From richard.horton@sff.net Mon Mar 15 23:41:19 2004 Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2003 21:10:30 -0600 From: Rich Horton Newsgroups: sff.people.richard-horton Subject: Summary: Five Small Press Horror Zines, 2003 I'll be treating several small-press horror-oriented magazines here. Let me note first that I am not a big fan of horror. So a subset (but a subset only) of my complaints here may simply be related to my dislike of much of the genre. My biggest complaint is that the standard-issue horror story plot seems to be: person goes somewhere. icky thing appears. Gulp, slurp, etc. the end. -- Could I have some actual logic, conflict, suspense? eh? Naturally the best horror stories (say, many of those in the recent Datlow anthology _The Dark_) do much more than that -- so it can be done right. The crummy writers don't do it right though. My other complaint, relative to some of these magazines, is that by and large the prose is DREADFUL (the best couple are not so bad in this area). There just isn't a lot of editing going on here. So, more or less from least bad to worst: 1. Flesh & Blood. I saw two issues of Flesh and Blood this year, #12 and #13. There may have been more. The two issues combined featured some 37,000 words of fiction, with one reprinted story, so about 35,000 words of new stuff. There were a total of 16 stories, 15 new, all quite short -- the longest was about 4800 words. This is one of my main issues with the magazine -- too many very short stories. With issue #13 the magazine got much larger -- letter size instead of digest size, and the new look is pretty nice. (There was also more fiction and generally longer stories.) I will say that my comments above about prose don't really apply to Flesh & Blood -- in general the stories are at least competently written. They still don't appeal to me a great deal on the whole, but I'm willing to ascribe that largely to taste. I can't say I was really excited by any of the stories, but perhaps the best were "Harvey and Fifth" by Laura Anne Gilman (#12) and two from #13: "Tiny Hooks and Dainty Door Keys" by Mark McLaughlin and DF Lewis, and "The Final Staging of Ascent" by Tom Piccirilli. 2. Dark Animus. This magazine seems in some ways related to Brian Lingard's pair of 'zines mentioned later. It's edited and published by Australian James R. Cain. I saw two issues, date February and May, #2 and #3. A total of 17 stories, 53,000 words, with one of the stories novelette-length. Best were "Lolicia", by Graham Masterton (the novelette), "Writing on the Wall" by Robert Hood, "The Womb of Night by Lawrence Schimel and Billie Sue Mosiman, and "Gracelands" by Cat Sparks. Again, the writing here, though decidedly variable, was not overall too bad. 3. Thirteen Stories. This is a curious Canadian publication. I saw just one issue, #12, dated Oct. 2003. It's a funny-looking publication, a very small paperback book (perhaps 4" by 6"), about 148 small-print pages, a total of 13 stories (surprise!) and about 38,000 words. It's not clear to me whether the entire run of the magazine is devoted to "Horror, Fantasy, and the Supernatural" or just this issue. The stories are all 5400 words or shorter. I was rather disappointed by the prose in many of these stories. There was a great deal of slack writing, tired and inappropriate images, words that mean almost but not quite what the writer seemed to intend, and horrid punctuation. No doubt some of this is attributable to copy-editing -- but even so, it's no fun to read. As for the stories themselves, most were quite pedestrian, though not exactly awful. Best were Gord Rollo and Brett A. Savory's "Chamber of the Gods", Matt Cole's "Ghost Drums", and Richard Dysinger's "Sometimes They Hug Back". 4. Black Satellite. This is one of a couple of slim 'zines edited by Brian Lingard. This one has a fairly general horror focus. In particular Lingard seems to have a taste for science fiction horror, of which I generally approve. But these stories just didn't work for me, partly due to really shabby prose, and partly due to uninspired ideas. I saw two issues, 12 stories, all short, totaling some 45,000 words. None really worth mentioning. 5. Mythos Collector. This 'zine is also edited by Lingard, but has a specific slant -- homages to Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, and also articles about collecting Mythos related material. There is a fairly limited amount of fiction, as well as some poetry. In the one issue I saw there were two short stories, neither very impressive, totaling about 10,000 words. I can't recommend it for the fiction, though the nonfiction may be of value if you have an interest in Lovecraft.