Peter Tennant did a mammoth review of titles from The Alchemy Press in Black Static #50. Below is the review for GIVE ME THESE MOMENTS BACK.
Mike Chinn[...]'s collection GIVE ME THESE MOMENTS BACK (Alchemy
Press pb, 266pp, £9.99) opens with ‘Welcome to the Hotel Marianas’ in which a
submersible with idle rich passengers voyages to a hotel built in the depths of
the Mariana Trench, only to find that something monstrous is waiting. It’s a
story that’s written with a feel of momentous events taking place and
increasing unease as they unfold, the characters well drawn and the idea of the
ultimate in adventure holidays coming across strongly, all of which can’t
obscure the fact that ultimately it is just a gotcha story, one in which
everything, all the careful preparation, leads up to the moment when the big
bad jumps out.
There’s a genuinely
creepy feel to ‘Facades’, with a couple on holiday in Venice getting on the
city’s bad side, though you suspect that the fault lies as much in their
natures as in that of the city. The atmosphere of menace builds gradually and
surely, with Chinn showing a fine sense of place and grasp of his characters’ motivations.
The scientist protagonist of ‘A Matter of Degree’ tries to prove the worth of
the suction cups he’s developed by scaling an unfinished bridge building
project. In a weird dislocation of reality his attempt at exposure backfires,
though he does achieve immortality of a kind in a twist ending, the story
entertaining with its gonzo ideas and the portrait of ambition warped badly out
of true.
In ‘All Under Hatches Stow’d’ a group of foresters become stuck on a
boat in the middle of a lake when their work unleashes a plague. Again, the
sense of place is strong, with Chinn meticulously filling in the background
picture, but the perils of the plague are overshadowed by the warped
personalities of the people on board the boat, monsters in human form whose ire
is directed at the only woman in their party. There’s a sense here of something
else going on, something that hovers just out of the reader’s view, possibly
related to Prospero’s Books, a film
one man watches obsessively, and comparisons with Shakespeare’s The Tempest are there to be made.
Resurrected
musicians play to adoring crowds in ‘Be Grateful When You’re Dead’, but the
reality of their condition repels people when the music ends. Underlying all
this is a subtext about how the dead hand of the past can be an end to future
and present creativity, the suspicion that all our idols have feet of clay and
only their untimely deaths prevents us from realising this.
Japanese whalers
are lured into strange waters and attacked by a terrible beast in ‘Kami Ga
Kikoemasu’, a story that has about it something of the weirdness of Hodgson’s
nautical tales, while at the same time raising vital questions about our lack
of respect for the environment and nature.
An
advertising executive with a novel idea on how to promote a beauty product
finds herself on the receiving end of the attentions of an otherworldly entity
in ‘All Beauty Must Die’. The story explores our obsession with beauty and the
things we might be willing to do to preserve it, while also casting a jaundiced
eye over the advertising industry, all of which contributes to the ultimate horror
of what is taking place.
Set in Victorian times, ‘Parlour Games’ has a guest at
a dinner party whose host is renowned for his unusual entertainments finding
that he is to be the subject of tonight’s diversion, the story engaging and
with a nasty sting in the tail.
‘Cold Rain’ is perhaps the most oblique story
here, with Adam wandering through a watered down landscape, one in which it’s
never really clear if he is a ghost or haunted by others, the surreal feel of
it all unsettling, but at the same vaguely dissatisfying, more mood piece than
story.
In ‘Once
Upon an Easter’ treasure seekers in Mexico fall out among themselves, with
gunplay and treachery all in a day’s work, the story an exciting read that
doesn’t outstay its welcome, but I suspect won’t be remembered long after the
reading is done either.
A brother and sister on vacation together have an
unusual encounter in ‘The Appalachian Collection’, a story which is beautifully
written but for my money is a tale where the payoff simply doesn’t justify the
trip there. With its strange museum and overly obliging moteliers it reeks of
the outré and weird, but on this occasion better to travel than arrive, as it
feels like an assemblage of effects rather than a story.
‘Just the Fare Back
Home’ gives us the tale of a scam, with a man masquerading as a police officer
and his partner a hooker in all but name. It was fun to read, with some decent
characterisation and a fine comeuppance for the two deserving victims, though
from the point of view of Molly for all practical purposes she is prostituting
herself, so I’m not sure what purpose the scam served and I couldn’t really see
any point to the betrayal by her partner in crime.
Tarl Genin
and his fellows live in the Belows, surviving on whatever scraps fall from the
world above, but in the story ‘Harbour Lights’ their numbers are being thinned
by an unknown killer. Chinn excels here in the creation of a blighted world,
one in which human beings are little different from the vermin with which they
co-exist, and he wraps it up in an exciting and gripping story, one that revels
in madness and bleak characterisation, but ends on a solitary note of hope.
‘Like
a Bird’ is the story of photographer Connor, taking publicity and promotional
shots in the Azores, guilt ridden over the death of his wife, finding sexual
consolation with two very different women who work at his hotel. It’s an
erotically charged story, but one with something far more sinister going on in
the background as the original inhabitants of the islands return to fill it
with their progeny. At the heart of the story is the concept of taking
responsibility for our actions, and what the failure to contain lust may result
in.
A chance
encounter with a woman from his past, results in a catastrophe for the
protagonist of ‘Give Me These Moments Back’, the story intriguing but
ultimately a little too off the wall for my liking, the feeling that we’re only
being given clues which don’t quite add up.
There’s a noir feel to ‘Brindley’s
Place’, with a man taking a stripper to a gangster’s crib, but the real slant
of the story is in the background details and the picture that finally emerges
of our protagonist, a man who made one mistake and has been paying for it ever
since. As if to underline the point, Chinn offers no happy ending, no way out
from under, with our hero having to settle for the occasional gesture and
sparks of verbal defiance that mock his fate.
Written in the form of daily
diary entries, ‘Holding It In’ tells of a retired TV personality who works as
Father Christmas at a local garden centre, his big secret that there is a
kidnapped girl kept prisoner in his basement. The thrust of the story lies in
the disconnect between the man’s rambling, self-indulgent memoir and the reality
of what he is doing, with occasional lapses into reality where his real motives
come to the fore and the reader is appalled by what is seen through the bars of
the narrative.
Ending the collection is the fantasy romp ‘Saving Prince Romero’,
a gloriously entertaining melange of wizards and flying boats, swordplay and
double dealing, with larger than life characters and some surprising twists in
the plot. It’s an exuberant and fun note on which to end this assemblage of
work by a writer who wears his influences lightly and seems to find inspiration
in every corner of the genre and its culture.
Reproduced with kind permission of the author. Copyright 2016 Peter Tennant and Black Static.