No foolin’—this is out today
It’s like the arguments of some ardent audiophiles, those enthusiast that (in the digital age of aimlessly yanking a song or two from some disreputable source, absently arranging them in some arbitrary order) maintain that vinyl is the only way to go: The listener forfeits the essence of the album—the liner notes, the song-to-song sequence, the warmth of the music. Same could be said for downloading a book or short story. Easy? Sure. Convenient? Without doubt. But think about what you’re missing out on—the art, the weight, the feel of the book.
Okay—yes, so I own a Kindle; but stay with me. There are some publications which still honor a bygone era of storytelling, aesthetically impressive journals whose sole purpose is to appeal to both our sense of tactility and our imagination.
The Weird Fiction Review, Issue I, is a piece of publishing artwork—a glossy, flap-cover paperback containing 225 pages and a sixteen-page, full color gallery of David Ho’s vibrantly lurid images. “The Weird Fiction Review is designed to promote serious scholarship in weird and supernatural fiction from the Gothic novels to the present day,” writes S.T. Joshi in his opening editorial, “with an emphasis on the literature of the late nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.
Fiction contributors include Michaels Aronovitz, Cody Goodfellow, Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., Mare Laidlow, Jason C. Eckhardt, along with yours truly. There are also eight essays (the focuses of which include Lovecraft, Poe, Blackwood, Stoker, and Gaiman, to name a few), and five poets offering weird work.
Leviathan by David Ho
In the spirit of bygone journals and (sadly) defunct periodicals which prided themselves on promoting the tradition of supernatural tales, S.T. Joshi’s Weird Fiction Review provides a darkly disturbing glimpse at the past, present, and future of dark fiction.
Follow this link to Centipede Press: www.centipedepress.com
Or check out Amazon.com: www.amazon.com
And follow this link to David Ho’s website: www.davidho.com
As always: thanks for reading, and thank you for your support.
Clint Smith Fiction 