1. It is a ‘sentimental mishmash . . . muddily photographed in flat television style.’ Peter Nicholls, The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction 2. It ‘invites you to have some wonderful dumb, callow fun.’ Pauline Kael 3. It was made for €12 million – even at the time a relatively small budget – and released on 4 June 1982, when I was not quite a year old. 4. I don’t remember the first time I saw it, though I can guess that it was probably around 1991, when I was ten. I must have watched it at least half a dozen times a year since then. I am now forty, which means that I have seen it some 180 times. If we factor in the period in the middle of my adolescence when I watched this film once a week – every Wednesday afternoon, when school finished early – we can...

Jennifer Walshe | Tolka, Issue Three, July 2022 Imagine walking through the car park of a supermarket and seeing a baby sleeping on the back seat of an empty car on a very hot day. The baby looks like it’s barely been born; it has mottled skin; the squashed features babies have for the first few days. It looks to be sleeping, but it’s not moving properly. Something seems off. Is it breathing? Is it drugged? And why isn’t it in a car seat? It’s lying on a sheepskin. It should be in a car seat. Jesus Christ, what monster would leave a baby alone in a car? You need to sprint over to the security guard right now, ask them if they can break the window. You need to run screaming into the supermarket to page whoever owns the car! But . . . Oh, oh, oh. It’s not...

Roisin Kiberd | Tolka, Issue Two, May 2022 T+1 minute Static shots of a rocket in a Texan desert. The broadcast is live, backgrounded by the gentle hum of engines. Six bodies are huddled inside the capsule; three men, fifty-seven, fifty-three and eighteen, and an eighty-two-year-old woman. They crossed the bridge, rang a silver bell, strapped in, and endured the countdown. Now they will be blasted into the sky, so far as to glimpse a fleeting oblivion. Regret and possibility collapse as they depart the earth. The flames press down, the rocket jolts, and it feels like they’re soaring out of hell. News journalists and bystanders gather on tarmac some distance away. On YouTube, a commenter types ‘With that ship design, Bezos seems like he is trying to compensate for something.’ Everything here he has paid for; the richest man on earth and, soon, somewhere off-earth, too, on the way...

Darran Anderson | Tolka Issue Four, December 2023 The job was to collect memories. I hadn’t been back in town long and I wasn’t in much of a state to work, although I was even less cut out to starve. It was only temporary and I’m not sure there was ever an official job title. ‘Are you a good listener?’ was all they asked, which somehow sounded like a trick question. The job required a researcher, of sorts, on a Mass-Observation-style project, to be sent out to homes, pubs and workplaces. While there, I’d simply encourage people to reminisce. Each time, I had to roll out a disclaimer that, in all likelihood, their testimony wouldn’t be used or would be whittled down to a passing anecdote in a leaflet. Still they wanted to share their stories, in meticulous and sprawling detail. So, paid by the hour, I let them. The...