Black Static Issue 5 by TTA Press

In the latest issue of Black Static, Britain's premier magazine of dark, unsettling fantasy and outright horror, columnist Christopher Fowler, Stephen Volk and Mike O’Driscoll provide thought-provoking opinion. Tony Lee and Peter Tennant review DVDs and books.

Fiction

"This isn't the easiest of stories to tell. It happened in Fox Hollies, a district where nothing is particularly straight or clear." (Winter Journey by Joel Lane)

Those last six words read like a mantra for Black Static. It's at its most interesting when the stories don't follow the expected narrative arc, and together with its visuals and its glossy production values, its one of the reasons it's a magazine worth reading.

The opening story's a prime example of this refusal to follow the expected path. 'How Deep is the Loneliness' by Kathleen Windsor tells of a rich old man obsessed with death and his son's best friend who prefers the old man to the dutiful but unloving son, but who's paralyzed by inertia. It's a slipstream piece that's almost anti-genre in its stubborn refusal to explain, which is more effective on re-reading.

Tim Casson returns from the first issue of Black Static with 'The Second Death of Johan Kluge.' Like his 'Lady of the Crows, it's another mittel-Europa setting, this time in an eighteenth century filled with zombies. It's well-drawn, reeks of atmosphere and unusually for Black Static has the faintest ray of hope, which is swiftly extinguished.

'Night Game' by Tony Richards is one of several stories with socio-political undertones; a salesman is stranded overnight in a town where nothing happens except a football (soccer) match. Sadly, the message is a little too heavily underscored.

Daniel Kaysen's 'The Rising River' is a subtler piece, about a woman who sees the ghosts of her family, but not of her brother, who is dead -- or is he? Nothing is certain in Amy's edgy, unsettled world, where the currents of reality swirl like the river her brother fell -or was pushed-- into. Highly recommended.

As is 'Winter Journey' by Joel Lane, who also appeared in the first issue and seems to have a propensity for policeman protagonists. A young man who has 'gone feral' on the Fox Hollies Estate spits into the mouth of the arresting officer, who in turn exhibits strange symptoms, and the young man later dies, apparently 'eaten from within.'

'Slap' by Gary McMahon is another story that jumps off from current sociological concerns, this time, happy-slapping: "a lone member of a gang casually approaches a pedestrian...punches the unsuspecting victim in the face, and then flees the scene. His friends remain there for a few moments to record the result of his actions [on their mobile phones], and then make their own getaway." Such attacks can be fatal, but what happens to the man who reluctantly interferes in one such attack doesn't follow the expected path in this, the best story in this issue.

Christopher M. Cevasco's 'Less A Dream Than This We Know' tells of the last hours of H.P. Lovecraft. But despite its elegant writing and unflinching depiction of the pain of dying, circling back to the O'Driscoll column, it's essentially plot-less and like Steve Nagy's story in the previous issue, over-relies on the reader's familiarity with its subject-matter.

As always, this issue of Black Static provides one of the most interesting magazines available.

Cover for Black Static 5

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