Wayne Simmons's Blog

“There are no good guys anymore,” Matthew Dunne says. He’s the main protagonist of David Moody’s latest novel, ONE OF US WILL BE DEAD BY MORNING, and in this one sentence he captures the essence of the book perfectly.

Picture the scene, if you will: you’re on an island with everyone you work with, the assholes as well as those you can actually tolerate day to day. It was pitched as some team-building thing by your boss but it’s turning out to be exactly the opposite. You see, back on the mainland, the world is ending. People are killing each other and at any time, that one guy or girl you genuinely do get on with in the office/ store/ wherever could lift a kitchen knife and bury it in your chest. For absolutely no reason at all.

Such is Matt’s predicament. The world he’s known and taken for granted has been flipped onto its ass. The rules have changed. It’s US vs THEM and you just don’t know who you can trust — if anyone at all. The tension is unbearable, paranoia’s through the roof. It’s William Golding’s Lord of the Flies meets Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None meets the most brutal slashers you’ve ever watched.

And there’s no humour, none at all.

The body count is high, the horror visceral and it’s relentless. And if you’re looking for some square-jawed hero or gun-totin’ green beret to parachute in and save the day, forget about it. “There are no good guys anymore,” remember, not even Matt himself could call himself that.

The things these people will have to do to survive will horrify you, no word of a lie.

ONE OF US WILL BE DEAD BY MORNING is a shocking read — and I mean that as a compliment. It’s hands-down the most brutal and uncompromising horror story I’ve ever encountered and addictive with it. You won’t be able to put this book down. It’s horrible, but you won’t be able to stop reading until it reaches its inevitably brutal conclusion.

You’ve been warned.

Find ONE OF US… at all good bookstores and online retailers or at the Infected Books store.

BOOK REVIEW: One Of Us Will Be Dead By Morning by David Moody was originally published in Wayne Simmons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Boy, aren’t Tor.com Publishing knocking it out of the park of late. With titles such as Runtime, All Systems Red and Killing Gravity on their roster, they’re fast becoming the go-to for fast-paced speculative fiction. Modern scifi pulp, if you like. And now we’ve got A Red Peace, the first in their new Starfire series by Spencer Ellsworth, a debut novella that feels a hell of a lot more confident than most of what the so-called veterans of the genre are putting out. Ellsworth’s writing has smoothness to it, a conversational swagger that just lures you into the story. And what a story it is.

We follow two narrators. Jaqi, the loveable roguette, a half-breed working the fringes of known space who unwittingly finds herself caught up in a massive conspiracy involving the galaxy’s newest warlord, John Starfire, a couple of human kids and their mysterious and much sought-after artefact. Together with her unlikely ally, a musclebound brawler named Z, they hit the spaceways with Starfire’s vanguard, including the drug-addicted Araskar, second narrator of the story, and a whole bunch of nasty looking bug things in hot pursuit.

It’s wrong to draw parallels when you’ve got a writer building a world that’s very much his own, but I’m going to do it anyway. A Red Peace takes everything I love best about Star Wars, Firefly, Guardians of the Galaxy and Killjoys, as well as Corman’s Space Raiders and Battle Beyond the Stars, and just throws it all into a big bear pit to fight it out. The result is a tightly plotted novella totally devoid of filler, comprised solely of the best bits of its source material, and yet somehow Ellsworth still manages to breathe life into his characters, fleshing them out on the sly to the point where you really, really give a damn about them. And let me tell you, it’s been a while since I’ve felt like that reading a book.

The first part of a trilogy, A Red Peace kicks off a saga sure to dig its claws into space opera fans over the next couple of years or so and if there’s any justice at all, scoop a few awards in the process. Get on board now so you can say you were there before it went big.

More details on Starfire: A Red Peace right here

BOOK REVIEW: Starfire A Red Peace by Spencer Ellsworth was originally published in Wayne Simmons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For the uninitiated out there, Interzone is the UK’s longest-running scifi and fantasy magazine. Available bi-monthly from TTA Press, it features short stories for the most part but also book & movie reviews, interviews and opinion pieces.

I’ve had a subscription with the mag for over a year now and have found it to be a wonderful way to connect with writers both new and established working within the genre.

Issue 271 comes loaded with another breathtakingly ethereal cover by Dave Senecal. Dave’s art really stands out for its unique style and attention to detail. For me, his Interzone work in particular has a cyberpunk edge about it that wouldn’t look out of place on some holo from 2049. Perfect for a sci-fi mag, then.

The quality of art is high throughout this issue with a range of styles represented, from Martin Hanford’s edgy comicbook vibe for Tim Casson’s Gods In The Blood (Of Those Who Rise) to Richard Wagner’s quasi-realism on Chris Barnham’s When I Close My Eyes and others.

Story-wise, we get quite the mix as usual but there’s a tendency towards the more surreal takes on familiar tropes.

Opener, The Rocket Farmer by Julie C. Day, for example, is a trippy little ride fusing rocket science with good ol’ southern-fried folksiness. The result is a character-rich story about family that delivers quite the emotional punch.

Michael Reid’s If Your Powers Fail You In A City Under Tin — with some suitably Cthulhu-esque art by Jim Burns — works some fast-paced urban fantasy into an apocalyptic horror setting.

Chris Barnham’s When I Close My Eyes delivers a heart breaking blend of paranormal and mech.

Andy Dudak’s Cryptic Female Choice puts something of a unique and perhaps even topical spin on dystopian scifi.

Tim Casson’s Gods In The Blood (Of Those Who Rise) has a Tales of The Unexpected feel to it that I really enjoyed.

And then there’s Chubba Luna by Eliot Fintushel, a seedy tech noir that proved to be my favourite of the bunch. Eliot also has the best ‘about the author’ blurb I’ve ever read — oh how you’ll laugh.

All in all, another solid issue from the good folks at TTA delivering some of the freshest genre stories out there. Grab it here in print form and here on Kindle.

MAGAZINE REVIEW: Interzone 271 was originally published in Wayne Simmons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I’ve just learned of the passing of George A. Romero.

This is very sad news indeed and a great loss to the horror community. George’s stories of ordinary people in extraordinary situations have shaped my writing and the writing of many of my peers.

David Moody wrote this moving tribute.

A lot of creators within the wider horror and genre community owe this man a huge debt of gratitude.

RIP, sir.

NEWS: RIP George Romero… was originally published in Wayne Simmons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Congrats to my German language publisher, Voodoo Press, on their nine year anniversary! I’m honoured to have released a slew of titles through VP over the years — Grippe, Inkubation, Zum Sterben schon 1 & 2 and Das Madchen im Keller.

Check out this rather impressive VP collection built up by Dieter Annecke!

NEWS: My German language publisher, VOODOO PRESS, celebrates their nine year anniversary was originally published in Wayne Simmons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

BOOK REVIEW: Killing Gravity by Corey J. White

God, I’m loving these novellas.

I mean, who needs a 100K tome to wade through when you can have a different world every weekend to immerse yourself in, with a story and characters and rules so delightfully clutter-free that you don’t need a map/ list/ whatever at the front to make sense of it all.

Corey J. White’s Killing Gravity is the latest in a long line of shorter form fiction I’ve been reading — many from Tor.com — that really hits the spot. Think Firefly meets Buffy meets Star Wars meets William Gibson’s Neuromancer and you’re in the right ball park. Story follows Mariam “Mars” Xi, an enigmatic young space pirate with more going on than meets the eye. Basically, she’s a space witch (that’s right, I said SPACE WITCH) and together with her cat, Seven, and the raggiest of ragtag crews, Mars slays her way across a planetary system more scummy looking than all of the quarries they used to film Blake’s 7 put together.

White’s writing is sharp and sarcy, doing the William Gibson thing of letting us, the readers, pick it all up on the hoof. There’s no annoying exposition, no annoying anything, actually, just loads of interstellar goodness populated with the kind of badass characters you just dig from the get-go. And what with digging those characters, you can be damn sure there’ll be heartache on down the line.

For me, that was perhaps the most striking thing about this book, actually, how much raw emotion White was able to rinse out within his 30 or 40 K. Damn thing practically bleeds the stuff. And with a sequel in the pipeline as well as spin-off novel, fans of Ms. Xi & co. should have plenty to get invested in.

(Personally, I’m hoping for a box set and line of action figures. What about it, guys?)

For more info on this and other Tor.com novellas, check out their official website.

BOOK REVIEW: Killing Gravity by Corey J. White was originally published in Wayne Simmons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For a while there, mech suits were all the rage. There was that Idris Elba movie, wasn’t there, teched-up beefcakes battling it out on some beach somewhere, as well as a slew of tie-in and cash-in books. It was the next big thing for all of ten minutes and then it was more or less gone, chased back to the fringes of Anime from whence it came.

Tor.com has never been a publisher to follow the trends, or indeed do anything in a paint-by-numbers style at all. Their last mech suit title, Runtime by S.D. Divya, was one I thoroughly enjoyed so I was keen to see how All Systems Red, their latest foray into the sub-genre, would go down.

Safe to say, I wasn’t disappointed.

The trick with Runtime was to focus less on the mech suit and more on the very human story underneath — and that’s very much what’s going on here, too. Wells does a wonderful job of bringing out the humanity of her lead character, a nameless company ‘murderbot’ tasked with minding a somewhat passive group of scientists on a research trip that goes wrong. And it’s the little touches that make it for me — the bot’s obsession with soap operas, its social awkwardness and neurotic self-analysing. It’s all perfectly pitched to make a fully rounded character within a sub-genre — this story floats somewhere between military sci-fi and cyberpunk, I guess — that is often bereft of decent characterisation. Wells nails it.

I read this book over a weekend, pretty much within three or four sittings — and I’m slow reader, to boot. It was one of those addictive books that I kept wanting to return to, everything about it worked for me. There’s also the format, Tor.com’s novella length really appealing to me right now — I’ve burned through quite a few of their titles over the last year, including the award-winning and highly acclaimed Binti series. With reports that Wells has signed up for at least another two Murderbot stories, I’m very much looking forward to seeing how this series progresses, too.

More details on this and other titles mentioned can be found over at the Tor.com website.

BOOK REVIEW: All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries 1) by Martha Wells was originally published in Wayne Simmons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

BOOK REVIEW: Alien Covenant by Alan Dean Foster

Back when I was a kid, I loved movie novelizations.

They used to come out before the movies were released so the novelization was like an advance screening, if you like. I picked up a lot of them over the years— Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, Licence to Kill, Alien 3 etc. And what I really liked about them, particularly Alien 3 by Alan Dean Foster, was how you were often given something extra, something that was absent from the movies— a cut scene here or there, some clues as to what a character might have been thinking, what motivated them to do whatever it was they did. In that sense, then, the novelization was like the director’s cut of the movie and, for me at least, often a better way to experience the story.

I haven’t seen Alien: Covenant yet. I guess I’m waiting for the DVD release, figuring it’s one I’d prefer to experience in the comfort of my own home as opposed to on the big screen. Maybe I’m just getting old or maybe it’s the fact that a visit to the cinema these days would set you back more than I would happily pay (yep, definitely getting old!). That said, I feel like I’ve seen the movie because I’ve read the novelization: written by the always on-form Alan Dean Foster, it’s like the damn thing was playing in my head.

So what was it like?

First of all, I think it’s important to say that this story is not a direct sequel to the Alien series. What I mean by that is that it doesn’t come after Alien Resurrection, either chronologically or thematically — it’s a very different beast to that. No, this movie is a direct sequel to Ridley Scott’s Prometheus which is something of an origin story to Scott’s very first movie within this world, 1979’s Alien. In that sense, then, Alien: Covenant continues this prequel series, not only making reference to the characters of Prometheus but actually picking up on their storyline.

The story is set ten years after the events of Prometheus. We follow the crew of a new ship, Covenant, sent by the ever-sinister Company (aka Weyland-Yutani) to colonise a distant world. The crew themselves are comprised of couples, each with their own skillsets: our principal heroine, Daniels — a character perhaps a little too similar to Ellen Ripley for comfort — is in charge of terraforming, for example. After being woken rather abruptly from hypersleep — a scene that, at least in the book, played out very effectively — they find themselves close to a different planet to the one they were originally destined for, and collectively decide to at least visit it. This, of course, turns out to be a mistake.

To take the story much further than this would be quite spoilerific and I want to avoid that in this review. For me, a lot of this story’s punch lies in going in with fresh eyes and no expectations at all. Safe to say, the xenomorphs make an appearance, at first on the planet, and then later within the ship. In some ways, then, you could be forgiven for thinking that this story is a retread of some of the earlier movies within the series — Scott’s original movie as well as James Cameron’s Aliens and even the less popular Alien 3— and that would be true, particularly with regards to the action scenes. But what that doesn’t account for is the fact that there isn’t a lot of action in this story per se — at least not within the book. It’s much more of a philosophical piece, and, in that sense, I feel, borrows just as much, thematically, from Scott’s Blade Runner as it does from the Alien franchise.

I enjoyed this book and very much look forward to the movie. For me, it is a wonderful enrichment of the Alien universe, addressing many of the questions fans have been pondering for years as well as introducing a few new ones. For the casual reader/ viewer, the pace might prove a little on the slow side, the action scenes — and even many of the characters within them — bringing little new or fresh to the table. But for me, this is a worthy addition to the series and a great bridge between the world of Prometheus and the world of Alien.

More info on this book and other titles within the Alien series is available from the Titan Books website.

BOOK REVIEW: Alien Covenant by Alan Dean Foster was originally published in Wayne Simmons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Titan Books’ omnibus series aims to re-release all of the earlier tie-in novels from the popular sci-fi horror series Aliens with the first book collecting Earth Hive, Nightmare Asylum and The Female War.

I review all three.

EARTH HIVE by Steve Perry

Steve Perry’s Earth Hive is the first of a trilogy of novels based on the comicbook series offshoot written by Mark Verheiden. First released in 1989, the comics were a direct continuation of the film, Aliens, and so featured the characters Newt and Hicks. Following the release of Alien 3, further reprints of the comics, along with Perry’s novels, changed the names of the main characters to Billie and Wilks respectively, but it’s still, of course, very easy to draw parallels.

Perry’s novels form a cinematic expansion of the movie series, particularly reminiscent of the second and arguably most popular, Aliens. The emphasis is on action and horror but the world-building is what it needs to be and the characterisation doesn’t suffer despite the change of names — within time Billie and Wilks become their own characters with their own adventures and agendas as opposed to just mirror images of their root characters from the movies.

With Earth Hive, we see the story told from two perspectives — a ship full of colonial marines destined for a planet infested by the Aliens with the intention of bringing back a specimen alongside a lab back on Earth with its own specimen.

The plot’s a little meandering, if we’re honest, and doesn’t fully address the question of why the company had these two projects running alongside each other, but the story remains incredibly readable and highly entertaining. Perry’s clipped and frenetic writing style steals the show and keeps those pages turning until the bitter end — and bitter it is!

NIGHTMARE ASYLUM by Steve Perry

Second of the Perry trilogy, following the exploits of Wilks, Billie (and later, Ripley), Nightmare Asylum was actually the third book that I read and, in so being, may have lost a little of its punch.

The story plays out a lot like George Romero’s seminal zombie horror film, Day Of The Dead, with its crazed, totalitarian general and a half-baked attempt to domesticate the aliens rather than kill them — a concept we see coming up within both the movies and books of the franchise time and time again. It becomes something of a McGuffin here, however, the main thrust of the story being the claustrophobia of the marines hacking out an existence on a small base in the arse end of space. And in that alone, it works just fine. Perry’s writing is as sharp as ever, the action scenes suitably cinematic and the character-building genuine and not forced for the sake of taking a break between the action scenes. But, for me at least, the retconning of the original story here, which was meant to follow the exploits of Newt and Hicks as opposed to Billie and Wilks, takes much of the wind out of Perry’s sails leaving the story a little less explosive than it could have been.

Still very readable, though.

THE FEMALE WAR by Steve Perry & Stephani Perry

Steve and daughter SD Perry’s The Female War is what’s known in the business as an ‘oldie but a goodie’. First published in 1993, it came out around the time that Alien 3 brought Ellen Ripley out of cryosleep and back onto the big screen. The Perrys’ book also sees the return of Ripley only in a completely different way, which may have presented problems for the publisher — safe to say, this book, and the two previous novels in the series, are not deemed canonical.

But what it loses in authenticity, it sure as hell makes up for in sheer readability. With their clipped, uncomplicated writing style and less-is-more approach to exposition, the Perrys have unleashed one hell of a page turner. And, sure, the premise itself might be a little hokey and the plot not one you want to dwell on for too long, but why let that get in the way of a good time, right?

The Female War is a fun, blood-spattered thrillride mirroring some of the best moments of the movies. Definitely worth your time.

More info on this and other Aliens tie-in titles is available from the Titan Books website.

BOOK REVIEW: The Complete Aliens Omnibus Volume 1 was originally published in Wayne Simmons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Okay, so I’ve read this latest Alien series from Titan Books completely arse-about-face.

I started with the middle one in the trilogy, James A. Moore’s Sea of Sorrows, and then moved onto the third instalment, Christopher Golden’s River Of Pain. And here I am now reviewing the first in the series, Tim Lebbon’s Out of The Shadows.

It doesn’t matter, of course, as while they’re all billed as being somewhat connected, they’re not — each is a self-contained story. In fact, the only thing they share in common is the fact that, at least when released, they were sold to the readers as canonical. And that’s very important because, having read all three now, for me the most striking thing about them is how authentic they feel.

That alone, I guess, does set them apart from some of the earlier tie-in-novels (ALIEN HARVEST by Robert Sheckley, I’m looking at you) which, while perhaps entertaining in their own right, have felt nothing like the movies.

For Tim Lebbon, making Out Of The Shadows feel in any way authentic was going to be a big ask — and I say that with the greatest of respect to the lad. Set between the first and second movies, and starring Ripley herself, it just didn’t feel possible to me to make this feel like a genuine part of the movies’ timeline — but Lebbon pulls it off.

Without getting too spoilery, the story follows Ripley’s escape shuttle from the Nostradamus as it crash lands into Chris ‘Hoop’ Hooper and co’s mining ship the Marion. It just so happens that Hoop’s been having some pest problems himself, shall we say, so having Ripley around proves very useful indeed. And while at this point, readers might feel they’re in for a retread of the first movie, Lebbon casts his net wider than that, bringing the Marion’s hapless crew down into the mine itself where, of course, they encounter all kinds of fun.

The result is a story that while drawing upon the best bits of the movies — in particular the first and third films — also remains very much its own beast.

An excellent read in and of itself but also a brilliant addition to the whole Alien franchise, and the increasingly complex tapestry underpinning such — Out Of The Shadows is an essential addition to any fan’s library and a huge recommend from me.

BOOK REVIEW: Alien: Out Of The Shadows by Tim Lebbon was originally published in Wayne Simmons on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.