Black Static

There is a scene in a Richard Brautigan story where the protagonist is walking around his neighbourhood in the aftermath of Christmas, and he compares the Christmas trees left outside houses for refuse collection to fallen soldiers left to lie on the battlefield while the conflict moves elsewhere. It's an image I rather like, and wonder if it might be apposite for the books I don't find time or space to review in Black Static.

All I can do by way of closure is list them here with a brief summary and, if possible, a link to some other review online, so you can educate yourselves on what we may or may not have missed.

Alexander Zelenyj's Experiments at 3 Billion A.M. (Eibonvale pb, 658pp, £18.75) is a substantial collection by a writer we published on the old Whispers of Wickedness website. No, strike substantial; it's a doorstop of a book, with forty stories that cover all the genre bases, and some charming interior artwork by David Rix.

A Madness of Angels (Orbit pb, 496pp, £7.99) by Kate Griffin is billed as the first volume in the Matthew Swift series (and the second is out next March). The back cover description, with talk of magicians, angels, a Beggar King and various factions battling for the soul of London, make it sound like a cross between Mary Gentle's work and Gaiman's Neverwhere.

A while back I was planning on doing a 'world horror' feature in Black Static #15, but that's fallen by the wayside now owing to a distinct lack of world horror, or at least of books translated into a language I can understand. Basically, if you're looking for something non-Anglo, it's down to the Japanese and John Ajvide Lindqvist (he of 'Let the Right One In' fame). Instead I now hope to go with a feature on Australian horror, as I seem to have a surfeit of that at the moment.

If the original plan had gone ahead, Paprika (Alma Books pb, 348pp, £9.99) by Yasutaka Tsutsui and The Summer of The Ubume (Vertical pb, 320pp, $16.95) by Natsuhiko Kyogoku would have been representing Japan. Paprika sounds like a variant of J-Lo film The Cell, with a device that allows entry into people's dreams being used to send them insane and a psychotherapist who has to enter the dreamscape to set things right. The Kyogoku is a psychic detective tale, with a Japanese exorcist tackling the local spirits, and written by an author described as the Japanese Neil Gaiman.

The Ark (Cauliay Publishing pb, 195pp, £8.99) is the debut novel from Andrew Powell, and the first time I ever heard of Cauliay Publishing. Contrary to expectation, the ark of the title is nothing to do with Noah or flooding, but a work of art, the magnum opus of an artist who is creating a new form, and maybe goes a bit too far. 'Beauty is Art and Art is ugly!' according to the back cover blurb. Let's hear it for Ms Emin and the Chapman brothers, Jake and Dino. Unfortunately I can't find an online review of this title, except at Amazon, so if anyone knows of one write me at whitenoise@ttapress.com and I'll get a link added.

I interviewed David Wright of Wordsworth Editions on this blog a while back, and their line of inexpensive paperbacks has the potential to form the cornerstone of a library of supernatural fiction for anyone operating on a budget. The April/May addition to the line was The Beast with Five Fingers (Wordsworth pb, 418pp, £2.99), a selection of supernatural tales by W. F. Harvey, and you can check out a couple of Harvey's stories for yourself at the Horror Masters library, along with a lot of other 'classic' horror (link below).

There's one other title that I'm going to have to wave goodbye to, but as it's one that I actually got round to reading I'm hoping to post a review at some point, time allowing.