My story, ‘The Brazen Head of Westinghouse’, has been published on IZ Digital, the online arm of Interzone magazine. It’s about Elektro, the robot that was exhibited at the 1939 New York World’s Fair, who could walk, talk and (oddly enough) smoke cigarettes. It’s quite a sweet and sad little story, I think.
You can read ‘The Brazen Head of Westinghouse’ for free if you’re a subscriber to the Interzone print edition, or if you’re a member of IZ Digital (only 1 euro per month!). Click here to go to the story.
In other news, I’m so pleased to say that I’ll have a story featured in Best of British Science Fiction, alongside stories by writers whose work I love. My story, ‘The Marshalls of Mars’, is about a married couple on a return trip to Mars (though plans go awry, resulting in a fairly profound detour). Neatly enough, it was first published in IZ Digital, like ‘The Brazen Head of Westinghouse’. My thanks go to Gareth Jelley for first publishing it, and to Donna Bond for selecting it for this anthology.Best of British Science Fiction 2022 will be published by NewCon Press in July 2023 and can be pre-ordered now. See here for all the info, including the full table of contents.
If you can’t wait until July, though, ‘The Marshalls of Mars’ is currently free to read on IZ Digital.
My favourite book published this year was Candescent Blooms by Andrew Hook. It’s an outstanding, confident, often surreal collection, featuring accounts of the final days of Hollywood actors who died before their time. Despite its strong pitch, it remains difficult to describe – the stories are poetic, subjective, dizzying. Though there’s a huge amount of research in evidence, tone and language take precedence over biography. Normally I struggle to read whole collections from start to finish, whereas in this case I told myself I’d take my time, savour the richness of each story, but then raced through the whole lot in a couple of sittings, so that now they all merge in my mind and I couldn’t tell you which I loved most. It’s a huge achievement and a hell of an experience, and I recommend you get hold of a copy immediately.
Of the other recently published novels I read this year, the one that meant the most to me was Leonard and Hungry Paul by Rónán Hession (2019). I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed this story of humble, modest people achieving humble, modest success. You might describe another of my favourites as an antagonistic twin of this book: No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood (2021), which genuinely made me laugh out loud in the first half and also cry at the end, and I can’t remember the last novel that managed that. One of the most exhilarating books I read in 2022 was By Force Alone by Lavie Tidhar (2020), casting Arthurian legend in bizarre new forms, a 21st-century riff on T H White’s already riff-packed The Once and Future King. I’m saving the second of Tidhar’s Anti-Matter of Britain Quartet novels (The Hood) for a later treat, and I can’t wait to find out which legends the final two novels will address. Other novels that I loved unequivocally were The Rotters’ Club by Jonathan Coe (2001), my first Coe, which sparked a season of reading his other linked books, and Geek Love by Katherine Dunn (1989), a big, bold carnival of a carnival novel which was Very Much My Thing even before the speculative elements showed up.
On to older novels. I was blown away by the restrained energy of Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (1980), and the inventiveness of the Jekyll and Hyde-inspired Two Women of London by Emma Tennant (1989) – I must get on to reading more of her work. I found The Woman in the Dunes by Kōbō Abe (1962) thrilling in spite, or perhaps because of, its claustrophobia.
A list of wonderful novels I read this year and that I should have got around to reading much sooner includes: the amoral The Murderess by Alexandros Papadiamantis (1903), the lively Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh (1928), the unexpected pleasures of The Club of Queer Trades by G. K. Chesterton (1905), the proto-SF The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster (1909) and the intense and startlingly modern The Awakening by Kate Chopin (1899). Even odder, and somewhat embarrassing, omissions until 2022 were the wonderfully bizarre The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz (1934) and The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers (1895).
It’s that time again! Here are some of the most interesting open submission calls for SFF/horror writers that I’ve come across recently. As always, best of luck if you pursue any of these opportunities!
It’s that time again… Here are some of the most tantalising open submission calls I’ve spotted this month. If you decide to go after any of these opportunities, good luck!
Tim Major 
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