Produktbeschreibung
Featuring:
* Fiction by John Shirley, Terry Bramlett, Tyree Campbell, James R. Cain, Paul Finch, Paul Melniczek, Greg Beatty, Gerard Houarner, David Niall Wilson and Patricia Lee Macomber
* An interview with Joe R. Lansdale
* "Writer at Large" by Richard A. Lupoff
* Poetry by Lee Clark Zumpe, Ann K. Schwader, and Bruce Boston
* Strange Happenings, puzzles, contests, and more!
An interview with Joe R. Lansdale
Writer at Large, a regular column on writing by Richard A. Lupoff
The Serpent Grail, an exclusive article for Dark Wisdom ,by Philip Gardiner
The Film Vault, a regular column featuring commentaries on unusual, overlooked, or comdemned films
Poetry by Lee Clark Zumpe, Ann K. Schwader, and Bruce Boston
Artwork by Steven Gilberts, Kathy Ferrell, Colin Foran, Cathy Hill, Chris Hill, and Bryan Reagan
Another episode of What Rough Beast Comes by Kurt Belcher and William Jones, fiction and gaming reviews, a puzzle contest with prizes, and more!
TechnoTriptych by John Shirley
Panel I: CALL GIRL, ECHOED
There was no real reason Morales should be nervous. But he always was, before one of them came over. It was absurd, he told himself, as he went to the small portable bar on the balcony, to make himself a drink. It's all quite professional, nothing personal to them, even the human ones, so there was no reason to be nervous. But he was nervous for both kinds of call girl. He'd gone from the human kind;which were quite rare now, anyway, they had so many disadvantages;to the robotic call girl, because he thought that would deal with the nervousness, the defensiveness; with his reluctance to tell her about the kinky little games he wanted to play. And real, flesh and blood girls had always irritated him. The robots were designed to be accommodating...
So the Story Ends by Terry Bramlett
The dunes kept changing behind Pancho, almost as much as Pancho's skin changed. Lefty understood he was dreaming. The dunes never changed while he roamed the desert. He wished he could say the same for Pancho...
Generation Gap by Tyree Campbell
Across generations Lucy passed, like the quilts of the first-born, until at last she arrived in mine on dusty musty photographs of stern-faced families dressed in clothes they wore once or twice a year. My father passed a gnarly finger across the album page, the tip catching on a loose, coal-black corner, which he licked and slipped back on while he uttered her name as if she were a mess we'd made on the floor. Nine, I knew better than to prod that tone with questions, but Jody was an artless eight...
The Thing in the Park by James R. Cain
Bill strode away from the station, adjusted his glasses and huffed against the cold. His stomach growled and he swung his briefcase as he hurried toward the car, fumbling with one hand in his pocket for his keys. Three lads in jeans rose through the shadows toward him, up the hill, their shoulders hunched, revenants formed from the moonlight, parting the threaded mist. One pointed at Bill who thought nothing of it at the time...
Private Nightmare by Paul Finch
The "hares" were in flight. All three of them. Kipling, Utterson and Poynton. And it was sheer agony. Mud squelched under their trainered feet. The harsh November air rasped in their throats. The wooded path rose and fell and twisted tortuously, dense rhododendrons hemming it in, blotting out the buttery afternoon light...
Frontiers by Paul Melniczek
Roger pulled his Explorer into the lot of Deleon State Park and turned off his radio. He sat there for a few moments, digesting the latest news. Terrible. Things were getting worse, much worse...
Dr. Gilthorpe's Bilingual Daycare by Greg Beatty
"I can't tell you how overjoyed I was to stumble across your daycare. Can you believe that despite your spacious grounds, no one in the entire town seemed to know that you exist?" Cheryl Wyndham gushed when she was happy, or nervous. She was both now...
Out of the Shadows by Gerard Houarner
Kendra sat in a window booth looking out through her own dark-skinned reflection at mountains looming over the diner parking lot and the lonely stretch of road beyond. A single green trailer truck was lined up alongside her rental Taurus and a ragged gathering of older, American cars and trucks and recent-model sport utility vehicles, looking like a little boy’s collection of toys in the shadow of ancient, rounded, tree-shrouded peaks. The interstate she had driven on all night through slumbering suburban sprawl had shrunk to two lanes in the foothills and was now a fragile tar ribbon tossed casually over convenient folds and crevasses in the earth, with only an occasional passing car to confirm it was still open. Her destination, the town of Tendleton, was only a few miles further along the serpentine highway, nestled between protected National Park land and undeveloped private tracks. She wondered if the road would last the distance she had yet to go, or if anything would be left of the place when she got there. The trip, like her young life, felt like it had reached an ending from which there were no new beginnings...
The Purloined Prose (part II of II) by Patricia Lee Macomber & David Niall Wilson
Shaking his head, the barman swiped his cloth across the counter and mopped up the spilled pint, cursing under his breath and vowing to charge the odd little man who'd spilled it double the next time he came in...
Writer at Large by Richard A. Lupoff
Probably a more fruitful question, certainly a more refreshing one than the cliché Where do you get your ideas, is How do you start a story? Of course there is no one answer. As I've said a gazillion times before today and will say a gazillion more before I'm finished, Every writer finds his or her own path...
The Serpent Grail by Philip Gardiner
The whole world has seemingly gone mad with Da Vinci Code 1 hysteria following Dan Brown's international bestseller. The 80's book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln 2 has once again topped the charts. All manner of Grail related books are being dusted off and re-published in the race to ride the Dan Brown Express. And yet the whole premise of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail is incorrect..
Film Vault
Welcome to the Film Vault. Each issue presents three commentaries on unusual, overlooked, or condemned films. The commentaries are those of the critics, who are not allowed to discuss the film with each other beforehand. The three critics are writer and reviewer C.J. Henderson, freelance writer and reviewer Paula Guran (www.darkecho.com), and staff reviewer Chris Welch. This issue features commentaries on the film Frailty (Lions Gate Films, 2002).
C.J. Henderson says:
How does it come about that we continually end up with entertainment that reaches classic, often epic, proportions over the years, which in its initial appearance before the public is met with indifference and even indignation? Fans might have loved the original Star Trek television show, but they were in a distinct, and tiny, minority. The film thought of as the perfect children's entertainment, The Wizard of Oz, failed miserably in the theaters. If not for its yearly showings on the medium of television, starting twenty years after it was shelved, it might today be completely forgotten... |
