| Fugue XXIX is
the first full-length collection of short
stories available from World Fantasy Award
winning editor and author Forrest Aguirre.
These marvelous tales come to you from the
fringe of speculative literary fiction where
innovative minds keep busy dreaming up the
futures uncharted territories and mining
forgotten treasures of the past. Whether exploring
the stars or unearthing ancient cultures these
stories will surprise and delight. In Aguirres
world anything can happen, and does, with
regularity.
What
are they saying about Fugue XXIX:
"Fugue XXIX is a selection of grotesque delicacies from the work of an enviable imagination."
—HorrorScope
“This collection houses a few of the stranger and more perplexing specimens that we will be noting. While such creatures may attract the sustained interest of only the most adventurous readers, nonetheless there are items here that reward the attention of even casual fictionologists. The horror story sub-species is particularly well represented, both with small, evocative sketches and with denser, more complex narratives. The uncertain traveler, sampling this carnival of oddities for the first time, might do best to start with some of the more traditional fictions, such as "The Universal Language of Silence" (a creepy tale) or "The Color of Laughter" (a cute science fiction story), which will begin to prepare the reader for the intellectual pleasures of the more substantial, less traditional pieces of fabulation scattered elsewhere in the collection.”
—Matthew Cheney for Locus Online
"I was happily surprised
by this truly wonderful collection of riveting
stories
I know that I will be thinking
about these ideas again and again, often
because of how Aguirre crafted his words
more than the concept itself. Fugue XXIX is a fine collection from one of the great
stylists of our age and another work that
proves genre IS literature."
SFRevu.com
"With
imaginative vigor, Aguirre explores the
fluctuating boundaries that separate human
from inhuman, terrestrial from extraterrestrial,
and natural from supernatural in the 29
fantasies in his debut story collection.
...Most of the selections are brief, plotless
sketches built from surreal images that
resist literal interpretation. At their
best, they offer arresting and provocative
perspectives that make the ordinary uncommon
and the bizarre plausible. Aguirre won a
World Fantasy Award for editing the anthology
Leviathan Three (2003) and
readers who enjoyed that book's genre-bending
content will find much to their satisfaction."
Publishers
Weekly
"Forrest Aguirres
beautiful stories are a set of portals that
lead to the very quintessence of the ancient
and noble art of the fantastic. His narrative
is the contemporary prose equivalent of
the wildly imaginative paintings of Hieronymus
Bosch."
Zoran Zivkovic,
The Fourth Circle
"From the shadowboxed
morality of World War I to the struggles
of colonial Africa, the stories in Fugue
XXIX showcase Forrest Aguirres
deft, supple command of languageenigmatic,
mysterious, elusive, tantalizing, always
leading the reader into their own inner
darkness. Aguirre pursues disturbing themes
outside the realm of everday experience,
with an immediacy that is both jarring and
engrossing. Fugue XXIX will haunt
you."
Jay Lake,
Rocket Science
| Table
of contents: |
|
I Downstream Flow: A Fugue
II The Mystic Flower
III Tickets, Please
IV Four Canopus
V Convergence on a Panoptic Newtonian: The
Interstices of Heaven
VI The Night Factory
VII Bearing Seed
VIII The Reverie Styx
IX Loyal
X Precognitive Myopia
XI Hopeless: A Triptych
XII Waiting for Felicity
XIII Over Alsace
XIV Return from Abaddon
XV In the Place Where Suffering Was Not
|
XVI
The Universal Language of Silence
XVII Kaleidoscopes of Africa
XVIII Frenzy
XIX Matriarch
XX The Butterfly Artist
XXI The Nut Lady's Cabin
XXII The Bones of Ndundi
XXIII Beyond the Flame
XXIV The Death Machines
XXV Improv and the Man of Means
XXVI The
Color of Laughter
XXVII Queen Phoebe
XXVIII Headlong
XXIX The Further Adventures of Star Boy |
About the Cover
Artist
Terry Rentzepis is self-taught.Terry
began experimenting with painting, after
undergoing major back surgery. He mostly
works in acrylic on canvas, but he owns
alot of oil paints. He also loves to work
with old-world quills and ink...it reminds
him of him of his lifetime of doodling.
Starting with a blank canvas, Terry creates
his works as goes...allowing his paint brush
to guide his eyes. He believes in still
moments. He wants the viewer to feel like
he is intruding on his characters. Stumbling
on secret, guarded and very private emotions.
Terry lives in Coconut Grove,
Florida with his beautiful wife Sheri and
his son Jake. There is alot of fur living
with him too! Ghost. A two-year old Doberman.
Face. An eight-year old mistake! Ghetto.
A seven-year old black cat. To view more
of his work visit www.alltenthumbs.com.
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