are you shivering? are you cold? are you bathed in silver or drowned in gold?

I hate to do it, but 1 measly star is about right. This review is for Bad Movie Night, Sundays at 8. Don't go.

We knew we were in trouble right when we walked in and the guys at the door started making dumb jokes. Like the kind of dumb jokes a waiter makes when he says something like, "sorry we're all out of water." Permanent frown. Then the act started and we had to watch an entire Weird Al music video because it had the word "eat" in it and so did the title of our movie, "Eat, Pray, Love."... clever.

Let me get to the point of why I left after half an hour. This is supposed to be like Mystery Science Theatre. Now I've seen this done before, really really well. Comedians in the front row will talk over the whole movie, impersonating characters, pointing out funny stuff, general tomfoolery. The snag is, those guys wrote their material beforehand like any good comedian would. These guys hadn't even watched the movie before so all their material was delayed and random, plus they were talking over each other, and they weren't funny! I found myself trying to block them out and watch the movie. It just wasn't intelligent at all.

About the venue itself: The seats sucked, the rows are almost level so you can't see if there's someone in front of you. It's old and dirty. It's just dumb.

In the UK, short fiction anthologies are pretty rare. Equally, readers of anthologies are pretty rare. To buy an anthology, of unknown writers, by an unknown publisher can only be, I think, an act of investigation. Firstly, a reader has to be at least disenchanted with the high street 3-2 staple on offer. Disenchanted enough to wonder what else is out there, to wonder if what's publicly available really is a representative range of the uses of the medium.

Secondly, a reader has to be familiar, or more than familiar, with the short story form. One motivation for buying an anthology is to compare the contents, either with favoured writers, or with the reader's own work. Given that short story reading and writing are both unusual practises, and that the literary culture they inhabit, and are sustained by, is in the midst of a decline and fall, these readers must be very few.

It's this kind of curious, discerning, reader that a new anthology should appeal to. And it's exactly these readers that might look at Unthology No.1 and assume the worst. It's these readers who may, at the first page, brace themselves, wince, and otherwise prepare to endure a dose of provincial amateurism, indistinct narratives and shop worn familiar characters.

With the Unthology, these readers can relax a little. Each of its stories has merits, ranging from the narrative maturity of Mischa Hiller's "The Burning" or Melinda Moore's "The Turtle", where carefully layered residual emotions reach a point of focus and clarity; to Viccy Adams's "Doing it by the Book", where what at first is a straightforward scenario develops unexpectedly, so that the reader quickly accumulates questions. The more leftfield, experimental, style of story is well represented, as in Michael Baker's "Bleach", which is one of the strangest pieces I've ever read, but in a good way. Ashley Stokes's "A Short Story about a Short Film" is a film script underscored by footnotes which describe the many agonies of the director.

There are plenty of positive signs. For instance, I had trouble reading the collection quickly, because I found so many of the stories to be moving. Also, in general, these are stories with strong or confident openings, as in Jenni Fagan's "Impilo", which begins as the narrator falls into a lawnmower. Then there is Sherilyn Connelly's "The Last Dog and Pony Show", which introduces us to 'the biggest animal role playing event of the year.'

Finally, there is an unusual pleasure in anthology reading, which comes from the variety of the stories, and the novelty of each one. For a short story enthusiast used to reading collections, this is a pleasant surprise.