by Chris Stevens
The stench of sulfur wafted through the air as Colin lit the black candles positioned at each corner of the pentagram. He stared intensely at the large pentagram he had drawn on the bare concrete floor. It had taken a while to remove the carpeting and padding from the room. Harder still was the remnant of glue that was swirled on the floor to keep the padding in place. Colin had even gone so far as to remove the tack strips and their anchors, in order to get a nice smooth surface for the task at hand. |
Issue 19 (Mar 2012) |
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by Mark Sykes
SURELY ONE OF THE best things about reading short fiction is waiting for the twist at the end. Not every short story has to have one, and some do very well without them, but they are delicious when they’re done properly. And could there be more fitting genres for them than sci-fi and horror? |
Issue 19 (Mar 2012) |
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interview by Vianne Venter
I think we have it in us, but we have a fair amount of growing up to do first. It would take a concerted, worldwide effort to do so, and we’d need motivation everyone could get behind. In the short term, I don’t know that we could do it out of sheer curiosity or a drive to explore, but a threat to the species might be enough to scare us all into line. |
Issue 19 (Mar 2012) |
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Posted in Interviews | 
Tags: Interview, Issue 19, RWW Greene, Vianne Venter, Writers Cornered | 
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by R.W.W. Greene
A lot of people cheered when our space plane docked with the Sam Walton but I wasn’t in the mood. The ride up was terrible. First I felt squashed, then I felt like I was falling, then I just wanted to puke. The flight attendant had handed out anti-nausea gum before we took off, but people were throwing up all around me. A couple of rows back, someone missed the barf bag and vomit bubbles floated by my head. The attendant captured it with a net. Gross. |
Issue 19 (Mar 2012) |
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Hendrik Gericke
I recently got turned down for a sci-fi concept art gig, because I didn't have enough of that kind of thing in my portfolio. It's annoying, because I love sci-fi, yet in concept art it's been done to death and I tend to go the opposite direction to the general norm. So I took this as the gauntlet that had been thrown down and jumped at the chance to get stuck in. A massive inspiration of mine is the painter John Harris, who has done a lot of covers for Tor Books (they have an amazing stable of artists), and I definitely took cues from him. I wanted to relate the sense of scale between the craft and the planet, giving it a telephoto feel.
Read more »by Joe Vaz
| Our March issue comes at you with four original stories, one SF and three horrors. We start off with some good advice in ‘It Pays to Read the Safety Cards’ by R.W.W. Greene on the 6th of March. Chris Steven’s twisted story, ‘Stained’ will be posted on the 13th of March. On the 20th of March comes Peter Damien’s ‘Ghost Love Score’, and we close off the issue with Nick Scorza’s ‘The Book of Love’. Our interview for March is with South African television and film actor, Brandon Auret, who has just come off the new Niell Blomkampf (District 9) film. Together with Mark Sykes’s Sixth Sense of Humour, this completes our issue for this month. If you just cannot wait to read all the stories then why not purchase the magazine now, or take out a subscription through Weightless Books? |
Issue 19 (Mar 2012) |
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interview by Vianne Venter
I was stuck for an hour or two in this really old train station in the middle of nowhere, and had the misfortune of needing to use the bathroom. They were in a little concrete hut. The smell was so bad I couldn't breathe and I had to tip toe in and out because the place was flooded with murky liquid. When I went in, the attendant, who looked at least 80, was mopping up. Only he wasn't doing much more than smudging the dirt around. |
From Issue 18 (Feb 2012) |
Posted in Interviews | Tags: David McCool, Interview, Issue 18, Vianne Venter, Writers Cornered | Comments Closed
by David McCool
A couple of months ago - I'm talking mid-June, right smack in that heat wave - I took a walk into the town centre to kill some time on what was likely the hottest day of the year. Had I stayed at home I'd have risked dozing off in front of the TV, and, at my age, my sleep pattern doesn't need much more than a five-second, head-jerking snooze for it to be thrown right out of sync. Working in the garden wasn't an option, either. I'd have been sizzled good, even with factor 50 and a straw hat on my side. |
Issue 18 (Feb 2012) |
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interview by Joe Vaz
I always try to remember that the characters in the book should be fully embedded in the future and in the world they’re living in, so for them, what we would regard as amazing technologies are completely prosaic and mundane. They’re not going to be knocked out by some gadget. A spacecraft for them is just a means of getting from A to B and they don’t particularly care how it functions. I try not to get into those boring discussions that you get in bad science fiction about how the engine works… unless it’s central to the story, that’s different. |
From Issue 18 (Feb 2012) |
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review by Deon van Heerden
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Published by Rebellion/2000AD Originally published in 2000 AD during the late 1990s, the complete Mazeworld saga is brought together here in one, beautifully presented volume. The author, Alan Grant, and illustrator, Arthur Ranson, are, of course, familiar to comic book and graphic novel aficionados, and their names alone should be enough to get you to hand over your money without hesitation. If, however, you feel you need further convincing, read on. |
From Issue 18 (Feb 2012) |
Posted in Reviews | Tags: Alan Grant, Arthur Ranson, Deon van Heerden, Issue 18, Mazeworld | Comments Closed