Thursday, April 06, 2006

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

Saturday, April 01, 2006

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
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