The Best of Lucius Shepard, Volume 2

by Lucius Shepard

When Lucius Shepard passed away in 2014, he left behind a body of work unparalleled in its richness, power, and sheer originality. In 2008, Subterranean Press published The Best of Lucius Shepard, which served as a massive monument to an extraordinary career. Over time, this monument has proved insufficient, so we now have this even more massive second volume. It is a gift that Shepard's many devoted readers will take to their hearts. Weighing in at more than 300,000 words, spread across nearly 850 pages, this magisterial book brings together fourteen stories and novellas, three of which ("Aztechs," "The Last Time," and "Ariel") have never been previously collected. Each of them, without exception, is worth returning to over and over again. Lucius Shepard's life and work took him, quite literally, to the ends of the earth, and this masterful collection reflects his restless, peripatetic nature. The volume opens with "A Traveler's Tale," an account of the horrors that attend the creation of a small community of outcasts on the coast of Honduras. It ends with "Dog-Eared Paperback of My Life," a surreal account of a Conradian journey up the Mekong River, a journey that moves through multiple interpenetrating realities. In between these bookended moments, Shepard introduces us to an astonishing array of people, places, and dramatic, often horrific situations. The Hugo Award-winning novella "Barnacle Bill the Spacer" is a powerfully written account of mutiny in deep space. "Jailbait" recounts the relationship between two lost souls adrift in the world of the hobo jungles. In "Ariel," alien incursions and quantum physics merge in a tale of love, memory, and obsession. "Human History" posits a remote, low-tech future in which the human race is subordinate to the all-powerful Captains. "Crocodile Rock" is a tale of murder and impossible transformations set in a vividly evoked Africa. And in "Liar's House," Shepard adds a fascinating chapter to what may be his most iconic creation: the world of the Dragon Griaule. Like its predecessor, The Best of Lucius Shepard, Volume Two is, quite simply, an essential book.

848 pages, Hardcover

Published December 1, 2021

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

[Ralph Blackburn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Best of Lucius Shepard (2)- In this second "Best of" volume we can enjoy some of the equally excellent stories that were left out of the first volume. 840 pages, a lot of content and some great reading. I read some of these stories in Asimov's and Analog when they first were published and it was nice to experience them again. Shepard's writing is so lyrical and smooth it just sucks you right in. You finish a story and two hours have passed without your feeling it! Some stories I like better than others, but that's just personal preference. My usual take on anthologies, even by the same author, is you like some, but there's always ones that sing to you and others that leave you tuneless. Subterranean Press is publishing this book, so it will probably be a knock-out.

[Scott]

Reading this off and on and will rate the shorts as I go:
- A Traveler's Tale
- Surrender
- Barnacle Bill the Spacer ***
- The Last Time
- Human History ****
- Crocodile Rock
- Aztechs
- The Drive-In Puerto Rico
- A Walk in the Garden
- Ariel
- Liar's House
- Jaibait
- Dagger Key
- Dog-Eared Paperback of my Life

[Pablo · Rating 5 out of 5]

800 pages of some of the best work from one of the best science fiction and fantasy writers of the last 40 years. I didn't see volume 1 but I can tell you there's nothing less than excellent in volume 2. If you're new to Shepard, feel free to start here. If you're an old fan who's been missing him since he left us, what a great opportunity to reread some of your old favorites. Highly recommended.