Supernatural Tales

I recently read a horror story. I was struck by how familiar it all seemed. The plot, the characters, the inevitable conspiracy, and the violence. Especially the violence, which has an off-the-shelf feel to it. Am I alone in being disappointed by horror, as a genre? I'd like to know what people who read more widely think of the field these days.

This is a sort of 'emergency review' I'll never wedge into ST. So here goes... 'Thoroughly Evil'. It's not often you come across that phrase on the blurb of a DVD box set. It's a quote from the late Mary Whitehouse, who for many years was the self-appointed voice of decent God-fearing folk, and every bit as humourless and narrow-minded as the phrase suggests. Mrs Whitehouse didn't like The Omega Factor because one episode featured spiritualism, hypnotic regression and the like. But does the disapproval of the (now defunct) Mrs Whitehouse mean it was any good? TOF was produced by BBC Scotland, broadcast in 1979, then disappeared without trace. It was never repeated and never released on VHS, nor did it crop up on cable or satellite. This explains why many fans of sci-fi, horror and general spookery missed it when it first aired. Seen for the first time, The Omega Factor is not half bad, albeit very much of its time. The series opener, 'The Undiscover...

I'm heartened by the amount of enthusiasm for the Mike Chislett special issue. With a bit of luck I'll have most of the work done within a month or so. It remains to proof it and then get it printed. And, of course, I'm also working on ST12, but again I'm making good progress. I've uploaded the basic cover art - a variation on the ST format.