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NEMONYMOUS REVIEWS (2001 - 2008)

« H E email
posted Sunday, 6 July 2008

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ZENCORE: “a work that is staggeringly important”  

 

Other Zencore review links: http://weirdmonger.livejournal.com/2007/07/26/

 
 

Just a small selection of quotes:

  

"A first class collection." -- INTERZONE 201 re Nemonymous Five

  

"Nemonymous: It’s been a hell of a ride, and the world has been made a better place because of it." - John Llewellyn Probert (2005)


"We should all thank Mr. Lewis for taking a risk and thinking outside the box. Nemonymous 3 is a testament to pure creativity." -- Carmela Rebe (2005)

 

"One of the most interesting experiments in fiction in recent years."
-- from TIME OUT 2003

  

"Utterly unique...this compact little book offers immense pleasure."
-- from ASIMOV'S 2005

  

Rick Kleffel's article HERE says: "This is a brilliant and exciting idea, and who else would come up with it but DF Lewis, who has been pushing the boundaries of fiction for more than 20 years."

Milk of Medusa: So very rarely does something truly innovative survive marriage to altruism in the harsh day to day reality of the business of literature. Check out Des Lewis' Nemonymous, be part of something great.  

Other review links: http://weirdmonger.blog-city.com/wwwnemonymouscom.htm

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Some quotes from the authors in Nemonymous:

“'The Painter' (Nemonymous #4) was my first ever entry as a writer, and as they say here in The Netherlands, I 'fell with my nose in the butter'.” – Dominy Clements

“Being accepted at that time, by a magazine I considered one of the most important of the small press, gave me the motivation I needed to keep on writing.” – Rachel Kendall

“I am proud to be part of such a courageous venture as Nemo.” – Simon Clark

“I enjoyed my "Nemonymous Experience", the beautiful production of the books, the high quality of the stories, Des' more-than-occasional ramblings, and the whole debate it sometimes stirred across the Internet.” – Lavie Tidhar

“Nemonymous is a unique and landmark publication and in the long term scheme of things, whatever Des says, not a failure in the least.” – Tamar Yellin

“Ice Age was the first story that anybody paid me money for. … I remember talking with Des when Nemo was just a gleam in his eye; it was great to see it become (sur)real, and I was proud that my stories appeared in it.” Iain Rowan

“What difference has appearing in Nemonymous made? A huge personal one, considering that I've been an enormous fan of DF Lewis ever since reading "My Giddy Aunt" in a beat-up paperback copy of Year's Best Horror Stories.” – Scott Tullis

“Nemo 5 was a beautiful thing. It resonates in the hand. The whole Nemonymous concept and subsequent execution has been a delight to watch unfold, but to end up with a story in that marvellous vermilion baby was something I had coveted for a long time. When Des took Running Away, I felt I had achieved something unique and strange and rather mystical.” – Paul Meloy

“Getting published in Nemonymous was a real boost for me. It is still by far (if reviews are anything to go by) my most read story, and, it seems, positively read too. And I doubt that I'll ever be published in a more beautiful publication if I live to be a hundred.” – John Travis

“I hereby propose that any Nemo's life is either pre-Evanby of post-Evanby. … What is important to me, though, is that there are people like Des Lewis, who just think of stuff like this. One man, who dreams up late-labelling, and nemonymous publishing, and who then creates a magazine out of a single dropped moment of silence, which, listened to in another context, turns out to be a deafening roar. The difference, in the end, will not be the writer's, but to writing itself.” – Paul Evanby

“I don’t think it the least bit coincidental that every other writer to have had the pleasure of being involved with Des and Nemo says pretty much the same thing – of what a transcendental experience it has been to us as artists.” – Robyn Alezanders.

"More than anything, it gave me a sense of freedom to write in a different way than 'the norm' for me ... As Simon Clark said so perfectly: 'If anything Nemo has become a little voice in the back of my head telling me to be more courageous and more adventurous with my writing.'" - Robert Morrish

"Several of the stories that have been or are awaiting publication are stories I originally wrote, in one form or another, as Nemonymous submissions. Okay, so hey didn't fulfil their original intent, but each one has gone on to gather laurels of their own in other publications. So, if it wasn't for Nemonymous, they would never have been written. Nemonymous itself however, was an astonishing experience." - Terry Gates-Grimwood

 


comments (1)


1. Weirdmonger left...
Sunday, 6 July 2008 2:13 pm

**From Kek-W's article (5 July 2008):**

Nemonymous is a megazanthus, wh/ in plain terms is a cross between a book and a magazine (like New Worlds when it switched to a quarterly paperback format) - ie a book-shaped object posing as a periodical. It's a pretty unique thing these days. It harks back to an era of classic speculative/slipstream fiction, yet it also somehow feels resolutely modern. There are echoes of First Wave Wyrd like Machen and Blackwood, along w/ tinges of 60s New Wave blended in with some new, nameless form of Post-Blair Bizarre that celebrates the Sabotage of the Ordinary and documents the downfall of a country that has somehow been invaded by itself. The familiar still exists, but has been impregnated by an Imposter Nation, a sort of Neoliberal Cookoo who has left its young in our nest. The writing in Nemonymous seems to almost subconsciously recognise this fact, spawning a type of suburban reportage that echoes the unease of a country in transition - an experiment in Social Engineering whose outcome is still inconclusive, but whose effects are being felt on some astral literal-plane.

Nemonymous isn't as in-yer-face as Bizarro, its overtly transgressional (mostly) American cousin, and that's no bad thing. It's more polite and mannered - in that weird way that only the Brits can affect: the keeping up of appearances whilst all around them collapse...except this isn't the apocalyptic fiction of The Cold War years; it's something vaguer and less easy to define - a sense that the status quo is being redefined around us and we're powerless to alter this new future that currently being shaped without any clear mandate. Unlike the 60s/70s of the now-classic New Worlds run, Nemonymous isn't overtly political - it's more a muted grey reflection of a world that is starting to change faster than our ability to comprehend it.

While it has yet to produce its own equivalent of a Ballard (or a Moorcock or a Harrison) some of the Nemonymous writers are tantalisingly starting to suggest some of the shapes that Post-Ballardian spaces might resemble. The use of anonimity - initially an almost gimmick-like strategy for selecting contributions without fear of prejudice or accusations of cliquey nepotism - is increasingly starting to make some sort of counterintuitive sense in a culture obsessed by both the longterm celebrity and the notion of transient fame.

Nemonymous should be seen as part of an on-going process of reallignment in contempory alternative fiction - Des has provided a flag of convenience for writers whose voices don't quite fit to rally round. He hands out abstract manifestos and vague themes - blank leaflets that the authors can respond to without feeling hemmed in by. The results are then filtered through his own warped sensibilities, so that the resulting anthologies have a sense of asthetic coherence.

What we're seeing here is a literary non-movement that is, er, moving towards becoming a genre without actually being one - a reasonable analogy might be the UK Electronic Dance 'Nuum, which occasionally goes through periods of Namelessness where the music is in a state of flux, absorbing influences and ideas and reconfiguring itself just prior to becoming something with a set of recognisable signifiers. Those periods just before something coalesces into a new, nameable genre are always the most exciting.

Like I said: hop on board! In 10-20 years time people will be talking about stuff like this as being the beginning of something new, and tatty old copies of Nemonymous will be selling for stupid amounts.