Cyber-Psychos #5 review (from Dead of Night #10. "The Unquiet, The Unburied" Magazine Reviews) by t. Winter-Damon
CYBER-PSYCHOS AOD #5, Beltane/May 1994. Color Cover, 71 pp.
The philosophy/philosophies driving Cyber-Psychos are a dangerous, intense and passionate fusion--to oversimplify, tribal neo-pagan, pre-apocalyptic, eco-visionary... I spent considerable time speaking with editor Jasmine Sailing at the World Horror Convention, this past March, and let me assure you, she is one of the most fascinating individuals I've had the pleasure of meeting -- not only a powerful sensitive blessed with a fierce, questing intellect, but, despite her relative youth, I sensed a very old soul, possessed of an astute cognizance of the more esoteric comparative religions ...a shared indulgence. In any case, Jasmine puts together one of the strangest, headiest cross-genre mixes imaginable -- the fringe-oid music scene, counter-culture lifestyles, spotlights on cutting edge or eccentric artists, gut-wrencher horror, SF of the darker persuasion, erotica, interviews; in other words, whatever strikes her delightfully bizarre fancy. This issue includes interviews with Vampire Rodents, Bliss Blood of the Pain Teens, Dick Lucas of Citizen Fish, Johnny Indovina and Human Drama, and controversial filmmaker/performer Joe Christ (vampire novelist Nancy Collins' hubby). As usual, she's included a first-rate spectrum from the cutting edge of Newbreed Horror/SF cross-genre writers -- a brief excerpt from Bruce Boston's eloquent and mindbending first novel Stained Glass Rain, "The Comet Called Ithaqua" by Don Webb, "Even The Rich" by Uncle River, two short-shorts: "Crippled" and "Skull" by Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire, and the powerful and disturbing "Mary's Need" by Sue Storm -- a tale of a young female junkie and a twisted exploitive research scientist who'd have fit in well in the Third Reich, buying blackmarket babies to... read this one and find out! Some other warped tales herein -- "Perversion #65" by Jeffrey A. Stadt, "Secret Deep" by Gregory G. Nyman, and "Mr. Bibbette's Passenger" by G.F. O'Sullivan. Nonfiction, "Black Velvet And Slice" by Wayne Allen Sallee and in-your-face commentary "The Bad Boy's View of the World" by (of course) S. Darnbrook Colson. Extensive music and book reviews, including regular "guest" appearances by popular horror novelists Brian Hodge and Edward Lee. The illos are, as usual a mostly good but uneven mix -- excellent works by Harry Fassl, Voodoo, Wendy Piper, and Brian Cooper; the cover by Will Anders is possessed of a dark, demonic energy, and is quite nightmarish and effective, despite a certain lack of technical polish (if it weren't for a couple of less engaging, somewhat shaky, interior illos, in fact, I'd have laid it to deliverate primitivism on his part... but I perceive him as a rapidly developing talent to watch out for... and his illo on pg 19 is killer too...); Gordon Klock, whose occult/surreal/hallucinatory images have graced several Cyber-Psychos covers, with excellent effect, seems a trifle hurried with his two current illos, not quite as crisp as I've come to expect of him. I NEVER miss an issue of this one -- it truly matches my own decidedly warped sensibilities.
GIVE IT A TRY IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY!