Maybe this change can be referred to as evolution, or as some might say, a devolution. But would anyone go so far as to think of the developing situation as an opportunity?

The future of the Borders book chain is looking less than rosy. This affects me on both a professional and a personal level. I for one will miss that particular quirky retail experience. There was always the possibility of finding something new and interesting on the genre shelves, and the magazine section, well, I’d regularly hotfoot it down to pick up the latest issues of HorrorHound, Fangoria, The Darkside, Rue Morgue and Death Ray, have a flick through Interzone (as I’m a horror boy and subscribe to Black Static), and generally nose about the imported titles until I sniffed out something new. That small high street pleasure is denied to me now, (and I’m sure there are others out there like me).

Will Waterstones start stocking imported magazines? I think not. Although, in some stores that I’ve visited, (Exeter and Kingston), there are encouraging stocks of imported genre books.

How will we obtain copies of Canada’s excellent Rue Morgue now? There’s the subscription option, which is actually great value, but the delivery has always been plagued by delays in my experience, with some titles arriving three months late. Maybe that has changed now. I hope so as I need my RM fix on a monthly basis.

HorrorHound is another favourite, a fanboygeek collector’s magazine of all things horror merchandise, plus some great articles on the 80s video invasion, classic films, and the like – a thoroughly modern magazine with a nostalgic editorial bent. No delivery issues here at all as far as I remember.

I stopped subscribing to these magazines a year or so ago – not because I had lost faith in them, far from it – but because I wanted to pop into a shop to buy them, (despite the high import prices). I enjoy that experience and Borders could pretty much guarantee they’d be there, all in one place.

There are other options for us paper-collecting genre geeks, at least in London. Forbidden Planet stocks all these titles, but not consistently as far as I can tell, and you can’t purchase magazines on their website. The Cinema Store stocks these titles and loads of others too. Outside London? Fab Press’ website stocks issues of Rue Morgue, but again it’s unlikely you’ll be able to pick up the latest RM there, as they have to wait to receive them, just like the rest of us. Although looking at their website today, they’re up to date with the November 2009 issue.

I think it might be time to return to the subscription option. But, will there be any (UK) magazines left for us to subscribe to?

Shivers died a year or so ago, and the inevitable demise of Borders has coincided with what are most likely to be the final death-throes of several magazines: The Darkside has not been seen since September. A wiki entry states it might return. Let’s hope so. A thread on the Frightfest Forum has a little more information. Although maligned by some, the magazine appealed to the pulp in me. In its lastest editorial Gorezone rather tastelessly claims some credit for the end of The Darkside, but as the discussion on Monster Kids Classic Horror Forum shows, other non-genre titles are dropping like flies too.

Black Fish, the publisher of Death Ray and newly-launched sister title, Filmstar, appears to be in trouble as both titles are on hold by the looks of things:

As some of you may have heard, and others who popped along the shops to pick up the latest issue of Filmstar may have feared, Blackfish’s two magazines, Filmstar and Death Ray, are currently ‘on hold’. What this means is that there will not be another issue of either of them along for a number of weeks – or, likely, months. Indeed, whether there will ever be another issue of either is a moot point, and at this moment in time impossible to answer. But we hope so.

Quite what the future holds for Filmstar, Death Ray – and, indeed, Blackfish – remains unclear, but we hope to have more definite news over the next week or so. Keep watching this space, because as of now quite literally anything (or nothing) could happen.

Who’s to say what the future holds for genre magazines in the UK, but I think there’s always been an element of uncertainty hovering around such titles, as finding the niche audience on the high street can be challenging regardless of which shop you can get yourself in.

What reassures me about this situation, and the worlds of genre in general, is that the brains behind these magazines have it in their blood, they must give life to their visions, and I genuinely hope they are able to resurrect their titles in one form or another in 2010.

And as John Gilbert’s comment here on The Great White Space states, there might well be life in an old dog yet…

This week a few thoughts of mine are featured in The Bookseller, the trade magazine for the UK publishing industry.

The article is reproduced here, and the paper version also includes a ‘baker’s dozen’ of my viral marketing tips for UK publishers. The cover of this week’s issue is nice and gory, and within the article I managed to sneak in the words ‘vampire’ and ‘zombie’ and namedrop the ongoing Stephen King Under the Dome viral campaign. A tiny victory for the genre…

Antichrist commences with an extended scene, shot in black and white, and set to a classical soundtrack. No dialogue, just detailed slow-motion shots of the flat in which the Man and the Woman (the characters are unnamed and I’ll not mention the actor and actresses names either) are making love, and (ooh how controversial) a single second scene of penetration. During this activity their young son walks down the stairs, climbs onto a desk and falls out of the window. It’s a memorable, simple and stylish way to begin a film that soon loses itself in analysis, atmosphere and ambiguity.

The Man is a therapist who feels he knows more about his wife’s bereavement and guilt issues than the staff at the hospital, so he discharges her, taking care of her at home; a move which soon comes across as selfish, as the woman increasingly feels like an experimental subject. Perhaps in response she demands increasingly physical sex and self-harms as the influence of nature gradually manifests itself and her guilt grows. The Man decides they should spend time at their utterly remote cabin in the woods, Eden, where the Woman spent time writing her dissertation on medieval misogyny and where, we find out, she fell into believing what she was writing about, rather than critiquing it.

Von Trier dedicates the film to Andrei Tarkovsky, the famed Russian Director of Andrei Rublev, Stalker and Solaris among others, and it’s with these last two films that Antichrist resonates the most as von Trier utilises several of Tarkovsky’s filmic techniques such as long, uninterrupted scenes, and the black and white dialogue free passages. Like Tarkvosky, Von Trier in Antichrist has given the earth, nature, the elements and the animal kingdom, an alien and ambiguous intelligence that seeps into the minds of the Man and the Woman so that their time sent in Eden becomes a wildly surging series of experiences and emotions: as the cabin’s tin roof is constantly bombarded with acorns from the huge trees it sits beneath; in harsh, visceral and surreal encounters with crows and a talking fox (which I found extremely powerful and perfect within that segment of the film, as opposed to many who have simply laughed).

As the Woman experiences the highs and lows of self-realisation it is the Man, the therapist, who appears most-affected as the landscape becomes an immense primal force that overwhelms them both; as he works with her to overcome her fear of the grass that swirls around the cabin, he is seeing visions that warn him of impending chaos. It is here where Antichrist veers away from what I took, (wanted?), to be an intriguing, ambitious exploration into the nature of nature and its influence on our relationships, towards a graphic depiction of torture and survival rooted in the deep mental illness resulting from a child’s death. Driven on by their surroundings, unable to cope with the sheer size of the environment and their emotions, their physical relationship intensifies into matrimonial violence: genital mutilations being the worst of many outrages inflicted upon and by each other.

The furore surrounding Antichrist has been mostly about its easy to criticise elements: the sex, the violence, its so-called pretentiousness, von Trier’s reputation and even his supposed attitude towards women. I bet even von Trier isn’t sure what he’s trying to say some of the time but, for me, Antichrist is an extremely brave film; as with Tarkovsky’s works, its attempts to depict this unknowable and unquantifiable world we live in and the unpredictable and unfathomable ways we humans relate to it and to each other, are absolutely open to debate and interpretation, and that’s the point. Two-thirds wonderful.

Antichrist, 2009

Directed by Lars Von Trier

Colin is the eponymous central character whom we meet returning home one afternoon. It soon becomes apparent there’s anarchy in the streets of Wandsworth, South London as gunshots and explosions fill the City air and he washes his blood-soaked hands and knife. Colin has been bitten and after fighting off his flatmate we witness his inevitable un-birth. The film then follows our hero around the streets of London as he slowly descends into a state of fully-fledged zombie. For a zed geek like me this is one of the most interesting aspects of the film as, initially, Colin appears to have a certain amount of intelligence to his actions, maybe considering whether or not to tuck into some easily available flesh as the more developed around him flood the streets and chase down the unfortunate survivors.

Colin wanders around, occasionally chowing down, mostly on the already dead, possibly learning from the actions of the others. There are some interesting victims, notably the man who is being eaten alive while he listens to his MP3 player, a gadget which attracts Colin’s attention for a while. There are a couple of episodes where our hero disappears amongst the whole zombie horde, such as the time when he stumbles into a townhouse where four students are fending off a whole front room of the undead. As sheer weight of numbers overwhelms them the scene does actually become fairly harrowing and only one girl escapes. We follow her as she breaks into a seemingly disused garage where a sleazy bloke seems to be torturing zombies by removing their eyes. Again, it’s an intense scene, but its effect is somewhat dampened by the fact you can’t see what’s going on most of the time, and it’s so unexpected and jarring when set against the carnage in the streets. Director Marc Price should be commended for trying something a little different with these interludes, and with Colin being almost totally from an undead perspective.

Price also succeeds with his decision to introduce a sub-plot wherein his sister realises he’s a zombie, and with some mates captures him in an effort to see if he can remember who he is was/is. These poignant scenes are well balanced by her mates’ dislike for Colin in his current state, and the decision they must make when it becomes obvious he cannot be ‘returned’. (Another geek note of interest – apparently, immersing a zed’s head in a bath of water will calm it down temporarily).

Colin is surprisingly well-acted given the majority of its cast were recruited via Facebook and MySpace, although it helps that the majority of the film is without dialogue, and where there is speech it is mostly experienced from Colin’s point-of-view. Being sympathetic to a central character is a prerequisite of most films; the viewer’s interaction with Colin is no different as we know just enough about him to care and as the story unfolds and he descends into a new form of life this sympathy only increases.

Colin, 2008

Dirceted by Marc Price

The Dead Outside has an overwhelming air of purposefully half-explained menace: the virus might still be airborne; touching the afflicted in any way might result in infection; the turned victims are after blood and attracted by noise, so living a quiet life becomes vital to survival. So what better place to be than in the Scottish borders? Sparsely populated, lots of space and plenty to eat if you find a suitably isolated farm and can grow your own. Which is exactly what Daniel does after his wife and child are infected. But he wakes up the next morning to find April peering down the barrel of a shotgun at him. Braehead is her family’s farm and she doesn’t exactly welcome strangers, not even healthy ones.

The two put up with each other as they struggle to survive;  but there’s more to April than meets the eye. Why does she  spend nights outside the safety of the farmhouse on her  own, why does she shoot every infected person on sight,  burying them in the woods around the farm, and why hasn’t  she been infected by all this contact? When a third survivor  stumbles onto the farm, this fragile and untrusting dynamic  is threatened.

The Dead Outside shares the same main problem as The Zombie Diaries – a lack of turned plague victims, (in fact, if it were not for the differences in the disease and infected, these two films might almost be companion pieces), but Director Kerry Anne Mullaney’s choice of Dumfries and Galloway as a location tempers this accusation in two ways – naturally, there are less people here, and most impressively, the bleakness of the countryside is captured in the blues and blacks of the eerie dusk/night exterior shots, (when most of the action occurs). The area’s wet and dreary weather conditions, shown through deceptively simple, lingering shots of the farmyard, the surrounding fields and woods, and farm buildings going to ruin as nature reclaims them, more than makes up for the too-few, (but effectively savage), encounters with the infected.

Mullaney has crafted a rough-edged independent Post Apocalyptic gem: the dialogue is economical; the acting is convincing; the farmhouse’s rooms clogged full of a lifetime’s clutter constrict and suffocate those hiding within, eventually forcing them outside to face the truths behind April’s attachment to Braehead Farm.

The Dead Outside is a nervous and personal snapshot of the apocalypse, as the characters subtly probe each other’s motivations in an unforgiving, and tense environment. A is for Apocalypse, and Ambiguity, but also for Atmosphere and The Dead Outside literally drips with it.

Shot in two weeks, on a micro-budget, (the makers wouldn’t divulge the amount in their Frightfest Q&A session, due to the fact they’re trying to sell the film at the moment), The Dead Outside is a stylishly dark mood piece, and if The Zombie Diaries can do well in the straight-to-DVD market, The Dead Outside surely will, and deservedly so, as it is a prime example of thoughtful, twisted story-telling and aspirational independent film-making.

Hopefully we’ll be seeing The Dead Outside in cinemas or on DVD before too long. Check out the official trailer here.

The Dead Outside, 2008

Director: Kerry Anne Mullaney; Writers: Kerry Anne Mullaney and Kris R. Bird

Speculative Fiction Junkie has written a little piece and seems to like it; as does Sharon Ring, who gave it a great review over on Science Fiction and Fantasy Enthusiasts, and Highlander’s Book Reviews.

Let us know what you think!

To this reader, Bestwick is amongst the frontrunners of the niche world of the macabre ghost story; his A Hazy Shade of Winter was the first Ash Tree Press title I bought. Not only did his tales of contemporary hauntings, both in the mind and of the land, take a firm hold on me, they also alerted me to that publisher’s high quality catalogue. His latest collection, All the Pictures of the Dark is available from Grayfriar Press – I’m three stories in and have no hesitation recommending it on the strength of those alone. Plus Bestwick’s up for a British Fantasy Award for Best Novella with The Narrows in September at the Fantasycon in Nottingham. Now he’s been given the chance to write a mass-market paperback and the tantalising possibility of him lending his powers of atmospheric suggestion to a full-blown zombie apocalypse was one I could not deny mself, and I applaud Abbadon for adding him to their roster.

Tide of Souls is first and foremost an environmental apocalypse, of which zombies are an integral element. The seas rise and engulf the United Kingdom, (and most likely the rest of the world), but the action is set in Northern England where Bestwick lives. The book is cleverly divided into three parts, each told by a different narrator, each narrator linked to each other by circumstance. Katja Wencewska is a Polish immigrant who has been tricked into a hideous world of sex slavery, her passport taken and all her money gone.

We first encounter her locked in a top-floor room in the brothel where she ‘works’ as the waters devour Manchester. Making it to the roof Katja watches as groups of survivors huddle on other rooftops as the rain continues to fall, and group-by-group they’re picked off as drowned and now mysteriously reanimated corpses with green-glowing eyes emerge from the depths to feed. Fighting desperately, Katja is encouraged by the memories and words of her deceased father, a member of the Special Forces, who taught her to look after herself – weapons, martial arts, that sort of looking after yourself.

The middle section of the book follows Robert McTarn, a former Sergeant, who’s been forced to re-enlist due to the rapidly deteriorating situation. At Fullwood Army Base in Lancashire his team are briefed as they watch footage of an SAS squad being ripped apart by green-eyed monsters. McTarn’s been recruited to find maverick scientist, Dr. Benjamin Stiles a specialist in marine biology who’s retired due to ill-health, and the insistent voices in his head, the voices of the dead. On his last diving trip he’d suffered the bends in a rapid and panicked ascent. Stiles’ last know location is a small village in North East lancashire: Barley. As Katja’s fight for survival and McTarn’s mission puts them on a course towards each other, Bestwick forces them to traverse a submerged and deadly landscape: Katja in an old narrowboat more used to sedate canal journeys than the storms battering the waters that swirl with the swimming dead; and McTarn and his squad as they fly across the county, unable to stop and help the survivors on high-ground – survivors who will have much more to deal with than rising waters…

The last section revolves around Stiles, explaining the circumstances behind his accident and why he might just be the reason for, and have the solution, to the chaos. It’s here that Bestwick excels, giving Tide of Souls a unique place in the zombie sub-genre. Bestwick has clearly thought long and hard about the genesis of his zombies and their raison d’etre is explained in satisfying detail – something of a rarity in this sub-genre. Unique biological, behavioural and entirely logical traits are exhibited by the ‘nightmares’ (as they’re referred to, and truth be told they’re not strictly zombies in the Romero tradition) but Bestwick manages to keep that degree of separation at exactly the right distance from us; when a zombie evolves it usually turns towards the human once again. Not so in Tide of Souls, as Bestwick’s grounding in the classic supernatural and weird tale ensures the nightmares recall the eery dripping ghosts of John Carpenter’s The Fog, and the relentless, gnarled Nazi zombies from Shockwaves, rather than the running athletes of the Dawn of the Dead remake.

We were about ten yards up from the farmhouse when Akinbode pointed down the slope and shouted.
They stood in the shallows below the farmhouse. It lapped around the knees of the two adults and the waists of the the two older children. The toddler clung to its mother. They stared at us with their slack, empty faces and glowing eyes, but they didn’t move.

SPOILER ALERT: As mentioned, this tale is primarily a global environmental apocalypse. The rising waters are a result of climate change, but the undead are urged on by an elemental force, (similar in its collective consciousness to the yrr in Frank Schätzing’s sf-eco classic, The Swarm), evolved from the emotional and physical pollution of human activity across the world’s oceans. This force gradually develops a degree of awareness as it seeks to regain something it has lost. Bestwick’s nightmares are its eyes and ears, its collective learning, and its ravenous undead aquatic army. END OF SPOILER ALERT.

As this awareness grows Tide of Souls flows into something else, something entirely unexpected and relatively unexplored within zombie literature: a hauntingly atmospheric love story set amongst scenes of breathless battle, heroism, self-sacrifice and Lovelockian speculation.

Tide of Souls is recommended without reservation.

The eerie illustration is by my friend and conspirator Owen Priestley. This is the colour version of the accompanying illustration – Necrography printed a monochrome version which is pretty effective too. Thanks again to Owen for coming up with something so atmospheric and representative of the story.

Shaldon’s a quaint fishing village on the South West coast of Devon and my parents have a house a little way up the estuary in the hamlet of Ringmore. (I’m writing a series of tales set here and the second story, Low Tides, is forthcoming in All Hallows). As you might envisage, the majority of the residents are quite elderly and there’s always some work going if you take the time to look for it.

For several summers between the ages of about eleven and fourteen, maybe even fifteen, I filled my holiday time doing odd jobs around the gardens of my neighbours. The Gardener was inspired by an experience that has stuck with me all these years; and a little feeling of regret that I have from one summer in particular.

Mrs Merchant asked me to put a mouse out of its misery after what might have been a close encounter with a cat. I couldn’t stamp on it, or put any wieght on it, so I chose an easy option, or so I thought. And it has stayed with me since then. And a year or so later, the same lady passed away before I was able to fulfil a very simple promise I’d made to her: cut the grass around the grave of her husband. The next time I visited the grave was at her funeral and somebody else had cut the grass – that made me feel guilty, and still does, a little.

I combined these what I believe to be gently formative but very memorable events with the graveyard setting of the St. Nicholas Church in Ringmore (which I can see from my parent’s house), and the flow of people, (or grockles as we call them) that cause most coastal tourist destinations to shrink and expand over the seasons, to form what I hope is a dark and very personal take on the undercurrents that swirl around such communities during the summer months. Lacking  a bit of confidence I speculatively emailed Gary A. Braunbeck, a writer whose work I greatly enjoy, and he was kind enough to make some suggestions on the structure and tense of the story.

Here’s an excerpt from The Gardener:

It was the day between the end of spring and the beginning of summer; the second summer that Howard spent in Shaldon. Just like last year the air was still and the birds silent, as he weeded the flowerbeds in old Mrs Merchant’s tiny back garden. It was so small it barely required any tending, but she insisted he come twice a month.

He sensed Mrs Merchant hovering behind him in her own silence. Her presence was always there when he was crouched over this one small flowerbed in particular. He felt she was watching him closely, for this was where she had buried her dog, Stroud, several years ago. Howard twisted his neck and looked up at her.

“The weather is waiting for the change!” he shouted at her, breaking the hushed spell. “It’ll be a lovely day tomorrow!” She had been completely deaf for three years, and it was too late in her life to learn how to lip read. But still, she appeared to understand everything he said. Sometimes, she even seemed to hear his thoughts.

Mrs Merchant didn’t reply; she wasn’t looking at him. He noticed that she didn’t look at him at all since her husband, Oliver, had died three months ago. She was staring at her feet, her head bowed, influenced by the hunched fragmenting bones in her spine. She didn’t say much any more either. When her husband was alive, she shouted enthusiastically due to her deafness, oblivious to the din she was making, Oliver listening with a smile playing just behind his lips and eyes.

“Look at that mouse.”

It was more of an observation than an instruction and Howard paused a moment before realizing she had spoken, whispered without moving her lips. Maybe he’d heard her thoughts this time. But Mrs Merchant spoke again, indicating with a gnarled hand, the fingers frozen into the wooden clump of a walking stick handle.

“In the corner over there, Howard. Please help it.”

Howard walked to the end of the garden where some cherry red Rhododendron bushes dominated. A tiny field mouse was lying on its side in the grass. Its brown body was shuddering sporadically as it lay there in shock.

“Something must have attacked it,” he said, not sure if Mrs Merchant could hear him.

“Howard will you put it out of its misery please? Then I need to talk to you.” He heard her footsteps recede behind him.

All your energy has gone, he thought.

Howard quarter filled a bucket with water from the outside tap. He gingerly picked up the mouse by its tail and softly placed it into the water. It lay under the surface on its side, held down by the twig in his hand. Howard stared into its glassy black eye and he couldn’t tell if the mouse was looking back at him, or looking at something far away, maybe something deep inside itself. Its body gasped for air for a surprisingly long time and he kept it submerged until it was still. Its eye looked no different in death, impenetrable.

What do you see?

Red Sands

Charged with seizing and then monitoring an important road the soldiers get lost due to some random artillery fire, come across some ruins and out of boredom (regardless of the fact they’ve just been attacked) set about shooting up the statues carved in the sides of the red sandstone hills. This act of ignorance unleashes a Djinn which then takes its revenge on the soldiers.  We know it’s a Djinn because there’s a plaque in the stone that says so.

The problem with Red Sands is that at the very beginning of the film you are shown who survives, and because you also know what’s shape-shifting and taking on the appearance of those it kills, causing hallucinations and generally making their stay in a strangely abandoned stone house uncomfortable (especially as the radio is unusable and the jeep’s engine is mysteriously ripped out) there’s absolutely no intrigue, suspense or surprise to the experience.

The shallow and clichéd characters of the soldiers are played by the numbers (why does every radio operator have glasses, and be literately nerdy?) The shadowy interior setting of the house is way too dark to see any detail; and there is a tired re-use of ideas from Dead Birds – a lot of the decent effects are dark, hollow eyes and wide gaping mouths of those victims sucked dry by the Djinn; admittedly they are scary the first time around, but if you’ve seen them once…

Ultimately, and unfortunately because I really wanted to like it, Red Sands is a disappointing and predictable film.

[This review was originally published in the Spring 09 edition of Prism, the Newsletter of the British Fantasy Society]

There’s a strong if fairly unoriginal plot forming the foundations of Dead Wood. A brief prologue shows us a man running through the woods, pursued by something unseen, the woods alive with movement. He comes to a small river and hesitates and that proves his undoing. His girlfriend is left shouting his name as the woods darken around her. We then jump to a couple playing matchmakers for a weekend, taking their shy but mutually attracted friends camping. On the way they run over a deer and as it lays there in convulsions, they make what they consider to be the correct and humane decision, and finish it off.

Dead Wood, an independent UK production, mixes up a little Blair Witch, a possessed Asian girl with yep, long-dark hair and staring eyes, and some spliff-induced hallucinations. The atmosphere grows heavy as the four lose themselves in the woods, stumble across a rotting tent and welcome a complete stranger, (the girlfriend from the prologue) into their midst rather too naively.

I was reminded of the scenes in Evil Dead as something rushes through the trees bearing down on the campers and… and, to be honest, there are far too many references to influential horror films crammed in here, so that Dead Wood loses itself amongst the trees, as does the average acting, and the panoramic ( and possibly) stock footage of vast forests into which the group definitely did not drive. This is a shame, because when it finally gets going (40 minutes into its total running time of 82) there are some interesting and spooky manifestations of a green environment with a lust for the red stuff.

Frustratingly the reasons behind the woods going after the campers are never explained; maybe it’s a Long Weekend nature’s revenge scenario due to the deer fatality, or possibly just because the woods themselves are bad, or haunted, or polluted, or…

Regardless of some effective tree transformations á la The Guardian, Dead Wood is a trying and tedious experience for such a short trip.

[This review was originally published in the Spring 09 edition of Prism, the Newsletter of the British Fantasy Society]