My next gestalt real-time review is of the fiction in ‘Theaker’s Quarterly Fiction #45’ and it takes place in the comment stream below as and when I read each story.
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ISBN (print) 978-0-9561533-9-5
The fiction is by Howard Watts, Howard Phillips, Katharine Coldiron, Robin Wyatt Dunn.
All my previous TQF real-time reviews are linked from HERE.
The Des Lewis Gestalt Real-Time Reviews 
The Colour of the Wind Erodes the Shape of Time – Howard Watts
“Old gits shit more ‘cos it builds up over the years and they’re full of it,…”
This is an incredibly inspiring and surprising short short, dealing, inter alia, with protocols regarding age, platonic sex as well unplatonic, identity, time, physics and modern/antique art. All to the well-drawn backdrop of seedy flats in Brighton’s Victorian terraces. Seriously blown away by this story (not by the St. Jude wind!)
We Slept Through the Apocalypse – Howard Phillips
“On tour every band becomes a tiny nation unto itself, or even an army. Each member finds their niche, their way to help out,…”
An engaging notion of communal effort and, earlier, the art of pow wow or palavering (a la King’s Dark Tower) when faced with outside (alien?) danger to the group, here within what I shall call the accretive Glastonbury festival (even a Glastonbury romance) setting on a farm as rock bands gather, some of them famous, as an apocalyptic SF event (no spoilers about its nature but it is eventually connected with noise by singing) encroaches spectacularly. There are echoes of Valiant Razalia in the concept of outside help from Planet Envia, and mentions of LOST and DOCTOR WHO. All very satisfying and I shall be tussling with some repercussions of what I have read long after finishing it. It also follows the Watts story neatly, resonating with the outside forces. (There through Time). Something impinging on the mundane. Weirdtongues. The Glistenberry Animal Zodiac delineating and excising areas within the hills…
This story is ostensibly in the same world as the story by Howard Phillips that I reviewed from TQF HERE, but WE SLEPT… is far more linear and it is a page-turner.
[two typos: looked at each other too see – shaking my first at the window]
Kingdom Automata – Katharine Coldiron
“The most plausible human lies mix the truth with falsehoods.”
A beautifully written nocturne in vulnerability (cf my past thoughts on “revelling in vulnerability”): an extrapolation of inverse Frankenstein’s monsterism (my expression, not the story’s) in interface with Erasmus Darwin and blade-runner dilemmas that evoke all manner of mind-stretched readers, I guess, who are taken by Coldiron towards realms beyond religion or science. Beyond humanity itself where any glance backwards recognises the crassness whence you’ve evolved. All peppered with memorable images such as “Her voice was warm and melodious, like a Tibetan singing bowl.” And breathing as aspiration. (Deals with the protocols of identity as in the Watts story and the inner synergies within your bodies like groups cohering as nations or armies in the Phillips story.)
Possible subsequent serendipity of the Coldiron story with elements of ‘Member’ by Michael Cisco – my reference to the comparison in my review today here: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/member-michael-cisco/#comment-1268
Carcosa, Found – Robin Wyatt Dunn
“…since I sink their being into this hollow Earth,…”
A coda for this book’s set of fiction cast as variations on the theme of Robert W. Chambers’ KING IN YELLOW. It seems to project or amplify the mind, echoing the previous story’s breath as aspiration. Beyond the slavery of humanity. Needs working at.
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