Rhonda Parrish Caroline Callaghan Trudi Topham Interview Matthew J
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WWW.PANTECHNICON.NET ISSUE FIVE SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY AND HORROR BRAND NEW STORIES S. J. HIRONS COLIN SINCLAIR TOM POLLOCK RHONDA PARRISH CAROLINE CALLAGHAN TRUDI TOPHAM INTERVIEW MATTHEW J. ARMSTRONG HEROES’ Nuclear Man talks exclusively to Pantechnicon about the NBC hit show and life after Ted Sprague RHONDA PARRISH FEATURES WE CAN MAKE IT FASTER, BETTER, STRONGER The resurgence of modern science fiction BRYAN TALBOT We look at the artist’s illustrative work COLUMNS THE FANDOM MENACE State of the Sci-Fi Nation HORROR GEMS Polishing rough diamonds REVIEWS Making Money, The Zombie Diaries, Jekyll, and more PANTECHNICON CONTENTS EDITORIAL Issue Five My editorial. Let me show you it. COLUMN STORIES The Fandom Menace Strays The lost art of the quote conversation When film dialogue deteriorates, what Flash fiction zombies. Caroline Callaghan happens to the poor quote conversation? The lunatics run the asylum. Again. The Tales We’ll Tell When Our World Is Ending Fan-films have hit the big-time. But is that Two survivors cross paths as an alien race really a good thing? disassemble the Earth. S. J. Hirons Horror Gems Sleepstalker Spoken in Darkness What did this poor film do to deserve relegation to the bargain bins? God, the Devil, and the P.I. in the middle. Colin Sinclair Incubus An exploration of Shatner’s shiny Esperanto Two Hands at Heartbreak House outing. Felix Coulper is a magician with an itch to scratch and an old score to settle. Tom Pollock REVIEWS Sunshine Making Money Sister Margaret The Jennifer Morgue Ancient vampire pimp mobster. What could Star Wars: Death Star possibly go wrong? The Atrocity Archives Rhonda Parrish Halo 3 Nosferatu London Calling: Part Five Invasion of the Body Snatchers It’s all going horribly wrong. So no surprise The Black Cat there, then. Creepshow Trudi Topham Xena: Warrior Princess (Seasons 1 & 2) The Zombie Diaries The Pumpin Karver FEATURES Lord of the Flies We can make it faster, stronger, better: Kaw The resurgence of modern science fiction Jeckyll CONTENTS Hostel PAGE 2 We take a close look at the latest batch of Sci-Fi Dead and Deader hitting the screens and ask which ones are Paprika likely to make it past puberty. Bryan Talbot: Artist Extraordinaire A brief retrospective, and excerpts from Jabberwocky, courtesy of the artist himself. PANTECHNICON ISSUE FIVE ISSUE PANTECHNICON EDITORIAL CREDITS First off, I’ll start by apologising for the delay. You’ve waited patiently for Issue Five, and it’s Editor here at last. Trudi Topham Why the wait? Cover art Jack Well, as I’m sure you’re aware, Pantechnicon was founded in 2006 by Trudi Topham and Andy Fiction Frankham. Andy has recently had to go on hiatus from the project, leaving it all in my capable (if Caroline Callaghan, S. J. Hirons, somewhat sweaty) hands. Rhonda Parrish, Tom Pollock, Colin Sinclair, Trudi Topham I’ve taken the opportunity to completely change the way Pantechnicon works. In part this will Non-Fiction even out the workload so that I can concentrate Caroline Callaghan, Kevin Gilmartin, on finding new stories and new writers, but it Jamie Halliday, Stuart Horswell, Paul Kane, will also make Pantechnicon a more dynamic Locke, Lee Medcalf. place. We have an armada of new contributors who will be making regular donations to the word-bank, a shiny new website, and a complete- With thanks to ly redesigned look for the PDF editions. Matthew J. Armstrong, Bryan Talbot, So thank you for sticking with us. I hope you’ll Andy Frankham, and all our contributors. agree that it was worth it. All content is copyright its author and may not be Trudi Topham. reproduced without their express permission. STRAYS Have you ever killed a stray? I have. Let me tell you about it. AUTHOR: Caroline Callaghan I guess it all started at the time of The Great Attack. When we knew The Attack was coming, those of us with keys to The Shel- ter - The Chosen Ones, they’d called us - took our wives and children to the safety of those places underground. The State told CONTENTS us we’d be safe there. We had to protect our families for the good of The State. We didn’t know why we’d been chosen. We just took the keys and did as we were told. Many months later, as our supplies started to dwindle, some of us ventured to the surface to look for food. We first saw the strays then. They’d come sniffing around - mostly under cover of darkness - trying to steal our food. Filthy, stinking creatures; like vermin. I guess the kindest thing would have been to round them up, take them away and have them humanely destroyed. But there were no State Officials around to see to that. So they roamed the streets, scavenging for what ever they could find. We needed to keep what was rightfully ours. So we set up patrols to watch for these strays. Mostly, they were easily frightened away. We shouted and threw stones at them. They were timid. We didn’t want to hurt them; we only threw things to scare them away. Then one night this stray - bolder than the rest - just wouldn’t be deterred. We had to make a stand; to see off this vermin. I don’t know what caused it. The fear of what this filthy thing might do perhaps? PAGE 3 Concern that if this one succeeded others might follow? Or maybe it was just too much testosterone. What ever it was, I knew the patrol were baying for blood that night. It was against our nature. After all, we were The Peaceful Ones; the ones who’d campaigned for tolerance and equality before The Attack. But everyone joined in; kicking, punching and beating the stray with sticks and stones. It cowered against the wall bleeding from its wounds. I recall stamping on its ribcage as it lay dying in a pool of blood and urine. And then it suddenly dawned on me; the difference between me and this pitiful creature. When The Attack came, I had the keys to The Shelter and he didn’t. PANTECHNICON ISSUE FIVE ISSUE PANTECHNICON FICTION The Tales We’ll Tell When Our World Is Ending The wraiths had appeared one by one - face- less figures, robed and hooded in black, holding AUTHOR: hessian sacks. S. J. Hirons They appeared in market-squares and shopping The trick is to be quiet, he thought. malls, on the plazas and the boulevards; in side- streets and along the highways; before monuments He had seen two or three of these fuckers dis- and places of historical note. On local TV news they mantling the power-station on the edge of the city were shown in remote and rural places, too. – brick by brick and pipe by pipe - with inexorable determination yet, somehow, the electricity was People watched for a month, puzzled and be- still working in most places. Apart from the ever- mused once so long a stretch of time had passed, present threat of imminent extinction the wraiths as the wraiths continued to manifest day after day. now brought with them one could almost carry on The initial terrors receded as life continued una- as normal - as long as they didn’t notice you. bated. No-one seemed able to make sense of these weird visitors, or their purposes, so they were sent He reached around out of the aisle he had hidden up in political cartoons and on chat-shows. Shops in and snatched two tins of soup from the shelf started to sell ersatz versions of their hoods and before hurrying out of what he guessed was the bags; Mime artistes imitated them, to much whoop- wraith’s line of sight: he had seen them give chase ing and delight. Self-proclaimed experts offered ex- to other scavengers once or twice since the city had planations and explications no more or less rational been abandoned but, mostly, they seemed happily than street-corner prophets and armchair intellec- occupied with their allotted tasks, and otherwise tuals. The armies of every nation confirmed they engaged when it came to noticing humanity. He’d were immovable, immune to gunfire, fire-resistant heard no tales of them harming anyone. Not yet, and blast-proof. Some religions claimed they were anyway. That hadn’t stopped the general exodus angels. Other soothsayers said they were devils. out of the cities, of course. If there’d been an an- nouncement about this then he’d missed it. Where The time passed and still the wraiths did nothing; were you supposed to go in the event of such a did it so intently, in fact, that they became scenery. cataclysm? This was not a subject he recalled being It even stopped being a novelty to be photographed covered during his schooling and he wondered what near one, just another tired routine one might do if comforts one had to sacrifice for such a vague sense one was bored. of safety. He could just picture the train of refugees, out there somewhere, huddled around hastily im- And then people ran, screaming, as the wraiths provised fires and hoping comfort would find them began to dismantle the world. in the dark: He was not one for campfire songs. - Besides, a near-abandoned city meant rich pick- THE TALES WE’LL TELL WHEN OUR WORLD IS ENDING ings. PAGE 4 There was one in the supermarket he had broken into. It was slowly making its way along the canned He put the cans in his own bag - where they did vegetable aisle putting tins into its sack, one after not disappear but, rather, nestled alongside the another after another, as it went.