Black Static Issue 29

by Andy Cox (Editor), Nina Allan, Renee Carter Hall

This is the E edition of the fabulous new look (in print), new size Black Static, #29, with its gloss laminated spine and 96 pages of fiction, reviews, columns and comment. Here you'll find fiction from: Nina Allan with 'Sunshine', Renee Carter Hall with 'Horseman', ex movie star Baph Tripp with 'Chodpa', Ray Cluley with 'Shark! Shark!' and Tim Lees with 'The Counterweight'. Plus our TV reviewer Mike O'Driscoll runs his rule over Dexter and finds the 6th series wanting as compared with its earlier self.
(November 2013) - Ray Cluley's 'Shark! Shark!' won the 2013 British Fantasy Award for best short story and Nina Allan's 'Sunshine' was in the short list along Ray's story.

Baph Tripp was a movie star in his early teens when, as Louis Tripp, he played a 12 year old in the cult horror movie 'The Gate' and then its sequel.
'Chodpa' is his first published story.

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186 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2012

Reviews

[Des Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just read it. Remarkable. But don’t forget it depends who wears the dark glasses whose eyes can’t be seen.

The detailed review of this publication’s fiction posted elsewhere under my name is too long or impractical to post here.
Above is one of its observations at the time of the review.

[Blair]

Read Nina Allan's story 'Sunshine'. Belonging more explicitly to the fantasy genre than much of her work, it follows a man (male creature?) who is part of a humanoid race known as 'hirudin'. The epigraphs suggest hirudin are some sort of evolved leeches; the narrator's own story indicates they are the source of many beliefs about vampires. I started off not much liking this: it's crude in a way that feels unnecessary and perhaps a bit forced. But when the narrator relates a story from his past, it becomes more interesting. A woman named Margaret is the only human who's been involved with him and lived to tell the tale. Her brother Stephen, meanwhile, is one of the few with the ability to perceive his true nature.

It struck me that it's possible to read this story without ever believing in the hirudin – after all, we have no outside confirmation of the narrator's claims. He might be a rapist and murderer who's spinning a fantastic lie around his crimes. When Stephen says I know you're one of them, he is seeing the narrator for what he is – but what is that, exactly? A literal monster or just a figurative one? The final line of the story almost seems like an admission.