Urban Fantastic by Allen Ashley

The author's work inhabits territory that the fantasy genre could usefully exploit/explore in the years ahead. If the first stage in the development of modern fantasy was ambiguity (is the fantastic element in the story real or not?), and the second stage was stories in which the fantasy is acknowledged to be real; then the logical next step is to put the fantasy to work -- and this is what Ashley does in his stories...

Continue reading at SF Site.

Further links:
Allen Ashley
Crowswing

Macrolife by George Zebrowski

Living on planets is a precarious business. You never know when some quirk of geology or a stray rock falling from the sky will put paid to your species; not forgetting evolutionary pressures pushing you who-knows-where, and sundry other ravages. So it's pretty much inevitable that a civilization wishing to survive in the long term (for the sake of argument, ours) must become space-faring. But what then?...

Continue reading at SF Site.

Further links:
Pyr

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

A new book by Neil Gaiman is always welcome but a short fiction collection is perhaps especially so, because it lets us experience a wide range of his work. Certainly, Gaiman’s remarkable talents are showcased to brilliant effect in Fragile Things. There are twenty-seven (or should that be twenty-eight?) pieces of fiction in the volume; let’s examine some of them.

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

Further links:
Neil Gaiman
Hodder Headline

Dusk by Tim Lebbon

A man wearing a red robe enters the village of Trengborne and proceeds to slaughter everyone there -- all except two people, that is: Rafe Baburn, the young boy he's looking for; and Kosar, a former thief who hid when he saw the man approaching the village. Leaving Trengborne, Rafe falls in with the witch Hope and Kosar with his ex-lover, a warrior named A'Meer from the mysterious Shantasi people. The truth about the red-robed man becomes clear...

Read more at SF Site.

Further links:
Tim Lebbon
The world of Noreela
Bantam Spectra

52 Projects by Jeffrey Yamaguchi

Looking through the list of books available for review on Laura Hird’s website, I notice one called 52 Projects: Random Acts of Everyday Creativity. Sounds interesting and different, but is it the right kind of book for me? I normally stick to reviewing fiction, and have never really thought of myself as much of a creative person, so I’m wary... but then again, why not? Nothing ventured, nothing gained...

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

Further links:
52 Projects
Perigee

Triquorum One, ed. Christopher Teague

This book grew organically, beginning life as a single novella, before gaining one and then two companions as Chris Teague received submissions that, he felt, worked well alongside each other. So, in Triquorum One, we have three tales which are all distinctive, yet are linked by the games they play with our notions of reality...

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

Further links:
Allen Ashley
John Grant
Lavie Tidhar
Christopher Teague
Pendragon Press

Rabid Transit: Long Voyages, Great Lies

Rabid Transit is a series of short anthologies published by a group of writers who call themselves the ‘Ratbastards’. It began as an outlet for their own work, then began to feature other writers; and has now reached this, its fifth instalment. The six stories in Long Voyages, Great Lies are loosely connected by themes of travel and escape. Let’s take a closer look at them...

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

Further links:
David J. Schwartz
F. Brett Cox
Heather Shaw
Meghan McCarron
Geoffrey H. Goodwin
Christopher Barzak
Alan DeNiro
Kristin Livdahl
Velocity Press

DH Interviews... Sean Wright

My first interview is now online...

On mapping Jaarfindor:
"The stories that come from Jaarfindor can't be mapped out as a whole, perfect picture. Why? Because I'm in the process of discovering what lurks in the cities and countryside, in the deserts and oceans, meeting new characters in exciting and challenging situations. I'm an artist, and as such I'm obsessed to explore the weird space of my imagination, writing down what I find there, making numerous pen and ink sketches as aide-memoirs. I constantly surprise and worry myself. Every time I venture there I find myself asking a simple yet for me a profound question: are you certain you witnessed that? Much of what I write isn't easy to quantify or label."

Read more at SF Site.

Further links:
Sean Wright

Jaarfindor Remade by Sean Wright

Reality's walls have been breached, and the worlds of Earth and Jaarfindor have become fused. Life in the capital of New Jaarfindor, Queen's Lynn (formerly present-day King's Lynn in Norfolk), presents several challenges: humans rub shoulders with insectiants, and you never know if the person next to you is an android; the mysterious shamutants, living beneath the city, may (it is said) erase your memories if you're not careful; the air is so polluted that decontamination is compulsory whenever you enter a building; and nobody knows what's "Out There" beyond the fog...

Read more at SF Site.

Further links:
Sean Wright
Crowswing

Vellum by Hal Duncan

'A burning map. Every epic... should start with a burning map,' says a character at the start of Hal Duncan's Vellum. Perhaps I'm reading too much into that comment, but it's tempting to see it as a call for the destruction of that most familiar epic-fantasy accessory. Certainly it serves as a warning that this unmapped and perhaps unmappable (in the conventional sense) fantasy does not play by the rules (at least, not by those rules)...

Continue reading at The Zone.

Further links:
Hal Duncan
Macmillan

Gift from the Stars by James Gunn

Aerospace engineer Adrian Mast finds designs for a spaceship in the back of a remaindered book on UFOs -- designs that, to Adrian's trained eye, appear workable. Could the plans be of extra-terrestrial origin? Adrian is determined to find out and persuades the sprightly bookseller Frances Farmstead to help him track down the author of the mysterious book. Naturally enough, they manage to do so, and the plans are genuine...

Read more at SF Site.

Further links:
James Gunn
BenBella Books

The Ephemera by Neil Williamson

The Elastic Press collections are a great way to discover new authors; but they also offer the chance to rediscover authors, to give shape to the styles and concerns of writers you've read maybe once or twice in a magazine, but whose voices have become lost in the din. My reason for wanting to read The Ephemera was Neil Williamson's superb contribution to The Elastic Book of Numbers (which, I thought at the time, was the only story of his that I'd read; though, as it turned out, there had been another). I wanted to find out what the rest of his work was like; I discovered that he has an intriguing and distinctive style that permeates the entire collection without becoming stale or predictable. Like to know more? Step this way...

Continue reading at The Zone.

Two books by Brendan Connell

The Translation of Father Torturo:

The Translation Of Father Torturo is the tale of Xaverio Torturo, seemingly a model of spirituality - pious, learned, and athletic to boot. But he has a dark side: born into a family which has produced (to paraphrase his uncle) its fair share of criminals but no cardinals, Torturo has ambitions towards the latter (and beyond) - and has no qualms about dealing with those who stand in his way. Nor is he above dabbling in the 'supramundane', by stealing saints' relics and having them sewn into his own body - to what end, only he knows...

Dr Black and the Guerrillia:

In the novella Dr Black And The Guerrillia, the good doctor has travelled to San Corrados to study the religious customs of the Yaroa people. Naturally, things don't quite go according to plan, what with Dr Black having all his supplies stolen, becoming caught up in the coils of a snake, and being hauled in front of a firing squad by the local People's Revolutionary Army...

Read more at The Zone.

Shriek: an Afterword by Jeff VanderMeer

This novel marks a return to Ambergris, the setting of Jeff VanderMeer's story collection City Of Saints And Madmen (though you don't need to have read it to understand and enjoy Shriek). One of the novellas in that earlier book took the form of a historical pamphlet, The Hoegbotton Guide To The Early History Of Ambergris by Duncan Shriek. This volume is presented as a biographical afterword to the 'Early History', written by Duncan's sister Janice after he has disappeared - or so she thinks, because Duncan has found her manuscript and made his own annotations...

Continue reading at The Zone.

Who Needs Cleopatra? by Steve Redwood

In the not-too-distant future, the inventor of time travel (known only as 'N') is visited by three beautiful, but dangerous-looking, women from the Time Police. They claim to be historians, wishing to record for posterity the story of N's journeys through time with his (now deceased) travelling companion, Bertie. N isn't fooled by this ("If these women worked in the records department, then I felt sorry for any filing cabinets which happened to get in their way"), but has no option other than to play along for the time being. What follows is the tale of a romp through history, with all the twists and turns you'd expect (and some you wouldn't). However...

Continue reading at The Zone.

Strange Tales, ed. Rosalie Parker

I wouldn't normally dwell on a book's packaging and presentation in a review, but I must make an exception for this, because the hardback edition of Strange Tales has obviously been made with loving care and attention. This volume is a beautifully presented object, right down to the thickness and smell of its pages (not that I make a habit of smelling books, but it's something that I couldn't help noticing). What's more, I gather that all Tartarus Press books are like this (I can't say from personal experience, as I've only set eyes on one other title of theirs before). In any case, its production values certainly lead one to expect great things from the book's stories.

Strange Tales appears to be something of a mission statement for Tartarus Press, comprising as it does 'fourteen new stories that represent, in our view, the very best writing in the fields of supernatural, fantasy and horror fiction; (says Rosalie Parker in her introduction). As the book's title suggests - and as its introduction confirms - it's also an anthology of 'weird fiction'. And, although we can all probably agree broadly on what that means, it can be quite a slippery term - as evidenced by the best two stories on offer here.

'Mr Manpferdit' by Tina Rath takes us to 18th-century London, where Dr Johnson and James Boswell are setting out to meet one Mr Manpferdit, who claims to be a centaur. Now, generally speaking, I don't care for stories where modern-day authors adopt an 'archaic' writing style, as Rath does here; but she tells her tale with great verve and humour, which made the whole thing highly enjoyable. And that's not to mention the marvellous ending... but that would spoil the story for you.

Dale Nelson's 'Shelter Belt' is a very different proposition: a subtle and evocative story about a young boy in small-town America whose mother falls in love. There is barely a hint of anything supernatural here; but be that as it may, 'Shelter Belt' thoroughly deserves its place in the anthology. These two stories are not the only good ones in Strange Tales, but they are the pieces I enjoyed the most; and they illustrate the diversity of the range of stories on offer.

Several of the pieces in Strange Tales tend towards quite a florid use of language, which is one thing that can put me off this kind of fiction: it often seems to get in the way of the storytelling. And these stories span the full range of success: 'The Descent of the Fire' by Mark Valentine and John Howard, in which 'The Connoisseur' investigates mysterious goings-on in a Shropshire village, didn't engage me at all. Quentin S. Crisp's contribution, 'Cousin X', the dark story of young Sasha and her enigmatic cousin, is more effective, but suffers from being overwritten in places. 'The Itchy Skin of Creepy Aplomb' by Rhys Hughes is also somewhat over-done, but its bizarre combination of formal language and slang forces the reader to approach the story on its own terms - and the story succeeds admirably. But I won't attempt to synopsise it; it's a story that truly deserves to be described as 'weird'!

Of course, judgements like these are more personal than most: someone else might like the use of language in a story that I dislike, or vice versa. The same goes for levels of gore in a story. There is plenty in a few of the tales in this book; and, once again, some are more successful than others. 'The Maker of Fine Instruments' by Brendan Connell tells the story of Willi, the pupil of one Charles Martens, who does indeed make the finest instruments - out of animals, that is. Connell makes his story compelling as well as grotesque, which is no mean feat. In contrast, Adam Daly's 'The Self-Eater', in which a man does exactly what that title suggests, is just unpleasant.

So, do the stories in Strange Tales live up the promise of the volume's appearance? As is so often the case with anthologies, some do and others don't. The best stories here are very good indeed; the worst don't have much to recommend them at all. That said, there are many stories in this volume which have something good (or more than good) about them; so, yes: Strange Tales is worth investigating for yourself.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Three Things About Me by Aliya Whiteley

This is Aliya Whiteley’s first novel, after 2004’s superb novella Mean Mode Median, and a rather different proposition from that earlier work. In the little Devon town of Allcombe, seven people begin their training course at a bank’s call centre. They play a game as an icebreaker: each person says three things about her- or himself, but only two are true; the other group members try to guess which is the lie. We then follow the trainees to the end of the course two months later, by which time their situations have changed somewhat…

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

The Bullet Trick by Louise Welsh

When stage magician William Wilson accepts a gig at a policeman’s retirement party in Soho, he doesn’t realize just how much trouble it will cause. The retiree, Detective Inspector James Montgomery, has an envelope in his pocket whose contents are of interest to the club owner, Bill Noon; Montgomery used them to blackmail Bill’s father – and, later, Bill himself. So Bill would very much like to know what’s in that envelope; would William be kind enough to steal it for him?

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

The Last Days of Johnny North by David Swann

‘Publishing at the edges of reality and fantasy,’ says the Elastic Press website; and, indeed, Andrew Hook has shown a healthy disregard for genre boundaries, happily publishing mimetic fiction alongside fantastic tales, usually in the same volume. The Last Days of Johnny North stretches (pun intended) this ethos in a somewhat different direction: only two of the pieces could be considered fantasy (and even those can be rationalized); but what David Swann does is to make the mundane seem strange, even hallucinatory...

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

Scifantastic Vol. 1, Issue 3

Scifantastic is, as its name implies, a magazine of science fiction, fantasy and horror; and the stories in this issue cover a pleasingly broad range (though leaning towards the fantasy/horror end of the spectrum). And there are plenty of them: eleven stories in the magazine’s thirty pages, plus a smattering of non-fiction. But does the quality match the quantity?

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

Parenthesis, ed. Ra Page

This is the second anthology from Comma Press to showcase authors with ‘no major publication behind them’ (the first was 2005’s Bracket). Unlike the previous volume, Parenthesis is (according the press release) intended to be an anthology of ‘experimental writing’. Now, I must be honest and admit that those are two words that usually send a shiver down my spine, as I imagine them to describe something horribly pretentious and incomprehensible. Doubtless this is unfair of me, and I certainly needn’t have worried about it with Parenthesis, which is a very welcoming anthology – though that doesn’t make it an easy ride...

Continue reading at Laura Hird's New Review.

X and Y and Other Like Stories by Heidi Cyr

"Is it love, or just another psychotic episode?" This question is posed on the back cover of this enigmatic little book, and it expresses the main theme of Heidi Cyr's first collection; you may find yourself asking it as you read many of the stories...

Continue reading at SF Site.

Rabid Transit: Menagerie

This book is the fourth in the Rabid Transit series of anthologies. I'd not encountered the other three, so I wasn't sure what to expect; but the cover blurb promised that the stories in Menagerie "show different ways to break out of the conventions of the shopworn story." I was interested to see what the authors had come up with.

Continue reading at SF Site.

Further links:
Vandana Singh
Matthew Cheney
Dean Francis Alfar
Rudi Dornemann
Christopher Barzak
Alan DeNiro
Kristin Livdahl
Velocity Press

Singer in the Snow by Louise Marley

The frozen world of Nevya experiences summer but once every five years, with the coming of a second sun known as the Visitor. The Nevyans are therefore dependent on quiru, the magical fields of light and heat generated by Singers. Mreen has just qualified as a Cantrix, and will shortly travel to the House of Tarus, where she will provide quiru for the inhabitants. Her quiru are exceptionally strong, such that a nimbus of light surrounds her constantly; but she is mute, though able to communicate telepathically (as can all Singers) and through sign language. A student Singer named Emle is assigned to go with Mreen and act as her interpreter for a time, before returning to Conservatory. Emle is highly talented, but frustrated that she cannot channel her Gift to produce quiru. Meanwhile, at Tarus, young stable hand Luke has his own problems, namely his stepfather, Axl. The hrussmaster is abusive towards Luke's mother Erlys, but she refuses to stand up to him. Luke fears for his sister Gwin -- and Gwin harbours a secret that could make those fears well-founded...

Continue reading at SF Site.

Further links:
Louise Marley
Marley's blog
Viking

Twilight of the Past: A Rift in Time by Michael Parziale

Our protagonist is one Newl Rift, who is (as far as I can tell) the leader of Guntra De, a nation at war with neighbouring Spero. Although, physically, he appears to be in his thirties, he is actually a hundred years old; and he can't remember his life before Guntra De. He also wonders what this war is really all about. Whilst travelling to the country's capital, Templis, he is set upon by a mysterious individual calling himself Lone Hybrick, who suggests that Newl might want to visit distant Melis. Newl follows this advice, accompanied by the rulers of Saetraz, Amate and Mishell Luminata (whom he doesn't entirely trust). Unfortunately for Newl, though, he is being expected...


Read more at SF Site.

Further links:
Twilight of the Past
Michael Parziale
Nightengale Press

Genetopia by Keith Brooke

In the distant future, the world is saturated in "changing vectors," bio- and nano-technological agents that alter those who come into contact with them in unpredictable ways. The clans of "True" humanity guard the purity of their genes jealously: babies showing signs of being affected are left out to die from exposure, and the purebreds want nothing to do with "Lost" humans. But there's a thriving slave trade in "mutts," individuals so drastically transformed that they are regarded as animals; though, having said that, any hint of difference can lead to someone being branded a mutt, as our protagonist discovers...


Continue reading at SF Site.

Further links:
Keith Brooke
Pyr

Midnight Street issue 6

The strap-line of Midnight Street magazine is 'Journeys into Darkness', and the stories Trevor Denyer has assembled in this issue each live up to that description, but each in satisfyingly different ways...

Continue reading at The Zone.

Further links:
Tony Richards
Jerry Oltion
Michael Lohr
Midnight Street

The Cunning Blood by Jeff Duntemann

Peter Novilio is in trouble. Having fallen foul of 1Earth's anti-violence laws, his sentence is transportation to the prison planet Hell -- unless, that is, he accepts a mission from the Governor General of America, Sophia Gorganis. Hell's technological development was supposedly stalled two hundred years earlier, when Earth placed a nano-mechanism in the planet's atmosphere that would destroy all electrical conductors -- but now it seems that something strange is occurring on Hell...

Continue reading at SF Site.

Further links:
Jeff Duntemann
ISFiC Press

New reviews in the New Review...

Three reviews in the latest update to Laura Hird's website:

Moondust by Cleveland W. Gibson

Before I began properly to read Cleve Gibson’s story collection, Moondust, I glanced at the book’s first sentences: ‘“Incurably insane, me? Never, Doctor Leo Harper! I was clever enough to kill my best friend and get away with it.”’ A fine example of an arresting opening, I thought; if the rest of the book lived up to that standard, I was in for a treat.

Alas – and it’s no fun having to write this – I was sorely disappointed..

Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon

When I was younger, I enjoyed dipping into books of ‘strange but true’ stories. It never crossed my mind at the time to question whether the stories actually were true, but it didn’t really matter; what was important was a reminder that remarkable things do happen – those moments when life takes an unexpected twist that makes you laugh, or cry, or rage, or wonder. J. Robert Lennon’s Pieces for the Left Hand is almost a literary version of one of those books: a collection of one hundred very short stories (three pages long at most) that read as though they are told by a friend of a friend...

Mean Mode Median by Aliya Whiteley

This is the story of Edward and Anna St Clare, two siblings who have the ability to influence others with their words (whether through preternatural charisma or psychic powers is unclear). Edward works for his father James’s insurance firm; but not for long, because he keeps persuading customers they don’t really need insurance. John Dart also works for James, and lusts after Anna, a researcher for a TV quiz show. Anna learns from Edward that her father has been using her to secure John’s loyalty, so James can pass on the business to him. Angry, she decides to take revenge on them all – but, meticulous planner though she is, even Anna can’t predict the consequences…

Further links:
J. Robert Lennon
Aliya Whiteley
LBF Books
Hadrosaur
Granta
bluechrome

Wicked or What? by Sean Wright

Our protagonist is Jamey O'Rooke, the fat kid at school, who was forever being bullied until a couple of strangers mistakenly handed him a mysterious object (whose nature is never revealed) that was intended for one of his tormentors. Jamey's best friend is Layla, who seems to be on his side but may have her own agenda. And, somewhere else entirely, an individual known as the Third travels across a strange landscape to join them, before it's too late...

Read more at SF Site.

Further links:
Sean Wright
Crowswing

Bisson and Yolen

I have two reviews in the mid-February issue of SF Site.

Numbers Don't Lie by Terry Bisson:

In Numbers Don't Lie, Terry Bisson offers three tall tales underpinned by some suitably weird physics (which I assume is genuine, though it hardly matters). Irving, our narrator, has no head for science, so he can't understand how the Moon could be inside a mechanic's shed when it's clearly still in the sky; or why a previously deteriorating car seat cover is now improving by the day; or what's making planes and trains arrive on time all of a sudden. Luckily, his friend Wilson Wu is (amongst many other things) a mathematical genius, and he knows what's going on -- and he has the equations to back his ideas up...

The Pit Dragon Chronicles by Jane Yolen:

In this box set, Jane Yolen takes us to the desert world of Austar IV. Once a penal colony, the planet's economy is now based around its native dragons, whom the human settlers breed to battle each other in Pits. There is a two-tier social structure of masters and "bonders," the latter wearing bags which they must fill with money before they can buy freedom and become masters themselves. Our protagonist is Jakkin Stewart, a young bonder at the nursery of Master Sarkkhan (all descendants of Austar's original convict population have a double-K in their names), who plans to steal a dragon and train it himself...

Further links:
Terry Bisson
Jane Yolen
Tachyon Publications
Harcourt

The Elastic Book of Numbers, ed. Allen Ashley

Here we have the second anthology from Elastic Press, following on from 2004's The Alsiso Project. Like its predecessor, The Elastic Book of Numbers is based around a single broad theme; as its title suggests, all the stories in the volume are connected to numbers in some way. The resulting tales are highly varied, as I hope to illustrate...

Continue reading at SF Site.

Further links:
Neil Williamson
Charles Lambert
Jeff Gardiner
John Lucas
Allen Ashley
Elastic Press

Review Index

Abyss & Apex
Issue 26, Second Quarter 2008

Ashley, Allen
The Elastic Book of Numbers (ed.)
Somnambulists
Urban Fantastic

Birtolo, Dylan
The Shadow Chaser

Bisson, Terry
Numbers Don't Lie

Bott, Claire
Time Hunter: The Clockwork Woman

Brooke, Keith
Genetopia

Brust, Steven
The Gypsy (with Megan Lindholm)

Burr, James
Ugly Stories for Beautiful People

Burton, David C.
Hell Cop

Campbell, Ramsey
The Grin of the Dark

ChiZine
Issue 37: July-Sept 2008

Cobley, Michael
Iron Mosaic

Connell, Brendan
Dr Black and the Guerrillia
The Translation of Father Torturo

Copithorne, Dana
The Steam Magnate

Couzens, Gary
Deep Ten (ed. with Sara-Jayne Townsend)
Extended Play: The Elastic Book of Music (ed.)

Coward, Mat
So Far, So Near

Cryptopolis
Tales from the Secret City

Cyr, Heidi
X and Y and Other Like Stories

De Pierres, Marianne
Nylon Angel

Diet Soap
Issue 2: Sex and Gender

Duncan, Hal
Vellum

Duntemann, Jeff
The Cunning Blood

Electric Velocipede
Issue 10

Faust, Minister
The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad

Films
In Search of a Midnight Kiss

Fintushel, Eliot
Breakfast with the Ones You Love

Frost, Gregory
Attack of the Jazz Giants and Other Stories

Gaiman, Neil
Fragile Things

Gibson, Cleveland W.
Moondust

Gibson, Gary
Angel Stations

Grant, John
New Writings in the Fantastic

Green, Jonathan
Unnatural History

Green, Mitis
The Ardly Effect

GUD Magazine
Issue 1: Autumn 2007

Gunn, James
Gift from the Stars

Gurwitch, Annabelle
Fired! Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized and Dismissed

Hall, Steven
The Raw Shark Texts

Hemingway, Amanda
The Greenstone Grail

Hendrix, Howard V.
The Labyrinth Key

Herter, David
On the Overgrown Path

Hook, Andrew
The Alsiso Project (ed.)
Moon Beaver

Huff, Tanya
Blood Price
Stealing Magic

Interzone
Issue 217: August 2008
Issue 218: October 2008

Kaye, Marvin
The Dragon Quintet (ed.)

Jupiter
Issue XIV: Thebe

Lebbon, Tim
Dawn
Dusk

Lee, Tony
Premonitions: Causes for Alarm (ed.)

Lennon, J. Robert
Pieces for the Left Hand

Lindholm, Megan
The Gypsy (with Steven Brust)

Lone Star Stories
Issue 28, August 2008

McBean, Brett
The Last Motel

McCarthy, Tom
Remainder

MacCauley, Kay
The Man Who Was Loved

Malcolm, Claire
Magnetic North: New Work from North East Writers (ed.)

Mann, George
The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction (ed.)
Time Hunter: The Severed Man

Marley, Louise
Singer in the Snow

Midnight Street
Issue 6 (Winter 2005/6)

Moore, Christopher
A Dirty Job

Morden, Simon
Brilliant Things

Nazarian, Vera
The Clock King and the Queen of the Hourglass
The Duke in His Castle

Nemonymous
Cone Zero

Newell, Paul J.
The Turning

Nevill, Adam L.G.
Banquet for the Damned

Nicholls, Stan
Orcs: The Omnibus Edition

Page, Ra
Parenthesis (ed.)

Parker, Rosalie
Strange Tales (ed.)

Parziale, Michael
Twilight of the Past: A Rift in Time

Pettersson, Vicki
The Scent of Shadows

Postscripts
Issue 14: Spring 2008

Rabid Transit
Long Voyages, Great Lies
Menagerie

Ramsden, Chris Lee
Small Voices, Big Confessions (ed.)

Redwood, Steve
The Heisenberg Mutation and Other Transfigurations
Who Needs Cleopatra?

Rhodes, Dan
Gold

Robinson, Neil
Oliphan Oracus

St. Clair, Jennifer
The Secret of Redemption

Scifantastic
Vol. 1, Issue 3

Secombe, Andy
The Last House in the Galaxy

Shunn, William
An Alternate History of the 21st Century

Sinha, Indra
Animal's People

Snow Patrol
Final Straw considered by DH

Something Wicked
Issue 6, Summer 2008

Svendsen, Hanne Marie
Under the Sun

Swann, David
The Last Days of Johnny North

Swartz, Mark
H2O

Teague, Christopher
Triquorum One (ed.)

Tevis, Walter
Mockingbird

Townsend, Sara-Jayne
Deep Ten (ed. with Gary Couzens)

VanderMeer, Jeff
Shriek: an Afterword

Welch, Patrick
Cynnador

Welsh, Louise
The Bullet Trick

Whiteley, Aliya
Light Reading
Mean Mode Median
Three Things About Me

Williams, Conrad
The Unblemished

Williamson, Neil
The Ephemera

Wooding, Chris
The Fade

Wright, Sean
Jaarfindor Remade
The Twisted Root of Jaarfindor
Wicked or What?
Interview with Sean Wright

Wright, T.M.
I am the Bird

Yamaguchi, Jeffrey
52 Projects: Random Acts of Everyday Creativity

Yolen, Jane
The Pit Dragon Chronicles

Zebrowski, George
Macrolife

Blood Price by Tanya Huff

I’ll be honest with you: sometimes it’s hard to keep a sense of perspective. These days, I have an in-built mistrust of epic fantasy, even though I know that, when written with care and skill, it can be just as good as any other kind of fiction. Likewise, it’s essential to have strong female protagonists; but that doesn’t stop me wondering whether one will tip over the edge and become a clichéd Feisty Series Heroine. And it’s the same with vampire stories, or – and this makes me even more apprehensive – stories in which strong female protagonists get involved with vampires.

Which brings me to Blood Price. It was first published in 1991. and so actually predates most of the stuff we might instinctively compare it to. At first glance, though, it still looks like more of the same old same-old: Vicki Nelson, PI, hears a scream in the subway but is too late to stop a man being brutally slain by something. Then she’s on the case, trying to bring an end to a chain of similar murders across Toronto – and she doesn’t mind treading on the toes of her former police colleagues. Meanwhile, also investigating the killings is one Henry Fitzroy, the vampirized bastard son of Henry VIII. Needless to say, his and Vicki’s paths cross in due course…

So far, so ordinary. But it would be unfair to describe Tanya Huff’s novel that way, because there’s more to it than that. For a start, the protagonists are not the ultra-glamorous individuals you might expect. Yes, Henry has the typical mystique of a vampire, but he also pays the rent by writing trashy romance novels. And Vicki had to leave the force because of her failing eyesight (one complaint: Vicki pushes her glasses up her nose seemingly every few pages, and it is highly irritating). She is also, unusually, a good deal taller than Henry. These are minor points, but they make Blood Price stand out from its competitors.

One other refreshing thing that Huff does is to use multiple third-person viewpoints, as opposed to the single first-person narrative that we find in most tales of Feisty Series Heroines. This technique does two main things: it takes the weight of the telling off the character of Vicki, and allows Henry to become a protagonist in his own right. And the characters themselves are nicely drawn: even Vicki’s bizarre quasi-relationship with Mike Celucci, a former colleague whom she can’t stand, comes across as believable in context. Only Norman Birdwell, the nerdy summoner of the evil spirit doing the killing (and no, that’s not a spoiler), comes across as a stereotype.

Huff’s storytelling is also appropriately brisk, peppered here and there with a few striking images, and a nice line in dry humour: ‘Even in an age of science, the dead were considered bad neighbors. Henry couldn’t understand why; the dead never played Twisted Sister at 130 decibels at three in the morning.’ It’s not going to set the world alight, but it does its job very well.

In fact, that’s Blood Price in a nutshell. It’s not a radical reworking of anything; it’s not going to change anyone’s perceptions; but it is a great supernatural yarn. There are four more books in this series, and if they’re all like this, it will be a series worth reading.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

SF Site reviews

Here are links to all my reviews which have appeared on SF Site to date:

The Shadow Chaser by Dylan Birtolo

Attack of the Jazz Giants and Other Stories by Gregory Frost

Time Hunter: The Severed Man by George Mann

The Secret of Redemption by Jennifer St. Clair

Further links:
Dylan Birtolo
Gregory Frost
Jennifer St. Clair
Inkwater Press
Golden Gryphon Press
Telos

The Zone reviews

Here are links to all my reviews which have appeared on The Zone to date:

The Gypsy by Steven Brust and Megan Lindholm

The Ardly Effect by Mitis Green

The Dragon Qunitet, ed. Marvin Kaye

The Last Motel by Brett McBean

The Twisted Root of Jaarfindor by Sean Wright


Further links:
Steven Brust
Megan Lindholm
Orson Scott Card
Elizabeth Moon
Tanith Lee
Mercedes Lackey
Michael Swanwick
Marvin Kaye
Brett McBean
Sean Wright
Tor /Orb
Brambling Books
Biting Dog Press
Crowswing

The Last House in the Galaxy by Andy Secombe

Major Matt Fripp is on a mission to retrieve the Helian Cartogram, an ancient map of the universe. This he does, but the dastardly Gologons are on his tail, so he flees – accidentally travelling through a wormhole to the gardens of Hambledon Hall in rural Devon.

It's the perfect place (thinks Fripp's companion, General Glaak Raffin of the rat-like Argusians) for the peoples of the United Planets Federation to meet and plan to strike back against the Gologons. They just have to hide their existence from the hall's owners. And Fripp has to go back through the wormhole to find the Cartogram, which he lost on the way to Earth; but not without a quick detour to rescue his beloved Mariella from the clutches of Gulgus Filch, leader of the Gologons...

In these days when there seem to be so many unfunny genre comedies about, it is such a pleasure to read one by an author who knows what he's doing. Andy Secombe doesn't waste time on redundant exercises like trying to milk genre clichés for laughs; nor does he neglect to give us a good story. In fact, the story is one of the great strengths of The Last House in the Galaxy. This is one of those genre comedies where the jokes don't come thick and fast, but the tale has room to breathe. In particular, there are some neat action set-pieces, which is most unusual in comic SF and fantasy.

But don't let this make you think that Secombe has forgotten to put some humour in his book. There are some smart one-liners ('Their monitoring equipment is a lot less sophisticated than ours, which means it works.'), and some nice comic ideas. However, the jokes don't always work (after Fripp recovers from an anaesthetic, he has a habit of getting words wrong, a running gag which I found quite tedious), and there are no great belly-laughs to be had.

That's not the only problem with the novel. The characters sometimes seem interchangeable, and the flippant tone can mask serious issues: Fripp is afraid to see someone kill in 'a cold, calculated fashion' towards the end of the book; but thinks nothing of lopping off some heads a hundred pages earlier. Yet Secombe makes nothing of this. Still, The Last House in the Galaxy is a superior space romp and, if it never makes your ribs ache, it does keep you reading to the very end, raising chuckles all the while. I suspect that this is not the last we'll see of these characters, and their return would be welcome. Start reading about them now.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Further links:

Andy Secombe

Tor UK

Oliphan Oracus by Neil Robinson

In 1995, Kate Wallis, a young scientist working for a pharmaceutical company, is accidentally exposed to an experimental longevity virus which results in her falling into a coma for 262 years. On waking, she learns from a computer in the military hospital in which she has been kept that the Western world was overcome by a plague of mental illness in the early 21st century. Now, in 2257, the forest has taken over outside and a simpler form of human society prevails. Kate falls in with the inhabitants of a small settlement named Streamside; most notably Keef, who is a 'television', able to create visions in the minds of other people; visions sent (so the Streamsiders believe) by Oliphan Oracus, who may be a god, of sorts.

What to make of Neil Robinson's début novel? On the one hand, we have a superbly depicted future society: with a few choice words, the author creates a convincingly alien culture from the ashes of our own. This comes through especially in the Streamsiders' speech, with its unusual abbreviations ('pologies' for 'sorry', or 'comp' for ‘comprehend') and striking transformations of twentieth-century terms (at one point, Keef says of Kate, 'She swallowed the Big Mushroom Cloud and she's been in Televisual Heaven for two hundred and sixty-two years'). On the other hand, we have to grapple with imagery like this: 'she found it as irritating and exhausting as attempting to tear open a litre carton of life-long orange juice.' Sometimes it feels as though one is reading two different books.

Oliphan Oracus is a very self-conscious novel: as narrator, Robinson often refers to what happens in 'science fiction stories' – for example, the hero travels to the future and proceeds to show the poor ignorant inhabitants how superior his (or her) time is. The implication is, of course, that this sort of thing is not going to happen in Oliphan Oracus, and indeed it doesn't; all Kate's efforts to introduce twentieth-century technology to Streamside fail. One of the novel's main themes is how Kate struggles to adapt to her new environment and lifestyle, and comes to accept that 'modern' technology is not appropriate for the society in which she now finds herself.

There are some problems here, though. For one thing, it is hard to believe that Kate would take almost the entire book to realize something the reader understood early on (perhaps even after reading the blurb on the dustjacket). Another problem is that Robinson's contention about 'science fiction stories' is flawed: there are a good number of time travel stories whose protagonists reject their own time (Jack Finney's Time and Again springs to mind). Factor in all stories which involve encounters with another culture (which is what Oliphan Oracus is at heart), and you find plenty more examples which undermine the idea that Robinson's novel is a radical departure.

Still, as I noted earlier, the life and society of the Streamsiders is vividly depicted; one gets the feeling that Robinson has a great love and respect for nature. Unfortunately – indeed, frustratingly – having created this society, he doesn't do much with it. There is not much human drama in the book, until near the end; and what there is feels awkwardly tacked on. Furthermore, the Streamsiders are not as sharply differentiated as they really need to be; too often, it's hard to see them as distinct personalities. The business of reading it becomes a great chore.

In the second chapter, Robinson writes: 'In the spring of 1995 Kate could never have guessed that she would soon find herself living the plot of a science fiction soap opera.' And a soap opera is what this book resembles: not only in its focus on relationships and its episodic nature, but most especially in its ending: there's no true sense of closure: the novel ends 'out of frame'. Now, this can be a very effective technique, if it's handled correctly, as characters set out for wider horizons that the reader only glimpses. But Oliphan Oracus just stops abruptly: it's a deeply frustrating and unsatisfying denouement, and a late guessing-game over the narrator's identity fails to make up for that frustration.

So, what we have in Oliphan Oracus is a well-realized future in need of the right vehicle to do it justice. Robinson's ideas would probably work better as a novella or a series of short stories; but as a novel, they are spread too thinly. It's a great disappointment.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Further links:
Immanion Press

The Heisenberg Mutation and Other Transfigurations by Steve Redwood

Now, I'd heard of Steve Redwood – I knew he had one novel already published, Fisher of Devils – but I hadn't read anything by him before I picked up The Heisenberg Mutation. Nor was I familiar with the publisher of this chapbook, D-Press; so I had no idea what to expect of the four stories in the pamphlet. What I got was a diverse bunch of tales with, as the title suggests, change (in all its forms) as a common theme.

The collection gets off to a fine start with 'Going Back', in which a young man named Simon Brent is goaded into raping Jenny Smith, a girl he's attracted to, on a drunken night out. In the aftermath, Jenny stumbles into the path of an oncoming car, and is run over. Wracked with guilt, Simon devotes his life to funding research into time travel, in the hope that one day he will be able to return to the past and change things. But, when he gets his chance, will he use it wisely?

The story is told in patchwork fashion, flitting back and forth between times and narrators, leaving the reader thoroughly disorientated, in a way that only great fantastic fiction can. Yet Redwood controls his tale superbly; if we need to read 'Going Back' more than once to understand it, that's because of our own inattentiveness the first time. Such a feat of storytelling would be remarkable enough on its own; but add to that Redwood's vivid imagery and skilful depiction of emotion, and you have something very special indeed.

After such a start, you wonder how the author is going to keep up the momentum. Yet, keep it up he does, with 'Off the Shelf', set in a future (or perhaps sideways) world where men borrow women from a Library staffed by the alien Blueskins. John William Smith is due to return Maria 8, who is in desperate need of a Service; but her memory would be erased in the process, and John doesn't want that to happen, since he has become attached to Maria. Trouble is, she has been reserved – by no one less than the Prime, who rules the city. So there is nothing for it but to run away...

This story asks questions about love and humanity, and is certain to leave you with plenty to think about. But... just when you think you have a handle on the story, Redwood pulls the rug from under your feet. It's a bold move but, as with the first story's unusual structure, the author is skilled enough to pull it off. Also like 'Going Back', this is a welcome reminder that science fiction and fantasy enable us to address concerns and tell stories in ways that mimetic fiction does not.

I mention this because it came to mind when I was reading the third story, 'The Solaris Effect'. Here, we meet Mike, who has convinced Jenny to come back to his flat on the pretext of watching the original film version of Solaris. In fact, Mike has been talked into a bet, that he can't get Jenny into bed before the night is out. The story chronicles their relationship until the next morning. All the elements I had come to expect of Redwood were present: the dialogue is sharp, the imagery evocative, the characters rounded; but I still came away feeling disappointed. It felt almost as though Redwood was relying on the dialogue to make up for a dearth of something else, even though there was nothing that seemed particularly to be lacking. With hindsight, the reason becomes clear: the previous two stories were so extraordinary that 'The Solaris Effect' felt lesser simply because there is nothing in it to give that sense of dislocation. Rest assured that, in fact, it is not lesser at all.

The final story in the book is, unfortunately, also the weakest. 'The Heisenberg Mutation' is the tall tale of the elderly – and fabulously rich – Charles Algernon Soames, whose fortune is so sought after by other people that he turns into his own Last Will and Testament. It's a marked change of pace from the previous stories, and one that is not entirely successful. The main problem is that it reads too much like sub-par Robert Rankin. This is perhaps a little unfair on Redwood, since it must be extremely difficult to write a story of this type and not sound like Rankin; but I'm afraid I didn't find it funny enough. Still, judgements on humorous fiction are always going to be highly subjective, and there are far worse authors to sound like than Robert Rankin. And, with the other riches on offer here, I think we can let this one go.

So, out of the four stories in The Heisenberg Mutation, two number among the best short fiction I have read in quite some time, one suffers only in comparison with those two, and one is not so good. A 75% success rate is good for any short story collection, even more so when the good stories are of such a high calibre as these are. I will resist the temptation to make a cheap pun about this book changing your life; but it is a very good read, and you should hunt down a copy right away.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Further links:

D-Press

Orcs: The Omnibus Edition by Stan Nicholls

This volume collects together the three parts of Stan Nicholls' Orcs: First Blood trilogy - Bodyguard of Lightning, Legion of Thunder and Warriors of the Tempest - along with an associated short story, 'The Taking'. It is, put simply, a fantasy quest with the orcs as protagonists ('heroes' doesn't quite seem an appropriate word). Though it isn't quite as simple as that... but I'm getting ahead of myself.

We follow the fortunes of the Wolverines, a thirty-strong band of (mostly) orcs in the service of the half-human, half-nyadd Queen Jennesta. The main personalities in the band are its commanding officers: Captain Stryke; his two sergeants, Haskeer and the dwarf Jup, who are constantly at loggerheads; and below them, two corporals: the elderly healer Alfray, and Coila, the band's only female member. They, along with the other 'elder races' (almost every standard fantasy race you can think of), inhabit the land of Maras-Dantia, whose equilibrium has been disrupted by the insurgent humans. Human activity has been 'eating the magic' of the land, changing its climate and causing glaciers to advance south.

The main trilogy opens in the thick of action, with a raid by the Wolverines on the human settlement of Homefield, where they have been sent by Jennesta to retrieve a message cylinder. After successfully doing so, the cylinder is stolen by kobolds; rather than face Jennesta's wrath, the Wolverines decide to chase after the thieves. They recover the cylinder, and rescue a gremlin names Mobbs, who reveals that it contains an 'instrumentality', one of five such artefacts which, when brought together, may somehow release the elder races from human dominion. By now, Jennesta has ordered search parties to be sent out to look for the band; and the Wolverines decide to hunt for more of the instrumentalities, with a view to perhaps using them to barter with Jennesta, or trying to tap into the objects' power in some way. In due course, Jennesta declares the band outlaws, charging her orc army, her dragon riders, and three human bounty hunters, to find them. And that's as far as I am prepared to synopsise.

The Orcs trilogy is an odd mixture of the subversive and the clichéd. Subversive, of course, because we're rooting for the characters who would be considered 'bad guys' in the standard generic fantasy milieu. And Nicholls gives a pleasingly complex portrayal of 'race' in his work: it certainly isn't a straightforward case of 'orcs good, humans bad'; and even the Wolverines can be bloodthirsty (though, since they have known nothing but war, is that so surprising?). Having said that, the nature of the quest Nicholls gives the Wolverines is highly traditional, perhaps even more so than most: the instrumentalities are standard-issue 'plot coupons' for the characters to collect; and the fact that the orcs discover the location of each instrumentality through hunches and chance encounters serves to highlight the mechanical nature of the plot.

And yet, far from being a weakness, all the clichés become something of a strength. They make the quest seem more like the plot of a fantasy game rather than a novel, which is entirely appropriate: arguably, the modern figure of the orc (and the many other 'elder races' of fantasy) owes at least as much to the gaming industry as it does to Tolkien. And it is only by winning the game (which they do, though not in the way you might expect) that the orcs can break free of its rules. Furthermore, Nicholls' main point, about fantasy's 'racial' stereotypes, is rendered all the more forcefully by the generic storyline. Anything other than a tradional quest would be out of place.

Amid all this talk about the subtext of Nicholls' trilogy, we should not overlook the fact that it's also a cracking fantasy adventure. The author's action sequences are superb, and the story moves along at a nicely brisk pace (it's nice to see that there are still some fantasy trilogies being written which have relatively short volumes!). Nicholls' characterization is also generally good: Stryke is a well-drawn reluctant champion, and the constant sparring of Haskeer and Jup is particularly entertaining. That said, some characters do remain caricatures: Jennesta, for example, never really rises above the level of a stock evil sorceress, which is a disappointment when many of the other characters are more rounded. Overall, though, the trilogy is well conceived and skilfully written.

'The Taking' is a short story that prequels the main trilogy, beginning as Coilla joins the Wolverines. The story both gains and loses from being uprooted from its original context and placed alongside its parent series. It loses because much of the first half of the story, which introduces the characters and the world, is made redundant; but it gains because we understand the significance of the relationships established here (for instance, we know how important Coilla will become to the Wolverines). The story itself, in which the band attempt to recover a stolen idol, is reasonably entertaining, but suffers inevitably from comparison to the main trilogy. It seems to have been included for the sake of completeness more than anything.

It's very pleasing to see all these stories together in one volume (though you may prefer not to read them all at once). The main trilogy especially is well worth reading, far more entertaining than many other trilogies, and at only a fraction of the length. It's a worthy addition to any fantasy fan's reading list.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Further links:
Stan Nicholls
Orion / Gollancz

Brilliant Things by Simon Morden

It's a risky move to name a collection something that suggests the stories within are great, because it also leaves the way open for obvious jibes if someone disagrees. Yet the responsible reviewer should resist such jibes. So I don't really want to say that the stories in Simon Morden's book are not 'brilliant things' but... well, frankly, they're not.

I was really looking forward to reading this. The jacket and accompanying press release are full of praise for Morden's work; and surely, I thought, as editor of Focus, the BSFA's fiction magazine, Morden should know a thing or two about what makes good science fiction. But there's no denying that reading Brilliant Things was a hard slog.

The main problem is Morden's use of language: these stories are full of cumbersome imagery and awkward turns of phrase. A typical example comes from 'Empty Head': 'Three computers, separate but together, white gloss cases diffusing the hot yellow light slanting through the open slats of the blinds.' Or, from the book's title story, set in the First World War: 'Stones and soil clattered out in a stinking cloud that bloomed and faded like a poppy.' This sort of thing highly distracting, and disrupts the reading experience.

It's a shame, too, because Morden's ideas are often good in principle, just not so good in practice. For example, 'A Forgotten Corner of Hell' is set in a wounded WW1 veteran's country house, where people start freezing to death after a relative of the owner comes to stay. It turns out that the relative has built a machine granting access to a 'forgotten corner of hell', and a demon is passing through the machine and killing people in this world. It's an interesting idea, but the story is again let down by the writing, both the specific ('Every panicked step he took covered a pace's worth of floor...') and the general; there's something artificial about the whole telling of the story.

The tales in Brilliant Things cover a lot of ground in terms of genre and setting, and some of them do hit the mark. 'Terra Incognita' is an atmospheric tale of 18th-century seafarers that rattles along nicely and raises a smile at the end. 'Whitebone Street' is mostly effective for its deadpan delivery of surprises, so I had better not say any more about it. 'The Northman's Shroud' is another interesting piece, in which some plainsfolk are cursed by the titular Northman, and permanent dusk subsequently descends. Again, I risk spoiling the story for you if I reveal any more.

In summary, then, Brilliant Things contains a few good stories, but there are also some of a considerably lower standard; and, sadly, the good stuff is in the minority. It's not a book I can recommend - and I say that with no small amount of disappointment.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Further links:
Simon Morden
Subway

Moon Beaver by Andrew Hook

Andrew Hook's first novel tells the story of Benny Henderson, who works for the Company, a giant concern which has practically taken over Norwich. Benny is happily in love with his fellow Company employee Louise – that is, until the dazzling Moon Beaver comes into his life.

The Company promotes conformity, and the security that comes with it; but Moon lives by a different philosophy: that of doing just what you want, a philosophy which has made her immortal (or so she claims). She whisks Benny away on an international odyssey to experience living, while Louise is left behind to puzzle over just who Moon Beaver really is.

And elsewhere, we meet Lou, an egg farmer who is one of Moon's previous acquaintances (companions? lovers?), and Christian and Alice, maker and reluctant star of pornographic films, who have their own encounters with the Company, and whose lives change as a result.

Moon Beaver is about the conflict between the desires of the self and the constraints of society, a conflict that we all experience at times. Welcomingly, Hook offers no easy answers: Moon's colourful individualism might seem infinitely preferable to the Company's drab conformity, but Benny recognizes that her self-gratifying lifestyle is ultimately hollow and unsustainable. The best answer (as so often) is to strike a balance between the two as well as you can.

The only grumble I have about Hook's presentation of this conflict is that the contrast between the Company and Moon isn't perhaps drawn as sharply as it ought to be. We tend to hear about the Company's oppressiveness rather than experience it first-hand; as a result, the Company tends to fade into the background instead of being a reality of the novel. Similarly, Moon Beaver herself doesn't leap off the page as much as her role suggests that she should. All this may, of course, be deliberate; but it does lessen the impact of the book a little.

But that should not detract from what is a fine debut novel. Andrew Hook is known for his short stories, but proves to be adept at the longer form. He does sometimes crack self-referential jokes (about this being a novel) that some readers may find annoying; but, on the whole, his narration is very good-humoured and likeable, with some arresting turns of phrase.

Moon Beaver is a thoroughly enjoyable ride; be sure to book your place on it.

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Further links:
Andrew Hook
Emperor's New Clothes Press

Deep Ten, ed. Gary Couzens and Sara-Jayne Townsend

The T Party are celebrating ten years of their existence, and have published this volume to mark the occasion. Good for them, you might be thinking, but who are they, and why should we care? Well, the T Party is a writers' group based in south-east England, concentrating primarily on the fantastic genres (perhaps the only one in the region to do so, according to the introduction). And we should care because they write a mean story - and there are quite a few amongst the ten in this multi-genre anthology.

Roseanne Rabinowitz contributes one of Deep Ten's finest pieces, 'Be Positive, Be Very Positive'. At the age of eight, Hannah was sexually abused for the first time. She discovered that she could enter the mind of her rapist and experience his feelings during the assault. We now find Hannah following her ex-boyfriend, Steve, and using her ability to participate vicariously in both sides of his new sexual relationship. Rabinowitz draws her protagonist skilfully: Hannah's pain and obsession come across strongly, giving the story its great power.

'Ask ASE' by Martin Owton is another winner. ASE, or 'All-Seeing Eye', is a computer system that can run a household, keep an eye on the kids, and appear to its users as a holographic avatar. Mike has installed an unusual combination of ASE modules, such that his system begins to act rather strangely after his son, Thomas, dies after being run over. ASE appears to Mike as both his son and his partner Jane, who has left him. Like Rabinowitz, Owton delivers a rewarding character study that uses its fantastic elements to great effect.

David Gullen's 'The BDM' is about the legendary director Leopold Seraphim Mazurski and his ambition to create the ultimate cinematic experience: the Billion Dollar Movie. Mazurski's desire for his moviw to be as realistic as possible involves cosmetic surgery to turn his leading lady into a real Venusian amazon; filming a war between two groups of mercenaries hired solely for that purpose; and even creating life, in the shape of the alien god Y'golonac. Gullen tells his story with great skill: no matter how absurd events become, there's always a nagging feeling in the back of one's mind that, one day, something like this might actually happen...

Not all of the stories in Deep Ten are successful but, generally speaking, it would be unfair to describe any of them as bad; rather, they just don't work as well as they might do. Perhaps the clearest example of this is 'Closer to God' by Jon Jones, in which the unnamed protagonist is plagued by nightmares of a figure being stabbed to death. The main problem with this tale is that it does not lead up effectively enough to its ending, and is undermined by what appears to be a continuity error. However, with a little cleaning and polishing, 'Closer to God' could have been considerably better, and the same can be said of several other stories in the anthology.

Deep Ten is a mixed bag of stories, in terms of both genre and quality. That said, the quality definitely leans towards the upper end of the scale, and there is nothing irredeemably bad. It certainly has something for everyone, and is well worth a read. Here's wishing the T Party many more fruitful years of writing!

This review first appeared in The Alien Online.

Further links:

The T Party