Test Patterns

by Duane Pesice

For your approval; an outré collection of short speculative fictions written with classic Television SF/F anthology programming in mind. These are the nightmares you wake from after staying up too late to watch that eerie midnight movie, only to find yourself bathed in the gray glow of the test pattern from the screen. Richly varied stories designed to impart a moral, inspire thought, give meaning, offer hope, or instill dread. Tales told in unique ways, employing provocative twists and revelations, while exploring the universal themes of humanity and self-discovery through the lenses of horror, fantasy, science fiction, the strange, and the weird. Our Table of Summoning Spirits by Michael Adams / The Stars are Black by D.L. Myers / The Woman in the Forge of Saturday Night by Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. / Evidence of Absence by H.S. Graves / I Am Become Death by William Tea & Ron Gelsleichter / The Judge by Philip Fracassi / The Snake Beneath My Skin by Sarah Walker / The Hands of Chaos by Ashley Dioses / The Nomenclature of Unnamable Horrors by Peter Rawlik / Golden Girl by S.L. Edwards / Scenes From a Forgotten Diorama by Brian O’Connell / You Can’t Go Wrong With Grass-Fed Beef by Jill Hand / Abettor by Ruth Asch / Work Group by Pete J. Carter / The Cliffside Tavern by Sean M. Thompson / One Evening in Whitbridge by Scott Thomas / The Velveteen Volvo by Nathan Carson / Outre Non-limitations &The Kumiho Question by Frederick J. Mayer / I’ve Lived in This Place a Long Time by Can Wiggins / The White Terror by Frank Coffman / Symptom of the Universe by John Claude Smith / Sustenance of the Stars by Scott J. Couturier / Alien Shore by Rob F. Martin / Ye Hermit’s Lay by Adam Bolivar / Bridge by Don Webb / Balls by Russell Smeaton / Call Me Corey by Matthew M. Bartlett / Hero Mother by Cody Goodfellow / Red-Eye by Stephen Mark Rainey / Séance by K.A. Opperman / Looking for Ghosts & Prosaic by Duane Pesice

Genres: Horror

242 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 23, 2017

About the author

Duane is the author of a small army of stories under a slew of pseudonyms. Under his own byline he has published pieces in a number of of hitherto-unrelated places. He writes weird fiction and baseball articles and has a book available.
Duane also records under the band name "moderan", and is indebted to the late David R. Bunch for the use of that name and concept.
He lives in southern Arizona with his guitars, books, and cats.

Reviews

[Elf · Rating 5 out of 5]

It starts a little wonky, not bad mind you, there isn't anything bad in here, but strange and sort of funny moving. You get the feeling that you are reading something different...oh yes, the first mess of stories seem to have been written directly for the anthology, the test patterns taken very literally, here it is folks, sort of a barker on a midway calling you to come in and watch, look at this...there's more here than just the multi colored bars that eighties kids grew up with; there's the Indian head, another world, maybe a countdown to oblivion. The stories, the poems, the stories! All of it combined, smooshed into a goopy soup of old school drama, near misses, and direct hits as we wander about in this modern post-modern landscape and learn oh so much, the first half of the book deals in whimsy, deals in horror, deals in the unexpected and these are stories that very much fit a theme and a good theme it is. But some story or other happens and we slip into Act II (What story that is might differ for the average reader, there's so many stories in here, so many of them catering directly to YOU THE READER WHO WILL BE THANKED PROFUSELY!) and suddenly we aren't just reading an anthology of stories loosely based upon those old sci-fi horror shows from the sixties but we are experiencing a prophecy brought forth by many a wordperson and we are catapulted somewhere into the stratosphere and the scary things, the abominations and true hazards start happening and this reader was left with a hurting roller coaster-gut (there are a couple stories in here that are particularly brutal, hard-core for the modern world, so 'of the now' that we experience the true death of light!) Each story is part of this, an expertly edited hand crafted and chosen batch of awe full, each story a facet that mirrors the whole unwittingly. I'm not sure how the creators of this glorious anthology pulled this off, but they did and it's worthy, very worthy. Read it. I already want to read it again.

[Des Lewis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The last two sentences in this book – from PROSAIC, a briefest of shorts, by Duane Pesice – say it all!
I dare not quote them.
The book itself, with vertical headers and footers flank-staking the horizontal text, has been a well-handled companion for me over the last two weeks. I really do think it has got something special. It needs something special to acknowledge that fact.

The detailed review of this book 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.

[Joel Hacker · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection of horror, science fiction, and weird fiction from Planet X Publications. It is in the vein of, and certainly going to appeal to fans of, classic Twilight Zone, Night Gallery and Outer Limits both in theme and style. If you loved those creative, one shot, stories by the masters of that era, you'll love these short, creative, mind bending tales from the masters of today.