Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 203

Britain’s Good And Bad Coastal Towns

I once ran this shot from the film ‘Genevieve’, which shows Madeira Terrace, the unique wrought-iron Victorian glory (the world’s longest) that defined Brighton’s shore. Now after decades of council infighting and neglect it has passed beyond repair – so it is to be torn down. Wherever you live – especially if you don’t live […]

How To Collect Paperbacks

A few years ago I started going to paperback book fairs, usually held in the basements of unfashionable hotels that smelled of bacon. At one in Victoria I arrived to find I was the only customer in a room of around sixty dealers’ tables. The following year I returned and had to queue for 20 […]

Anthologies VS Collections

Readers have asked me about this a number of times, so here’s an answer to a recurring question: Anthologies are not collections. The former are compilations from a variety of authors under the aegis of an editor who (hopefully) makes an intelligent selection, and the latter stem from a single writer. Collections are less popular […]

Essay: The Spectre Of 007

With the spectre of ‘Spectre’ on the horizon, it’s worth taking a look at the very peculiar world of James Bond in more detail. Bond is the idealised man for a generation of men who missed the war. It is hard to overestimate the effect 007 had on post-war readers and audiences. Here was the […]

Frightening Is Coming

After 13 collections of short stories I swore I’d never write another – particularly after my disastrous decision to go with small press for ‘Red Gloves’, a massive double-sided book which look stunning but which never reached bookshops. However, with the approaching arrival of my backlist of 19 books as e-publications it made sense to […]

A Postcard From: Barcelona

Today is National Independence for Catalunya day (you’re reading this after the event), and the atmosphere on the street – as always – is intensely pro-separatist. I can think of few nations in history which have flourished after partition (I think of the horrors after Tito’s Yugoslavia) but it’s hard not to feel the intense […]

What’s Your Favourite Place?

There are cities where people never smile; I’ve been to a few in Belgium, Switzerland and Germany. I like to think people are naturally predisposed to smiling, but sometimes the pace of life or the relentless grimness of their surroundings makes it hard to think of anything but just surviving. In the need to earn, […]

Sand Storm Coming In!

My thriller ‘The Sand Men’ is heading this way at the start of October from Rebellion Press, and that strange cracking noise is me breaking out of yet another pigeonhole. This time the demographic lines are really blurred. Is it SF? Yes and no; it’s set in the present day but explores themes close to […]

Always Reigns In England

An extra post today because Queen Elizabeth II became the longest reigning monarch in 1,000 years of British history at 5.30pm. That’s63 years and 216 days on the throne, overtaking Queen Victoria. I’m not much of a royalist when it comes to those in the lower branches, but Elizabeth II has been there all of […]

How I Learned To Stop Worrying & Love ‘Game Of Thrones’

‘Did IQs just suddenly drop while I was away?’ I asked the same question Ripley asks at the start of ‘Aliens’ when I saw the public reaction to ‘Game of Thrones’. I don’t ‘do’ fantasy, a cheesy mash-up of the only things kids can remember from medieval history lessons plus the drawings they made on […]