Dark Horses is an anthology of science-fiction by Friends of the Arts Lab, FOALs for short. All writers have attended Arts Lab events organised by Arts Labs from around the UK. Arts Labs were a Sixties cultural phenomenon, and from them came many well-known creators including David Bowie and Alan Moore.
Most of the writers of this anthology are from the Northampton Arts Lab, which was ressurected in 2016 following an event to discuss counter-culture at Northampton University, which featured guests including Alan Moore, Robin Ince, Josie Long, Francesca Martinez, Scroobius Pip, John Higgs, and Grace Petrie. Attendees were encouraged by the idea of collaborating on lots of different artistic projects in the manner of their Sixties predecessors, and to date the friends have created fanzines, comics, sketches, and plays, and organised poetry and comedy events.
Contributors include Alan Moore, Alistair Fruish, Sophie Sparham, Kev Rooney, The Spence Brothers, KB Willson, James Milton, Yoshe, Laura Roklicer, K.S. Dearsley, Michel Louis, Tom Clarke, Tom Jordan, Joshua Spiller and me. Cover art by Scott Jeffery.
There are stories about post-apocalyptic house choices, vengeful robots, sentient waste-fed microscopic creatures taking over, murderous social media, dissolved languages, time-looping assassins, and more!