable contributions be received, there would always be at the very least a Newton Braddell episode to publish. Herein we have the final four episodes: the magazine will be forever lessened.

But new adventures ever beckon! On one hand, in the style of British comics of old, this issue features on its flipside one of the final issues of Pantechnicon, a fellow zine that ran out of steam. Though I am of course always glad to see our rivals tumble to their doom, I was more than happy to help them get their last issues out to the world.

Also, I was recently lucky enough to be appointed the caretaker chair of the British Fantasy Society… It’s a huge honour, but it does mean that this year’s issues of TQF will probably be a bit shorter than usual (like this one), so that I can do my best to stay on top of everything. Our schedule may be a little more erratic than usual. As my favourite typo has it, bare with us!

Editorial

New Friends and Old! Stephen Theaker

Newton Braddell and His Inconclusive Researches into the Unknown: the Conclusion!

John Greenwood

Miss Lavender Goes It Alone
A Diabolical Persistence in Error
A Hard Bargain
Sembawang

The Quarterly Review

Audio

Doctor Who 124: Patient Zero 31
Doctor Who 125: Paper Cuts

Pantechnicon

Editorial

The Ups and Downs of Publishing a Zine, Caroline Callaghan & team

Fiction

Money, Paul L. Mathews
Vehicles, Martin Willoughby
Maria, the Destroyer, W.G. Lloyd
The Darkout, Jason Palmer

Interview

The American Godfather of Gore in the 21st Century: an Interview with Herschell Gordon Lewis, Mackenzie Lambert

Features

An Unconventional Truth, Alex Davis
That Was No Zombie, That Was My Wife! Steve Wilson

Here are the people who made it the TQF side of things possible…

John Greenwood, both gentle man and gentleman, is the co-editor of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction and long-time chronicler of Newton Braddell’s adventures.

Howard Watts is an artist from Brighton. He has previously supplied covers for Pantechnicon magazine.

Stephen Theaker is the eponymous editor of Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction. He wrote this issue’s pair of reviews (originally for Prism, the newsletter of the BFS).