 Barnacle Bill the Spacer: And Other Stories — (1973) Publisher: There are science fiction stories alongside short thrillers and a psychological horror story; something for everyone.
 Green Eyes — (1984) Publisher: Life the second time around is short, strange and terrifying to the awakened. One "zombie", victim of a bizarre scientific obsession, breaks away, leaving a trail of muder and miracle as he flees the Project and the horror his "life" hasbecome.
 The Jaguar Hunter — (1987) Publisher: Fourteen of Lucius Shepard's most memorable stories are combined with a previously unanthologized novella, Radiant Green Star, to form a stunning sci-fi collection. In the Nebula Award–winning title story, a poor Honduran hunter is coerced into tracking the forbidden black jaguar of Barrio Carolina.
 Kalimantan — (1990) Publisher: Deep in the lush jungles of Borneo, an American fugitive discovers a native drug that can bring hallucinations to life and revive the ancient spirits of the land.
 The Ends of the Earth: Fourteen Stories — (1991) Publisher: The second collection of Lucius Shepard's short stories. Includes "The Scalehunter's Beautiful Daughter."
 The Golden — (1993) Publisher: Deviating from traditional tales that feature lonely vampires who prowl through human society in search of victims or solace, this account of vampires flourishing in their own "inhuman society" takes place in the year 1860, when their centuries-long breeding experiments have finally produced "The Golden," a mortal whose blood is perfect and powerful. Mobilized by the news of this discovery, aristocratic vampire clans arrive at the looming Castle Banat, where they plan to partake of the sublime blood. To their shock, the guests find that The Golden, a young girl, has been brutally murdered and her blood already drained. The story also follows the Inspector Michael Beheim — a recent vampire — assigned to track down the killer. Recounted in full 19th-century literary style with gothic elements and foreshadowing, the inspector navigates his way through the vampire world and the crime therein.
 A Handbook of American Prayer — (1999) Publisher: A man walks into a bar. A dispute ensues, and the bartender kills him. He's sentenced to ten years for manslaughter. In prison, the convict, Wardlin Stuart, writes prayers addressed to no god in particular. Inexplicably, his prayers — whether it's a request for a girlfriend or a special favor for a fellow inmate — are answered, be it in days or weeks. When his collection of supplications, A Handbook of American Prayer, is published by a New York press, Stuart emerges a celebrity author. Settling into a new life in Arizona, he encounters a fundamentalist minister. The two are destined for a confrontation. In the interim, it seems that the god to whom Stuart has been praying has manifested himself on the earth. In this short novel about America's conflicting love triangle — celebrity, spirituality, and money — Shepard negotiates the thin line between the real and the surreal, expounding upon violence and redemption along the way. This story of an unlikely American messiah shows why The Wall Street Journal has compared Shepard, an award-winning author, to Graham Greene, Robert Stone, and Ward Just.
 Beast of the Heartland — (1999) Publisher: The fiction of Lucius Shepard has more to do with Joseph Conrad than Isaac Asimov. Fascinated by deception and decay, and generally labeled a cyberpunk writer, his work transcends the limits of genre fiction. Beast of the Heartland contains seven tales that explore the darkside where science fiction meets horror. Headed by the award-winning "Barnacle Bill the Spacer," a story of high-space mutiny, the book includes "A Little Night Music," a gothic tale of insanity; "All the Perfumes of Araby," where an adventurer in the Middle East links up with an ancient entity; "Human History," a postapocalyptic chiller; "Sports in America," a noir tale in the Chandler tradition; "The Sun Spider," a mini space opera; and the title story — an ingenious picture of a battered boxer on the decline.
 Colonel Rutherford's Colt — (2002) Publisher: The itinerant gun show draws together many subcultures from the margins of society: survivalists, Aryan brotherhoods, and the team of Rita Whitelaw and Jimmy Roy Guy, dealers in collectible arms. Rita has made Jimmy an exception to her general disdain for whites — "not your typical Caucasian," as she describes him — for Jimmy's got a storytelling ability that borders on mystic vision. When Jimmy makes an agreement with the widow of Aryan martyr Bob Champion to broker her husband's infamous Colt .45, he and Rita run afoul of "the Major," Champion's spiritual successor. However, they're not intimidated by the Major's veiled threats. The gun has launched a story, and when Jimmy begins a story, one way or another, he's bound to see it through. (For mature readers.)
 Louisiana Breakdown — (2003) Publisher: Welcome to Grail, Louisiana — next to nothing and just beyond reality — where hoodoo meets Jesus, and townsfolk pray to both. This dark fantasy delves into the psychological and motivational depths of Grail and its residents. Miss Sedele mixes up green cocktails called 'cryptoverdes' at Le Bon Chance. Vida Dumars, owner of the Moonlight Diner, peers into the deepest realms of her customers' hearts as though they were picture windows. Town spirit Good Gray Man has promised good fortune to the town as long as it hangs onto tradition. A quirky, fantastical town's heart and soul are slowly, often painfully revealed in this dark and captivating novella. 
Liar's House — (2004) Publisher: Our short novel series continues with a new title by award-winner Lucius Shepard. Return to the world of the dragon Griaule, setting of some of his most beloved tales such as "The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule," "The Father of Stones," and "The Scalehunter's Beautiful Daughter."
 Viator — (2004) Publisher: Quartered aboard the freighter, Viator, run aground twenty years before on a remote section of the Alaskan coast, the four men hired to determine the ship's worth at salvage have begun to exhibit a variety of eccentric behaviors. They've become obsessed with Viator to the point that the world beyond seems of consequence only as it relates to the ship. When their putative leader, Thomas Willander, is afflicted by a series of disturbing dreams, he concludes that something on board may be responsible for their erraticism. He seeks the help of a woman in the nearby village of Kaliaska and together they initiate an investigation into the history of Viator, hoping to learn, among other things, why the ship was run aground and who was the mysterious man who hired the four. But their efforts may be too late. The men, whose eccentrities are now verging on the insane, show no sign of intending to abandon their new home, compelled by Viator's eerie allure. To make matters worse, winter will soon be setting in, ominous incidences of sound and light are issuing from the forest surrounding the ship, and Willander's dreams may be coming true...
 Two Trains Running — (2004) Publisher: This collection of fact and fiction was inspired by the time science fiction writer Lucius Shepard spent with Missoula Mike, Madcat, and other members of a controversial brotherhood known as the Freight Train Riders of America. Shepard rode the rails throughout the western half of the United States with the disenfranchised, the homeless, the punks, the gangs, and the joy riders for the magazine article 'The FTRA Story'. That original article is presented here, along with two new hobo novellas, 'Over Yonder' and 'Jailbait'. In 'Over Yonder', alcoholic Billy Long Gone finds himself on an unusual train. As Billy travels his health improves and his thinking clears, and he arrives in Yonder - an unlikely paradise where a few hundred hobos live in apparent peace and tranquillity. But every paradise has its price, and in Yonder, peace and tranquillity breed complacency and startling deaths. 'Jailbait' is a hardcore tale of deception, lust, revenge, and murder in the seedy underbelly of rail yards and train hopping. Madcat, who functions best in a whiskey-induced haze, must decide between solitude and companionship when he meets up with Grace, an underaged runaway. Grace, in turn, seeks the security of an older man and the life about which only young girls can dream.
 Trujillo — (2004) Publisher: In the town of Trujillo, in Honduras, on the edge of the Mosquito Coast, Dr. Arturo Ochoa, a semi-retired psychiatrist, has a single patient: a troubled young man named Thomas Stearns, the son of a wealthy Atlanta family. Stearns has been found adrift on the Carribean in a vessel owned by two Nicaraguans, both of whom are missing; he has been alone for eighteen days and has little memory of that time. Suspected of murder, Stearns is unconcerned. He knows his family will buy off the police. But he is reluctant to leave Trujillo, having developed an odd affinity for the town. As therapy progresses, he tells of a mysterious stone figure regurgitated by, improbably, a whirlpool, and Dr. Ochoa, drawn into his pathology, begins to doubt not only Stearns' sanity, but his own.
 Eternity: And Other Stories — (2005) Publisher: Here are seven stories from a master of the art. Viktor Chemayev is the Philip Marlowe of Russian detectives, a sad-eyed, heavy drinking romantic who refuses to stay beat. In the title novella of this extraordinary collection, he goes head-to-head with an Irish assassin in the depths of a Moscow nightclub in an attempt to win back his true love, who has been sold to the Beelzebub-like king of the Moscow underworld... Lucius Shepard is known for his dark, unpredictable vision, and in this assemblage of some of his best writing he takes us from Moscow to Africa; from the mountains of Iraq, where Specialist Charlie N. Wilson encounters a very different sort of enemy, to Central America, where a bloody-handed colonel meets his doom via lizards. In these seven tales Shepard's imagination spans the globe and, like an American Gabriel Garcia Marquez, refuses to be restricted by mere reality.
 The Best of Lucius Shepard — (2008) Publisher: Lucius Shepard writes from the darkest, truest heart of America — not the heart of the United States or of North America, but all of America — and he writes of it with rare passion, honesty and intelligence. His earliest stories, the ones that made his name a quarter of a century ago were set in the jungles of South America and filled with creatures dark and fantastical. Stories like "Salvador", "The Jaguar Hunter", and the excoriatingly brilliant "R&R" deconstructed war and peace in South America, in both the past and the future, like no other writer of the fantastic. A writer of great talent and equally great scope, Shepard has also written of the seamier side of the United States at home in classic stories like "Life of Buddha" and "Dead Money", and in "Only Partly Here" has written one of the finest post-9/11 stories yet. Perhaps strangest of all, Shepard created one of the greatest sequence of "dragon" stories we've seen in the tales featuring the enormous dragon, Griaule. The Best of Lucius Shepard is the first ever career retrospective collection from one of the finest writers of the fantastic to emerge in the United States over the past quarter century. It contains nearly 300,000 words of his best short fiction and is destined to be recognized as a true classic of the field.
 Softspoken — (2007) Publisher: A chilling and mysterious voice becomes audible to Sanie shortly after she and her husband Jackson move into the decaying antebellum mansion that is the Bullard ancestral home in rural South Carolina. At first, she wonders if the voice might be a prank played by Jackson's peyote-popping brother Will or his equally off-kilter sister Louise. But soon Sanie discovers that the ghostly voice is merely a single piece in the decadent, baroque puzzle that comprises the Bullard family history rank with sensuality, violence, repression and madness.
 Vacancy & Ariel — (2009) Publisher: For many of us, the Ace Double Novels of the '50s and '60s have long been a source both of pleasure and nostalgia. This new double volume from Subterranean Press stands squarely in that distinguished tradition, offering a pair of colorful, fast-paced novellas from one of the finest writers currently working in any genre: Lucius Shepard.
In Vacancy, a washed-up actor, a mysterious motel, and a Malaysian "woman of power" form the central elements in a riveting account of a rootless man forced to confront the impossible — but very real — demons of his past. This is Shepard at his harrowing, hallucinatory best.
Ariel brilliantly transmutes some traditional SF concepts — alien incursions, the mysteries of quantum physics — into an astonishing, often moving reflection on love and obsession, memory and identity, and the archetypal conflict that stands at the heart of an infinite multitude of worlds.
The Taborin Scale — (2010) Publisher: In the Carbonales Valley, a remote region separated from this world by “the thinnest margin of possibility,” there is an ancient, incredibly large creature known as the Dragon Griaule. For twenty-five years, in stories ranging from “The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule” through “Liar’s House,” Lucius Shepard has brought us extraordinary accounts of lives shaped by the dragon’s undying influence. The Taborin Scale is the latest installment in this ongoing epic, and it is an astonishing — and revelatory — accomplishment. The story begins when George Taborin — numismatist, collector, and solid citizen — travels to the valley on his annual vacation. There, he encounters a prostitute named Sylvia and acquires a tiny dragon’s scale with unexpected properties. With shocking suddenness, George is removed from his everyday life and thrust into a primal world of violence and cruelty. In the course of an adventure that will change his life in fundamental ways, he is forced to bear witness to the gradual unfolding of a vast, implacable design. The Taborin Scale is Lucius Shepard at  his absolute best. Bizarre, horrifying, and strangely beautiful, it is both a gripping, self-contained narrative and a pivotal moment in what might be the most singular fantasy of our time.
 The Taborin Scale
I have long thought that the ideal length for a work of science fiction or fantasy is the novella length, defined by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America as 17,500 to 40,000 words. This gives an author sufficient space to create a world, describe it and the characters that inhabit it, and spin a plot. It’s a short enough work for the reader to consume in a single sitting, allowing her to immerse herself in the author’s world without any such rude interruptions as the need to go to work. For this particular reader, it’s lovely to be able to give myself up entirely to a writer’s imagination; the colors, the scents, the textures of the world become completely real to me.
Lucius Shepard writes ravishing novellas. The Taborin Scale, set in the same universe as the novella The Scalehunter's Beautiful Daughter and the short story “The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule,” gives us yet another perspective on the massive Dragon Griaule. It is the story of George Taborin, a numismatist who purchases a glass jar containing coins, buttons and other odds and ends when on his annual trip to Teocinte to sport in the brothels. He finds a dark, leathery chip in the jar, and begins polishing it, uncovering a blue-green color. A prostitute sees what he’s doing and identifies the chip as a dragon scale from a young dragon — definitely not the Dragon Griaule, she says, and it has to be centuries old. She wants the chip, so George strikes a deal: two weeks during which she will meet his needs (“spelled out … in clinical detail”), and the chip is hers.
Sylvia and George get along well enough, but of course there are times when they’re not in bed, and George spends some of it polishing the dragon scale. At one point, George strokes the scale and the world around him changes: suddenly he and Sylvia are on a plain with tall grasses and stands of trees, far from the city of their hotel room. The landscape fades after a moment and they’re back. Sylvia, though frightened, wants him to try it again, and he obliges. This time the landscape doesn’t fade, and they’re stranded in the new world that seems to be their own, only much younger.
Before long, it becomes clear that they have been brought here by the Dragon Griaule, though the reasons for the dragon’s actions are never made clear, even after a climax that is as unexpected as it is exciting. There is always more to this dragon than any reader might have thought. Shepard explores his meaning, religiously, culturally and historically; indeed, the book is presented as a sort of history in itself, with infrequent footnotes that explain certain details in a much more clinical manner that the tone of the story, which is much more artistically told.
The novella is published by Subterranean Press, which often publishes novellas in beautiful editions that justify the high prices it charges. This book, for instance, is signed by Shepard and, opposite the title page, bears a picture of the Dragon Griaule by J.K. Potter (who also did the lovely cover) that just might haunt your dreams. It’s a small detail, but I was particularly taken by the endpapers, which are textured to resemble the dragon’s skin and scales. I cannot imagine replacing this sort of book with the bare text on an e-reader; it stands as an argument for physical books all by itself. My only complaint is a familiar one when it comes to Subterranean: there are far too many typographical errors for a book on which such love has been lavished.
Despite the typographical errors, if I were rich, I’d be collecting Subterranean Press books by the boatload. They are lovely in every way. The Taborin Scale is as beautiful to hold and touch as it is to read. If you are already a Shepard fan, you’ll want to add this book to your collection. If you’re not, think about investing in another Subterranean book, The Best of Lucius Shepard, which opens with “The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule.” Shepard is worth savoring. —Terry Weyna
|
links. Or donate.
