This is issue zero of a new magazine, to debut with issue one in early 2027. A slim paperback of 97 pages, it contains six stories-- "Strange Stories of the Ineffable" as the subtitle describes them. The opening short story, "Flume" by Sean Padraic Birnie, tells of a teen who forces his younger brother down a waterslide that disappears with his brother. Another, "Stillness" by Ben Tufnell, tells of a man caught in an old mantrap in the forest; as he bleeds out, he realizes how he got there. In the third, "Folly" by K. Wallace King, a woman visits a person claiming to be a friend whom she hasn't seen in forty years. The fourth tale, "The Philosopher's Skeleton" by Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece, reads like a macabre parable that eludes sense. This sixth, "Floodlands" by Steve Toase, tells of a man who returns to a mysterious place of his youth, now decayed to the very core.These five stories are well-written, but impressionistic and elusive, barely using any plot, which limits their interest considerably. I skipped over the fifth tale, "The Heads" by Brian Evenson, because it stands out by far as the best of the issue. Herein, a boy sees faces in blank spaces, and learns from his doctor that this makes him special, but that he must be wary of paying the faces too much attention, or they will turn into malevolent heads. As a sampler, this doesn't make me look forward to premiere issue of this magazine, and only Evenson's tale makes me want to read more by its author.
No comments:
Post a Comment