Terminal Zones

by Gareth E. Rees

Ten tragicomic tales of environmental and personal disaster from the margins of town and country.

A troubled hipster is seduced by an electricity pylon.

Sinister omens manifest in a supermarket car park.

A motorway bridge becomes a father.

Malevolent bacteria plague a polar icebreaker.

A bioengineered abomination lurks in a Gloucestershire railway terminus

The weekly bin collection pushes a man over the edge.

A former squatter clings to her home on a crumbling cliff.

Joyriders are foiled by Anglo Saxon floodwaters.

Vampiric entities stalk B&Q.

And fiery catastrophe comes to the zoo.

Gareth E. Rees’s first collection of short fiction explores lives on the verge of breakdown, where ordinary people are driven to extremes by the effects of late capitalism and ecological collapse.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Dystopia, Literature, Horror, Contemporary

180 pages, Paperback

Published October 13, 2022

About the author

Gareth E. Rees is a writer of fiction and non fiction. His books include Sunken Lands (Elliott & Thompson 2024), Terminal Zones (Influx Press 2022), Unofficial Britain (Elliott & Thompson, 2020), Car Park Life (Influx Press 2019), The Stone Tide (Influx Press, 2018). His first book 'Marshland' was reissued in 2024 by Influx Press in a new expanded edition.

‘What he seeks out is the magical in the mundane, the bizarre happenings in plain sight’
- Deborah Moggach, The Times

Reviews

[Blair · Rating 4 out of 5]

The stories in Terminal Zones take place in a Britain, and a world, in literal meltdown, on the precipice of violent destruction – but they often take place in its seemingly dull, innocuous corners: the car park of a DIY store, a motorway bridge, an area of urban marshland. These are tales of creeping strangeness and unease that vibrate with the possibility of collapse, a constant danger lurking beneath the (mostly) commonplace settings and wry humour.

My favourite was undoubtedly ‘The Slime Factory’, a near-future conspiracy story with an unexpected, unforgettable climactic scene that ensures you’ll never look at a certain children’s cartoon in the same way again. (What with this and Dan Coxon’s ‘All the Letters in His Van’, I feel like there’s definite potential for an anthology composed entirely of this type of story...) Some of the stories were not new to me: I loved revisiting the deceptively sinister car-park world of ‘Meet on the Edge’, and found ‘We Are the Disease’, a chilling tale of infection on board an icebreaker ship, somehow so much better on a second read. (Perhaps it just hits different post-Covid.) ‘A Dream Life of Hackney Marshes’ and ‘Bin Day’ are both fantastic portraits of pathetic characters whose obsessions consume them utterly.

I received an advance review copy of Terminal Zones from the publisher, Influx Press.

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[Amy Biggart · Rating 4 out of 5]

there were some solid stories in here and a lot of the premises I can tell will stay with me

[Eric Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Existential angst meets the climate crisis in this thoughtful and entertaining short story collection. Nearly every tale in this book makes reference to an impending environmental disaster whether it's two female friends living in a cliff edge home that's literally collapsing into the sea or a mother who ingests the constant news of climate change and feels “It was the end of the world and she was totally bored.” This psychological swerving between intense alarm and resigned tedium poignantly reflects the modern experience of watching the world rapidly change around us. Rees dramatises this state of being in imaginative ways including a research ship which ventures into the arctic only to encounter new/ancient forms of sinister spores and sentient bacteria, an animal park/refuge that literally goes up in flames and a dystopian future-set story about a reclusive oligarch's scheme to harness the world's first living computers. Other stories show characters developing surprising emotional attachments to seemingly anonymous concrete and metallic structures whether it's a girl finding paternal feeling in a Motorway Bridge or a new father who falls romantically in love with a pylon. It's moving how the author demonstrates the multifarious ways this admirably diverse set of characters' lives play out in the anonymous interstices of parking lots or seemingly barren fields. Rees' fiction brings to the forefront the experience of individuals in rural England who are often marginalized and relegated to the fringes of society.

Read my full review of Terminal Zones by Gareth E Rees at LonesomeReader

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories were all truly fantastic.
Personal standouts were — ‘The Levels’, ‘Meet On The Edge’ and ‘The Slime Factory’.

[Ian Greensmith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Firstly, the author is a good pal of mine, but although I'd loved his Stone Tide novel it has taken me three years to get around to reading this collection. The reason being that I'd understood it to be in the sci-fi/dystopian genre, neither appealing to me. However, I felt I should give it a go and it proved to be a very enjoyable decision.
Yes, it's not untrue to place the book within that sphere, but each tale is grounded within the British Isles in the present or near-future. Each display Gareth's slightly warped view of reality, with his tongue often firmly in his cheek. The balance between black humour and existential dread is finely weighed.
Current events are already echoing what seemed like fiction three years ago (a certain character in The Slime Factory will strike a chord). Ecological collapse combined with human frailties/eccentricities is the canvas for most of these tales. Several of these stories will stay with me, a particular highlight being (slight spoiler) the description of a modern day mountain bike seen through the eyes of an Anglo-Saxon.
Very happy to pass on a hearty recommendation.

[Erin Warden-English · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with a lot of short story collections, this was a bit of a mixed bag, but the stories were generally very good. The strongest ones were the ones that dealt with the topic of climate change, presenting an eerily believable near-future in which global warming has ravaged the planet - my favourites were "we are the disease", "when nature calls", and "tyrannosaurs bask in the warmth of the asteroid". The weaker ones (I thought) were the ones that seemed to be weird for weirdness sake - a man falling in love with a pylon, a woman who believes her dad is a motorway bridge, or a billionaire creating characters from thomas the tank engine in real life.

[Simon Pitfield · Rating 3 out of 5]

The bastard love child of Nicola Barker and the Reverend W. Awdry offers up a collection of postcards from the edge which is definitely more than the sum of its parts, weaving themes of marginalisation, millennial anomie and imminent environmental catastrophe into an alarming insta post from the top of the downslope. It should come as no surprise that those forced to the fringes of society find it so easy to step over the lines of what we might consider 'normal' behaviour, and it is a necessary reminder to all of us about the precarious thinness of the social veneer we call civilisation. Rees articulates this clearly in his well constructed, if not always unpredictable stories.

[B P · Rating 4 out of 5]

The ecological apocalypse is here and the only thing most of us can afford to do is stare. These tales tell of how various individuals cope or go off the deep end when it comes to ever worsening Earth conditions. Prose aren't exactly literary but I don't think they needed to be. They moved at a precise clip appropriate for narrating individuals without much say. Depressing but warranted, would recommend, especially for the last story (body horror + Thomas the tank engine).

[Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hugely impressive collection of weird/slipstream/sf stories, haunted by the desolation of British post-industrial spaces, the ravages of climate change, and creeping insanity. I immediately bought two more of Rees' books.

[Lindsay · Rating 5 out of 5]

A strange dark read of short stories on our world and global warming what is happening

[Viv · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was so weird. I loved it.

[Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[Georgie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 most of the stories were compelling and creepy

[Ruby Atkin · Rating 3 out of 5]

What does this man have against Thomas the tank engine?! Got me out of a reading slump so it’s a yes from me

[nelly :)]

dnf - some of the stories are fun but sometimes they seem a bit … meh?

[Calum McGregor · Rating 1 out of 5]

By a considerable distance the worst book I have ever read.

[Rob Mccarthy-keegan · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5!

[Gael Impiazzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mostly great, weird stories.