Enarrare

Fanzine at /enarrare/. See Also: Enarrare-SAAB

Reviewed by Kathryn A on ?

This is the most consistently excellent fanzine of my acquaintance. The editors are perfectionists (and consequently don't produce zines that often). Except for the special Blake's 7-only edition (which won the Australian Science Fiction Media Award for Best Fanzine in 1989) this fanzine has a mix of British SF&F media based prose & poetry (Doctor Who, Blake's 7, UFO, Sapphire & Steel and so on). With a stable of excellent writers and artists, this is always a treat.

!!Issue #08

Reviewed by Kathryn A in 1996

Clear plastic & cardboard covers, approx 190 A4 pages, small print, comb bound.

Enarrare 8 is another offering of mixed British media SF&F from that crowd in Queensland. As usual, all the illos are good, and Bruce Mitchell's are superb. The pieces are mostly Blake's 7 this time, with some peeps from The Tomorrow People, Space 1999, Sapphire & Steel and UFO. There is also a lovely folio by Sonja Van Den Ende, a fan artist I have always admired. But let's look at it piece by piece.

Insurance (Blake's 7 season 3) Ana Dorfstad

This one fills in a little question - if the Liberator treasure room had so much stuff in it, why were stunts like the Kairopan haul needed in season 3? Well written, plausible, gets the character nuances right, particularly the relationship between Blake and Avon.

The Gate Beyond Winter (Blake's 7 season 3) Marie Logan

One of my favourite ever stories. An ancient Queen fights goblins and is rescued by elves - or is that what is really happening? It is so good to see the Seven from such a different perspective. One has one's cake and eats it too, where fantasy meets reality and one finds it to be cultural difference rather than un-reality.

Nascent (Tomorrow People season 3) Catherine Stewart

One sees so few Tomorrow People stories, and this one is fun.

River of Night's Dreaming (Blake's 7 season 5) Jack Wynguard

Sad, but pretty well done. One of those noble uplifting tragic kind of endings. But hope lives on.

How To Be Ridiculously Well-Acquainted With The First Season Of Blake's 7 In Less Time Than It Takes To Make A Good Cup Of Coffee (Blake's 7 Humour) Danny Murphy and David Leighton

This was full of chuckles. Pomes and other summaries, aptly accompanied by cartoons. My favourites were the ones for Project Avalon and Deliverance.

Might-Have-Beens (Blake's 7 season 3 poem) Bryn Lantry

She's got Avon here dancing on the edge of sentimentality but not quite crossing it.

Infernal Devices (Space 1999 post-season 1) David Tulley

Good style, but I don't care that much for Space 1999 - and this is an improbably happy ending, even though it does explain what happened to Prof. Bergman et al.

A Lie - After Orbit (Blake's 7 season 4 poem) Bryn Lantry

It catches Avon's self-deception well enough. If it was self-deception.

Celtic Circle (Sapphire & Steel) Catherine Stewart

Well done! It is so hard to think of an original and interesting menace for Sapphire and Steel to battle, but she's done it. It was also refreshing to have the 'civilian' play a partnership role rather than a tool role with Steel, amusing to see him wrong for once. I liked the way some things were the reverse of the usual.

The Devil's Loom (Blake's 7 season 3) Ana Dorfstad

I like the twist. I was sure all along Avon wasn't a psychopath, but I can't be sure that my other suspicions about what was going on wasn't due to my proof-reading part of this story earlier. This one explains why the Liberator crew gave up on looking for Blake for most of the third season. Yet another story where good comes out of bad, if the cryptic last paragraphs mean what I think they do.

The Seventh Rebel (Blake's 7 season 1) Bryn Lantry

A different idea, postulating Zen-as-person deciding whether or not it wants to be part of the Cause.

In My Enemy's Eyes - The Inheritors Part 1 (UFO post-season 1) Catherine Stewart

Oh, I like this one so much, perhaps partly because I had been looking forward to it after hearing part of the plot from the author a few years ago. But it is better than I had anticipated. Carlin crashes in the bleak North American tundra, with no one alive out there but the alien whose UFO he had damaged. This is set after her story Cloudeye, from the way some of the characters in that get mentioned. The double meaning of the last remark of Carlin was a pleasantly ironic way to end it. And the way Carlin is trying to avoid Straker's overtures of friendship is amusing. I love the picture of the alien: nicely enigmatic.

Overall, highly recommended.