Hauling Like A Brooligan

Stephen Gallagher

Author: Steve

  • The Thirty-Nine Steps

    I recently went back to John Buchan’s novel The Thirty Nine Steps, the template for all modern on-the-run thrillers from The Fugitive to 24 to the entire Jason Bourne trilogy. The re-reading confirmed my remembered impressions. The book has terrific narrative velocity. It also falls apart to an utterly unmemorable end, and the story doesn’t…

  • What the Filk

    Got to share this… Every now and again I used to walk 200 yards up the lane to my village local where I’d meet with a bunch of fannish mates who, once a month and in a more central venue, constituted the core of the Preston SF Group. PSFG meetings were open to all; the…

  • Plots and Misadventures

    Thanks to Ellen Datlow for the heads-up this morning, telling me that my second book of short stories has been nominated in the Fiction Collection category of the IHG Awards. “The International Horror Guild Awards have been presented annually since 1995. Based on public recommendations, the juried awards recognize outstanding achievements in the field of…

  • Thomas M Disch

    I’m sad to hear that the death of Thomas M Disch has been reported. Tom Disch was my first real-live author, by which I mean the first one that I met and talked to in the flesh at my first convention – that was Yorcon 2 in Leeds in 1981, where he was the Guest…

  • Eyes Without a Face

    On that trip to Paris a couple of weeks back I gave myself an excuse to browse the stock of the Bouquinistes, those riverside bookstalls along the Seine, for a copy of the source novel of one of my favourite films. All I knew of Les Yeux Sans Visage was that it was written by…

  • Step Aside, Mister Bond

    If ever you needed someone to save the world, I was your guy. Mind you, I was only nine at the time. I think it was an ad in one of the Man from Uncle tie-in novels that gave an address where you could write in and be recruited as an UNCLE agent. The card…

  • Granada

    Good Dog mentioned a couple of classic series and broke a memory… I was a Presentation trainee in Granada’s Manchester studios when they were making The XYY Man, and one of our control room monitors was hooked to the studio feed. So I saw everything the studio cameras saw, both during and between takes. I…

  • Man in a Suitcase

    I just finished working my way through the boxed set of the 1967-68 ITC series Man in a Suitcase. It’s taken me longer than I expected it to, and it’s provoked some mixed feelings. It’s a show that I was enormously impressed by, the first time around. And I still am, but in a qualified…

  • Gallic Noir

    I just got back from a few days in Paris (and if that doesn’t make you even a little bit jealous, then I can only suppose it’s a place you’ve never visited yet). As soon as I got to my hotel room I did what comes naturally to every visitor to a distant city. I…

  • The BFS Awards

    I’ve just learned that both The Kingdom of Bones and Plots and Misadventures feature in the recommendations list for the British Fantasy Awards, voted by the membership of The British Fantasy Society and announced each year at Fantasycon. It’s not an actual nomination or even a shortlisting, so let’s not get carried away. But it’s…