False Readings

by Patrick Stuart

False Readings is the first collection of fictions by Patrick Stuart, the co-creator (with Scrap Princess) of 'Deep Carbon Observatory', the D&D adventure that won Indy Supplement of the Year 2014 and the Ramanan Sivaranjan award for Best Writing, and of the monster book 'Fire on the Velvet Horizon' which China Mieville called 'Easily one of my standout books for 2015'. False Readings ranges from short Sword and Sorcery stories told from the point of view of a madwoman duelling verbally with the animated poem in her head (don't be put off by the poetry, there is murder only a few pages in and a bit of necrophilia at the end), and of the first person narration of a homosexual skeleton on a vengeful mission of forgiveness, or possibly a forgivable mission of revenge, to the strange and tragical tales of the Knights of the Snail. Included are a range of fragmentary and unfinished fictions, primarily of interest to enthusiasts and weirdoes, including the first-person narration of an underworld monster, the meeting of a character from Deep Carbon Observatory with the whimsical hobo insect man 'Fiddlin' Joe Cooper amidst the black towers of Jukai, the city built on the coagulated shells of sleeping mega-monsters which will one day end the world, an unfinished apocalyptic choose-your-own-adventure story told in verse, an incomplete play about time travel in iambic pentameter and the very first thing the author ever wrote at length that didn't make him want to vomit.

266 pages, Paperback

Published November 16, 2015

About the author

I am False Machine

Reviews

[Cian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quality odds and ends. Some a bit rough and explicitly marked as unfinished but endearing for it. The Knights of the Snail are the stars and really do deserve an eventual picture book. If you've read Patrick Stuart's blog or Fire on the Velvet Horizon and enjoyed them even at all, you will get a good deal of pleasure out of a good deal of this collection.