The Scalehunter's Beautiful Daughter

by Lucius Shepard

Less than four years since the appearance of his first novel, Green Eyes, Lucius Shepard has become of the best known and most widely admired writers of science fiction, horror and fantasy working today. Dozens of brilliant short stories, novellas and novelettes have given his name headline status at every genre periodical, and his second novel, Life During Wartime, has further established his credentials as a visionary author of contemporary mainstream literature. His 1987 collection of short fiction, The Jaguar Hunter, was universally regarded as one of the most important anthologies of 1987, containing selections that more than fulfill the promise implicit in his having wo the World Science Fiction John W. Campbell Award as 1984's Best New Writer.

The Scalehunter's Beautiful Daughter is a return for Shepard to a scenario he first explored in his 1984 story, "The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule," which was nominated for the World Science Fiction, World Fantasy, and Nebula Awards. Acclaimed writer and respected critic Michael Bishop has described that story as, "a tale that -- in the indirect way of a parable, implies a great deal about both love and creativity. Seldom, though, do you find a parable so vivid or so involvingly sustained."

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Speculative Fiction, Novella

153 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1988

About the author

Brief 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.

Reviews

[Kat Hooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

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. He rests in a valley where his body composes much of the landscape, creating hills and forests and waterfalls. Trees and other vegetation have taken root on his body and animals and parasites live in the habitat he produces. Griaule overlooks the town of Teocinte and another shantytown rests on his back. He’s angry about his situation and his negative... Read More: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...

[Wekoslav Stefanovski · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second Griaule story takes us deep within Griaule, in a quite literal way. The storytelling is great, and the characters are the deeply flawed humans that Shepard does so wonderfully, but in a way, I kinda missed the heavy-handed moralization so characteristic of his writing.

[Casey Henderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A technically Perfect novella: explored everything without being overbearing. I read it in one sitting and I want to reread it already.

[Bret · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book best experienced by reading the first and last chapters only. Those, in prose and plotting, deserve top marks. The rating above applies to the muddled middle six.