Saturday, 30 August 2025

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)

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!

Friday, 1 August 2025

Signs of the Times

Signs of the Times (2025)

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.