In her preface, Canadian Kilpatrick (The Vampire Stories of Nancy Kilpatrick) calls this collection a "tribute" to the small press, where most of its 27 brief dark fantasy tales first appeared. Like the desktop-published books and periodicals she lauds, many of the stories have a rough and tumble quality that reflect the worst and the best of semipro publishing. "Youth Not Wasted," a black comedy about diet consciousness, and "Metal Fatigue," concerned with a man's apparent sexual victimization by Streiberesque E.T.s, are full of physical vulgarity that sometimes passes for revolutionary candor in horror's guerrilla press. "Horrorscope," which features people guided by astrology to commit deviant acts, is one of several plotless experiments more concerned with elaborating strange personalities and ideas than telling a story. The best selections, however, show the author skillfully developing character and theme in stories of ambiguous supernaturalism. In "Projections," a maladjusted woman follows her psychiatrist's advice to embrace the fears she projects onto others and winds up assimilating something nasty that may not be just a figment of her neuroses. The book's most affecting story, the previously unpublished "The Middle of Nowhere," completely sidesteps the fantastic in its depiction of the horrifying transformative power of grief. Its haunting, direct confrontation of powerful emotions cloaked elsewhere in the book in the garb of supernatural imagery shows why Kilpatrick is one of the horror small press's most successful graduates. (Oct.)
