Tag: Nemonymous

Tim Nickels, ‘Supermarine’ (2010)

14th December 2010 / / 1 Comment

The longest and last story in Null Immortalis (and therefore the last story in all of Nemonymous) takes us to wartime Gibraltar, focusing on a number of characters, but most notably Kay Keating, an ex-film starlet who has travelled to the Rock on the orders of — well, that’s for the story to tell, not me. As with ‘The Green Dog’, I feel I haven’t been able truly to get to grips with this piece. I loved the flow and atmosphere of Nickels’ writing, but couldn’t piece together the deeper connections in the story.

Rating: ***½

Bob Lock, ‘Haven’t You Ever Wondered?’ (2010)

9th December 2010 / / 1 Comment

There have been stories in Null Immortalis which draw on their context of being in this particular anthology, but none more so than Lock’s contribution. Anthology editor D.F. Lewis is himself the protagonist, approached by the alien Tullis in a tale that casts the entire project of the Nemonymous series in a rather different light. This story comes across as a big in-joke, but, to be fair, I did find it rather amusing.

Rating: ***

Mark Valentine, ‘The Man Who Made the Yellow God’ (2010)

7th December 2010 / / 2 Comments

Valentine’s subject is J. Milton Hayes, author of the dramatic monologue ‘The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God’, here cursed with immortality and obscurity. What makes this short piece works so well is the narrative voice, which combines old and contemporary in a way that utterly convinces as the voice of a man who has remained physically young for a hundred years. There’s also an effective contrast between the vein of humour running through the narration and the more quietly spoken terror of the events described.

Rating: ***½

Stephen Bacon, ‘The Toymaker of Bremen’ (2010)

7th December 2010 / / 1 Comment

In 1938, young Scot Tullis’s family are on a motoring holiday in Germany when their car breaks down. Scot falls asleep, and wakes to find that his parents have disappeared; going off in search of them, he instead finds a house inhabited by an old man and his seven children, and full of strange toys. The old man offers Scot a place to stay; the days turn into months, with no sign of Scot’s parents. I like the idea of this story, but it doesn’t quite flourish for me in practice, as the prose doesn’t reach the level of texture and atmosphere for which it seems to be aiming.

Rating: ***

Cameron Pierce, ‘Broom People’ (2010)

6th December 2010 / / 1 Comment

The newly-single narrator  opens his dresser-drawer to find a tiny wooden girl who announces herself as ‘a broom…come to clean the cobwebs.’ Oh, but our man doesn’t know the half of it. This story is wonderfully creepy and odd, and leaves one guessing just what’s going to happen up to the very end.

Rating: ***½

Reggie Oliver, ‘You Have Nothing To Fear’ (2010)

1st December 2010 / / 1 Comment

An artist recalls his friendship with an aristocratic photographer, and recounts the tragic fate of the model who became his friend’s chief subject. The object of fear in this story is nothingness, and ‘being nobody’; there’s also a subtext of people being driven to destruction by others in the pursuit of fame or success. It’s interesting as it goes along, but I never really felt the emotions underpinning the tale.

Rating: ***

Joseph S. Pulver, Sr., ‘Icarus Above…’ (2010)

27th November 2010 / / 1 Comment

Like ‘Apotheosis’. this story draws very much on its context, though in a very different way, as Pulver makes use of not only the title of Null Immortalis, but also the name of its publisher and the wind-turbine imagery on the book’s jacket. So, the assemblage of eight turbines becomes ‘the Null Immortalis of Megazanthus’, which a young Scott Tullis sees at the age of eight. He is immediatley drawn to it as a symbol of the wind (he’s also saving up for a kite), but the Null Immortalis will cast a long shadow over his life and family.

Pulver’s prose is oblique and fragmentary, making for a dense four pages. I didn’t grasp everything about ‘Icarus Above…’, but I do appreciate its singular atmosphere and the rush of its telling.

Rating: ***½

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