Trivialities

Trivialities (2025)
Gibbon Moon Books 

Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) was a Russian absurdist writer, a dissident and satirist who was imprisoned by the regime during the Second World War and died of starvation in a prison cell in Leningrad. His works were rescued from oblivion by friends and clandestinely preserved for several decades before the cultural climate in the Soviet Union loosened sufficiently to permit piecemeal publication. He is now renowned for a sequence of very brief stories, typically violent, acerbic, nightmarish yet comical snapshots of an oppressive reality in which truth and dream are seamlessly blended.

Trivialities is a tribute to Kharms. Here are eighty flash fictions that attempt to express admiration for the modes, themes and ironies of Kharms' microfictions. The nightmare endures as people are thrown out of windows, crushed by trams, flown into the sides of mountains, launched from catapults, bisected by guillotines, sealed alive in coffins. And often but not always they are resurrected in otrder to be destroyed by some other method. Meanwhile, Daniil Kharms himself waits for the sentence of starvation to be carried out in full, doing his best in secret to delay the process.

Trumpet Face

Trumpet Face (2025)

Incunabula Press

A comedic fantasy novel full of strange characters and stranger incidents.

"The explorer who can turn his head into a trumpet if he tries really hard has crashed his balloon again, an accident that leads to him becoming the guest of a very strange household. He is introduced to the members of the tribe, including a living suit of armour, levitating skull, sentient reflection, and the woman or women in a state of quantum superposition he is fated to fall in love with.

In a world ruled by the flux of wordplay and ideas-association rather than ordinary cause and effect, he must adapt quickly to the demands of lateral logic or perish. He must learn to blow impossible fanfares with his own face to secure his future."

With an Introduction by Michael Moorcock.

Tangents

Tangents (2025)

Raphus Press

The culmination of the Pandora's Bluff story cycle, which took 33 years in total to complete. Tangents is a mosaic work consisting of exactly one hundred linked flash fictions. The last of these fictions is a prequel to the first story in the cycle.

"In the brief narratives of this new work, Hughes's obsessions, humour, unique perceptions, and subversions of language come to the forefront. Tangents is yet another essential contribution from an author who is as significant as he is unconventional.

This book has a perfect square format (7.87 × 7.87 in.), 90 pages, with an exclusive, painfully handcrafted Japanese binding style. As usual, this new chapbook edition will be very scarce: only 30 copies, plus some (very few) private copies."

That Other Egypt

That Other Egypt (2025)

Eibonvale Press

There is more than one Egypt.

There is the Egypt of reality and dreams, a realm of impossible nostalgia, a sandblown land cut by the mightiest of rivers, ancient and enigmatic, the days swirling with the dust of millennia, the nights thick with the accumulated echoes of countless generations, alluring, exotic, often arcane, a focus of desire for generations of archaeologists.

But parallel Egypts exist too, more sinister and even more mysterious, where pyramids are inverted and every object that can be mummified will be. Some of these alternative Egypts might be found inside our heads, others will transform those heads into geometrical travesties of themselves.

Egypt is a multiplicity, an infinite layering of secrets.

Contents:

Mummyfixation * Nile by Mouth * Why Mummy is a Pharaoh * Ponzihotep * The Lighthouse Sisters * Toot and Come In * Cloud Hunter * The Taming of the Old Woman Who Lived in a Shrew * The Universal Set * A Tomb with a View

Robots in Love

Robots in Love (2025)

Eibonvale Press

A retelling of the Ancient Greek story of Daphnis and Chloe but with robots and androids instead of shepherds and goatherds, and set inside an asteroid rather than on an island.

It is an astro-pastoral romance featuring a male robot and a female android who get some quantum entanglement going despite all the obstacles and distractions put in their way, namely star pirates and vacuum gods, attempted abductions, futuristic mischief merchants, moon apes, jealous rivals, twists of fate, superconductive dented rumples, and the pure hostility of the deep space environment.

For the gravitational power of passion is supreme and these logical lovers are a pair of clanking bleepers made for each other!

Signs of the Times

Signs of the Times (2025)

Gibbon Moon Books

Poems inspired by signs. These are the signs of the times. "Signs of the Times" is a phrase that can be turned into a selection of anagrams such as "Oftentimes Sighs", "Softish Meetings", "Gnome Fetishists" and "Fishnets Egotism", all of which might be considered as alternative titles for this slim collection of verse. But in the meantime (the mean time is never as nice as the good times) let us refer to it simply as Signs of the Times.

"If you are looking for a light, entertaining read that you can open anywhere for a few good laughs and more, welcome aboard.” — BRUCE BOSTON, Bram Stoker Award Winner, author of Gallimaufry.

"A wonderfully stylish writer. I would call him an indubitable modern sentence master.“ — SAMUEL R. DELANY, author of Dhalgren.

"Rhys Hughes puts a big red rubber nose on language." — MAITHREYI KARNOOR, author of Sylvia.

The Eleventh Commandment

The Eleventh Commandment (2025)

Recital Publishing

"Rhys Hughes’ unique observational, aphoristic humour abounds in this collection of artfully crafted, extremely short stories. A perennial master of invention, Hughes explores our perceptions of humanity, mining truths beneath the clutter of culture with incisive wordplay and trademark wit.

Hughes has arrayed eighty-eight narrative gems into three groups, The Zodiacal Light, Beyond Necessity, and The Ostraca of Inclusion—clever new takes on mythology, history, and science. A thirteenth star sign, minotaurs and gorgons, a dog ventriloquist, gears and cogs, a clock-wrestling octopus… all are semantic Möbius strips where fantasy and philosophy are seamlessly melded as only Hughes can do; both thought provoking and entertaining."

Contents:

1. The Zodiacal Light (Aries * Taurus * Gemini * Cancer * Leo * Virgo * Libra * Scorpio * Ophiuchus * Sagittarius * Capricorn * Aquarius * Pisces)

2. Beyond Necessity (Kafka’s Birthday * One Mighty Bound * Kissing With Noses * Teachers * In the Corner * Fever * Occam’s Beard * Shadow Foot * Baldness * Listening to Leonora * The Contrast * The Leg Puppies * When I Discovered Laziness * Frankenstein Films * The Giant Woman * Exaggeration * In the Den with Daniel * Big Enough * The Skull * A Man on Stilts * How Cold is It? * Anatole France * The Birds * Postmodern Picnic * The Leaves * Stretching My Legs * Do They Believe? * The Mirror * The Underwater Trapeze * The Eleventh Commandment * The Façade * The Ventriloquist * The Gorgon * The Fireman * Infinity Gears * Walking the Wrong Plank * The Sea and the Ruins * Inside the Minotaur * The Prison * Head in Hands * The Windmill * Alexander Kluge * Washing Our Hands * How to Wake Up * The Umbrella * Song of the Sirens * The Slipper Exchange * The Palace * Pressed Flowers * The Octopus and the Clock * My Swiss Neighbour * The Palace Coup * Whirlwind Romance * The Witch * A Deep Breath * The Tired Bed * The Illuminations)

3. The Ostraca of Inclusion (Beyond the Edge * The Book Burning * Unwanted in Paradise * A Room With a View * White Cliffs * Map of Conquest * Just A Second * The Eclipse Flower * Monsieur Choux * Tumble Keys * Nostalgia City * Freight of Years * The Lamp * The Wardrobe of Love * The Lost Coffee * The Möbius Minutes * The Mirrors * The Overdue Book)

Romantic Onion Antics

Romantic Onion Antics (2025)

Gibbon Moon Books

Poems about onions and flying saucers. phantoms, revenge, accidents, monsters, tribulations, trilobites, and who knows what else? Poems that will linger on your breath and in your mind...

"A wonderfully stylish writer. I would call him an indubitable modern sentence master. A delight to discover." — SAMUEL R. DELANY

"Rhys Hughes puts a big red rubber nose on language." — MAITHREYI KARNOOR

"If you are looking for dense, lyrical poetry you’ve come to the wrong place. For the most part shunning adjective and adverbs, Hughes writes in a clean direct voice with sensible line breaks. If you are looking for a light, entertaining read that you can open anywhere for a few good laughs and more, welcome aboard." — BRUCE BOSTON

The Devil's Halo

The Devil's Halo (2025)

Elsewhen Press

In death, as in life, paperwork is hell. The paperwork for the recently deceased Monty Zubris needs to be examined and deliberated upon. So, meanwhile, the Devil has consigned him to the Waiting Room of the Afterlife. It is ordered alphabetically, so he is compelled to make his way to his designated zone, which is, of course, near the very end of the chamber. On this voyage of enormous length, he meets various dead individuals, many of whom wish to tell him their remarkable stories...

“For many years, I have regarded each new book from Rhys Hughes as continuing proof that the universe is a marvellous, exciting and creative place. His work brightens my days, lightens my burdens, and convinces me that I am in the presence of a font of exuberant inventiveness. The Devil’s Halo is no exception, and might very well be in the Hughes Top Five. All the myriad tales of Hell from Dante onward have never charted any territory as gaily bizarre and humanly affecting as this book unveils. As Monty Zubris traverses the ten-million-mile length of Hell’s Waiting Room, the reader is treated to posthumous wonders akin to those in Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld books. If Anatole France, Voltaire, James Branch Cabell and C.S. Lewis had been born in the year 2000, and come of age amidst our twenty-first-century chaos, they might have collaborated to produce an existential odyssey half as wild and unruly as this one. Somewhere in Hell’s Waiting Room, Robert Sheckley and William Tenn are reading this book and splitting their sides with rueful laughter.” —PAUL DI FILIPPO

Dabbler in Drabbles Omnibus

Dabbler in Drabbles Omnibus (2025)

Gibbon Moon Books

DABBLER IN DRABBLES is done and dusted. There are 1000 drabbles here (with the meta-inserts 1008 in total) and they are mostly self-contained microfictions, but there are mini-epics too, cycles and sequences of tales that often overlap with each other.

A huge cast of characters populate these drabbles, many of them frequent visitors to the text as it evolves through the individual stories.

Be prepared to meet Three-Armed Jake, Leo the Walking Skeleton, Travis the Stick Man, Curious Bertie, Bunny Grunter, Cranny Faddock, The Discourager, Bookmarkus Aurelius, Silverfake, the painter Elbigelli (with the illegible signature), Charlotte Creeps, Malta Witty, Fibba Flobba, Explorer Jones, Blob Hope, Spooky, Frightful and Boo, Editor Jenkins, Truman Quixote, Gothario, The Boast Gusters, Jellyfish Morton and many many more, not to mention Polyphemus, the cyclops who is telling the tales, and Chiron, the centaur who is listening to them.