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DJS / BLR BannerWhat do you MEAN you don't have a BLR banner
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ZOMBIE JAM has finally crawled from the mouldering, clotted mulch of snakebit delays and multiple postponements, to void its horror all over you in a big icky mess. Despite the long wait, there are currently very few copies left at 
Easy to miss : This is the Dark Delicacies anthology, edited by Del Howison (proprietor of the eponymous bookstore) and Jeff Gelb (of Hot Blood fame) for Carroll & Graf softcover publication September 2005. Of the 14 out of 20 total contributors enumerated on the cover, DJS is not one of them, having been consigned once again to the ignominy of "and many more." Since the "many" is only about a third of the people listed upfront, it doesn't constitute as "many" as are already on the cover. (Message to Lisa Morton: Where did we go wrong?! Who have we offended NOW?!) The inference lent by the sell text is that Richard Matheson has contributed "an original tale of terror and the macabre," when in fact he only wrote the introduction. All this smoke and white noise makes it easy to miss the fact that this book contains a new DJS story (ironically titled) "The Pyre and Others," to which you are heartily recommended. 
Awaiting you in the new 
The latest volume of monster caricatures and illos by the incomparable 
The Outer Limits: Season Two. DJS' comprehensive writeup on
the newly-released Season Two DVD set will appear in the Rondo
Award-winning 
Dangerous Red
Cemetery Dance Magazine #47 leads
off with a new DJS interview (8000 words), and an excerpt from Bullets
of Rain . Also: reviews of Rock
Breaks Scissors Cut, Bullets, and the much-recommended Dangerous
Red. Even the 
"The Content of Our Winter's
Diss"
"The Thing Too Hideous to Describe" appears in From the Borderlands (paperback version of Borderlands 5)
"Water Music" appears in Hellboy: Odder Jobs
"Wake-Up Call" appears in The Mammoth Book of New Terror
Havoc Swims Jaded. Just you wait. (2004)
To Celebrate the 3rd Anniversary
of BLR, we're pleased to announce our latest sponsored site: 
Sinister Visions Banner Exchange
It is a remarkable
development in my lifetime that people have come to expect and want to
be entertained for more and more of their lives. Previously, entertainment
had clear limits. You went to a sports game, or to a movie, or a theatrical
event, and there you were briefly entertained. Afterward you returned
to your regular life, which was not expected to be entertaining. Your
life might be passionate, it might be committed, it might be compelling
and engaging, exciting and arousing, but it was not imagined to be "entertaining." Because
entertainment is something that is done to you, or for you, by another.
Now, entertainment has become a defining metaphor for all kinds of activities.
Restaurants are supposed to be entertaining, and often have "themes." Schools
are supposed to be entertaining. Media is supposed to entertain, more
than to inform. Even self-improvement courses and therapies are supposed
to entertain. Nearly everything in society is judged by whether or not
it is entertaining. Of course, all this entertaining creates anxiety.
How fragile we are, that we cannot be alone, that we must have the tube
on for company, that music must play in our rooms and earphones, that
when we turn to TV we flick aimlessly from one channel to the next, "looking
for something good." You'd think this endless flicking would tell
us something, but it never seems to. As we accelerate the pace of our
lives, we no longer have time to experience our own lives, so that entertainment
becomes a numbing relief. But as the acceleration continues further,
we no longer have time to experience our entertainment either. Two hours
in a movie theatre is too long; we don't need to see the movie, we can
just talk about it. Its stars, its reviews, its grosses. There was a
time, not so long ago, when audiences focused on the work, putting the
artist (and his/her faults) in the background. Now, everything is inverted.
Reared on a steady diet of media gossip, we have come to think it is
a normal focus of attention; we are desperate to know gossip about an
artist's life, or about the behind-the-scenes making of a film. We want
to know escapades and lovers and lawsuits and fighting and drinking,
and we can hardly be bothered with the work itself. The only value to
the work is that it generates the gossip, which is what we now find "entertaining." My
own view is that we do a disservice to ourselves to imagine that we cannot
survive without the constant flow of distractions. In fact, children
enjoy learning and the acquisition of knowledge is its own reward. It
does not have to be hip and fun. Kids mistrust hip and fun teaching,
as they should. I think adults do, too. Sooner or later, all this entertainment
will, in its franticness, melt away, like the witch in The Wizard of
Oz.
—
MICHAEL CRICHTON.