MIDNIGHT STREET ISSUE 4 - SPRING 2005
Fiction from Rosanne Rabinowitz, Ralph Robert Moore, Gary McMahon, Scott Nicholson, Jane Fell, Paul Edwards, Andrew Roberts, Lauren Halkon, Ronald Jones.
Interviews with Rosanne Rabinowitz, Eric S Brown.
Artwork by AC Evans, Russell Dickerson.
Poetry from Jill Morris.
Soapbox: Six Appeal - Robert Dando.
The Mystic’s Bardo - Michael Lohr.
MIDNIGHT STREET ISSUE 3 - WINTER 2004
Fiction from Joel Lane, Quentin S Crisp, Lisa Tate, John B Rosenman, Tim Lees, Jay Lake, Trey R Barker, David Price.
Interviews with Joel Lane, Scott Nicholson, David Longhorn.
Artwork by Kirk Alberts, Russell Dickerson.
Poetry from Michael Lohr.
The Mystic’s Bardo - Michael Lohr.
MIDNIGHT STREET ISSUE 2 - SUMMER 2004
Fiction from Peter Tennant, RD Robbins, Byron Starr, Tim Lees, AC Evans, David Penn (currently nominated for Best Short Story Award by British Fantasy Society), Jonathan William Hodges, Roz Southey, David Hudson, Terry Gates-Grimwood.
Interviews with Peter Tennant, Sephera Giron.
Artwork by Carole Carmen.
Poetry from Anna Cates, Sarah Southon.
Soapbox: Second Page Syndrome - Allen Ashley.
The Mystic’s Bardo - Michael Lohr.
MIDNIGHT STREET ISSUE 1 - WINTER/SPRING 2004
Fiction from Andrew Humphrey, Antony Mann, Joel Lane, Paul Finch, Steve Redwood, Gary Couzens (currently nominated for Best Short Story Award by British Fantasy Society), Catherine J Gardner, David Rawson, Cathy Buburuz.
Interviews with Andrew Humphrey, Antony Mann.
Artwork by Russell Dickerson, Lauren Halkon, Charles S Fallis, Cory Harding, Carol Humphreys, Carole Carmen.
Poetry from Geoff Stevens.
The Mystic’s Bardo - Michael Lohr.
“An enjoyably-spiced assortment of literary exposition with the odd crackle of powder and whiff of cordite to keep the whole thing spinning.”
Nick Jackson
Midnight Street, 12, Spring 2009
This issue contains an unusually eclectic selection of fiction from a variety of authors who deliver a kaleidoscopic vision of the world in stories ranging from hysterical fantasy transvestitism to deft minimalism.
Tony Richard’s “Crows” is a strong opening story. It is one of the quieter ones, relying on a slow build up to achieve its atmosphere of tense expectation.
On the whole I preferred these shorter quieter pieces in which the writing hinted at something just out of frame, a half-glimpsed horror or a distorted vision of the world. However, David Gullen’s story of a drag troupe turning up to perform in an Alaskan outpost, “The Cabaret at the World’s End”, was so outrageous it shocked me into submission. Any story that features a man assailed by unexpected homosexual leanings towards a drag queen dressed in silver silk while a human and environmental catastrophe unfolds, culminating in a walrus vs. zombie fight to the death (well, I said it was outrageous), has got to have my seal of approval. And who could ever have imagined walruses as objects of erotic fantasy (apart from David Gullen, obviously)? Read this story and you’ll understand.
I skirted nervously round an interview with Guy N. Smith, a prolific horror writer whose main job is editing the gun column for “Countryman’s Weekly” and found myself staring down the muzzle of Allen Ashley’s “Planet Dodo” in which he fires off a salvo on the topic of being over fifty (welcome to the club, Allen), celebrates being a fuddy-duddy and muses generally on British culture, or lack of it. This is followed by a deeply disturbing interview between Michelle Belanger who seems to believe she is both a psychic and a vampire (psychic vampire, anyone?) and Michael Lohr, who may or may not have come out of the interview unscathed.
“The Last Gallery” by Joel Lane is one of the understated gems in this issue. There are no tricks or twists to this piece of delicately crafted prose, just a strong self-absorbed character, reaching towards that mesmerising something which remains cloaked in darkness.
Jane Fell’s poem, “Watched Over” slips neatly into a gap between stories, with muted and well-chosen imagery.
“The Turning of the Screw” by William Mitchell starts off sedately enough as a kind of Victorian mystery chronicle but begins to seem more like Conan Doyle on a speed trip, as it spins towards a gratuitously gory conclusion in which buckets of blood and gobbets of flesh cause an entire circus audience to turn nauseous.
Thank goodness Allen Ashley’s on hand in “Waving, Not Drowning” to remind us that all true-blooded British heterosexuals would rather risk being swept out to sea than have their shrivelled manhood called into question by a bunch of broccoli-eating aliens.
Marion Arnott’s story of Germanic World War II barbarism, “The Persistence of Memory” is almost serene by contrast but impeccably written, as her stories always are, with a dark heart to it.
Then, just as I thought the show was over, there was Carl Barker’s rather fine and wistful story, “The Man Who Came to Dinner” describing an encounter between an enigmatic first-person narrator and a man who is forced to come to terms with his own mortality. I hope Mr Barker will shortly be producing more such delicately-nuanced pieces.
All in all, an enjoyably-spiced assortment of literary exposition with the odd crackle of powder and whiff of cordite to keep the whole thing spinning.
Nick Jackson
