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Dark Horizons (4 May 2008)

I was recently lucky enough to be made editor of Dark Horizons, the journal of the British Fantasy Society, and so I've added a Dark Horizons page to our own site. There you'll find information on recent issues and the beginnings of the new guidelines for contributors. The actual issues, of course, will never be available on this website – to read them you'll have to join the BFS! – SWT


Two Reviews of TQF#17 (30 May 2008)

A recent review of our magazine said such nice things about me that I could hardly fail to link to it: read Don Schneider's review of TQF#17 here! If you're in the mood for reading more about that issue, an earlier and equally kind review of the same issue appeared a little while ago on Whispers of Wickedness. – SWT


A Notable Story of the Year – in TQF! (30 April 2008)

Some very exciting news: "Ananke", a story by Jeff Crook which appeared in TQF#18, has been selected as one of the "notable stories of 2007" by the judges of the Million Writers Award (an award dedicated to online fiction). While I'd like to take the credit by claiming that I knocked an atrocious and unreadable manuscript into a shimmering work of art, the truth of course is that, bar a few commas, it arrived with me in its fully-formed award-nominated state, and so all credit must go to the author! (Although I'd like to think those commas tipped it over the edge.) Follow the link to find out about the other notable stories of 2007. – SWT


Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #22 (4 April 2008)

Issue twenty-two of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction is one of our best yet (I know, I say that every time). From Mike Schultheiss we have "Darwin's Corridor", a rousing tale of action, colonialism, love, anthropology and philosophy on a far-off planet. Though I've enjoyed everything I've published in this magazine, this one probably comes closest so far to being exactly the kind of thing we're looking for. Then we have “The Spirits of ’26”, by Robert Laughlin, a Silverberg-esque story of ambition, dedication and calamity. Sam Leng returns to our pages with “A Matter of Taste”, another short, sharp tap on the shoulder, and Richard K Lyon and Andrew J Offut supply another in their series of Tiana adventures. In my editorial I take a trip down memory lane, it having been ten years since I started to use the name Silver Age Books (if only I'd taken a bit longer to come up with something more distinctive!), while at the other end of the issue John Greenwood describes the next events in the unfortunate life of Newton Braddell, researcher unextraordinary. We round out the issue with a bunch of reviews. – SWT


NaNoWriMo Tips and Space University Trent (25 February 2008)

Continuing the theme of bringing old treasures to light, we've made a couple of areas of the website much easier to reach than they were. Our NaNoWriMo tips, formerly intended to appear one a day on the website during the months of October and November (a system that I never really got working), are now all gathered together on our NaNoWriMo Tips page, for anyone who wants to see them. Bear in mind that these tips (like National Novel Writing Month itself) are all about finishing a novel, any novel. If you want advice on writing a good novel, just keep walking!

And our pages of information about Space University Trent, previously only accessible via a back door on Walt Brunston's author information page, can now be accessed directly. There is an introduction to the show, an episode guide, and even the beginnings of a Space University Trent timeline, encyclopedia and movie database. – SWT


The Final Throw, by Robert Neilson (25 February 2008)

Sorting through my old email over the weekend, I found that about five years ago Bob Neilson, a respected science fiction writer from Ireland, gave us permission to post his story, "The Final Throw", on our website. We originally published it in the fourth issue of New Words, our first foray into publishing. What's more, he supplied us with a copy of it in Word, to save us from having to scan it in. Five years ago, as you can see, things were getting quite gloomy and quiet at Silver Age Towers. It was after we had published our first batch of books, but before we had started to publish Theaker's Quarterly. The slumber into which we had fallen accounts for this glittering diamond getting lost at the back of the cupboard, but now it is recovered and on display for everyone to read: "The Final Throw", by Robert Neilson! – SWT


Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #21 (4 February 2008)

TQF#21 is now available - as usual you can download it from us here or buy a print copy from Lulu. I'm sorry about the cover painting - it isn't very good, but I had a great deal of fun painting it! (Digitally, of course - I wouldn't want to get my hands all mucky with real paint.) The real fun, though, comes with this issue's two lengthy stories: John Greenwood delivers the second half of a novel, The Hatchling, and Wayne Summers brings us the entirety of "The Exile from Naktah", a terrifying tale of a dark castle and its dark, dark lord! At the end of the issue I bring my powerful critical faculties to bear on my favourite game of January, Mass Effect – the game that forced me into asking my significant other to implement the parental timer on the Xbox 360... – SWT


TQF Reviews Online! (3 February 2008)

I've always been really impressed by the reviews section over on Whispers of Wickedness - both by the quality of the reviews, and by its usefulness as a source of information on small press magazines. We can't match them in either sense, but we can still nick their idea and put our reviews online too. It'll make us a little bit more Googlable, if nothing else. Go see the TQF Reviews! – SWT


Howard Phillips' Musical Interpretation of The Fear Man CD (2 February 2008)

Lulu have sorted out the problems they were having with CD creation, and so now you can go there and buy a CD of the first album by Howard Phillips and the Saturation Point, Howard Phillips' Musical Interpretation of The Fear Man. And it only costs £3.99! – SWT


Preditors and Editors Poll (9 January 2008)

There are still a few days of voting to go in the annual Preditors and Editors poll, in which you could vote for Theaker's Quarterly Fiction as best magazine, or vote for John Shanks' cover to TQF#16 as best cover, or vote for Eric Lowther's "Rural Legend" as best science fiction or fantasy story, or indeed vote for anyone else you like! For example, there's a glaring and rather hurtful omission in the nominees for best zine editor! If polls have closed by the time you read this, go have a look at the results to see links to lots of other great magazines, stories and artwork.– SWT


Howard Phillips and the Saturation Point Online (9 January 2008)

After years of not being properly available, the first album by Howard Phillips and the Saturation Point - "Howard Phillips' Musical Version of The Fear Man" - is now available on Last.fm. You can listen to it online, or even download it for yourself! When we have a spare minute or two we'll upload some of our other old music too We'd quite like to have a CD for sale on Lulu too, but they seem to be having some problems on that end at the moment. – SWT


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 Offut, 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