Black Static is Britain's premier magazine of dark fantasy. In its fiction section the April-May 2009 issue paints a disturbing vision of today's childhood, superbly evoked by David Gentry, while the usual commentary columns by Christopher Fowler, Stephen Volk and Mike O'Driscoll focus on the imaginative failures of film and television programme commissioners.

Christopher Fowler

The fiction kicks off with Fowler's fiction debut in BS, 'Piano Man,' in which a hack reporter sent to post-Katrina New Orleans falls in with feuding bar owners, semi-retired witches and the titular piano. Told in a seemingly effortless noir style, it's variation on voodoo and the conjured monster has plenty of nice touches. Recommended.

Less involving, although still commendably dark is Gary McMahon 's 'The Chair.' Ben has been abandoned by his father to the care of a mother who is barely functional herself, and at night dreams of an old dining chair placed out in the street. In a moment of adolescent rebellion Ben flushes his tablets away, and as the story climaxes his world becomes increasingly hallucinatory as their effect wears off.

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