Hello! In the six months or so since I last wrote about my writing, what have I actually written? Generally, if I'm writing fiction then I'm not writing here in the Gyre. The converse is also true: I've posted more in the last six weeks than in the previous six months and consequently have barely … Continue reading #AmWriting, April 2024
Around the same time I was watching Close Encounters for the first time, BBC2 were showing, in a weekday tea-time slot, a series of 1950s science fiction classics. This was my first exposure to older sci-fi, i.e. things that pre-dated 1977. I'm sure if I dug around the internet the evidence would contradict me, but … Continue reading First Frights: 50s Sci-Fi!
A widower and his young daughter live in a hillside cottage. Interspersed between the increasingly dark events of their life are vignettes of historical scenes from the area's past: moments of violence, trauma, and death, whose actors and events feed into each chapter. The girl, Nia, has a powerful imagination, which seems capable of dissolving … Continue reading Review: “Dark Play” by Tim Cooke (2024)
Read Part One The mid-1980s saw a change in Herbert's work, of which Moon (1985) although it contains many similar elements to The Jonah, is the first example. The hero of this transitional novel in Herbert's oeuvre has a "softer" name than his usual heroes - Childes - which reflects his vulnerability. He's a teacher … Continue reading Horror Rewind special: James Herbert! (part two)
"Politically the UK was still in turmoil, economically the country was very much in the doldrums, and culturally we were still living in the sixties, albeit without any of the verve, and certainly none of the optimism...power cuts and the three-day week...endless public sector strikes, IRA bombings and apparent industrial collapse...it wasn't exactly a dystopian … Continue reading Horror Rewind special: James Herbert! (part one)
Time is cyclical. That's the underlying message of Gareth E. Rees's timely and often persuasive new book, the follow-up to his superb Unofficial Britain. As a species, argues Rees, we've been here before: we've seen the seas rise, seen rising waters swallow the land. It's happened once, twice, many times; and if we take the … Continue reading Review: “Sunken Lands” by Gareth E. Rees (2024)
A hobby of mine when I was a teenager was birdwatching. I'd go for walks up the hill behind my parents' house with binoculars and field guide; if I was lucky Mum and Dad would take me to RSPB Vane Farm (now Loch Leven), a half-hour drive away; or I'd go with my cousin Colin, … Continue reading Not birdwatching
Copy supplied for review Helen Grant's previous book Too Near The Dead was a thoroughly absorbing ghost story, and well worth a read. Her new novel Jump Cut is, I'm pleased to say, even better. Writer Theda Garrick is fortunate enough to have succeeded where others appear to have failed, and gained access to elderly … Continue reading Review: ‘Jump Cut’ by Helen Grant (2023)
Stephen King famously wrote in Danse Macabre, his 1981 study of the horror genre, "I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the … Continue reading Horror Rewind #9 – ‘Spawn’ by Shaun Hutson (1983)
TV shows had scared me before. But nothing had ever given me the true sense of awe that Close Encounters did (and, largely, still does) the first time I saw it. That's awe in the Romantic sense of the sublime, in which it borders on terror. Every time I watch the film, there's some new … Continue reading First Frights: ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ (1977)
Into the Gyre 