Black Static #2, December 2007

Black Static serves up an intriguing blend of fiction and essays this month, wrapped up in a dark design whose aesthetic is caught between eras, a wobbly-legged lovechild of a ‘zine and a website. Its pages are replete with Photoshop art, rusty backgrounds, and the simulacra of whiteout, creases, underexposed patches, scratches, sharpie annotations, Polaroids, and post-it notes. Its design and most of its contents brand it as a horror magizine, although one story and one essay (”In The Shape of A Dragon” and “Japan’s Dark Lanterns”) don’t seem to fit into that aesthetic, specifically in that they don’t feel dark in any way (for more on this, see “Night’s Plutonian Shore” by Mike O’Driscoll in issue #1 of Black Static); but that doesn’t make either of them less enjoyable.

The most successful story in this issue (despite a few moments of knotted syntax) is “The Serpent & The Hatchet Gang” by F. Brett Cox, set in Rockport, Maine on July 7 and 8, 1856. I can be this specific about timing because the story is based on historical events; Hannah Jumper really existed and really led Rockport’s women in an assault on the town’s taverns and other suppliers of alcohol, and like other campaigners for temperance in that period, they used hatchets and axes to destroy storage casks. Cox acknowledges The Great New England Sea Serpent, by J.P. O’Neill, as his cryptozoological source. Cox makes good use of history, effectively constructing his setting and depicting the lives and social context of his protagonist and her fellow townswomen through her—the decline of the fisheries, the plight of widows, their budgets, their histories, their way of living:

Sooner or later, Julia knew she would have to choose among gloomy options: join the relatives in Boston whom she barely knew but who had grand visions of her becoming a governess on Beacon Hill; strike off on her own and seek work in the inland factories; or cast her lot with the likes of Mr Babson. These were not choices; these were sentences for the crime of being a widow.

Julia Brooks’s encounters with the serpent feel ritual, liminal, moments when the past branches out into a crossroads, and, guided by the monster, she has to re-enter her life and choose a future.

Rebellious women and serpents seem to be tightly paired in this issue of Black Static, appearing in both Cox’s story and Mélanie Fazi’s “In the Shape of a Dragon” (translated by Brian Stableford). It is refreshing to encounter a translation in a genre publication, and this one is an original tale of music as synaesthesic inspiration for art and the interplay between generations of artists. Faustine’s Papa has a problem: his drawings, each the product of a song, are slowly disappearing, and he is helpless to stop their destruction. The plague seems to have started after he finished drawing a dragon inspired by a particularly magical song; he worries that he has lost his gift, and keeps the dragon song playing for days. Faustine comes to him, driven by curiosity about the music, and they talk about its visual properties:

“ . . . Listen carefully…the riff, for example. Do you hear the riff?” . . . . Papa set himself to reproduce on the ground, with the tip of his index finger, the motif woven by the guitars . . . . [”]Imagine a dragon with a body as supple as a serpent’s, which might undulate to the rhythm . . . . Faustine understood, now. The music assumed the contours of a dragon, right down to its colour . . . . “Tell me, that funny noise you can hear at the beginning…” . . . . How could she translate into words the subtle skimming of cymbals that she had only just noticed? . . . . “I think one might call it the sound of talons rubbing against rocks.”

Faustine later draws in a manner inspired not only by the music, but her father’s creations, which he rebukes her for; there is a moment where her father even resembles a dragon, when he forbids her to enter his studio. I wonder if the number of serpents Faustine finally draws (four, the same number of dragons her father drew) is intentionally the same as the number of novels Fazi has published.

In his essay “Night’s Plutonian Shore,” Mike O’Driscoll considers the idea of canon and the fluid boundaries of horror in a way which could also be applied to sf, for that matter (e.g., “Can Margaret Atwood write sf?”). This feels rather like a genre-side sibling of Ursula K. Le Guin’s comic essay, “On Serious Literature,” published in Ansible this past July. Unlike Le Guin, O’Drisoll explicitly brings up marketing as a possible source of (counterproductive) genre xenophobia, as well as subtly interrogating the concept of canon, which dovetails rather nicely with the influences portion of the interview sidebar in “Case Notes.”

I appreciate having that sidebar (or perhaps I should call it a topbar), because there’s something painfully recursive about trying to review reviews, especially when one hasn’t (yet) read the books in question because one is busy reading the things which one has committed to review oneself! However, I can comment that Peter Tennant’s “Case Notes” are cogent, with the right amount of summary and analysis. Gary Fry, Michael Boatman, James Cooper, and Gary McMahon make thoughtful comments about why they prefer the short form, and it is interesting to see how the authors and stories they name as their five favorites overlap (and gratifying to realize I’m not the only one in love with M.R. James). I find I have the same trouble with “Blood Spectrum” as I had with “Case Notes” (trying to write a review of reviews), but I will say that I found Tony Lee’s comments educational as well as a pleasure to read.

It seems that Christopher Fowler has read Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail” (Wired, 2004), and that it has given rise to his argument that corporations might provide genre writers valuable exposure and also better service and efficiency in the long run. I see his point, although I argue that small outlets with a web presence might better serve their readers, despite being as vulnerable to “ladyscience” as their corporate foes. Both Fowler and O’Driscoll seem to be asking the question “What is horror’s place in the wider world?” Fowler, for his part, seems to argue that if horror plays nicely, it will get a spot in the big sandbox. O’Driscoll suggests that we should stand up, look around, and realize that we’re on the beach, and somebody in marketing built the sides out of driftwood a few hours ago.

Stephen Volk talks about how dictatorial directors need to be king of the sandbox in “Electric Darkness,” and based on the dismal result of most book-to-movie adaptations, I’ve got to side with him. I do know that I’d be far more interested in seeing the writer’s cut than the director’s cut of a number of films…including Gothic, at this point.

“Japan’s Dark Lanterns” really sticks out as the only nonfiction piece in a magazine full of essays and stories, although it is definitely on par with its fiction cohabitants for strangeness. I’ve been familiar with Christ conspiracy theories ever since I read Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum back in high school, but John Paul Catton’s anecdotes of Jesus in Japan (accompanied, of course, by the Ark of the Covenant) take that cake and dump it in the deep-fryer. This well-written and amusing article not only stands on its own, but would work well in a travelogue of Japan’s weirdest tourist traps (if one doesn’t already exist). Were any such book to see print (if Catton wrote it), I would happily buy it.

I was not as impressed by Scott Nicholson’s “Must See to Appreciate,” wherein a realtor desperately tries to sell a white elephant of a house with hidden issues to a preternaturally picky buyer. Although it has a few charming creepy moments, this story’s foundation has a few structural issues, and it falls down when its author applies a (to me, clumsily applied) twist. But good writing, like a nice paint-job, does something to make this one slip by rather nicely up until that point, and I wouldn’t say no to reading another of his stories.

Ivy visits her ailing grandmother at her mother’s behest and remembers how her sister vanished one day, pretending to call a monster out of their grandmother’s stories. Lynda E. Rucker’s “Ash-Mouth” is more about family relationships and contested reality than supernatural creatures, however, and when the story ends, it feels unfinished. Yes, we know who’s probably telling the truth, but Ivy’s history is still so many dangling strings—she’s just an observer, an accidental scientist, and we don’t know why.

“In the Hole,” “Unknown,” and “Holding Pattern” are even more maddeningly inconclusive, to the point of being opaque. Lisa Tuttle and Steven Utley’s “In the Hole” is the strongest of the three; they make good use of description and emotional realism to build characters and locations which have depth and bend in the right places. But their twist ending robs sense from what they have created thus far, almost purees it into insignificance, as it makes what happened in the story matter less than what the authors subtly imply (and there’s nothing to madden like a subtle twist ending, if handled badly) is happening. It feels like an out, a way to turn what isn’t a genre story into a genre story, to make a social comment something else (not that I’m against social comments). I can’t say more, because I won’t want to ruin this for those who might want to read it, but I will say that I suspect Tuttle and Utley have seen a certain Tim Robbins movie.

The “Unknown” has left his name, his parents, and his lover (who he claims never told him her real name) and wanders compassionless, possibly hallucinating, through a sad and bedraggled city. I know that Steve Rasnic Tem is trying to make an argument about language and the nature of fiction in this story, but I’m not quite sure what it is. Certain moments and images don’t fit with what he seems to be trying to say, and in fact feel rather random, like the unknown man’s fainting spell (caused by what?) near the end of the story, or the ratlike angels (three blind mice?) who hover over him in an alley. Perhaps the unknown man is supposed to be mentally ill, and that explains why he sees minotaurs and angels and fails to treat other humans with compassion, but if he is, I find this to be a rather un-nuanced portrayal, and one from which I can’t glean very much.

Mental illness, hallucination, or reality rifts are all possible explanations for the events of “Holding Pattern,” but it doesn’t seem to matter much to Andrew Humphrey. Like “Ash-Mouth” and “In the Hole,” genre elements are a convenience for this story: “Doesn’t make sense? Then reality is breaking!” Douglas is married to Gayle and friends with Richard, a jerk recently divorced from Serena (who doesn’t otherwise enter the story). And other than that, everything else seems to be up for grabs, except for the fact that Douglas’s world is falling to pieces.

Taken as a whole, Black Static’s issue 2 fiction is strong in emotional realism, imagery, and innovation, but sometimes weak in coherence and closure; the essays and reviews are uniformly well argued and interesting, if occasionally a little unfocused or syntactically awkward.

[Disclosure notice: The Fix is brought to you by TTA Press, publisher of Black Static.]