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The Best of Lucius Shepard
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.
623 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 25, 2008
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491 people want to read
About the author
Lucius Shepard
296 books158 followersBrief biographies are, like history texts, too organized to be other than orderly misrepresentations of the truth. So when it's written that Lucius Shepard was born in August of 1947 to Lucy and William Shepard in Lynchburg, Virginia, and raised thereafter in Daytona Beach, Florida, it provides a statistical hit and gives you nothing of the difficult childhood from which he frequently attempted to escape, eventually succeeding at the age of fifteen, when he traveled to Ireland aboard a freighter and thereafter spent several years in Europe, North Africa, and Asia, working in a cigarette factory in Germany, in the black market of Cairo's Khan al Khalili bazaar, as a night club bouncer in Spain, and in numerous other countries at numerous other occupations. On returning to the United States, Shepard entered the University of North Carolina, where for one semester he served as the co-editor of the Carolina Quarterly. Either he did not feel challenged by the curriculum, or else he found other pursuits more challenging. Whichever the case, he dropped out several times and traveled to Spain, Southeast Asia (at a time when tourism there was generally discouraged), and South and Central America. He ended his academic career as a tenth-semester sophomore with a heightened political sensibility, a fairly extensive knowledge of Latin American culture and some pleasant memories.
Toward the beginning of his stay at the university, Shepard met Joy Wolf, a fellow student, and they were married, a union that eventually produced one son, Gullivar, now an architect in New York City. While traveling cross-country to California, they had their car break down in Detroit and were forced to take jobs in order to pay for repairs. As fortune would have it, Shepard joined a band, and passed the better part of the 1970s playing rock and roll in the Midwest. When an opportunity presented itself, usually in the form of a band break-up, he would revisit Central America, developing a particular affection for the people of Honduras. He intermittently took odd jobs, working as a janitor, a laborer, a sealer of driveways, and, in a nearly soul-destroying few months, a correspondent for Blue Cross/Blue Shield, a position that compelled him to call the infirm and the terminally ill to inform them they had misfiled certain forms and so were being denied their benefits.
In 1980 Shepard attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop at Michigan State University and thereafter embarked upon a writing career. He sold his first story, "Black Coral," in 1981 to New Dimensions, an anthology edited by Marta Randall. During a prolonged trip to Central America, covering a period from 1981-1982, he worked as a freelance journalist focusing on the civil war in El Salvador. Since that time he has mainly devoted himself to the writing of fiction. His novels and stories have earned numerous awards in both the genre and the mainstream.
Toward the beginning of his stay at the university, Shepard met Joy Wolf, a fellow student, and they were married, a union that eventually produced one son, Gullivar, now an architect in New York City. While traveling cross-country to California, they had their car break down in Detroit and were forced to take jobs in order to pay for repairs. As fortune would have it, Shepard joined a band, and passed the better part of the 1970s playing rock and roll in the Midwest. When an opportunity presented itself, usually in the form of a band break-up, he would revisit Central America, developing a particular affection for the people of Honduras. He intermittently took odd jobs, working as a janitor, a laborer, a sealer of driveways, and, in a nearly soul-destroying few months, a correspondent for Blue Cross/Blue Shield, a position that compelled him to call the infirm and the terminally ill to inform them they had misfiled certain forms and so were being denied their benefits.
In 1980 Shepard attended the Clarion Writers’ Workshop at Michigan State University and thereafter embarked upon a writing career. He sold his first story, "Black Coral," in 1981 to New Dimensions, an anthology edited by Marta Randall. During a prolonged trip to Central America, covering a period from 1981-1982, he worked as a freelance journalist focusing on the civil war in El Salvador. Since that time he has mainly devoted himself to the writing of fiction. His novels and stories have earned numerous awards in both the genre and the mainstream.
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April 4, 2019
ATTENTION GOODREADS READERS WHO READ SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY: YOU NEED TO READ LUCIUS SHEPARD!!
I don’t often gush, but here I need to, I loved this book and I have found a new favorite writer. Lucius Shepard is brilliant.
My Goodreads profile states that I like “Science Fiction, Horror, weird fantasy, dark fiction, biography, history, historical fiction, Shakespeare, etc. etc.” Shepard was writing to me and the readers who like this moody dark back alley of the speculative fiction genre.
Shepard is the new Joseph Conrad; blending Conrad’s modernistic perspective and colonial sentimentality and an eye for how the East meets the West and subtly overcoming it, with a post-modern Hunter S. Thompson cool and verve; like Conrad after a three day binge, kept awake with Ritalin and Vodka and with a poet’s observant reflection of the moon. Shepard has achieved what so many writers of his day have attempted but failed: a dualistic sympathy for the comforting ways of the past, but with a tough and resilient voice, edging into the future. Just as Conrad had in Heart of Darkness traced the beginnings of Western experience along the murky banks of the Thames, so now has Shepard observed a Stygian origin along the fetid marshes of the Mekong and the Amazon.
His is a studious irony of a westerner in the jungle – Conrad in the East, Hesse describing a spiritual vista magnified by GPS and night vision goggles, but fermented with Lovecraftian elements of horror and paranormal and like Hunter S. Thompson with his swaggering wit and erudite but drug rattled musings.
I have long seen his name atop the TBR lists and recommended highly because I liked some other book. I read a review by my friend Adam who identified Shepard’s novella “R&R” as the “Rosetta stone for his work”. Intrigued I picked up a Kindle edition online, went straight to R&R and was blown away. My other reading projects took a backseat.
The Best of is a damn fine collection of stories and novellas that span his career, though he came to writing (like Conrad) later in life. And I was saddened to learn that this gentleman passed only earlier this year, March 2014. Many of these shorter works would be the building blocks and foundations for later novel sized works and I want to read those too, all of them.
“R&R” – Brilliant, evocative of Coppola’s Apocalypse Now with images of jungle warfare and for its savage mysticism. This would result in his later, perhaps most recognized work, Life During Wartime.
“The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule” – Shepard demonstrates his ability to use magic realism (a common element in his writing), set in Central America, almost like a fable; Shepard describes an artist killing a fantastic dragon, duping locals into a forty year project.
“Salvador” – like R&R, set in a alternate future war in Central America, where drugs are given to soldiers to heighten battle readiness featuring magic realism, surrealism, alternate dream states, and again like R&R portrays a soldier as a human first, a totalitarian cog second with mysticism and savagery.
“A Spanish Lesson” – This novella is evocative of Ira Levin’s The Boys from Brazil, also a sensual quest, with notes of eastern spiritualism.
“The Jaguar Hunter” – One of Shepard’s more archetypal works, it is Steinbeckian in its fable-like use of magical realism, also reminiscent of Haruki Murakami.
“The Arcevoalo” – Mystical and creepy with a personified jungle, also vaguely similar to Hesse’ Siddhartha in the dramatic tension between a “perfect” spiritual journey interrupted and affected by the modern world.
“Shades” is an unapologetically creepy and weird ghost story of an American soldier trapped in the netherworld of Vietnam. Shepard might have written this as a syrupy Mitch Album tearjerker, but instead he hones this novella to a fine edge and makes the reader not just a little uncomfortable, Lovecraftian.
“Delta Sly Honey” – Similar in design and theme to Shades, another ghost story from Vietnam, this one is played more straight, in the style of Richard Matheson or Stephen King. Shepard is conjuring ghosts and exercising demons, trying to make sense and create an orderly universe from the insanity of war.
“Life of Buddha” – Reminiscent of Harry Crews or Charles Bukowski, this is a hard-bitten tale of lost opportunities and bad decisions. Using the ironic use of the name Buddha, Shepard describes the monster of guilt as effectively as a Danish bard illustrates Grendel, and Shepard depicts the hollowness of a drug ruined life as effectively as Phillip K. Dick in A Scanner Darkly, while again using Murakami-like magic realism to evoke a sense of real world enlightenment.
“White Trains” – A disconcerting poem in the style of Galway Kinnel or James Dickey.
“Jack’s Decline” – A surreal and introspective character study of Jack the Ripper’s last years, this is a practiced study in the supernatural and demonology, hinting at psychology and mental illness. The inclusion of Nazism lends this story an illustration on the hierarchy of evil with a damaged soul seeking atonement that proves elusive.
“Beast of the Heartland” – This is a poignant, meaningful ode to boxing, an erudite effort to commend the heroic and proud amidst barbarism. Here Shepard displays his talent for characterization and dialogue. Reminiscent of Jack London’s A Piece of Steak (which I think may be the best boxing story ever) with images of fear and savagery and a calm confrontation of both. I could also imagine scenes from Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull while reading this excellent novella.
“Radiant Green Star” – Early in his writing career, literary critics were unsure which label should be affixed to Shepard and he was cast in the sub-genre of cyberpunk, this novelette shows why. This near future adventure also anticipates Paolo Bacigalupi’s brilliant biopunk novel The Windup Girl.
“Only Partly Here” – A weird 9/11 ghost story, this is also a psychological / philosophical journey into and beyond healing; Shepard uses elements of post-modern angst and repressed guilt to heighten this eerily touching short work.
“Jailwise” – If H.P. Lovecraft and Franz Kafka got together and made notes for a story and then 80 years later the story was dug up from a shallow grave and was completed by China Mieville, that would describe this odd but endearing surrealistic prison novella.
“Hands Up! Who Wants to Die?” – A poor white trash, trailer park fun ride in the style of Elmore Leonard and here, himself a native of rural Virginia, Shepard positively channels Harry Crews. The story also has some elements of the 1984 Alex Cox film Repo Man; though if this story were to be filmed, the Coen Brothers would be well suited for the project in the style of Fargo, using dialogue more similar to Raising Arizona.
“Dead Money” – Another Elmore Leonard type urban hustle, this one set in post-Katrina New Orleans. Voodoo in the Big Easy, and Shepard again displays his considerable range and verve. Dead Money is another example of Shepard’s talent for dialogue and characterization and the narration reads as though being read with a Lafayette drawl and backwoods wit.
“Stars Seen Through Stone” Maybe the best opening line in the collection: “I was smoking a joint on the steps of the public library when a cold when blew in from no cardinal point, but from the top of the night sky, a force of pure perpendicularity that bent the sparsely leaved boughs of the old alder shadowing the steps straight down towards the earth, as if a gigantic someone above were pursing his lips and aiming a long breath directly at the ground”. This was as if Jonathon Franzen collaborated with China Mieville on a modernized, musical edged tribute to Lovecraft.
A gem.
I don’t often gush, but here I need to, I loved this book and I have found a new favorite writer. Lucius Shepard is brilliant.
My Goodreads profile states that I like “Science Fiction, Horror, weird fantasy, dark fiction, biography, history, historical fiction, Shakespeare, etc. etc.” Shepard was writing to me and the readers who like this moody dark back alley of the speculative fiction genre.
Shepard is the new Joseph Conrad; blending Conrad’s modernistic perspective and colonial sentimentality and an eye for how the East meets the West and subtly overcoming it, with a post-modern Hunter S. Thompson cool and verve; like Conrad after a three day binge, kept awake with Ritalin and Vodka and with a poet’s observant reflection of the moon. Shepard has achieved what so many writers of his day have attempted but failed: a dualistic sympathy for the comforting ways of the past, but with a tough and resilient voice, edging into the future. Just as Conrad had in Heart of Darkness traced the beginnings of Western experience along the murky banks of the Thames, so now has Shepard observed a Stygian origin along the fetid marshes of the Mekong and the Amazon.
His is a studious irony of a westerner in the jungle – Conrad in the East, Hesse describing a spiritual vista magnified by GPS and night vision goggles, but fermented with Lovecraftian elements of horror and paranormal and like Hunter S. Thompson with his swaggering wit and erudite but drug rattled musings.
I have long seen his name atop the TBR lists and recommended highly because I liked some other book. I read a review by my friend Adam who identified Shepard’s novella “R&R” as the “Rosetta stone for his work”. Intrigued I picked up a Kindle edition online, went straight to R&R and was blown away. My other reading projects took a backseat.
The Best of is a damn fine collection of stories and novellas that span his career, though he came to writing (like Conrad) later in life. And I was saddened to learn that this gentleman passed only earlier this year, March 2014. Many of these shorter works would be the building blocks and foundations for later novel sized works and I want to read those too, all of them.
“R&R” – Brilliant, evocative of Coppola’s Apocalypse Now with images of jungle warfare and for its savage mysticism. This would result in his later, perhaps most recognized work, Life During Wartime.
“The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule” – Shepard demonstrates his ability to use magic realism (a common element in his writing), set in Central America, almost like a fable; Shepard describes an artist killing a fantastic dragon, duping locals into a forty year project.
“Salvador” – like R&R, set in a alternate future war in Central America, where drugs are given to soldiers to heighten battle readiness featuring magic realism, surrealism, alternate dream states, and again like R&R portrays a soldier as a human first, a totalitarian cog second with mysticism and savagery.
“A Spanish Lesson” – This novella is evocative of Ira Levin’s The Boys from Brazil, also a sensual quest, with notes of eastern spiritualism.
“The Jaguar Hunter” – One of Shepard’s more archetypal works, it is Steinbeckian in its fable-like use of magical realism, also reminiscent of Haruki Murakami.
“The Arcevoalo” – Mystical and creepy with a personified jungle, also vaguely similar to Hesse’ Siddhartha in the dramatic tension between a “perfect” spiritual journey interrupted and affected by the modern world.
“Shades” is an unapologetically creepy and weird ghost story of an American soldier trapped in the netherworld of Vietnam. Shepard might have written this as a syrupy Mitch Album tearjerker, but instead he hones this novella to a fine edge and makes the reader not just a little uncomfortable, Lovecraftian.
“Delta Sly Honey” – Similar in design and theme to Shades, another ghost story from Vietnam, this one is played more straight, in the style of Richard Matheson or Stephen King. Shepard is conjuring ghosts and exercising demons, trying to make sense and create an orderly universe from the insanity of war.
“Life of Buddha” – Reminiscent of Harry Crews or Charles Bukowski, this is a hard-bitten tale of lost opportunities and bad decisions. Using the ironic use of the name Buddha, Shepard describes the monster of guilt as effectively as a Danish bard illustrates Grendel, and Shepard depicts the hollowness of a drug ruined life as effectively as Phillip K. Dick in A Scanner Darkly, while again using Murakami-like magic realism to evoke a sense of real world enlightenment.
“White Trains” – A disconcerting poem in the style of Galway Kinnel or James Dickey.
“Jack’s Decline” – A surreal and introspective character study of Jack the Ripper’s last years, this is a practiced study in the supernatural and demonology, hinting at psychology and mental illness. The inclusion of Nazism lends this story an illustration on the hierarchy of evil with a damaged soul seeking atonement that proves elusive.
“Beast of the Heartland” – This is a poignant, meaningful ode to boxing, an erudite effort to commend the heroic and proud amidst barbarism. Here Shepard displays his talent for characterization and dialogue. Reminiscent of Jack London’s A Piece of Steak (which I think may be the best boxing story ever) with images of fear and savagery and a calm confrontation of both. I could also imagine scenes from Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull while reading this excellent novella.
“Radiant Green Star” – Early in his writing career, literary critics were unsure which label should be affixed to Shepard and he was cast in the sub-genre of cyberpunk, this novelette shows why. This near future adventure also anticipates Paolo Bacigalupi’s brilliant biopunk novel The Windup Girl.
“Only Partly Here” – A weird 9/11 ghost story, this is also a psychological / philosophical journey into and beyond healing; Shepard uses elements of post-modern angst and repressed guilt to heighten this eerily touching short work.
“Jailwise” – If H.P. Lovecraft and Franz Kafka got together and made notes for a story and then 80 years later the story was dug up from a shallow grave and was completed by China Mieville, that would describe this odd but endearing surrealistic prison novella.
“Hands Up! Who Wants to Die?” – A poor white trash, trailer park fun ride in the style of Elmore Leonard and here, himself a native of rural Virginia, Shepard positively channels Harry Crews. The story also has some elements of the 1984 Alex Cox film Repo Man; though if this story were to be filmed, the Coen Brothers would be well suited for the project in the style of Fargo, using dialogue more similar to Raising Arizona.
“Dead Money” – Another Elmore Leonard type urban hustle, this one set in post-Katrina New Orleans. Voodoo in the Big Easy, and Shepard again displays his considerable range and verve. Dead Money is another example of Shepard’s talent for dialogue and characterization and the narration reads as though being read with a Lafayette drawl and backwoods wit.
“Stars Seen Through Stone” Maybe the best opening line in the collection: “I was smoking a joint on the steps of the public library when a cold when blew in from no cardinal point, but from the top of the night sky, a force of pure perpendicularity that bent the sparsely leaved boughs of the old alder shadowing the steps straight down towards the earth, as if a gigantic someone above were pursing his lips and aiming a long breath directly at the ground”. This was as if Jonathon Franzen collaborated with China Mieville on a modernized, musical edged tribute to Lovecraft.
A gem.
February 19, 2018
The Best of Lucius Shepard: His earlier stories are better
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
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, he gained greater prominence with his short story collection The Jaguar Hunter in 1987, which won the 1988 World Fantasy Award and Locus Award for Best Collection. Many of the stories were nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards, with “Salvador” winning the Locus Award in 1985 and “R&R” winning the Nebula Award in 1987. His work is characterized by strong elements of magic realism, supernatural horror, Central American and other exotic locales, and hallucinatory depictions of futuristic warfare. In my opinion, he is one of the best stylists to ever work in the genre.
Lucius Shepard was one of those authors who seemed compelled to travel and experience the world, working a host of unusual jobs to survive. You can get his bio details on the internet, but suffice to say he travelled extensively in Europe, North Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central America, and most of his stories are set in exotic locales with vivid details. His characters are generally dislocated ex-pats, spiritually-lost bohemians, or soldiers trapped in hopeless Central American military conflicts, and they frequently encounter supernatural events that cannot be explained by science. His story “The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule” is very much a magic realist parable about evil and the power of art to combat it.
While not all of his books are still in print, you can get his most important ones: his short story collections The Jaguar Hunter (1987), The Ends of the Earth (1991), and The Best of Lucius Shepard (2008), and his novels Green Eyes (1984) and Life During Wartime (1987). If you are looking for a cheap intro to his stories, The Best of Lucius Shepard is available for just $2.99 on Amazon. However, in my opinion his greatest and most memorable stories were written in the earlier part of his career, so I would strongly recommend The Jaguar Hunter and The Ends of the Earth over this retrospective, since they contain his best work.
I actually found it quite a struggle to get through the later stories in his “Best of” collection, as his interests moved away from his Central American magic realist/futuristic war motif to a focus on the poor and marginalized corners of American society. It’s certainly a legitimate artistic choice to make, and it’s hard to fault an author for not being satisfied to stir the same pot again and again, but the quality and focus of the stories towards the end of the collection just couldn’t keep my attention. In particular, I just couldn’t see the point of “Hands Up! Who Wants to Die?” It is always risky to use a narrator who is inarticulate and uneducated, as Shepard can no longer use the incredible artistry of his writing, so it was a frustrating experience. At least “Jailwise,” while the final message was elusive, was hallucinatory and strange and beautiful.
Here are the stories in the Kindle version (“R&R” is not in the original publication):
“The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule” (1984): This is one of Shepard’s most famous stories, and the most clear homage to the legendary Latin American magic realists Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The story is a parable open to many interpretations, and is written very much in the style of Borges (who I am reading right now). It centers on the man Meric Cattanay and his proposal to destroy the dragon and its dark influence on the surrounding lands and people by painting its body with a wondrous mural. It pits art against a dark influence so subtle that it defies description. Meric devotes four decades to painting the dragon, going through the many vicissitudes of life, both ups and downs, triumphs and disappointments, and eventually reaches the end of his labors. It is a mysterious and ambiguous story, but well worth reading. Notably, Shepard wrote several more stories that share the same themes and framework, collected as The Dragon Griaule (2013) by Subterranean Press.
“Salvador” (1984): This story is one of the highlights of the collection. It is about Dantzler, a US special forces soldier stationed in El Salvador hunting for Sandinista patrols. It has strong echoes of films like Platoon, as Dantzler’s ideals and admiration for the local culture are dashed by the casual contempt and mind-numbing violence of the military mindset, particularly a psychotic superior officer who has become a sadistic killing machine assisted by ampules to boost reflexes, alertness, and homicidal urges. It is a chilling but realistic depiction of war, yet Shepard’s writing remains lyrical and powerful nonetheless.
“A Spanish Lesson” (1985): This is definitely an unusual story with a fantastical twist much like “A Traveler’s Tale.” It is the story of a young traveling expat who settles in a small Mediterranean fishing village that has an enclave of bohemian foreigners who spend much of their time taking and dealing drugs, dabbling in novels and poetry, and feeling superior to the surrounding locals. One day a very strange young pair of twins, blond, frail, and awkward, show up in their village and start to disrupt the rhythms of life. Things get extremely weird when the narrator finds a secret diary entry by the twins, and it is definitely not what you would expect.
“The Jaguar Hunter” (1985): The title story is a perfect example of Shepard’s favorite themes. A retired jaguar hunter named Esteban lives in the countryside of Honduras with his unhappy wife. She yearns for the trappings of Western material culture, so she buys a TV on credit from the local pawn shop without permission, putting Esteban into debt. Lacking the cash to pay this, the sleazy shop owner asks him instead to kill a deadly black jaguar that has killed eight other hunters. Despite his misgivings, he takes the assignment and soon encounters the black jaguar, which is far more formidable than he expected. The writing in this story is phenomenal, and the story behind the jaguar is rich with mysticism and tragedy.
“R & R” (1986): This story won the Nebula Award in 1987 and was later expanded to Shepard’s best-regarded full-length novel, Life During Wartime. It is similar to “Salvador” in that it features soldiers stationed in Guatemala for R&R in a break from bombing raids in Nicaragua. The Sikorsky helicopter gunship pilots use special high-tech helmets that link them to their machines, blurring the lines between, and yet the pilots are so superstitious that they refuse to remove their helmets even when on the ground. Mignolla and his buddies take R&R together out of a belief that if they follow the same routine each time they will survive unscathed. This is nearly novella-length, and much befalls Mignolla in hallucinatory, magic-realist, unnerving detail.
“The Arcevoalo” (1986): One of Shepard’s most fable-like and magic-realist stories, but wedded to a far future Amazon jungle setting after the September War, which has transformed the region in magical ways. A young man awakes in the ruined city of Manaus, and seeks to discover his origins and purpose. He is surrounded by the mystical creatures of the jungle, and has an intense bond with their life forces and that of the jungle itself. He learns he is called the arcevoalo, and that his purpose is on behalf of the jungle to enter the world of men and learn their nature and weaknesses. He finds himself entering the decadent walled city of Sangue do Lume, settled by Brazilians who fled the September War and dwelt in the metal worlds that circle the sky before returning to Earth.
There he is taken in by one of the wealthy families of the city, who value his mysterious origins and incredible knowledge of the jungle which they seek to exploit for their profit. The arcevoalo finds himself assisting in the exploitation of the very jungle that nurtured him, and then becomes embroiled in a classic love triangle with tragic results. The entire story is a luminous fable of discovery, treachery, the loss of innocence and the eternal battle between mankind and the jungle.
“Shades” (1987): Here is a return to form for Shepard, as a Vietnam vet named Tom Puleo returns to Vietnam to cover a story about a young soldier named Stoner who died in a village called Cam Le. A Marxist mystic has invented a device that can summon ghosts, and Stoner’s ghost has come back to haunt the village, scaring the residents away and attracting foreign attention. As a fellow soldier with Stoner, the machine inventor wants to see if Stoner’s ghost will respond more to Tom. The story is filled with intense paranormal confrontations between Tom and Stoner’s ghost, and the ending is poignant.
“Delta Sly Honey” (1987): Here is another Shepard story set in a war setting, this time behind the front lines in Vietnam. Randall J. Williams is a skinny and shy young Southern guy who transforms into the “High Priest of the Soulful Truth and the Holy Ghost of the Sixty-Cycle Hum.”
Randall’s job is mainly to handle the bodies of dead soldiers, but one day a lifetime sergeant named Andrew Moon decides to make meek Randall his target of bullying. One day someone using the tag line Delta Sly Honey answers Randall’s broadcast, and he freaks out and goes AWOL. As the narrator investigates, things get more bizarre and horrific…
“Life of Buddha” (1988): This is the only story in this collection that I just didn’t like. It’s the story of a heroin addict nicknamed Buddha that basically spends much of his time in a drugged-out stupor in a shooting gallery, ostensibly serving as security for his dealer. He has decided to shut out the painful memories of his family by losing himself in drugs, and encounters another lost soul who is also living in the margins and struggling with gender issues. There are some fantasy/horror elements, but I couldn’t care about the characters or the story much.
“Jack’s Decline” (1988): Here Shepard explores new territory that many writers have been drawn to, namely who Jack the Ripper was and what became of him. Imagine he was from a wealthy family who would go to great lengths to protect him and his killing madness from discovery. And even though he is given a long list of treatments, and he tries all forms of study and distractions, his inner demon will not let him rest. And then one day his remote hunting lodge in the countryside is visited by a small troop of Nazi soldiers who have brought with them some captive young Jewish women as their entertainment. Things get very twisted as one form of evil meets another, with innocent lives caught in between.
“Beast of the Heartland” (1992): In a complete change of pace, this is a powerful and visceral story of Bobby Mears, a heavyweight boxer who has tangled with the likes of Marvin Hagler in his only title fight, but whose retina has become detached and is now a brawler who better fighters use to tune up as they climb the ranks. And yet he perseveres, continuing to win his share of fight through sheer tenacity. Much in the Rocky Balboa vein, he is an everyman whose only route of success is training and fighting in the ring. Though the story does not feature magical creatures or futuristic soldiers in Central American jungle wars, it does have an element of mysticism, as Mears has strange visions of beasts that he projects onto the face of his opponents, which gives him the added push to keep punching past his limitations. There is also the young hooker with the heart of gold, the crusty old trainer Leon, and the invincible opponent that he must face. It has all the makings of a stereotypical boxer-in-decline story, but in Shepard’s hands it packs a real emotional punch.
“Radiant Green Star” (2000): Though this story is far more cyberpunk in setting than many of the others, it is equally the timeless story of a young orphan raised in a small traveling circus called the Radiant Green Star. He was given into the care of the owner of the circus, Vang, at age 7 by his mother, and has only hazy memories of her. Vang tells him his father had his mother killed and that he stands to inherit a fortune from his grandfather upon his 18th birthday, but to avoid his father taking control he has been hidden away till he has reached the age to inherit his birthright.
The story is set in a futuristic Viet Nam, complete with digitally stored personalities, cybernetic impacts, and biologically-enhanced assassins and powerful tech corporations. However, Shepard revels in mixing genres by overlaying the story of Phillip’s coming of age story with a traveling circus, and even includes a grotesque circus freak named Major Martin Boyette, supposedly the last surviving US POW, who is hideously deformed by genetic experiments. His audience draw is not just his hideous appearance but his ability to tell elaborate and dramatic stories of the war, but when not on stage he withdraws into his own private world of madness.
Philip harbors a deep-seated desire to kill his father to avenge his poor mother, while the circus owner grooms him to take over the circus one day. Appearances and motivations are very deceptive, however, and for a novella the story is impressively layered and complex. Philip falls in love with his fellow troupe member Tan, and for a time he lives a happy existence. However, the story soon brings back the underlying tragedy of his past as he discovers that the troupe will be performing in the secluded and wealthy enclave town where his powerful and corrupt father lives. There are the obvious echoes of Oedipus as he confronts his father, and when his origins are finally revealed, there are many surprises awaiting. Overall, this story is impressive in its combination of themes and plots, all told in Shepard’s signature rich and evocative style.
“Only Partly Here” (2003): This story represents a new direction for Shepard. It’s a story about 9/11 and the workers clearing the debris of the site in the aftermath. They spend their days shoveling away bits of building, office equipment, clothing, and occasionally bodies. It is grim work, and Bobby, Pineo, and Mazurek are pals of sorts, united by the numbing drudgery of the job and the haunting atmosphere where thousands lost their lives in one fateful day. They take to going to a dive called The Blue Lady, but don’t want to talk about the job, but rather to erase it with booze. One day a severe, Wall Street-type woman starts showing up at the bar, blowing off would-be pickup artists, and Bobby, who unlike his pals is a graduate student, takes a morbid curiosity as to why she shows every day just to drink in sullen silence…
“Jailwise” (2003): A lengthy and somewhat Kafka-esque story of a lifelong convict named Tommy Penhaligon with an intense anti-authority streak who is offered taken on by a mentor named Frank Ristelli who teaches art classes near the prison and discovers that Tommy has quite a talent for painting. Frank also has a unique philosophical view of incarceration, punishment, repentance, and redemption. He recommends to Tommy that he request a transfer from Vacaville to a mysterious prison facility named Diamond Bar built into a mountain in the wilderness of the West Coast. This place has no apparent guards, fences, or even locked cells. Though he is initially suspicious, he takes the offer and discovers a strange world run by prisoners that seem quite content with being there. They live their daily lives without any explicit or rules, but controlled by a strange council of elderly inmates who appear to be in charge. Tommy seeks to find out the origins of Diamond Bar and how it can function completely unlike any other prison.
When the council discover Tommy’s talent for paintings, they ask him to paint a giant mural to depict the Hearth of the Law, the fundamental principal that underpins Diamond Bar. Tommy also encounters the plumes, seemingly transgender men who serve as sexual partners for the inmates. He forms a relationship with one that seems to be in all respects female, and she also inspires his artwork as his muse.
This story eludes any easy interpretations, and while further revelations await in the final parts of the story, and center on the themes mentioned above, it is always unclear what parts of the story are “real” or just “in his mind,” and there is a surreal and archetypal feel to the events. It’s both an evolution from and departure from the magic realist elements that pervaded Shepard’s earlier stories from the 1980s.
“Hands Up! Who Wants to Die?” (2004): This is another lengthy story about down and out characters living in the margins, in the intersection between crime and poverty and desperation. A young never-do-well named Maceo in South Florida meets up with another fringe dweller named Leeli. They have a tryst and wander onto a supposedly abandoned government property where they encounter a strange older woman named Ava who has two strange men in tow, Carl and Squire. They aren’t all there mentally, and the exact nature of the trio’s relationship is unclear, but Ava exudes a strange vibe of confidence and supernatural powers. They get into trouble when Carl suddenly pulls out a gun at a diner and yells, “Hands up! Who wants to die?” He’s too stupid to realize what he’s doing, but before they know it they’re on the run and hiding out in a swampy Southern Gothic property, where things get kinky and weird.
However, much like “Jailwise,” the weirdness is quite unfocused and elusive, very unlike the powerful South American magic-realist images of Shepard’s earlier stories. Partly his choice of characters is to blame — since the uneducated Maceo is the narrator, we get the story told in his broken-down street lingo, which prevents Shepard from exercising his most lyrical and hallucinatory writing. I didn’t like the characters or the story, and felt like this was not a direction I wanted to follow the author in.
Originally posted at Fantasy Literature
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, he gained greater prominence with his short story collection The Jaguar Hunter in 1987, which won the 1988 World Fantasy Award and Locus Award for Best Collection. Many of the stories were nominated for the Hugo and Nebula Awards, with “Salvador” winning the Locus Award in 1985 and “R&R” winning the Nebula Award in 1987. His work is characterized by strong elements of magic realism, supernatural horror, Central American and other exotic locales, and hallucinatory depictions of futuristic warfare. In my opinion, he is one of the best stylists to ever work in the genre.
Lucius Shepard was one of those authors who seemed compelled to travel and experience the world, working a host of unusual jobs to survive. You can get his bio details on the internet, but suffice to say he travelled extensively in Europe, North Africa, Southeast Asia, and Central America, and most of his stories are set in exotic locales with vivid details. His characters are generally dislocated ex-pats, spiritually-lost bohemians, or soldiers trapped in hopeless Central American military conflicts, and they frequently encounter supernatural events that cannot be explained by science. His story “The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule” is very much a magic realist parable about evil and the power of art to combat it.
While not all of his books are still in print, you can get his most important ones: his short story collections The Jaguar Hunter (1987), The Ends of the Earth (1991), and The Best of Lucius Shepard (2008), and his novels Green Eyes (1984) and Life During Wartime (1987). If you are looking for a cheap intro to his stories, The Best of Lucius Shepard is available for just $2.99 on Amazon. However, in my opinion his greatest and most memorable stories were written in the earlier part of his career, so I would strongly recommend The Jaguar Hunter and The Ends of the Earth over this retrospective, since they contain his best work.
I actually found it quite a struggle to get through the later stories in his “Best of” collection, as his interests moved away from his Central American magic realist/futuristic war motif to a focus on the poor and marginalized corners of American society. It’s certainly a legitimate artistic choice to make, and it’s hard to fault an author for not being satisfied to stir the same pot again and again, but the quality and focus of the stories towards the end of the collection just couldn’t keep my attention. In particular, I just couldn’t see the point of “Hands Up! Who Wants to Die?” It is always risky to use a narrator who is inarticulate and uneducated, as Shepard can no longer use the incredible artistry of his writing, so it was a frustrating experience. At least “Jailwise,” while the final message was elusive, was hallucinatory and strange and beautiful.
Here are the stories in the Kindle version (“R&R” is not in the original publication):
“The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule” (1984): This is one of Shepard’s most famous stories, and the most clear homage to the legendary Latin American magic realists Jorge Luis Borges and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The story is a parable open to many interpretations, and is written very much in the style of Borges (who I am reading right now). It centers on the man Meric Cattanay and his proposal to destroy the dragon and its dark influence on the surrounding lands and people by painting its body with a wondrous mural. It pits art against a dark influence so subtle that it defies description. Meric devotes four decades to painting the dragon, going through the many vicissitudes of life, both ups and downs, triumphs and disappointments, and eventually reaches the end of his labors. It is a mysterious and ambiguous story, but well worth reading. Notably, Shepard wrote several more stories that share the same themes and framework, collected as The Dragon Griaule (2013) by Subterranean Press.
“Salvador” (1984): This story is one of the highlights of the collection. It is about Dantzler, a US special forces soldier stationed in El Salvador hunting for Sandinista patrols. It has strong echoes of films like Platoon, as Dantzler’s ideals and admiration for the local culture are dashed by the casual contempt and mind-numbing violence of the military mindset, particularly a psychotic superior officer who has become a sadistic killing machine assisted by ampules to boost reflexes, alertness, and homicidal urges. It is a chilling but realistic depiction of war, yet Shepard’s writing remains lyrical and powerful nonetheless.
“A Spanish Lesson” (1985): This is definitely an unusual story with a fantastical twist much like “A Traveler’s Tale.” It is the story of a young traveling expat who settles in a small Mediterranean fishing village that has an enclave of bohemian foreigners who spend much of their time taking and dealing drugs, dabbling in novels and poetry, and feeling superior to the surrounding locals. One day a very strange young pair of twins, blond, frail, and awkward, show up in their village and start to disrupt the rhythms of life. Things get extremely weird when the narrator finds a secret diary entry by the twins, and it is definitely not what you would expect.
“The Jaguar Hunter” (1985): The title story is a perfect example of Shepard’s favorite themes. A retired jaguar hunter named Esteban lives in the countryside of Honduras with his unhappy wife. She yearns for the trappings of Western material culture, so she buys a TV on credit from the local pawn shop without permission, putting Esteban into debt. Lacking the cash to pay this, the sleazy shop owner asks him instead to kill a deadly black jaguar that has killed eight other hunters. Despite his misgivings, he takes the assignment and soon encounters the black jaguar, which is far more formidable than he expected. The writing in this story is phenomenal, and the story behind the jaguar is rich with mysticism and tragedy.
“R & R” (1986): This story won the Nebula Award in 1987 and was later expanded to Shepard’s best-regarded full-length novel, Life During Wartime. It is similar to “Salvador” in that it features soldiers stationed in Guatemala for R&R in a break from bombing raids in Nicaragua. The Sikorsky helicopter gunship pilots use special high-tech helmets that link them to their machines, blurring the lines between, and yet the pilots are so superstitious that they refuse to remove their helmets even when on the ground. Mignolla and his buddies take R&R together out of a belief that if they follow the same routine each time they will survive unscathed. This is nearly novella-length, and much befalls Mignolla in hallucinatory, magic-realist, unnerving detail.
“The Arcevoalo” (1986): One of Shepard’s most fable-like and magic-realist stories, but wedded to a far future Amazon jungle setting after the September War, which has transformed the region in magical ways. A young man awakes in the ruined city of Manaus, and seeks to discover his origins and purpose. He is surrounded by the mystical creatures of the jungle, and has an intense bond with their life forces and that of the jungle itself. He learns he is called the arcevoalo, and that his purpose is on behalf of the jungle to enter the world of men and learn their nature and weaknesses. He finds himself entering the decadent walled city of Sangue do Lume, settled by Brazilians who fled the September War and dwelt in the metal worlds that circle the sky before returning to Earth.
There he is taken in by one of the wealthy families of the city, who value his mysterious origins and incredible knowledge of the jungle which they seek to exploit for their profit. The arcevoalo finds himself assisting in the exploitation of the very jungle that nurtured him, and then becomes embroiled in a classic love triangle with tragic results. The entire story is a luminous fable of discovery, treachery, the loss of innocence and the eternal battle between mankind and the jungle.
“Shades” (1987): Here is a return to form for Shepard, as a Vietnam vet named Tom Puleo returns to Vietnam to cover a story about a young soldier named Stoner who died in a village called Cam Le. A Marxist mystic has invented a device that can summon ghosts, and Stoner’s ghost has come back to haunt the village, scaring the residents away and attracting foreign attention. As a fellow soldier with Stoner, the machine inventor wants to see if Stoner’s ghost will respond more to Tom. The story is filled with intense paranormal confrontations between Tom and Stoner’s ghost, and the ending is poignant.
“Delta Sly Honey” (1987): Here is another Shepard story set in a war setting, this time behind the front lines in Vietnam. Randall J. Williams is a skinny and shy young Southern guy who transforms into the “High Priest of the Soulful Truth and the Holy Ghost of the Sixty-Cycle Hum.”
Randall’s job is mainly to handle the bodies of dead soldiers, but one day a lifetime sergeant named Andrew Moon decides to make meek Randall his target of bullying. One day someone using the tag line Delta Sly Honey answers Randall’s broadcast, and he freaks out and goes AWOL. As the narrator investigates, things get more bizarre and horrific…
“Life of Buddha” (1988): This is the only story in this collection that I just didn’t like. It’s the story of a heroin addict nicknamed Buddha that basically spends much of his time in a drugged-out stupor in a shooting gallery, ostensibly serving as security for his dealer. He has decided to shut out the painful memories of his family by losing himself in drugs, and encounters another lost soul who is also living in the margins and struggling with gender issues. There are some fantasy/horror elements, but I couldn’t care about the characters or the story much.
“Jack’s Decline” (1988): Here Shepard explores new territory that many writers have been drawn to, namely who Jack the Ripper was and what became of him. Imagine he was from a wealthy family who would go to great lengths to protect him and his killing madness from discovery. And even though he is given a long list of treatments, and he tries all forms of study and distractions, his inner demon will not let him rest. And then one day his remote hunting lodge in the countryside is visited by a small troop of Nazi soldiers who have brought with them some captive young Jewish women as their entertainment. Things get very twisted as one form of evil meets another, with innocent lives caught in between.
“Beast of the Heartland” (1992): In a complete change of pace, this is a powerful and visceral story of Bobby Mears, a heavyweight boxer who has tangled with the likes of Marvin Hagler in his only title fight, but whose retina has become detached and is now a brawler who better fighters use to tune up as they climb the ranks. And yet he perseveres, continuing to win his share of fight through sheer tenacity. Much in the Rocky Balboa vein, he is an everyman whose only route of success is training and fighting in the ring. Though the story does not feature magical creatures or futuristic soldiers in Central American jungle wars, it does have an element of mysticism, as Mears has strange visions of beasts that he projects onto the face of his opponents, which gives him the added push to keep punching past his limitations. There is also the young hooker with the heart of gold, the crusty old trainer Leon, and the invincible opponent that he must face. It has all the makings of a stereotypical boxer-in-decline story, but in Shepard’s hands it packs a real emotional punch.
“Radiant Green Star” (2000): Though this story is far more cyberpunk in setting than many of the others, it is equally the timeless story of a young orphan raised in a small traveling circus called the Radiant Green Star. He was given into the care of the owner of the circus, Vang, at age 7 by his mother, and has only hazy memories of her. Vang tells him his father had his mother killed and that he stands to inherit a fortune from his grandfather upon his 18th birthday, but to avoid his father taking control he has been hidden away till he has reached the age to inherit his birthright.
The story is set in a futuristic Viet Nam, complete with digitally stored personalities, cybernetic impacts, and biologically-enhanced assassins and powerful tech corporations. However, Shepard revels in mixing genres by overlaying the story of Phillip’s coming of age story with a traveling circus, and even includes a grotesque circus freak named Major Martin Boyette, supposedly the last surviving US POW, who is hideously deformed by genetic experiments. His audience draw is not just his hideous appearance but his ability to tell elaborate and dramatic stories of the war, but when not on stage he withdraws into his own private world of madness.
Philip harbors a deep-seated desire to kill his father to avenge his poor mother, while the circus owner grooms him to take over the circus one day. Appearances and motivations are very deceptive, however, and for a novella the story is impressively layered and complex. Philip falls in love with his fellow troupe member Tan, and for a time he lives a happy existence. However, the story soon brings back the underlying tragedy of his past as he discovers that the troupe will be performing in the secluded and wealthy enclave town where his powerful and corrupt father lives. There are the obvious echoes of Oedipus as he confronts his father, and when his origins are finally revealed, there are many surprises awaiting. Overall, this story is impressive in its combination of themes and plots, all told in Shepard’s signature rich and evocative style.
“Only Partly Here” (2003): This story represents a new direction for Shepard. It’s a story about 9/11 and the workers clearing the debris of the site in the aftermath. They spend their days shoveling away bits of building, office equipment, clothing, and occasionally bodies. It is grim work, and Bobby, Pineo, and Mazurek are pals of sorts, united by the numbing drudgery of the job and the haunting atmosphere where thousands lost their lives in one fateful day. They take to going to a dive called The Blue Lady, but don’t want to talk about the job, but rather to erase it with booze. One day a severe, Wall Street-type woman starts showing up at the bar, blowing off would-be pickup artists, and Bobby, who unlike his pals is a graduate student, takes a morbid curiosity as to why she shows every day just to drink in sullen silence…
“Jailwise” (2003): A lengthy and somewhat Kafka-esque story of a lifelong convict named Tommy Penhaligon with an intense anti-authority streak who is offered taken on by a mentor named Frank Ristelli who teaches art classes near the prison and discovers that Tommy has quite a talent for painting. Frank also has a unique philosophical view of incarceration, punishment, repentance, and redemption. He recommends to Tommy that he request a transfer from Vacaville to a mysterious prison facility named Diamond Bar built into a mountain in the wilderness of the West Coast. This place has no apparent guards, fences, or even locked cells. Though he is initially suspicious, he takes the offer and discovers a strange world run by prisoners that seem quite content with being there. They live their daily lives without any explicit or rules, but controlled by a strange council of elderly inmates who appear to be in charge. Tommy seeks to find out the origins of Diamond Bar and how it can function completely unlike any other prison.
When the council discover Tommy’s talent for paintings, they ask him to paint a giant mural to depict the Hearth of the Law, the fundamental principal that underpins Diamond Bar. Tommy also encounters the plumes, seemingly transgender men who serve as sexual partners for the inmates. He forms a relationship with one that seems to be in all respects female, and she also inspires his artwork as his muse.
This story eludes any easy interpretations, and while further revelations await in the final parts of the story, and center on the themes mentioned above, it is always unclear what parts of the story are “real” or just “in his mind,” and there is a surreal and archetypal feel to the events. It’s both an evolution from and departure from the magic realist elements that pervaded Shepard’s earlier stories from the 1980s.
“Hands Up! Who Wants to Die?” (2004): This is another lengthy story about down and out characters living in the margins, in the intersection between crime and poverty and desperation. A young never-do-well named Maceo in South Florida meets up with another fringe dweller named Leeli. They have a tryst and wander onto a supposedly abandoned government property where they encounter a strange older woman named Ava who has two strange men in tow, Carl and Squire. They aren’t all there mentally, and the exact nature of the trio’s relationship is unclear, but Ava exudes a strange vibe of confidence and supernatural powers. They get into trouble when Carl suddenly pulls out a gun at a diner and yells, “Hands up! Who wants to die?” He’s too stupid to realize what he’s doing, but before they know it they’re on the run and hiding out in a swampy Southern Gothic property, where things get kinky and weird.
However, much like “Jailwise,” the weirdness is quite unfocused and elusive, very unlike the powerful South American magic-realist images of Shepard’s earlier stories. Partly his choice of characters is to blame — since the uneducated Maceo is the narrator, we get the story told in his broken-down street lingo, which prevents Shepard from exercising his most lyrical and hallucinatory writing. I didn’t like the characters or the story, and felt like this was not a direction I wanted to follow the author in.
October 27, 2008
Lucius Shepard went from a writer I couldn’t get into or understand the respect and praise heaped on him, to one of my absolute favorites pretty much on reading his novella ‘R&R”. This is like the Rosetta stone for his work. A work of such luminous power that I read everything I can by him to get that glow. Sometimes just hint of it shines through and sometimes it burns even brighter (ironic language for such a grim writer). Dense, beautiful prose, mastery of setting, character, and dialogue, understanding of the harsh tide of world politics, and ability to leap genres with aplomb (knowing what cliché to subvert and what ones to convince with the sheer force of their telling.). This is a great intro to this writer who is part Conrad, part Vance, and wholly essential. Well selected stories at the beginning will guide you into the dark forest of nightmares and beauty that is Shepard’s world. The selections from The Ends of the Earth(his best collection) I disagree with as they miss some of his best work(“Nomad’s Land”, “Scalehunter’s beautiful daughter”, “Ride to Glory”, “On the Border”, “Aymara”,) Of recent stories I would have preferred “Eternity”,”Limbo”, or “Barnacle Bill” might have been better (or the novella “Floater.”, but just because I can find it no where) Of the stories that are new here, there is the bizarre fable “Arceveolo”, which gives credence to the advance press claim of Shepard resembling Hawthorne as it is an allegory or parable as evocative and mysterious as myth with no clear interpretation. A strange and bittersweet story featuring Jack the Ripper and Nazis isn’t as silly as it could be, which is an accomplishment, but it isn’t that great regardless. “A Radiant Green Star” set in future Vietnam and involving elements of cyberpunk and Greek tragedy in a story involving revenge, a circus, and the oldest living POW, is a moody success.
May 9, 2009
When I was young I was always able to tell when I was listening to Brahms: not only would it be all romantic and blustery to my young ears, but there would always be a point during the piece that I was convinced was the finale, where the music had reached a climax and was about to dive into a speedy, victorious coda and come to an end. If I was still listening to the same piece ten minutes later, I could be certain it was Brahms. Only later, probably only in my late twenties, did I finally come to be able to hear the depth of Brahms's symphonic music and really fall in love with the sound world of those long, meandering pieces (particularly the piano concerti). Although the music is no less long-winded to my ears, I no longer mind so much because I don't want the dream to stop.
I feel like Lucius Shepard works in a similar way. His stories are jammed full of words - wonderful, poetic words - and he sure as hell takes his time wrapping up a story, and I'm not so sure how I would have felt about that ten years ago. But now I can't get enough. Shepard is capable of getting so much of a character's interior life onto the page that aspects of the story that are conventionally important in sf & fantasy - the far-out ideas, the magic, the macguffin - seem of secondary importance, and, in the lesser stories here, can even be slight distractions.
In this sense Shepard reminds me of Graham Greene, particularly because they write a similar kind of protagnoist: reflective, disillusioned, deeply flawed, weakness for women and alcohol, wearing the scars of a hard life. Shepard also shares Greene's taste for exotic locales. Although I'm pretty sure Greene never set a story in a near future central American vietnamesqe guerilla perma-war (as in "Salvador" and the intensely cinematic "R&R"), or the near future southeast asia of the traveling circus in "Radiant Green Star," or the white trash southern Florida of "Hands Up! Who Wants To Die?", there is nonetheless a similar fascination for the down and out fringe elements and an ability to make a place seem remarkably familiar, like a place we remember growing up, despite its foreign trappings.
At over 600 pages this book was a monster to carry around on my daily trek through the city, but now I'm kind of sad it's over.
I feel like Lucius Shepard works in a similar way. His stories are jammed full of words - wonderful, poetic words - and he sure as hell takes his time wrapping up a story, and I'm not so sure how I would have felt about that ten years ago. But now I can't get enough. Shepard is capable of getting so much of a character's interior life onto the page that aspects of the story that are conventionally important in sf & fantasy - the far-out ideas, the magic, the macguffin - seem of secondary importance, and, in the lesser stories here, can even be slight distractions.
In this sense Shepard reminds me of Graham Greene, particularly because they write a similar kind of protagnoist: reflective, disillusioned, deeply flawed, weakness for women and alcohol, wearing the scars of a hard life. Shepard also shares Greene's taste for exotic locales. Although I'm pretty sure Greene never set a story in a near future central American vietnamesqe guerilla perma-war (as in "Salvador" and the intensely cinematic "R&R"), or the near future southeast asia of the traveling circus in "Radiant Green Star," or the white trash southern Florida of "Hands Up! Who Wants To Die?", there is nonetheless a similar fascination for the down and out fringe elements and an ability to make a place seem remarkably familiar, like a place we remember growing up, despite its foreign trappings.
At over 600 pages this book was a monster to carry around on my daily trek through the city, but now I'm kind of sad it's over.
Want to read
December 5, 2015After reading his brilliant Stephen King-like story, *The Flock*, Lucius Shepard, is probably the highest on my list of authors I must read more by...if not EVERYTHING by.
April 10, 2019
For short works, I found these amazingly immersive and evocative. His prose and style are simply spellbinding. Many revolve around the shifting balance between the unseen, imagined magical world and our physical reality and logical beliefs. As touchy-feely as that may sound, Shepard tackles some dark and serious themes including death, war and its corrupting influence, and cultural conflict between native/indigenous views and those of so-called modern society.
"... if you deny mystery—even in the guise of death—then you deny life and you will walk like a ghost through your days, never knowing the secrets of the extremes. The deep sorrows, the absolute joys."
"They were all fables of irresolution, cautioning him to act, and they detailed the core problems of the Central American people who—as he was now—were trapped between the poles of magic and reason, their lives governed by the politics of the ultrareal, their spirits ruled by myths and legends, with the rectangular computerized bulk of North America above and the conch-shell-shaped continental mystery of South America below."
Salvador 4/5
The Jaguar Hunter 4/5
R&R 4/5
Radiant Green Star 4/5
"... if you deny mystery—even in the guise of death—then you deny life and you will walk like a ghost through your days, never knowing the secrets of the extremes. The deep sorrows, the absolute joys."
"They were all fables of irresolution, cautioning him to act, and they detailed the core problems of the Central American people who—as he was now—were trapped between the poles of magic and reason, their lives governed by the politics of the ultrareal, their spirits ruled by myths and legends, with the rectangular computerized bulk of North America above and the conch-shell-shaped continental mystery of South America below."
Salvador 4/5
The Jaguar Hunter 4/5
R&R 4/5
Radiant Green Star 4/5
Currently reading
December 5, 2025A recommendation from my love. I don't understand how this author has escaped me completely. He's so good, but somehow mainstream fame eluded him. Perhaps if he'd written about century old vampires creeping on underage girls...
Stars Seen Through Stone - My first of his stories. He has a great style and I'm looking forward to more, especially the dragon story.
A Spanish Lesson - This one was a trip, portals and alternate realities. I wish we'd gotten a chance to read a story by Shepard from after the ww2 propaganda started getting holes poked in it. He was clearly an intelligent person and most of them come around.
Started Salvador
Stars Seen Through Stone - My first of his stories. He has a great style and I'm looking forward to more, especially the dragon story.
A Spanish Lesson - This one was a trip, portals and alternate realities. I wish we'd gotten a chance to read a story by Shepard from after the ww2 propaganda started getting holes poked in it. He was clearly an intelligent person and most of them come around.
Started Salvador
Want to read
May 22, 2015Added from Lyn's review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
December 27, 2025
I think the first story I read from Lucius Shepard was "Crocodile Rock" in the Oct-Nov 1999 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction. By then I would have been aware of his award-winning career up to that point, but this story was the first he had written in a few years, perhaps marking a second phase of his career. I found it impressive enough to go back and start reading everything he had written and somewhere along the line he became one of my favorite writers. I'd read everything in this book up through "Green Radiant Star" by the time I decided I might finish this up, forgetting that most of his work was at novella length, including the last five stories. I only have four stars on this collection because there are few perfect collections out there, but this as close to a five-star collection as you'll get and if I had just read the last 6 novellas on their own it would have been easy to give. He's possibly one of the best to ever tackle the novella length.
Shepard wrote largely male protagonists. Disaffected would be the wrong word, but I always had this sense from him that his characters were similar to him, possibly somewhere along a journey towards a redemption they were looking for yet didn't believe in. Most of them react in contempt of ostentation or gaudy displays of ego, all are usually involved in a relationship amd/or after, and all sort of reflect a feeling of the author immersed in life but worn down from the darkness around him while trying to find a better way. He feels more outside the SF or dark fantasy genre looking in from a deep literature sense, and there are very few writers with as rich, descriptive prose who are also as immensely readable as Shepard is. Very few of his stories are easy to put down.
I'm not sure if he was challenged to or took it upon himself but a lot of his books and novellas are attempts at genre tropes. He has a vampire novel, "The Golden," a profound ghost store about 9/11 in "Only Partly Here," a take on zombies you'd never expect in "Hand Up! Who Wants to Die?" and even something surprisingly Lovecraftian in "Stars Seen Through Stone." But you'll never find anything cliché in these stores, the genre conceits are all tied in with long ruminations about human behavior and always involve deep character study. I'd doubt you could read more than a few of his stories without encountering someone who seems very familiar. Shepard definitely had the support of a lot of great editors during his career who believed in his talent (which makes you wonder a little if it has any bearing on how Vernon in "Stars" deals with his) but I never felt the popularity grow after his earlier days. And his legacy deserves so much more than that.
Shepard wrote largely male protagonists. Disaffected would be the wrong word, but I always had this sense from him that his characters were similar to him, possibly somewhere along a journey towards a redemption they were looking for yet didn't believe in. Most of them react in contempt of ostentation or gaudy displays of ego, all are usually involved in a relationship amd/or after, and all sort of reflect a feeling of the author immersed in life but worn down from the darkness around him while trying to find a better way. He feels more outside the SF or dark fantasy genre looking in from a deep literature sense, and there are very few writers with as rich, descriptive prose who are also as immensely readable as Shepard is. Very few of his stories are easy to put down.
I'm not sure if he was challenged to or took it upon himself but a lot of his books and novellas are attempts at genre tropes. He has a vampire novel, "The Golden," a profound ghost store about 9/11 in "Only Partly Here," a take on zombies you'd never expect in "Hand Up! Who Wants to Die?" and even something surprisingly Lovecraftian in "Stars Seen Through Stone." But you'll never find anything cliché in these stores, the genre conceits are all tied in with long ruminations about human behavior and always involve deep character study. I'd doubt you could read more than a few of his stories without encountering someone who seems very familiar. Shepard definitely had the support of a lot of great editors during his career who believed in his talent (which makes you wonder a little if it has any bearing on how Vernon in "Stars" deals with his) but I never felt the popularity grow after his earlier days. And his legacy deserves so much more than that.
May 20, 2014
I got this collection to read "The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule". I didn't get around to reading the other stories in the collection, so the rating is really just for the Griaule story. I did notice that many of the others in the collection were more science fiction than fantasy.
The following is spoiler-ish; more in general than specific events of the story.
The following is spoiler-ish; more in general than specific events of the story.
February 4, 2026
This fine collection gathers eighteen works of Lucius Shepard--novellas, novelettes, short stories—ranging from fantasy and weird to cyberpunk and science fiction. For a quick synopsis of each, please check out Lyn's review on this site.
For the purposes of my review, I will focus on a highly philosophical novelette I found bat-ass weird and completely captivating: A Spanish Lesson. Spoiler alert: In order to address the philosophical dimensions contained herein, I allude to a number of bizarre twists and happenings deep into Shepard's tale.
The seventeen-year-old narrator, a dude named Lucius, is tall, thin, hot-tempered, and possesses, so he tells us, the ability to consume enormous quantities of drugs. He is also an aspiring writer. A semiautobiographical tale? It certainly sounds like one.
Lucius sets the stage: in a Costa del Sol village of white stucco houses, a group of expatriates, mostly American, live in a row of houses at the sea's edge—expats who, for him, embodied the bohemian ideal. As a way of aligning himself with these older men and women, Lucius rents a small beach house and starts writing poetry. Several weeks after moving in, he initiates a bittersweet romance with a dreamy blonde California gal by the name of Anne Fisher. But it doesn't last long. "By the time she left me some months later, I had grown thoroughly sick of her, but she had—I believed—served her purpose in establishing me as a full-fledged expatriate."
Life for Lucius and the expats hums along, although Lucius remains an outsider. But then something unusual happens: a man and a woman—twins—move into the beach house next to his. Lucius characterizes them as "two suitably substandard people," a couple of years older, Tom and Alise, who say they are from Canada; however, Lucius surmises that their accents are definitely Northern European.
All the expats are put off by the twins, especially Richard Shockley, who views them as a threat to their dope-taking and occasional dope-smuggling. Surely, Shockley voices, the twins' weirdness will draw the attention of the police. His suspicions have some basis in fact: the twins have been seen making strange movements on the beach, and they set lanterns in their windows and let them burn all through the night. The local fishermen judge them to be "the devil's spawn."
A committee of expats led by Shockley asks Lucius to keep an eye on the twins. Since Lucius has never really been included in their group, he refuses their request and, as a way of extracting a measure of revenge, he goes next door and warns Tom and Alise.
Lucius explains the situation—how their actions on the beach and their lanterns at night are weirding everybody out. Tom replies, "We don't want to cause harm, but there's something we have to do here. It's dangerous, but we have to do it. We can't leave until it's done."
Tom goes on to tell Lucius of their background: they are not Canadian but German, having been raised by a dictatorial father after their mother's death. They were beaten, locked in closets, and fed poorly for nearly twenty years. They eventually escaped, found ways to raise money to flee to Spain, and now plan to travel to India after they receive more money for some goods they stole from their father.
From the moment he enters their house, Lucius senses the twins are communicating telepathically. His intuition is confirmed when he hears Tom say, "We thought if there was the appearance of a romantic involvement between you and Alise, people might take us more for granted. We hoped you would be agreeable to having Alise move in with you." Initially taken aback, Lucius agrees once Alise explains that she will only do the cleaning and the shopping; furthermore, there's no need for physical contact.
Events move apace. As it turns out, Alise shares Lucius' bed and, in her own odd way, is a very active participant in their sexual relationship, which leads to an intimate bond of sorts. The expats take this development in stride.
Then the tale kicks into overdrive—vintage Lucius Shepard. When the twins are off on their daily walk along the beach, Lucius sneaks into their house and reads the notebooks he saw on his previous visit. From the lengthy diary entries, he learns that the twins are refugees from a parallel universe where Hitler won the war and established a genetic manipulation project. Twenty clones, Tom and Alise included, were placed in a cave for further experimentation. At one point, all the clones were brutalized, but Tom and Alise escaped through a tunnel to this world.
Lucius is shocked but skeptical. He figures all these diary entries are simply a consequence of them being beaten and kept in a closet for all those years by their sadistic father.
As a way of discovering the truth, Lucius follows the twins down the beach to see what they are actually up to. Keeping hidden, he does indeed behold the miraculous. The twins start moving in a way that reminds him of T'ai Chi. The air in a section of the sea becomes distorted, as with a heat haze. The distorted air grows larger and larger, and he begins to see odd translucent shapes swirling within. Then, suddenly, all returns to normal.
What happens next is for Lucius Shepard to tell. But I'll give a hint: on their next trip to the beach, the twins activate the tunnel described in their notebooks and the victorious "Hitler world" bleeds into our own. Lucius realizes his real "Spanish lesson" is that there are multiple hidden worlds and dimensions within the cosmos, and that the struggle between good and evil is deeper and infinitely more sinister than anybody can imagine.
July 9, 2018
Lucius Shepard wrote "R&R", which is almost hallucinatory in its brilliance. He's written a lot of other stuff as well, mostly short fiction. Think Graham Greene, if Greene was a part-time weird horror writer. This is as good an introduction to Shepard as is out there -- it's huge, and it doesn't have all of the stories that I'd have picked, but it's got a good cross-section of a twenty year career (in two phases). Shepard's later work doesn't have the fever-dream intensity that he was known for earlier, but "Jailwise" is bewilderingly surreal, and "Stars Seen Through Stone" is almost perfect in how it draws a completely ordinary place in a haunting way.
June 3, 2014
A great collection of stories by an under-appreciated writer. Like his novel 'Life During Wartime,' the germ of which is presented here in story form (R&R), these tales feature well-drawn characters and imaginative plots with one toe in the near-future dystopian and another in the realms of the supernatural. I can't say enough about Shepard's clean, elegant prose - spare without being minimalist, never calling attention to itself, with a finely tuned ear for accent and dialog. Not everything here is five-star quality but enough of them are to push it over the top for me: Radiant Green Star, Dead Money, Stars Seen Through Stone, The Arcevoalo.
June 1, 2019
Well, the writing is luminous, magic, glorious, inimitable, peerless, page after page of it. Unfortunately, some half of the tales herein included, not so much, somewhat a bit less than remarkable. Radiant Green Star was my favorite, a truly compelling story with relatable characters and the right dosage of ambiguity, served by Shepard's unique literary talents, a triumph.
"Guilt was irrelevant. We were all guilty, the dead and the living, the good and those who had abandoned God. Guilt is our inevitable portion of the world’s great trouble. No, it was the recognition that at the moment when I knew the war was lost—my share of it, at least—I chose not to cut my losses but to align myself with a force so base and negative that we refuse to admit its place in human nature and dress it in mystical clothing and call it Satan or Shiva so as to separate it from ourselves." (from Radiant Green Star)
"Guilt was irrelevant. We were all guilty, the dead and the living, the good and those who had abandoned God. Guilt is our inevitable portion of the world’s great trouble. No, it was the recognition that at the moment when I knew the war was lost—my share of it, at least—I chose not to cut my losses but to align myself with a force so base and negative that we refuse to admit its place in human nature and dress it in mystical clothing and call it Satan or Shiva so as to separate it from ourselves." (from Radiant Green Star)
February 19, 2026
The Best of Lucius Shepard, 2008 Subterranean Press, is in print in e-book and hardcover. It includes 18 short works of speculative fiction, ranging from short stories to novellas. It’s a hefty group of science fiction, fantasy and horror stories, coming in at 623 pages. My favorite is the superlative novelette “The Jaguar Hunter“, F&SF May 1985. Although my overall rating is a strong 3.81/5, or “Great”, I find the contents variable, with three stories in the merely “Good” or competent range that I would have omitted. You might feel differently. Regardless, recommended strongly.
November 12, 2018
The Man Who Painted Dragon Griaule ☆☆☆☆
Salvador ☆☆☆☆☆
A Spanish Lesson ☆☆☆☆☆
R & R ☆☆☆☆☆
The Jaguar Hunter ☆☆☆☆☆
The Arcevoalo ☆☆☆☆☆
Shades ☆☆☆☆☆
Delta Sly Honey ☆☆☆☆☆
Life of Buddha ☆☆☆☆☆
White Trains ☆☆☆
Jack’s Decline ☆☆☆☆☆
Beast of the Heartland ☆☆☆☆☆
Radiant Green Star ☆☆☆☆☆
Only Partly Here ☆☆☆☆☆
Jailwise ☆☆☆☆☆
Hands Up! Who Wants to Die? ☆☆☆☆☆
Dead Money ☆☆☆☆☆
Stars Seen Through Stone ☆☆☆☆
Salvador ☆☆☆☆☆
A Spanish Lesson ☆☆☆☆☆
R & R ☆☆☆☆☆
The Jaguar Hunter ☆☆☆☆☆
The Arcevoalo ☆☆☆☆☆
Shades ☆☆☆☆☆
Delta Sly Honey ☆☆☆☆☆
Life of Buddha ☆☆☆☆☆
White Trains ☆☆☆
Jack’s Decline ☆☆☆☆☆
Beast of the Heartland ☆☆☆☆☆
Radiant Green Star ☆☆☆☆☆
Only Partly Here ☆☆☆☆☆
Jailwise ☆☆☆☆☆
Hands Up! Who Wants to Die? ☆☆☆☆☆
Dead Money ☆☆☆☆☆
Stars Seen Through Stone ☆☆☆☆
September 3, 2020
Good but dark
The title pretty much says it all. A lot of good tales in here, but he does tend to dark themes
The title pretty much says it all. A lot of good tales in here, but he does tend to dark themes
September 2, 2016
There's a terrible density in seeing a career compressed into a "Best of..." collection. I'm sure I've read a few Lucius Shepard stories before, but it was some milSF in the Playboy Anthology that inspired me to follow up, and discover a truly great and weird author.
Shepard's form was the novella, stories long enough to let his characters and setting breath a little without deviating from his point, and this is a great collection of novellas. The 'straight scifi' centers on a guerrilla war in Central America between American soldier hopped on combat drugs and napalm, and locals who draw upon a mystical spirit of the land to fight them. But what really calls to Shepard is the weird, the mystical, the magical, and the stories explore the uncanny from Honduras to Vietnam to the American South.
Truly great authors have a knack for picking precisely the right word, the difference between lightning and lightning bug, and Shepard tends to bombard his stories with baroque layers of imagery, in the hopes that one will get close enough, but the style is very very good. My favorites were "Delta Sly Honey" and "Jailwise", but the only miss was the nihilistic criminal caper “Hands Up! Who Wants to Die?”
Lucius Shepard never quite made it into the top-tier of SF and weird writers, but if you haven't read him, you're missing out.
Shepard's form was the novella, stories long enough to let his characters and setting breath a little without deviating from his point, and this is a great collection of novellas. The 'straight scifi' centers on a guerrilla war in Central America between American soldier hopped on combat drugs and napalm, and locals who draw upon a mystical spirit of the land to fight them. But what really calls to Shepard is the weird, the mystical, the magical, and the stories explore the uncanny from Honduras to Vietnam to the American South.
Truly great authors have a knack for picking precisely the right word, the difference between lightning and lightning bug, and Shepard tends to bombard his stories with baroque layers of imagery, in the hopes that one will get close enough, but the style is very very good. My favorites were "Delta Sly Honey" and "Jailwise", but the only miss was the nihilistic criminal caper “Hands Up! Who Wants to Die?”
Lucius Shepard never quite made it into the top-tier of SF and weird writers, but if you haven't read him, you're missing out.
July 20, 2014
Quelques grosses nouvelles de Lucius Shepard qui nous a malheureusement quitté cette année. Malgré sa faible diffusion en france, il reste pour moi un auteur majeur que j'ai découvert avec La vie en temps de guerre.
On retrouve dans ces nouvelles la même ambiance empreinte du réalisme magique sud-américain ainsi qu'une certaine critique de l'impérialisme américain.
On retrouve dans ces nouvelles la même ambiance empreinte du réalisme magique sud-américain ainsi qu'une certaine critique de l'impérialisme américain.
May 5, 2010
full of past gold, superb evocative prose
Want to read
March 3, 2012Couldn't get into the Central American FutureWar stories - may try again some other time
bet gave 3 stars; SDMB AuntiePam & WordMan recco
bet gave 3 stars; SDMB AuntiePam & WordMan recco
March 3, 2014
R&R is one of those short stories that just sticks with you.
October 27, 2015
Lucius was an outstanding author whose prose was breathtakingly beautiful. This collection was a joy to read. Very highly recommended to anyone who enjoys a good story written outstandingly well.
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