Stephen Theaker's Blog

He’s wealthy, attentive, protective, and attractive. Cha-ching!

I’m tired of vampires and werewolves. I’m not big on first-person narration. I’m not even in the right audience for this one. But I had to do it. I had to go back and read the books that inspired a cultural phenomenon thanks to the 2008 film Twilight and its offspring. 

It all started with Stephenie Meyer’s 2005 novel of the same name that sank its teeth into the YA market. Alongside narrator Isabella “Bella” Swan, we travel to Forks, Washington, where we meet the mysterious vampire Edward Cullen and bear witness as they fall in love. 

When Bella inadvertently crosses paths with another vampire with no compunctions about cracking open a nice human neck, she becomes the target of an unrelenting hunter. And Edward and his family will do everything within their formidable power to protect her.

The novel also introduces Jacob Black, whose Native American tribe in nearby La Push has a severe distrust of the Cullens. Thus begins the series-long rivalry between Jacob and Edward. They’re both strong. They’re both attractive. And they both want to protect an aimless young lady. For many, that’s an irresistible combination. 

One of Meyer’s most potent strengths is on display early in the novel. She plays up Edward’s peculiarity, compounded by his initial revulsion towards Bella. Beyond that, the Cullen family’s sharp contrast from their fellow Forks High students is something to behold. 

Unfortunately, however, Edward needs to be fleshed out as the novel progresses. A hefty chunk of the book details Edward and Bella getting to know each other. They talk at school, at her house, at his house, in cars, in a field. All this “I’ll love you forever” talk even after being together for a week or so starts to grow wearisome for some audiences. 

Again, I understand the fascination with the competition for Bella and with Edward: his godlike presence (even a waitress rouses Bella’s jealousy), his speed and strength, his multiple talents, and the attention he showers on Bella. Nevertheless, there came a point at which I thought to myself, If I have to read about another young man pushing a stray lock of hair behind Bella’s ear or how good Edward smells, I’m going to throw up. 

Here’s the big secret about the entire Twilight series and its heroine: despite the excitement of everything happening around her, Bella is rather average (with some exceptions). And maybe that makes sense – maybe it helps more people identify with her. Douglas J. Ogurek ***

The SecondSleep by Robert Harris

Hutchinson,hardback, £20.09, September 2019, ISBN 9781786331373

RobertHarris is an English novelist best known for his historical fiction, much ofwhich has been adapted for the big screen. He began his writing career as a highlysuccessful journalist and published several nonfiction books, including  Selling Hitler: The Story of the HitlerDiaries (1986), which is interesting not just for the hoax itself, but therole played by Rupert Murdoch, who was a powerful and sinister force even then,in the early nineteen eighties. Harris’ breakout novel was also his first, Fatherland(1992), published off the back of Selling Hitler, and he has authored seventeento date, five of which are about the Roman Empire and four of which are aboutthe Second World War. As I mentioned in my review of Prime Video’s The Man in the High Castle (2015-2019), Fatherland is actually alternativehistory rather than history and there is a strong speculative element runningthrough Harris’ oeuvre.
Archangel (1998) and The Ghost(2007) are also alternative histories and the latter foregrounds a technique Harrishas perfected and for which he really should be better known, the twist in thetail of the tale. His trademark twists are not only convincing, butretrospectively imbue his narratives with fresh meaning (or, perhaps moreaccurately, reveal a hidden meaning that was there all along). Conclave(2016) is another example of the master at work, with a revelation so powerfulthat it switches the novel from a contemporary thriller to an(other)alternative history. The Fear Index (2011) combines alternative history(in this case, the Flash Crash of 6 May 2010) with both science fiction andhorror and I’d classify it as science fiction in consequence of the role of AI(though, as far as I can remember, Harris does not use the term). And then thereis The Second Sleep, which seems to be a more straightforwardinstantiation of science fiction.
Thenovel takes its name from the concept of biphasic, diphasic, or segmentedsleep, what we would now think of as getting up in the middle of the night forone to two hours before going back to sleep. There is significant evidence forthis practice in pre-Industrial Europe, when people typically went to sleepshortly after dusk and rose with the dawn. Activities in the middle, which wassometimes called ‘the watch’, typically included one or more of: prayer,reading, chores, sex, or visits to neighbours. The second sleep is thus,literally, the second round of sleep between dusk and dawn, following the houror two of pottering around. There is less evidence that this practice continuedinto the nineteenth century, which makes sense given that it seems tied tonatural patterns and rhythms, and the closest one gets to it now is the SouthernEuropean siesta, where there might be an hour’s nap during the day and thenless sleep at night. The Second Sleep opens in England in 1468 and thefirst thing anyone with an interest in history will notice is that the contentis filled with anachronisms and inaccuracies. (I was lucky in that, veryunusually, I started the book without knowing anything at all about it, otherthan the authorship, and dived straight in without reading the blurb.) How, onewonders, is this possible in the work of such a critically acclaimed historicalnovelist?
Givenmy acquaintance with Harris’ work, I suspected the apparent errors were cluesto a mystery and the suspicion was quickly confirmed when an Apple logo turnsup after a few chapters. The 1468 is not Gregorian, but an alternative calendarthat is being used in a post-apocalyptic England, which has reverted to acultural and technological state that mixes the Medieval with the Romantic. Theprotagonist, Father Christopher Fairfax, and his supporting cast in Addicott St George are in factliving in humanity’s second sleep, a second Dark Age that followed acatastrophic collapse of civilisation as we know it in 2025. Let me get mycriticisms out of the way first. The story has a slow pace and rather ramblingplot, which is loosely underpinned by a series of related mysteries: the mystery of 1468, themystery of Fairfax’s predecessor’s sudden death, the mystery of the apocalypseitself (discussion of which is punishable by a brutal and backward legalsystem), and the mystery of what happened in between the apocalypse and thenarrative present. In contrast to what I’ve just written about Harris’ masteryof the twist in the tail, the resolution is also underwhelming, reminiscent ofboth Fatherland and Enigma (1995) albeit lacking their substance.
WhereHarris shines, more so than in, for example, The Fear Index, is in hissketch of why civilisation collapsed and the inevitability of certainconsequences of that collapse. The former is very much related to one of my owninterests, the almost complete change to everyday life in the UK (and elsewhere)from 1995, when most people had no access to the internet, to 2015, when mostof us spent nearly three and a half hours of each day glued to our phones, letalone on the internet. Smartphone enabled social media transformed almosteverything we do and completed that transformation in less than twenty years –which is too much too soon, even if everything about the technology is beneficial(which it clearly isn’t). Harris is particularly concerned with the deeplyproblematic combination of the exponentially enhanced complexity of twenty-firstcentury everydayness with the inherent vulnerability of coupled systems thatrely on the coordination of a multiplicity of interconnected parts. While he doesnot dwell on the point, he makes an exceptionally chilling observation about the wayin which the human species is currently setting itself up for the second sleepby outsourcing both its reasoning processes and social interactions to BigTech. This is one of the rare cases where the transparency of the novel’s message,something along the lines of think about what the technology was designedfor before you embrace it, does not undermine the pleasure of the medium inwhich it is delivered. Thoughfar from Harris’ best novel, The Second Sleep is his best sciencefiction to date and definitely worth reading.

There’s a line between suspense and annoyance – this story crosses it. 

Josh Malerman’s It Waits in the Woods is the third instalment in Amazon’s creature feature series of short stories written by high-profile horror writers. 

The story’s first problem is inherent in its title. Haven’t we seen enough of these monster in the woods stories? This time, the threat is a faceless creature – Malerman calls it an “imp” – that lures people and takes their faces. Add a bridge. Add a mirror. Insert enough of these tropes and hopefully the reader will assume some symbolic significance.

When her sister and another girl go missing, aspiring filmmaker Brenda travels into the woods and films her quest to find her sister. Her aim is to go where police and parents haven’t gone.

The story repeatedly reminds the reader that during a television broadcast, Brenda’s parents partly blamed her for her sister’s disappearance. All right already, I thought to myself, I get it! 

There comes a point when hammering the reader over the head with the same information knocks you out of the story. 

Despite these shortcomings, It Waits in the Woods gets more suspenseful as the climax approaches, thanks to Malerman’s strong storytelling abilities. His cinematic writing style makes it difficult to turn away. Alas, this strength is only exhibited for a brief portion of an otherwise banal story. Douglas J. Ogurek **

Wanted: outrageous gore and grossness with a moral twist!

“No excessive gore.” Are you tired of this frequent restriction in calls for fiction submissions? Here’s your opportunity to run amok with the most grisly and vile stuff you can imagine. There’s just one catch: your revolting creations must deliver a positive message. 

Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction (TQF), supposedly the UK’s second-longest-running sci-fi/horror/fantasy ’zine (and the birthplace of the unsplatterpunk subgenre), has opened to short stories for the ninth chapter in its often criticized yet never silenced UNSPLATTERPUNK! series. Failed novelist and second-rate humourist Douglas J. Ogurek returns as editor to unearth and intensify the most outrageous submissions.  

Send us your morally enlightening filth of up to 10,000 words by 30 September, 2026. We’re also looking for attention-getting cover art that reinforces the unsplatterpunk theme. Note: this is a nonpaying market (more on this below). 

A Vat Full of Barbarity

Stories in the UNSPLATTERPUNK! series range from cringe-worthy sci-fi and fantasy to gag-inducing realism and bizarro. Just make it disgusting… and enlightening.

Explore the previous anthologies, downloadable for free or available for purchase in paper format: 

UNSPLATTERPUNK! UNSPLATTERPUNK! 2 UNSPLATTERPUNK! 3 UNSPLATTERPUNK! 4 UNSPLATTERPUNK! 5 UNSPLATTERPUNK! 6 UNSPLATTERPUNK! 7UNSPLATTERPUNK! 8

The UNSPLATTERPUNK! anthologies amplify the distasteful content of the typical splatterpunk
story while adding a lesson in virtue. The message can be straightforward or subtle… we’ve even
used allegories. You’d Bloody Well Follow These Tips

Following are a few suggestions for crafting your story:

Create content as intrusive as a death metal band at a baby shower. Try to make readers think to themselves, Why am I reading this? And why can’t I stop? Avoid revenge stories: the market is saturated with them, and they rarely convey a positive message.If you want to philosophize or pontificate, submit elsewhere. Imagine a violinist standing over you and starting to play each time your work gets the least bit dramatic. Don’t let him play! Don’t impress us with your writing style – impress us with your story.Read previous entries in the UNSPLATTERPUNK! series. Why not? They’re free.Read as many splatterpunk stories as possible so you can understand what has already been done… and outdo it.Conflict reigns. Show us conflict and don’t stop till the end. Don’t forget humour. The over-the-top nature of these stories means there’s an element of humour in them. When authors take their subject matter too seriously, their work often devolves into dramatic hogwash.Don’t tack a moral lesson onto your conclusion. Embed it into your story. Please, for the love of all that is holy, don’t write your story in a chatty style full of colloquialisms. You’re writing to your reader, not your bestie.  

The Gory Details

Send stories (no poetry, please) and artwork to TQFunsplatterpunk@gmail.com. Put “UNSPLATTERPUNK! 9 submission” in the subject line. Include a bio and tell us about the positive message your story conveys.

Deadline: 30 September 2026Max word count: 10,000Reprints: NoMultiple submissions: YesSimultaneous submissions: No. We’ll get back to you within a couple of weeks.File type: DOC (preferred) or DOCX files for stories; PDF or JPG files for artwork

After publication, you are free to reprint your story elsewhere, but please credit Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction for original publication. See the TQF standard guidelines for additional information on rights and legal matters.

A Word on No Payment

We do not offer contributor payment. However, all authors and artists (and everyone, for that matter) will receive a free PDF. Paperback versions of the anthology are also available for purchase via Amazon. 

The UNSPLATTERPUNK! series (and the TQF ezine in general) is not a moneymaking venture. Those who think we’re “getting rich off writer slave labour” are completely off base. Rather, we’re a group of hobbyists trying to have some fun and maybe just make the world a better place. Over the course of the UNSPLATTERPUNK! series, we have collected next to nothing from hard copy sales, and all of this nothing has gone right back into the publication of the anthology. 

Nevertheless, if you believe your short story or artwork is destined for the best-seller list and you deserve payment for your masterpiece, we encourage you to submit elsewhere. And if you’ve been inspired to write something unsplatterpunkish elsewhere, let us know so we can send readers your way!

Also, keep in mind that while some anthologists select contributors from a tiny pool of acquaintances, we take a different approach here. First, our sole criterion for acceptance is a good story that follows the parameters. Thus, everyone who submits has an equal chance of getting a story selected. Second, we read every submission from beginning to end. If we reject it, we tell you why. If we find promise in a story, we work closely with the contributor to make it as tight, violent, nauseating and illuminating as possible.

Join the unsplatterpunk movement by blending the grisly and the gross to achieve a positive message.

Frolic in the Contumaciousness 

Thanks to the many talented contributors, TQF has thrown a tantrum in the splatterpunk classroom eight times. The gore-slingers who’ve screamed and writhed within our pages include Hugh Alsin, Joe Koch, DW Milton, Tom Over, Garvan Giltinan, Triffooper Saxelbax, Drew Tapley, and many others. 

What triggers your moral compass? Environmental destruction? Intolerance? Poverty? Inequality? Speciesism? Write us a story that shows us how to deal with it. Dump all the brutality, carnage and vileness you can into your creation, but don’t forget to sprinkle in the virtue.

So get ready to hurl your juice box, fall to the floor, and get some attention – it’s time for UNSPLATTERPUNK! 9. Remember: sometimes to teach a lesson through writing, you have to snap a femur, suck out an eyeball and chew it, or lick a crusty foot covered in rotten yogurt. 

You have until 30 September 2026. 

Go ahead. Give us your worst.

Stephen King is one of a mere handful of authors tohave sold hundreds of millions of books. Though he has written across multiplegenres, he is best known for his horror fiction and more specifically as theauthor of: The Shining (1977), Carrie (1974), ’Salem’s Lot (1975),Misery (1987), Pet Sematary (1983), and his apocalypticmasterpiece, The Stand (1978, republished in 1990). King was born in Portland (Maine), in 1947, and will be turning eighty next year. He began writing fictionat a very young age and made his first professional sale, a short story called‘The Glass Floor’, to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967, nearly sixty years ago. He is currently completing Other Worlds Than These, which is the final instalment of a trilogy that began with The Talisman in 1984, continued with Black House in 2001 (both of which were co-authored with the late Peter Straub), and is due for publication in October. My mother wasa great fan of King so the house was full of his novels when I was growing upand I’ve been reading his work for about forty years now. I’ve also become anunreserved and unashamed fan…why?

Lots of reasons. First, I must give my mothercredit for never forcing King on me. Unfortunately, she didn’t live long enoughfor me to thank her, but she clearly knew my teenage self very well; that mycuriosity would be more of a motivation than any recommendation. Second, Kingseems like a really (and rarely) decent human being. At least from his publicpersona and autobiographical writing. His to-and-fro with Trump on Twitter wasparticularly entertaining. So are his responses to book burners. I could go on.Also, King doesn’t have to be that way – he has sufficient celebrity tobe as obnoxious as he wants without losing his fanbase. Third, he has writtenthe best book on writing that I’ve ever read and am ever going to read, titled,simply, On Writing (2000). As such, I regard him as a writer’s writer(whatever, precisely, that may mean). Fourth, in spite of all the money andfame, he’s an underdog, ignored and even despised by the literary establishmentand academia until very recently and then recognised with reluctance. Evenchampions of genre fiction like S.T. Joshi seem to have taken great pleasure inderiding almost everything about his writing. I almost always agree with Joshi,but he tears King to pieces in The Modern Weird Tale: A Critique of HorrorFiction (2001), setting him up as a kind of anti-Ramsey-Campbell, who isrepresented as the second coming of Lovecraft. (I don’t object to thecomparison between Campbell and Lovecraft, but to King as an inferior binaryopposite.) While I’m not going to pretend that I’ve loved every word of histhat I’ve read (on which, more below), given that, at the latest count, he’spublished sixty-seven long and two hundred short works of fiction, there arebound to be at least some mediocre or subpar offerings. There are also,however, many great offerings and perhaps even a work of two of genius.

In spite of my lengthy acquaintance with andenjoyment of King’s oeuvre I’ve only very recently completed all six ofthe novels for which he is famous. Misery is my favourite, a great narrativethat succeeds on multiple levels and is essential reading for anyone who enjoysbooks about writing and the writing life, whether fiction or nonfiction. TheShining is excellent, especially the effortless changes of perspective fromfather to mother to child and back again. This is King doing what he does best,exploring either the traditional or nuclear family in all its complexity oflove, hate, joy, sorrow, comfort, and anxiety. At its most basic, TheShining is the tale of a haunted house, the house being a giant hotelisolated in the winter snows. I’ve seen the novel criticised for its lack ofinternal logic (a recurring complaint from King’s detractors), but as someonewho pays a great deal – probably too much – attention to such things, I don’tsee the problem. The supernatural elements make sense, they move the plot along…what’snot to like? Carrie and Pet Sematary are competent and maybe evenoriginal outings in the horror genre, with King playing to another strength ofhis, the representation of the worlds of children and teenagers, but neither arefavourites of mine. Salem’s Lot and The Stand were, regrettably, toolong for me, which was a shame regarding the latter because I really wanted tolike it. There just wasn’t enough story to sustain either novel all the way tothe end and with respect to the former, I thought the short story ‘Jerusalem’sLot’ (which was first published in Night Shift in 1978) far superior. Itis probably not surprising that the two of the six I like the most are aboutwriters and, more specifically, writers with addictions, as King reveals in hisdiscussion of his own struggles with addiction in the autobiographical part of OnWriting.

Surely this is faint praise if I’m recommending nomore than two of King’s six most successful novels? I’m not alone in thisassessment because in an interview in Far Out magazine in 2022, helisted his favourite five stories, only one of which is from the six: ‘SurvivorType’ (1982), Misery, Lisey’s Story (2006), ‘The Body’ (1982),and Billy Summers (2021). What is particularly interesting about thislist is that only one of his favourites has a supernatural element (Lisey’sStory), much of which is presented with great subtlety. I think King is athis best without the supernatural and in his shorter work, albeit with severalexceptions that prove the rule. My own list of favourites also includes onlyone of the six (mimicking King’s choice) and one other from his list: ‘RitaHayworth and Shawshank Redemption’ (1982), Misery, ‘SurvivorType’, ‘N.’ (2008), and Cycle of the Werewolf (1983). One novel, twonovellas, and two short stories, in the first three of which the supernaturalis absent. I was lucky enough to read ‘Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption’before I saw the film (which I also enjoyed, but is not as good) and withoutany spoilers, both of which contributed significantly to my reading experience.

I think I’ve already justified my enthusiasm forboth King and his work, but let me say one more thing to make this a genuineappreciation. His own list of favourites covers forty years of writing and minetwenty-five. Since his big break with Carrie in 1974, the quality ofKing’s work has remained consistent, in spite of the life-changing injuries hesustained when he was run over by a reckless minivan driver in 1999. Since thenhe has published, among others, Lisey’s Story, Just After Sunset(2008), The Outsider (2018), and Billy Summers. The first ofthese is an epic love letter to his wife, the second one of his best shortstory collections to date, the third an excellent occult detective story, andthe fourth a great crime thriller. I hope there are more to come and I hopewe’re both around for his eightieth birthday…

free epub | free pdf | print UK | print USA | Kindle UK | Kindle US

Welcome to Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #80: Station, edited by Stephen Theaker and John Greenwood. Our third issue in five months!

The stories begin with “The Naval Cadet: A Case of Identity” by Rafe McGregor, another in his series of mind-bending mysteries. “Great Central Station”, by Harris Coverley – his longest published story to date, in any venue – will appeal to anyone who enjoyed Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom by Sylvia Plath. “A Beckoning Star” is by Michael W. Thomas, who I think was the first ever external contributor to our magazine and “The Green Perplexity”, by Charles Wilkinson is perhaps the best story yet by one of our most consistently excellent contributors. “Across the Ages” by Soramimi Hanarejima is a time travel story with a difference.

In The Quarterly Review, Douglas J. Ogurek and Stephen Theaker review books by Paul Tremblay, Aron Beauregard, Zoraida Córdova, Martin Munks, and the films Kalki 2898 AD, M3GAN, Renfield and The Super Mario Bros Movie.

The cover art adapts Shantum Singh’s “Abandoned Railway Station in Delhi, India”, used under licence via Pexels.

I hope you’ll enjoy this issue as much as I did.

Here are the exceptionally patient contributors to this issue.

Charles Wilkinson’s publications include The Pain Tree and Other Stories (London Magazine Editions, 2000). His stories have appeared in Best Short Stories 1990 (Heinemann), Best English Short Stories 2 (W.W. Norton, USA), Best British Short Stories 2015 (Salt), Confingo, and London Magazine, and in genre magazines/anthologies such as Black Static, Interzone, The Dark Lane Anthology, Supernatural Tales, Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction, Phantom Drift, Bourbon Penn, Shadows & Tall Trees, Nightscript and Best Weird Fiction 2015 (Undertow Books). His collections of strange tales and weird fiction, A Twist in the Eye (2016), Splendid in Ash (2018), Mills of Silence (2021) and The Harmony of the Stares (2022), appeared from Egaeus Press. Eibonvale Press published his chapbook of weird stories, The January Estate, in 2022. He lives in Wales. His stories have previously appeared in TQF41 (“Notes on the Bone”), TQF44 (“A Lesson from the Undergrowth”), TQF46 (“Petrol-Saved”), TQF48 (“A Thousand Eyes See All I Do”), TQF54 (“Septs”), TQF56 (“Mr Kitchell Says Thank You”), TQF59 (“The Constant Providers”), TQF60 (“Evening at the Aubergine Café”), TQF64 (“September Gathering”), TQF70 (“July Job Offer”), TQF73 (“The Arrival of an Acquaintance”) and TQF76 (“Controlling the Lights from Above”).

Douglas J. Ogurek is the pseudonymous and sophomoric founder of the unsplatterpunk subgenre, which uses splatterpunk conventions (transgressive/gory/gross/violent subject matter) to deliver a positive message. His short story collection I Will Change the World … One Intestine at a Time (Plumfukt Press), a juvenile stew of horror and bizarro, aims to make readers lose their lunch while learning a lesson. Ogurek also guest-edits the wildly unpopular UNSPLATTERPUNK! “smearies”, published by Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction. These anthologies are unavailable at your library and despised by your mother. Ogurek reviews films and fiction for that same magazine.

Harris Coverley has had more than a hundred short stories published in Penumbra, Hypnos, JOURN-E and The Black Beacon Book of Horror (Black Beacon Books), amongst many others. He has also had over two hundred poems published in journals around the world. He lives in Manchester, England. His stories have previously appeared in TQF70 (“See How They Run! See How They Run!”), TQF72 (“Father Figure”), TQF73 (“The Scorpion”), TQF74 (“Kung Fu Sue: Origins”), TQF75 (“Kleptobiblia”), TQF76 (“The White Body”), TQF77 (“Kung Fu Sue and the Circle of Broken Bones”) and TQF79 (“Kung Fu Sue and the Drug Lord’s Elephant”).

Michael W. Thomas’s latest poetry collection is Nothing Louche or Bohemian, a collaboration with poet Tina Cole (Black Pear Press). His most recent solo poetry collection is A Time for Such a Word (Black Pear Press). His latest novel is The Erkeley Shadows (Swan Village Reporter). His work has appeared in, among others, The Antioch Review, Critical Survey, The London Magazine and The TLS. He is on the editorial board of Crossroads: A Journal of English Studies (University of Bialystok, Poland). Website: www.michaelwthomas.co.uk. Blog: http://swansreport.blogspot.co.uk/. Socials: @thomasmichaelw. Instagram: michaelwthomas5. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=549139910. His most recent appearance in these pages was in TQF68, with “The Erkeley Shadows”.

Rafe McGregor is a critical theorist publishing on Anglophone culture, political violence, and policing. He is the author of twenty books, including Reducing Political Violence: Narrative Accounts of Crime and Harm (2026), Anthropocide: An Essay in Green Cultural Criminology (2025) and The Adventures of Roderick Langham (2017).

Ever yearning to be spellbound by ideas of a certain fanciful persuasion, Soramimi Hanarejima often meanders into the euphoric trance of lyrical daydreams, some of which are chronicled in the neuropunk story collection Literary Devices for Coping.

As ever, all back issues of Theaker's Quarterly Fiction are available for free download.

For the last twenty years, I’ve been fascinated bywhat is called ‘the literary life’, ‘the writing life’, being ‘bound up withbooks’, being a ‘bookman’ (or bookwoman), and various other more oblique orless elegant phrases. Regarding terminology, I’m not keen on either of the lasttwo because they imply an emphasis on reading (or collecting) books rather thanwriting them and while one cannot write without reading, I know plenty of peoplewho love reading but have no desire to write anything beyond an email orshopping list. Calling a life literary seems pretentious to me, though perhapsthat’s just because I never aspired to be the next Kurt Vonnegut, Jr, DouglasCoupland, J.M. Coetzee, Cormac McCarthy, or David Peace (I’m just not clever orcreative enough.) Which leaves me with the writing life. What is it andhave I been living it?

One of the best descriptions I’ve ever read is byOctavia Butler, from the archive of letters, diaries, journals, commonplacebooks, and datebooks that has recently been made available by The HuntingtonLibrary in San Merino, California. She gets straight to the heart of thematter: ‘Will always write, no matter what. This is a fact of my life. Thus Imust always leave time in my day for writing.’ The writing life is nothing moreand nothing less than a life spent writing; writing, typing, or recording one wordafter another until one has a paragraph, a stanza, a draft, a manuscript orsomething else someone somewhere might read. And that remains the case evenwhen writing doesn’t earn any money or when there might be very little time forit. Here is Gareth L. Powell in About Writing: The Authorised Field Guidefor Aspiring Authors (2022), picking up where Butler leaves off: ‘Howeveryou decide to organise your life, remember why you’re doing it. The goal is toget everything else under control, so you can be wild and free in your creativeendeavours.’ For me, the writing life has had several characteristics that seemto have been shared by better known writers of speculative fiction and I wantto draw attention to five.

First – and I place this first for good reason – isnotetaking. In Wish I Was Here: An Anti-Memoir (2023), M. John Harrisonwrites: ‘But notes make good source material, and when you keep notebooks theyeventually begin to suggest something.’ Like many writers (and researchers),I’m a compulsive notetaker. And happy with it. Where I could and should dobetter is that I often throw my handwritten notes away or delete my digitalones and…of course…sometimes find I could’ve used them later. Here is Butler,once again cutting straight to the core, describing exactly why I make so manynotes: ‘Writing things down a little might help untangle them – answers in aflash of insight or something.’ My creative process is very unimaginative inthat whether I’m writing fiction or nonfiction I usually start with notesrather than with an exposition or introduction. My writing is labour-intensive,perspiration not inspiration, proceeding slowly from rough notes to detailednotes to a first draft to up to a dozen more before something someone somewheremight enjoy reading emerges from the mess.

The second characteristic is collecting. I knowfew people who live the writing life without loving and collecting books (includingin digital form, whether listened to or read onscreen). I listen to as manybooks as I read, to save my eyes and maximise my reading time, but I still lovethe look, feel, and smell of actual books. I’m with Ursula Le Guin when shewrote for Harper’s Magazine in 2008: ‘The book itself is a curiousartifact, not showy in its technology but complex and extremely efficient: areally neat little device, compact, often very pleasant to look at and handle,that can last decades, even centuries.’ I’ve been collecting on and off for forty-fiveyears and probably have about four thousand books and magazines on my shelves,which is a little disappointing as it isn’t much of an advance on what I hadten years ago, but probably for the best until someone donates me a biggerhouse. Harrison has a depressing take on collections like mine for writers likeme, i.e. those in the latter part of their lives: ‘You imagine someone saying,“They meant so much to him, choose anything you like,” then, when everyone hasgone, looking around at all the books still left and wondering what on earth todo with them because even the charity shops aren’t interested.’

Third, drafting – as distinct from notetaking,revising, editing, or proving. In my short-lived career as a creative writingtutor, I used to call this 3FD: finish the f— first draft.(You might be surprised at how sensitive many creative writing students are,which is what the silly em dash is doing there.) I later realised that many ifnot most fiction writers recommend the same thing when it comes to writing anovel. Here’s Joanne Harris in Ten Things About Writing: Build YourStory…One Word at a Time (2020): ‘It’s tempting to tinker about with yourfirst draft as you go along, but, barring a small amount of day-to-dayline-work, which might help you get into the mood for writing, it’s nearlyalways better to just get your draft down. Even a dirty first draft is easierto work with than a clean first chapter.’ I’m not sure how useful the advice isin general, but given my own practice (described above), it’s exactly what Ineed. Once I have a completed first draft instead of detailed notes, the restis relatively easy, whether it’s another three or ten drafts. In Steeringthe Craft: A Twenty-First Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story (1998),Le Guin explains precisely how one gets that first draft down: ‘The chief dutyof a narrative sentence is to lead to the next sentence – to keep the storygoing. Forward movement, pace, and rhythm are words thatare going to return often in this book.’

The fourth characteristic is walking. Powellreminds us that, ‘Spending all day in a chair, hunched over a keyboard, can bedesperately bad for your long-term health. In order to perform to the best ofyour abilities, you have to make time for a little exercise, even if it’s justa stroll around the block.’ Harrison takes a much more robust approach, whichis why one of his chapters is titled ‘write all night, walk all day’. Hereplaced walking with running and then rock climbing when he moved to the PeakDistrict, both of which I enjoyed when I was younger, but neither of which havethe same value for me as walking. I couldn’t find a fiction author who captureswhat I get from walking and what it means to me so I’ve resorted to myfavourite book on the subject, A Philosophy of Walking (published in 2011and translated to English in 2023), by the French philosopher Frédéric Gros: ‘Walkingis something other than a way of relaxing after a hard day’s work, somethingother than a remedy for ennui, a health regimen, a social ritual, or even asource of inspiration.’ He is absolutely right, but it is also all of thosethings he lists…at least to me.

The fifth and final characteristic is what I’mgoing to call judging, which is a poor description of what I’m trying tocommunicate. Let me try another approach: if I could go back in time, givemyself one piece of advice, and insist to myself that I follow it, what wouldit be? (I had to add the third part because I often fail to follow good advice,regardless of its source.) Without doubt: find a way of determining when topersevere and when to give up. Obviously, that advice is useful beyondwriting. Less obviously, I’m not talking about persevering with or giving upthe writing life. What I mean is judging when to persevere with a project andwhen to give up on it – because I’ve wasted hours, days, weeks, months, andperhaps even years rewriting and revising work I should have just left (but notthrown away or deleted) in draft. Harris says it best: ‘Don’t throw valuabletime at a dead project. Yes, giving up can be painful. But sometimes youhave to plough over your crop in order to plant something else.’ But how doesone know when the project is dead? While I have a better sense now than I did whenI began, I’m still not sure and if someone had told me how important decidingwhether to cultivate or plough was twenty years ago, I might have eventually workedit out. In Steering the Craft, Le Guin doesn’t provide an answer, but shedoes show where and how it can – must, even – be found: ‘Ultimately youwrite alone. And ultimately you and you alone can judge your work.’ Judgingwhat has potential and what doesn’t remains one of the most difficult thingsfor me.

I first watched F1, Joseph Kosinski’s 2025Hollywood blockbuster, at home rather than on the big screen, had mixedfeelings about it, and did what I usually do in such cases – read a few reviewsthe next morning. The most pithy (I’ve forgotten where it was) stated: ‘this isnot the film you want it to be.’ True on many levels, including the most fundamental.This is a story about a never-has-been fifty-something racing driver, SonnyHayes (played by Brad Pitt), whose Formula One career was cut short by hisyouthful recklessness but is given one last shot to compete by his friend, a former-teammate-turned-owner.Spoiler alert, Sonny achieves what he couldn’t manage thirty years ago, winningthe final race of the season, the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The problem from anarrative point of view is that Sonny’s character is as static as his driving isdynamic. The most basic story human beings tell is about someone who wentsomewhere or did something and was changed by the going or doing. At the end ofthe film, however, Sonny is not only the same man he was at beginning, but thesame reckless, fearless, and rootless man he was in his twenties. And in casethis isn’t disappointing enough, the film rubs its flaw in our faces in theclosing scene. In the eighth minute (of one hundred and forty-eight), Sonny isheading for the Baja 1000 when his friend catches up with him and makes him theoffer he can’t refuse. What does he do immediately after victory in Abu Dhabi?Leaves without saying goodbye and signs up for the Baja 1000. The places hewent and the things he did changed nothing. It wasn’t the film I wanted it tobe.

So why write about it at all, never mind in a zinededicated to speculative fiction? About two-thirds of the way through thenarrative, there is a scene where Kate McKenna (played by Kerry Condon),Sonny’s love-interest in what is for the most part a sausage-fest, asks him whyhe has come back to Formula One at his age. With typical masculine reticence,he declines to answer. Then, after a suitable amount of encouragement and asingle manly tear, he says something very interesting: ‘It’s rare, butsometimes there’s…this moment in the car where everything goes quiet. Myheartbeat slows…it’s peaceful and I can see everything and no one, no one,can touch me. And I am chasing that moment every time I get in the car. I don’tknow when I’ll find it again, but man, I want to, I want to…cos in thatmoment, I’m flying.’ The moment about which Sonny is talking is difficultto describe, but is something like what the philosopher (and Nobel laureate inLiterature) Jean-Paul Sartre called being-in-itself, a kind of purity of beingthat we, as conscious and self-conscious living things, can rarely, if ever,reach. (In Sartre’s taxonomy, we are being-for-itself). It is pureconsciousness, meaning consciousness of nothing or just nothingness itself(Sartre’s magnum opus was called Being and Nothingness), thebreaking down of the barrier between subject and object, selfhood andworldhood, and perhaps even mind and body. That moment has frequently andfraudulently been sold to us as ‘flow’ and ‘mindfulness’, the latter as a snakeoil remedy for exploitation by our employers or Big Tech. I wondered what theequivalent moment in writing might be.

Once again, I did what I usually do (when I have aquestion about writing), turned to my three favourite books on writing, all ofwhich I have read or listened to multiple times and all of which I will nodoubt read or listen to many more times in the future. In order of precedence, theseare: Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000), ChuckWendig’s The Kick-Ass Writer: 1001 Ways to Write Great Fiction, GetPublished, and Earn Your Audience (2013), and Brian Dillon’s Essayism(2017). Stephen King needs no introduction and I’ve written about him manytimes in Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction and elsewhere. Chuck Wendig is anAmerican speculative fiction author best known for his Star Wars: AftermathTrilogy (2015-2017), three novels that connect the original trilogy offilms to the sequel trilogy in what is now known as the Skywalker Saga.Brian Dillon is an Irish author best known for his nonfiction, especially hisessays, and is also a highly respected art curator. As the title suggests, Essayismis about Dillon’s fortérather than fiction writing so I shall replace it with a recent find, Gareth L.Powell’s About Writing: The Authorised Field Guide for Aspiring Authors(2022). Powell is a prolific English science fiction author who has beenpublishing short stories, novellas, and novels since 2002. I want to callPowell and Wendig ‘mid-list’ authors, but I’m not sure if I should because,first, I’m not sure if a mid-list of professional novelists still exists and,second, it sounds disrespectful…which is not my intention: as much as I love OnWriting, I never aspired to be a bestseller so there is a sense in whichPowell’s and Wendig’s books are much more relevant to my experience as anauthor.

King describes something very similar to Sonny’s momentand even uses ‘moment’ to introduce it. This passage appears during hisdescription of the problems he had writing The Stand (1978), his fifthnovel and one of the half-dozen for which he is most famous: ‘At one moment Ihad none of this; at the next I had all of it. If there is any one thing I loveabout writing more than the rest, it’s that sudden flash of insight when yousee how everything connects. I have heard it called “thinking above the curve,”and it’s that; I’ve heard it called “the over-logic,” and it’s that, too…Therest of the book ran itself off in nine weeks.’ Wendig prefers ‘momentum’ tomoment and focuses on its significance in completing a first draft rather thanon the experience of writing with (or in a state of) momentum: ‘Momentum iseverything. Cut the brake lines. Careen wildly and unsteadily toward your goal.I hate to bludgeon you about the head and neck with a hammer forged in thevolcanic fires of Mount Obvious, but the only way you can finish something isby not stopping.’ Powell is concerned with something similar to theever-elusive moment when he writes: ‘I think you find your voice when you giveyourself permission to stop trying to write like anyone else and just put thewords down on the page as they occur to you. And you find your groove whenyou’re writing in the right way for you.’

None of these are describing Sonny’s moment,although King comes very close. King is actually discussing two separate butrelated experiences: the first is thinking above the curve, the momentwhen the solution to his narrative problem came to him; and the second what wemight call writing above the curve, finishing what many consider hisbest book in nine weeks. It is the writing above the curve in which I’minterested. Comparing Sonny’s dialogue with King’s passage, I have a bone topick with the F1’s script. Sonny says, ‘I want to…cos in that moment,I’m flying.’ Flying is just a version of driving, with much more speed and freedomand I imagine many pilots who fly professionally or for pleasure don’t experiencethe breakdown of subject and object, selfhood and worldhood, and all the rest towhich Sonny is referring. When he says driving in the moment is like flying,it’s akin to an author saying that writing in the moment with a pen is likewriting on a keyboard. It’s not that the moment makes one experience like a similarexperience that is more intense, but that in the moment, all experiences areintense, regardless of whether one is driving, flying, writing, typing, orpractising zazen. While King writes about thinking above the curve rather thanwriting above the curve, it seems likely he had some (or perhaps a great dealof) experience of the latter in those nine weeks he mentions.

Describing the moment in writing is verydifficult, which may be why so few people have tried and why I should cut thescreenwriters of F1 some slack. For me, writing above the curve is whenI cease being conscious of what I’m writing – the genre, the structure, theaudience, the publisher, all of that – and simply write (the story, novel,essay, monograph, whatever it is). It feels like writing without any rules orrestrictions. It’s not, of course, because the rules and restrictions are allthere, but I’m no longer aware of them and am just typing one word afteranother. At such times, I often touch-type too, which is something I can’t dowhen I’m aware that I’m typing. It seems like the manuscript is writing itself(which it’s obviously not either). I don’t have much more to say about theexperience except that while it’s not the only or even main reason I write, it probablyis comparable to racing (or zazen, or whatever). I first felt it when I waswriting my first (and, in retrospect, best) novel and the last thing I will sayis that, for me, it only happens when I’m working on a manuscript that takes multiplesittings, like a novel, monograph, novelette, or long essay. I’m not sure why,but the sustained attention required for these medium-to-large projects seemsto facilitate writing above the curve in a way that short stories, blog posts,and reviews don’t. I’ve sketched a poor picture of the experience, but ifyou’ve felt it (in writing or elsewhere), then I think you’ll understand preciselywhat I’ve failed to articulate.

Heavywith metal, heavy with meaning

Douglas J. Ogurek’s excellent review of George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) reminded me that I’d been planning to review its sequel, Fury Road, ever since using it as an example in my short essay, The World Ecology of Climate Change Cinema, in 2023. So here it is, three (or eleven) years late…Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) is the fourth instalment in the Mad Max film franchise, following Mad Max (1979), Mad Max 2 (1981), and Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985). All four of the films are directed by George Miller (the third in partnership with George Ogilvie), set in Australia, and follow the eponymous protagonist, Max Rockatansky (played by Mel Gibson in the first three and Tom Hardy in the fourth).

MadMax introduces Max as apolice officer in Victoria’s Main Force Patrol in a dystopian future ‘A FEWYEARS FROM NOW’ and pits him against a particularly vicious motorcycle gang. MadMax 2, which was released as The Road Warrior in the US (after Max’snom de guerre), opens with a narrated introduction that establishes thecontext of the original as the collapse of global civilisation in the aftermathof a Third World War in which nuclear weaponry was deployed. The sequel is setin a post-apocalyptic Australia in which isolated communities and maraudinggangs compete for the remaining fossil fuel, the production of which wasdestroyed in the war. Although the police no longer exist, Max fulfils asimilar function in Mad Max 2 and Beyond Thunderdome, highwaypatrol replaced by cross-country driving as he protects the weak from death andslavery at the hands of the marauders.

FuryRoad also opens with avoiceover, which concludes with Max stating: ‘Once, I was a cop, a road warrior searching for a righteouscause. As the world fell, each of us in our own way was broken. It was hard toknow who was more crazy…me or everyone else.’ The voices interrupting Maxsuggest that the Earth can no longer support human life and that human life hasbecome half-life, i.e. subject to radioactive decay, which is evinced bythe majority of the characters in the narrative, who appear diseased, deformed,or disabled. The global ecological collapse is mirrored in Max as anindividual, his psychological breakdown involving a paradoxical combination ofobsession with those he failed to save and paranoia that everyone intends himharm. He is thus no longer the road warrior defending prey from predator, but asolitary scavenger haunted by failure.

FuryRoad is 113 minutes fromopening to closing credits and has the five-act structure characteristic ofHollywood blockbusters: exposition, complication, climax, crisis, andresolution. The exposition and resolution are brief (seventeen and sevenminutes respectively) and the three acts that constitute the bulk of the filmall involve an extended motor vehicle chase across the Wasteland, putting FuryRoad very firmly in the action thriller genre. The exposition introducesMax, the despot Immortan Joe (played by Hugh Keays-Byrne), and Joe’s War Boys,the most capable of whom is Imperator Furiosa (played by Charlize Theron). The complicationbegins when Joe realises that Furiosa has rescued his Five Wives from sexualslavery in the Citadel and sets off in pursuit, with Max (who was capturedearlier) being used as a living blood bag for Nux (played by Nicholas Hoult),an ailing War Boy. Furiosa and Max meet and flee together while remainingmutually hostile. The climax begins when the two join forces (48 minutes in tothe film) and ends with Max convincing Furiosa that she must reverse the chase,charge the War Boys and their allies, and take control of the Citadel. Thecrisis is a prolonged battle between the two groups and the resolution depicts…well,I won’t spoil the ending just in case anyone reading this hasn’t seen it yet.

Assuch, the plot of Fury Road seems straightforward, moving from aninaugural condition in which Furiosa flees from the Citadel to her acceptanceof Max as an ally to a retrospectively inevitable condition in which she andMax fight Joe and the War Boys. The superficial narrative is, however, enriched by an alternating focus on the two protagonists. The title of the film and its placein the Mad Max franchise suggest that it is primarily about Max,like the three prequels, and the exposition follows suit, concentrating on hiscapture, attempted escape, and enslavement as Nux’s blood bag. The complication changes direction, however, suggesting that the narrative’s explorationof women’s emancipation in the face of hegemonic masculinity is of much moresignificance. The clash between female liberation and male supremacism –represented by the conflict between Furiosa and the Wives on the one hand andJoe and the War Boys on the other – leaves little room for Max, who is neitherfemale nor a War Boy. This exploration continues to take centre stage throughthe climax and it is not until the crisis, when Max leads a motley band ofwomen against the combined forces of the Citadel, Gas Town, and the BulletFarm, that his importance once again rivals Furiosa’s.

Thenarrative tension between Max and Furiosa, the question of whose story matters the most, is successfully resolved in the conclusion. Fury Road –or Furiosa’s road – is really about Furiosa and her struggle to free theoppressed in the Citadel. While Max’s role in the represented sequence ofevents is less significant than Furiosa’s, the role of those events in thefranchise is crucial to Max in that it restores him to his former status ofroad warrior and, in so doing, facilitates a future continuation of thefranchise. Screenwriter Nick Lathouris describes this development in thematicterms, as Fury Road being ‘about a man running away from his betterself, and his better self catches up to him’. He’s right, of course, but only in part because if Furiosa is the first Mad Max film without Max (cameoappearance excepted), then Fury Road is the first Mad Max filmwhere he is displaced as the protagonist. This is her story and thatstory is a perfect blend of high-speed action and abundant allegorical depth.****

Basic plot, basic tech, sophisticated filmmaking 

A girl gets kidnapped by desert-dwelling motorcycle thugs. They kill a loved one. The girl sets out to exact vengeance on their leader without revealing her utopian homeland. There’s the plot of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, the 2024 prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). We’ll leave the rest of the details to the film nerds.

Furiosa reveals the protagonist’s early ingenuity, how she gets involved with Immortan Joe (a villain from previous installations), and even how she lost her arm – it makes sense given the tenacity of her character. 

The guzzoline that drives the film is the beautifully choreographed action sequences. Most memorable is the scene during which Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) joins part father figure/part potential lover Praetorian Jack (Tom Burke) on a “war rig” – it looks like a giant gasoline truck – headed to Bullet Town to collect ammunition. The “war boys” stationed throughout the vehicle use a variety of weaponry (including their own bodies) to fight off a motorcycle hoodlum cavalcade. Thanks to the giant fans attached to their backs, some of the enemy can take flight and attack from above while still connected via cords to the cyclists on the ground. Attackers enter the fray in sequence, like dancers coming onto a stage.

With its desert setting, accelerated movements, distinctive vocabulary, and unrestrained characters – Immortan Joe’s bumbling and adrenaline-fueled sons Rictus Erectus and Scabrous Scrotus are prime examples – the film stays true to the Mad Max brand. Moreover, it retains the visual splendour of its predecessor. Hit the pause button at any point and there’s a good chance you’re looking at an image iconic enough to decorate a movie poster. And for evidence of writer/director George Miller’s focus on details, look to the scenes embossed in the metal of the war rig. 

While casting Taylor-Joy as Furiosa is like using a Lamborghini to deliver pizzas — the heroine does not have much of an emotional range — placing Chris Hemsworth in the role of Dementus proves a strong choice. From his big movements to his vocalizations, Hemsworth delivers as a chatty (but not annoying) and power-hungry villain who all but steals the show. When the dirty-faced antagonist, with his teddy bear, tarp-like cape, and unHemsworthian teeth and nose, comes onto the scene, the viewer tunes in. 

Another fascinating aspect of Furiosa is the creative use of basic technologies. Dementus’s chariot, for instance, is drawn by a pair of driverless motorcycles that he controls with attached ropes. And when he addresses an elevated Immortan Joe and comrades from the desert floor, Dementus uses a grimy microphone. Well worth the watch. Douglas J. Ogurek****