Review of Siberian Hellhole by Michael Mulvihill in Black Petals Zine

Here is the typed-out transcription of the review text from Black Petals Issue #63 as shown in your images. I’ve kept the wording faithful to what is visible on the pages and preserved paragraph structure.

Black Petals Issue #63
April 15th, 2013

THE BP #63 SPRING 2013 EDITORIAL
by A.M. Stickel:

BALANCING FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION WITH MORAL RESPONSIBILITY

Admit it. All writers have trouble with the above. For horror writers in particular, though, freedom of expression wins out over the question of moral responsibility. Do our monsters—be they human or alien or interdimensional, made of flesh or more rarified fabric, accepted by this world or vehemently denied by it—have consciences? (If they are ordinary, garden-variety zombies, well, they do not even have minds with which to make conscious decisions, right?) Do scary stories nowadays devolve into gore fests or the celebration of the appalling? Are they veritable orgies of no-holds-barred, four-letter-word-laden acts of senseless destruction?

Raise your hand if you don’t dare show your published (or unpublished) writing to someone near and dear to you, let alone send more of it out there. Is that inner voice saying, “WHAT?! ARE YOU CRAZY?” even as you consider your next plot?

Most readers, faced with the hard and frightening facts of everyday life, do not want to read horror, or even science fiction, do they? They want feel-good literature that uplifts them and validates common societal values, despite their TV viewing habits (which may include violent sports, martial arts combat, gun and/or sword fights, crimes of every kind, bombs and whole civilizations—falling, and space debris snuffing out the biosphere…). But our readers are not most readers, are they?

And this leads me to discuss my close encounter with some modern horror fiction by Mike Mulvihill, one of whose short stories springs out at us in this issue. His SIBERIAN HELLHOLE takes place after the collapse and restructuring of the U.S.S.R. His hero, named for the biblical Tobias who went in search of a cure for his father’s blindness, has been forced into his own journey of enlightenment. The outcome manages to move beyond the man’s survival to that of his community and nation into the world at large.

Mulvihill mixes a wild blend

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