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