The 3rd Alternative, Issue 39, Autumn 2004

The 3rd Alternative

I got into 'The 3rd Alternative' late in the day, reviewing issues #26 #36 #37 and #38. The news that TTA Press were to take over the increasingly fragile Interzone was largely a welcome one, as Andy Cox had shown with The 3rd Alternative that producing a genre magazine of high quality was not beyond him and his team.

With Interzone part of the TTA Press stable, editor Andy Cox announced that the The 3rd Alternative would consequently leave the SF to Interzone, allowing The 3rd Alternative freer to explore the boundaries of slipstream/New Weird/dark fantasy/horror etc.

Subsequently, The 3rd Alternative has taken on a darker hue, with the magazine appearing to be shifting not only away from SF but the 'new weird' as espoused in previous issues, towards a more straightforward horror content.

With the latest issue, Number #42, comes the news (not actually hot news if you have been reading the vigorous debates on the TTA Press forums) that The 3rd Alternative is to be retitled 'Black Static', and a preview of the cover first issue of the newly titled mag flags up only 'horror' in terms of content. What the fiction content actually transpires to be, we shall see.

For the sake of completeness I have put together this listing of the contents of issues 39-42, partly as the ISFdb is struggling to keep on top of basic listings these days, and partly as I'm anally retentive anyway. Where I did ready the stories I have made note.

The 3rd Alternative, Issue 39, Autumn 2004

Nina Allan. Monsters.

Teenager Jes is discharged from hospital, recovering from a breakdown after the death of a close friend and getting hooked on VR. Allan gets into the mind of her very effectively, portraying the distorted, scary world and the people in it which she sees with strange clarity.

She is drawn back to experience the VR world, and is finally able to face the fate which befell her friend.

Some months since I read this, and some of the finer points have long since leaked out of the sieve-like structure of my brain. I do recollect a strange penchant for hats featuring in the story! But I recall the story was a reasonable read, its contemporary London(?) setting offering a contrast to the American setting of a lot of SF, and certainly sufficiently sfnal to appear in an sf magazine.

Joe Hill. The Black Phone.

A youngster is abducted and incarcerated in a cellar by a deeply unpleasant perv. However, the old fashioned phone in the cellar offers him some help - supernatural help in the form of advice given from those who have been in the cellar in the past, and a weapon which he can use against his captor. Dark and disturbing!

A 'missing chapter' of the story is available at the author's website.

An altogether darker story, and whilst I can take one of these once in a while, a regular diet of such stories isn't as enervating as I like.

Mike O'Driscoll. If I Should Wake Before I Die.

Another morbidly darke tale, getting into the head of someone revisiting dark deeds.

Susan Fry. Father Gregory's Relic.

In the streets of Jerusalem Father Gregory's attention is brought to a creature in a cage. Can it truly be a captured angel? Or is the Father a fool?

Christopher Barzak. A Resurrection Artist.

A man who earns money through performance art which goes beyond the usual - being killed - finds that he is tiring of his job, and seeks a more final death and resurrection.

Jay Lake. Daddy's Caliban.

A young boy and his friend go against parental advice, and get more than they bargained for, as they hear the echoes of the past. Close to Gene Wolfe quality.

The 3rd Alternative, Issue 40, Winter 2004/2005

This issue has been sitting on my shelves since it arrived some months back. The opening paragraph of the opening story, in which the protagonist refers to having had since he was ten years old 'reverent dreams of one day fucking (his) sister' wasn't exactly begging me to read it.

Steve Mohn's 'We Must An Anguish Pay' carries on in the same vein, as the now adult brother turns up at his sister's request at the inn on which she has squandered the family inheritance. It turns out that her brother is the least fucked up of the group she is now hanging around with, as she is heavily into drugs and alcohol, and her colleagues are very strange. They are all doing serious amount of drugs, between 'vastation' sessions, in which a portal to a greater understanding is opened to them, and through which they are tempted to pass.

The protagonist finally fulfills his long-held desire, and then pushes one of the group through the dark portal, saving his sister in the process. A dark, sleazy, sensual piece that manages to go about as far enough as I like to see, although I daresay for some it will go way too far, and for others, not far enough.

Paul Meloy. Black Static.

This is more the kind of the story I would put forward as being the new-weird that in my short experience T3A does best. A hazy dream/nightmare in which Dr Mocking is treading a dangerous path, being chased by a baroque Uproar Contraption, and young Lesley Morning is fleeing in a hot-air balloon, chased by the witchlike Nurse Melt.

The two story threads, told in the present tense, come together, as the relationship between Dr Mocking and Lucy unfolds, and the dark deeds which have been happening in the 'real world' become clear.

The only concern for me is the fact that childhood sexual abuse is the dark deed - call me old fashioned, but T3A seems to feature incest rather too often than in healthy!

David J. Schwartz. Breaking Glass.

A young man in Chicago, about to get divorced, finds relief/catharsis in breaking glass. Strangely, his nocturnal activities attract acolytes who at first witness, and then mimic his vandalism.

Darren Speegle. Sugar Cream Pie.

Melanie Fazi (transl. Brian Stableford). The Cajun Knot.

Vandana Singh. Thirst.

Eugie Foster. Running on Two Legs.

A young woman has a recurrence of her childhood cancer. As a child she successfully fought it off, in the process losing her ability to talk to animals. She knows that the cancer has reappared when this ability returns, and we follow her through the diagnosis and treatment, as she communicates with animals in her garden and a dog who a hospital visitor brings around the wards. It is the wise old dog, himself a cancer survivor, who offers her wise words of which she takes heed.

The central conceit didn't work for me, as the type of conversation she was having with the animals and birds was rather too Dr Dolitte and stretched my suspension of disbelief beyond the snapping point. However, the human/human relationships were handled well, and to some extent the fantastical elements rather got in the way, rather than enhanced, the story.

The 3rd Alternative, Issue 41, Spring 2005

TTA website

The previous issue opened with a drug/alcohol/incest combination, and a particularly unlikeable POV character, and this issue does likewise!

Nathan Ballingrud. SS.

Ballingrud gets rather too deep into the mind of a very unpleasant young man, who gets involved with the wrong crowd. In this case, Nick is living at home with his mother. The opening paragraph sets the tone, with Nick leaving his mother at home, in a very dark corner in her wheelcahir, with something obviously unpleasant happening in the house. Nick has a menial job washing dishes at a diner, but the companionship offered by a local white supremacist group, and the sex on offer from young Trix pulls him down into even darker ways. We find out more about what he has been doing with/to his mother (bleagh!), and he sets off, armed, to commit a murder to inveigle himself with his new friends. However, a road traffic accident gives him the opportunity to use his gun on an injured horse, which sets him off home on a mercy killing mission.

My sensitive tum came as close to heaving as it ever has when reading a story - I much prefer the writer to leave the reader to imagine the horror, rather than spelling it out in scalpel sharp prose!

For me, the story is missing that special something, in the same way as does SF which doesn't attempt to do something new - maybe writing stories about nasty sickos is the horror equivalent of stories in which people are stranded on the moon and are only able to stay alive through their ingenuity?