Magazine Review: Midnight Street #11

‘Midnight Street’ is doing rather well for itself, having been recommended in three categories for the British Fantasy Awards this year. It publishes SF, fantasy and horror stories in an A4 format with a matte coloured cover and B&W internal illustrations. The non-fiction includes book reviews, interviews and editorials. Of these I particularly enjoyed the interview with Andrew Hook of Elastic Press who discusses the joys and challenges of writing and publishing. There’s also a single poem that as usual went over my head. The bulk of the magazine is devoted to nine short stories:


Read the rest of my review at SF Crowsnest.

This review is no longer available at SF Crowsnest, so it's reprinted here:

‘Midnight Street’ is doing rather well for itself, having been recommended in three categories for the British Fantasy Awards this year. It publishes SF, fantasy and horror stories in an A4 format with a matte coloured cover and B&W internal illustrations. The non-fiction includes book reviews, interviews and editorials.  Of these I particularly enjoyed the interview with Andrew Hook of Elastic Press who discusses the joys and challenges of writing and publishing.  There’s a single poem that as usual went over my head, along with nine short stories.

 

David Penn opens the issue with ‘The Grey Dynamo’ in which an ‘educationally subnormal’ boy immediately becomes the focus of attention on joining an all-boys grammar school.  Through the eyes of one of the other pupils we see the teasing and bullying he undergoes and the aura of mystique that surrounds him when he claims to be building a robot in the shed.  The actions of the bullies and the bullied, as well as those just trying to stay out of trouble, are portrayed with a genuineness that makes you really feel for them.  The alleged robot is intriguing, but irrelevant to the success of the story.  

 

‘A Gentleman From Mexico’ is one of those stories that seems to be about itself.  Mark Samuels tells the story of a literary agent in Mexico looking for horror stories to publish who is offered some Lovecraftian Chthulu stories of the kind that (apparently) all amateur horror writers like to produce.  There is some excellent descriptive work of the Mexican people and places that develop an atmospheric backdrop for subsequent mysterious developments. The agent finds himself involved with a mysterious cult and a disturbed writer in a tale that ironically turns out to be a Lovecraftian Chthulu tale. It’s good irony though.

 

I’m afraid I can’t tell you whether the apartment in Ralph Robert Moore’s ‘Rocketship Apartment’ turns out to really be a rocketship, or whether it’s something to do with the couple’s drug-befuddled brains.  Call me old-fashioned, but I find the kind of crudity and vulgarity that this story revels in entirely unnecessary and I certainly don’t want to read it. 

 

The horrors of war are explored in Michael Cobley’s ‘Weapon Of Choice’ in which a British soldier in Iraq fids himself suddenly part of an otherworldly Army in a war against the Forge.  Both of these forces make use of the world’s ongoing conflicts for their own eldritch purposes, while the author makes use of the tale to deliver his own verdict on the conflict in Iraq.  Personally I like a bit more escapism in my fiction rather than being lectured about current affairs, but the practice of using literature to comment on the state of the world has a long tradition.  The story itself has an intriguing premise and a classic battle between good and evil, though in this case its hard to differentiate, which I guess is the point of the political subtext.

 

Making a deal with the devil is an idea that has often been used with varying amounts of success.  Stephen Melling gives it an immediacy that lasts throughout the brief ‘Falling From Grace’ as the entire exchange occurs when a parachute fails to open.  It’s an idea that that probably couldn’t have been dragged out very successfully, but as a piece of flash fiction it delivers very well indeed.

 

Like Mark Samuels, Peter Tennant recounts a story about a story in ‘Something From The Wreckage’, a traumatic tale of how one of his earlier horror stories inspired a psychotic copycat killer.  Tennant’s account of his own trauma in coming to deal with this are almost as harrowing as the horrific deed itself as he faces the question of whether fiction inspires or is even responsible for some of the worlds ills.  I presume this too is a story, rather than a true account, but I was left wondering whether any deranged psychopaths who so far had only been reading horror fiction would now get the idea to become a copycat?  Or maybe the idea will only suggest itself to them after reading this review…     

 

‘The Rosary’ is a piece of flash fiction from Steve Redwood that takes place in a fantasy setting that although briefly described manages to evoke a feeling of something much bigger.  When a stranger arrives in a small village sporting a strange necklace of beads, he immediately rouses the suspicion of the locals who fear for their women.  The tale makes no apologies for its own internal sensibilities but allows the story to whisk us briskly to its intriguing conclusion.

 

In ‘Chasing Waterfalls’ Andrew Hook recounts the story of identical twins and the woman who admires one of them from afar, the complex feelings she has and the mysterious bond between the brothers.  It’s a fairly sedentary and introspective story as it builds up gradually to an event that will change all of their lives forever.  The whole effect reminded me of something that could have been written by Ray Bradbury – that feeling of the ordinary that could develop into something extraordinary at any moment.  You’d have to read it to find out if it does.   

 

Patrcia J Esposito’s concluding story ‘My Domestic’ had me slightly lost.  It’s a very short piece in which a man (or animal) who is devoted to (or enslaved by) an enigmatic woman paces up and down her study.  It’s very atmospheric, but the brief flashbacks to a trip to the circus (or was it the county fair?) made it all a bit crowded and confused. Maybe I should read it again.

 

As usual, and as the name suggests, the magazine’s selection tends toward the darker side either in theme or in execution and represents quite a variety of styles that should please most fans of all three genres most of the time.

End.