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International Small Press Review & Independent Newsletter |
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written and edited by Spindoc published by PIGASUS Press |
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RATINGS: monster = 10 rocks = 9
boss = 8 cool = 7 mutant = 6 proto = 5 kipple = 4 anorak = 3 fudge = 2 sucks = 1 zombie = 0 |
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LETTERS TO THE DRAGON - Alan Siler, Meisha Merlin Publishing, Inc. Yes, congratulations to authors Mark McLaughlin, Rain Graves, and David Niall Wilson for winning the Bram Stoker Award (7 June 2003), from the Horror Writers Association, for Best Poetry Collection! I just wanted to write and thank you for your wonderfully enthusiastic (and very erudite) review of my book, The Dinosaur Filmography, in dragon's breath no.71. I put a good several years into the creation of the book, and it is so gratifying to find that my efforts are appreciated. I mean, the only 'Monster' rating on the entire page ... wow! Again, my sincere thanks. - Mark F. Berry On 5/3/04 I attended the booklaunch for Christopher Barnes' LOVEBITES at Newcastle's Morden Tower. To my horror, the poems he read were stomach-churningly grotesque. The worst poem was about Dracula and a homosexual lover buggering a field of war dead and dying with lots of blood and sperm imagary. I was disgusted. Why does modern poetry always have to aim for the gutter? What Barnes knows about poetry wouldn't fill one tile in a public lavatory. Nothing rhymed, so is it poetry anyway? Another of the poems was about alcholics and voyeurism. There must be plenty of nice things in the world to write about without being so wilfully peverse. If you agree that this subject matter is revolting, write to the publisher, Richard Livermore at Chanticleer Press, 61 Jamaica Mews, Edinburgh, EH3 6HN - Brian Baty ANTHROPOLOGICAL BLUES by Daniel S. Irwin - $5 (cash) 623 N. Borders - Apt #2, Marissa, IL 62257, USA Neat poetry chapbook, one of a series, very much in lighthearted vein of comic verse. Yet, despite the irreverent humour, colourful banter and bawdiness expressed, some pithy social criticism is evident. Apparently, Irwin's a wannabe Highland Laird but he lacks easy access to Scottish territory. Other collections, with similarly giveaway titles are: KICKING THE DOG AT FEEDING TIME, OBSERVATIONS SHORT OF REASON: Sci-Fi Horror And A Bit Of Christmas, and SUCK A LEMON KISS A TURD are also available. Same price for each one. PROTO ASPECTS OF A PSYCHOPATH by Alistair Langston - £8 / $.9.95 Telos Publishing, 61 Elgar Ave, Tolworth, Surrey, KT5 9JP website Hard-horror fiction, previously available online from British author, this novella is a diary-format story of a year in the life of a serial killer, whose heinous crimes are ckearly intended to shock. What's most scary here, as in all the best such works, is not the gruesome descriptions but the manner in which the villain blends into 'normal' society (albeit the lowlife variety) and is subsequently overlooked or ignored, or worse, accepted. MUTANT BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER: THE QUOTABLE SLAYER compiled by Micol Ostow and Steven Brezenoff - £9.99 Pocket Books, Simon and Schuster... website Certainly one of the better Buffy related 'nonfiction' companion guides or souvenir books, this smartly illustrated title is a handy-sized hardcover with 8 pages of colour photos (mostly star cast portraits), and several b/w pictures for each main character's notable one-liners. Plenty of very droll humour, human insight, and terse dialogue extracts from the TV show's creator and episode writers, here. Immortalised so well by the sassy superheroine and 'scooby gang' of slime-fighters, that we can hear their voices speaking to us, as if they're over-the-shoulder reading. Of course, it's impossible to read cover-to-cover, but it's absolutely brilliant for dipping into. BOSS
CHALLENGING DESTINY edited by David M. Switzer - $6 Crystalline Sphere Publishing, R.R. #6 St Marys, Ontario, N4X 1C8, Canada website Digest-sized magazine of quality SF and fantasy short stories, edited by David M Switzer. With slick colour covers and some excellent b/w interior artwork, each issue boasts an entertaining mix of genre fiction, interesting articles and thought-provoking editorial comment. #16 (June 2003) has stories by Uncle River, A.R. Morlan, Ken Rand, Michael R. Martin, and others, plus an interview with Alison Baird. The stunning cover painting is by Jason Walton. #17 (December 2003) features stories by Marissa K. Lingen, and Brian N. Pacula, and a novelette by A.R. Morlan. There's also an interview with Scott Mackay, and part 2 of a survey of time travel movies. BOSS CINEASTE - $6 PO Box 2242, New York, NY 10009-8917, USA website American highbrow film magazine whose art house leanings happily don't prevent it from covering mainstream fare with the same intelligence and insight given to schlock DVD as to recent festival winners. Four issues received for review here. Vol.28 #3 has interviews with Spike Lee, Michael Haneke, John Bloom (alias, Joe Bob Briggs), who makes some intriguing points about censorship and the US critics who attacked I Spit On Your Grave, and with Tilman Büttner, cameraman on Russian Ark. Articles include a piece on genre revisionism in McCabe & Mrs Miller. Among the 24 pages of reviews are City Of God, Spellbound, Tarkovsky's Solaris, and Samuel Fuller's autobiography A Third Face. #4 looks at Capturing The Friedmans, Hitchcock studies, and 'mockumentaries', and has interviews with Stephen Frears, and Peter Mullan. Review coverage includes John Malkovich's The Dancer Upstairs, and Peckinpah's ever-controversial Straw Dogs. Vol.29 #1 has interviews with Chen Kaige, and Emmanuelle Béart, and there's a very worthwhile supplement on contemporary Spanish cinema, including comments from the underrated Álex de la Iglesia. Reviews include Whale Rider, Errol Morris' The Fog Of War, Lost In Translation, and Metropolis. #2 toplines interviews with Michael Caine, and Omar Sharif, and there's an extensive 'Film And History' supplement examining several issues and aspects, including the mutability of truth and facts in Hollywood costume epics. Pick of the reviews: 21 Grams. COOL COWSLIP by Kirk Sigurdson - $14 Terminus Books, 313 E. 3rd St - Suite A, Durango, CO 81301, USA website Presenting fiction as journalism is a rather tired literary conceit nowadays. Any book labelled 'fiction' with "a novel" as subtitle, that opens with foreword "What you are about to read is not a novel" seems to call for a reader's disinterested yawn, or at least a confused sigh. Persevere, and COWSLIP delivers a moderately fascinating tale of colliding supernatural and mundane worlds, as wannabe rock star Julia's mystery illness (mad cow disease) eventually presents her with a series of bizarre visions... Fans of Philip K. Dick and M. John Harrison may find this first novel by promising author Sigurdson enjoyable, if not particularly distinguished of its type. PROTO
DOCTOR WHO NOVELLAS: COMPANION PIECE by Robert Perry and Mike Tucker, FALLEN GODS by Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman, FRAYED by Tara Samms, THE EYE OF THE TYGER by Paul McAuley - £25 each Telos [see above] Another batch of four superbly produced hardcovers from Telos, these limited editions offer fans of the iconic British TV programme often surprisingly imaginative variations on the familiar time-travelling adventures of Doctor Who. Perry and Tucker's COMPANION PIECE is funny and scary in roughly equal measure as the Doctor and his assistant Catherine are waylaid by a Holy Inquisition on an alien planet. Blum and Orman's FALLEN GODS boasts a foreword by cult author Storm Constantine, and a stunning frontispiece by artist Daryl Joyce. More ancient world fantasy than SF, the story sees the Doctor appearing in Crete during the Bronze Age, and is packed with images and themes from Greek mythology. Tara Samms' FRAYED returns to the character's original TV incarnation, focusing on William Hartnell's interpretation of the Doctor. But the determinedly sci-fi plot is nevertheless inventive. EYE OF THE TYGER by noted SF author Paul McAuley opens with a talking point and most telling opinion from Neil Gaiman, that the description of the Doctor's Tardis machine as bigger on the inside than it is on the outside may apply to the Time Lord character, too. Versatility is indeed the key to the Doctor's enduring success. Though only chapbook-length, EYE is arguably the pick of the bunch. It starts with a tiger hunt in India before zipping off to a rendezvous inside a generation-starship in a distant future, for a tale buzzing with hard-SF concepts and some daring fantasy genre references. What's so engaging about these novellas is that their writers are allowed to casually break nearly all the rules of the Who universe, yet they frequently remain faithful to the basics of the character. BOSS DREAMING SCRYERS, TRUE DECEIVERS edited by Steve Sneyd - £3.25 / $6 [cheques/PO payable to Steve Sneyd] Hilltop Press, 4 Nowell Place, Almondbury, Huddersfield, West Yorks, HD5 8PB Belated souvenir publication celebrating an Oxford poetry reading event of 19 July 2003, when the cream of Britain's genre poets, led by modern literary giant Brian Aldiss, gathered in the Council Chamber of Oxford City Hall. Here's refreshingly diverse work by Steve Sneyd, Andrew Darlington, Pete 'Cardinal' Cox, John F. Haines, and Rip Bulkeley (of the Back Room Poets' group), all smartly presented in an expensive but worthy little chapbook. Also from Hilltop Press, comes another four issues of the always-interesting DATA DUMP, usually 4 x A5 handwritten newsletters that cover genre poetry and music in all its styles and tones - 70p / $2 each. Latest issue #71 (which is typed for a change) offers Steve Sneyd's provisional timeline of proto-SF and SF poetry, and includes a checklist of URLs for Sneyd's own poetry available on the Internet. COOL FALLING TOWARDS JUPITER by Kurt Lancaster - $14 Terminus [see above] Initially uninteresting but fast-improving by speedy chapters, this is a passable first novel. However, its writer (and self-publisher) makes the elementary mistake of claiming that it's "not just about science fiction". Fair enough, I suppose, although that's likely to irritate if not alienate roughly half the potential readership, immediately, and perhaps the adventures of young cadet Katie as she joins the space academy on Jupiter station ought to have more genre content than the writer manages to include. Having the heroine uncover a terrorist plot that threatens everything makes the book's unoriginal September 11th parallels rather too blatantly obvious, and so the shallow personal dramas have no place to go afterwards but down, hitting every jutting cliché on the way... PROTO FRACTURED MUSE by A.C. Evans - £1 [cheques/PO payable to D.J. Tyrer] Atlantean Publishing, 38 Pierrot Steps, 71 Kursaal Way, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, SS1 2UY website A modest collection of poems and surreal collage artwork from British writer A.C. Evans, this is published by the editor of Monomyth magazine. It's content and literary style jumps back and forth across SF and fantasy genre borders, delving into realm of the mysterious and the weirdly allegorical, or at least the broadly philosophical and contemplative. The package arrived with two fanzine attendants. AWEN #24 (September 2003), 4 x A4 sides of assorted poetry, and bigger MOMOMYTH SUPPLMENT #10 (12 x A4, corner stapled), which celebrates 40 years of Doctor Who with an impressive welter of articles, reviews, poems, opinions, and the odd rant or two. Neither are priced, so assume they are freebies available for postage. MUTANT FUZZY DICE by Paul Di Filippo - £35 / $50 PS Publishing, Hamilton House, 4 Park Ave, Harrogate, HG2 9BQ website Cunningly subtitled An Ontological Daytrip this novel is from the astonishing imagination of Paul Di Filippo, author of A Year In The Linear City (also from PS Publishing). Rudy Rucker's intro gives too much away, so best to avoid the latter half of that until after you turn the last page. FUZZY DICE concerns the misadventures of alternative world traveller Paul, a struggling writer visited by a cosmic genie offering 12 wishes. Worlds pop into wraparound existence from magic yo-yo spins, like rolling dice against the grandiose Theory of Everything, demanding exploration by the troubled protagonist, or at least philosophical consideration. Not simple alt Earths but frequently bizarre realms of TV nostalgia, stylised chaos, hereditary knowledge, before and after the Universe. (Somewhere/when, I submit, even God may be scratching his head at all this.) The book is divided into 12 sections, each divided again into 12 chapters. Despairing genius at large, Di Filippo (the main 'character' seems to be the author's avatar) flips through dreams, subtle fantasies, gross nightmares and wild surrealities in search of truth or a hard lesson to be learned. If quantum theory posits innumerable parallel worlds are generated by every thought we have, the Cosmos just got considerably stranger. Whatever goodies the creative mind produces, though, retail price remains a necessary consideration on this plane, so... ROCKS THE GOREHOUND'S GUIDE TO SPLATTER FILMS OF THE 1980S by Scott Aaron Stine - £24.95 McFarland & Co, PO Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640, USA website The Eurospan Group, 3 Henrietta St, Covent Garden, London, WC2E 8LU Marking the 40th anniversary of the splatter movie, this beguiling survey of the sub-genre's heyday is unpretentious and highly readable. Incorporating slasher flicks (both spree and serial killers), SF shockers and monster movies, the range of material under brief scrutiny is commendably all-inclusive. The alternate titles listed (and helpfully cross-referenced) are particularly useful, and the comprehensive index makes this a valuable research tool. Perhaps we might have expected more space would be given over to the better (artistically speaking) gore pictures, but author Scott Aaron Stine is clearly determined not to get mired in hero-worship, so even the regrettable dross, such as Mutant Hunt (1987), Psycho Cop (1988), and Violent Shit (1989) gets similar review coverage to widely-acknowledged splatter classics, like Joe Dante's The Howling (1980), John Carpenter's The Thing (1982), and George A. Romero's Day Of The Dead (1985). Although some fans and critics may disagree with Stine's opinions in a few cases, he does a very good job of sorting the wheat from the chaff here, and there's rather more objectivity than you may find in other comparable horror guides. BOSS
HANDSHAKE edited by J.F. Haines - free for postage Dunnock Press, 5 Cross Farm, Station Rd, Padgate, Warrington, Cheshire, WA2 0QG Irregular 2 x A4 photocopied newsletter of SF/fantasy poetry from the Eight-Hand Gang, with the usual mix of relevant info, adverts and genre poems. #53 has obit of Peter Redgrove, notes on the Rhysling awards, and verse from Steve Sneyd, Neil K. Henderson, Bryn Fortey and others. #54 has convention dates, plus poems by Heys Stuart Wolfenden, Andrew Darlington, etc. #55 includes Giovanni Mailto obit, and contributions from stalwarts like Geoff Stevens, Cardinal Cox, and Richard Lung. MUTANT THE HOLY LAND by Robert Zubrin - $14.95 Polaris Books, 11111 W. 8th Ave - Unit A, Lakewood, CO 80215, USA website Weirdly wicked yet effective sci-fi satire that uses the distancing effects of space opera and black comedy to address some of the world-burning religious issues of today, especially the Palestinian situation. Perversely amusing, as all-out galactic warfare looks likely to destroy planet Earth, if fine upstanding US Christian soldiers can't save a tribe of ignorant pagan refugees, THE HOLY LAND delivers a Swiftian time bomb of gleeful cosmic exaggeration. Pure hokum with a point to make isn't easy to achieve, but author Robert Zubrin (praised by Gregs Benford and Bear), first-strikes just the right balance of political analogy and video-game blatancy. This 'star wars' on terrorism will have all fans of Kurt Vonnegut and John Sladek, or Kubrick's Dr Strangelove, chuckling away to themselves, though perhaps insanely. COOL IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE by Ray Bradbury - $125 Gauntlet Press, 5198 Weaver Drive, Colorado Springs, CO 80922, USA website Although this qualifies as the definitive book about the script development and the production of Jack Arnold's much-loved sci-fi classic It Came From Outer Space (1953), it's chiefly aimed at the SF collectors' market, and is not a standard making-of souvenir book. Including as it does some introductory material, academic-minded essays, an interview with Bradbury by the book's editor Donn Albright, reproductions of original draft 'treatments' (complete with their typos, handwritten annotations and scribbles), copies of publicity documents, a poster gallery, unpublished fiction and sundry magazine pages, it's quite clear that no stone was left unturned in the research effort. However, an overzealous desire to preserve the 'authenticity' of the aged materials presented here, has overcome common sense when many pages of faded type are hardly legible. MUTANT JUNG'S PEOPLE by Kay Green - £5 Elastic Press, 85 Gertrude Rd, Norwich, Norfolk, NR3 4SG website At times rather dependant on steering along poetic routes towards narrative conclusions, this first collection of short fiction by Kay Green explores mythic archetypes, the spiritual worldviews of our new millennium, and the lingering conflicts between paganism and everyday modernity. Even the sharply focused themes of science fictional pieces have a slipstream twist. There are 15 stories, all reasonably well told. Still, I can't help but wonder if a greater variety of cross genre themes would have been preferable, instead of this broadly anthological mode. COOL JUPITER edited by Ian Redman - £2.50 [cheques/PO payable to Ian Redman] 23 College Green, Yeovil, Somerset, BA21 4JR website 1st issue (Summer 2003) of quarterly SF magazine has short fiction by John B. Rosenman, Lavie Tidhar, Davin Ireland, Tomn Kerry, Tom Smith, and genre verse from Lee Clark Zumpe. 32 x A5 with colour cover. I found nothing exceptional here, but nothing in particular to criticise either, and so - as with all new small press ventures - it's worth supporting if you can afford to. PROTO KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER - DEVIL IN THE DETAILS by Stefan Petrucha - $6.95 Moonstone Books, 582 Torrence Ave, Calumet City, IL 60409, USA website A comicbook spinoff from the 1970s' TV mystery show about dogged reporter Carl Kolchak causing grief aplenty for his long-suffering boss Tony at the newspaper office by investigating only the weirdest cases and then filing impossible-but-true stories. Fox Mulder would no doubt have been proud to identify Kolchak as his honorary father, and X-Files creator Chris Carter has cited The Night Stalker as a profound influence on his 1990s' series. This sci-fi horror tale, illustrated by Trevor Von Eeden, recaptures the uncanny atmosphere of the original adventures, although some background details have been updated for post-millennial readership. An inventor's family are disintegrating one by one, evaporating in seconds. Intrepid newshound C.K. (note same initials as Clark Kent) suspects that a terminally ill scientist is somehow responsible, but how can Kolchak prove his theory after the man suddenly dies? COOL KUNG FU CULT MASTERS by Leon Hunt - £15.99 Wallflower Press, 4th Floor - 26 Shacklewell Lane, London, E8 2EZ website Grappling with issues as thorny as Cantonese and Mandarin transliteration of Asian names and film titles into English, explaining the subtle and gross differences between real life martial arts and cinematic kung fu, and navigating through a confusion of myths and legends about Shaolin temples, superhuman warriors and otherworldly beings, this is a didactic study of the increasingly popular genre "from Bruce Lee to Crouching Tiger." Of particular interest are the chapters on posthumous 'clones' of the little dragon, female fighters dubbed 'deadly china dolls', the post-1997 Hong Kong cultural diaspora including commentary on the Hollywood career of Jackie Chan, and the recent advent of CGI and digital effects that has resulted in cyber fu of videogames and the wire fu of The Matrix trilogy. COOL LEGEND: WORLDS OF POSSIBILITY edited by Trevor Denyer - £4 / $10 Immediate Direction, 7 Mountview, Church Lane West, Aldershot, Hants, GU11 3LN Seventh and final issue of the British fantasy magazine, with its usual emphasis on myth, magic and legends (whether Arthurian or alternate-historical), this includes fiction by Lauren Halkon, Kay Green, C.J. Carter-Stephenson, Jack Caynon and others, plus poems by Maureen Braithwaite, Sidney Morleigh, Michael Lohr, Barry Tebb, Ann Keith, and others. There's also an interview with author Storm Constantine, and the usual high quality b/w artwork, slickly presented in 60 square-bound A4 pages. MUTANT LIBERATION: THE UNOFFICIAL AND UNAUTHORISED GUIDE TO BLAKE'S 7 by Alan Stevens and Fiona Moore - £9.99 / $17.95 Telos [see above] With the first season of fondly remembered BBC space opera Blake's 7 (1978-81), created by Terry Nation, now available on DVD, this independently published SF TV book will surely be welcomed by all keen fans of the show. Alan Stevens and Fiona Moore clearly know their subject inside out, and the book provides oodles of fascinating trivia about the show's development and its sophisticated antihero characters, along with capsule plot synopses, and satisfyingly intelligent commentary on every one of the 52 episodes. It's an informative and entertaining read, sparsely illustrated with a few previously unpublished b/w photos. What it lacks in visual documentation and glossy colour presentation, it more than makes up for with perceptive and erudite critical analyses. Appendices cover spinoff material like audio books and original novels, and there's a helpful index. In short, then, this is an invaluable retro guide! ROCKS MIDNIGHT STREET edited by Trevor Denyer - £3.50 / $8 7 Mountview, Church Lane West, Aldershot, Hants, GU11 3LN website The successor to Trevor Denyer's Roadworks magazine, this new offering is subtitled 'Journeys Into Darkness', and targets readers and fans of horror, fantasy, and science fiction - though perhaps not necessarily in that order. #1 (Winter/Spring 2004) has fine short stories by Joel Lane, Andrew Humphrey (who's also interviewed), Antony Mann (he's interviewed, too!), Catherine J. Gardner, Paul Finch, Gary Couzens, Cathy Buburuz, and others. With a digitally generated colour cover and some less than impressive b/w interior artwork, there's room for improvement on the visual level, but the quality and range of fiction, and the glimpses into the minds of two fast-rising British writers afforded by the interviews, is well worth the money. COOL THE PENGUIN TV COMPANION by Jeff Evans - £16.99 Penguin Books... website 2nd edition of this one-volume guide to small screen entertainment, covering nearly 70 years of TV shows. A magnificent work of practically obsessive research, the book covers 2,000+ programmes, more than 1,300 entries for TV stars and behind-the-scenes people and, instead of woolly or pedantic comments, concentrates on a unique compilation of facts and tightly written précis. For the sake of space saving - and, I suspect, the writer's sanity, too - all American TV movies have been excluded and it lacks illustrations, but this is never a problem with any text intended for reference purposes. Want to know the name of the pet cockatoo in Baretta? Need to checkout the full cast of Brookside? Which notable film director created The Dick Van Dyke Show? What are Anthony Hopkins' principal TV credits? Who were The Likely Lads? Where is the PAL system used? What's the difference between The Sandbaggers and Saracen? Can you name the stars of Take Three Girls? Who did the voices for the Wacky Races cartoons? How does actor Don Henderson link The XYY Man to Strangers? The answers to all these questions and more can be found in this book. ROCKS RIOT ANGEL edited by Rebecca Toennessen - unpriced 63 Colcomb St, Greenwich, London, SE10 0EZ website Feminist punk literary fanzine haunted by "the spirit of riotgrrl," with some vivid prose items, witty or tragic and darkly humorous short fiction, and a scattering of terse poetry. It has low production values but high ambitions, in the typical antiestablishment vibe of the underground press. Best features of the 1st issue are an excellent story by Joanne King, and a couple poems by Helen Kitson (who's also interviewed). RIOT ANGEL has rough presentation, but manages to surprise with the intensity of its background energy. A very promising zine, presumably free for postage! COOL SCIENCE FICTION TELEVISION SERIES by Mark Phillips and Frank Garcia - $85 McFarland [see above] A hefty reference tome, this hardcover genre TV book features episode guides, programme histories, and casts and credits for 62 prime time shows, from the 30-year period of 1959 to 1989. There's a foreword by Kenneth Johnson, and many entries are illustrated with b/w publicity stills and rare behind-the-scenes pictures. You also get a list of Emmy Award winners and nominees, and a fulsome index. American bias means Doctor Who and Blake's 7 are excluded from the main text (and, of course, Star Cops isn't even mentioned), but so too are US sci-fi sitcoms like Mork And Mindy and spy adventures such as The Man From UNCLE. Conversely, British series UFO, The Prisoner, The Champions and Space 1999 are chronicled because they reached the US networks. Thankfully, for the sake of completeness, any shows launched before 1989 (like Star Trek: The Next Generation) are covered in full, despite continuing after the 1989 cut-off point. Okay, so the authors are being selective. (Some bizarre examples: The Amazing Spider-Man and The New Original Wonder Woman are spotlighted, while Batman and The New Avengers are relegated to honourable mentions.) However, what ensures this book will be of particular interest to UK fans is that it contains info about US shows like World Of Giants (1959-60), The New People (1969-70), The Starlost (1973-4), and Cliffhangers: The Secret Empire (1979) never seen on British TV, while several other obscure series received only very limited distribution on video over here. Another appendix looks at failed pilot films like The Questor Tapes (1974) and Dr Strange (1978) that usually ended up being presented as TV movies. I enjoyed reading about old shows Fantastic Journey, Logan's Run, Project UFO, and Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea that I watched as a kid, and the straightforward writing is pleasingly free of witless critical opinions. Details of the syndicated revival of The Twilight Zone (1988-9), which is not adequately listed in Roger Fulton's Encyclopedia of TV Science Fiction, are also useful. Overall, the thoroughness of research undertaken by Mark Phillips and Frank Garcia for this guide is admirable. BOSS
SHORT OF A PICNIC by Eric Shapiro - $10.95 Be-Mused Publications, PO Box 841, Ravensdale, WA 98051-0841, USA website A brilliantly written anthology of contemporary short fiction and striking vignettes about real-seeming people afflicted with various mental illnesses, Eric Shapiro's book is essential reading for anyone intrigued by psycho-social disorders in the human condition. There's lyricism, wicked humour, astounding imagination, and a keen sense of compassion in the dozen vivid and touching accounts of things like addiction, Alzheimer's disease, anorexia, attention deficit disorder, manic depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, Tourette's syndrome and other complex problems. This is definitely not in the curiosity-only mode of storytelling from a marginal interest camp of literary experimentalism. SHORT OF A PICNIC is never simply comic, callous or condescending, but it does make us question our assumptions and revise our inexpert opinions of those care-in-the-community cases that are usually shunned or ignored. The great book certainly deserves a much wider readership than it will probably get in the small press. Recommended! ROCKS SLEEPWALKERS by Marion Arnott - £6 Elastic Press [see above] The laudable campaign by Andrew Hook's independent publishing house, Elastic Press, to showcase high quality original fiction by the rising stars of Britain's literary scene continues with this fourth collection of short stories. Cross-genre writer Marion Arnott's praiseworthy work spans intelligent crime thrillers and stylish fantasy, steeped in sleekly immediate, modernist prose whatever the colourful setting or dramatic scenario. Poignant use of haunting metaphor and character studies so richly developed in meagre word-counts the effect is enthralling. There's narrowly averted tragedy or headlong crashes into fate. Childhood traumas dictate vicious adult behaviour sure as broken eggs always smell bad. But it's not all doom and gloom of the Brit-lit miserablist kind. Happily, Arnott sometimes closes with a wry quip, not of forced optimism or flippancy, just honest bemusement. FAVOURITE: the brilliantly quirky Dollface cleverly compares and contrasts subconscious nightmares and the lucid dream world of Internet chat-rooms. ROCKS TOLD BY THE DEAD by Ramsey Campbell - £35 / $50 PS Publishing [see above] Ramsey Campbell is very much a writer's writer. He's not just a genre author of superior horror novels and exceptional short stories, but an important figure in British literature of the fantastique. He's probably got just as many celebrity admirers as regular fans. This is his first collection for five years, and it's bloody marvellous. With an introduction by Poppy Z. Brite, here's a creepiness and menace, and downward spiralling rides on the para-psychological helter skelter. Suffer through the slow train journeys to hell. Confront ghosts with heinous agendas. Discover that familiar settings provide no safety when the dreaded night things are after you. There are sinister phone calls, mirrors telling of personal misfortune, and cinemas you shouldn't be caught dead in. Campbell's unerring skill is to carry the reader through the fire and beyond the worst shocks that we mortals can imagine. But it's okay, really. Tell yourself it's only someone else's awful dream, or take refuge behind a shield of nervous laughter. If that doesn't work, I'll see you on the other side. ROCKS TOMORROW'S PEOPLE by Susan Greenfield - £20 Allen Lane, Penguin Neuroscientist, Baroness Susan Greenfield CBE, argues that contemporary advances in science and technology, particularly in the fields of cybernetics and genetic engineering, may result in a radical makeover for the mind. Is the advent of biotech, infotech and nanotech just as much a threat as a promise? This is relevant and thought-provoking nonfiction. There are chapters on tomorrow's lifestyles, robots, work, reproduction, education, science, terrorism, and human nature (how robust will it be?), closing with a recap of options for the future. The psychological impact of all-pervasive media on human senses cannot be ignored, Greenfield uncompromisingly addresses vitally important issues of how progress in the future could entirely change the way that we think, feel, and live. In particular, it's more than a little scary to consider how plausibly hi-tech supercomputers (whether DNA-based or quantum devices) would automatically eliminate privacy in all our communications, as decryption of any stored or transactional data becomes effortless. Generalised social and cultural implications are no less daunting, or challenging. As the job-for-life security of the 20th century fades rapidly, Greenfield warns that some may be unable to cope with the fluidity of constant retraining and perpetual learning that 21st century employment requires, and there are genuine concerns about the so-called grey workforce if retirement itself becomes a thing of the past. Meanwhile, third world states and developing nations face the gloom of comprehensive economic isolation from wealthy or industrialised countries, and the further depravations of corrosive corporate exploitation, even as they are strictly denied access to first-world services like everyday transplant surgery and virtual universities, and the potential benefits of increased leisure time. Despite frequent use of scientific jargon the author also trots out curious but nonetheless helpful techno-aware phrases, such as her comment about the risk of over stimulation breaching "the firewall of our sense of individuality." TOMORROW'S PEOPLE offers a fascinating overview of many current hard-SF concepts, presented in highly lucid and readable fashion. ROCKS TRITCHEON HASH by Sue Lange - $14.95 Metropolis Ink... website Basically a sci-fi romantic comedy, this sometimes-hilarious satire on the battle of the sexes posits separate lives on a faraway planet for women, leaving all the men back on Earth to their own devices, free to pollute the fragile environment and kill each other in pointless warfare. The vegetarian, pacifist women from 30th century colony 'Coney Island' are led by Zen scientists. Pragmatic feminist leaders are secretly considering re-unification, but they aren't sure what the menfolk have been up to, alone for centuries, and FTL space probes can't get through the stratospheric blanket of murk enveloping humanity's home-world, so they send flawed Amazonian test pilot Tritcheon Hash on a solo flight to spy on mankind. Tough spacer Tritch meets her match in thoroughly domesticated biologist, Dr Bangut Walht, who's quite unlike any male that Tritch's paranoid superiors had taught her to expect. But she also has to contend with the unwelcome attentions of Colonel Slab Ricknoy, an incompetent if farcically aggressive warmonger. Should Tritch abandon her beautiful wife Drannie and two kids back on planet Coney to move in with Bangut at his GM farm? Will Drannie still be waiting for Tritch when she returns home to file her recon report? What happens when Bang and Slab both realise that they're in love with the same woman? Sue Lange's debut novel assigns the same utility value to a bucket as The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy did to a towel, but there's far more going on here than just witty asides and daffy quips. There are keen insights regarding human nature, irrespective of gender, so TRITCHEON HASH is certainly worth your time and money, whether you're a diehard space opera fan, a student of life, or whatever... BOSS
WHISKEY ISLAND - $6 Dept of English, C.S.U, Cleveland, OH 44115, USA website Issue #46 of a literary magazine with mix of prose and nonfiction from Cleveland State University, this features short fiction by Peter K. Hixson, Harriet Tramer, Jim Ross, plus poetry from Amy Miller, John Harvey, artwork (ranging from sketchy doodles to photo-realism) by Jim Lang & Adam Brodksy, and George Potts, an interview with Dan Chaon, and contributions from many other writers that you probably haven't heard of before. Although the works are sometimes obviously the product of 'creative writing' studies, the overall quality is good, with one or two standout pieces, and the magazine's design and print is superbly professional. COOL ZOETROPE: ALL STORY edited by Tamara Straus - $6.95 Zoetrope: All Story, The Sentinel Building, 916 Kearny St, San Francisco, CA 91433, USA website For seven years Francis Ford Coppola has published this award-winning quarterly literary magazine. Vol.7 #4 (Winter 2003) is a 'Cinema Issue' featuring work by some of today's most outstanding screenwriters. From Coppola's intro, we cut to a screenplay format excerpt from The Adventures Of Pinocchio (also by Coppola), followed by The Return Of The Player by Michael Tolkin (who previously adapted his own novel for Robert Altman's hit film, The Player, 1992). Tamara Jenkins' Scene About Drugs And The Hazards Of Subletting is another scripted piece (and it's over-stylishly presented as if the manuscript was photographed on a desk). Eric Bogosian's Red Angel is a stage-play inspired by Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel. Although all the other stories are in standard format, the allure of big name contributors like Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Neil LaBute, and Neil Jordan, is suitably intriguing whether you are especially interested in screenwriting or just the storytelling ability of playwrights, directors, and celebrated Booker prize-winning novelists. BOSS PUBLISHING NEWS SUBSCRIPTIONS + SUBMISSIONS Get your independent publication listed and reviewed in db: send a finished & printed copy (no proofs or e-zines please!) to: Spindoc, c/o Pigasus Press, 13 Hazely Combe, Arreton, Isle of Wight, PO30 3AJ, England. SPINDOC THANKS |
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