Theaker's Quarterly Fiction: Year Four (#15-20) (30 December 2007)
Our omnibus edition of all of 2007's issues of TQF is now available,
featuring 46 short stories and novellas, one and a half novels, one
six-part serial, five editorials, one manifesto, seven news items, one
lost classic of the Silver Age, ten reviews, one obituary, and six comic
strips. Authors in this volume include Wayne Summers, Dan Kopcow, Jeff
Crouch, Richard K Lyon, Andrew J Offutt, Howard Phillips, Mark E Deloy,
Laura Bickle, Jeff Crook, Benjamin Spurduto and Eric R Lowther. You can
see the cover on our website
here, along with the previous bound volumes we've done, or you could
just head straight over to see it on
Lulu. Only
£8.99 at the time of writing, which is pretty good
value for 460 adventure-packed pages! – SWT
Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #20 (29 December 2007)
In the twentieth issue of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction we present the
very substantial horror of "The Hatchling: Post-Natal Paranoia" by John
Greenwood. Cultists, monsters and secret government ministries - what else
do you need? "Contrarieties" by Bruce Hesselbach continues his charming
series of Tales of Yxning. The issue is rounded out by the final part of
After All, by Michael Wyndham Thomas. There's also a bit of apologising
from me about the poor quality service I'm providing as a book reviewer.
It isn't quite half the length of the previous issue, but it is a little
bit shorter. See TQF#20. – SWT
November Spawned 2007: a Novel-Writing Handout (26 October 2007)
I've left this a bit late to be of any use to anyone else for this
year's NaNoWriMo, but the new
Novel-Writing Handout is now
available. It's not that different to last year's - just a few tweaks here
and there, plus a plug of course for the incredible earth-shaking literary
endeavour that is Shortschafe 2007!
Everyone coming to our kick-off meeting in Birmingham will get one of
these, plus official NaNoWriMo stickers and tattoos. To see more about
nano-events in Birmingham, see our
local forum. – SWT
Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #19 (8 October 2007)
A few days late, but it's finally here!
There's lots of great stuff in this issue, and it's all divided up into
neat little sections so you can head straight for the stuff that interests
you most!
First there's a dash of horror, to reflect the fact that it's a
Halloween special: Pumpkin Jack, by Laura Bickle, and The Walled Garden by
Wayne Summers.
Then there's lots and lots of fantasy: Rural Legend by Eric R Lowther,
The Iron Mercenary: A Tale of Tiana, by Richard K Lyon & Andrew J Offutt,
When the Sun and the Moon Did Not Shine, by Sam Leng, The Remarkable Life
of Yren Higbe by Bruce Hesselbach, and the fifth instalment of After All,
by Michael Wyndham Thomas.
Then we have a bit of science fiction: The Broadest Divide by David
McGillveray, and Newton Braddell: a Detour by John Greenwood.
And though it didn't fit anywhere else, there's also a bit of bizarro
from Dan Kopcow, Who Picked the Pope’s Nose?
Finally there's a review of Zencore!, or as much of one as I could do,
having lost the book a couple of weeks ago.
Another great issue of TQF! Read yourself some
Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #19!
This was one heck of a tough one to get finished, so expect the next
issue to be half the size! – SWT
British Fantasy Society – Birmingham Open Night (15 September 2007)
There will be an open night of the
British Fantasy Society
this Saturday in Birmingham, the home of Silver Age Books!
Like our own Theaker's Quarterly Fiction, the British Fantasy Society
covers all types of fantastic literature, including science fiction,
horror and fantasy. So if you are a writer, artist or publisher with an
interest in those genres this would be a great time to meet other
like-minded people.
Anyone is allowed to attend, whether they are members of the Society or
not, and attendance is free. It isn't particularly intended as a means of
enticing new members, so if you have no intention of joining, don't feel
at all that you shouldn't come.
Some special guests will be attending too:
The Write Fantastic, a
group of crusading fantasists including Chaz Brenchley, Juliet E McKenna,
Deborah J Miller, Stan Nicholls and Jessica Rydill.
The event is taking place from 6.30 pm at the Cornerhouse pub, 110
Edmund Street/Newhall Street, Birmingham, B3 3PU, and of course there will
be a minor SAB presence, standing quietly in the corner and probably not
talking to anyone! – SWT
Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #18 (4 August 2007)
As I say in the editorial for this issue, the rock just won’t stop!
This issue of the munificent and magnificent TQF contains the following
stories: "Ananke", by Jeff Crook (fantasy in the high style); "Winter’s
Warm Blood" by Mark E Deloy (horror with a feminine side); "Live to Be
Hunted" by Sean & Craig Davis (100% masculine); "Glimmerick", by Michael
McNichols (featuring the magical tree of god!); "La Tierra de la Sangre",
by Benjamin Spurduto (pirate-crazy); "The Tragical History of Weebly
Pumrod, Witch Hunter", by Bruce Hesselbach (the world of Yxning); "After
All", by Michael Wyndham Thomas (antepenultimate engagement); more Newton
Braddell by John Greenwood; and reviews of the Transformers movie and Apex
#10!
Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #18 is
longer than #17, and contains nothing by Howard Phillips – you can't lose!
– SWT
A Blog About Steven Gilligan (8 June 2007)
I'm glad Frank Black chose this decade to go country and western. Fast
Man Raider Man is really hitting the spot for me right now.
Anyway, people are sharing their memories of our old friend on a
blog about Steven
Gilligan.
In the spirit of people remembering how deliberately provocative and
shocking he could be, intensely embarrassing though I always found it,
here's a joke about his death:
"Steven's in a better place now."
"Well, the morgue is a step up from his previous apartment." – SWT
Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #17 (4 June 2007)
Our biggest issue yet is now out! Eighty pages of the strangest and
best in fantastic literature!
Read the conclusion of The Doom That Came to Sea Base Delta, and the
next instalments of After All, Helen and Her Magic Cat and Newton
Braddell's Inconclusive Researches! Join us for our first dip into the
worlds of Diane Andrews, Dan Kopcow, Richard K Lyon and Jeff Crouch! Read
reviews of games and movies that were out months ago! And read our
manifesto, which should go some way to explaining why we roll in the
square-wheeled way we do!
Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #17
kicks out the jams, and spreads them on toast! – SWT
Steven Gilligan (1973–2007) (1 June 2007)
I can’t quite remember when I first met
Steven Gilligan. It might
have been at the school library, where I soon joined him, John Greenwood
and Sam Dixon as a student librarian. It might have been after someone
suggested I look in on a writers’ group (made up mainly of the same
people) that was meeting at lunchtimes. Or I might just have met him in
the hall at lunchtime one day. However it happened, it was a lunchtime,
and he made an immediate impact on me, and we quickly became involved in a
dozen silly projects together – we performed sketches at the school shows,
started a band (Master Zangpan and the Mechanical Housewife), tried to
start a marbles revival, sold trumped-up horoscopes, offered a ghost
hunting service, created New Words, launched Silver Age Books, published
our novels, and most recently we created November Spawned and Theaker’s
Quarterly Fiction, to both of which he made notable contributions.
In amongst all that, we laughed a lot, talked a lot about computer
games, tv and music, and drank a bit from time to time. He introduced me
to Hellblazer, HP Lovecraft, Warhammer, Primal Scream, My Bloody
Valentine, Joy Division, Vic Reeves’ Big Night Out, and a million other
things I love so much for which I’m forgetting to give him credit, and
took me to my first ever gigs (The Wedding Present and The Wonder Stuff).
He gave me confidence in whatever I wanted to do, gave me a kick up the
butt when I needed it, taught me the importance of the punk rock spirit in
everyday life, and did a brilliant job as the best man at my chaotic
wedding.
Anyway, he’s gone now – he died last week. For the rest of my life
it’ll feel like something’s missing. My daughter’s lost someone who would
have been the best “bad influence” uncle a kid could ask for, and I’ve
lost a best friend. He was also the best gift-giver I've ever known –
birthdays and Christmases are going to really suck now.
We have some of his Helen and Her Magic Cat strips in hand, so his
presence will be felt directly in the magazine for a little while yet, and
indirectly for as long as it lasts. If we can, we’ll also put together a
new collection of his work at some point.
I think he would have appreciated the way I found out that he was a
goner.
Sitting in the lobby of his tower block, waiting for news from the
police who had gone to open and investigate his room, I heard someone, a
cleaner I think, yelling, “Have you heard? Someone on the first floor has
kicked the bucket!”
I couldn't help laughing, because that’s exactly how Steven would have
wanted it. – SWT
The Big Five-Double-O! (23 May 2007)
It's hard for me to believe, but the free pdf of TQF#16, helped no
doubt by John Shanks' intensely attractive cover artwork, has now been
downloaded over 500 times!
Wow... That's something like 500 times as many downloads as there were
of TQF#1 when it came out! Thanks to everyone who has taken a look. It's
really nice to know that people are taking an interest in what we're
doing.
Thanks too to websites like
Ralan's Specfic
Webstravaganza,
Duotrope, and the
British Fantasy Society, who have hosted links to the site, to
Whispers of Wickedness, where a
brief discussion of TQF led by
Lawrence
Dagstine gave our download numbers an astonishing bump with every
fresh post, to all the small press friends we've made on
MySpace,
and of course to all the other authors and artists who have trumpeted
their appearances in our magazine with such strange pride!
This year has been TQF's coming-out party, and it's been great to find
such a welcoming and friendly community out there in the wider world of
the sf and fantasy small press.
It's been a revelation to find how many free tools are at our disposal,
too, so thanks to PayPal,
Lulu,
Amazon and Cafepress for making it so easy to hitch a ride on the long
tail!
Finally, thanks as well to the magnificent and inspired folks at
NaNoWriMo, because if I hadn't been
writing a daft novel every year, I wouldn't have founded a daft magazine
to put them in! Their can-do, fun attitude informs every aspect of TQF. –
SWT
Pay for a TQF Subscription and Back Issues with PayPal! (1 May 2007)
If you've ever fancied subscribing to TQF, and it wasn't the
horrendously high price of £23.99 that put you
off, but rather the complications involved in leaving the internet to
write a cheque, help is now at hand! You can now buy a subscription using
PayPal!
Go for it! Pay the mortgage next month!
We've also found a couple of back issues in the storerooms, and dug
them to go on sale – #4,
#11,
#12 and #13 – though in every case
it would be much better value to buy the bound volumes! Back issues from
#15 on remain available from our
Lulu Store,
thanks to the miracle of modern technology (and the postage costs have
recently taken a bit of a tumble, too)! – SWT
Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #16 (4 April 2007)
After four issues in four months, we're back on track – issue sixteen
of TQF is out on time!
What's more, it's the longest issue of TQF yet published, running to 64
amazing pages! Every one of them is jam-packed with adventure, terror,
laughter and awe-inspiring greatness! The creative renaissance of Howard
Phillips continues apace, we have new contributors from the United States,
another Lost Classic, and, best of all, adverts for the British Fantasy
Society, Trevor Denyer's Midnight Street, and
Homegrown Goodness, the magnificent website of our cover artist, John
Shanks.
Go and read Theaker's Quarterly Fiction
#16 – it's free to download, and it doesn't come cheaper than that.
All it will cost you... IS YOUR MIND! – SWT
Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #15: Spring Issue! (5 March 2007)
Issue fifteen of TQF is out now! The effort of preparing all 23 stories
for publication has wearied me to the point that I can hardly find any
more words to say!
We have called this incredible issue "The
Silver Age Treasury of Fantastic Literature".
The idea was to fill an entire issue with single-page stories – in the
end, many of them ran a bit longer than that, but in every case the
extended word count is undeniably essential!
What's more, I've just realised that this is the first TQF since #8 to
see any fiction published under my name, so it's worth reading for that
reason alone! – SWT
Sign Up For the Silver Age Bulletin! (27 February 2007)
A side-effect of setting ourselves up at CafePress is that we can now
use their mailing service to let you know whenever a new issue of
Theaker's Quarterly Fiction is available!
Check out the sidebar on the left to sign up.
We will only email you once for each issue, making six emails a year in
total – assuming the frequency of TQF publication doesn't go up! – so we
won't be clogging up your inbox. – SWT
Silver Age Books: the CafePress Store! (27 February 2007)
I realise all these rapid developments at Silver Age Books may be
taking some of you by surprise, after years of relative inertia, but hold
on to your hats: there's a new innovation! We've just opened our own store
at CafePress. At the moment the selection is limited to a range of
excellent white t-shirts bearing the Silver Age Books logo, but if you
check it out now and again new stuff should turn up on there fairly
regularly now: the
Silver
Age Books Cafepress Store. – SWT
Theaker's Quarterly Fiction – the Bound Volumes! (25 February 2007)
Now available from our Lulu store - bound volumes of all issues of
Theaker's Quarterly Fiction to date.
Year One
covers #1-4, from 2004,
Year Two
covers #5-8, from 2005, and
Year Three
covers #9-14. Eagle-eyed shoppers will notice that the prices for the
bound volumes compare very favourably with the prices for the single
issues, so these are real bargains. We plan to continue putting out a
bound volume at the end of every year – so if you want to "wait for the
trade" next year, that's fine by us! Each issue will continue to be
available to read for free on this site. – SWT
Lulu SAB Storefront Opens! (20 February 2007)
It's technology a-gogo in Silver Age Towers this week. Not only have we
successfully (so far as we can tell) upgraded to Windows Vista, complete
with snazzy window switching, we have set up shop over at
www.lulu.com, long-time friends of all
November novelists. At present we have just made TQF#14 available to
order, but who knows what might follow? Visit the
Silver Age Books Storefront
regularly to find out! – SWT
Empty Bag EP Comes to Light! Rock Historians Rejoice! (16 February
2007)
One of the great items missing from this website was the superb EP
recorded by
Master
Zangpan and the Mechanical Housewife (guest stars in the first ever
publication to bear the name Silver Age Books,
Professor Challenger in Space) back in 1990. Now, thanks to my mum
finding a copy among her old cassettes, we have it, and you can download
it today! Visit our
MZATMH
page pronto! – SWT
On Valentine's Day, Become an Official Friend of Silver Age Books! (14
February 2007)
As ever, Silver Age Books is at the forefront of new technology, and
with that in mind we have created our own page on MySpace - see here
Silver Age Books on
MySpace. It is not intended to replace this fine, fine website of
ours, of course not, but rather to complement it. You can go there to add
us to your friends list, pictures you've already seen right here, and,
from time to time, we might even add something inane to the
Silver Age Books blog!
Get over there now: you don't know what you are missing, and you won't
know how little you were missing until you go and see! – SWT
A Robot's Adventure (14 February 2007)
We've always had a couple of movies available on the Silver Age Books
website, but there may be an increasing number of SAB projects along those
lines, now that Youtube's around, ready to do the file hosting for us. For
starters, here's a very short and silly item produced by our publisher
himself, A Robot's Adventure,
a very, very basic animation designed to make his youngster laugh (hence
the credits to "Daddy"). Don't expect very much from it, and you will
probably still be disappointed!
We have something a bit more ambitious planned for later in the year. –
HP
Out Now: Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #14 – the New Year Special
(28 January 2007)
This was intended to be the Christmas special, but it feels a bit late
for that now! Never mind, like every issue of TQF it is still extremely
special, regardless of which calendar event we link it to! This issue
rounds out our third year of publication with a lengthy episode in the
annals of Valiant Razalia, by Michael Wyndham Thomas. Go now and read
Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #14.
This will be the last issue of TQF in its current format, at least as
far as paper readers go (online readers will not notice much of a change,
other than the illustrations getting a bit bigger, perhaps, since the
original files will still be A4-sized for now). From #15 the printed
magazine will be A5-sized, allowing for cheaper printing, cheaper postage
and hence cheaper subscriptions! We're still planning to publish six
issues, but they may be a little longer than has been the case to date.
We'll have to see! – SWT
Eighteen Days into ShortsChafe 2007! (18 January 2007)
If this year, again, you just can't wait for
National Novel Writing Month (aka
NaNoWriMo) to get started, have a go at
ShortsChafe 2007, the
Short Story Challenge for Earthlings. The challenge once more is to write
a short story every day. It doesn't matter when you start, but you have to
do it every day from then on. Your final score is the number of
consecutive days on which you manage to write a complete story of at least
600 words. – SWT
New Copy Deadlines Available! (18 January 2007)
The deadlines for submitting copy for this year's six issues of TQF are
now up on the site - see the
Submission Guidelines
and Deadlines page. We are looking for anything with a hint of
derring-do, or a smidgen of blood-curdling horror, or a milligram of
science. Westerns, horror, mysteries, fantasy, science fiction, adventure
– it's all good. Put your meat in the grinder! – SWT
Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #13 Brings the Pain! (8 January 2007)
I might have known our good timekeeping wouldn't last! After two issues
that came out on time,
Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #13 is finally here, but it's wagging its
tail like a happy little puppy, and really sorry about having taken its
time to turn up!
This is yet another "best issue ever", with the first brilliant
adaptation of a Space University Trent episode, followed by a Lost Classic
of the Silver Age, a stunning chapter of the previously unsuspected
Mushrooms from Infinity!
Thank all that is good that one of the Silver Age family got lost and
ended up in that alternative dimension, in which our publishing house was
launched decades before the parallel event happened in our quotidian
plane.
Issue fourteen should be along quite quickly, so start reading this one
right away! – SWT
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