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SFF Author: Lucius Shepard

(1947-2014)
Lucius Shepard is the author of the World Fantasy Award-winning collections The Ends of the Earth and The Jaguar Hunter. He is the recipient of the Nebula Award, the Locus Award, and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He died on March 18, 2014.

The Dragon Griaule: Collects all the Griaule stories

The Dragon Griaule by Lucius Shepard

His flesh has become one with the earth. He knows its every tremor and convulsion. His thoughts roam the plenum, his mind is a cloud that encompasses our world. His blood is the marrow of time. Centuries flow through him, leaving behind a residue that he incorporates into his being. Is it any wonder he controls our lives and knows our fates?

The Dragon Griaule collects Lucius Shepard’s six stories and novellas about Griaule, the mile-long 750-foot-high dragon that has been in a spellbound sleep for thousands of years.

Kat Hooper´s rating: 4.5 | Lucius Shepard | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Taborin Scale: As beautiful to hold and touch as it is to read

The Taborin Scale by Lucius Shepard

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.

Terry Weyna´s rating: 4.5 | Lucius Shepard | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Jaguar Hunter: Powerful, hallucinatory stories in exotic locales

The Jaguar Hunter by Lucius Shepard

I try to avoid excessive praise unless it is truly deserved, but I can say this without hesitation — Lucius Shepard was one of the best SF short story writers of the 1980s. His prose, imagery, themes, and style are so powerful, dynamic, and vivid that it’s a real crime that he didn’t gain a wider readership when he was alive, though he did win many awards.

He burst on the scene with his short story collection The Jaguar Hunter,

The Ends of the Earth: Luminous, powerful stories of war, exotic locales, and supernatural horror

The Ends of the Earth by Lucius Shepard

Lucius Shepard had already created one of the best short story collections in the genre, The Jaguar Hunter, which won the 1988 World Fantasy Award and Locus Award for Best Collection, with “Salvador” winning the Locus Award in 1985 and “R&R” winning the Nebula Award in 1987. His work is steeped in magical realism, supernatural horror, Central America and other exotic locales, and hallucinatory depictions of futuristic warfare. In my opinion, Shepard is one of the best stylists to ever work in the genre.

The Best of Lucius Shepard: Earlier stories are best

The Best of Lucius Shepard by Lucius Shepard

I’ll come right out and say it. Lucius Shepard was one of the best SF short story writers of the 1980 and 1990s. His prose, imagery, themes, and style are so powerful, dynamic, and vivid that it’s a real crime that he didn’t gain a wider readership when he was alive, though he did win many SF awards.

Although he had already been publishing his stories in SF magazines like SF&F and Asimov’s for several years,

The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Vol 2: More disturbing than Vol 1

The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume 2 edited by Gordon Van Gelder

I read the first volume (The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: Sixtieth Anniversary Anthology, published 2009) before I tackled this one, published in 2014. It’s only been five years, but I detected a darkening of the tone. Maybe I’m imagining it, maybe it’s just me, but it seemed to me that the earlier volume contained stories that set out to go to strange places and, as a consequence, were sometimes disturbing,

Mike Reeves-McMillan | George Alec Effinger, Harlan Ellison, James Patrick Kelly, Jane Yolen, Ken Liu, Lucius Shepard, M. John Harrison, Maureen McHugh, Paolo Bacigalupi, R.A. Lafferty, Stephen King | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Magazine Monday: Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April 2012

The March/April issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction is worth its cover price for the new Peter S. Beagle novelet all by itself. In “Olfert Dapper’s Day,” Beagle demonstrates that there are still new tales to tell about unicorns if you’re a master of the short fantasy tale. Dr. Olfert Dapper was a seventeenth century conman who wrote books about the strange creatures to be found all over the world, even though he never left Holland – that is, the actual historical figure never left Holland.

The 2012 Shirley Jackson Award Nominated Novellas

The Shirley Jackson Awards will be handed out in just less than two weeks, at Readercon in Burlington, Massachusetts. This is the third of three columns about the short fiction nominees, this column covering the novellas; the short stories are discussed here, and the novelettes are discussed here (now updated to include a discussion of Jeffrey Ford’s wonderful novella, “The Last Triangle” from the Ellen Datlow-edited anthology, Supernatural Noir).

Michael Morano’s “Displacement” from Stories from the Plague Years begins with a chilling picture: a serial killer is “showing” a victim’s body to her decapitated head,

Magazine Monday: Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2012

The novella is the ideal length for a science fiction story. It’s long enough to allow a reader to become immersed in a scene and involved with the characters; and it’s short enough to allow a reader to suspend disbelief as to the more unscientific or strange aspects of a story without questioning them too closely. Kate Wilhelm’s “The Fullness of Time,” which forms the backbone of the July/August issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, is a fine illustration of the strengths of the novella form.

Magazine Monday: Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January/February 2013

The latest issue of F&SF is stuffed with good reading. I can’t pick a favorite, as I often do; many of the stories hit that sweet spot. Robert Reed’s short story, “Among Us,” is a good example: it’s about the Neighbors, creatures who look exactly like humans but are not, though they may not know that themselves. The narrator studies the Neighbors in every way possible — almost. There comes a moment when he is not willing to let research take its course, and whether that proves something to him, to the researchers,

SHORTS: Shepard, de Bodard, Bear, Jemisin, Parker, Holland

Our weekly exploration of free short fiction available on the internet. This week’s theme, just for fun, is stories dealing with dragons.

The Man Who Painted The Dragon Griaule by Lucius Shepard (1984, free online at Baen.com (sample from the Bestiary anthology), originally published in Fantasy & Science Fiction, also collected in The Dragon Griaule). 1985 Hugo and 1984 Nebula nominee (novelette), 1985 World Fantasy Award nominee (novella)

In 19th century South America, “in a world separated from this one by the thinnest margin of possibility,” a 6,000 foot long,

The Solaris Book of New Fantasy: Celebrates the rich diversity of the genre

The Solaris Book of New Fantasy by George Mann (ed.)

I’m pretty much a novice when it comes to short fiction. Because of my lack of experience in this area, I hope that you will bear with me as I try to provide a thoughtful and comprehensive analysis of The Solaris Book of New Fantasy, even if I don’t always succeed. The plan is to first look at each short story individually providing synopses and commentary, followed by my evaluation of the compilation as a whole. So, let’s look at the stories:

1) “Who Slays the Gyant,

Robert Thompson´s rating: 4 | Chris Roberson, Christopher Barzak, George Mann, Hal Duncan, James Maxey, Janny Wurts, Jay Lake, Jeff VanderMeer, Juliet McKenna, Lucius Shepard, Mark Chadbourn, Steven Erikson, Tim (T.A.) Pratt | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe

Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe edited by Ellen Datlow

Whether you’re aligned with the literary academia or an unabashed genre reader, the name Edgar Allan Poe commands much respect. I think it’s only fitting that a modern anthology inspired by the author’s body of work should be released on his 200th anniversary. Kudos to Solaris Books for taking on the task of publishing such a book, which all comes together with the firm editorial direction of Ellen Datlow. Datlow, for me, has been an editor who’s less impressed with literary fireworks or verbal acrobatics but focuses more on the meat and bones of the story,

The Book of Dreams: A small but satisfying collection

The Book of Dreams edited by Nick Gevers

The Book of Dreams is a small but satisfying collection of short stories that are thematically, albeit loosely, connected by the theme of “dreams.” The book features original stories by Robert Silverberg, Lucius Shepard, Jay Lake, Kage Baker and Jeffrey Ford, and was edited by Nick Gevers for Subterranean Press.

Somewhat surprisingly,

Wings of Fire: I thought I didn’t like dragons

Wings of Fire edited by Jonathan Strahan & Marianne S. Jablon

I don’t like dragons.

This is probably not the first sentence you’d expect to find in a review of Wings of Fire, an anthology devoted exclusively to dragon stories, but I thought it best to get it out of the way right from the start.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with dragons. They’re just terribly overused, one of those tired genre mainstays that people who typically don’t read a lot of fantasy will expect in a fantasy novel because they were practically unavoidable for a long time.

Stefan Raets´s rating: 4 | Anne McCaffrey, C.J. Cherryh, Charles De_Lint, Elizabeth Bear, George R.R. Martin, Holly Black, James P. Blaylock, Jane Yolen, Jonathan Strahan, Lucius Shepard, Margo Lanagan, Michael Swanwick, Naomi Novik, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Patricia McKillip, Peter S. Beagle, Roger Zelazny, Tanith Lee, Ursula K. Le-Guin | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

I haven’t actually read every page of The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, yet I’m giving it my highest recommendation. Edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, Master and Mistress of Weird, The Weird is 1126 pages long and should really be considered a textbook of weird fiction. It contains 110 carefully chosen stories spanning more than 100 years of weird fiction.

Kat Hooper´s rating: 5 | Abraham Merritt, Caitlín R. Kiernan, China Mieville, Clark Ashton Smith, Clive Barker, Daniel Abraham, Elizabeth Hand, Fritz Leiber, George R.R. Martin, H.P. Lovecraft, Harlan Ellison, Haruki Murakami, Jeff VanderMeer, K.J. Bishop, Kelly Link, Laird Barron, Lisa Tuttle, Liz Williams, Lord Dunsany, Lucius Shepard, M. John Harrison, Margo Lanagan, Mervyn Peake, Michael Chabon, Neil Gaiman, Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Stephen King, Tanith Lee | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |

The 2012 Novelette Nominees for the Shirley Jackson Award

This week Terry looks at the four novelettes nominated for the Shirley Jackson Award, which will be presented at Readercon. This year Readercon will take place July 12 through 15, in Burlington, Massachusetts.

“Omphalos” by Livia Llewellyn, is the first nomination for this writer whose first book, The Engines of Desire: Tales of Love & Other Horrors is also nominated in the single-author collection category (“Omphalos” appears in the collection). It is about a horrifically dysfunctional family in which every family member seems to be having sex with every other family member of the opposite sex,

Next SFF Author: Joel Shepherd

Previous SFF Author: Mary Shelley

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SFF Author: Lucius Shepard

The Dragon Griaule: Collects all the Griaule stories

The Taborin Scale: As beautiful to hold and touch as it is to read

The Jaguar Hunter: Powerful, hallucinatory stories in exotic locales

The Ends of the Earth: Luminous, powerful stories of war, exotic locales, and supernatural horror

The Best of Lucius Shepard: Earlier stories are best

The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Vol 2: More disturbing than Vol 1

Magazine Monday: Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April 2012

The 2012 Shirley Jackson Award Nominated Novellas

Magazine Monday: Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2012

Magazine Monday: Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January/February 2013

SHORTS: Shepard, de Bodard, Bear, Jemisin, Parker, Holland

The Solaris Book of New Fantasy: Celebrates the rich diversity of the genre

Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe

The Book of Dreams: A small but satisfying collection

Wings of Fire: I thought I didn’t like dragons

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

The 2012 Novelette Nominees for the Shirley Jackson Award

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