Subject of Scholarly Research

This is a book report written by Cameron Barnes (of Alloa, Scotland) Age 14

Tankbread
By Paul Mannering

The front cover of this book is well designed. It has a green background and what looks like bubbles of chemicals and a DNA helix at the front. Then at the top you have the title TANKBREAD in bold letters. The cover makes me want to read as the author has thought about the colours and the detail very well and made it look fantastic. The blurb tells us that the book is set in a post-apocalyptic world where zombies wreak havoc. It also tells us about an outlaw courier and a cloned woman called Else and their desperate quest across the wasteland of Australia.
The blurb gives you a good image of what the book will be like and pulled me into reading it. The first chapter tells us where The Courier is and what he’s doing. It also tells us that there are two kinds of zombies. There are Zombies that are more intelligent and can talk and ones that are more typical shamblers. The first chapter gives us an insight into the mind of Mannering. It’s dark and gruesome in here! The first chapter want me want to read more as it sounds like a thrill ride.

Not My Daisy

With Not My Daisy we return to the realms of insanity. It's a recurring theme in the collection and one that seems to have an inexhaustible wellspring of stories for me to write.

The idea of a man who is clearly insane from the get go allowed me to explore what fears a serial killer has. He isn't some all powerful destroyer and corrupter. He is a terrified and anxious individual who is doing what he can to keep his world safe and pure. Of course along the way a lot of innocent girls are going to suffer horrific deaths at his hands.

The Birth

First published by now defunct magazine 'The Willows,' this story was an homage to HP Lovecraft and the weird Universe he created. It's a pastiche but many great writers have done that, each one adding to the Cthulhu Mythos with their own macabre tales.
All the usual elements are there. An intellectual male, strident in his belief in science, finds himself in a situation that cannot be explained or perhaps survived.

I've always loved HP Lovecraft's stories. Mostly because they don't generally have happy endings. That in itself creates a sense of realism that is lacking in most fiction.

Too often there is the expectation that good will triumph over evil, that the good guys will win. But horror doesn't require that. One of the best elements of horror is when we realise that in fact, we can never be the same again. There can be no return to the safe ignorance of before. The reader, like the protagonist, is transformed by their experience.

After Lights Out

I'm going to write a series of short story essays. Kind of an author's notes for the stories found in my short story collection.

The first story is 'After Lights Out.'

Set in a private boys school, this story explores the issues of discipline and the generation gap that exists between adolescents and the senior teachers. My family went to boarding school. My brother was a senior when I started at Nelson College. It was very Lord of The Flies. I could write an entire book about it - but it might end up banned. I only went to boarding school for one year. After that my parents decided to move me and my older sister back to a co-ed school in the city we had moved to from the farm I grew up on.

Violence is common in boarding schools. Angry young men in a strict hierarchical system it's quite Darwinian. I broke another kid's leg in a fight. 


Because it's fiction I take the story of After Lights Out to a different level. I like the idea of insanity from the madman's point of view. I think there is a definite sense of clarity in irrational acts. It goes beyond justification - the truly crazy are doing exactly what they know to be right. It's an evangelical state of mind. Everything becomes black and white and the consequences are irrelevant - because the absolute knowledge that you are right.

So we are treated to a clear descent into madness, or senility or is it just the kind of discipline that the youth of today really need? It's the complete calmness of the protagonist that is the unsettling element.