by Marianne de Pierres / Scott Harrison / Lee Harris / Paul Kane / Andrew Edwards
By the time we reached the eighth castle though, the tide was lapping at our feet and all had retired from The Game for fear of drowning on the incoming tide.
All but us and Jaella Armagh.
As we secured the eighth flag and climbed back down to the beach, Jaella waded waist deep through waves to the ninth castle.
‘We - can’t - make it - Lauren,’ I panted. ‘The tide is - nearly in. The waves will - take us.’
‘Jaella?’
‘Halfway to Popo.’
‘Quickly,’ she cried insistently. ‘We must follow.’
I glanced behind us. The beach was disappearing. Only a tiny strip of sand remained between the waves and cliff face. Above, on the headland, tiny figures watched down on us. Katrin would be among them, cursing me.
‘It is over,’ I said firmly. ‘We have to go back’
‘No.’ She tore free of my hands and lunged a few steps toward Popo.
The waves rolled in, dragging her under.
I dived without thinking and felt for her amongst the froth and weed. It tumbled me once, twice then with relief my hands contacted her flesh and we surfaced, gasping.
The sea had pulled us closer to Popo than the eighth and when my feet touched sand I dragged her with all my strength to the base of the last sandcastle.
She wasted no breath on apology or exclamation. ‘The flag is on the peak. I can see it.’
I did not argue with her for the thin strip of sand had gone now and our survival depended on reaching the top.
Jaella Armagh was above us, wailing with disappointment as flags were washed from their hidey-holes and her grasp by the lash of the waves.
‘There is one left,’ Lauren whispered. ‘I sense it near the broken turret. Near the butterflies.’
I saw where she meant - the smoky cloud of them above a narrow, flat-topped tower. I coaxed her feet and hands to safe ledges and grips.
‘Have faith, Tinashi. Have faith.’ She said it over and over, and I clung to it as my feet slid on trapped seaweed and the salt stung my every scratch and cut.
Jaella reached the top before us but chose the other turret to search.
We tumbled over the lip of the butterfly tower and collapsed but within seconds Lauren was up, crawling around, letting her fingers and mind’s-eye lead her. I lay gasping for breath.
Lauren gave a little cry of victory as her fingers found the last flag. She fell back in a gesture of surrender. Taking a small vial from the halter of her bathers she held it aloft.
Jaella saw her and lunged across the small divide between us, a brutal, wild expression wild on her face. I put my hands out to ward her off but she pushed me away and toppled onto Lauren, clawing and shrieking.
I tried to pull them apart but they were locked in a tussle for the vial.
‘Tinashi,’ Lauren cried. She threw the vial in the air. I caught it reflexively but the stopper dislodged and the contents sprayed over my face.
Blood. I could taste it on my lips, feel its viscosity.
The whirling cylinder of butterflies descended to engulf me, blocking out the light. I felt the flutter of a thousand wings on my face and innumerable tiny stings from their proboscises, as they clamored for the blood.
‘No. No…’ I don’t know which one of us was screaming.
*
Professor A. Wang: Carmine Island Notes, 2051
I examined the most remarkable ‘spore work’ today in a pregnant Afri-Caribbean woman (45) named Tinashi Obeah who presented to the local clinic. Knowing of my studies, the doctor called me in to view the ultrasound - unbeknown to the mother.
The foetus was not formed as it should be for 18 weeks gestation and the woman’s womb contained a liquid mass that was NOT amniotic fluid. Tissue could be seen to be forming in random sections and the doctor has ordered an amniocentesis.
To my knowledge the only creature that presents a similar type of gestation is the blood-feeding Heliconius butterfly. I suggested a blood sample to confirm my suspicions but it will be several days before the results are conclusive and until then I will keep my thoughts to myself.
According to the mother’s confused reportage, her child was conceived during The Flag Game (see: Island Customs). I can only hypothesise, if the DNA evidence supports it, that the woman has been exposed to foreign peptides and this has somehow compromised her reproductive strategy. Whether the child reaches full term, or indeed becomes a child, is yet to be determined.
NOTE: if the feotus was ‘accidentally’ stillborn it would make an outstanding study specimen.
About the Author
Marianne de Pierres lives in Brisbane with her husband and three children. Her latest novel, Dark Space, is published by Orbit, and was reviewed in Hub issue 5. Our reviewer concluded: readers who hunger for perceptive, intelligent and unflinching literary science fiction should seek this book out as soon as possible. If the sequels to Dark Space live up to the promise of this opening salvo, de Pierres will become a serious challenge to the big boys of the genre.
Reviews
Torchwood – Complete First Series reviewed by Scott Harrison
New Writings in the Fantastic reviewed by Lee Harris
30 Days of Night reviewed by Paul Kane
Torchwood – Complete First Series
Directed by Brian Kelly, James Strong and others
Starring John Barrowman, Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoko Mori
BBC, £54.99
It’s a pretty safe bet to say that Russell T. Davies’ much anticipated Doctor Who spin-off series, Torchwood, wasn’t particularly well received when it first hit our screens back in October 2006. Many complained that the show’s mandate of aiming at a more ‘adult’ audience simply meant a liberal sprinkling of four-letter words and gratuitously crow-barred in sex scenes, while others bemoaned the distinct lack of originality or a strong central motif in its collection of thirteen scripts. Very few series in television history has stirred up such intense controversy and ill feeling in its audience, even before it had begun airing. Yet from day one Torchwood sent the more ‘extreme’ members of the Whovian fanbase clamouring for their PCs in a desperate race to get online and slag it off. It’s a wonder RTD and co didn’t throw up their hands in despair and call it a day, ending the series for good after only thirteen episodes! But now that the dust has had time to settle and twelve months of bitter bile has flowed under the bridge, the question is were the fans right in their initial harsh criticism of the series and is it really that bad?
The answer is no…it’s actually bloody good! To misquote the Bard, Torchwood is a series more sinned against than sinning.
Watching Torchwood again a year later, without all the horribly constricting preconceptions borne through watching Doctor Who it’s surprising just what a cracking little series it is. OK, yes, it has its faults (of which we will come to in a moment) but we must remember that this is only its first series and as such is still finding its feet. TelevisionLand is littered with many culturally iconic and massively popular TV shows that were, to say the least, a bit wobbly at the outset. We only have to look at the first two cringingly awful seasons of Star Trek The Next Generation, season one of The Simpsons or the first six episodes of Red Dwarf to see that it’s rarely plain sailing from the word go. Even Doctor Who took an entire thirteen episode series before it managed to eject those somewhat embarrassingly cheesy moments. But credit where credit’s due, as first series go, Torchwood rather impressively manages to hit the ground running from very early in its run.
Set in modern day Cardiff and concerning itself with the Alien-busting exploits of Torchwood Three the first half of the series is told through the eyes of PC Gwen Cooper, a down-at-heels honest Welsh bobby who steps into the secret and violent underworld of the Torchwood organisation when duplicitous member Suzie Costello kills herself following an impromptu murder spree. Along with her fellow Torchwood colleagues – Owen Harper (doctor and self-proclaimed ‘twat’), Toshiko Sato (the timid comp
uter genius) and Captain Jack Harkness (of whom we are all familiar with by now!) - they set out to investigate the dark, weird and violent cases that are considered beyond the capabilities of the usual British authorities and arm themselves with whatever alien technology they can beg, steal or borrow in order to defend the Earth against future threats from outer space.
Torchwood’s biggest drawback is in its episode running order and many of its problems could have been resolved if more care had been taken in where the stories were placed. The latter half of the series sees too many stories focusing on a single member of Torchwood while the remainder of the team are sidelined to brief appearances that bookmark the episodes. Though Gwen is undoubtedly the main character of the series, sometimes a little too much airtime is given to her character, relegating others, such as the tragically underused Toshiko and even the mighty Capt. Jack, to bit-part players. The darkly disturbing and bitterly tragic episode They Keep Killing Suzie, which spends much of its fifty minutes stressing the absence of an afterlife, that there is no ‘higher plain’ awaiting us after death, only the total void of absolute nothingness, is immediately proceeded by the God-awful Random Shoes (Torchwood’s very own Love & Monsters episode!) which sees a recently deceased youth returning as a ghost to solve the riddle of his own death – a scenario which seems to contradict the entire groundwork laid down by the previous episode. Perhaps the series’ greatest weakness lies in its almost non-existent story arc (existing only as the line “Something is moving in the dark and it’s coming for you” which is spoken only twice in the whole of the first series) and its monster-rampaging dénouement which not only seems an unoriginal and unimpressive climax after the Doctor Who two-parter Impossible Planet/Satan Pit which aired only four months before but rather confusingly fails to reference or acknowledge it in any way at all, leaving the viewer confused as to whether there is any connection between the two stories or the programme makers simply forgot that they’d already used that monster a few months earlier!
It’s taken over a year for Aunty Beeb to finally get around to releasing Torchwood in its shiny complete series entirety (rather than the five months for the Doctor Who box sets) but it’s certainly worth the wait. Along with its parent series’ releases, these are without doubt the greatest television packages to hit our DVD shelves so far! Groaning under the weight of an impressively hefty collection of extras this seven-disc set has been put together with all the love, care and attention that is so woefully absent from just about every other small screen release. All thirteen episodes come with a wonderfully chatty, informative and downright fun commentary track from various members of cast and crew while the whole of disc seven is taken up with BBC3’s behind-the-scenes documentary series Torchwood Declassified, cram-packed with wonderful interviews and backstage gossip from all those involved in the making of the show. Out-takes, deleted scenes, John Barrowman’s video diary and fourteen making-of featurettes complete this fantastic box set and spoils us rotten in the process!
To all you Torchwood nay-sayers and bad-mouthers I say go out and buy this box set right now – Torchwood isn’t as bad as you think it is! In fact, along with Doctor Who and the U.S. series Heroes it’s one of the most exciting, fun and downright cool series currently airing on British TV!
New Writings in the Fantastic
Edited by John Grant
Published by Pendragon Press
£12.99, www.pendragonpress.co.uk
Pendragon is one of the most consistently impressive small press publishers in the country. Though their output is modest in terms of quantity, where quality is concerned, they almost always score impressively high.
New Writings is a collection of over 40 short stories by over 40 authors, linked only by their genre. Editor John Grant states in his introduction that the book is “an attempt to show the full scope of what the literature of the fantastic can do when it isn’t being crammed into that preconceived, primarily non-fantastic marketing niche [perpetrated by the publishers of “doorstop fantasy”]”.
He has a point.
Any collection of this size that doesn’t rely on being the year’s “Best of” is going to have a hard time of it. It is difficult to commission forty plus stories without running into some weaker works. Thankfully, Grant has chosen wisely, and there are very few tales within the anthology that are not worth reading. The quality of the stories tends to run from the very good (Derek J Goodman’s An Incomplete Palindrome Alphabet for Dyslexic Deliverymen) to the excellent (Greg Story’s The Transmissionary).
Like many small press publications, the cover price seems, at first glance, a little on the high side, but the quality of the work makes New Writings worth every penny. This is quite possibly the most important and most interesting collection in the oft-maligned fantasy genre to be published this year. Buy it.
30 Days of Night.
Directed by David Slade.
Written by Steve Niles.
Starring Josh Hartnett, Melissa George, Danny Huston, Ben Foster.
Out in cinemas now.
Just when you think nothing new can be done with the vampire sub-genre, along comes a TV series or movie to inject fresh blood into it. In the 90s it was Buffy strutting her stuff, proving that a powerful female lead could show Van Helsing a thing or two, giving us memorable vampire characters like Angel and Spike. Blade introduced us to a cool half vampire and an urban stomping ground where humans were familiars. A decade on and it’s the turn of Steve Niles, whose 2003 graphic novel 30 Days of Night has just been – deservedly – brought to a larger audience. The difference this time? Two things. 1) The setting: Barrow, Alaska, a town in the Arctic circle which for one month out of every year is in complete and utter darkness, thus taking away one of the best defences against vamps, sunlight. 2) The protagonists here are simply a group of survivors, hoping they can avoid the neck-chompers long enough to see another dawn…
The movie begins in epic style, with one man (Ben Foster) emerging from a frozen ship and making his way towards Barrow. His mission: to pave the way for the vampires – by destroying all the cell phones, killing the sled dogs and crippling the town’s helicopter. Those inhabitants who don’t want to endure the perpetual dark are already departing, leaving the town’s asthmatic Sheriff, Eben Oleson (Josh Hartnett), to try and figure out what’s going on. Stranded, too, is his estranged wife Stella (Melissa George) who was only there for a fleeting visit in her capacity as a fire marshal. Together, they capture the stranger and sling him in jail, but as the sun sets for the final time in 30 days and the power dies, they realise far too late that something is very wrong indeed.
All over the town people are being dragged from their houses and feasted on by a group of nosferatu led by Marlow (Huston taking a chilling part, speaking in a guttural ancient language). Almost feral in nature, they attack anyone they can find, ripping into their throats and drinking their blood. Soon only a small group remains – including Eben, his teenage brother, Jake (Mark Rendall), Stella and Beau Brower (Mark Boone, Jr.), a local snowplow driver who is also a bit of a loner. Hiding away from the vampires only gives them some breathing room, and soon they have to come out for supplies. But with the whole town a hunting ground, and up against a force much stronger than them, it becomes a question of who will make it through the month alive, who will be turned and how the vampires can finally be defeated.
Director David Slade takes Niles’ script, adapted from the original source, and really goes to town with it. I can honestly say there’ll be something in here that will make even the most jaded horror fan whoop with joy. From a chilling little girl vampire asking if they ‘want to play’ to the frenzied and gore-soaked attacks on the townspeople, there are shocks aplenty. Some of the chills are subtle, some out and out nasty, but all of them work. Plus the relationships of the characters don’t play second fiddle as they do in some horror movies. Actually, it’s because you care so much about them and whether they’ll get through this that makes 30 Days of Night so di
fferent from others of its ilk. Eben is not a stereotypical hard-man hero, far from it, and only fights when he’s cornered or is trying to save someone else. And the last scenes with him and Stella will guarantee that you never, ever forget this excellent piece of celluloid.
Like a nightmare you can’t wake from, where you’re being chased and can’t get away, the audience is dragged along with the survivors in the film, never quite sure who will make it through the next attack – and, trust me when I say nobody is safe. Psychological horror rubs shoulders very nicely with bloody effects to create what will surely be a springboard for more vampire movies and television shows to come. If you thought this particular sub-genre had been staked in the heart, think again.
Author Profile: Alan Moore
By Andrew Edwards
Alan Moore has been creating comics for over thirty years, initially as a cartoonist, then as a scriptwriter. He was the first comics writer to make an impact in the USA, in turn opening the doors for other writers to follow, including Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison and more recently, Mark Millar. He has lived in his home town of Northampton all his life and he is arguably the greatest living writer of comic books in the whole world. He has received critical acclaim for a number of his works, which are among the most significant pieces of science fiction and fantasy ever to have been published. He is also a practising occult magician, and he currently worships Glycon, a mid-second century snake god. Alan Moore is a one-off, an original force in comics and a cultural phenomenon.
Moore's emergence as a scriptwriter, with stints on self-drawn strips, short 'Future Shock' stories for 2000 AD and Marvel UK, and work on Doctor Who and Captain Britain, led to him bringing an adult sensibility to his comic scripting work. This found expression in his work on Marvelman, a defunct UK hero reinvented by Moore and artist Garry Leach (later with Alan Davis and other artists) and was published in the short-lived but influential UK comic title Warrior. Moore took Stan Lee's method of applying real life situations and relationships to comic book superheroes and injected sophisticated plotting and realistic dialogue, in turn creating scenes and characters which, in superhero comics, were more believable and true-to-life than pretty much anything that had come before. He was also influenced by Harvey Kurtzman's parody Superduperman, reapplying its parodic depiction of realism in relation to superheroes in a dramatic context. In addition, Robert Mayer's Superfolks novel was another influence in Moore's use of realism in Marvelman.