Flame Tree Fiction

Gothic literature has been a huge part of British history since its conception, and with Halloween around the corner, what better time to celebrate it! The British Library has just opened their exhibition Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination, and it presents the evolution and spread of the Gothic genre over the 250 years it's been in existence.

Dystopias have been invading our screens for decades, although there has been a recent influx of great dystopias. They come in all kinds of forms, including TV shows (the ever-popular 'The Walking Dead' is starting up again in October!), films (Mockingjay Part 1 is released in November!) and books (there are so many YA dystopias being published I don't know which to get excited about first!). But what is a dystopia? We know there must be something fundamentally broken about society. But in what way should it be broken? Must there be a totalitarian leader and cameras watching your every move?

Image via totallyuselesstrivia

We love all things fantasy at Flame Tree, which means that aside from reading and making awesome books, we also like putting our feet up and watching some great telly. Over the next few weeks we'll be building up to some of the best fantasy TV series that will be on the box next year.

So it seems everywhere I look at the moment are zombie pictures, visions of the walking dead – sometimes relatively unscathed and human-like; mostly fairly bloodily down the road of decay – whether in art, film or on TV. Having been immersed in making a book on zombies has obviously contributed to my high intake of undead depictions, but even when I decide to read something apparently non-zombie, my thoughts return to these shuffling, grasping creatures. Going through my other half’s eclectic collection of books the other day, looking for something new to read, I plucked out John Wyndham’s The Day of The Triffids – a 1951 post-apocalyptic science-fiction tale of worldwide blindness enabling the rise of some rather nasty, stinging, lurching, carnivorousplants…

Awakening to A Changed World

OK, so first of all, the post-apocalyptic thing is there – a trope much beloved of zombie-filmmakers – but more specifically, I experienced much déja-vu in the opening scenes as the protagonist wakes up in hospital to discover he has been abandoned by his carers and no one is left, save for some desperate, groaning, shuffling people wandering the wards... Where had I seen this before?

The danger, mystery and beauty of vampires means they have an eternal allure a world apart from zombies or other horrors, and as well as reading about them or watching them on screen, gothic fantasy art affords a whole world of imaginative vampiric visions created by talented artists.

Today’s Zombie

In the last decade, Zombie pictures, movies and games have entered the mainstream in a big way. The Walking Dead has not only seen huge success in its comic book form, but also in the tv show adapted from it. Even an actor as well loved as Brad Pitt produced and starred in a film adaptation of Max Brook’s World War Z. Yet even as the genre grows, it is important to remember that it owes a huge debt to the the wonderfully twisted mind of George Romero.

We've just released a digital first publication in our Gothic Dreams series: Steampunk. 128 pages of colour illustrations, packed with brilliant art from fabulous contemporary illustrators. It's available on the Apple iBookstore and is designed for the iPad Retina display which shows off the detailed and glorious art. We're absolutely delighted with it.

There’s something very steampunky about cinema itself. The medium was invented in the Victorian era, and early projectors and cameras were intricate, archaic devices with hundreds of moving parts. This ethos of incricate moving parts laced with a strong emphasis on style is what makes steampunk appeal to so many people worldwide, and why too it has capured the imaginationof Hollywood filmakers. 

The stars have aligned, oceans have parted; and now Cthulhu no longer dreaming lies dreaming in the depths, but is here. We're incredibly proud of our amazing illustrated title, now available in hardback print and also digitally via the iBookstore. The powerful and terrifying images of Cthulhu look astonishing on the iPad, each colour popping because of the device's high-res screen. These illustrations also look incredible in our print book; we've used high-quality, glossy paper, so that each image stands centre stage in all its glory.