Black Static is the UK's leading magazine of dark fantasy and horror. Issue 14, covering December 09 and January 2010 is the first issue since the magazine's launch to not feature art by David Gentry, and for the first time the cover art makes the magazine look ordinary. The power of Gentry's artwork is its ability to unsettle while looking perfectly ordinary. Sadly the cover art by Dave Senecal is fairly standard horror fare, not up to Gentry's level.
In 'We, Who Live in the Wood' by Paul Finch a couple flee from the emotional fallout from at the woman's miscarriage to the wilds of Dartmoor. Finch's style is so orotund that it verges on over-writing, but while his prose can initially be irritating, such is the strength of his story that the reader cannot help but be drawn in.It's the longest story in the magazine since Simon Avery's 'Burying the Carnival' in the very first Black Static, and this length helps to give Finch room to establish the detail of the setting.
Christopher Fowler
Christopher Fowler's 'The Eleventh Day' takes place entirely in the confines of a lift (elevator to American readers) which becomes trapped between two floors in a St Petersburg office block in the process of being vacated. It's a nicely paced story which improves on re-reading, although there's still the suspicion that Galia is underdrawn to service the plot. Nonetheless, Recommended.
Fowler's Interference column this issue examnines the choices we make in the films we watch, and the way we delineate those choices.
The eponymous 'Hootchie Cootchie Man' by Maurice Broaddus is a car thief who steals to order - but the order is placed by those wishing to ditch their cars by leaving a couple of hundred dollars under the floor mat. Nathaniel gives a girl a lift and then keeps running into her over the next few hours, as 'Like a desperately needed word on the tip of his tongue, Nathaniel was on the verge of realizing an important truth.' There is something slightly reminiscent in tone of Broaddus' spare prose of Michael Moorcock, in that Nathaniel is somewhat iconographic in the same way as Jerry Cornelius and the Eternal Champion. The pick of the issue.
The events of 'Survivor's Guilt' by Rosanne Rabinowitz take place in the late1930s against a rising tide of ant-Semitism in London's East End. The characters are well depicted, as is the sense of setting, and while on first reading there's a suspicion that its vampiric protagonist is there to make it speculative than because the story demands it, on re-reading it's clear that no 'normal' person could have such a close bond with another human being -- so the narrative does dictate the author's decision. Highly Recommnded.
Gary McMahon
'Teen Spirit' is another of Gary McMahon's excellent stories of horror highlighting the disintegration of everyday society, in which children turn feral in front of their parent's helpless gazes. But widowed mother Helen is a less passive protagonist than in some of McMahon's stories, and in managing to avoid the obvious narrative arc, he comes up with a rather neat ending. Recommended.
McMahon is also profiled in Peter Tennant's White Noise, with reviews of his latest novel, Hungry Hearts, and novella 'Different Skins,' as well as a short interview.
This issue Tony Lee's Blood Spectrum reviews the new DVD/Blu-ray releases, which include A Perfect Getaway, Dorian Gray, Pontypool, Thirst, Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead.
As well as Gary McMahon, Case Notes by Peter Tennant includes reviews of books by Adam Roberts, Stephen Clark, Shaun Jeffrey, Karen Rose, Steven Deighan, Trevor Denyer, Ralph Robert Moore, Tom Fletcher, Michael Marshall Smith and Tony Richards.
Another solid issue.
Colin Harvey - Author six novels, and editor of four anthologies; professional reviewer since 2003, including six years at Strange Horizons. Member of ...
