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Reviews: Classic Atomic Age film with On the Beach

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On the Beach,
Directed by Stanley Kramer,
Starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, Anthony Perkins, Donna Anderson, John Tate

“Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda, you’ll come a waltzing, Matilda, with me...”

When I was a teen, back in the 1980s, the Doomsday genre was pretty well-established, from works like the BBC’s unbelievably powerful and bleak Threads dramatisation of a nuclear attack on a UK city to the Apocalypse War in the pages of Judge Dredd in the venerable (still going and approach its fiftieth anniversary!) 2000 AD comic. But, arguably, Stanley Kramer’s adaptation of Neville Shute’s acclaimed novel is the godfather of the genre. While the style screams the period (1950s), the story, message and, importantly, the refusal to sugar-coat any possible ending is remarkably unusual for a mainstream Hollywood film from 1959.

For those not familiar with the book or the film, it is an early depiction of World War III – not one that takes in combat scenes or the sight of nuclear weapons being dropped by bombers on cities, though. No, On the Beach is set in the aftermath – as far as anyone knows, the entire northern hemisphere has been destroyed, everyone annihilated. Entire nations are simply gone, thousands of years of human civilisation vanished into the blinding light of the atomic age.

Australia is one of the last safe havens, and even that is temporary – scientists and the military plot the clouds and winds carrying radioactive particles, and realise that it is a matter of weeks until they blow across the oceans to that massive island continent. There is no defence, nothing that can be done, no last minute, desperate plan that might just work. No, instead the government is making ready large supplies of painless suicide pills for the entire population, as the only alternative to a slow, lingering, painful death by radiation poisoning. Yes, it truly is that hopeless.

Into this we have the USS Sawfish, one of the last surviving vessels – ironically one of the new nuclear powered subs – which only escaped obliteration because she was submerged at the time. Captain Dwight Lionel Towers (Gregory Peck) is her skipper, trying to maintain a calm, thoughtful demeanour befitting a captain, to reassure his men, while internally grappling with the realisation at the large scale that his entire nation, and soon the world, is gone, and on the personal level, that his wife and children are gone too. There’s a lot of the attempting the stiff upper lip approach by both Towers and many of the other characters, especially the naval personnel (a young Anthony Perkins as an Aussie officer Peter Homes, assigned to be liaison to the Sawfish also tries to maintain that keep calm and carry on approach, which makes the odd sudden and very understandable outburst of emotion all the more powerful).

Knowing the end is approaching, some take a desperate, almost carnival approach of parties, drink and even dangerous pursuits – tired, often drunk atomic scientist Julian Osborn (Hollywood royalty, Fred Astaire, here playing a very dramatic and serious role very distant from his famous song and dance work) is restoring a beautiful Ferrari racing car, which he enters into a road racing competition, where it s clear both he and the other drivers are going beyond reckless. Why bother about any danger by pushing it as far as you can? You’re going to die slowly in a few weeks anyway, why not crash and burn now, as many of the drivers do.

Against this,two events offer a slender hope – a Morse code signal coming from the West Coast of the US; gibberish, but constantly broadcasting, in a place where they thought nobody could still be alive, requires investigating. And some scientists theorise the winds and rains may disperse the radioactive clouds into the ocean before they cross into the southern hemisphere, meaning perhaps Australia, or at least Antarctica may be spared (no mention of New Zealand, curiously!).

As a nuclear sub, only Sawfish has the range to make this trip safely (although an Australian submarine was used in the film, the US Navy reluctant to help in a film with this topic), so Peter and Julian are both seconded to the submarine for the voyage. Peter worries that the cloud could reach Australia before he returns, and desperately tries to get the suicide pills early, for his wife and baby daughter, just in case. Later scenes when the pills are made generally available, closer to the end, depict patient queues of Australians lined up at government facilities, giving their names and family member’s names to receive a box of the pills; no screaming, no histrionics, it’s more reminiscent of the queues of patiently resigned folk lining up for their rations during the previous war, which of course would still be fresh in the memory of much of the original audience back then.

Spoiler warning: yes, I know this is from 1959. but I have to assume a few people have not seen it and have never read about the ending, so if that’s you and you don’t want to know more before seeing it, skip to the final paragraph.

When the submarine reaches the frozen north and takes samples, it finds that the radiation is actually higher – the theory it may disperse is wrong. The last hope that Australia at least may be spared is gone, the men know now that the end is coming and there is nothing anyone can do against it. That leaves the signal. The sub stops off the coast of San Franciso, Towers peering through the periscope at a city still standing, but entirely devoid of people. In an eerie scene he allows his men, one by one, to take a look through the periscope, their last view of their homeland. Each looks silently, lost in their own thoughts before pushing up the handles of the scope with a bell-like clang, again and again. It is simple, but powerful.

Tracking the signal to a refinery near San Diego, one crewman goes ashore in a radiation suit, but finds nobody. Hydroelectric power means the electricity is still running, the machines ticking over for now, but not a single person there. He eventually finds the radio room, and a Morse key – the drawstring of a window blind has caught in it, and an empty Coke bottle has landed on the key. When the wind blows, the blind moves, the string lifts the key, then the weight of the bottle makes it go back down, sending a gibberish signal. No, there isn’t some desperate survivor, just this accidental happen-stance.

As I said, this is a story which eschews the idea of a last minute ray of hope or plan that can save someone or anyone, it is resolutely bleak about the prospect, and indeed so it should be. By the 1970s and 80s the peace movements like CND and others had exposed the utter lunacy of the two superpower blocks facing off with weapons which would leave no winner, only annihilate our entire species (and much of the other species of animal and plant life with it), and those of us growing up in that era were well aware that the sound of an air raid siren could mean nuclear annihilation in a few minute. But this is one of the first major media productions to grapple with that idea, and it is powerful, despite also being very of its time (not the modernity of the more optimistic 60s, some of it closer to the 1940s wartime movies in many ways, just with a terrifying new weapon, a legacy of the last days of that conflict).

Towers, when ashore, has been introduced to Moira, another Hollywood legend, Ava Gardner. Ava pretends to be a lush, the older but still single party girl, but Gardner gives her more humanity, a woman who has reached her forties in that era but not married, no children, now finding there is almost no time left for love, or anything. Her flirtations with Towers go nowhere at first, understandably – he has only just lost his family after all. But slowly the two of them find that talking to one another rather than drunken seduction brings them closer, and they start to fall for one another, even although they know how little time is left (again shades of those classic WWII movies, the desperate making the most of the moment because you never knew when your number might be up, except here everyone knows it).

Which makes the final scenes all the more quietly heartbreaking. With little duty left to perform in the final weeks, Towers tells his crew to choose what they want to do. Some will stay for the end in Australia but most vote to sail back to the US. They know they are all going to die regardless of where they are, but they would rather do it back home. Towers understands – he would dearly love to stay to the bitter end with Moira, but he is the skipper, and he simply cannot abandon his men on a final voyage, so he goes with her. A last scene of Moira, standing on the coast, watching the Sawfish sail out for the final time is bitterly sad, and, as it does throughout the film, the unofficial Aussie anthem of Waltzing Matilda plays over one of the saddest, bleakest endings in cinema.

Kramer was never the flashiest of directors, and this is often fairly staid, but actually that is to its advantage – that quieter, stiller approach adds to the power in the way that more mobile camerawork and more histrionic behaviour by the characters just wouldn’t (and this is, like the previous war era, still a time when you were expected to button it up, keep a brave face on, stiff upper lip and all that). But he was a master of social commentary – this is the man who directed The Defiant Ones, Inherit the Wind and Judgement at Nuremberg, among others – and this comes through here, A world just really starting to understand the implications of the awesome power that had been unleashed over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but now vastly more powerful and in numbers enough to devastate the entire planet, entering the era of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction), where each side stockpiled more and more powerful nuclear weapons to scare the other side into hopefully not daring to use their stockpile in fear of retaliation.

It’s quiet but incredibly powerful, and as I indicated earlier, it’s pretty remarkable for the period it was made, a window into a dawning global consciousness of the rising threat of atomic annihilation, and it is an absolute classic that deserves its place in cinematic history. I’m glad to see it getting this shiny new, high-res BFI release, complete with a slew of extras, including a choice of two commentaries, some rare 8mm film footage from behind the scenes, interviews, and short film Operation Hurricane (1952), which documents the British push to develop its own nuclear weapons alongside the Soviets and Americans. I apologise for the longer than usual review, but it’s a classic, and an important part of film history, and it deserves it.

“Who would ever have believed that human beings would be stupid enough to blow themselves off the face of the Earth?”

This new high-def release of On the Beach is available from the BFI now.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

Reviews: Exit Party

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Exit Party,
Emily St John Mandel,
Picador
Hardback, 320 Pages
ISBN: 9781035081288

Toronto Book Award and Arthur C Clarke Award winner, Emily St John Mandel returns, following her excellent Sea of Tranquillity (reviewed here), with a new novel Exit Party. As with Tranquillity, this narrative takes in different places and times, with different characters who are connected. Indeed the times, places and people are more connected than they can know at the start.

It’s the very near-future, and Ari has just been released from a long prison sentence, sharing an apartment in LA with her friend, Gloria. A civil war has just finished, and the US no longer really exists, having broken up into a series of competing regions, states and even city-states, with warring militias everywhere. Ari and Gloria are celebrating the end of the curfew and the removal of the last peacekeeper troops from the streets of the Californian Republic.

It’s at a party hosted by Kareem, a friend of Gloria’s, that Ari first starts to notice strange things – she’s always had a knack, an intuition of sorts for when something is about to happen or something peculiar is about, even when others don’t notice at first. In this case she observes a beautiful woman in a gorgeous dress, then later the same woman, now dressed down. At first she assumes she changed – perhaps she spilled something on her dress? But then she sees both women at the same time, something unusual happens to Gloria, and then Kareem vanishes. She sees him, goes to talk to him, but he’s gone from the room he entered, and she can’t see how he could have exited without her seeing him.

What begins as a gentle tug at her senses that something peculiar happened starts to build slowly, bit by bit, over the narrative. Ari’s intuition tells her when to move to another location to escape possible danger, and in this fragmented former US, danger is everywhere. She meets Nico in another city, who was also at that party, except she knew this woman under another name, but yes, this is the same person. Or is it? They talk warily and eventually Nico confesses she too saw odd things at the party, and confirms Kareem has never been seen since, and she confirms the double sightings of others, almost like there were two, slightly different versions of the same people. In fact Nico calls Ari “Ibari” when she first meets her, not a version of her name that Ari goes by, so she is puzzled how Nico would even know it.

As with Tranquillity, we move through different character perspectives, including “Ibari”, who is a federal officer, a kind of not so secret police officer in a US that didn’t disintegrate like Ari’s, but which is now a totalitarian regime, where children inform on their own parents (but hey, crime is low and the trains run on time!), a total opposite from Ari’s fractured, disintegrating US. We move through the characters and through the years, and as with her previous book, Mandel rather deftly takes all of these pieces of the puzzle, and arranged them, facet by facet, until we have the whole jewel, bringing all the connections together, each illuminating the other strands.

I don’t want to go into it any further because of possible spoilers, but suffice to say that as with Sea of Tranquillity, I found this not only an interesting narrative, but a beautiful bit of writing craft, to float various characters and spaces and times, then slowly bring them together; as with that previous book I found this highly satisfying.

Exit Party is published in Hardback by Picador/Macmillan on the 17th of September; this review was originally penned for The Shoreline of Infinity

If you are able, please support your local independent bookshop for purchases – if you don’t have one nearby, you can buy through Bookshop.org , and nominate a local bookshop, which will get a cut of the sale (to hell with Spamazon!)

Reviews: The Red Sacrament

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The Red Sacrament,
Sara Hinkley,
Titan Books,
Paperback,
ISBN: 9781835410820

It’s Paris, 1869, an era when this most famous of cities is claiming its title as “the city of light”; the new Haussmann boulevards, enormous department stores like the famous Au Printemps dazzle with size, light and sheer range of goods, the pavement cafes bustle, the opera and theatres are busy, the many new squares and garden spaces are lined with flaneurs, and the new gas lighting illuminates everything.

This is not entirely to the taste of our main protagonist, Arnault, who runs the small Théâtre Saint-Siméon , tucked away from these elegant, wide, new streets. It is an unusual venue, where one cannot purchase a ticket – instead black tickets are distributed out among certain sections of society, free of charge, and many are keen to obtain one. How does the theatre sustains itself with no box office, you may ask? It transpires the cast has, shall we say, other methods of obtaining an income, and that income is only secondary to something else they require more urgently: blood.

Yes, this is a theatre of vampiric actors and singers and jugglers; some have only been undead a few years, others performed their stage trade at the open-air fairs of the old Paris, centuries before. Arnault himself is the oldest; a monk and scribe once upon a time, chosen by a pale nobleman to become his painter apprentice. Despite his centuries of existence, he maintains the low, careful profile for himself and his troupe, and truth be told, he takes little interest in the events of the outside world, which tend to surprise him when he notices, giving him a slightly grumpy old man aura, despite his youthful appearance, as he mutters about everything changing around him, as the Modern Era really starts to show.

(Portrait of Clémentine, Mrs Alphones, by Henri Lehmann, in the collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the original artwork the book cover design is based on)

Into this fairly static existence – select pieces to perform, rehearse, put on a season on the stage, arrange the usual bribes and covering charges, putting aside takings from their victims into a pool that accrues interest for these immortals over the years – disruption is about to arrive, partly in the form of something unusual. Not just two new vampires from another country (from the New World, the islands of the Caribbean!), but a brother and sister, both vampires, both beautiful, elegant, happy in this new world of artificial lights, masked balls, operas and department stores where they can buy whatever they desire.

The other disruption bearing down on them, almost unnoticed at first – such is Arnault’s disinterest in the wider world – is history itself. As anyone familiar with European history will be aware, this is the era of the Franco-Prussian War, which the French assumed they would win easily, but in fact lead to a humiliating defeat, a long siege of Paris itself (the infamous one where the restaurants butchered the zoo animals and served them in fine sauces as food became scarcer), the surrender of territory and the establishment of what would become a united Germany (laying the groundwork for all the alliances and grievances which would lead to disaster in 1914). How do the citizens deal with the cold and hunger or a months-long siege? And how do vampires sustain themselves when their prey is harder to find at night, and what they find is mostly weak and starving?

(The Siege of Paris, 1870, by Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier)

There are obvious nods to the queen of vampire fiction, Anne Rice – her sequel to the now iconic Interview With the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, also boasted an exclusive theatre in Paris run by vampires, and both are clearly paying homage to the famous, or infamous, real Théâtre de Grand Guignol, which was a fixture in the city’s demi-monde for many decades. And while Rice fans (myself included) will find some familiar material here, this is, I am happy to report, its own beast, albeit one Rice fans will enjoy, I think. Sumptuous descriptions of the new, improved Paris, and especially of the styles of the period (Hinkley herself is a costume designer for film and stage) are rich, and it all comes with a nice sense of the Gothic.

Add in a witch from a backward, rural part of France (not even touched by “the iron rail”, as Arnault refers to the trains), this young, new vampire brother and sister who they know next to nothing about (exciting new friends? It has been decades since they last saw a new vampire visit the city. Or are they a threat to their comfortably carved out existence?), a potential queer romance as Arnault finds himself, despite his normal reticence to anything new, towards Victor, the visiting male vampire, who in turns seems quite taken with Arnault (unlike his sister who seems to disdain the entire group), and then the historical siege, and you have a rich, Gothic, romantic, bloody stew to enjoy, which also makes gentle commentaries on ageing, on the nature of change and moving on.

The Red Sacrament was published by Titan in July; this review was originally penned for The Shoreline of Infinity

If you are able, please support your local independent bookshop for purchases – if you don’t have one nearby, you can buy through Bookshop.org , and nominate a local bookshop, which will get a cut of the sale (to hell with Spamazon!)

Best of the Year – 2025

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It’s time for a look at some of what I most enjoyed reading this year – fiction, non-fiction, and graphic novels. As every it is not a complete list, and given how much I read over a year, there are always titles I will only remember well after posting this (with an oops, how did I forget that one? slap to the head, so apologies to anyone missed out).

If you are interested in buying any of these, please, if you can, consider doing so from your local, independent bookshop (Jeff Bezos does not need another yacht, as one of my colleagues put it!). If you buy online, you can use BookshopDotOrg which allows you to order a book and nominate a local Indie bookshop who will get a percentage of the sale (so you don’t have to use Spamazon)

Non-Fiction

The Sun Rising: James I and the Dawn of Global Britain,
Anna Whitelock,
Bloomsbury

2025 marked four centuries since James VI & I died, and there were several new history books marking this anniversary. I didn’t have time to read them all, of course, but Bloomsbury kindly sent me this one. Not so much a biography of the Scottish king who succeeded Elizabeth I to then sit on both the Scottish and English thrones, but about the world around him, changing, and laying the groundwork for what would come in later centuries (uniting the kingdoms, for both good and ill, something we’re still arguing about, the movement into colonialism that would lead to empire and to global trading, again something we’re still dealing with).

Earth Shapers: How Humans Mastered Geography and Remade the World,
Maxim Samson,
Profile Books

Samson traverses the centuries and the continents, examining the way different human cultures have interacted, for good and bad, with their environments, from the astonishing road networks linking pre-Columbian civilisations in South America to the “green wall” across the edge of the Sahara. It takes in history, politics, psychology, sociology and nature, in a fascinating and thought-provoking manner. Ideal for those who enjoyed the likes of Power of Geography.

Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli: the Epic Story of the Making of the Godfather,
Mark Seal,
Gallery Books

Coppola’s movie has earned its place in the pantheon of greatest films of the 20th century, while Puzo’s novel which inspired it has remained in print for decades. This deep-dive explores both, taking in Puzo’s struggling writing career and gambling addiction, a struggling studio deciding to make a film of the book, the many problems that plagued the production, from personality clashes to problems with the real Mafia (from threats to suddenly wanting to be in the film), it is as compelling as the movie itself, and a great read for anyone who loves cinema.

It’s also a reminder that there was a time when now almost gods of cinema like Coppola and Pacino were all but unknown, with producers and studio execs wondering why they were bothering with them (seems bizarre to us now, from our perspective, of course)

Is a River Alive?
Robert MacFarlane,
Hamish Hamilton/Penguin

I love Robert’s work, and have been waiting several years, since his remarkable Underland book, and I was not disappointed. Travelling to different parts of the world, from South America to Canada to India, water is the connection here to each chapter, just as rivers and seas have traditionally been the connections between human societies.

MacFarlane doesn’t just visit these places, though, he travels with and listens to the local people who try to protect these environments, who explain its importance to them, not just a natural resource, but a part of their way of life. It doesn’t shy away from the awfulness of environmental damage, but it also underscores those fighting back – it is a warning, but it is also hopeful and inspiring, wrapped in MacFarlane’s beautiful, lyrical prose; one of those precious books that rekindles your sense of wonder about how remarkable our world is (and why we must take better care of it). My favourite read of 2025.

Graphic Novels

The Casebook of Stamford Hawksmoor,
Bryan Talbot,
Jonathan Cape

I consider Bryan Talbot to be pretty much the UK’s greatest comics creator, someone who has been at the top of his game for decades (I’ve also been fortunate enough to chair Bryan at the Edinburgh International Book Festival). His Grandville series was an absolute masterclass of clever storytelling (building layers with each volume), astonishingly detailed, rich artwork, and with multiple references (to history, art, films, other comics and more, demanding re-readings).

Here we have a prequel to Grandville, with LeBrock’s mentor, the great detective who trained him, Stamford Hawksmoor, a deliberately Sherlock Holmes themed character. It’s a superb piece of work, an engrossing mystery, woven through the last days of the old regime changing hands to the one we know in Grandville, and again layered with references, from Spiegelman’s Maus to The Outlaw Josey Wales (let no-one say Bryan’s influences are not diverse!). Although it is a prequel to Grandville, this could be read by anyone who hasn’t encountered that series, but obviously those who have will find more in the details to spot.

Muybridge,
Guy Delisle,
Drawn & Quarterly

I’ve taken photographs for as long as I can remember – my late Uncle Jim gave me a Kodak 110 camera (remember those?) when I was in primary school, then a few years later, my first 35mm camera – and I have been a huge fan of Guy Delisle’s work, especially his travel literature comics, so Guy looking at the odd life of Muybridge, one of the pioneers of early photography, was always going to fascinate me. If you’re not familiar with the name, you have almost certainly seen his astonishing sequence of still images that first captured a running horse, showing each step, and that the hooves did all leave the ground. Injured in a stagecoach accident, his personality noticeably changed (a head trauma?), and while his photographic genius remained, this is a man who would later commit murder (and get away with it).

It’s a fascinating insight into an unusual man attempting the impossible, and the influence that work had (not least cinema), although I think it could have done without the use of a photograph of animal abuse in one scene (that really wasn’t required, and should have had a warning, I think, the explicit scene not adding anything other than disgust, but that’s just one niggle in anotherwise fascinating book).

Low: Bowie’s Berlin Years,
Reihnhard Kleist,
SelfMadeHero

I’ve shouted out Reinhard’s work since the early days – back before his groundbreaking Cash: I See a Darkness graphic biography of Johnny Cash was published, on the FP Blog we highlighted it and said it needed to be translated and published into English. I’ve followed his work ever since, and had the good fortune to chair him at the Edinburgh International Book Festival. Reinhard is a master at creating fascinating graphic biographies, especially of artists (his works on Nick Cave and Johnny Cash are amazing); he interweaves their artwork through the events of their life, knowing with an artist you really cannot separate them, giving a real flavour of the complex person who created that art.

Also, you have Bowie sharing a flat in then West Berlin (still Cold War, so Berlin Wall still up) with the equally iconic Iggy Pop, which almost sounds like the set up for a sit-com.

Second Shift,
Kit Anderson,
Avery Hill

I always find myself backing Kickstarter campaigns for some of Avery Hill’s new slate of publications each year, and this was one of them for 2025. A science fiction work, set on a distant world where three humans, working shifts and spending time between in isolation, plugged into “Station”, their AI, for distraction and amusement. There are echoes of the film Moon here and there – what are they really doing on this distant planet, does the mega corp that sent them even still exist, does the AI tell them the truth?

The discovery of a similar but now empty base to their own opens up a new line of enquiry for the main character, with Kit expertly sliding us into her world from the start so we discover things alongside her.

Dry Cleaned,
Joris Mertens (translated Julia Blackburn & Sandra Van Der Beek)
Jonathan Cape

François is a middle-aged man, the same suit every day, the cigarette dangling from his lips, doing the same work – a daily run in a van for a dry cleaning business. It always seems to be raining (symbolically he lacks even a raincoat), the raise he’s asked for over the years never appears, and now he’s training a younger worker, and worried they will take his job. His only lights are a local single woman and her daughter, who he dotes on, and he dreams of winning the lottery (playing the same numbers every time) and giving them and him a better life.

When a chance delivery for work leads to him stumbling into a bloody crime scene, there’s a chance to make easy money, and it is very tempting… I wasn’t familiar with this European creator until this book, and while I enjoyed the story, I did find it a little predictable in places, but oh wow, the artwork lifts it beyond that. Published in a larger format, it lets you enjoy that art – the rain-lashed streets of the city, the lights reflecting on wet roads, it is simply gorgeous comics artwork.

Fiction

Automatic Noodles,
Annelee Newlitz,
Tor/Macmillan

This was a lovely surprise – the publisher sent me a copy unexpectedly, and I was very pleased they did. A brief novella, it follows some robot workers in a bad fast food joint, waking each other up to discover their former employer has shut their awful business and fled, switching them all off and abandoning then. It’s near-future California, recovering from a war against “the Yankees” for independence (some of the robots also took part in the war, and have issues from it), and while the robots are nominally free, there are some who don’t like that, and the Yankee agitators operate social media sock puppets to sow dissension about things like robot rights.

In an attempt to keep their freedom, they all pool together to turn the abandoned business into a very good noodle place, something they can all enjoy working in and take pride from, while dealing with obstacles along the way. It’s brief, but it is a delightful read, and packs in a lot about identity, acceptance and second chances into a slim volume. Smile inducing.

When the Moon Hits Your Eye,
John Scalzi,
Tor/Macmillan

I’ve enjoyed Scalzi’s work for years, and his most recent works, such as Starter Villain (a man in a career-life crisis discovers he has inherited his estranged late uncle’s business empire, which turns out to be a front for a supervillain organisation, complete with volcano lair!), have veered towards a more light-hearted approach, partly in response to the dismal period of Covid and Lockdown. Moon is another fun read, taking one of the oldest comedy tropes in SF – that the Moon is made of cheese – and making it a reality.

Starting with panic in the Neil Armstrong museum as they realise their prize moon rock specimen is now cheese (“what kind of cheese?” someone asks), it then goes around a diverse cast of people coming to the realisation of what has happened, impossible though it should be, and what it actually means, from physicists to religious figures trying to make sense of it.

Dinner at the Night Library,
Hika Harada (translated Philip Gabriel),
Scribner

Japanese fiction in translation has been big in the UK in recent years, every since the success of the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series (which I enjoyed), and it is a bit of a running joke in the book trade that so many feature a bookshop or library and a cat on the cover (as indeed this one does!). Our central character is offered a job by a mysterious employer who only appears online (with no video) to talk to them, at a remote library that houses collections from deceased authors, all the books they wrote, all the ones they collected.

It’s in a distant location, so has its own dormitory and canteen, where the chef makes daily menus inspired by recipe ideas from novels. There’s a mild mystery or two, and it is a gentle read, very Japanese (everything done a certain way), but after a couple of heavy duty books, this was the perfect tonic, well-written but also easy going, and very much aimed at book lovers.

The Haunting of Hero’s Bay,
Amanda Block,
Hodder

I really enjoyed Amanda’s debut novel a few years ago, The Lost Storyteller, and recommended it quite a bit in our bookshop, so I was looking forward to her second book. Following a young man who finds himself drifting a bit following his long-time romance falling apart (and worse, his ex is now marrying someone else and inviting him and his family to the wedding), he takes a job with his aunt, swapping Edinburgh for the West Country, where she is renovating an old buildings as a hotel.

The tiny, seaside village is famed for an enormous painting showing a shipwreck in the bay, created by an aristocratic artist who lost his life swimming to the rescue of a similar shipwreck. The past of smugglers and wreckers on that rugged coast, art and modern day life start to converge in a very satisfying manner. Ghosts, art, history and romance.

Jesus Christ Kinski,
Benjamin Meyers,
Bloomsbury

Yes, this is that Kinski – Klaus, the famously insane German actor (and I do mean insane literally, he was certified and put into care at one point). This is quite a departure for Meyers, very different from his other works, and you find him pondering his choices as half of the book is Kinski’s inner monologue as he performs a one-man show about Jesus on stage in Germany in the 1970s, and the other half is the author debating with himself, why am I writing this, why does this performance by a much-maligned, egotistic, mad German actor most folk don’t remember compel me to write about them instead of doing another “hit” novel or another that gets filmed? It’s very different and totally compelling, one of the more intriguing and unusual novels I’ve read in 2025.

Dark Crescent,
Lyndsey Croal,
Luna Press

I’ve known Lyndsey for some time, through our Edinburgh based Shoreline of Infinity journal of science fiction, and our annual Cymera SF literary festival, and I was delighted to read this collection of short tales by her, ahead of us having an absolutely terrific launch night for it in our bookshops. Dark Crescent’s stories mostly riff on, or are inspired by, Scottish folklore, some with obvious roots, given their own, unique twist and angle, others are more her own invention, but feel very much like there is a real legend inspiring it, which you feel you could go and look up.

The Autumn Springs Retirement Home Massacre,
Philip Fracassi,
RunForIt/Orbit

I really enjoyed Philip’s Boys in the Valley, a horror novel with icy teeth, set in a remote, early 1900s Catholic orphanage during a snowstorm, where a sheriff’s posse bring in a dying suspect covered in arcane tattoos, that looses something demonic within the walls. This new book is tonally totally different from that Exorcist-vibe tale – yes it is horror, there are multiple deaths, but it also much lighter and actually rather fun in places (despite the body count!).

Set in a retirement home where a couple of residents start to suspect the recent spate of deaths is not just due to the age and infirmity of the residents, but a cover for a serial killer to do their work, this is a total hoot – imagine your slasher movie “final girl” being in her eighties, and you start to get the picture. A terrific collision of humour and horror.

Cymera time!

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This weekend sees the return of the annual Cymera Festival, Scotland’s festival of literary science fiction, fantasy and horror. As usual I will be there all weekend (there are author panels, workshops, gaming rooms, dealer’s rooms and even theatre!), and again I am also fortunate enough to be chairing againg this year. On Sunday 8th I’ll be in conversation with Gareth Powell, E.M. Faulds and Stark Holborn about their latest works. Many of the events are also available to view online if you can’t make it to Edinburgh.

Barbarians

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I am utterly horrified and disgusted at the flagrant abuse of police in Jerusalem, ransacking a Palestinian owned bookshop and arresting the booksellers, who are well known in the cultural society of the city (supposedly “offending books” include a child’s colouring book, for god’s sake) and who have appeared here at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, one of the pre-eminent literary festivals on our planet.

Ever since I was a small boy, I have been a reader, long before I was a bookseller, and even as a child I read of regimes that censor, ban and burn books and intimidate writers, reporters, librarians and journalists.

Even as a child I knew this for what it was – the act of the utter barbarian. It is an act designed to despoil culture, the free expression and interchange of thoughts and ideas, to instil fear so no-one will speak out. It is the antithesis of civilisation. For thousands of years, from the earliest days of our ability to create written language, writing has been seen as the epitome of civilisation.

Humans are creatures of language and story, and the written word, this marvellous, astonishing creation of our brains is a remarkable thing that allows us to share the thoughts of a poet gone for thousands of years or the life of a person alive today in another country, it is truly an amazing creation. And these barbarian bastards try to trample on it. Because they, like all bullies and cowards, are afraid of it.

But the barbarians come, and the barbarians go, throughout history. Books, the thoughts and dreams and passions and emotions of human beings shaped into a form all can share – the written word – it endures, always, it endures and finds a way to remain, and after the last barbarian has slunk shame-faced back into the shadows when light returns, we will continue to write and read and share words.

Bookshop at Bedtime

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I found myself last person in the bookshop recently. I had put out all the lights for the night, except the red neon sign with our shop motto (“we read past our bedtimes”). I didn’t have the tripod with me, so I improvised, sitting the camera on tables and piles of books to steady it for a longer exposure shot, setting the timer and crossing my fingers.

Bookshop At Bedtime 01

Bookshop At Bedtime 02

Sometimes these improvised shots work, sometimes not, but in this case I got lucky. Quite like these snaps of the bookshop going to bed for the night.

Bookshop At Bedtime 03

Bookshop At Bedtime 04

The spooky, dark corner, where the shop ghost lives!

Bookshop At Bedtime 05

The shop motto!

Reviews: The Great When

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The Great When,
Alan Moore,
Bloomsbury

The great, bearded Magus of Albion commences a new prose series of fantasy works from Bloomsbury, the Long London series, following last year’s collection of short stories, Illuminations, from the same publisher. I’ll confess I was a bit wary when I was sent an advance copy of The Great When – much as I love Moore’s comics work and much of his other media creations, his previous prose novels like Voice of the Fire, and the enormous Jerusalem, really didn’t work for me at all (I’m sure I can hear my friend Padraig grinding his teeth at my temerity in not liking everything Alan writes, as I type!). However, I found this to be more accessible to my tastes and rather enjoyed it.

The wonderfully-monikered Dennis Knuckleyard is a young orphan in post-war London, struggling to make even a meagre existence in the grey, bombed-out streets of a city and country worn out by the Second World War. He’s an interesting choice for a main character – of course having a character who is fairly lacking in experience and knowledge at the start of a fantasy work is hardly unusual, but poor Dennis really is limited, not just in abilities, he really doesn’t even have much in the way of any drive to improve himself (other than a vague notion of being a “secret agent”, mostly because of the old Dick Barton radio show).

Scraping a living in a very down-at-heels bookshop, in an even more worn-down street (or what’s left of that street, after years of Luftwaffe visits rearranging the architecture, such as it was), run by the formidable and terrifying Ada, who may, or may not, have dispatched someone who wronged her years before and buried them in the dead soil that passes for a garden, with both of them living above the shop.

It’s when Ada sends Dennis on an errand across town to pick up a consignment of old books from a seller that his dismal and hopeless teenage life starts to take a very peculiar turn. He makes his pick-up okay, even makes the transaction for a better than expected price, saving money, which may make Ada slightly less grumpy (happy is unlikely). Except among the books in his box, there is an unusual one. Very unusual. It shouldn’t exist. At least, not in our reality…

This ties back to a very effective prologue, in which Moore brilliantly describes the child version of Dennis, caught outside during an air raid a few years earlier, the prose bringing forward the horror of entire neighbourhoods vanishing into flame, smoke and rubble, and a child amid it all, with nowhere safe to hide, catching a glimpse of something very strange, but later dismissing it as fevered imagination and trick of the light, brought on by the fires and explosions and trauma to his young mind.

Except, of course, it wasn’t imagination, he’s glimpsed a doorway into another realm, another version of the city, the Great When. And this book, it appears, comes from that fantastical and frequently disturbing version of the city. It is mentioned in a novel from our own version of reality, but it is a fictional work mentioned in a work of fiction… And yet here it is, a real book. Ada’s highly alarmed reaction scares Dennis, and it should – she knows enough to realise nothing from the Great When should be in our world, and it will attract some very unwelcome attention. She effectively kicks out a totally lost Dennis to try and either sink or swim, guessing the sink option is the more likely outcome for the unfortunate youth.

I don’t want to go into too much more of the plot for fear of spoilers; suffice to say Dennis has to find a way of having the book returned to where it belongs, preferably without being maimed or killed first, either by all-too-worldly people from our world (noticeably some East End gangsters, vaguely aware of its potential power), or from emissaries from that other realm, who won’t really care that none of this is his fault.

Moore takes us around locations in 1940s London, mixing in allusions to real events with the fictional (for example, the famous street battle against the black-shirted fascists), gangsters who hint at the celebrity mobsters to come, like the Krays, and most of all he uses the places and their histories, adding depth to the story. More than a few times you can feel the influence of his friend, Iain Sinclair and his psychogeography, and this really adds to to both the story, and to the feel of both this historic period of the London we know, but also the other London, because they reflect qualities of one another, old stories, characters, events.

Fears that an alternate city may be too similar to the likes of Gaiman’s Neverwhere, or Mieville’s City and the City prove unfounded – of course Moore is far too experienced a storyteller for that. His Great When has recognisable London elements, but so distorted and disturbing to our eyes, sometimes like a Surrealist acid trip. It’s unusual and fascinating, and although this is the first in a series, it felt very much like it also worked perfectly as a stand-alone novel.

Edinburgh International Film Festival – The Radleys

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Edinburgh International Film Festival 2024 – The Radleys,
Directed by Euros Lyn,
Starring Kelly MacDonald, Damian Lewis, Harry Baxendale, Jay Lycurgo, Bo Bragason, Shaun Parkes

I was keen to see the Radleys, partly because it is based on a novel by the excellent Matt Haig, partly because I do love a good vampire flick (I am, dare I say it, a sucker for a vampire film. Yes, he went there), and partly because I was in the film festival audience some years ago when its director Euros Lyn (well known, especially to genre fans, for directing numerous Doctor Who and Torchwood episodes) brought us his first feature film, the Welsh-language Y Llyfrgell (titled The Library Suicides for the English-language market, filmed in the National Library of Wales), and I had really enjoyed that.

The premise is a fairly straightforward one – a local, everyday suburban family are actually vampires – but it allows for a lot of room to explore family dynamics and tensions, not to mention, in the case of the younger Radleys Rowan (Harry Baxendale) and his older sister Clara (Bo Bragason), also take on the issues of teenhood and coming of age, but with the added wrinkle of the family “condition”. This latter is a particular problem for the siblings, and it will essentially drive the events of the film.

Their parents Helen (Kelly MacDonald) and Peter (Damian Lewis) are abstinent vampires – it’s not just that they don’t hunt, harm or kill humans, they simply don’t drink blood, and haven’t for years. Following a vampiric version of the famous Twelve Step programme for addicts because years before they decided they wanted to have a regular life, not the nomadic, erratic, roaming, outside life of the predatory vampire, they wanted a home, they wanted to have and raise children and be part of the local neighbourhood. To this end, they have not only abstained, and implanted themselves into this lifestyle (Helen has her book group, her baking and other pastimes, all scheduled into her timetable, Peter is a local doctor), they have never told their children, now in their teens, about their unusual heritage.

Rowan especially feels like an outsider and a freak – hardly speaking to anyone at school, seen as weird, keeping his camera between him and the world (he goes old-school, working in film and developing his own work), but it is his sister who will be the catalyst for events, when a cocksure, older boy at a party tries to push himself on her repeatedly as they walk through the woods. As he gets more physical, essentially trying to assault the younger woman, she grows panicked and angry, and her bloodline kicks into gear by instinct. Suddenly Freddie (Stuart Harper) is sent flying through the air; as he lies stunned and injured, Clara feels her fangs descend, and like a cat on the hunt, pure instinct drives her, leaping onto Freddie, biting and biting.

When Helen and Peter find their daughter, they not only find themselves trying to conceal the evidence of the murder to protect her, they realise they are going to have to explain to both of their children just what happened, and why. As you can imagine, this does not go down too well with either child, Clara especially yelling back at them that they have lied to her for her entire life, while they selfishly decided to play normal family household, and that they no longer get to tell her what to do. It’s that teen rebellion thing, but here driven with some justification (just when, if ever, were they going to tell the kids about what was lurking in their nature? How far would they go to maintain their charade of normality?).

Needing help to cover everything up, Peter reluctantly reaches out to his twin brother, Will. Will (also played by Lewis) is the opposite of Peter (or at least of how Peter has become now) – he is still full vampire, indulging himself, roaming the country in an old RV, taking what and who he wants, when he wants, savouring any pleasures with little or no thought about consequences for anyone else. But, still being a blood-drinker, he has abilities they need, such as being able to mesmerise someone to convince them nothing is happening (handy when the police call), and he has practical experience in disposing of bodies, so they need him, even though you can see they know bringing him back into their lives is not the best idea, but what else can they do?

I don’t want to go much further into it for fear of spoilers, but this pretty much sets up everything that will come out later: the children now have to learn what they are and what this means for themselves and for their relationships with anyone else (their parents included), and the arrival of free-booting Will doesn’t help (the cool Uncle who is happy to let the nephew and niece sneak booze or anything else, unlike boring mum and dad, for instance). And Will’s arrival also stirs up Helen and Peter – reminding them of their past, before they tried to give up blood-drinking, and hints at a much darker history between all three.

It’s nicely played – it largely sticks to many of the vampire genre tropes and pokes a little fun at others (Peter has the father-son talk at one point, explaining that the no reflections in mirrors thing is just in the films and books, but yes, the garlic thing is true, and so are some of the powers gained when drinking blood, Peter also has to invite his brother Will into their home when he first arrives). This is more about the nature of families than fangs, however – everything that happens, other than the biting and killing, is the material we all know, the love-hate, the desperate desire to understand who you are, why you are that way, how you can be different for the younger Radleys, about trying to fit into what society expects the suburban parents to be for the older Radleys, and the fact that reality is rarely the same as what all our societal norms tell us we are meant to be. There are also nods to the genre in there too for vamp fans – coastal shots of Yorkshire (Whitby being the heart of British vamp-fandom, of course), even a scene with Rowan desperately licking spilled blood from the floor echoes a scene from Del Toro’s Cronos.

The script was adapted from Haig’s novel by Tabitha Stevenson and comedian Jo Brand, and they bring a lot of humour into this. Yes, there is some genuinely heartfelt musing about being the outsider (especially for Rowan, developing feelings for another boy – Jay Lycurgo’s Evan) and with no idea how he should proceed, even before finding out about his vampiric heritage), there is a lot of drama in the tensions simmering between Peter, Will and Helen as we see the “normal” patterns of behaviour they have forced themselves to inhabit start to break down in the face of events, while having Lewis play both (attempting to be) straight-arrow dad Peter and the debauched Uncle Will allows him to explore the different paths those siblings chose. And while that is well-handled and compelling, driving a lot of the narrative, the humour runs through the film, lightening it. A genuinely enjoyable entry in the vampire genre.

This review was originally penned for Live For Films

La Belle Adventure – New European Graphic Novel Bookshop

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A few weeks before Christmas, I went with my French chum to the Institut Francais D’Ecosse, on Edinburgh’s Royal Mile (right next to Saint Giles Cathedral in the heart of the historic Old Town). They were hosting a festive fayre, and among the various small businesses such as Chez Roger (a small but enticing French deli near my bookshop in Edinburgh’s Holy Corner) and makers (everything from hand-crafted jewellery to wonderful fabric creations) there was also a stall from La Belle Adventure, selling European graphic novels in both French and English.

Naturally this drew my attention, and I found a lot of titles and names I was familiar with from my own reading, and also from the old European Correspondent column that my Belgian friend Wim Lockefeer used to pen for us back in the Forbidden Planet Blog days. I got to chatting with the couple, Annabelle and Benoit, who were running this stall, and they told me they were also doing pop-up stalls regularly at the Leith street market and the Stockbridge market at weekends in Edinburgh, while searching for a location for a permanent home.

Considering there is only so much you can carry to these kinds of temporary venues, stock-wise, as I know from personal experience, having manned many a book table at various events over the years, they had picked out a nice, diverse array of titles, including a number I had read in English translation, such as the fabulous Blacksad series, and my personal favourite French comics creator, Jacques Tardi, with the range of translations of his work that Fantagraphics have put out. As I am still trying to improve my French, and as my reading comprehension is better than my spoken French (when reading I can take it at my own pace, in conversation I start off okay then it all gets too fast for me to follow!), I opted to buy a couple of hardback, French-language bande dessinee albums from them as a treat to myself.

Fast forward a few months, and La Belle Adventure has a permanent home now, in a small bookshop on Leith Walk, not far from the Out of the Blue Drill Hall venue (which has hosted some good comics fairs among many other events), handily close to the tram for easy access. This also puts them within short walking distance of the excellent independent bookshops, Argonaut Books and Typewronger in that part of the city, so that’s another win for readers, in a city that is satisfyingly provided for in terms of Indy bookshops

Our weather, even by Scottish standards, has been pretty dismal for the most part in recent weeks, and it was absolutely torrential on my day off, when I went to check out the new shop, then in only its second week. It was midweek and monsoon conditions outside, but I had a warm welcome from Annabelle and Benoit, and spent a very pleasant chunk of the afternoon chatting to them about the new librairie, and of course we talked a lot about both older and newer comics works we had enjoyed, while I had a good browse around the store.

The titles are in both English and French, with publishers from Europe, like Casterman, the UK – plenty of SelfMadeHero titles! – and North America (step up Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly), however the focus is on creators from Europe (including the UK). There were a lot of creators I was not only aware of, but many that grace my own, overloaded bookshelves – the aforementioned Tardi, naturally, the brilliant Bryan Talbot, Scotland’s own Metaphrog (highly appropriate given they comprise a Scottish and French creative duo!), classics many comics readers will be familiar with, such as the Metabarons, as well as manga, and works for younger readers (I smiled on seeing little figures of Lucky Luke and the dastardly Daltons on a shelf next to some of the albums).

Obviously I wanted to continue to support this new venture, and I was looking to add some titles to my ever-expanding To Be Read pile (now grown so large I fear it may require planning permission from the local council). Since my own collection of translated works in English is already fairly well developed, and as I am continuing to try and practise my French skills, I had decided I would be buying titles in French. Since I have some of the classics by Tardi, Moebius et al already in English language editions, it seemed more sensible to pick up something completely new, so I sought some advice from Annabelle and Benoit on newer works, which hadn’t yet been translated, and which I could consider.

We looked through several, and I ended up opting for two very different hardback albums that were recommended to me. Jade Khoo’s Zoc, a gorgeous looking, colourful piece about a young woman who has water which flows from her hair, and which is clearly influenced by the wonderful Studio Ghibli, and, at the other end of the spectrum, La Route (The Road), a graphic adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s famous post-Apocalypse novel, by Manu Larcenet which, despite the sombre colour palette (appropriate given the nature of the tale), uses some amazing comics artwork and some terrific variation in panel layout and perspective to draw in the visual eye.

Both of those titles were published by Dargaud, and join two Glenat publications I bought from them a few months back at the Institut Francais, Timothe le Boucher’s 47 Cordes, which was again recommended to me as an interesting recent work from a newer creator that I wasn’t familiar with, and Joe La Pirate (how could I resist a title like that?) by Hubert and Virginie Augustin. Of course, you are under no obligation only to read in French – La Belle Adventure has plenty of excellent European creators available in English, in all genres, adult and children’s books alike, and they are very happy to advise you on possible reading.

The duo remain involved in not only selling but promoting our beloved medium, being involved in drink and draws and other comics events in Edinburgh and Glasgow. In addition to helping organise the recent La Monde Sans Fin exhibition at the Institut Francais in Edinburgh (see our review here), Annabelle showed me the small back room to the bookshop, which they are planning to turn into a comics art exhibition space, which is also welcome news. When I visited it was only their second week of being in the shop, so they are still waiting on more titles to be delivered, and while they have carefully curated a diverse mix of works to start with, they will be looking to see what readers are most interested in and fine-tuning it in response.

It’s a terrific new venture, and I wish them every success, and commend any comics lover in, or visiting the city, to take a trip to visit and support them. You can follow La Belle Adventure on their Instagram page here, while the shop itself can be found at 225 Leith Walk, open Wednesday to Saturday, 10.30 to 6, and 1pm to 5 on Sundays.

This article was originally penned for Down The Tubes

Reviews: Someone You Can Build a Nest In

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Someone You Can Build a Nest In,
John Wiswell,
Published Jo Fletcher Books,
Hardback, Published April 2024
ISBN 9781529431339

I’ve heard of Nebula-winning John Wiswell before, but not actually had a chance to read him, until Jo Fletcher books spotted me talking about another book and sendt me an advance copy, thinking if I liked that one I might like this. They were correct, and I am delighted that they sent it to me out of the blue like that, as this was one of those rather lovely reads that you don’t just enjoy for good story and characters, but come away sporting a big smile and a warm feeling inside.

It’s your classic love story – monster is feared and hunted by locals, convinced she is devouring people (well, okay, she does sometimes, mostly bad people, or people trying to hurt her though, to be fair), hides in ruins in a remote, dank area (shades of Shrek’s swamp home) where she can have privacy and safety, and also because, although she can shape-shift into human form, she hates having to talk to people and doesn’t quite understand how interpersonal relationships work. And then, injured in her human guise, she is found and tended to by Homily, one of those kind-hearted people who tries to help others.

This has never happened before, and Shesheshen – going under the name Siobhan here – finds herself at first alarmed and wondering what is going on, preparing to defend herself, then slowly realising that Homily helps because, well, that’s just who she is. And as she finds out more about Homily, how her good nature is a reaction to the awful behaviour of most of her family, and how they treat her, the more Shesheshen, still not understanding fully these relationships, finds herself becoming very attached to Homily, and protective of her, in a way a monster really shouldn’t with a human…

As I said, it is the old love story – monster falls for kind-hearted human, who doesn’t know they are really a monster, both have their vulnerabilities and foibles that they share, as they slowly fall for each other in a queer, cross-species fantasy romance, but will it survive when the truth is revealed? Romeo and Juliet, but with monster hunters, people eating and psychotic, aristocratic relatives. And running through it, a delicious sense of dark humour – Shesheshen, hearing monster hunters mutter that they should have brought priests with them thinks, oh, yes, I like priests, they taste so righteous, or having warm memories of being an infant monster, kept warm in the next by being surrounded by her late father’s intestines (he was a very good father, she thinks nostalgically).

It’s about identity, not fitting in, but sometimes finding there are others you can not fit in with in a way you never expected, and how that can really change your life in the most unexpected of ways (although still with people eating – a monster girl has to eat, after all). An absolute delight.

If you are ordering this book, please buy from your local, Indy bookshop if you can – Jeff Bezos does not need more of your money! If you don’t live near a local bookshop, you can order directly from the website of many of them, or go through Bookshop Dot Org, which allows you to support independent bookshops of your choice.

This review was originally penned for The Shoreline of Infinity, Scotland’s leading journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy.