What do you think?
Rate this book
Collected
230 pages, Paperback
Published May 28, 2026
About the author
Chris Kelso
74 books210 followersChris Kelso is an award-winning genre writer, editor, illustrator, and musician from Scotland. His work has been published widely across the UK, US and Canada.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 24, 2026
Oi mutta fookas, this is naught a fookin drill: deres a new fookin Chris Kelso joint up in dis bastiche. Some sawrta fookin "career retrospective". Dafuq does that even mean? Does dis ponce think he can jus retire on us? Ack like dis gone be his last fookin book? No fookin dice, geezer. I only jus started readin deez shits, you can't start fookin holdin out awn me. Call up fookin Brian Evenson and get dat fucker crackin on Jenny Longlegs Part 2.
June 11, 2026
Unlike any other author I've read, Kelso writes exciting narratives with unfettered creativity. Bringing together a wide-ranging selection of his short fiction from the past 15 years, this collection displays an evolving maturity of exceptional writing craft. Having met the man, sometimes I find it difficult to connect the fearless writing style and wild abandon with the well-spoken, unassuming family man and teacher he is now. But, I guess I never knew the Chris Kelso of 15 years ago, except through his crazy, slipstream, sci-fi stories featuring selfish, hedonistic time agents and literary giants. Then there's the incredibly dark nihilism of his Slave State stories, reflecting the troubled mind of a young man going through tough times.
But the collection isn't just about an angry man pouring all of his darkness into his fiction. Just look at the list of collaborators on the co-authored stories and you'll get a sense of the high regard in which others hold Kelso and his storytelling expertise. Every one of those stories is so unique, but ever one has that same strand of Kelso fiction DNA running through them, like the same strain of mind-bending bacteria. Every one is a banger, but my favourite is still Jenny Longlegs. Those little buggers freak me out, too.
For an author who threatens to stop publishing fiction, he ought to be sat down and shown the list of "new stories" which end the collection. Each one is a doozy in its own right, from the horrific anti-capitalist undertones of the science fiction story "The Mnemosyne" to the futuristic police procedural "There is a Measure in All Things", drawing as much on the author's feelings about returning to one's roots in a small town as it does on his early Slave State stories. "The Bleeder" begins like a straightforward story of a committed boxer called Joyce, desperate to make her mark in the latest tournament at any cost, before Kelso weaves in science fiction nanobots and a fear of invasive cancer. Closing out the new stories section and the collection as a whole is "The See-Through Town", a gem of a story. It simultaneously details how a town is haunted by its inhabitants and vice versa, using the frame of a spate of supposed suicides and a sinister entity known as the See-Through Man. It showcases everything that has been on display throughout the collection, like a crescendo of incredible craftsmanship. Troubled and flawed characters, with hints at even deeper darkness. A scarred and claustrophobic setting that reaches out with ragged claws to drag the characters back, kicking and screaming, cutting off any chance of escape. A dark sense of foreboding utilising any storytelling device and subgenre, from bleak dystopian science fiction to futuristic techno noir to the boogeyman in the dark, always with the same fearlessly dark poetic prose. His style may evolve and grow with his own maturity, but may his drive to share his incredibly unique stories never fade. The world needs writers like Chris Kelso to save us from mediocre media and trite narratives.
But the collection isn't just about an angry man pouring all of his darkness into his fiction. Just look at the list of collaborators on the co-authored stories and you'll get a sense of the high regard in which others hold Kelso and his storytelling expertise. Every one of those stories is so unique, but ever one has that same strand of Kelso fiction DNA running through them, like the same strain of mind-bending bacteria. Every one is a banger, but my favourite is still Jenny Longlegs. Those little buggers freak me out, too.
For an author who threatens to stop publishing fiction, he ought to be sat down and shown the list of "new stories" which end the collection. Each one is a doozy in its own right, from the horrific anti-capitalist undertones of the science fiction story "The Mnemosyne" to the futuristic police procedural "There is a Measure in All Things", drawing as much on the author's feelings about returning to one's roots in a small town as it does on his early Slave State stories. "The Bleeder" begins like a straightforward story of a committed boxer called Joyce, desperate to make her mark in the latest tournament at any cost, before Kelso weaves in science fiction nanobots and a fear of invasive cancer. Closing out the new stories section and the collection as a whole is "The See-Through Town", a gem of a story. It simultaneously details how a town is haunted by its inhabitants and vice versa, using the frame of a spate of supposed suicides and a sinister entity known as the See-Through Man. It showcases everything that has been on display throughout the collection, like a crescendo of incredible craftsmanship. Troubled and flawed characters, with hints at even deeper darkness. A scarred and claustrophobic setting that reaches out with ragged claws to drag the characters back, kicking and screaming, cutting off any chance of escape. A dark sense of foreboding utilising any storytelling device and subgenre, from bleak dystopian science fiction to futuristic techno noir to the boogeyman in the dark, always with the same fearlessly dark poetic prose. His style may evolve and grow with his own maturity, but may his drive to share his incredibly unique stories never fade. The world needs writers like Chris Kelso to save us from mediocre media and trite narratives.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
Chris Kelso is one of these authors that people in the know share in the dark alleys of literature, nodding as they mention the titles of his books. It is an author, like me, invisible in full mainstream daylight, but this is where his strength lies: uncompromised, absolutely uncompromised. "Collection" might be the best introduction to this potent and violent drug: short stories assembled like an insane mosaic made of mirror shards and precious stones that intend to cut you deep. However, Kelso is not a real sadist, but rather a very dedicated misanthopist humanist who intends to show his readers the true nature of the soul, that is to say the few diamonds scattered in its bowels, shining in the darkness. Probably the only true genuine disciple of William Burroughs, Kelso is one of the last and the first of the first. To discover him is a blinding revelation, to read him a reassuring anguish and to re-read him a true guilty as charged pleasure. Don't be a square, get this book -- you'll get hooked. You can always trust a Kelso junkie like me.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews