Black Static Issue 12 Reviewed
The August-September Copy of Britain's Premier Dark Fantasy Magazine
Aug 27, 2009
Black Static 12 marks two years of publication of one of the most distinctive and visually iconoclastic magazines extant in Britain, and all the usual suspects are present; Christopher Fowler offers a disturbing dissection of Hollywood, Stephen Volk elaborates on infusing story with authenticity, Mike O'Driscoll laments our collective thralldom to Celebrity Worship, Tony Lee watches lots of DVDs, including 'Let the Right One In,' and Peter Tennant provides another set of erudite reviews including Gary A. Braunbeck, whom Tennant interviews.
Nina Allan
Nina Allan opens the fiction with 'My Brother's Keeper,' the story of Stephen and Martin, one of whom is dead, the other adopted. When one of Martin's 'Aunts' gives him an antique watch for his birthday, it's the catalyst for revelation, temporal dislocation and the appearance of the enigmatic Circus Man. As with Maura McHugh's wonderful 'Vic,' one of the most enjoyable things about the story is the atypical tone, and that the narrator engages the reader's sympathy.
This is a far better story than Allan's earlier 'En Saga,' which read as being only gratuitously speculative. One small quibble; 'My Brother's Keeper' is one of two stories written by women, but with (initially) unnamed male narrators. There's a subconscious tendency to default the narrator's gender to that of the writer so that when Martin is named, it jolts the reader out of the narrative. Nonetheless, it's a highly satisfying story with which to get issue 12 under way. Highly Recommended.
T.F. Davenport's "Bryson Feeds Families" is a short, beautifully underwritten vignette in the shape of six interviews. Essentially plot-less, it works marvellously as a mood piece, the horror all the more effective because it's so restrained. Highly Recommended.
Like the Allan, Sarah Totton's 'Flatrock Sunners' is written from the viewpoint of an adolescent boy, but that's about all they do have in common. The eponymous Sunners may or may not once have been human, but now "He's human-sized, but too long in the body, shoulders hunched and bent like they're coiled up under the skin on his back." (p.22) The Sunners blink and out of humanity's perceptions, while the mysterious earless Slander offers up what first seems to be an ordinary, if beautiful young whore, although his very offer to pimp her for an unspecified fee sets alarm bells ringing in the reader's mind. But the writer has other things in mind, far more disturbing still. Maddeningly elliptical, the story works despite, rather than because of Totton's ambiguity.
Tim Casson
'Stone Whispers' marks the long-overdue return of Tim Casson, with a marvellous and atmospheric story of a reclusive couple caretaking a privately owned Channel Island in the 1920s. Casson's eye for detail and characterization are acute, and Celia's sad acceptance of life's disappointments make this one of the outstanding stories of the year.
By contrast, 'Charles' by the near-ubiqitous Steve Rasnic Tem seems clumsy by comparison, its dialogue awkward but is redeemed by a strong ending. The titular character is another child who refuses to lie still in his grave, but instead grows up and inhabits a squalid flat. Despite the ending, it's not one of Tem's best.
Kim Lakin-Smith
Another Interzone writer to cross to Black Static is Kim Lakin-Smith, whose fiction has been increasingly catching the eye since 'The Killing Fields' last year. In 'Unearthed,' a young man haunted by an adolescent prank gone horribly wrong takes a job keeping bar in Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, a Nottingham pub that claims to be the oldest in England. Paragraph by paragraph, page by page Lakin-Smith builds the tension, then snaps off the (metaphorical) light at the crucial moment. Her prose is direct, muscular, and unrelenting. A close second to the Casson as the best story in the issue, and certainly the most chilling.
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