’Nemonymous’ is a magazine that asks writers to submit stories anonymously. The stories are published without the authors’ names and only in the next issue are the writers’ identities revealed. Editor Des Lewis calls this “late-labelling.” Anonymity offers interesting possibilities for writers, in theory creating a freedom to explore previously uncharted territory or delve unselfconsciously into more personal issues. But as Neil Ayres points out in his review, there is a consistency to the stories in this magazine. For me, a number of pieces are quite wordy and might have benefited from some editing. As for the best of Issue 4, my own favourites are ‘Leaves Like Hearts,’ ‘The Painter,’ ‘Nocturne for Doghands,’ and ‘Vole Mountain.’ However, many of the other stories were also well worth reading. Speculative fiction, magic realism and realism appear side by side. Anyone interested in imaginative writing and characters on the edges of society are advised to get a copy of this magazine. ‘Nemonymous’ is one of the best UK magazines, and like ‘Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet’ straddles the genre and literary worlds effortlessly, showing that such categories are confining and ultimately redundant in the face of good writing.

’Whispers of Wickedness’ is a website and print zine, produced by D-Press. The print magazine is quarterly. “Dark Atmospheric Art and Fiction” is the description on the cover of the chapbook-sized zine. The cover artwork by Chris Cartwright is a typical example of the great illustrators and artists who work on D-Press chapbooks and magazines.

There are six stories in the new Summer 2005 issue. ‘The Two Funeral Urns of Mrs Tate From Number Three’ by Steven Pirie is the first story. An older woman dusts the urns of her dead husbands. Their urns are kept well apart. Even in death they don’t get on. One of her husbands, Eric, had been “a troublesome rogue.” He also murdered Cyril, whose ashes reside in the other urn. But Eric later hanged himself with his braces. These men still whisper to her from beyond the grave. Dark humour threads through this story.

’Sending Freedom Far Away’ by Rhys Hughes sees a fictional Latin president coming to power. He wants to export his country’s own freedoms to the world, whether other parts of the world want it or not. By exporting freedom, though, he won’t endanger his own country, because “Freedom isn’t like oil, it can’t run out.” Over time freedom is forced on more and more countries. In the end, only one country without freedom is left, his own - because the people have been apathetic and have gone along with everything the president told them. Freedom can run out after all. Though the story lacks subtlety at times, Hughes has obviously taken great delight in writing this fable-like piss-take on US foreign policy.

’Black Man Stands’ by John Saxton takes place over the 3rd and 4th of April, 1968, and features a plane crash that will change the course of history. The story though deals only with the crash itself and its immediate aftermath. An assassin has died in the crash - think about the date, look at the title, and maybe you’ll work it out for yourself. The crash itself has been caused by supernatural means.

Carole Humphreys has done a beautiful and eerie illustration for ‘Maternal Whispers’ by James Harris. The story itself deals with the continuing tragedy of a couple who have lost a baby. The child was strangled by the foetal chord. The husband can do nothing for his grieving wife, who has refused breast pumps and tablets to stop her milk from coming. They are literally haunted by the death of their child.

’Number Crunching’ by Steve Redwood is another story with a humorous edge. It plays on numbers and the fact that some numbers (pi, prime numbers, etc) are more important than others. Here, numbers that have no significance decide to get their revenge and have some fun at the expense of the narrator. Steve Redwood is a writer who plays with interesting and clever ideas, but this story is also very amusing. If there’s a criticism to be made, it’s in the ending where the perspective suddenly changes to two characters who only appear towards the end of the story. The rest of the story is in the first person. There’s a nice twist at the end though.

The final story is ‘The Legacy’ by Liza Granville, who takes the Pygmalion story and gives it a 21st century makeover. An older schoolmaster takes a young bride, but she refuses to go along with his masochistic sexual demands. In the end, they maintain a respectable front in an empty marriage of mutual loathing, but after his death, she buys Eros, a sex toy programmed to meet all her personal needs. Things don’t turn out as she planned however. The legacy of the title lies in the schoolmaster’s strict authoritarian mother, and her methods of discipline which have been passed down to her son, even to her daughter-in-law. Granville’s prose style is fluid and she can conjure up a great phrase or sentence.

The poem, ‘The Demon Eater’ by Alexis Child was one of the better genre poems I came across in this roundup. Many of the others were too clunky and lacked lyricism. ‘The Demon Eater on the other hand was more poetic.’

Overall, though ‘Whispers of Wickedness’ isn’t up to the standards of ‘Nemonymous’ or ‘Lady Churchill,’ it is an entertaining read, with flashes of dark humour.

’Premonitions’ publishes science-fiction and horror poetry, fiction and art. It comes in A4 size, with a glossy colour cover. The poetry is actually the weakest aspect of the magazine for me, due to the tendency of the poets to use multi-syllabic words and overly technical words that frankly don’t lend themselves well to the poetic form. There’s also a lack of lyricism and rhythm in the poetry overall. Sometimes it seems more like prose chopped up into short lines. The lyrical ‘Idiot Boy’ by Lilith Lorraine (1894 - 1967) is the best poem in this issue, and comes from her 1952 collection, ‘Wine of Wonder.’

On the prose side, the magazine gets off to a good start with ‘Restless’ by K Bannerman, which revisits the tale of the Wandering Jew. The seventeenth century setting of the first part of the story is particularly good, and there’s a nice revelation at the end.

John Paul Catton’s ‘Ayumi-chan in Wireless Heaven’ is another of the more interesting stories. Set in a future Japan where everyone seems to have virtual spouses, with Manga faces, the story’s protagonist, Sekiguchi wakes up on a train to find his wife is missing. The fact that he checks his pockets tells you there’s something different about her.

’Sex and the Single Xanthrocite’ by Anthony Mann is a humorous story about a human who is chaperoning an alien diplomat. Debbie Moon’s story, ‘Are You Now…?’ meanwhile plays on J Edgar Hoover and McCarthyism, but here the issue is not whether people are communists, but whether they are aliens, living among the human population, passing for human. As the FBI agents of the story discover, Hoover himself is in cahoots with the visitors.

There are a number of other stories in ‘Premonitions’ and a good number of poems. The fiction seems to be stronger in this particular (unnumbered) issue of the magazine.

One other magazine worth mentioning in passing is ‘The First Line.’ In each issue authors are given the first line for their story, and each writer then takes it on from there. The stories in Volume 6, Issue 3 all begin with “I was born Rosa Carlotta Silvana Grisanti, but in the mid-Eighties, I legally changed my name to Eve.” It’s certainly interesting to see where different authors take this beginning, and the stories are written in various styles. While not the best of the literary mags, it certainly offers an interesting exercise to writers and is modestly priced. The stories in the Winter 2004 issue start with “The inside was dark.”

‘Nemonymous’ is without doubt the standout magazine of this bunch, and rivals ‘Lady Churchill’ for the title of recommended magazine of the season. Their strengths lie in their hybrid literary-speculative natures, where they aren’t afraid to present weird and wonderful fictions, written and published to standards that leave most pure literary or genre magazines trailing. If one magazine had to be picked though, it would be ‘Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.’ ‘Nemonymous’ is the best of this roundup’s UK magazines.

Kara Kellar Bell is a film and media graduate from the West of Scotland, with a passion for European novels, French films, silent cinema, and Brazilian music (everything from Daniela Mercury and other pop stars through to bossa nova). As a writer, she likes to have room to move around creatively, so she’s not located in one genre. She writes realism and also stories of a more fantastic nature, usually grounded to some extent in the real world. She also takes delight in writing across the sexual spectrum, and as a bisexual, considers it important to remind people that things are not always black and white, either/or, in sexuality or in gender. For a selection of Kara’s writing on the Showcase section of this site, click here

© 2005 Laura Hird All rights reserved.