11. The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson (1954). I studied a little Viking history at university, so I've read a couple of the sagas (albeit a few years ago now). It strikes me that, though they've been a great source of inspiration to fantasy writers, they aren't particularly good stylistic models for modern literature -- stories that try too hard to sound like the sagas can fall a bit flat. But Poul Anderson gets it right in The Broken Sword, which reads to me like a Norse saga (with added fantasy -- I don't know how much of the story is drawn from Viking mythology, and how much is Anderson's own invention) imbued with modern literary colour -- which makes this book feel fresher in places than a good number of fantasies written in the fifty years since its publication!

The story: England's elves are at war with the trolls; the elves' greatest champion is Skafloc, a human prince swapped at birth with a changeling, Valgard, who now fights for the trolls. As the situation grows ever more desperate, the elves' only hope is for Skafloc to have the cursed sword Tyrfing reforged -- but Tyrfing demands blood whenever it is drawn; so, as you may expect, all ends in tragedy. I was flagging a bit from about halfway (as I tend to with any book written an archaic style, regardless of when it was written -- but that's my problem, not the book's), but The Broken Sword is still as good a book of its type as I've read.

12. Black Static, issue 2 (2007). There used to be a magazine called The Third Alternative, which published dark 'slipstream' fiction. After its publishers took over the science fiction magazine Interzone, they decided to relaunch TTA without any SF-flavoured stories (which, they felt, would now be better served by Interzone. The result was Black Static.

It's a long time since I read an issue of The Third Alternative in full (and not just becuase it's a long time since there was one to read!), buton this, my first encounter, Black Static was instantly familiar -- which is both a good thing and a bad thing. The stories are good, don't get me wrong; but, at the same time, there's nothing in the magazine that truly sparkles for me, because nothing in it truly surprised me. Things would surely be different if I had never read TTA; but, since I had, the lost souls and displaced realities of these tales covered old ground. I'd say my favourite story was 'Holding Pattern' by Andrew Humphrey, about who finds reality 'failing' around him -- except, that is, when he wants it to most. I single out this one because I feel it's the most effective at tying its fantasy elements to its emotional story; but, even so. it is good rather than great.

Black Static also has a substantial number of non-fiction colums which, similar to the fiction, I found interesting but not truly thought-provoking (though the reviews gave me a couple of leads I want to follow up). My pick of these would be Christopher Fowler's piece, which puts a different slant on the 'independent vs mainstream' debate -- though he seemed to be talking about something different at the end from what he was at the beginning, so I'm not sure what to think about it.

Reading this back, I think it comes across as harsher than I intended. Certainly, if none of the names or titles I've mentioned here mean anything to you, this issue of Black Static is a good place to start. But it's not as good as I'd hoped.