Russell adds a dash of the strange to reality, creating worlds like our own that are fantastical yet plausible. This collection contains seven stories of everyday life with a weird or surreal edge. ‘The Constantly Empty Pool’ Rumours of the purest water in the world draw Mary Lou to a remote town in the United … Continue reading Strange Secrets by Mike Russell
surrealism
The Softly Spoken Magic Spell
Is the union of two oblique perspectives square? This gestalt of Dali's Destino and Pink Floyd's 'Time' suggests otherwise: https://youtu.be/hc_f9VDVsNk
Green Lions by Simon Rogghe and Zarina Zabrisky
Avoiding both making words their tool and the rules of writing their master, Rogghe and Zabrisky enfold language as a co-conspirator in their poetic egg. Merging the radical collaboration of the early surrealists with the entirely personal secrets of alchemy, they initiate a manual for transformation that would have saved Jerry Cornelius books-worth of angst … Continue reading Green Lions by Simon Rogghe and Zarina Zabrisky
Ralph and the Purple Fly by Christopher Brunt
Brunt’s novella is a satire of both bureaucracy and scientific excess reminiscent of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Fatal Eggs. Mixing absurdities with looming threat, it leaves the reader uncertain whether the narrator is falling into madness or standing alone against terrible danger. Having reached the pinnacle of plant biology, Professor Conrad Constant has set himself two … Continue reading Ralph and the Purple Fly by Christopher Brunt