Author: Cheryl Morgan

Cheryl Morgan is the editor of Salon Futura and owner of its publisher, Wizard's Tower Press. She is also non-fiction editor for Clarkesworld Magazine. Cheryl has won three Hugo Awards: Best Fanzine in 2004 for Emerald City, Best Fan Writer in 2009 and Best Semiprozine for Clarkesworld in 2010. She is a director of San Francisco Science Fiction Conventions and of Association for the Recognition of Excellence in SF & F Translation. She lives near Bath in the UK.

Issue 77

Issues

This is the February 2026 issue of Salon Futura. Here are the contents.


  • Art: The Hand of the King’s Shadow: This issue's cover is by Ben Baldwin and is the cover for Chaz Brenchley's The Hand of the King's Evil

  • Slow Gods: Space opera is alive and well in the sure hands of Claire North

  • The Owl Service: The Owl Service is one of the UK's best loved fantasy stories for young adults, but it is a story set in Wales, and inspired by Welsh mythology. How does it read in Wales?

  • Killing Hares: It is not easy, being the village witch. People have expectations of you, and they are not always very grateful for what you do.

  • The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire: This one is a straight up romantasy novel, set in Wales. Get your annoying but handsome fairy prince here.

  • The Great God Pan: The biggest name in Welsh fantastic fiction is undoubtedly Arthur Machen, but his work is well over a century old now. How does it stack up?

  • The Book of Three: The Chronicles of Prydain are very obviously rooted in Welsh mythology, but Lloyd Alexander was American. How does he do?

  • She Is Here: Finally, Nicola Griffith arrives at the PM Press Outspoken Authors series. About time, in Cheryl's opinion.

  • Editorial – February 2026: Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Sant Hapus, pawb! This issue is a Welsh fantasy special.

Slow Gods

077, Book Review, Claire North

People have said elsewhere that science fiction is dying, and if you take a look in your local Waterstones you can see why. But lack of books on shelves does not mean lack of books being written, it just means that current fashions in retail have changed. And when you have books as good as Claire North’s Slow Gods, how can a genre possibly be dying?

Mawukana na-Vnadze lives in the interstellar empire known as the Shine. It is called that because of its fascination with celebrity and power. People who have both are said to have Shine. Those who don’t are a waste of oxygen.

We should all accept now that, regardless of when they are set, speculative fiction books are a product of the era in which they are written. That is particularly true of Slow Gods, which is firmly rooted in the ruthless Capitalism of Donald Trump’s America. The only thing it misses is the obsession with Large Language Models as a means of doing away with the need for workers, and that’s presumably because all books take time in the writing. And also because the book is space opera and so deals with actual silicon intelligences.

The entity known as the Slow is one such being. It is unimaginably old and deeply ineffable, which leads many people, especially its fellow silicon intelligences, the quans, to regard it as a god of some sort. Like most gods, it rarely actually says anything. Which means it is a major event when it does. In warning the galaxy of an impending supernova, it most definitely indicated a status as a benevolent divinity. Human, quan and alien astronomers quickly confirmed the danger. Thankfully the warning had come in good time. There were decades to make plans to save the planets that would be in the blast zone. And so plans were made, except in the Shine where such activities were deemed a waste of resources.

Yes, Slow Gods is, amongst other things, a book about climate change.

Every space opera has to deal in some way with the unimaginable distances between stars. Some used ‘jump gates’ providing an instantaneous means of travel from one part of the galaxy to another, and also a potential economic bottleneck that can drive the plot. Others assume that there is travel through ‘hyperspace’, which can be a very weird place. North has opted for this solution, calling it arcspace, and it is a deeply strange and disturbing environment.

Arcship pilots are a breed unto themselves. Most do not survive long in the job. They have no ‘spice’ to ease their work. In some civilisations pilots are well-trained elite workers given generous retirement packages when their minds can no longer cope. Not so in the Shine, where retirement is not an option. There are always plenty of excess humans who fall into debt and cannot earn their way out of it. Shine pilots fly one mission, almost certainly die on it, and are quickly and cheaply replaced.

This was the fate of Mawukana na-Vnadze, except that Maw did not exactly die. Like Schrödinger’s cat he became both dead and not dead. A version of his ship was found, prior to its flight, in another part of the galaxy. There was no body, but copious amounts of blood that matched Maw’s DNA. Another copy of the ship was found elsewhere, with something alive on it that both was and was not Maw.

This person became known as Mawanuka-from-the-Dark. Two things were obvious about him. Firstly he was by far the best arcspace pilot in the galaxy, seemingly suffering no ill effects from his flights. And secondly he was impossible to kill. Or rather, if you did kill him, he would come back to life again as soon as his corpse was not being actively observed.

This new version of Maw both terrified and obsessed everyone. Logically he was too dangerous to let live. Practically he seemed impossible to kill. And also he might soon be very useful. Because war was coming. The Shine’s solution to the supernova was quite simple: they would just conquer neighbouring star systems that were outside of the blast zone and move there.

This will be a concept that is familiar to the people of Greenland and Canada.

For the civilisations of the galaxy, war is a problem, because peace relies on Mutually Assured Destruction. The more powerful civilisations rely for survival on the space opera equivalent of nuclear submarines. Blackships lurk in the vast emptiness of space, armed with planet-killing missiles that are virtually undetectable. A blackship war would mean the end of most of galactic civilisation.

The Shine therefore embarks on conventional warfare, picking on smaller, mostly defenceless civilisations, and daring the rest of the galaxy to risk escalation by opposing it. Fearing their own destruction, they do nothing.

It is all horribly familiar, isn’t it. Here’s one character’s view of the behaviour of the Shine:

Cuxil had not been raised to understand Shine, but many minds were now whispering to hers who had been born to it, bred to it, and they knew nothing was Shinier then boldly breaking all the rules, then making one tiny concession to those who are meant to enforce them, who say thank you, oh but thank you for doing that one little, little thing.

Which is exactly how Trump & co. get away with most of their outrages.

Or consider this:

What do you do when someone lies to your face so calmly, so repeatedly, so blithely?

Slow Gods, then, is a book about the fight against Fascism. It being space opera, there is no guarantee that the solution it provides would work for us. After all, there are no analogues to the Slow and Mawanuka-from-the-Dark in our world. But the book also addresses two existential issues of our time.

The first concerns the powerlessness that we all feel in the face of an advancing far-right war machine. Can we do anything worthwhile to oppose it? Should we even try? Is despair the only option?

The second concerns the consequences of taking action. If we fight, people will die. We might have to kill. Most of the population of the Shine are innocent of the crimes of their leaders, save only that they are too ignorant and powerless to resist. Civilians die in wars. How can we claim to be moral if we are killers of innocents too?

These are deep questions. It is significant, I think, that two of my favourite books from 2025—Slow Gods and The Everlasting—are both about resisting Fascism, albeit in different ways. I’d be happy for either of them to walk off with major awards. Both science fiction and fantasy are still very much relevant, and very much engaging with the issues of the day.

book cover
Title: Slow Gods
By: Claire North
Publisher: Orbit
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Owl Service

077, Alan Garner, Book Review

The Owl Service was first published in 1967, which is about the time I discovered The Lord of the Rings and vowed never to read a children’s book again. Yes, OK, I was a precocious git. But even though the book is much beloved by most UK fans of my generation and the next, I had not read it until now.

The attraction of the book is obvious. It is a fine piece of YA horror with the tension ramping up from one chapter to the next. It is not an easy book to read, but a clever teenager will doubtless warm to the challenge and love it all the more because of the effort it asks of them.

I suspect that a lot of present-day book reviewers would decry the book as ‘badly written’ because of how hard Alan Garner makes the reader work. It isn’t until you are well into the book that you can sort out who all of the various characters are, and what their relationship is to each other. The TV series was doubtless much easier to follow.

Also Garner expects you to understand what is happening (and often what has happened off screen) from the conversation. He is really very good at giving you a great sense of the action from a few well-chosen turns of phrase. Even in his own time some critics apparently complained that books for children should make the plot more plain. But that, I think, would detract from the building sense of dread.

However, I wasn’t reading the book for a general review. It is well known enough without me. I was reading it specifically as a work of Welsh fantasy. That requires asking some very specific questions. It also means spoilers.

I should start by noting that the book is very much of its time. Growing up as a Welsh kid in an English town, I was well aware of the contempt that most English people had for the Welsh back then. Also the sense of shame that many Welsh people had about their own language at the time was very real. It was engendered by the notorious Blue Book reports of 1847, and even when my mother was in school during WWII Welsh kids would be beaten if they dared to speak their own language. Things are very different now, but even so I think that almost all of the people who vote for Reform in the May elections will be people who don’t speak Welsh.

The main Welsh characters in the book don’t come off very well. Sometimes that is for believable reasons. Nancy has clearly been very badly traumatised by the previous cycle of the curse, and Gwyn has had a hard upbringing because of that. Huw Halfbacon seems at times as if he could have walked out of a rural village in Lovecraft’s New England, probably complete with gills, but he too is a victim of the curse.

Before being too upset with Garner, however, we should bear in mind that the closed rural community that he describes in the book is not something that is particular to Wales. I have already mentioned Lovecraft, and many other horror writers have used such communities as a setting. Some of them have been in England. I note also that Gwyn is a character who would have been very familiar to many of the kids I went to school with. We couldn’t wait to get out of Somerset.

Garner is not exactly kind to the English either. Roger and Alison are spoiled upper middle class brats. The horror expressed by Alison when ‘Mummy’ threatens to stop her attending choir and the tennis club if she doesn’t stop talking to Gwyn is magnificently out of proportion to the true horror of what it going on in the plot.

By the way, I am fascinated by the character of the new Mrs. Bradley, Alison’s mother. She never appears on screen. Clive, her thoroughly wet husband who would do anything for a quiet life, seems utterly cowed by her. How Clive got to be a wealthy captain of industry is a mystery to me. He probably inherited the role from his father.

The key point, however, is that at the end of the book it is the English who break the curse. Roger and Alison go back to their comfortable lives in Birmingham and can forget about their awful experience in Wales. Nancy is already ruined, and Gwyn loses everything in the events of the book. That doesn’t come over well for a Welsh reader.

I note that Garner seems to have skimped a bit on the research. He clearly thinks that Lleu Llaw Gyffes from The Mabinogion has a name that rhymes with ‘clue’. That would be true if he name were spelled Llew, which is often is. But Garner spells it Lleu, which rhymes with ‘ley’. Roger and Alison would make this mistake, but the Welsh characters would not.

Another disappointment is that the book doesn’t connect well with the source material. The only things that Garner really takes from the Fourth Branch are the love triangle and the flowers/owl nature of Blodeuwedd, and even then it isn’t really a love triangle because Roger and Alison don’t have that sort of relationship. Gronw is beholden to Lleu, but Lleu is no English overlord, he’s the heir to the kingdom of Gwynedd. Blodeuwedd is not English either, and Garner ignores the fact that she’s a golem made by Gwydion and Mab to get around a curse that Lleu shall never have a human wife.

All of which leaves me thinking that, while I am sure that there is a very good modern fantasy story that could be written about the love triangle between Lleu, Blodeuwedd and Gronw, The Owl Service is most definitely not it. Nor, indeed, is a small, tight-knit, rural community the correct setting for it. None of which takes away from the book’s power as a work of supernatural horror set in such a community. It is just a misuse of the source material.

book cover
Title: The Owl Service
By: Alan Garner
Publisher: Harper Collins
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Killing Hares

077, Book Review, E M Duffield-Fuller

I came across this book because it was being promoted by the Welsh Women in Publishing group on Facebook. Then I saw that the author, E M Duffield-Fuller, was doing an event at a local bookshop in Llandeilo, so I went along to meet her. I’m glad I did.

In some ways Killing Hares is a strange book. The cover screams romantasy at you. The publishers (a Welsh feminist small press) are marketing it as mainstream fiction. It is neither of these things. It is a fine piece of feminist fantasy about the difficulty of being the village witch.

Cerys is a huder (pronounced heeder), a worker of magics who, if the need arises, can call upon the power of the land to protect her village. The only trouble is that such powerful magic is likely to be fatal. Cerys’s mother died when the warlord known as the Iron Crow brought a dragon into their valley, causing young Cerys to have to grow into her role with no mentor.

Years later, the Iron Crow is still a threat, but Cerys is chafing against the restrictions of her role. Most importantly, for her to have a successor, she must have a girl child. Cerys has no desire to marry any of the young men of the village. Marrying an outsider would be unthinkable. And the village elders are getting impatient.

The village of Mervale is not actually in Wales. The book is set in an alternate world. But if you think of the nearby big town of Hardritch as Cardiff, and the Iron Crow as the English, it is all very familiar. Besides, Cerys is a Welsh name and huder is pronounced as if it is written in Welsh. Also there are some locations in the book that are familiar to anyone who knows Aberystwyth, which is where EM Duffield-Fuller lives. (She’s doing a doctorate in Literature at the university.)

Because the book is not set in our world, it does not need to be set in a specific historical period, but it feels quite 19th Century. The Iron Crow’s people are experts in metal magic, which leads to industrialization. Also the social attitudes of people in Mervale seem quite Victorian to me.

The plot revolves around the fact that the Iron Crow is once again seeking to extend his power to encompass Mervale. There is a spy active near the village and he has been setting magical traps for unwary locals. Meanwhile Cerys finds a young girl called Thraigthe who appears to be a runaway slave of the enemy. She takes the girl in with a view of making her an apprentice. The villagers, of course, are suspicious of any outsider, and with the looming threat the need to get Cerys pregnant seems very urgent to some.

I really like the way that the book portrayed small village politics, and the way in which it makes clear that what really matters is what sort of person you are. Someone whose family has lived in the village for generations can be a monster, while an outsider newly come to the community can be a good person. The book also makes the point that it doesn’t matter how important and powerful a young woman is, some men will still see her as someone whom they can order about and use as they see fit. In the book, at least, they come to regret those attitudes.

book cover
Title: Killing Hares
By: E M Duffield-Fuller
Publisher: Honno
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire

077, Anna Fiteni, Book Review

This one is definitely romantasy. Specifically it is an enemies to lovers romance featuring a human girl and a fairy prince. You wouldn’t think that from the first few chapters, but it gets there very quickly.

Sabrina Parry is a teenage girl living in a small Welsh village called LLanadwen. It is 1842 and her father is just about to be sentenced to transportation to Australia for his part in the Rebecca Riots, a protest against toll gates. Sabrina’s mother has died recently, and her sister, Ceredwin, is very sickly having barely survived the illness that killed their mother. The only other member of the family is an elderly grandmother, so Sabrina is going to have to be the breadwinner.

A note on names. Sabrina is the Roman name for the goddess of the river Severn. The original Welsh name for the river is Habren. In Welsh adjectives generally appear after the associated noun, so the ‘Habren Faire’ of the title would be ‘Fair Sabrina’ in English. (Well, apart from the fact that Faire is not a Welsh word, but the fairies in the book speak English because otherwise most of the book would be in Welsh.)

Anyway, Sabrina is trying to face up to being the family breadwinner, and hopes that Ceredwin, being much prettier, will find a husband despite her sickly nature. But then Ceredwin runs away into the woods near the house. Sabrina chases after her, and find herself in Gwlad y Tylwyth Teg–Fairyland. Searching for her sister there, Sabrina meets a very annoying fairy prince called Neirin and discovers that the land is suffering from a mysterious sickness than only a human can cure. The fairy king has offered a boon to anyone who can save his people.

Much of what follows is the romance plot in which Sabrina slowly discovers just how duplicitous the Tylwyth Teg can be, and how badly the handsome Neirin is manipulating her. Anna Fiteni handles this part very well. At no point did I feel that the emotions of the characters were being manipulated to serve the required tropes of the plot.

Eventually, of course, Sabrina must save Fairyland, save Ceredwin, and win her prince. Along the way we discover that the book is very much about the mistreatment of the Welsh by wealthy Englishmen.

The history is interesting. There is no such village as Llanadwen, but it is entirely reasonable that it should exist somewhere along the Taff Vale railway which runs from Cardiff Docks through Pontypridd to Merthyr Tydfil, taking coal from the mines to sell overseas, and also to the ironworks in Merthyr. The line was built by Brunel and opened in 1840.

The Rebecca Riots, on the other hand, were more of a Carmarthenshire thing, though 1842 is a year in which the rioters were very active. Also I could find no evidence of a mining disaster in the area in 1842, though there was one in 1844 so that plot element is entirely plausible.

However, despite having done some decent research, Fiteni doesn’t seem that interested in writing an historical novel. Time moves differently in Fairyland and the Fairies have access to future times. Sabrina meets a soldier who has died on the Western Front in WWI, and a girl who entered Fairyland in 1998. This is used as an excuse for the fact that everyone talks and thinks like present day people rather than Victorians.

One example of this is that, when Sabrina discovers that Ceredwin has been visiting Fairyland regularly, and has a lesbian relationship with a mermaid, she’s not particularly concerned by this. Obviously lesbians existed in 19th century Wales, but such things were very much not talked about.

Something else that I would have picked up on as an editor is carelessness with names. Sabrina knows that true names have power in Fairyland, and sometimes this concerns people, but sometimes it doesn’t. Morgen, the mermaid, gives her name to Sabrina unprompted when they first meet.

My guess is that this mostly won’t matter. The people who will be buying the book will be doing so for the romance plot and won’t particularly care about the things that I found weird. I note also that the book reminded me quite a bit of the sort of fairy tale written by that famous person whom we don’t talk about any more. If Fiteni can fill that void in the market, she’ll do very well.

From my point of view I am happy to see someone from Wales write fantasy that is rooted in Welsh culture. There is quite a bit of Welsh language in the book, though it is generally explained. The chapter titles are all in Welsh. Translations are provided for these, and though they are in brackets the publishers have chosen to put them in bigger, bolder type than the actual titles. It is clear that Fiteni is more interested in writing a romance than an historical fantasy, but I’m pleased that she added a lot of Welsh content and quite a bit of feminism.

book cover
Title: The Wicked Lies of Habren Faire
By: Anna Fiteni
Publisher: Electric Monkey
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Great God Pan

077, Arthur Machen, Book Review

Ask people about famous Welsh fantasy writers and they will probably look blankly at you. Ask them, “what about Arthur Machen” and they may well reply, “oh, was he Welsh?” The Great God Pan is a classic of 19th Century Gothic fiction. Parts of it are even set in Wales. But it is, after all, rooted in Classical mythology rather than Welsh. Machen (Arthur Llewellyn Jones) was born in Caerleon, the home of Legio II Augusta, and he spent a lot of time thinking about the Roman Empire.

The end of the 19th Century is an interesting time for speculative fiction. Machen published the final version of The Great God Pan in 1894. HG Wells published The Time Machine in 1895. The two books are very different. One helped kick-start the burgeoning genre of science fiction. The other is acknowledged as a classic of the horror genre but, like the work of HP Lovecraft, it can seem very stilted to a modern reader.

The basic plot of the story is very straightforward. A young gentleman is invited to witness a scientific experiment which, he is assured, will allow the test subject to see into the mystical realm and gaze upon The Great God Pan. The experiment appears to be a failure as the subject ends up a drooling idiot. Years later the same gentleman becomes aware of a number of high profile suicides of wealthy men, which he links to a particular woman, and thence back to the consequences of the experiment that he witnessed.

The problem, for both Machen and Lovecraft, is that they must somehow convey in words that which is too horrible for the mortal mind to witness without descending into madness. It is a task in which they both fail, because if they didn’t no one would survive reading their books.

What is then left for the horror writer is to convey a sense of creeping, escalating unease. That’s something that Alan Garner does very well in The Owl Service. Neither Machen nor Lovecraft seems to have that skill. Whether that is actually a lack of skill, or something cultural that differentiates the late 19th century from our own time, I can’t tell. I’m not well versed enough in horror as a genre.

What we can say, however, is that Machen’s influence on later writers has been immense. Bram Stoker, Lovecraft, and Stephen King have all been fans. He also has the unusual honour of having written a story that gave life to an urban legend (‘The Bowmen’ is the source for the Angel of Mons legend). And he had a fascinating life, including being friends with Oscar Wilde and a member of the Golden Dawn. Not bad for a kid from near Casnewydd.

book cover
Title: The Great God Pan
By: Arthur Machen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Book of Three

077, Book Review, Lloyd Alexander

Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles are most definitely aimed at much younger children than The Owl Service. Also Alexander was an American so, although he clearly has a great fondness for Wales and Welsh legend, he’s not going to get things right.

To be fair, he says up front that his Prydain is not Wales, even though it might look very like it when you look at the map, and many of the characters have obviously Welsh names, but his hero, Taran, hails from Caer Dallben which, on the map, is pretty obviously Bristol. That probably didn’t go down well with Welsh readers.

Obviously I am way too old for the target audience, but I could see the attraction of the book. It has a bunch of amusing, relatable characters and the young hero goes on a meaningful and character-building quest. I’m not surprised that the book did so well.

On the other hand, although the influence of The Mabinogion is very obvious, the book owes at least as much to Tolkien. If I wanted to do an elevator pitch for it I would do something like ‘Peregrine Took as the hero of a mash-up of The Mabinogion and The Lord of the Rings.’ Taran is no Frodo, he’s always getting into trouble. Gwydion is an Aragorn-like figure. Gurgi is a hairier and less damaged version of Smeagol (not Gollum). Medwyn is Gandalf and Radagast. Eilonwy is Eowyn and Arwen. His Tylwyth Teg are the comedy dwarves from The Hobbit (which surely will have earned Alexander a curse or two). Only Fflewddur, the incompetent bard, doesn’t seem to have an obvious origin in LotR.

Well, and Hen Wen, of course. Pigs are special.

There is a pronunciation guide at the back. It is, um… not good.

The Book of Three is only the first of the Chronicles. There are four other books in the series, which I shall read because they are short and fun. As fantasy books for kids they are great. As Welsh fantasy they are rather less impressive.

book cover
Title: The Book of Three
By: Lloyd Alexander
Publisher: Square Fish
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

She Is Here

077, Book Review, Nicola Griffith

I have very much enjoyed other books in the PM Press Outspoken Authors series. It has taken them a while to get around to doing a book with Nicola Griffith, but it has finally appeared and I have to say that it is about time. Griffith is very many wonderful things, and outspoken is very much one of them. She’s proudly lesbian, and proudly disabled, not to mention proudly female and Yorkshire. This book represents some of that.

One of the interesting things about this series is that each volume contains a variety of types of writing. In this case there are essays, there are short stories, there are poems, and there is an interview conducted by Nisi Shawl. The idea, I guess, is to give you an insight into the writer in all her aspects.

Most of the material in the book has previously been published elsewhere. The non-fiction includes Griffith’s contribution to Letters to Tiptree, her thoughts on author branding and on being a disabled writer, a letter to Hild of Whitby, and Griffith’s thoughts on being, and having, a wife.

The thing that will be of most interest to Griffith fans is a previously unpublished novella. ‘Many Things in Dumnet’ is a fantasy story set in an alternate world that has a lot in common with early mediaeval Europe. Anya, the heroine, travels from the Empire to an island that feels like Ireland given the names of the gods. Anya is not sure why she needs to go there, but her purpose becomes clear during the course of the story.

Griffith plays very much fast and loose with Irish mythology, even more so than she does in Spear. That’s fine by me because it is very clear that the story is not supposed to be set in Ireland. The names are just useful shorthand in the worldbuilding. Also the world is very interesting. There is enough there for me to want to know much more. Whether we will ever see any more is another matter. There is, after all, at least one more Hild book that needs writing. But if you need some new Nicola Griffith words while you are waiting, She Is Here is will worth a look.

book cover
Title: She Is Here
By: Nicola Griffith
Publisher: PM Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Editorial – February 2026

077, Editorial

This issue is going live on St. David’s Day (Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Sant). Partly in recognition of that, I am reviewing several works of Welsh fantasy. Some of them are written by English and American authors, but others are actually written here, and in one case published here. I do have an additional reason for doing all this, which will doubtless be something I can talk about in due course. But for now, please enjoy my reflections on the representation of Wales in fantasy.

Meanwhile things are very busy at Wizard’s Tower. I have a bunch of books on pre-order already, with more to come very soon. Eastercon is going to be very busy. There will be a book launch. Hopefully I will see some of you there.

Talking of conventions, I am just back from two days at the Plaid Cymru spring conference, which was held in the ICC Wales just off the M4 at Newport. This has occasionally been mentioned as a potential venue for either an Eastercon or Worldcon. Yeah, no.

The building itself is very lovely, though an absolute nightmare if you have hearing difficulties, which I do. But it is designed solely for a car culture. There are some hotel rooms on site, but not enough for a Worldcon and probably too expensive for an Eastercon. There is supposedly an hourly bus from Newport railway station, but really the only way to get there is by car. I stayed in a nearby Premier Inn. You could see the ICC from my hotel, and it was only 0.3 miles away, but there was no way to walk there as there is a gigantic roundabout in the way, with the M4 passing over it. Also the food choices at the venue are very limited. I ended up living off croissants and sausage rolls, which is not a great diet.

So no, if we want to do a convention in Wales, we need a better venue.

Issue 76

Issues

This is the January 2026 issue of Salon Futura. Here are the contents.


  • Art: The Sword Garden: This issue's cover is Ben Baldwin's art for The Sword Garden by Peadar Ó Guilín

  • The Everlasting: Alix E Harrow's The Everlasting is one of the stand-out books of 2025, not just for the beautiful writing, but also for the issue it addresses

  • The Incandescent: Emily Tesh's follow-up to Some Desperate Glory is a very different type of book, but no less entertaining

  • Winter’s Orbit: A few years late, Cheryl finally catches up with one of the new stars of UK science fiction

  • Frank the Monster: Swedish writer, Mats Strandberg, has written a series of books for children about a small boy who becomes a monster. Cheryl has a look at the first of the series.

  • Free Planet: A new comic series that is very science fictional, and very text heavy. That has to be of interest to you lot, right?

  • Percy Jackson – Season 2: Percy Jackson and friends are back for a second season of TV adventures in Greek Mythology. This time he's travelling in the footsteps of Odysseus.

  • Brigands & Breadknives: It is time once again to curl up with a cosy tale of lovely people in a fantasy universe. Yes, Travis Baldree is back.

  • Gŵyl Y Golau 2026: Spring is coming, and in Wales we celebrate the Festival of Light to recognise the turning of the year

  • Editorial – January 2026: To no one's surprise, Cheryl is very busy

Art: The Sword Garden

076, Art, Ben Baldwin

This issue’s cover is the art that Ben Baldwin had done for the new Peadar Ó Guilín novel that Wizard’s Tower will be launching at Eastercon. The Sword Garden is something of a mash-up of fantasy, science fiction and horror. I really can’t say mcuh more than that without giving things away.

As always, an unadorned version of the art is available below.

The Everlasting

076, Alix E Harrow, Book Review

It is, I think, undeniable that Fascism is on the rise world-wide right now. It is also undeniable that Autocratic rulers love a good national myth to bolster their popularity. That has been the case from at least Augustus and The Aeneid, through Hitler and Wagner, to the present day. I have academic friends who have devoted their careers to keeping an eye on how far-right political movements mis-use legends from the past to recruit in the present.

What we haven’t seen much of yet, which is why Alix Harrow’s The Everlasting is so welcome, is writers of fantasy fiction engaging with this issue. Harrow doesn’t, perhaps, provide much of an answer, but she absolutely highlights the problem.

Owen Mallory is a mild-mannered history professor and accidental war hero. Since childhood he has been obsessed with the legend of Una Everlasting, the valiant knight whose exploits enabled his country of Dominion to grow strong a thousand years ago. With his expertise in linguistics, no one is better qualified than Mallory to translate and interpret those ancient tales. Imagine his surprise and delight, therefore, when an anonymous donor sends him a copy of the long-lost book, The Death of Una Everlasting, which chronicles the heroine’s final adventure.

However, no sooner has he started to translate the book than it is stolen away again. A clue left for him leads him to the office of Vivian Rolfe, Minister of War, and wannabe dictator. You see, the book is a fake. It hasn’t been written yet. At least, it hasn’t been written as well as Ms. Rolfe would like. Mallory, she thinks, is the ideal man to complete the job to her satisfaction.

Sharp eyed readers will have noticed a lot of Arthurian references here. One character called Mallory, another called Vivian, and a book whose title recalls the historical Mallory’s most famous work. The ancient capital of Dominion is called Cavallon. Una’s last quest is in search of the Grail. It is also true that mediaeval Arthurian romances could be as much attempts to re-write myth to suit the political needs of the time as any other piece of propaganda. Yes, even the bits in The Mabinogion.

There is more to the book than that, however. Having set up our expectations with the outline I gave above, it quickly pivots to a time travel tale that totally eschews the idea that one should try not to change the past. Ms. Rolfe, it appears, is less the Lady of the Lake, and more Kang the Conqueror, and she wants to use legend to re-shape history to her own ends. Or, as Vivian puts it:

“In order to have a future worth fighting for, you must have a past worth remembering.”

Set against this, Mallory finds an unusual ally in Una herself who, after a lifetime of slaying the enemies of Dominion, has sickened of the bloodshed and wants nothing more to do with her legend.

As every good novelist should, Harrow gives her antagonist a good motivation. A lone woman in a man’s world of politics, Vivian is only too aware of the fragility of her position, and of how the men around her will conspire to take her down at the slightest sign of weakness. Her response is utter ruthlessness, and a desire to control, not just the present, but everything in the past as well.

The Everlasting is an enormously ambitious book. It also has some fabulous descriptive passages. Here’s one that stood out for me:

But I remember the cold. The weather turned as we left the hills, the sky turning the bluish-white of a frostbitten finger. Each night we huddled miserably on either side of the wind-whipped fire, sleeping fitfully and shivering ourselves awake.

Pretty much every review I have seen of this book talks about how extraordinary and amazing it is. Not only is it beautifully written, it also speaks most urgently to the time we are living through. I am expecting it to walk off with a heap of awards, and I shall be rather disappointed if it doesn’t.

book cover
Title: The Everlasting
By: Alix E Harrow
Publisher: Tor
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The Incandescent

076, Book Review, Emily Tesh

Well that was fun. There is some serious politics, and indeed some serious reflection on the profession of teaching, in The Incandescent, but it is by no means as weighty as Some Desperate Glory. What it is, is highly enjoyable.

As you are probably aware, the basic concept behind the book is a school for magicians story told from the point of view of one of the teachers. My school days are a very long way behind me, but kids certainly got up to some dodgy stuff, mostly involving sex and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. These days things seems to be much more complicated, with kids bringing knives to school, starting OnlyFans accounts and getting recruited by far-right groups from America. Add to that the fact that teachers are no longer allowed to be as cruel as they were in my day, and it has gotta be tough.

Consider now how much more difficult the job of teaching would be if some of your older pupils had the knowledge of how to summon powerful demons, but not power to control them, nor the wisdom to avoid getting possessed. And bearing in mind that a school full of magically gifted children is a literal smorgasbord for demons. Safeguarding, anyone?

Thus is life for Dr. Walden, the Director of Magic at Chetwood, a private school in the south of England where parents with lots of money can send their magically gifted children. There are a few scholarships for children from poorer backgrounds as well, but only those whose gifts are so extreme that they are judged a danger to themselves and everyone around them. Thus Nicola Conway, a Black girl from London whose entire family was wiped out in a demon-related incident when she was just seven.

There are other kids in Walden’s upper sixth Invocation class as well. There’s Aneeta, the sensible and competent daughter of wealthy Indian parents; Will, a rich kid who knows he will fail upwards all his life so can’t be bothered to apply himself; and insecure Matthias, who has been rescued from parents who were religious extremists who abused him terribly.

(I note in passing that the spoiled rich boy in Emberclaw was also called Will. Calling naughty schoolboys William is a bit of a thing in the UK.)

If all of this reminds you a little of a certain school for gifted youngsters in update New York, you would be onto something. Walden teaches at Chetwood for deeply personal reasons, but she is one of the best demonologists in the world. She turned down a job offer from the Pentagon. She has a pet demon, bound into tattoos on her arm. It calls itself Phoenix. You can see where this is going, can’t you. Oh dear.

The other central element of the plot is a love triangle. Walden has to choose between Mark Daubery, a independent Magical Security Consultant employed by the school after a demon attack (and also Will’s uncle), and Laura Kenning, the dashing Chief Marshall (Marshalls being descendants of a mediaeval order of demon-hunting knights who these days do security for places like Chetwood). You can probably tell how that will turn out too.

So yes, it is all quite predictable, but the way in which things play out will keep you reading, especially when things start to go seriously badly wrong for our heroine.

In the meantime Emily Tesh keeps us entertained with bits of fun. Walden is known as Saffy to the rest of the staff. The obvious assumption for anyone from the UK is that her actual name is Saffron, which is both a nod to the cruel naming habits of British parents, and an invocation of the wonderful Absolutely Fabulous sitcom. But you’d be wrong, as I was, if you thought that. Her name is Sapphire. Which brings to mind a very different Joanna Lumley character, gives us a very different sense of Walden’s character, and reminds us of a certain Greek poet from Lesbos.

I also appreciated the scene in which Mark arrives at the school in an Audi, showing off his fancy driving skills. That, I suspect, is intended to bring to mind the outrageous piece of product placement in Avengers: Endgame in which Tony Stark does the same thing in an Audi E-Tron. Which in turn tells us who Tesh would want to play Mark in the film of her book.

Something else worth noting is that the first few chapters are a masterclass in worldbuilding without boring your readers. I particularly liked the chapter in which Walden sits in on a class on magical ethics and the kids get to discuss whether demons are people. Is that relevant to the plot? You bet it is.

It is possible that non-British readers might be a little lost with all the background of the British class system, at which Tesh is poking sharply, but my suspicion is that most of you will have seen and read enough to be almost as familiar with it as we are.

Anyway, I hope most of you will enjoy this book as much as I did. Yes, the plot is predictable, but you read along, nodding to yourself, and thinking, “oh, you did that, of course you did, but I loved the way you did it”.

book cover
Title: The Incandescent
By: Emily Tesh
Publisher: Orbit
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Winter’s Orbit

076, Book Review, Everina Maxwell

When I was at Eastercon last year the name that seemed to be on everyone’s lips was Everina Maxwell. This was not someone whose work I was familiar with, but she was getting recommendations for good queer rep. She had two novels out already, and they were space opera. Clearly I had some reading to do.

Also she appears to be part of a writing group with Emily Tesh, and they gush over each other in the acknowledgements to their books. Tesh apparently had a significant amount of input to Winter’s Orbit, which is Maxwell’s debut novel.

Set against this, I tend to find books by women about gay men to be rather cringe-worthy. That gave me pause for thought, but I got through Winter’s Orbit with only minimal cringe. There are no lovingly detailed scenes of passionate sex, and no throbbing penises. There is a romance plot between the two main characters, but Maxwell has managed to find a way to fit that into the plot and provide a good justification for the confusion.

Kiem is a playboy prince of a stellar empire. At the start of the book he is told that he has to marry a nobleman from a colony planet because an important trade treaty depends on it. This Jainan had previously been married to Kiem’s cousin, Taam, but he had died in a flying accident and the whole diplomatic situation has been thrown into chaos.

Jainan, for his part, is aware that he’s just a tool in imperial politics and that, for the good of his people, he has to keep his new husband happy. Kiem’s public reputation is something of a drunken arsehole. Not offending his is going to be hard.

However, that’s just Kiem’s public persona. While he does enjoy playing the fool, he’s actually very tender-hearted and can’t bear the thought of poor Jainan being forced into a new marriage mere days after his previous husband has died. So the last thing that Kiem wants to do is force Jainan into anything, whereas Jainan is desperate to find out what he needs to do to make Kiem happy.

The possibilities for confusion are significant. I wish all romance plots were this cleverly thought out.

Meanwhile there is space opera to be done. It soon becomes obvious that Taam’s death was not an accident. The Internal Security service has Jainan as their prime suspect. The trade negotiations are in danger of falling apart. Both Kiem, who wants nothing to do with politics, and Jainan, who is an engineering nerd at heart, are completely out of their depth.

Two things need to happen by the end of the book. Firstly the romance plot needs to be resolved so that Kiem and Jainan can work together. Much of this happens in the middle of the book while the pair of them are stranded in snowy wastes, something I feel sure is a quiet nod to The Left Hand of Darkness. The other is that both our boys must learn to use their respective skills effectively to defeat the bad guys.

Fortunately help is at hand in the form of Kiem’s ultra-efficient personal aide, Bel. In much the same way as Alfred looks after Bruce Wayne, and Jarvis looks after Howard and Tony Stark, Bel is always two steps ahead of where Kiem needs to be, and has everything that he needs ready and waiting. She’s also not afraid to talk back to her employer, which is just what Kiem needs.

The gender politics of the world are quite interesting. Everyone seems to be able to choose the gender they want, with at least three options available. People signal their gender in different ways depending on local planetary custom. Amongst Kiem’s people it is done with jewelry. Neither clothing nor bodily shape is a reliable indicator. There is no mention of medical gender transition, and I get the impression that it doesn’t happen, so it is not a world that I would be comfortable in, but it is an interesting one.

That aside the worldbuilding is quite sketchy. There is clearly a whole galaxy outside of the little empire that Kiem’s people rule, with powers far greater than them. We don’t see much of it. One nice touch is that the animals on Kiem’s world have Earth-like names, but are nothing like the equivalent Earth animals. The thing that they call a ‘bear’ is a six-legged lizard. Kingfishers are dangerous raptors that have been hunted to extinction. This provides a nice air of alienation.

What impressed me most, however, were the characters. Aliette de Bodard, in her blurb for the book, says “It’s characters stayed with me long after I raced through the last chapters.” I feel very much the same about the book, and I’m actually rather sad that we don’t get to see more of Kiem, Jainan and Bel in Maxwell’s second novel, Ocean’s Echo. It is set in the same world though, so hopefully we’ll get more of that galactic civilization that we have only glimpsed for now.

book cover
Title: Winter's Orbit
By: Everina Maxwell
Publisher: Orbit
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Frank the Monster

076, Book Review, Julia Marshall, Mats Strandberg, Sofia Falkenhem

I don’t often review books for children here, but Mats Strandberg wanted to send me a copy of his latest book, and it is very lovely so here we are.

Frank the Monster is aimed at fairly young kids. The blurb I got from the publishers says ages 6-10. The central character is nine years old. So obviously it is quite short, and the language is very simple. The book is beautifully illustrated by Sofia Falkenhem.

Young Frank Steen is a bookish nerd. He’s unpopular at school, and a disappointment to his parents thanks to his sporty and popular kid brother, Oliver. Frank spends a lot of his time alone, or hanging out with his kindly elderly neighbour, Alice. If that wasn’t bad enough, everything changes for the worse at his 9th birthday party when he is bitten by Alice’s dog, Woof. Frank now finds that he will sometimes turn into a wolf at night.

With no one to guide and advise him, Frank has no idea how to behave in wolf form, and soon the town is consumed with panic about the furry monster that stalks the streets at night. Frank, who has had enough of being seen as different to already fill his short life, is terrified. But being a nerd he goes to the library, finds out about lycanthropy, and looks up possible cures. He’s delightfully serious about the whole thing.

Most of the cures were horrible. Like the werewolf having to drink the blood of an unborn child. Or stab themselves three times in the hand. Or be shot with a silver bullet. That way you’d die, but at least you’d be a human again.

Eventually Frank finds other monsters living in his town, and they take him in and give him advice. Because yes, this is a Found Family story. The publicity notes that Strandberg is, “Sweden’s leading horror writer”. It should perhaps have also noted that he is one of Sweden’s most famous gays. Frank the Monster is a charming story about the difficulty of growing up knowing that you are different from other kids, and eventually finding your own tribe (or, in Frank’s case, pack).

Because books for kids need to be very short, there isn’t space in this one to fully explore the issues. Frank still hopes that one day he will be able to come out to his parents, but that day seems a very long way off. Thankfully there are two sequels already written. I’m looking forward to them.

I should note that Julia Marshall’s translation into English is flawless. I’m pleased that some publishers are still employing human translators.

The book is currently on pre-order and will be available in April.

book cover
Title: Frank the Monster
By: Mats Strandberg & Sofia Falkenhem
Translator: Julia Marshall
Publisher: Gecko Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Free Planet

076, Aubrey Sitterson, Comic Review, Jed Dougherty

Thanks to Paul Cornell, I was sent review copies of the first 6 issues of this comic. Paul thinks it will be of interest to the science fiction community, and I can see why.

Free Planet aims to tell the tale of a newly liberated planet, originally known as ‘Aides but now called Lutheria. It was formerly a colony of the Interplanetary Development Alliance, but after a lengthy war has won independence. The story revolves around the lives of the Freedom Guard, a group of elite soldiers formed to safeguard the planet’s fragile freedom, but this is to some extent a hook on which to hang the worldbuilding, and lengthy discussions of the nature and cost of freedom.

Our heroes are, as is to be expected, a ragtag bunch. They are led by Gloria Sunandez, a former IDA officer who led a mutiny on the IDA flagship. Also in the group is Victor MacLiu, the idealistic son of the commander of that flagship. There’s Talun, a military strategy robot whose analysis of the war led him to choose the rebel side, and a notorious terrorist responsible for several massacres of civilians. We have two mechanics from the Machinist Religion—apparently the always come in pairs—representing the orthodox and reform branches of that organisation.

Something that distinguishes Free Planet from a lot of comics is that it is very text heavy. There are panels that a festooned with worldbuilding asides, that sometimes seem to contradict what is happening in the panel. Each issue closes with a couple of pages that are largely dense prose, providing further background. These are often full of economic and political explanations of the situation facing the Lutherians. Clearly the comic’s creators want their readers to think a lot about what is happening.

The art takes some liberties with convention as well. Issue #3 is the best example. The story is about an attack on Lutheria by a Warhammer-like civilization called the Orouran Empire. Our heroes have to do the gutsy little fighter pilots taking on a vast dreadnought thing. In order to give a feel of the nature of space combat, some of the pages are drawn sideways or upside down. This makes them quite difficult to read on an iPad unless you lock the screen.

In addition to the politics and military action, there are some classic science fiction themes. Talun, being an AI, is the source of considerably suspicion. There are squid-like aliens who claim to be able to predict the future. The idea of a religion that worships the Great Machine of the cosmos is very science fiction. So there’s a lot there of interest.

What there isn’t, yet, is any sign of a conclusion. And given that this is a comic series there need not be. But the world of the comic is so vast, and so much in introduced in the first six issues, that they could go on for a very long time before any of the storylines are resolved. Fortunately there is more than enough in the first few issues to get me wanting to read more. I figure that a lot of you would find it interesting too.

As the Salon Futura website isn’t really set up to acknowledge all of the creators of a comics series, here is the credits list:

  • Writer/Creator: Aubrey Sitterson
  • Art/Creator: Jed Dougherty
  • Colours: Vittoria Astone
  • Letters: Taylor Esposito
book cover
Title: Free Planet
By: Aubrey Sitterson & Jed Dougherty
Publisher: Image
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Percy Jackson – Season 2

076, TV Review

So, everyone’s favourite demigods are back from a second season. As I very much enjoyed the first season of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, I was keen to catch up.

Book 2 in the Percy Jackson series is called The Sea of Monsters, and the story riffs primarily off The Odyssey. Grover the satyr has been captured and his being held prisoner by Polythemus the cylops, so Percy and Annabeth have to go on a quest to rescue him. For reasons that are not properly explained, Polythemus is now the guardian of the Golden Fleece, which has miraculous healing properties. And the whole thing is a set-up because Luke and his gang of rebels want to use Percy to get the fleece so that they can then steal it and use it to resurrect Kronos.

That’s all very straightforward, but the joy of the series lies in the charisma of the teenage stars, and also in the way that Rick Riordan has bent Greek mythology to his will. In this season we get to meet Polythemus, Scylla and Charybdis, the Sirens and Circe. Annabeth, who is a daughter of Athena, knows the story of The Odyssey inside out so knows how to foil the various dangers their will meet. Percy, who is canonically dyslexic, looks that the name Charybdis and says, “I’m not even going to try to pronounce that.”

Season two also introduces a fourth teenage character to the team. Tyson is a young cyclops whom Percy’s mom has adopted. The CGI on his single eye is a bit dodgy, which I found very distracting, but he’s a great character. The main point is that, despite being a giant, and ugly by human standards, he’s very competent at a whole range of things, and just as much a hero as Percy.

Adaptations from books can sometimes be a disaster because the TV people don’t understand or respect the original content, but Rick Riordan is very much involved in this series and it is very much the better for his presence. Some of the plotting is excellent, and doesn’t feel at all like plot-by-numbers meets diversity-by-numbers the way some of Starfleet Academy appears to be turning out.

Talking of Starfleet Academy, it is interesting to compare the way that pupil-teacher relationships are handled in various stories. In The Incandescent the sympathy is largely with the teachers, for whom the kids are both sacred charges and a dangerous enemy. The Percy Jackson stories are much closer to Pink Floyd’s The Wall, particularly in this season as Chiron the centaur has been fired and replaced by Tantalus who, quite frankly, looks like the sort of person who deserved to be condemned to eternal torture. Starfleet Academy will, I think, try to find some middle ground, aided by the fact that the kids are that much older, but that remains to be seen.

The Circe episode was a particular favourite for me. Riordan manages to make her both sympathetic and deeply duplicitous at the same time. The way that she keeps prisoners on her island without them realising that they are prisoners is delightfully devious. The Sirens are also in this episode. As it is a kids’ show, they can’t use sexual allure on Percy and Annabeth. Instead they exploit psychological weaknesses. The way that they trap Annabeth is brilliantly done.

I happened to see the book on sale while I was watching the series. I haven’t read it through, but dipping into it I can see that a lot has been changed. A whole lot of characters have been dropped, which is generally the case with movie/TV adaptations. I’m a bit sad that Hermes no longer carries a caduceus with two snakes who have comedy speaking parts, but I can understand why they had to go. The location of the action in the book is supposedly the Bermuda Triangle, which makes sense, but it doesn’t add a lot so the TV series drops it. The TV series also ends on a much better cliffhanger.

Which, yes, it does. Thankfully the production team have been working hard and season 3 is not that far away. I’m looking forward to it.

Brigands & Breadknives

076, Book Review, Travis Baldree

So, here we are again. Travis Baldree books are cosiness personified. What lovely, kind people has he been writing about this time?

The main character is Fern, the bookstore-owning ratkin who was the star of Bookshops & Bonedust. But the book is set after the events of Legends & Lattes. A shop has become vacant next to Viv’s coffee shop, and she has persuaded her old friend Fern to up sticks and move cities to take it. Fern, who is suffering something of a midlife crisis, has agreed, but the move does not solve her feelings of restlessness.

Thus it is that Fern ends up falling into a drunken sleep in a wagon belonging to a legendary elven adventurer called Astryx One-Ear, Blademistress and Oathmaiden. And when she wakes up she’s off on an adventure with no turning back for many days.

Astryx is hundreds of years old and very world-weary. The examination of the feelings of very ancient elves is one of the more interesting aspects of the book. Astryx also has a magic sword. It is not called Stormbringer, or Excalibur. It is called Nigel, and it is a bit of a diva.

As is a requirement for Baldree’s books, pretty much everyone we meet is excessively nice. This extends even to the monastery run by the followers of the god Tarim, a one-eyed, tentacled monstrosity who wants to destroy the universe. His clergy, rather than being mad cultists as they would be in a Lovecraft story, have dedicated their lives to persuading His Terribleness to delay the destruction of the world for just a few more days, pretty please.

I never really got to grips with Fern’s motivation and fairly constant self-pity, and I suspect that the book might have bored me to tears had it not been for the other principle character, Zyll the goblin. Zyll is Astryx’s prisoner. There is a massive bounty on her head, and these days Astryx makes her living as a bounty-hunter. Quite what awful things Zyll has done to warrant this bounty are not clear, but we can she that she is very capable, and owns a multi-coloured coat full of pockets each of which appears to be a bag of holding containing all sorts of useful things.

It soon becomes clear that Zyll is way smarter than Astryx and Fern, and indeed could escape any time she wants. Clearly she does not want to do so, yet. This is setting us up for a twist ending which I think Baldree pulled off brilliantly. In the meantime Zyll manages to provide some fine comedy moments.

Clearly these books are very popular, and if what you want to read is something warm and fluffy with only mild peril they are probably the best thing going. Personally I prefer books that give me a little more to think about.

book cover
Title: Brigands & Breadknives
By: Travis Baldree
Publisher: Tor
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Gŵyl Y Golau 2026

076, Angharad Wynne, Event Report, Music Review, Simmy Singh

As some of you may remember, this time last year I attended an event at our local National Trust property, Dinefwr. Gŵyl Y Golau, which means Festival of Light, is the Welsh equivalent to Imbloc. Last year’s event was quite spectacular because it was done with the aid of a grant from the Welsh Government to explore the connection between music and the environment. That grant has now ended, but Simmy Singh and Angharad Wynne had so enjoyed last year that they wanted to do it again.

So what was different? Well, no money to bring in Nigel Shaw and Bethan Lloyd. Simmy did find a local percussionist and guitar player to perform with her, but as with so many musicians these days she also had a multi-instrument backing track. The songs that had all three of them working hard were probably the best entertainment, but Simmy also played a track from her new album which was really impressive.

The event was run over two days. The Friday majored on story-telling, with Simmy mainly providing a musical accompaniment to Angharad’s tales. Saturday was mainly music, with Angharad providing the occasional break to let the musicians recover after an energetic number.

There was supposed to be a Saturday morning event too, which would have been a guided walk around the estate with Angharad telling stories connected to the location. Sadly that had to be cancelled because it was pissing it down. All things considered, however, we did pretty well with the weather.

One of the things I picked up listening to Angharad is that there is an international community of story-tellers. This is quite separate from the written fiction community. Angharad talked about working with traditional story-tellers from Africa and India. It is a bit of a shame that our communities don’t talk more. We could learn a lot. So many written fiction writers are terrible at reading aloud, but Angharad can keep an audience spellbound for an hour, speaking entirely from memory.

Like last year, part of the event was held around a bonfire in the gardens of Newton House. We said goodbye to Mari Lwyd, who will go to sleep now until next winter. We had fairly clear skies, and a full moon for Saturday, so I guess we also had Diana’s blessing. There is no Celtic god who is specifically associated with the moon, though there are plenty of goddesses that you can use if you wish.

As with last year, much of the purpose of the event was the welcome the starting of spring. Gŵyl Y Golau is the mid point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. We should start seeing lambs in the fields soon. It is very much a festival of New Hope, if you’ll permit me a brief Star Wars reference. Here’s hoping that the things we hoped for will come to pass. It is about time that the Evil Empire got a good kicking.

Editorial – January 2026

076, Editorial

This one is a couple of days late going live, which is partly because I’ll get more readers if I publish on a weekday, and partly because I wanted to wait to be able to write about the Gŵyl Y Golau event.

February is a short month, but hopefully I will get a lot of reading done because I am going to Rome for an Assyriology conference. Travel is always good for the reading. And with any luck I will have some LGBTQ+ History Month things to write about in the next issue as well.

Meanwhile things are very busy at Wizard’s Tower. We have a whole lot of books due out this spring, and several projects that I can’t actually tell you about yet. Thankfully March should be fairly quiet, travel-wise. My first convention of the year will be Eastercon.

The other thing that is very much occupying my time at the moment is the forthcoming Senedd elections in May. Thankfully Fauxrage and his merry band of Fascist wannabes seem to be making a terrible mess of things. It is hard to pretend to be a fresh and radical voice in politics when you are also a keen supporter of Trump and Putin, and your MPs are largely refugees from the last Tory government. Of course if Plaid Cymru do end up with the majority of seats, they will have to actually run the country. Given the current international economic climate, that won’t be easy. We continue to live in interesting times.

Issue 75

Issues

This is the December 2025 issue of Salon Futura. Here are the contents.


  • Cover: Malcolm’s Grave Stone: Some fine Pictish stone carving

  • Once Was Willem: Mike Carey's latest novel is a big departure from his previous work, but very welcome in any case

  • When There Are Wolves Again: A new E J Swift novel is cause for excitement these days. How does the latest one stack up?

  • Carved in Stone: Ever wanted to write a story, or run a game, in the world of the Picts? This book has all of the worldbuilding that you need.

  • Emberclaw: L R Lam's gay dragon romance is up to its second installment.

  • These Burning Stars: Is science fiction dying? Hopefully not, and Bethany Jacobs is busily trying to keep it alive.

  • The War Between the Land and the Sea: The new Doctor Who spin-off series was shown over the holidays. Inevitably, Doctor Who fandom and the UK media hates it. Are they right?

  • The Lord of the Rings Re-Watched: It is almost 25 years since Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of the Ring hit movie screens. It wowed us then. Does the trilogy stand up to a re-watch?

  • Editorial – December 2025: In which Cheryl is not looking forward to 2026

Cover: Malcolm’s Grave Stone

075, Art

This issue’s cover is a 19th century antiquarian’s drawing of a Pictish carved stone which can be found in the village of Glamis in Angus. At the time the drawing was made the stone was known as Malcolm’s Gravestone, referring to King Malcolm II of Alba who lived in the early 11th century. However, dating of the stone is uncertain. It appears to have been made from an original Bronze Age standing stone. It bears a Christian cross, which puts a lower limit on the date. But whether it is late enough for Malcolm II is an entirely another matter.

Máel Coluim mac Cinaeda (Malcolm, son on Kenneth) is another fascinating character. His 29 year reign was exceptionally long for the period, but he produced no sons so he planned on securing his kingdom by marrying his daughters to neighbouring royalty. As a result he appears to have been the grandfather of both Macbeth and Duncan I, who in real life died in an ill-judged attack on Macbeth’s little subkingdom of Moray. Macbeth went on to acquire the throne of Alba which he held for many years.

As to why I have used this image, well you will have to read the review of Carved on Stone.



An unaldulterated version of the art appears below. I have no idea who the original artist was.

Once Was Willem

075, Book Review, Mike Carey

Something that always impresses me in a writer is a willingness to try something different. Sure, the fans just want more of the same, but why not stretch yourself. Mike Carey has done a number of different things: science fiction both near and far future, supernatural detectives, and superheroes, but I don’t think he has done mediaeval fantasy before. Also he’s fond of unusual lead characters. Koli in the Rampart Trilogy has a unique voice, and Topaz, the teenage rabbit girl from the Pandominium Duology is another stand out. All of this comes together in Once Was Willem.

Whilst I don’t think Carey has done mediaeval fantasy before, Once Was Willem bears as much resemblance to traditional epic fantasy as the work of Hieronymus Bosch has to a Pre-Raphaelite painting of Arthurian knights. The closest things I can think of to it are Kate Heartfield’s The Chatelaine (previously published as Armed in Her Fashion) and Cat Valente’s Prester John books. Carey’s work on the Lucifer comic means that he is well versed in Christian mythology, which actually makes him well suited to this sort of narrative.

The book is set in England during The Anarchy, and Carey wins points for referring to Matilda by her proper title of Empress, though he does seem to be more on the side of Stephen. The time period, however, is mainly to allow for a significant degree of lawlessness in the land. The majority of the characters are peasants, and the few Norman lords in the story are swiftly dispatched by a Serbian mercenary captain turned outlaw who fancies himself a castle.

Our lead character was once Willem Turling, but Willem is no more. He died of a fever aged just twelve. His loving parents, who had gone through considerable difficulty trying to produce a child, were distraught. When they hear that a traveling sorcerer is in the area, they gather all of their wealth and beg him to restore their son to life.

Once-Was-Willem, then, is a revenant. He can remember being Willem Turling, but that was once upon a time. He is someone very different now. Naturally the villagers are terrified of this shambling monster, and he ends up living in the wilds where he makes friends with other unnatural beings.

Meanwhile our sorcerer has been busy. The man who calls himself Cain Caradoc is not in the area by accident. He has discovered a source of great magical power in the hill on which Pennick Castle is built, and he is determined to harness that source for himself. Inveigling himself into the service of Maglan Horvath, the bandit lord, he sets about his work, and soon realises that what he needs for his spells is a child or two to sacrifice.

At this point we find ourselves briefly in a parody of The Seven Samurai in which Once-Was-Willem and his monstrous friends help the ungrateful villagers defend themselves against Horvath and his sorcerer. They are a motley crew, including Viking bear-serker, the spirit of the local river, a dead witch, a girl whom Caradoc has sacrificed and the terrible figure of Unsung Jill whose right eye contains a window onto Hell itself.

It is, like so much mediaeval literature, a totally gonzo story. But it works because it is grounded in the characters, and the overriding message which is one of acceptance of difference. The villagers are saved, not by some knight in shining armour, or even a bunch of handsome gunslingers, but by people whom they have driven away and live in fear of. There are shades of the Pied Piper tale here too, but Once-Was-Willem and his friends have no desire to take the village children from their home.

I guess that some people will find the book hard going because of the veneer of mediaeval language that Carey casts over the narrative, and some will be disappointed that there are no handsome knights rescuing maidens, but I thoroughly enjoyed the book and would love to see more work that engages more with the mediaeval world and its preoccupations.

book cover
Title: Once Was Willem
By: Mike Carey
Publisher: Orbit
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

When There Are Wolves Again

075, Book Review, E J Swift

I had very much enjoyed The Coral Bones and was very much looking forward to the new EJ Swift novel. I was not disappointed, but there are things to think about.

Like The Coral Bones, When There Are Wolves Again follows the lives of some women: two in this case, rather than three in the previous book. However, there is no great mystery to this book. It is clear from the beginning that the two women will meet at some point and discuss their life stories. The separate narratives are simply giving Swift’s future history from two different viewpoints.

When I say, ‘future history’, I mean very near future. The book begins in 2020 and ends in 2070. That’s a dangerous thing for a science fiction writer to do, because you can easily get caught out by events. A book from a mainstream publisher can easily take two years from delivery to publication these days, and will have been written earlier than that. I don’t know exactly when Swift write this book, but the idea that Reform (herein known as Albion to avoid lawsuits) would have only 3 MPs by 2030 has proved sadly wildly optimistic. Right now they look to be a shoe-in for a majority in the next General Election. I suspect also that the idea that there will be universities in the UK for ordinary young people to go to by 2030 may also prove mistaken.

This is not Swift’s fault. The tides of history are running strongly in the world at the moment and things can change very rapidly. It is not the job of science fiction writers to predict the future, and we should not expect them to be able to.

What we should be looking at instead is the central thesis of the book. I’ll come to that shortly. But first I need to introduce our two main characters.

Hester Moore is the older of the two. She is a documentary film maker. By 2070 she is a very famous one who has been heaped with all the plaudits that the UK can bestow on such people, but we have seen her homeless and starving on the streets of London at the start of her career. She was born on a farm in Somerset but, much to the disappointment of her family, gave up on farming and choose a very different life path.

Lucy Gillard is much younger, only a child when our narrative begins. She becomes a fan of Greta Thunberg and, with the help of her aging Hippy grandparents, becomes an environmental activist. After studying biology at university, she gets involved in the re-wilding movement. This includes time at the near future equivalent of the Greenham Common camp. Lucy, in her own way, becomes as famous as Hester, albeit without the social plaudits.

So where is that story? Well, the film that launches Hester’s career is about the wildlife that lives in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, specifically the pet dogs that were left behind and have gone wild. (Swift uses the spelling, Chornobyl, which appears to be the preferred use by Ukrainians.) This is very real. Nature has adapted to the high levels of radiation around the reactor zone and, in the absence of humans, has thrived.

The novel, through the eyes of Hester and Lucy, chronicles how the ongoing climate catastrophe affects the UK, and what is done about it. We start at Chornobyl because Swift’s thesis is that Nature is superbly adaptable. It can survive the meltdown of a nuclear reactor, and it will survive the massive changes in Earth’s climate that will happen over the next few decades.

Lucy and her friends get to see the Scottish Highlands transformed from privately-owned grouse moors to somewhere that a diversity of wildlife can live. Eventually there need to be predators, which means lynx and wolves.

Hester’s view is much more personal. With rising sea level, farming on the Somerset Levels becomes increasingly uneconomic. There is conflict between the farmers, who expect that Something Should Be Done, and the government, that has very different priorities.

The overall message is very hopeful. Nature may take a beating from climate change, but she will roll with the punches and come back just as strong as ever. Which is lovely. But my problem with such near future environmental SF (see also Ray Nayler’s The Tusks of Extinction) is that they elide over what happens to humans. Swift highlights the problems faced by Somerset farmers, but the county is not exclusively agricultural.

Hinkley Point is probably safe. The Office of Nuclear Regulation tells me that the site is 14 metres above sea level. But it will certainly become an island and the safety of the transmission link to the mainland will be an issue. In places such as Taunton, Bridgwater and Glastonbury, new housing is being built on the flood plain. With the new Hinkley C reactor being built, there have been a lot of new homes built in the surrounding villages, most of which will end up under water in Swift’s scenario. What happens to the people who live there? Swift doesn’t tell us.

When There Are Wolves Again is beautifully written, and likely to appeal much more to a mainstream audience than The Coral Bones. I very much enjoyed reading it. But if we are evaluating it as a science fiction novel then I think we should also ask how comprehensively it examines the consequences of the future it describes.

book cover
Title: When There Are Wolves Again
By: E J Swift
Publisher: Arcadia
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Carved in Stone

075, Book Review, Brian Tyrrell, Gaming, History, Lizy Simonen

Who were the Picts? That’s a question that has puzzled many a student of Iron Age Britain. They left very little writing, and they had far less interaction with the Romans than their cousins further south in the island. Those of us who take an academic interest in the issue have learned publications that we can peruse. If you have access to History Hit, Tristan Hughes has a new TV documentary covering the latest research on the Picts. But most people, I suspect, see the Picts through a combination of the Roman depiction of painted barbarians, and Robert E Howard’s brutish savages from the deep mists of time. Thankfully there is now a new source that can do away with these erroneous views. Remarkably, it is intended for use by story tellers and game players.

Carved in Stone began life as a Kickstarter project back in 2021. I spotted Kieron Gillen’s name among the list of original backers. The book has taken 4 years to produce, and I found out about it just in time to get one of the first print run. It is a hefty tome, better suited to the coffee table than the bookshelf, and the £50 price tag is totally warranted, but you can pick up the PDF for just £15.

We now know, contrary to Howard’s wild speculation, that the Picts were a British people. That is, they spoke a form of Old Welsh that would have been understandable to their cousins further south in the same way that someone from Aberdeen is understandable to someone from London. Sadly they did not paint themselves with woad. It blisters the skin. But they may well have used body paint derived from hematite (iron oxide) that is a nice shade of blood red.

Pictish society was in place before the Romans came, and continued on after they left. Eventually they seem to have been swallowed up by the Gaelic-speaking Scots (immigrants from Ireland), and the Vikings, but there were functional Pictish kingdoms around as late as the 9th century. The historical Macbeth began life ruling over the province of Moray, which appears to have been a descendant of the Pictish kingdom of Fortriu.

Carved in Stone is set in the 7th century. The various Pictish subkingdoms have been united under the rule of Bridei III. He’s a fascinating chap. His father, Beli, was king of the British kingdom of Alt Clut, which included Glasgow and Dumbarton. His mother was probably a daughter of the Anglian king, Edwin of Northumbria, making him a fairly close relation of Hild of Whitby, who was Edwin’s niece. Northumbria, Alt Clut and the Scottish kingdom of Dál Riata are the Picts’ main neighbours. The Picts are nominally Christian, but significant pockets of pagan belief still exist, and the Vatican has yet to exert much authority over their Christian practice.

The book is essentially a worldbuilding bible. It has sections on politics, religion and belief, where people lived, what they ate, what they wore, and how they entertained themselves. The information is backed up by an impressive list of academic advisors, including Dr Adrián Maldonado who you may have seen on TV talking about the Galway Hoard. While the focus of the book is very much on the Picts, much of what it says is probably useful for other parts of Iron Age Britain too.

I should add that the book is beautifully illustrated throughout. It has both images of the Picts going about their daily life, and recreations of the beautiful Pictish art style. The book is very accessible for children, and indeed one of its purposes appears to be to instill youngsters with a love of history and archaeology as well as a love of Scotland.

The book is published by Stout Stoat, an Edinburgh-based games company run by Brian Tyrrell who got his start in the business by running a Dungeons & Dragons fanzine. Brian describes himself as ‘neuroqueer’, and Carved in Stone is unashamedly queer-friendly in all sorts of ways. After all, being straight hadn’t been invented back then.

I am seriously impressed by this book. It is a magnificent blend of cutting edge academia and creative storytelling and game playing. Given that FantasyCon is in Glasgow next year, I think I might just start a campaign to get this book nominated in the non-fiction section of the British Fantasy Awards.

book cover
Title: Carved in Stone
By: Brian Tyrrell & Lizy Simonen
Publisher: Stout Stoat
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Emberclaw

075, Book Review, L R Lam

Ah, at last. It has been a couple of years, but here we are again with Arcady and Everen. At the end of Dragonfall, their relationship had hit rock bottom, and Everen was back in the dragon realm once more, but you can’t keep a good romance plot down so we all knew they would be back together in book 2.

To begin with, things don’t look good. Everen has been imprisoned by his mother, the dragon Queen, who still has plans to conquer the human world. He has even been stripped of his surname, which is the Emberclaw of the title. You might be forgiven for thinking that this book would be all about him. But it isn’t, it is about Arcady and Sorin.

Back in the human world, Arcady has achieved his ambition of gaining entrance to the university, where he hopes to learn enough to clear his grandfather’s name. But Magnes, the High Priest of the Order of the Dragons, is onto him. Sorin, the assassin, has been sent to the university as a student to keep an eye on Arcady.

While Dragonfall was very much a heist story, Emberclaw is a student contest tale. In order to trap Arcady and Everen, Magnes arranges for a contest amongst the students with a prize that Arcady can’t ignore. Sorin must enter as well, and through the course of the trials their relationship will evolve. And eventually Arcady will have to call Everen back.

This being a university, there must be other students. There are two key characters. Firstly there is Erin, a wealthy and uber-competent girl whom everyone loves and everyone expects to win. And then there is Willem, also absurdly wealthy, but competent only at being the life and soul of every party, and getting outrageously drunk. Fortunately one of his mothers is the professor of alchemy and he has access to good hangover cures, but he knows that he is destined to fail upwards for the rest of his life, and be roundly detested because of it.

Eventually, of course, Arcady will learn the truth about his grandfather and the terrible plague he is said to have caused. Sorin will learn the truth about Magnes and how he has manipulated her. And Everen will return to the human world so that there can be much enthusiastic gay sex with Arcady.

And so they all lived happily ever after. Which seems a bit of a shame. Was all that global politics stuff in book 1 just idle worldbuilding? Well maybe not. The publicity when the series was first bought promised that it would be a trilogy. I said as much in my review of Dragonfall. Emberclaw appears to have a very clear ending. But apparently there is a third book to come, and I have no idea what to expect. At the end of the second book of a trilogy, that’s rather unusual, and exciting.

book cover
Title: Emberclaw
By: L R Lam
Publisher:
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

These Burning Stars

075, Bethany Jacobs, Book Review

There is a concern I have seen voiced by a number of reviewers that science fiction is dying out. Certainly if you look at bookshop shelves, or best-seller lists, you would get that impression. Fantasy is everywhere. Works that are obviously SF, much less so.

Nevertheless, when the Locus Recommended Reading Lists come out, you will see plenty of science fiction novels listed. I suspect also that most of the books you see in Waterstones will not make the fantasy list. I understand that they are, for the most part, what the publishers call Romantasy. That is, they are romance novels set in a fantasy world. Whether they are good fantasy or not, I can’t say, because I am not fond of romance as a genre. But it does seem that most of the people writing them are not part of the speculative fiction world, and are unlikely to ever turn up at a convention.

This is all a bit strange, and doubtless one of the many side-effects of us having won the culture war. Fantasy is mainstream these days, but the fantasy that sells to a mainstream audience may not be the fantasy we are used to. Science fiction, on the other hand, seems to be mainstream only on TV. But, having seen people bemoan its lack, I figured I should make an effort and review more of it.

These Burning Stars is most definitely in the science fiction family tree. It is space opera, set in a far-future civilization known as The Kindom. There are Noble Families who control most of the resources. There are also three of what one might call Guilds, but the book calls Hands: priests, warriors and bureaucrats. If this all sounds a little bit like Dune, well the same thought occurred to me. Bethany Jacobs has done her reading, and produced something that is, in that well-worn publisher nostrum, ‘more of the same but different’.

As with Dune, the plot is part-dependent on economics. Jump gates are dependent on a rare mineral called sevite. The primary source of sevite is a moon called Jeve whose inhabitants, the Jeveni are both necessary to mine the stuff, and a sort of Jew-analogue in that they are fiercely proud of their singular, ethnic culture, and roundly despised by much of the rest of the population.

The other half of the plot concerns two children and the powerful but reckless priest who shapes their lives. Esek Nightfoot is a member of one of the most important noble families, and also a senior member of the Righteous Hand, the clergy. Esek is young, beautiful, hugely talented, massively ambitious, and totally out of control. She does what she wants, when she wants, relying on her power and talent to allow her to get away with it.

At the start of the book, Esek is summoned to see a group of school children. The Kindom is ruthless with its youth. Anyone wishing to join one of the Hands must pass through rigorous training during which they are known only by a number, and by the pronoun ‘it’. The school thinks that Esek will be interested in a child known as Six, and might perhaps take it on as an apprentice. Six is truly remarkable, but Esek spots something that the school has missed. She refuses to take the child, but instead sets it a challenge to prove itself to her.

Years later, the child who was Two in the same cohort as Six has been Esek’s apprentice and is now a senior priest in her own right. Unlike Esek, Chono takes the job of the clergy seriously and tries to live a moral life. Having been Esek’s apprentice, and now friend, stretches that commitment to breaking point.

Meanwhile Six has graduated and vanished. They took Esek’s challenge very seriously, and the pair have for some years been engaged in a deadly game of cat and mouse in which Esek tries to catch Six, and Six tries to find evidence of crimes that will cause Esek’s downfall. Matters come to a head during a political crisis involving the Jeveni, and Six’s secret ancestry, which is the reason Esek didn’t want them as a pupil, and also involves a massacre of Jeveni.

The story is told with interweaved chapters, half of which are set in the present, and the other half in the past but working forward over the years until the two narratives merge. It is all cleverly done, and there is a nice twist right at the end. I keep thinking that I should have enjoyed it more than I did, but the characters didn’t quite jell for me. Esek I found too extreme, and Chono’s simultaneous devotion to her old schoolfriend, and to her wildly immoral ex-mentor, also didn’t make a lot of sense. On the other hand, the book is the first of a trilogy, and I am intrigued enough to want to find out what happens next.

book cover
Title: These Burning Stars
By: Bethany Jacobs
Publisher: Orbit
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

The War Between the Land and the Sea

075, TV Review

One thing you can rely upon with any Doctor Who series, or spin-off, is that as soon as it airs a whole lot of Doctor Who fans will pop their heads up on social media and tell you how terrible it is, and how the franchise is completely ruined. The War Between the Land and the Sea is no exception.

There are, of course, many things to bear in mind when evaluating the truth of such assertions. For example, it was pretty much a given that the series would be panned in the national newspapers. That’s because Russell T Davies is an unrepentant lefty, and stridently pro-trans to boot. The media hates him. Meanwhile he is having as much fun as he can at their expense.

Another problem is that this is not Doctor Who. The thing that Who critics get wrong most often is that they forget that the show is primarily intended for kids. As Davies is fond of pointing out, the show has to be enjoyable by the average six-year-old, and not spook their parents. The War Between (there are no sensible abbreviations of the title) is very much not a show for children. It was broadcast after all of the little ones were safely tucked up in bed, and it was much more graphic in its depiction of death. There was also some inter-species sex. Coming straight after the exuberance of Ncuti Gatwa, it is a bit of a shock.

The plot, as has been well trailed, uses the Sea Devils from an ancient Jon Pertwee story which the BBC kindly broadcast in colourised form as a prequel. The main things I got from that were that TV was terribly sexist when I was a kid, and that Jo Grant was incredibly talented given that she managed to do all that running around in danger and not get a single dirty mark on her white trouser suit.

The idea of an undersea race that wants to wage war on humanity because of our treatment of the oceans and their inhabitants is not new. Prince Namor and Aquaman both pre-date World War Two, and we have seen the plot used in both the Aquaman movies and Wakanda Forever. Davies ramps up the conflict to the max, with the sea people threatening to melt both poles, and humanity responding even more viciously.

Davies, doubtless aware that the media will eventually manage to get him sacked, does not mince words. The message hits us over the head with all the subtlety of a Dalek. The use of an everyman character who accidentally becomes a key player in the conflict was probably a good idea, but it also strains the credulity quite a lot.

What I think has spooked Who fans most about this series is what it has done with UNIT. To start with, it has become clear that UNIT is an organization that operates entirely outside of any government control. That’s kind of necessary when all they are doing is helping The Doctor (who never has time for politics), but quite worrying when they are working all by themselves.

Also, this is a story in which UNIT fails. On at least three occasions we see operations go wrong because UNIT staff have been suborned by the bad guys. On one of those, someone who is supposed to be in a safe location, and subject to 24-7 monitoring, is accessed by the bad guys. You have to assume that UNIT staff are quite badly paid, and therefore easily bribed.

Finally, the common thread running through all UNIT stories is that The Doctor keeps on saving humanity because he is fond of us, and thinks that, whatever our faults, we deserve to be saved. In The War Between what we see is that humanity very much does not deserve to be saved, and if The Doctor was going to save anyone it would have been Aquakind.

One has to wonder where UNIT can go from here. It seems unlikely that the British government would want them to continue to be based here. Also Kate’s leadership should presumably be called into question given how badly she cracked under pressure. Jemma Redgrave reportedly loves the series, and I can see why. She has been given a very meaty role to play. But people love playing Hamlet and Lady Macbeth too.

Fortunately for Davies, the Whoniverse is infinitely flexible. There is absolutely no reason why The War Between should have any official place in the main timeline.

Meanwhile Davies offers us some hope. Our everyman character, Barclay, and his fishy girlfriend, Salt, seem to have had a happy ending. Multiculturalism FTW! Also there was one lovely scene in which Salt demonstrates the common fishy ability to change sex. It was a brilliantly pointed barb at the whole ‘biological sex’ nonsense that has consumed the UK for the past 8 months. Maybe some good will come of all this, if people are prepared to listen.

The Lord of the Rings Re-Watched

075, Movie Review

Years ago (yes, it has been that long) I had a habit of spending the holiday season watching the Extended Edition of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. There’s something like 15 hours worth of material there, so it keeps one occupied when there is nothing worth watching on TV and you are somewhat too sozzled to do any work. However, it has been a while. This year I decided to go back to it and see whether the films still stood up.

From a technical point of view I think some of the green screen work is now a bit obvious. Back when the films came out this tech was all very new and we were gob-smacked at how good it was. These days it looks a little shoddy. Hopefully that doesn’t spoil the viewing experience for modern-day kids.

As to the film-making, it is clear now that the seeds of all the things that made the Hobbit movies so bad were already there in the LotR films. Many of the action scenes were obviously ridiculous when the films came out, and I said so in my reviews at the time. For all of its emotional power, the Rohirrim charge down an almost vertical slope covered in loose scree is one of the most absurd things I have ever seen in a movie.

Weirdly, something that stood out was Arwen’s orange lipstick in the first movie. I’m not sure that we can blame Liv Tyler for this. I have a sneaking suspicion that there was a fashion for it at the time. Certainly I have a MAC lipstick in almost the same shade that I have had for years and hardly ever used.

Something that I did not remember was the look on Elrond’s face when Aragorn and Arwen get to kiss at the end. It is priceless. Well done, Hugo Weaving.

The Gollum/Sméagol scenes are still very effective, and obviously I have a soft spot for Éowyn dispatching the Witch King, but I had not remembered how frightened Éowyn is shown to be throughout most of the battle. It is almost as if the film wants to suggest that her brother was right and she should not have been there.

Of course most of the power of the films still comes from Tolkien, but the impact is very different now. Tolkien wrote the books during and immediately after the Second World War. In that time, mankind faced up to an existential threat and, through great sacrifice, made it through. The world was looking forward to a new era of peace and prosperity.

Viewing those films now, at a time when our world is once again staring down the barrel of war, with no guarantee of a successful outcome, they hit very differently. We all wish that we had not been born into these times, Mr Frodo, but we were, and now we have no choice but to play our part.

Editorial – December 2025

075, Editorial

Well, that was a bit shorter than usual, but I have reviewed a whole four novels. Go me!

Of course I never get as much done over the holiday period that I imagine I will. That’s partly because I spend too much time cooking and eating, and partly because once I start to relax I don’t have the energy for anything. Maybe if Christmas was several months long instead of a week I might get caught up. But Santa never manages to bring me that little request.

Given that this issue is going to go out around New Year, I suppose I should say something profound. I checked back to see what I did last year, but of course I don’t normally do a December issue. This one is only happening because I have got so few issues out in the past year.

It would be ridiculous to say that I am looking forward to 2026. Sure I have a lot of great stuff planned for Wizard’s Tower, which I hope very much that you will enjoy. But the legal situation for trans people in the UK is likely to get much worse in the coming year. Forced de-transition is already happening in England thanks to changes to NHS England regulations which make it very difficult for trans people to get their hormone prescriptions. We are safer here in Wales, but the national media is determined to engineer a Reform win in May’s Senedd elections, and if that happens one of the first things they are likely to do is scrap devolution.

I shall be doing my best to ensure that Wales remains free of Fascism, and hopefully we will see a new government led by Plaid Cymru. But if we don’t there isn’t a lot I can do. In the immortal words of Commander Peter Quincy Taggart: “Never Give Up! Never Surrender!”

Issue #74

Issues

This is the November 2025 issue of Salon Futura. Here are the contents.


  • Cover: The Green Man’s Holiday: This issue's art is by Ben Baldwin and is from the new Green Man book.

  • The Salt Oracle: Lorraine Wilson has produced a sequel of sorts to We Are All Ghosts in the Forest, and it is set in Åland. This is a source of great excitement in these here parts.

  • What Stalks the Deep: The next Alex Easton novella is out. Naturally Cheryl jumped on it.

  • A Mouthful of Dust: Cleric Chih and Almost Brilliant are on the road again. They have been tasked to gather stories from a town that suffered a famine, but not all of the survivors want to talk about what happened.

  • Patriarchy Inc.: Cordelia Fine's latest book suffers from some unfortunate timing, but it is fascinating nonetheless.

  • BristolCon 2025: Another year, another small but perfectly formed convention.

  • World Fantasy 2025: World Fantasy has come to the UK for the first time in a decade. Hooray? Well, it is in Brighton again...

  • Running a Kickstarter Campaign: The Kickstarter campaign for the new Wizard's Tower anthology has funded. How did we do it? Well, it is complicated, but you can get by with a little help from your friends.

  • Strange New Worlds – Season 3: Captain Pike and the Enterprise have been boldly going once more, and in Season 3 they seemed to be going in many different directions at once.

  • Editorial – November 2025: With October being well and truly over, an air of calm descends upon the Tower.

Cover: The Green Man’s Holiday

074, Art, Ben Baldwin

This issue’s cover is the art that Ben Baldwin produced for The Green Man’s Holiday. I can’t tell you much about it because that would be spoilers. Suffice it to say that Ben has once again captured the appearance of a character from the book quite perfectly.

As usual, you can find an un-adorned version of the art below.


The Salt Oracle

074, Book Review, Lorraine Wilson

As you may remember, I loved Lorraine Wilson’s We Are All Ghosts in the Forest. When I head that she had written a sequel I was very keen to get hold of a copy. Solaris had a launch event at World Fantasy, and The Salt Oracle was one of the books featured. Naturally I bought a copy.

I should note that this is not a sequel in the traditional sense. Katerina does not feature in the story save as an un-named Estonian witch who has developed a potential cure for ghost infection. It is, however, a story set in the same world, one in which civilization has collapsed and the world is haunted by the deadly ghosts of the internet.

Much to my delight, the story is set in Åland. The Oracle of the title is a young Russian girl who has a talent for attracting ghosts and thereby somehow being able to tap into electronic communications. With appropriate prompts, she can be made to babble streams of data from weather survey buoys scattered about the Baltic. This is enormously useful in a world in which weather forecasting has become a black art, and even compasses can no longer be relied upon. But attracting ghosts is a dangerous business. After an unfortunate event in Helsinki, in which many people died, the Oracle and her attendant academics has been exiled to a rig anchored in the Åland Islands where, it is hoped, her talents can be tapped more safely.

Wilson says in her Afterword that the book is her attempt at writing Dark Academia. That’s not a sub-genre that I am familiar with and, beyond a passing interest in the fashion movement that accompanies it, I have little interest in it. However, The Salt Oracle appears to be Dark Academia without the traditional tropes. That is, it is set in an academic institution, with academics being nasty to each other, but it is not fantasy, and nor is it properly romance.

What can be said about the book is that it is very much informed by what happens to academic research when the subject of that research is a) very valuable to commercial interests; and b) the subject of fear and suspicion among the general population. It is also, as seems rather fashionable these days, something of a meditation on Le Guin’s famous story, “Those Who Walk Away from Omelas”.

The Oracle was a child when her powers were discovered. She was taken from her parents by bandits and sold, presumably to the University of Helsinki. Her weather forecasting abilities are of considerable commercial value, and the powerful shipping magnates of Gdansk would love to have her under their control. There is a Finnish terrorist organization called the Survivors, founded by people who did survive the Helsinki incident, who are determined to kill her. And of course everyone is terrified of ghosts so the Survivors have a lot of sympathy. The Oracle needs a 24/7 paramilitary guard. Set against all this, the needs and even rights of one mentally unstable girl are far down the list of priorities.

Bellwether College, so named for its ability to attract ghosts, has three main academic departments. The most powerful is Metrology, headed by the ambitious control freak, Gabrielle. Next is Oceanography, headed by the laconic Finn, Uoti. Their job is mainly to study fish stocks, which have been greatly depleted since the Crash. Finally there is a small department who are there to study the ghosts. It is a small group: just Boudain Caron and his assistant, Auli Fraser. It is Auli, with Finnish lesbian mothers and presumably a now absent Scottish father, who is the focus of our story.

Auli, unusually at Bellwether, is an academic with a conscience. That’s hardly a problem when she is a junior in the most junior department. But, when Boudain is found dead in mysterious circumstances, Auli finds herself promoted to the exulted rank of Principal Investigator and thereby privy to some of Bellwether’s darkest secrets.

The Salt Oracle, then, is a murder mystery. As such is has a plentiful collection of red herrings, people with dark pasts, people having secret affairs, and an all round air of mutual suspicion. I’m not an expert on crime, but Wilson seems to manage the job well enough to keep me intrigued.

The book is also a story of a love affair. In the past, Auli had a relationship with Raphaël Giroux, the Head of Security for Bellwether. He proposed to her, sort of, but she had been warned by another female academic that he was not to be trusted beyond a casual fling, so she tuned him down. As such the book starts at the half-way point of a traditional romance plot. Our hero and heroine have already had their falling out, and must find their way back to each other before there can be a happy ending.

Most of all, however, The Salt Oracle is a story about the sea. Wilson, like me, is an oceanographer by academic profession. Unlike me she lasted a lot longer in academia, and probably spent a lot longer actually at sea. She understands its dangers well. And if you put something that attracts ghosts on a rig in the middle of the sea, even a relatively shallow and placid millpond like the Baltic, the sea will deliver up ghosts that mariners know only too well.

I should note also that the college doctor, Niki, is a non-binary person who has fled Poland because of the anti-queer attitudes there. They get accidentally misgendered a couple of times in the copy I have. I’m pretty certain that’s just typos, and I hope that can be fixed, at least in the ebook, and hopefully in a second printing.

As to the success of the book, it has something of the feel of a middle book in a trilogy. We don’t learn a lot more about the nature of the post-Crash world, or internet ghosts in general. I’m hoping that Wilson has a third book planned that develops that side of the story more fully. In the meantime, The Salt Oracle does well enough with its murder and romance plots to make a satisfying book on its own. You should probably read We Are All Ghosts in the Forest first to get a full sense of the world, but it is not essential.

I should also note that the number of SF&F books set in Åland is vanishingly small, and if Wilson doesn’t get an invitation to Åcon sometime soon I shall have words with my Finnish friends.

book cover
Title: The Salt Oracle
By: Lorraine Wilson
Publisher: Solaris
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

What Stalks the Deep

074, Book Review, T Kingfisher

The latest installment in T. Kingfisher’s Sworn Soldier novella series sees Alex Easton and Angus travel to the USA. This, inevitably, is cause for hilarity. Gallacia, the small, European country whence Alex hails, could not be more un-American. Its people are quiet and reserved, its landscape mountainous and forbidding. No one would ever dream of shaking anyone else by the hand, let alone doing so with gusto.

Equally, the USA is profoundly un-Gallacian. Alex elects to keep kan status as a Sworn Soldier secret because goodness only knows what the Americans would make of that. Thankfully ka passes for male and does not have to try to explain. It also means that Kingfisher doesn’t have to delve to deeply into social attitudes to gender, which might be interesting to me, but would probably detract from the main narrative.

Angus, being a dour Scotsman, does not hold with Americans at all, but loyally tags along to keep his employer out of trouble and/or social embarrassment.

Thus to Boston Alex must go. Ka has received a telegram from kan old friend, Dr James Denton, with whom ka faced the horrors of the house of the Ushers in What Moves the Dead. Denton is clearly in need of urgent help, and what is left unsaid suggests that supernatural horrors are the source of his troubles.

So it transpires. Denton has come into the ownership of an abandoned coal mine in Virginia. His young cousin, Oscar, has taken it upon himself to investigate the property and see if it can be re-opened profitably. But Oscar has disappeared and his letters back to Denton are sufficiently lurid to suggest that he might have been reading fiction by that Lovecraft fellow.

Alex, Angus and Denton head off to Virginia, accompanied by Denton’s friend, John Ingold. He’s a great character. He’s part native by birth, so has equally acerbic views of Americans to Easton, but for very different reasons. He is also a chemist, and thus fond of experiments that are prone to explode spectacularly. You need a chemist if you are going to explore a coal mine, because it can be full of all sorts of gases that you can’t see, and are reliably deadly in a variety of horrific ways.

Once at the mine, things evolve towards a conclusion, but probably not in the way you might anticipate. Firstly the very lovely UK cover of the book has absolutely nothing to do with the story. The US cover is more appropriate, though looks like it would be more at home on a Jeff VanderMeer book.

Alex turns out to be quite claustrophobic, but being the only actual military person in the party ka obviously cannot show weakness amongst civilians. And there is a definite air of horror about the proceedings. But the story has a twist that takes it in a very science-fictional direction. That is, if you think about it, quite in keeping with the Lovecraftian nature of the story, but possibly not what you would expect having read the two previous books in the series.

Personally I love these books. I am, of course, a sucker for stories with a trans hero. And Kingfisher writes very well. Quite what her fans will make of this one remains to be seen, but I hope they love it too because I want more Alex Easton stories in this world.

book cover
Title: What Stalks the Deep
By: T Kingfisher
Publisher: Titan
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

A Mouthful of Dust

074, Book Review, Nghi Vo

It is the task of the clerics of the Singing Hills to collect stories. That, you might think, is not particularly horrible or dangerous. But not every story has a happy ending, and not everyone wants their story to be told.

The town of Baolin is famous for three things. It is famous for its soil, in which fabulous melons are grown. It is famous for a pork dish whose recipe is a closely guarded secret. And it is famous for a terrible famine which afflicted the town within living memory, and which many of the townsfolk did not survive. And so Cleric Chih and Almost Brilliant are sent to Baolin to collect the stories of the survivors, if they are prepared to tell them.

Nghi Vo’s Singing Hills novellas are, I suppose, technically horror, given that they deal primarily with the doings of demons. Then again, Chinese folklore is full of stories about demons. I suspect that there isn’t much else to talk about. Famine demons are, of course, particularly terrible, both for the death they spread in their wake, and for the terrible things that people will do to survive them.

A Mouthful of Dust is named for the cookies that were made by the mason’s guild in Baolin to help feed the townsfolk during the famine. They are made of brick dust rather than flour, with just a sprinkling of salt on top to give the mouth something to savour. They are by no means the most terrible things that the people of Baolin ate in those awful times.

Cleric Chih, being insatiably curious, is ideally suited to being a Singing Hills monk. But their curiosity can also get them into trouble. That is partly because there are those who survived the famine who do not want their stories told. And it is partly because there are those who did not survive who want revenge.

As with the other tales in the series, this latest installment is small but perfectly formed. It is, perhaps, not a tale for anyone with a queasy stomach, but it is a reminder of what horrors result from famine. Despite our obvious wealth, there are parts of our planet where famine is still commonplace, and with a worsening climate such things will only become more common. Vo has given us a timely reminder that famine demons are to be feared, not to be wished upon ourselves.

book cover
Title: A Mouthful of Dust
By: Nghi Vo
Publisher: Tor Dot Com
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

Patriarchy Inc.

074, Book Review, Cordelia Fine, Feminism

If you remember my report on the Hay Literary Festival you will know that I saw Cordelia Fine being interviewed about her latest book, Patriarchy Inc.. Fine is one of my favourite feminist writers, and this book looked to engage directly with my work because it is all about the DEI industry. I have finally got around to reading it.

Patriarchy Inc. is, sadly, a book that suffers from terrible timing. When it was written, the diversity industry was in full flow. Fine comments at one point that it was predicted to be worth $24.4 billion by 2030. But by the time it was published DEI was already coming under attack from the Tangerine Tyrant in the White House. As I write this, he has declared that practicing DEI is a breach of human rights, presumably the right to hate and oppress anyone who is not white, straight, able-bodied, male and nominally Christian.

Consequently Fine’s book comes across as aiming a peashooter at a target that is getting the full force of an assault rifle to the face.

Whether that matters or not is a different question, because the main thrust of Fine’s argument is that DEI hasn’t worked, does not work, and will probably never work. And that is something that should concern all of us who still believe in promoting equality.

Much of the book is devoted to explaining how attempts to promote diversity, equality and inclusion in the workplace have been misguided. Some of this is fairly obvious. Equality programmes that tell women that they are not behaving in the right way in the work environment, or that they need ‘fixing’ in some way, are essentially victim blaming.

Equally initiatives to ‘fix’ men won’t work if they are superficial and don’t address the underlying issues. For example, giving men the right to maternity leave changes nothing if the men are all afraid to take it in case doing so damages their careers.

Sometimes the problem is more subtle. Some DEI promoters have identified that women prefer to work with female mentors. They are much less likely to suffer casual sexism, or sexual harassment, that way. But if the workplace environment already privileges men over women then anyone with a female mentor will do less well than someone with a male mentor, and soon people start drawing the erroneous conclusion that women make bad mentors.

Fine also holds that some diversity training is counter-productive. Training that tells white, middle-class people that they all suffer from unconscious bias and need to change their bad behaviour is probably not going to go down well with a lot of the class.

The real problem, however, is money. The modern work environment in Western countries is geared to produce exactly one thing, regardless of what industry you are in. It is a vehicle for producing shareholder value. Nothing else matters. This is disastrous for a whole number of reasons, but from a DEI point of view it means that those at the top of the tree, who are overwhelmingly white men, and who are incentivised to produce shareholder value by being paid in stock, have no interest in the wellbeing of their employees or the long term future of the company for which they work. They just want to squeeze as much value out of it as possible and then move on to the next victim.

Along the way we are treated to some classic examples of Fine’s acerbic wit. She reserves her most pointed shots for evolutionary psychologists, which makes me very happy. She also managed to dig up this fabulous quote:

No society can surely be flourishing and happy of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

That’s from a little book called An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes if the Wealth of Nations, by a fellow called Adam Smith. You may have heard of it.

Fine has a bunch of suggestions in the final chapter for how we can effect real change in society and the workplace. But the real problem is that our society is obsessed with gender differences, and this obsession is baked into children at a very early age. We (by which I mean Western society, because folks in the parts of the world we colonized did not always share our weird social ideas) have been fighting this gender war at least since the fall of the Old Babylonian Empire. Stopping that happening is going to take more than a few government initiatives and workplace training programmes.

book cover
Title: Patriarchy Inc.
By: Cordelia Fine
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura

BristolCon 2025

074, Convention Report

Having an annual convention in the same hotel each year, run by roughly the same group of people each time, has to be the gold standard for science fiction conventions. Over time it should (if the committee and any good) develop into a well-oiled machine that runs along without any major issues. BristolCon has reached that state of convention Nirvana.

That doesn’t mean that things don’t change. Since it started, the hotel has added extra function space. The con has changed from a one-day to a two-day event. And this year they experimented with a different layout. It all seemed to work well.

Normally at BristolCon I do a launch for the new Green Man book. However, this year Juliet had to be in London on the Saturday, and we had a launch event scheduled for World Fantasy the following weekend, so we just did a soft launch for the new books. That is, they were available, but there was no associated party.

I did two programme items. One was a discussion on SF as Activism, which I think went very well. For the other I moderated a discussion on why our fiction should have more than two genders, with an entire panel of people who were at least trans-adjacent if not openly trans. That might have been a bit more lively, but again seemed to go OK.

Despite, or possibly because of, the new location, the Dealers’ Room went very well, at least for me. BristolCon traditionally has very good programming, so the room tends to be a bit of a desert except for turn-around time (the last 10 minutes of each hour). Some people suggested that the con should schedule a lunch break to give people time to visit the Dealers, but I suspect that folks would head out of the hotel if that happened because the hotel lunch options are not great.

Anyway, I sold a lot. I was very pleased.

The exciting news, at least from my point of view, came at Closing Ceremonies. Apparently I am going to be a Guest of Honour at the convention next year. It will be my first time being a GoH in the UK, and I’m delighted that it will be for a convention that I helped found. As to what I will be doing, I don’t know right now. I guess I won’t be able to be in the Dealers’ Room nearly as much. I get the impression that GoHs are expected to participate in the Saturday night karaoke, but I can’t see that happening. If I try to sing someone is likely to call the police to report a song being murdered. But there are many other things that I could be doing.

Watch this space. BristolCon next year will be fun.

World Fantasy 2025

074, Convention Report

Well, here we are again, the good old Brighton Metropole. I was at the last World Fantasy held there, at which Steve Jones contrived to upset as many people as he possibly could and the convention was rescued by the then nascent Redcloaks corps. Given that Jones is now persona non grata at World Fantasy, and FantasyCon has gone from strength to strength, I think we probably have a net win from that event.

I should note that no one in their right minds would choose to hold a convention in the Brighton Metropole. It is an accessibility nightmare, albeit slightly improved on last time. The space is really badly organized. And the hotel itself is big and poorly managed so getting the staff to do anything sensible is really hard.

I’m not casting aspersions on the convention committee here. Their original plan was to use the Birmingham Metropole, which ran a successful Eastercon a couple of years ago, and will be the Eastercon venue again next year. But their booking was gazumped and they had to find a new venue. At that point they ran into the perennial rightsizing problem. There are very few hotels of a suitable size for a World Fantasy in the UK, and so we ended up in Brighton again.

Ah well, at least I got a pile of Hilton points out of it.

I can’t say much about the programming because I had to be in the Dealers’ Room most of the time. I did have one panel, where I moderated a discussion on fantasy in translation with two Romanians and a Russian. It went the way these conversations normally do: we all agreed that translation was important and valuable, but we despaired of encouraging people to buy it, and had no idea how to finance it. With the prospect of the major publishers using AI to do their translations from now on, things are likely to get much worse.

One thing I noticed during the panel was that the soundproofing between rooms was very poor. There was a bigger programme room backing on to ours, and they were Very Loud. But, as it turned out, we got off lightly. Here’s Andrew Knighton from the BFS blog talking about his reading:

But then the problems started. First, the room was locked. Then, when we got in, we found out that there was a wedding disco next door. I ended up reading serious passages about landscape and grief while Michael Jackson and the Village People sounded through the wall, raising my voice every time the DJ turned up the volume.

I had at least two people come to the table the next day asking for Wiz Duo 3 because they were so impressed with Andrew’s heroic efforts in terrible circumstances the night before.

Anyway, there was programming, and people seemed to enjoy it. Some of it is available to members on replay, but I haven’t had the time to look at any of it.

The other program item I was involved in was a book launch for Wizard’s Tower. We had three new books: a new Green Man book from Juliet McKenna; a new novel from Chaz Brenchley; and a new Wiz Duo featuring Ruthanna Emrys and Andrew Knighton. All of the authors except Chaz were at the con, and it was lovely to get to meet Ruthanna at last.

The organization of the event involved a substantial amount of frantic paddling below the surface. The first problem was wine. The hotel was charging over £30 a bottle, which is probably something like a 200% markup. Thankfully corkage was only £12 a bottle, and I am able to source good quality wine for much less than £20. But there was still the problem of getting it to the con. Thankfully, Ben Baldwin lives near Brighton and I was able to ship it to him and collect it the day before the con started. Ben also kindly took delivery of some books, because there wasn’t room in my car for books for BristolCon, books for World Fantasy, Kayla and myself.

We also promised people cake. The convention said that the hotel wanted details of the ingredients beforehand for food safety purposes, which was fine by me. Jo and I were going to make the cakes. But when I got to Brighton I discovered that the hotel wanted other things too, such as copies of my food safety training certificates, and details of when my premises were last inspected by the Council’s food safety officers.

The only way around this was to buy a cake from a local cake shop. Fortunately Brighton is not short of such things, but it did result in substantial extra expense and the need to go and collect the cake first thing on the Saturday morning. Huge thanks are due to Cielo Cakery for coming up with a great cake at very short notice.

Collecting the wine and books from Ben, and the cake from the shop, both required that we take the car out of the hotel car park. This, is turned out, was another major source of problems. The hotel’s underground parking fortress is designed on the assumption that you will put your car in at the start of the stay, and pay on exit when you leave. Taking the car out part way through is major exception that causes all sorts of problems for the hotel.

It didn’t help that most of the staff we spoke to didn’t know how the system worked. Everyone we spoke to gave us a different answer. The person who let us out to go to Ben’s house said that we should have paid in advance, but as we were at the exit she’d let us out on the condition that that we paid for the parking as soon as we got back.

When we got back we tried to pay for the parking, but the staff on reception could not make it work.

Thankfully the car park let us out to collect the cake without needing to call for help.

When I went to check out there was an additional charge on the bill which I figured was probably for the parking, but the receptionist insisted that it must be a mistake and took it off.

When we left we were only charged for one day’s parking. But when I got home I found another charge from the hotel on my credit card. They did not let me know they had done that, nor did they send me a new bill.

Yes, the hotel staff really were that bad. And that’s without going into the whole saga of getting the cake put in a fridge on Saturday morning until we needed it, which was a whole new adventure.

Thankfully the launch went off very well. We had around 50 people there. No one complained about the wine or cake. We did not run out of either. And we sold lots of books. Which is just as well because if we hadn’t the takings from the event would have been very poor indeed.

Everyone in the Dealers’ Room was complaining about the lack of sales, and indeed the lack of footfall. We initially put it down to us having been hidden away in an upstairs room that wasn’t easy to find. Programming was on the ground and first floors (UK numbering). We were on the second floor, and finding the way up to us was challenge enough. Most people seemed not to want to leave the main programme floor, which was the first. There was much jealousy of the Art Show, which was right next to the main programme room, the convention bar and the convention food service.

However, conversations late in the convention suggested that the Art Show had also sold very little, with some big names having no sales whatsoever.

The poor sales appear to have had multiple causes. Firstly the wealthy Americans who normally splash lots of money around at WFC had spent most of what they had available on air fares. The local attendees, who were mostly British Fantasy Society members, are not big spenders in the same way. And, of course, everyone is worried about the state of the world, so free cash was in short supply for everyone.

Nevertheless, I did more business per day in BristolCon than I did at World Fantasy, and had I not had the book launch the total revenue from the two conventions would have been about equal. That was very disappointing, given the cost of attending WFC, and the fact that WFC had around three times the attendance of BristolCon.

The other key aspect of World Fantasy is the socializing. Last time we were in Brighton I went out to dinner with Scott Edelman, which is always an amazing experience given his skill and searching out top quality restaurants. Sadly my hearing is now so poor (even with hearing aids) that I now avoid bars and big restaurant groups because I have to spend all of my time apologizing for not being able to hear what people are saying.

Anyway, we survived the experience. Also Kayla and I got in quite a bit of tourism on the way to and from Brighton, so the weekend was not a complete bust.

I’m looking forward to next year’s FantasyCon being a much more predictable experience in a much better suited hotel, even if I will have to drive to Glasgow for it.

Running a Kickstarter Campaign

074, Wizard's Tower

One of the things that kept me crazy busy through October was the Kickstarter campaign for They Are Still Here. It was my second attempt at doing crowdfunding. The first attempt failed, but I learned a lot.

One key to a successful campaign is a good budget. The tools that Kickstarter provide to help you with this are useless and the independent advisors don’t give you anything useful unless you pay them (and probably not if you do pay). The way I did the budget is as follows:

  1. Work out how much everything is going to cost.
  2. Set your initial goal at twice the minimum amount you need.
  3. Price each reward at twice what it costs to fulfill.
  4. Don’t forget to allow for Kickstarter and credit card fees.
  5. Have postage charged separately after the campaign.

By having a consistent pricing strategy, you can be sure how much profit you are making. If your margin is different on each reward then you will have great difficulty knowing how much profit you are making because it depends on which rewards have sold.

Forgetting the fees is an easy mistake to make, but if you do it can throw a real spanner in the works. I budgeted 10%, and it was very slightly over that.

Interestingly, there are some parallels between Kickstarter and batting second in a limited overs cricket match. You know what your target is (either in pounds or runs) and you know how long you have to get there (in days or overs). So you have a target rate (in £/day or runs per over), but it helps a lot to get a fast start so that you are always ahead of the rate. Once your current rate drops below the starting required rate you are in trouble.

Getting a fast start is all about having a large number of people committed to back you. That is hard for a small press like mine. You need a mailing list of hundreds, preferably thousands, of people. Having a pre-launch helps, and we were at 39% after 4 days, but then things started to slacken off.

Once you are into the campaign, the trick is to keep getting the message in front of new people. You can do that for a while by being relentless on social media. Not all of your followers will see your initial posts, but if you keep at it then they will eventually get the message.

After that it is a problem. By day 13 I had clearly maxed out my own social media following. That day’s income was only £30. The next day was worse. At that point it was obvious that we were in serious trouble.

So I called in some favours. I wrote to a bunch of well-known writers that I knew and asked them to boost the campaign. That worked. We had a couple of very good days, and we funded with a few days to spare. My sincere thanks to everyone who helped out.

I would have liked to do much better. Hitting some stretch goals would have enabled us to offer authors bigger advances. But so it goes. Now we have to make the book.

If you are waiting for news, I will be in touch with all backers this week.

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