Fugue XXIX
- $15.95 PaperbackISBN: 1-933293-12-8
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ugue XXIX is the first full-length collection of short stories available from World Fantasy Award winning editor and author Forrest Aguirre. These marvelous tales come to you from the fringe of speculative literary fiction where innovative minds keep busy dreaming up the future’s uncharted territories and mining forgotten treasures of the past. Whether exploring the stars or unearthing ancient cultures these stories will surprise and delight. In Aguirre’s world anything can happen, and does, with regularity.
What They’re Saying About Fugue XXIX
“Fugue XXIX is a selection of grotesque delicacies from the work of an enviable imagination.”
—HorrorScope
“This collection houses a few of the stranger and more perplexing specimens that we will be noting. While such creatures may attract the sustained interest of only the most adventurous readers, nonetheless there are items here that reward the attention of even casual fictionologists. The horror story sub-species is particularly well represented, both with small, evocative sketches and with denser, more complex narratives. The uncertain traveler, sampling this carnival of oddities for the first time, might do best to start with some of the more traditional fictions, such as “The Universal Language of Silence” (a creepy tale) or “The Color of Laughter” (a cute science fiction story), which will begin to prepare the reader for the intellectual pleasures of the more substantial, less traditional pieces of fabulation scattered elsewhere in the collection.”
—Matthew Cheney for Locus Online
“I was happily surprised by this truly wonderful collection of riveting stories… I know that I will be thinking about these ideas again and again, often because of how Aguirre crafted his words more than the concept itself.Fugue XXIX is a fine collection from one of the great stylists of our age and another work that proves genre IS literature.”
—SFRevu.com
“With imaginative vigor, Aguirre explores the fluctuating boundaries that separate human from inhuman, terrestrial from extraterrestrial, and natural from supernatural in the 29 fantasies in his debut story collection. …Most of the selections are brief, plotless sketches built from surreal images that resist literal interpretation. At their best, they offer arresting and provocative perspectives that make the ordinary uncommon and the bizarre plausible. Aguirre won a World Fantasy Award for editing the anthology LeviathanThree (2003) and readers who enjoyed that book’s genre-bending content will find much to their satisfaction.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Forrest Aguirre’s beautiful stories are a set of portals that lead to the very quintessence of the ancient and noble art of the fantastic. His narrative is the contemporary prose equivalent of the wildly imaginative paintings of Hieronymus Bosch.”
—Zoran Zivkovic, The Fourth Circle
“From the shadowboxed morality of World War I to the struggles of colonial Africa, the stories in Fugue XXIX showcase Forrest Aguirre’s deft, supple command of language—enigmatic, mysterious, elusive, tantalizing, always leading the reader into their own inner darkness. Aguirre pursues disturbing themes outside the realm of everday experience, with an immediacy that is both jarring and engrossing. Fugue XXIX will haunt you.”
—Jay Lake, Rocket Science
About the Cover Artist
Terry Rentzepis is self-taught.Terry began experimenting with painting, after undergoing major back surgery. He mostly works in acrylic on canvas, but he owns alot of oil paints. He also loves to work with old-world quills and ink…it reminds him of him of his lifetime of doodling. Starting with a blank canvas, Terry creates his works as goes…allowing his paint brush to guide his eyes. He believes in still moments. He wants the viewer to feel like he is intruding on his characters. Stumbling on secret, guarded and very private emotions.
Terry lives in Coconut Grove, Florida with his beautiful wife Sheri and his son Jake. There is alot of fur living with him too! Ghost. A two-year old Doberman. Face. An eight-year old mistake! Ghetto. A seven-year old black cat. To view more of his work visit www.alltenthumbs.com.
Text:UR – The New Book of Masks
