Breathe

by Christopher Fowler

A Telos Original

An original and horrific slice of urban terror from one of the masters of the genre.

All is not well at SymaxCorp.

The work is piled high, people are toiling overnight to meet deadlines, and the supervisors are keeping their beady eyes on everyone. But staff are complaining of feeling sick, and the last health and safety officer disappeared one evening never to be seen again.

It’s down to new boy Ben, together with temp Miranda, kick-boxing Meera and overweight June to try and get to the bottom of the problem.

As colleagues are progressively transformed into mindless, blood crazed zombies, Ben and his friends discover that there really is something in the air...

 

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Breathe Introduction

We produce below Chrisopher Fowler's short introduction to Breathe, which was not included in the book itself.

 

Catching Your Breath

A word of warning. If you're at all familiar with my writing, the following novella is not what you'd expect from me. In fact, it's unlike anything I've written in a long time, and there's a specific reason for this. I think as writers mature, they gain the confidence to launch into new styles of narrative, but sometimes they also lose something. There is a directness and an innocence in early books that can be hard to recapture. The most disheartening thing a reader can tell you is that he or she loved your first novel.

'Breathe' developed from three different directions; some research I did for short stories, the idea for a movie, and a desire to write simply and directly again. It was intended as an experiment in returning to roots, and what is known in the film industry as a 'teether', a tale to encourage neophytes. It is very difficult to write simply when you have become addicted to complex sentence structures and oblique ideas, so I deliberately limited myself - present tense only, no lengthy descriptions, no literary tricks, characters defined by their actions, no carefully buried subtexts. In the last few years I've tried every short-form genre I can think of, from noir to romance, satire, parody and farce, but I haven't turned my hand to pulp horror in years. The exercise a fast blast of fresh air for me. I made extensive notes, then sat down and wrote the first draft in one sitting. The intention, after all, was to not let you catch your breath. Oddly, I've since discovered that the idea is not as far-fetched as it may appear; A Japanese company has been offering a very similar service to the one proposed by the Symax Corporation. Without the zombies, of course.

Christopher Fowler

 

Background

The book is available as an A5 paperback novella and as a signed (by Fowler) and numbered, limited hardback edition.

The cover artwork is by Simon Moore.

Further details:

Available as an A5 paperback @ £7.99 (UK) and as a limited edition hardback @ £25 (UK). Order Online

Published June 2004 in paperback and July 2004 in hardback (UK)