The Night Cache

by Andy Duncan

A special publication for Postcripts subscribers.

Cover art by Ben Baldwin.

PS holiday chapbook, #5

Genres: Fiction, Fantasy

46 pages, Hardcover

First published January 12, 2009

About the author

Andy Duncan is the award-winning author of two novellas—The Night Cache (2009) and Wakulla Springs (with Ellen Klages, 2013, 2018)—and three short fiction collections: Beluthahatchie and Other Stories (2000), The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories (2012) and An Agent of Utopia: New and Selected Stories (2018). He is also the author of non-fiction book Alabama Curiosities (2005, 2009), and co-editor (with F. Brett Cox) of Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic (2004). He has won the 2002 Theodore Sturgeon Award for "The Chief Designer", the 2012 Nebula Award for "Close Encounters", and three World Fantasy Awards. Born in Batesburg, South Carolina, Duncan currently lives with his wife Sydney in Frostburg, Maryland, where he he has taught English as an Assistant Professor at Frostburg State University since 2008.

Reviews

[Craig]

The Night Cache is a novelette published in an unusual hardbound chapbook format. It's a very good and refreshing ghost story/romance centered on geocaching, a subject about which I knew practically nothing. The characters are almost all young gay women, and their relationships are intriguing, as are the cipher puzzles Duncan provides through most of the narrative. Duncan creates fascinating and sympathetic characters for such a short piece, and my only complaint is that I wish it had been longer.

[Nighteye]

Good, it catch me towards the end. A kind of sad story.

[Steve Hampson]

An very entertaining fantasy love story. Duncan has established two thoroughly believable characters and an entertaining plot in such a short story. While it is excellent as it is, I was left wishing I could spend more time with the characters. Recommended read.

[Emmalyn Renato]

This novelette was nominated for the World Fantasy award in 2010.

[Riju Ganguly]

This book has been lavishly praised in different blogs & columns throughout the internet, and anyone pursuing them would be already aware that this chap-book has been nominated for World Fantasy Awards: 2009. They (i.e. the pursuers) would also be knowing the story-line as well as the names of the protagonists, their lesbian love-affair and their hobby/passion: geocaching. My meager addition to that oeuvre would be the following:

1. The gently humourous tone of the narrative makes the prose very-very refreshing, and livens up the characters. You would enjoy the prose once you begin, and would be eagerly searching for other works by the author.
2. The focus of the story is geocaching, something totally new for most of us pre-historics, and hence highly provocative for all of us, who are thus tempted to have a go at the cryptic clues leading to the climax.
3. The ending is appropriately open, and screams for a sequel/vengeful action on part of the survivor/...!

The book is difficult to find at retail bookstores (with all respect for Amazon), and hence you are recommended to visit the website of PS Publishing to get hold of the book, now, and I mean now.

[Stephen Theaker]

A decent story about Jenny, who gets into geocaching with a magical new girlfriend, Destiny Creech. The geocaching element makes it feel very "now", and the scenes where Jenny meets Destiny's family are affecting.

[Mark]

I love Andy Duncan's work, and while this is not his best story, it is certainly worth checking out!