Stephen James Walker

Telos Publishing is a small, independent, UK-based press established by David J Howe and Stephen James Walker in October 2000. The name comes from that of the fictional planet Telos from the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The company’s first publication came in 2001 with a horror anthology based on the television series Urban Gothic.

Since being formed, the company has published a wide variety of works, including an acclaimed range of original novellas based on Doctor Who; the Time Hunter novellas series; authoritative guide books on many cult TV and film subjects; and original and reissue fiction in several different genres, including horror, dark fantasy, crime and romance. Starburst magazine called Telos Publishing “perhaps the UK’s best-known independent publishers of Doctor Who books.”

Telos Publishing has given a first break to a number of new writers, and has also published work by well-known and award-winning authors such as Graham Masterton and Simon Clark.

The company has also been nominated for and in some cases won a variety of awards in its own right. These include the Canadian Prix Aurora Award and the PS Publishing Award for Best Small Press, which it won at the British Fantasy Awards in 2010 and 2011. One of the company’s Doctor Who novellas, Fallen Gods by Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman, won an Aurealis Award for Best Australian Science Fiction Novel, making it the first television tie-in to receive a major science-fiction award. Another, Shell Shock by Simon A Forward, won the BN International Gold Disc given at the Balacron Designer Awards 2003 for the quality of its production. Christopher Fowler’s novella Breathe won the British Fantasy Society Award for Best Novella in 2005.

In 2006, Telos Publishing’s founders Howe and Walker won a highly prestigious World Fantasy Award for the company’s work.