MOONCALVES: Strange Stories

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NO Press 2023

Edited by John WM Thompson

When I read this book, my thoughts will appear in the comment stream below…

Stories written by Briar Ripley Page, Ernest O. Ògúnyẹmí, Janalyn Guo, Brian Evenson, Jaime Corbacho, Lisa Tuttle, L. Marie Wood, Adam Golaski, Chelsea Sutton, Meghan Lamb, Christi Nogle, Glen Hirshberg, J.A.W. McCarthy, Sasha Geffen, Mark G. Meyer, Thomas Mavroudis, Daniel M. Lavery, Nathan Breakenridge, Steve Rasnic Tem, Jeff Wood, Elwin Cotman, Sofia Samatar, and Jaime Corbacho.

Black Static 82/83

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TTA PRESS 2023

Fiction by Simon Avery, Steve Rasnic Tem, Sarah Lamparelli, Rhonda Pressley Veit, Julie C. Day, Neil Williamson, Josh Bell, Françoise Harvey, Aliya Whiteley, Andrew Hook, Tim Lees, Ray Cluley.

My previous long-term reviews of this publisher: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/tta-press-interzone-black-static/

Although I have retired from most reviewing after 15 years of doing it, I am keeping up with my regular independent relationships, such as with this momentous final edition of Black Static. Congratulations, good wishes and thanks to Andy Cox.

I am also reviewing any new single stories in anthologies and collections by writers whom I have reviewed before. Please keep me informed of the latter. Who knows, I may one day come out of such retirement and start obsessively gestalt reviewing whole books again!

When I read this Black Static book (192 pages) in 2023, my thoughts will appear in the comment stream below….

All Living Writers Listed – by Aye Eye

A huge project started in the earlier days of AI Art availability.

Links to AI visual experiments as triggered by my gestalt real-time reviews since 2008.

PLEASE SEE THE LIST OF ALL THE MANY LINKS HERE

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Each image is clickable and available as a separate enlarged one.

All seemingly inspired by WIMSATT’S INTENTIONAL FALLACY / DES LEWIS GESTALT REAL-TIME REVIEWS / NEMONYMOUS / PARTHENOGENETIC LATE-LABELLING / THE SYNCHRONISED SHARDS OF RANDOM TRUTH AND FICTION (WEIRDMONGER)

EDIT (February 2024)— It was exactly a year ago I started experimenting with AI Visual Art, little knowing what I was entering. There was indeed much stimulation in triggering shifting collages from my gestalt real-time reviews of individual authors. But that was then, and now is now. From today, I no longer have this facility.

 

Living writers with visual AI experiments triggered by my reviews of their work into shifting collages… (1)

Links…

STEPHEN KING

BERNARD MACLAVERTY

THOMAS LIGOTTI

NINA ALLAN

RHYS HUGHES

NICHOLAS ROYLE

STEVE RASNIC TEM

GLEN HIRSHBERG

QUENTIN S. CRISP

COLIN INSOLE

JOHN HOWARD

MARK VALENTINE

KAREN HEULER

JULIE TRAVIS

CHARLES WILKINSON

REBECCA LLOYD

STEVE DUFFY

REGGIE OLIVER

D. P. WATT

ALEXANDER ZELENYJ

CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN

LIVING WRITERS TO BE CONTINUED HERE: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2023/03/27/aicraft-being-flown-amid-the-amorphous-thermals-of-literature/

Vastarien Vol. 5 No. 2

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GRIMSCRIBE PRESS 2022

Jon Padgett, Editor-In-Chief

My previous reviews of this literary journal: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/tag/vastarien/

When I read this book, my thoughts will appear in the comment stream below…

Work by Romana Lockwood, LC von Hessen, Amelia Gorman, Steve Rasnic Tem, Aleco Julius, Venezia Castro, Michelle Muenzler, John Brownlee, John Paul Davies, Scott McNee, Dyani Sabin, Sophia Ashley, Alina Măciucă, David Rees-Thomas, Charlene Elsby, Agwam Kessington, Shawn Phelps, Matt Sadowski, Shaoni C. White, Sara Wilson, Charles Wilkinson, Sofia Ezdina, Barbara A. Barnett, Stephen Hargadon, Marisca Pichette, Aaron Worth, Sarah Walker, T.M. Morgan, Anzhelina Polonskaya, C. O. Davidson.

The Sire — Steve Rasnic Tem

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If Jonathan Swift ever wrote an Immodest Proposal, this would be it.  It is beyond shocking, and I shall have to be very careful what I tell you about it, and not only  because of the fear of normal  plot spoilers to which most reviews are susceptible, but also of a series of multiple  false Braxton Hicks. Natural childbirth alone. Moments of pregnancy’s hatching that would trip you up or diminish the healing shocks and leave you only the destructive ones. So this review hides things from you. Otherwise you would miss out on its full effect as Paula takes to living in her new rented abode as hung with folk horror omens,  and she is bearing the pent-up ripening fruits of a one night stand with the eponymous-sired man, and we end up with the severest possible polarity of Natalism and Anti-Natalism: “…the insatiable appetite of nature as mothers delivered both life and death into the world.” — being the only quote I shall dare give you from this work’s transcendence versus horror-apotheosis.

But, suddenly, I feel another quote from it is shortly to drop upon your reading care or scare, before I can stop it, as the father’s return-to-cull for a metaphorical Irish famine, and he  leaves one of them that might have fallen off (Paula wasn’t sure): one who, I think, grows faster than even the utter polarity I have already described above grows, if with a mouthless speech like these printed words tend to be. Balanced within the polarity, I guess, by almost a cartoon glimpse of a Watership Down type thing, where any happy bits may be embodied by a Mr Rabbit. Review avoidances of my responsibility aside, I can say without hesitation that this story has a truly truly unmatchable “scythe of arm” in its sweeping prose. Can’t say more.

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This story can be found here: Mother: Tales of Love & Terror, eds. Christi Nogle and Willow Dawn Becker, October 2022

My reviews of Steve Rasnic Tem’s multi-hatching fictions over the years: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/steve-rasnic-tem/

My ongoing reviews of such recent stories, one by one, by living writers: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2022/11/06/the-single-story-toward-a-novel-world/

Best New Horror #31

PS PUBLISHING 2021

Edited by Stephen Jones

My previous reviews of the publisher HERE and the editor HERE

Stories by Scott Bradfield, Maura McHugh, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Jonathan Carroll, Alison Littlewood, Ramsey Campbell, Stephen Bacon, Don Webb, Ron Weighell, Angela Slatter, Richard Gavin, Michael Chislett, Mark Samuels, Richard Christian Matheson, Dale Bailey, Simon Strantzas, Kristi DeMeester, Steve Rasnic Tem, Reggie Oliver, Tanith Lee, Glen Hirshberg, D.P. Watt, Michael Marshall Smith.

As I had the honour of my stories being included in this series (1, 2 & 6), I felt I wanted to review this last one, as a heartfelt note of gratitude to all concerned, and to express my congratulations to Stephen Jones in particular…

When I read this mighty book, my thoughts will appear in the comment stream below…