Rustblind and Silverbright: A Slipstream Anthology of Railway Stories
British Fantasy Award nominee 2014.
Edited by David Rix.
Trains occupy a special place in the human psyche. The twin threads of the rails forge ahead from place to place, the ultimate symbol of travel and connection and all the hopes, fantasies, fears, reasons, romance and excitement that come with that. The links between points, the bridges and tunnels, are always so much more profound than borders or walls. And yet you travel these links through a world that is isolated from normal life and unique to itself. The railways are so mundane and taken for granted, passing through the backs of your cities and towns, yet they are worlds that cannot be visited, cannot be known. Worlds that can only be glimpsed from blurred windows or from the far end of the platform. Hidden places. Private places. Places where the ordinary and the secret meet.
This was the mood in which Rustblind and Silverbright came into being – a book of railway stories that aimed to look far beyond what you might expect from classic horror or sci-fi. Like any good journey, the scenery of this book is ever-changing. You will ride the rails of language and imagination through many and varied places – some almost unendurably disturbing, some bleak and miserable, some surreal and strange, some touching and moving, some absurd and comical, some exquisitely beautiful. This is a collection that ranges widely from the almost-familiar double-track line of slipstream fiction to the grungy metro of sci-fi and the dark and sparsely served branch line of pure horror, while the squawking locomotives of absurdism jostle with still stranger trains that ride to – other places.
Contents:
- Tetsudo Fan - Andrew Hook
- On The Level- Allen Ashley
- The Wandering Scent - Aliya Whiteley
- To the Anhalt Station - John Howard
- Death Trains Of Durdensk - Daniella Geary
- Vivian Guppy and the Brighton Belle - Nina Allan
- Last Train - Joel Lane
- Writer's Block - Stephen Fowler
- Northern Line Tube Announcement - Anon
- The Path of Garden Forks - Rhys Hughes
- District to Upminster - Marion Pitman
- Wi-Fi Enabled - RD Hodkinson
- Stratford International - D McGroarty
- The Cuts - Danny Rhodes
- Sleepers - Christopher Harman
- Escape on a Train - Steve Rasnic Tem
- Choice - Charles Wilkinson
- Embankmen - Gavin Salisbury
- Sunday Relatives - Douglas Thompson
- The Engineered Soul - Jet McDonald
- Didcotts - John Greenwood
- The Keeper - Andrew Coulthard
- Not All Trains Crash - Steven Pirie
- The Turning Track - Rosanne Rabinowitz and Matt Joiner
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David Rix
David Rix (born in England in 1978) is an author, composer, editor, artist and publisher active in the area of Slipstream, Speculative Fiction and Horror - not to mention hints of absurdism, miserablism, naturism and pissed-offism. Contemporary classical music, the seashore, urban underground, railways, rocks and canals. His published books are What the Giants were Saying, the chapbook Brown is the New Black and the novella/story collection Feather, which was shortlisted for the Edge Hill prize. In addition, his works have appeared in various places, the most notable being many of the Strange Tales series of anthologies from Tartarus Press, Monster Book For Girls from Exaggerated Press, Creeping Crawlers from Shadow Publishing, and Marked to Die from Snuggly Books. He also runs and creates the art for Eibonvale Press, which focuses on innovative and unusual new slipstream writing. As an editor, his first anthology Rustblind and Silverbright, a collection of Slipstream stories connected to the railways, was shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award in the Best Anthology category.
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