…so will be out in a couple of weeks. Cover and all original art is as usual by David Gentry…

…and it’s full of dark and troubling things.

Stories:

The Reason For The Season by Bruce Holland Rogers
The Hodag by Trent Hergenrader
Blood God Blood by Eric Gregory
The Talent Girl by Daniel Kaysen
Pages From a Broken Book by Tony Richards
The Deep Walker by Alison J. Littlewood
Bait by David Sakmyster

Features:

White Noise compiled by Peter Tennant
Interference by Christopher Fowler
Electric Darkness by Stephen Volk
Night’s Plutonian Shore by Mike O’Driscoll

Reviews:

Case Notes by Peter Tennant
Many book reviews including special features on Leisure Books, reviewing titles by Gary Braunbeck, Sarah Pinborough, Gord Rollo, Brian Keene, John Everson and Edward Lee, plus an interview with Leisure editor Don D’Auria; novels by Thomas Ligotti and Stephen Gregory from Virgin’s new horror line; ‘famous monsters’ with books by Suzy McKee Charnas and Nicholas Pekearo; and a feature on the new novels by Tim Lebbon including an interview with the author.

Blood Spectrum by Tony Lee
DVD reviews of many latest releases with chances for subscribers to win free copies of a lot of them. Who Saw Her Die?, Lost Boys 2: The Tribe, The Wizard of Gore, Shutter, B.T.K., Dante 01, Chemical Wedding, Day of the Dead, Dead Space: Downfall, Vexille, The Happening, Tin Man, The Flock, P2, The Vanguard, Outpost, Solstice, The Short Films of David Lynch, Eraserhead. Plus a round up of other DVDs received, including the Caligula Imperial Edition, Salò, The Dead Girl, Timber Falls, The Guard Post, Days of Darkness, Bone Dry, Reservoir Dogs Collector’s Edition…

Details of competitions to follow, here and on the forum.

Meanwhile, subscribe now!

Tags: Black Static • books • DVDs • films • free porn • Horror

The new issue of our groundbreaking Horror magazine (shortlisted for an International Horror Guild Award and a British Fantasy Award) is out now. As usual, cover and all original interior art is by David Gentry.

STORIES:

The Better Part Of You by Simon Avery

Back on the Road by Melanie Fazi

Special Needs by Peter Tennant

En Saga by Nina Allan

All Mouth by Paul Meloy

Viva Las Vegas by Ray Cluley

FEATURES:

White Noise (news)

Electric Darkness by Stephen Volk

Interference by Christopher Fowler

Night’s Plutonian Shore by Mike O’Driscoll

Case Notes by Peter Tennant (books, including Scott Sigler featurette and interview, focus on Chris Fowler’s Bryant & May novels, Jonathan Oliver on Abaddon Books, and much more)

Blood Spectrum by Tony Lee (DVDs, including interview with the directors of [REC] and several competitions)

Subscribe now!

Tags: Abaddon • Black Static • books • Christopher Fowler • David Gentry • DVDs • Horror • Melanie Fazi • Mike O'Driscoll • Nina Allan • Paul Meloy • Peter Tennant • Ray Cluley • REC • Scott Sigler • Simon Avery • Stephen Volk • Tony Lee

Issue 6 of our groundbreaking Horror magazine Black Static: Transmissions From Beyond has gone to press and will be out in a couple of weeks. As usual, the cover (and all original interior) art is by David Gentry. Click it to make it bigger.

Stories are by Simon Avery, Melanie Fazi, Peter Tennant, Nina Allan, Paul Meloy and Ray Cluley. Usual columns by Stephen Volk, Christopher Fowler and Mike O’Driscoll, plus news, a huge amount of book and DVD reviews by Peter Tennant and Tony Lee, interviews with Scott Sigler and the directors of [REC]… and free stuff! More details closer to publication.

Tags: Black Static • books • Christopher Fowler • David Gentry • DVD • Horror • Melanie Fazi • Mike O'Driscoll • Nina Allan • Paul Meloy • Peter Tennant • Ray Cluley • REC • Scott Sigler • Simon Avery • Stephen Volk • Tony Lee

ABIDING EVIL by ALISON BUCK
Alnpete paperback, 500pp, £9.99

So, a new publisher and a new writer, but to some extent the same old, same old, with a story straight out of the backwoods horror school of Hollywood fright flicks, plus grace notes courtesy of Richard Laymon and Jeepers Creepers. (more…)

Tags: Abiding • black • books • Buck • Evil • reviews • static • Tennant

NECROSCOPE: THE TOUCH by BRIAN LUMLEY
Solaris paperback, 672pp, £7.99

When Ben Trask and the talents of E-Branch investigate the case of a grotesquely deformed corpse it‚Äôs the start of an affair that will bring them into conflict with the Mordri Three, alien philosophers who destroy inhabited planets in their attempt to provoke God to respond and prove His existence, and Earth is next on their to do list. Posing as faith healers they amass huge sums of gold, while an army of slaves work on their spacecraft at Schloss Zonigen in the Swiss Alps. Fortunately another alien is on hand to help stop the Mordri‚Äôs plan, as is Scott St John, a young man with a personal grudge against one of the Three, who appears to have inherited the powers of the Necroscope. With E-Branch on site to deal with the human threat, a band of heavily armed mercenaries, the battle for Schloss Zonigen and the survival of mankind begins in earnest. (more…)

Tags: Black Static • books • Lumley • Necroscope • Peter Tennant • reviews • Solaris

TEDDY BEAR CANNIBAL MASSACRE edited by TIM LIEDER
Dybbuk Press paperback, 139pp, $13

Stories of fear, obsession and killer clowns, runs the tag line for this publication from Dybbuk Press, staking a claim for the no man’s land of gonzo fiction, which the contributors do their best to deliver on with eleven stories, and the results very much hit and miss.

Opening story ‘Formaldehyde’ by C. C. Parker is written in the form of a rambling conversation about zombies and magic mushrooms and shopping, with credible dialogue voices and seeming to promise much more than the author can actually deliver, ending on a note that’s not so much what if as so what? Far more entertaining is ‘Doof Doof Doof’ by Paul Haines, a reinvention of fairy tale tropes, one that gleefully dumps on some of our most cherished childhood archetypes as the big bad wolf is thwarted by a hooker Red Riding Hood hanging out with the three little pigs in a top floor fuck pad. More Ellroy than Anderson. Roberta Rogaw’s ‘Peppercorn Rent’ is readable and certainly lively, but impossible to take seriously and growing more ridiculous with each passing page, as a scheming Lord seeks to exercise his droit de seignior with a young lady who turns out to be a were-something or other. It reads like Ye Merry England caricaturised by someone whose ideas of the country were formed through watching Carry On movies and reading Wodehouse, but apparently didn’t quite grasp they were comedies. A tale of medical science gone awry, ‘Rats, the Wrong Alley’ by Tim Johnson has two would be burglars get their comeuppance at the hands of feral policemen, the story having a delicious twist in the tail that makes it possible to overlook the prevailing air of absurdity.

I’ve no idea what ‘Brilliant Suspension’ by Trina Shealy Orton was about. Something to do with somebody being suspended I think. It was mercifully short, something you couldn’t say for Jenifer Jourdanne’s ‘Blue Elephants’, which suffered from a lack of focus, running on about parrots and children and elephants and other stuff to no real purpose, albeit an agreeably provocative narrative voice does compensate somewhat for the prevailing air of aimlessness. By contrast, Cameron Hill’s ‘Hermetic Crab’ is a wacky and undeniably daft tale of wizards and their familiars, but gets so wrapped up in its gonzo storytelling that it’s doubtful anyone will notice (or care) that what’s happening is totally ludicrous. Similarly in ‘Head Drippers’ by Rob Steussi a man who checks in to a lunatic asylum for the hell of it, as you do, discovers an alien invasion conspiracy, the story coming over like a grossly distorted reflection of some pulp era ghastliness, and all the better for it.

Brian Rosenberger’s ironically titled ‘Something Funny is Going On’ has great fun with the idea of an all out war against the menace of clowns, and ends on the wonderfully wry note of our protagonist shaping up for a showdown with Ronald McDonald. I’m luvving it. ‘Clob’ by Michael Stone continues the string of hits, with the tale of a young man and his invisible friend, who helps out when our hero needs a date, the feel good factor overcoming the essential silliness of what is going down. Lastly we have ‘Berries Under the Snow’ by William A. Brock, a brief look at the relationship between a crippled scriptwriter and a Hollywood starlet fallen on hard times, an elegant codicil to a generally rewarding collection of offbeat fiction, one where reader gratification will probably be in direct proportion to willingness to think outside the box.

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Tags: Black Static • books • Peter Tennant • reviews • Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre • Tim Lieder

INFERNAL by F. PAUL WILSON
Forge hardback, 352pp, $25.95

This is the ninth novel in Wilson’s Repairman Jack series. For those not in the know, Jack is a guy who has dropped off society’s radar, a man with no identity, a many skilled adventurer without portfolio who occasionally breaks cover to set wrongs to right and deal with menaces, be they supernatural in nature or merely human. In short, he’s a superhero, and as any veteran of the Marvel Age of Comics will tell you, with superheroes it’s always the family who do the damage. Sure, Spider-man can beat the crap out of Doc Ock and the Green Goblin, but what’s he do when Aunt May has a heart attack or Mary Jane starts seeing another guy?

Infernal opens with the arrival of Jack’s father, with whom he has just begun to bond after a long hiatus in family affairs, and his subsequent murder in a terrorist attack at the airport, plunging Jack into a hunt for the killers, one which will force him to rely on underworld connections. Worse still, he has to involve estranged older brother Tom, and Tom, to put it bluntly, is an arsehole, a crooked judge who is facing a hefty prison sentence, and a philandering scumbag who doesn’t hesitate to hit on Jack’s girlfriend. Nevertheless Jack is guilt tripped into helping him out, and on a diving trip off the coast of Bermuda they recover the long lost Lilitongue of Gefreda, one of a series of hellish artefacts known as Infernals, and supposedly with the power to hide one from one’s enemies. Naturally it all goes horribly wrong, and Jack’s loved ones end up in the firing line.

I‚Äôm not familiar with the series and so can‚Äôt say if Infernal is representative, but for me it has about it the feel of a book that‚Äôs just marking time, or laying essential groundwork for something very big in the pipeline. It doesn‚Äôt seem complete. Otherwise, it‚Äôs an agreeable enough read, holding the attention but never to the extent that ‚Äògripping‚Äô is a word you would want to use to describe the effect. Wilson is a writer who knows his stuff, making all the hard work seem effortless, carrying the reader along with a prose style that‚Äôs as laidback as the locals in an ad for Malibu. The characters are fun to be with, credible in the way they care for each other, with the possible exception of Tom, who is the clich?©d arsehole older brother to the max (think John Candy in Splash, only darker and with no humour or other redeeming features). The supernatural angle, padded out with flashbacks to an earlier attempt to dispose of the Lilitongue, seemed a bit forced, but my suspicion is that it was there simply to introduce the Infernals and these will play a more significant part in future Repairman Jack stories. All things considered, I enjoyed Infernal well enough, without getting the feeling my life would be any the poorer had I missed the boat, and so would only recommend it to those already following the series. Otherwise, check out an earlier adventure, or Wilson‚Äôs vampire classic The Keep.

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Tags: Black Static • books • F Paul Wilson • Infernal • Peter Tennant • reviews

TWISTED SOULS by SHAUN HUTSON
Time Warner hardback, 321pp, £17.99

This is pretty much your bog standard Horror story, the kind of thing that everybody was writing during the glut of yesteryear, but which nowadays survives mainly as straight to DVD bargain bucket fodder.

Oh, and as Shaun Hutson novels.

The plot is the old familiar standby of outsiders visiting an isolated community where the locals are nursing a terrible secret, to which they fall prey. The venue is the country village of Roxton, once a prosperous mining community but fallen on hard times since a devastating explosion at the pit. The outsiders are Emma and Nick Tate, Jo and Pete Morton, two couples who rent a house for a short stay, in search of fresh air and stress free living, but unfortunately they bring with them all of the things they are trying to escape – Emma’s horror at the death of her parents in a car crash, Jo’s resentment at Pete’s philandering, and so on. It soon becomes obvious that not all is well in Roxton, despite the, some might say overly, friendly locals, with the four haunted by terrible nightmares that prey on all of their insecurities and secret fears, at which point fast forward to the grim revelation and their responses.

There’s not much that can be usefully said about all this. Nobody is ever going to accuse Hutson of subtlety, and Twisted Souls is par for the course. Roxton is the literary equivalent of stage scenery, all front but with nothing round the back, no depth, no atmosphere or sense of place. It fails completely to come alive on the page, fading from memory about five minutes after you close the book, while Hutson’s attempts to inject a Jamesian note, with Emma et al finding telltale Latin inscriptions on the recently installed stained glass windows at the church are almost risible (why, if they’re so anxious to keep their big, nasty secret do the locals post a huge clue as to what is going on in a public place?).

Against that, Hutson does a decent job of making the characters and their personal demons real, albeit don’t expect any insights into human psychology from him. The demon behind Roxton’s ills, though underdeveloped, has a certain novelty value, and there are some suitably squirm inducing moments to maintain Hutson’s reputation for schlock, while the use of short chapters and muscular prose ensure a fast paced and undemanding read (‘page turner’ in the colloquial).

Those who hate Hutson will have their opinion confirmed by Twisted Souls and those who love him will find more of what gets them hot. My own opinion is that, while far from being a writer who appeals for aesthetic or intellectual reasons, Hutson’s not as bad as he’s so often painted by those who seem to take his success as a personal insult. He’s the literary equivalent of fast food, and we all have our Big Mac moments, which is certainly not meant to be read as an unqualified endorsement. There are plenty of better things on which to spend money and precious reading time. All the same if you fancy a few hours of effortless entertainment in a Horror mode, a book ideal for a long train journey and which won’t be cause for inner torment if you accidentally leave it behind, then give Twisted Souls a whirl, and afterwards salve your conscience at such guilty pleasure by dumping the book in a charity shop.

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Tags: Black Static • books • Peter Tennant • reviews • Shaun Hutson • Twisted Souls

THE BRIEF HISTORY OF THE DEAD by KEVIN BROCKMEIER
John Murray hardback, 272pp, £12.99

Central to this novel is an Eastern spiritual concept, that after death people move onto a limbo plane where they remain for as long as there is somebody still alive who remembers them.

When a new and irresistible virus sweeps the globe, the only survivor is Laura Byrd, who was in Antarctica on an expedition for Coca Cola at the time (she had two male companions, but they were lost in an attempt to reach safety). One plot strand deals with Laura’s plight, finding herself trapped at the South Pole and the ensuing trek through the frozen wasteland to a scientific station where she expects to find help, but discovers only dead bodies. The slowly dawning realisation that she may be the only person left alive, followed by her death. And in another strand we get the people of an otherworldly city, thousands of them and most with nothing in common except that at some point they impinged on Laura’s life, their own realisation of what has happened to mankind, with the possibility that Coca Cola may have been, at least in part, responsible, and the shared knowledge that they all knew Laura – old lovers, friends and family, people she went to school and worked with, vagrants she gave money to.

And that is pretty much all there is to it, a simple concept containing nigh on endless possibilities. The interrelations of all these people and their attempt to make sense of what has happened, to fit their experience into some greater scheme of things, juxtaposed with Laura’s grim struggle to survive, makes for a fascinating read, with insights into human nature and the characterisation never less than interesting, while Brockmeier’s vision of the afterlife is intriguing. Laura’s struggle, the end to a life that was almost wholly ordinary and yet so rich, seems to provide a key note here, the idea that we all contain worlds within us, effect other lives in incalculable ways, and her battle to survive is certainly compelling, not least because of its utter futility.

Where the book falls down is in the ending. Having constructed this grand scenario Brockmeier doesn’t quite seem to know where to go with it, and so the reader is left with a vague sense of dissatisfaction; instead of some great spiritual truth, a revelation to cap all that has gone before, we are left with the feeling that this particular afterlife isn’t really that different from the existence we have known, the next bardo as the stuff of superior soap opera, and that whatever mysteries are contained within the universe or the mind of God will forever remain ineluctable (or at least until we ourselves have died and gone to…). Still, what was I expecting from a novel? Brockmeier is an amiable enough tour guide and you’ll have fun travelling in his company just as long as you don’t expect too much of the destination, which just may be the point of the exercise, though I doubt it.

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Tags: Black Static • books • Brief History of the Dead • Kevin Brockmeier • Peter Tennant • reviews

FLAMING LONDON by JOE R. LANSDALE
Subterranean Press hardback, 177pp, $40

Lansdale is a writer whose work eludes categorisation, falling into whatever slot the marketing gurus have found for him, be it Crime or Horror, Western or SF, but remaining quintessentially his own man. This latest novel, a sequel to Zeppelins West, gleefully pillages the body of pulp fiction and the cliff-hangers of yesteryear to produce a work in the vein of Philip Jose Farmer’s Wold Newton novels, both parodying and paying loving tribute to its source material, cocking a snook at history and literature as it plays games with the foundations of both.

In a world not unlike our own, filtered through the sensibility of a dime novelist, the Martian war machines arrive and start cutting loose with a Speilbergian delight in destruction. This event is witnessed by the poverty stricken writer Mark Twain and his much more successful friend, the writer and inventor Jules Verne. With Verne’s sidekick Passepartout and new friend Ned the Seal, an intelligent amphibian courtesy of the handiwork of Dr Momo, and a friend of Captain Bemo of the submersible Naughty Lass (both immortalised in fiction under other names), these two set out on their travels, their eventual goal to reach the London residence of another old friend, H.G. Wells. Along the way they have adventures and meet up with other archetypal figures, such as the Flying Dutchman, a giant ape called Rikwalk, Chief Sitting Bull, and two men who control Steam, a giant robot. It appears that the fabric of space-time is collapsing, with various realities crashing into each other, thanks to the activities of a person known only as the Time Traveller, and Wells is the only one who may be able to undo the damage (cue next book in series). But first there are those pesky Martians to be taken care of.

This is unashamedly lightweight and light hearted, the wet dream of any young boy raised on a diet of Verne, Wells, Twain and Saturday morning serials at the local fleapit, a joyful conflation of pirates and lost islands shrouded in mist, of giant apes and mechanical men, of travels by balloon and speedboat, playing SFnal counterpoint to the author’s Drive-In novels. I’d wager Lansdale had a lot of fun writing this book, and that pays dividends for the reader in search of a wild time, a seat of the pants rollercoaster ride to the limits of imagination and back. Flaming London takes no prisoners, subjecting everything that falls under its purview to outrageous liberties and with Lansdale firing on all cylinders to produce a fast paced and delightful narrative. The story is, to be blunt, slightly daft, but that doesn’t matter a jot. The over the top characterisation, no holds barred invention and non-stop action are handled superbly, as you’d expect from such a gonzo storyteller, with echoes throughout of other genre classics, both ancient and modern, and part of the fun putting them all into some overarching pattern. Reading it is an unalloyed pleasure, with wonderful touches of humour, most courtesy of the irrepressible Ned the Seal, permanently fixated on fish and nookie. Flaming London is a marvellous, irreverent concoction, made all the more so by the striking illustrations supplied by artist Timothy Truman. Recommended to the young at heart and those who can still remember the first time they picked up a book by Wells, Twain or Verne, and want to recapture some of the wonder they felt upon encountering those gonzo storytellers of the past, whose torch is being ably carried forward into the future by Lansdale..

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Tags: Black Static • books • Flaming London • Lansdale • Peter Tennant • reviews • Subterranean