Afterthoughts on the Black Static 10 Review

Posted by Colin Harvey May 2, 2009

Yesterday I elaborated on the second of the three thoughts that spun out of the Black Static 10 review, that it is a capsule, rather than anlytical review. A capsule review is 400 - 600 words long, and Suite101's reviews are written from third person point of view.

Their brevity --especially if reviewing an anthology like Dozois's Year's Best, of up to 30 stories --enforces a sometimes enjoyable discipline, but occasionally the constraints are stifling.

Brevity is only one of those constraints, if the reviewer cares about what they write. Another, and it's one that I'm encountering more and more as my circle of acqauntances grows, is that of knowing the author being reviewed. It's hard to write damning comments about someone you may have drunk with the week before, but it has to be done -- readers trust the reviewer to be honest.

But oddly, tempering one's praise of a really good story written by a friend or acquaintance can be even harder. Gushing can make the reviewer look amateurish, if it's not in context.

So in search of brevity and to avoid hype, I described 'Vic' as outstanding, when there was so much more I wanted to say. I loved the unexpected sense of joy mixed with foreboding which -because you know that a Black Static story isn't going to end well-- made its finale all the harder to bear. That end was only the pay-off for the spadework laid throughout the story, not what makes it special. The other thing was that all too often the stories feature the protagonist-as-victim. Not so Vic, who fought back, however briefly.

Every reader reacts differently to a story, depending on their experiences. I read two or three stories a year that provoke a punch-in-the-gut reaction, but I've felt nothing as strong as 'Vic' for about five years. (It was 'Sergeant Chip,' btw).

Not everyone will love 'Vic' the way I did. It's too small, too intimate, and for many it won't have enough blood. That's what makes Black Static such a great magazine -- often it includes stories that some in theory shouldn't 'fit' in it.

I didn't have the space to say all that in the review, which the joy of being able to blog about it.