Black Static Issue 8 by TTA Press
The December-January issue of Britains leading Dark Fantasy Magazine
Jan 4, 2009
In the December 2008- January 2009 issue of Black Static, Britain's premier magazine of dark fantasy and horror, columnist Christopher Fowler makes a case for more dreamers, rather than engineers. Stephen Volk looks at where ideas come from, and Mike O'Driscoll examines a possible future for the genre. Tony Lee reviews the DVD releases, and Peter Tennant has a Q&A session with Simon Clark, as well as reviewing several Clark titles, European novellas and the reissue of Joanne Harris' debut novel The Evil Seed.
Fiction
In "At the Gates" by Patrick Samphire, Grace is a teenager who wants to care for the world, according to her friend Dean, but when she finds and takes home an emaciated dog she names Hope, she may have taken on one cause too many. Already at loggerheads with her Mother's mean boyfriend Malcolm over their lodger, Mr. Uri, Grace is stricken with a virus, and to save Hope she must journey to the very edge of Hell and seek help from a man who may be a devil, or the devil. Marvellous.
Lynda E. Rucker takes the reader back to rural America for "These Things We Have Always Known." Rucker is already making a name for herself with her stories that portray the USA as a landscape as alien as any off-world setting. This time the town of Cold Rest is a "hard town scratched out on the side of a Georgia mountain ridge." While yet seeming absolutely grounded, Rucker draws a setting slightly off-kilter, where sculptures come to life on break their necks flying into windows.
Steve Rasnic Tem
The ubiquitous Steve Rasnic Tem (who has recently appeared in magazines as diverse as Asimovs and Albedo One) journeys to Japan for the story of "Noppero-Bo," the faceless monster, and an American schoolboy who is sent to live with his father after his mother's death. But Aaron is a troubled teenager enough who actually enjoys his alienation from his classmates, and the faceless monster reflects his own psychological unravelling.
James Cooper
James Cooper's "There's Something Wrong With Pappy" is the third story in the issue to feature a dead or absent parent. Like several Black Static stories, Cooper sets his tale of familial and psychological disintegration in a rural setting that occupies the margins of this and another world. The drug addiction belongs firmly to the here-and-now, but the rest of the story could just as easily come from a Grimm fairytale, and in relying on just a faint edge of creepiness, Cooper heightens the unsettling impression to good effect.
"The Book of Ruth" by Steven Pirie is another quintessentially British dark fantasy, sexual abuse in the window of a charity shop, but not only is the story short, but Pirie may surprise many readers with where he takes it -- the ending is unexpected and delightfully satisfying.
Gary Fry
In Gary Fry's "Taking On Life" teenager Louis, for all his hesitations and reluctance takes life on headlong, even as at the same time the image he has created with his printer grows in definition. Fry takes themes familiar to regular readers of his work --the youngster using technology to create an image of life, petty snobbery, warring parents and a bookish protagonist-- but takes them in unexpected directions; in this case the revenant is (perhaps) an image from Louis' future, a warning of what is yet to come. One of Fry's best to date.
Even the best magazines have their share of near misses and brave attempts that don't quite work, but Black Static 8 may be the first issue where that isn't the case. Every story works, and works well.
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