The Hollows is an enjoyably gripping blend that starts as a police procedural, quickly engages horror’s shared DNA with thriller fiction, and ultimately descends (in the best sense) into cosmic elder god nightmare. It also works well as a social deconstruction of folklore, splicing Peak District place names with the roles of individuals in village […]
I will write more about the experience soon, but I wanted to share the recordings of the show, which premiered on 17 April at Reclamation, the 2022 EasterCon in London. Deviant Database is a solo theatre show I wrote and performed based on previous pieces written for Virtual Futures, and also a near-future nightmare anthology […]
‘Rawblood’ was recommended to me by a number of different people as a great horror story; and indeed shortly afterwards it won the British Fantasy Award best horror novel for 2016. I don’t want to knock either the horror genre, which I enjoy, or this novel’s place in it; however, in this instance I do […]
I’ll be reading from my upcoming novel Celebrity Werewolf, which is being published by NewCon Press, at the British Science Fiction Association (BSFA) next Wednesday, 28 March. The venue is upstairs at the Artillery Arms, 102 Bunhill Row, London, EC1Y 8ND. Nearest tube station is Old Street. More details about the pub here. Doors are at 6.30pm and the […]
I was drawn to this book by its association with John Carpenter’s The Thing, whose alien is a uniquely visceral nightmare. Its physical distortions suggest unknowability, as if it is trying to find a form to express itself, which is a theme picked up on in Adam Roberts’s novel. While The Thing Itself is not a […]
The blend of human and machine goes further in Irenosen Okojie’s ‘Saudade Minus One (S-1=)’. The title reminds us of the nonsense maths of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ and the story inhabits an eerie hinterland informed by the kind of reality in which 2+2 really does equal 5. Identical boys are dispatched across a region of North […]
‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ does villainy so well its antagonists are part of our language: from the treacherous shopkeeper to the harsh genius O’Brian; from Big Brother to Winston himself as he willingly becomes the thing he hates. Prize for most hateful bastardy in ‘2084’ goes to the mysterious organisers of EJ Swift’s ‘The Endling Market’. Like […]
‘2084’ is a collection of specially commissioned short stories edited by George Sandison, set a century after the titular year of George Orwell’s seminal dystopian novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’. Since its publication, the themes, stories and language of Orwell’s novel have become part of popular culture in ways even its farsighted author could not have imagined. […]
This collection, chosen by friends, colleagues and admirers of the late author, is a great introduction to one of our great speculative short story writers. Tanith Lee effortlessly blends myth, fairytale, science fiction and erotica in a way both subversive and compelling. The stories are also often very witty; in ‘Red as Blood’, for example, […]
Joe is a private investigator tasked with finding Mike Longshott, author of the novel ‘Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante’ in this eerie book that perfectly nails the sense of dazed disconnect following the terrorist attacks in New York on 11 September 2001. As in ‘The Man in the High Castle’ ‘Osama’ (the book I’m reviewing, not […]
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