Lucius Shepard (1943–2014)

A huge dragon lying slap-bang in the middle of a valley, overgrown and embedded and part of the landscape but very much alive, if unmoving, his malevolent will working on the creatures that come to live around him and within him. An artist tries to kill him with paint, a young woman is taken deep inside his for some strange purpose, a murderer in a far-off city blames the dragon for his actions, a woman appears in a tavern and claims that she, too is a dragon, a group of people are show more transported to a version of the valley to witness something terrible, and in a South America we can readily recognise as our own, the dragon's will is still at work. And then there are the notes which contain things more hair-raising than in any of the already fairly hair-rasing stories and novellas. Fantastic writing, strong psychological inner lives of his characters, astonishing descriptions of places and things fantastical and real, and at the end of it all it's a powerful and profound political allegory. show less

It's going to be very hard to describe this work as anything other than genius.

Almost from the very start, I found myself slowing down and being dragged into the hellish nightmare of war and such densely imaginative prose that I discovered that there was nothing left for me except to become completely submerged and try to breathe the canned air that Shepard provided. I became Mingolla. I began seeing patterns in the very fabric of reality that might help me survive his life. I became show more paranoid. I grasped at any and all straws. I grasped at Debora, who was just as fucked as me.

What really blew me away was the way the stories appeared like bulletholes ripping spaces in the mist, swirling and leaving deep impressions that made a whole that was much, much grander than trying to survive the feuding families that had torn apart South and Middle America, or even coming to grips with the immense implications of so much mindfuckery. I loved the stories within stories within stories. We were treated with a dive within the mind's labyrinth, the Mayan king on one hand and the ghost of the conquistador on the other, laughing in insane merriment as they drove a whole world into an excess of dissolution and hate, marked mainly by the burning embers of obsessive hope and love.

My god, what an intense and immensely crazy ride this was. Rabbit-hole crazy. And I had no choice except to fall deep within its labyrinth. It's a mark of a truly fantastic tale when it grabs me so tight and surprises me with tears, anguish, hope, disillusionment, anger, more anger, a seething cauldron of anger, and finally, love. Is it real love? Hell if I know. Remember, I've become Mingolla. Maybe he's right. Maybe the world is completely insane and the only thing we can do is cling to each other, making whatever damn sense we can of the moment as we change with each other, and pray that we can hold a sense of the eventual and far-off understanding for safe-keeping, and that we still retain that last tiny ray of hope after we've arrived.

So damn beautiful. This novel is poetry. It should never be entered into without knowing the risks.

It's an important and brilliant piece of literature. Period. It deserves your complete attention, kiddies. This is no fluff. This is no popcorn. This can be, potentially, life-changing.

I've always hated war. I've never even particularly enjoyed the best that movies or other fiction have provided. But here's the brutal truth: While I hate war, this novel has shown me a special kind of horrible beauty that I'm unlikely to ever forget.

Like the mad-painter and his gorgeous murals that he'd booby-trap to destroy any potential admirer, and destroy the work itself in the process. It's crazy. It's also one hell of a statement of Art.

Shepard's own conversation in the field of literature is more of a gigantic fuck-you to all the writers out there who think they've ever gotten close to telling a Truth. This guy can WRITE, damn it, but whatever he touches, circles, and swoops-in to illuminate, he then shells with artillery.

Fucking amazing shit.

I remember this author from the Eighties being a part of the cyberpunk movement, but that characterization is completely unfair and not worth setting up. He's got maybe a few connections, the seeding of tech and immense discomfort, but beyond this, we've got a masterpiece of storytelling that goes beyond most pigeonholing. He's a force of nature.

I'm never forgetting this work. show less

There's a terrible density in seeing a career compressed into a "Best of..." collection. I'm sure I've read a few Lucius Shepard stories before, but it was some milSF in the Playboy Anthology that inspired me to follow up, and discover a truly great and weird author.

Shepard's form was the novella, stories long enough to let his characters and setting breath a little without deviating from his point, and this is a great collection of novellas. The 'straight scifi' centers on a guerrilla war show more in Central America between American soldier hopped on combat drugs and napalm, and locals who draw upon a mystical spirit of the land to fight them. But what really calls to Shepard is the weird, the mystical, the magical, and the stories explore the uncanny from Honduras to Vietnam to the American South.

Truly great authors have a knack for picking precisely the right word, the difference between lightning and lightning bug, and Shepard tends to bombard his stories with baroque layers of imagery, in the hopes that one will get close enough, but the style is very very good. My favorites were "Delta Sly Honey" and "Jailwise", but the only miss was the nihilistic criminal caper “Hands Up! Who Wants to Die?”

Lucius Shepard never quite made it into the top-tier of SF and weird writers, but if you haven't read him, you're missing out. show less

Lucius Shepard no es un autor que se prodigue en exceso, y menos en las letras españolas. En español tiene traducidas tres novelas y dos antologías de relatos, que en realidad es una sola. Shepard es un escritor con una gran imaginación y un rico estilo narrativo, claro y directo. La mayoría de historias de Shepard están enfocadas desde el realismo mágico. Sus narraciones parten de conflictos psicológicos y morales, en oposición a fuerzas externas, tales como extraterrestres, show more tecnología o hechizos, más comunes en la ciencia ficción y la fantasía. La mayoría de sus relatos están ambientados en selvas de Sudamérica, Asia Oriental y el Caribe, donde los protagonistas, norteamericanos, deben hacer frente a la cultura y misterios del lugar.

‘The Jaguar Hunter’ (1987), antología que ganó el World Fantasy Award en 1988, se publicó en español dividido en dos volúmenes,’El cazador de jaguares’ y ‘El hombre que pintó al dragrón Griaule’. Estos son los relatos incluidos en este último:

Delta Dulce Miel (****). En la Guerra de Vietman, Randall, encargado de la emisora local, recibe extrañas emisiones. Muy buen relato, sobre todo en cuanto a ambientación y desenlace.

El ejercicio de la fe (****). El reverendo de una parroquia es capaz de ver y sentir todos los pecados de sus feligreses, y actuará en consecuencia. Buen relato.

El fin de la vida tal y como la conocemos (***). Un matrimonio estadounidense, de viaje por Guatemala, recibe unas revelaciones místicas que cambiarán su visión del universo. Buen relato.

La historia de una viajera (*****). Ambientada en la isla de Guanoja Menor, el vagabundo Ray Milliken decide establecer un culto a una entidad alienígena, basándose en la entrada del diario de Henry Meachem, un pirata del siglo XVIII. Impresionante relato.

Mengele (****). Un piloto en apuros se ve obligado a realizar un aterrizaje de emergencia en las selvas de oeste de Paraguay. El lugar más cercano es un pueblo dominado por un anciano de infausto pasado. Gran relato.

El hombre que pintó al dragón Griaule (*****). El joven artista Meric Cattanay se propone hacer lo que nadie ha logrado: matar al dragón Griaule, de más de un kilómetro de longitud, que permanece comatoso debido a un hechizo, haciendo uso de sus pinturas. Imprescindible.

Una lección española (*****). Es 1964, y Lucius, un joven e inexperto estadounidense, permanece vagando por las costas de Málaga, buscando mejorar su estado en la comunidad de expatriados. Al poco, se hará amigo de unos recién llegados, una pareja de mellizos, hermano y hermana, de extraño aspecto, cuyo lugar de origen guarda grandes secretos. Otro relato impresionante. show less