Mombasa Madrigal

Mombasa Madrigal (2019)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

Mombasa Madrigal...
...and other African escapades

"A collection of stories introduced by a novelette that is a fusion of memoir, travelogue and speculation. 'Mombasa Madrigal' charts a modern voyage to that city of crumbling equatorial grandeur. A thoughtful, pulsating, intuitive text, it is something new in the somewhat conventionalised universe of contemporary narratives.

The short stories that follow complement and amplify the impact. Outrigger canoes with crab claw sails ride the currents of the Indian Ocean into oblivion, the mountains of Kenya loom high over grounded ships miles from the sea, pirates dream impossibilities and scheme them into reality along the Swahili Coast. And always Mombasa, the gateway to East Africa, pulsing endlessly in the heat of the night."

Contents:

Mombasa Madrigal * In African Airspace * Nothing Will Happen * Noah the Second *Sailing to Port Manitou

Note: The story 'Noah the Second' is only available in the paperback edition, not in the ultra-limited handcrafted original edition.

The Nostalgia that Never Was

The Nostalgia that Never Was (2019)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

"Marco Polo is travelling again in the service of Kublai Khan but this time he wanders off the path and ends up in an unknown part of the world. In his solitude he becomes an emperor of dreams. The ghosts of prehistory visit him, and the phantoms of later ages and the future too. He even finds himself in the unexpected position of haunting himself. Only his very last spectral guest can know everything that is essential, and that last guest may well be you, the reader."

A tribute to Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities but with ghosts instead of cities. 222 ghosts pay a visit to Marco Polo, who is now enthroned in a natural amphitheatre. Having travelled in the service of the Khan he is now a Khan himself, the Khan of the Canyons, and others can come to him for a change. And they do. From Pangu, Adam and Keyumars, three of the first men from three different traditions, to the very last man of all. The centuries slide past, some ghosts are substantial, others are flimsy, a few are nothing more than an idea or the starting point for a tangential routine.

The Early Bird Catches the Worm but the Wise Worm Stays in Bed

The Early Bird Catches the Worm but the Wise Worm Stays in Bed (2018)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

"A change is as good as a rest," said Dr Jekyll doubtfully.

Stories from the beginning and stories from near the end with a minor chasm between. Into this chasm falls a rain of worms that will tickle the napes of those who dwell below. But who dwells below? On either side of the chasm, absurd birds perch on the outstretched arms of plausible gibbons. The chasm will fill up eventually. A lake of worms. That's the way it ought to happen around here...

Contents:

EARLY BIRD
Raindancing * Big Game * The 4-D Mind * Nathaniel * Reflections of a Brass Head * Friends * The Faust Business * Death of an English Teacher * The Myth of Sisyphus * Under the Tree * The Dungeon * Consolations of the Wild One * The Roof of the World * Multicoloured Leaves in Bright Spirals * The Manticore * Zumbooruk * The Achilles Tendency * The Duvet Thief * Sucking the World's Thumb * Passengers * Loop * Romance with Capsicum * There's a Woman with a Cactus Instead of a Head * Miserable with Groceries, Cuddly with Stubble * Bracket * The Glossolalia of Hideo Frigg * The Apology * Primate Suspect * The Pelican of Venice

WISE WORM
Simplicity * Letters from my Windmill * Spoiling the View * Nozzles * Jekking the Oofers * When the Tide Comes in, Belinda Puts Out * What Did You Do for Doomsday? * The Tatty Bye * Hepcats are from Neptune, Bum Notes are from Uranus * Barbarian Gran * Alphabet Soup * Shelf and Safety * The Pink Canoe * Hey! Big Spengler * Counting the Pennies * The Sleep Patterns of Björn Wakeman * The Little Bridge Over the River

The Honeymoon Gorillas

The Honeymoon Gorillas (2018)
Bizarro Pulp Press

"Spud Gunn is the son of Hopalong Beech and Una Gunn. When his parents split up he begins his travels through the West, a place of myths, tall stories and strangeness. On his journey he has many peculiar encounters with the characters who inhabit the West and he begins to suspect that something is not quite right about the world he is living in. Could it be that this West is just a simulation? If so, for what purpose was it created?

Before he finds the answer to this and other questions, he will have to evade the unusual attentions of a troupe of lethal roving actors, the schemes of fake orientals, the catastrophic effects of asteroid strikes and the fury of a giant who is one of the original gods of the West and who has been assembled from his scattered parts in order to break down the walls of existence and reveal the truths beyond.... But what does this have to do with gorillas? Rather more than it may seem to the casual eye!"

Contents:

The Son of Una Gunn * Tumbleweed Tantrums * Phut Tu Ping and the Spittoon Gang * The Proper Setting * The Same Old Zoetrope * Rosco Pico Train * The Tooth on the Floss * Longfellow in the Compressor * Fudge Man Chew * Sarsaparilla Sasquatch * What we Gibber About when we Gibber About Gibbons * A Long Story Short * The Falling Kite Landed on my Back like an Angel Attack

How Many Times?

How Many Times? (2018)
Eibonvale Press

"Rhys Hughes has never been a stranger to experimental fiction and unusual ways of constructing stories, and this mini-collection gathers some of his most far-reaching examples, placed squarely in the world of OuLiPo writing.

Short for Ouvroir de littérature potentielle (the workshop of potential literature) OuLiPo is a grouping of authors who fashion works based on constrained writing techniques, writing that follows rigorous and extremely precise rules concerning structure and layout.

And here, we encounter works based on rigid numerical constraints, works in the form of grids that can be read in any direction, and a logico-erotic tale in which the permutations of the sexual acts are based on the workings of logic gates."

Contents:

The Five Pillars of Flimflam * Half a Dozen of the Other * Seven Sulky Sides for Seven Bulky Brooders * I Entered the Forest at Midnight * Boiling the Kettle * The Careful Plottings of my Enamoured Heart * Boolean Amours

Yule Do Nicely

Yule Do Nicely (2017)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, please put a penny in the old man’s hat. Yes, but we first require more information about the goose, the penny and the hat. We can’t be too careful these days. How fat is the goose getting and what connection does it have with the old man? Is the goose getting so fat that it is likely to explode with disastrous results for the nation? How will paying the old man a penny prevent this outcome? The situation is unclear.

We are on more certain ground when it is explained that the following fictions have been assembled in their present form in order to celebrate the festive season. They include work from the span of the past quarter century. The first twenty-four tales form a weird advent calendar from December 1st to 24th. Then it is Christmas Day and time for the stocking and the twenty-eight little strange tales inside it. Merry Xmas!

Contents:

The Hidden Sixpence * Three Friends * Down in the Park * The Chocolate Princess * Loafing Around * The Duvet Thief * My Beetroot Brow * The Moon and the Well * His Unstable Shape * The Cakes of Gehenna * Double Atlas * The Dirtiest Ararat * Zucchini Overdrive * Suttee and Sweep * The Strongest Monster * Cats' Eyes * Fringes and Bangs * Monsieur Choux * A Corking Tale * Don't Shoot the Messenger * All the Waiting * The Wrong Lamp *The Pancake Hurler * The Precious Mundanity * The Shocking Stocking

Note: 'The Shocking Stocking' is a portmanteau tale incorporating 28 little fictions.

World Muses

World Muses (2017)
Ex Occidente

"The world is a ball and our minds are a room and our lives are an endless dance in the ballrooms of forsaken palaces on those smaller worlds called our hearts, where seismic activity is almost constant, for the geology of our emotions is still young. The volcanic upthrusts of our yearnings make mountains out of our hopes and inspiration shakes the earth and collapses it beneath us and we wish for our fears to turn out to be groundless too. And sometimes indeed they are."

Contents:

World Muses (a series of eighty linked fictions)

Salty Kiss Island

Salty Kiss Island (2017)
Immanion Press

"This anthology collects for the first time Rhys Hughes’ fantastical love stories. What is a fantastical love story? It isn’t quite the same as an ordinary love story. The events that take place are stranger, more extreme, full of the passion of originality, invention and magic, as well as an intensification of emotional love. Also, the voice that tells them has rather a different tone to a conventional romantic narrator. The stories in Salty Kiss Island are set in this world and others, spanning the spectrum of possible and impossible experiences, the uncharted territories of yearning, the depths and shoals of the heart, mind and soul. They are adventure yarns, whimsies and comedies, tragedies and paradoxes. They are melancholy, gleeful, philosophic or mystical. A love of language runs through them, parallel to the love that motivates their characters to feats of preposterous heroism, luminous lunacy and grandiose gesture. They include tales of minstrels and their catastrophic serenades, dreamers sinking into sequences of ever-deeper dreams, goddesses and mermaids, sailors and devils, messages in bottles that can think and speak but never be read, shadows with an independent life and voyagers of distant galaxies who are already at their destinations before they arrive."

Contents:

Foreword * All for Nothing * Accordion Beach * The Innumerable Chambers of the Heart * Paradise Discarded * Eternal Horizon * Starlight Girl * The Cargo Cults of Salty Kiss Island * The Sweetheart Rosary * Venus and Stupid * The Mermaid Variations * Message to Rosita * Left on the Shelf * The Cure of the Scandal in Averroës * Love Keys * The Requirements of Desire * The Sublime Voyage of Ariana Aragão * Died For Puns * As I Walked Out One Midsummer Night's Dream * Don Entrerrosca * A Spaceship in the Shape of a Woman * An Unpleasant Romance * What the Shadow Sees * Afterword

Cloud Farming in Wales

Cloud Farming in Wales (2017)
Snuggly Books

"In Wales it never stops raining. Or almost never. When it does stop raining from the sky, it rains from hearts instead. Indoors as well as outdoors, the people huddle in the endless drenchings, and over time they have evolved into aquatic creatures who only look and behave like men and women but aren’t really. There is a clue in the name of the country. Wales is a nation with no spot of dry land within its borders. Wales is an Atlantis that never stayed under but is just as wet. Crammed with mythical beings and happenings, Cloud Farming in Wales palpitates, germinates and extrapolates, but never evaporates, and the sodden heroes that wade and slosh through the mighty puddles of its pages are generally in search of a canoe."

The Seashell Contract

The Seashell Contract (2017)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

"The seashell contract is binding on the human race. Once it is signed, the ocean will grow warmer and storms rage across the land. Other tales involve the longest chopsticks, a man who falls afoul of the sons of the sea, the first selfie photograph ever taken and its unexpected consequences, the man who swallowed an apple pip in order to grow a tree in his stomach, and the sasquatch who went to work in an office... 22 stories in total and all for a good cause. The author's profits from the sale of this book will go to The Mariposa Trust, a charity that supports mothers and families who have lost babies..."

Contents:

Chopsticks * The Seashell Contract * The Belly Orchard * Billy Holiday on Vacation * The Waters of Fosretaweht * Four Agora Corners * The Salsa Raft * Galaxy Whispers * A Comedy of Gambits * The Bus Museum * Why Look at Me Smugly? * Heavy Rain on a Slow Train * The Monumental Mason * The Promotion * The International Geophysical Ear * Junkshop in Oestrus * The Kizomba Wanderers * Where Everyone Wins * The Four Sea Sons * The Kind of Man * The Selfie Habit * The Workplace Hugger

Brutal Pantomimes

Brutal Pantomimes (2016)
Egaeus Press

"Brutal Pantomimes contains ten tales of absurd exoticism, weird adventure and wild fantasy from the shockingly prolific and highly acclaimed Rhys Hughes. Most of the stories, novelettes and novella included have not previously been published and some are regarded by their author to be among his best works... Enjoy pirate shenanigans, a globe of the Earth that is a voodoo doll, the dubious gifts of a Greek god, impossible angles, improbable sciences, impractical philosophies, a rare tropical yeti in a submarine and so much more. Featuring an introduction by Michael Cisco."

Contents:

The Jam of Hypnos * The Private Pirates Club * Corsets on the Outside * Wise Man * The Inflatable Stadium * The Eeriness that Lurks on the Far Side of Furniture * The Knees of Kionga * Shipyards on Saturn * How Gangrene was my Sally * The Impossible Inferno

Note: The story entitled 'Wise Man' actually consists of six linked tales, namely 'No Fury', 'Your Day', 'Last Chance', 'Nothing Else', 'In Stiches' and 'Most Unwise'

Mirrors in the Deluge

Mirrors in the Deluge (2015)
Elsewhen Press

A collection of 32 stories of unusual fantasy, philosophical satire, ironic adventure and laterally logical daftness.

Contents

The Prodigal Beard * The Bungle Duke * The Modesty Men * The Soft Landing * Gathering the Genial Genies * Najort Esroh * Travels with my Antinomy * The Bubble Bursts * A Dame Abroad * A Real Nowhere Man * Gold, Myrrh and Frankenstein * The Mouth of Hell * The Strings of Segovia * Paired Down * Arms Against a Sea * The Martian Monocles * Suddenly * Stand and Deliver * Trophy Wife * The Unkissed Artist Formerly Known as Frog * The Fairy and the Dinosaur * The Goat that Gloated * Vanity of Vanities * Unicorn on the Cob * Sunstorm * The Anvil Cloud * The Apple of My Sky * The Taste of Turtle Tears * The Musical Universe * The Bones of Jones * Train of Thought * The Haggis Eater

Thirty Tributes to Calvino

Thirty Tributes to Calvino (2015)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

A collection of thirty stories inspired by the genius of the writer Italo Calvino...

Paradoxical and philosophical fables; impossible cartographies and labyrinths of the mind and heart; towers that stretch across the universe; men who set sail on domestic oceans; the opinions and hopes of the sun; sentient geometries; games with gravity and planets; metafiction and wordplay; recursion and exploration; the perplexities of logic and desire.

These thirty tribute stories demonstrate the whimsical inventiveness and originality of an author who has won considerable acclaim for his speculative fiction.

Contents:

The Memory Palace * The Time Tunnel Orchid * Trombonhomie * The Non-Existent Viscount in the Trees * The Impregnable Fortress * Mundi Mourning * The Grave Demeanour * The Planet of Perfect Happiness * Starfish Wish * Beyond Paraparapara * The Pig Iron Mouse Dooms the Moon * Universe Tower * Benchmark * The City That Was Itself * The Rowing Machine * Sending Freedom Far Away * The Cowardly Custard Apple * Doom It Heavenwards * The Chattering Star * Hagmouth Town * A Spaceship in the Shape of a Woman * The Melon Seller * The Square Circle * Giddy Up * The Days of the Turbans * The Blue Jewel Fruit * Canute a Little * Broom Cupboard of Crossed Destinies * The Bathing Bells * My Most Metafictional Tale

Orpheus on the Underground

Orpheus on the Underground (2015)
Tartarus Press

Orpheus on the Underground is the new Rhys Hughes collection from Tartarus Press, containing fifteen previously unpublished stories and ‘The Concise Picaresque Adventures of the Wanderlust Bridge’, which first appeared in Strange Tales II, 2008. Ranging from the ghostly, through horror to the entirely fantastic, Hughes’ marvellously inventive tales steer the reader through the bizarre labyrinths of his unique talent for the strange.

In ‘The Upper Reaches’, two pilots discover a world beyond their mission, while the eponymous hero of ‘Orpheus on the Underground’ attempts to fit classical myth into the transport system of a modern metropolis. ‘Behind Every Ghost’ takes a conventional aphorism to its illogical limit, while ‘The Phantom Festival’ explores the history of music on various levels. In the ‘The Quixote Candidate’, a would-be film director is persuaded to give what may turn out to be an overly comprehensive interview.

In the twenty years since the publication of his first short story collection (Worming the Harpy, Tartarus Press, 1995) Rhys Hughes has become an éminence grise of the strange tale. He wears his reputation lightly, and it is the sheer fun and individuality of the stories in Orpheus on the Underground that make them so memorable.

Contents:

The Upper Reaches * Orpheus on the Underground * The Gargoyles of Black Wood * The Despicable Bungling of Yorick Porridge * Behind Every Ghost * The Ghost Written Autobiography of a Disembodied Spirit * Double Meaning * The Nick of Time * The Bicycle Centaur * The Quixote Candidate * The Pocket Shops * The Concise Picaresque Adventures of the Wanderlust Bridge * The Phantom Festival * Not Looking * New Improved Recipe for Disaster * The Great Me

Bone Idle in the Charnel House

Bone Idle in the Charnel House (2014)
Hippocampus Press

For more than two decades, Welsh writer Rhys Hughes has been entertaining and befuddling readers with his distinctive mix of terror, humor, fantasy, and absurdity. Although influenced by such writers as Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges, his work is utterly unique in its melding of weirdness and comic grotesquerie.

In this substantial collection of new and reprinted stories, Hughes displays the literary skills that have brought him a wide and devoted readership. Many of these stories have been published in leading magazines and anthologies over the past decade; but several are unpublished and reveal their wonders and mysteries for the first time. With this book, Rhys Hughes stakes a claim to being one of the most original writers in contemporary weird fiction.

Contents:

The Swinger * Bitter in Sour * The Old House Under the Snow * Degrees of Separation * The Warlord * Vampiric Gramps * Bone Idle in the Charnel House * What I Fear Most * Rediffusion * Casimir the Converter * Smuggling Old Nick to Newfoundland * Shelling the Toad * The Hydrothermal Reich * The Spoon * Chameleons * Happiness Leasehold * Life and the Plumbline * The Unsubtle Cages * Signma Octantis * The Century Just Gone

Captains Stupendous

Captains Stupendous (2014)
Telos Publishing

Too Much Travel Can Flatten the Mind...

"So you want to know about the Faraway Brothers, do you? Born somewhere in Gascony, they were, in the 1880s, all three of them birthed at the same time from the same womb of the same mother. Grew up in the same household, they did too, eating the same food, reading the same books, counting the legs on the same spider because the family couldn’t afford a real clock; but later they went their separate ways. Scipio took to the sea, to ships, islands and women; Distanto took to the air, to balloons, islands and women; Neary, unluckiest of the triplets, remained on land, taking only to locomotives and stations and chastity. Many adventures they all had and often their paths crossed and sometimes they clashed and the consequences were always totally STUPENDOUS!"

Contents:

This book is a novel made up of the following three linked novellas:
The Coandă Effect * The Gargantuan Legion * The Apedog Incident

The Lunar Tickle

The Lunar Tickle (2014)
Dog Horn Publishing

The Lives and Spacetimes of Thornton Excelsior...

“Thornton Excelsior is a man but he’s not an individual, he’s a multitude, an ensemble of avatars of himself that can exist in any place at any time. His mission is to do all possible things and most impossible ones. Give him a feather and he will tickle the moon until it laughs; give him a laugh and he will sell it in the market for a story; give him a story and he will give you a book of them. This book. A book to make full moons giggle.”

Contents:

An Inconvenient Fruit * The Maze * Hatstands on Zanzibar * The Porcelain Pig * Mad March Stylist * Tears of the Mutant Jesters *The Paradoxical Pachyderms * The Integers * The Shrug * The Longest Name * The Esplanade * The Rotten Otter * The Ducks of Hazard * Knight on a Bear Mountain * The Cheeky Monkey * The Melody Tree * The Reversed Comma * Black Ops * The Burning Ears * The Gates of Corn and Toffee * Whether the Weatherman * Note to Oneself * Said the Spook * The Notorious Unclemuncher * Read All About It * Putting Things Off * The Canapés of Wrath * The Plug * The Queue * Fossils * The Heat Death of Mr Universe * The Infringement * The Television * The Lock of Love *Sheer Lunar Sea * My Bearable Smugness

Note: the story entitled 'Tears of the Mutant Jesters' is a slightly rewritten version of a tale originally called 'The Appendix'

Bottled Love Story

Bottled Love Story (2014)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

"Love can't be bottled but it might arrive in a bottle... Love is a game like chess but with smiles, winks, laughs and kisses for pieces... Love is a problem. Is there a solution?

Cult author Rhys Hughes answers this question and resolves all the paradoxes in his new novelette. Join the woman who has no need for romance and the sailor from another age as they simultaneously attempt to accept and avoid the designs of destiny."

Contents:

This book contains the novelette 'Bottled Love Story' and is distinctive for making extensive use of typographical tricks, unusual layouts, pictures as part of the story, etc.

Rhysop's Fables

Rhysop's Fables (2014)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

"Tired of being given good advice in fables and parables by wise men, sages and gurus?

Why not try Rhysop's Fables instead, a set of 207 unhelpful and irresponsible fables? There are no messages here telling you how best to live your life. That kind of thing is entirely up to you! The philosophy of Rhysop's Fables is that there are no answers to life because life is not a question...

Join a cast of crows, clouds, aardvarks, snails, robots, foxes, dinosaurs, ghosts, pickle jars and many other beings and things in the great quest to fail to unravel the mysteries of existence! You won't regret it; and even if you do, you won't regret your regret!"

Contents:

Foreword * Rhysop's Fables * The Parable of the Homeless Fable * Rhysop's Return * Afterword

The Sticky Situations of Zwicky Fingers

The Sticky Situations of Zwicky Fingers (2014)
Gloomy Seahorse Press

"Zwicky Fingers is a giant fruit bat detective who lives in the past, present and future simultaneously. He is often consulted by the police force when there are paradoxical, lateral or impossible crimes to be solved. His sticky situations are ten tricky cases, one for each finger of two hands; but hands belonging to whom? That's just one of the mysteries you may or may not encounter when you join Zwicky on this decathlon of Calvinoesque whimsies!"

Contents:

The Trail Separation * The Reverse Midas* The Tetrahedron Offensive * The Name of the Nose * The Experimenter's Chagrin * Mr Hyde and Dr Seek * This Werewolf Prefers Muesli * The Sock Camels * The Haggler of Affection * The Lap of Your Gaze