Text:UR – The New Book of Masks
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A beautifully surreal masquerade. World Fantasy Award Winning editor Forrest Aguirre brings you fantastical fiction from the most imaginative minds of our time.
Contributors to this hallucinogenic spectacle include Brian Evenson, recipient of an O. Henry Prize and an NEA fellowship along with Lance Olsen, a Philip K. Dick Award finalist and Associate Editor at American Book Review. This anthology also features Rikki Ducornet who has had an L.A. Times Book of the Year has been a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award and Terese Svoboda whose first novel was one of SPIN’s ten best novels of 1994 and recently received an O. Henry Prize.
Two of these stories received honorable mentions in The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror 21: “Bluecoat Jack” by Sarah Totton and “Strangers on a Train” by Tamar Yellin.
Table of Contents
Faure, Envenomed, Dictates—Nadia Gregor
Monkey Shines—Eric Schaller
The Avatar of Background Noise—Toiya Kristen Finley
Parchment and Twigs—Christine Boyka Kluge
Bluecoat Jack—Sarah Totton
The Lindberg Baby—Terese Svoboda
Strangers on a Train—Tamar Yellin
Bitter Almonds and Absinthe—Joe Murphy
No Mooing in the Moonlight—Christine Boyka Kluge
The Theater Spectacular—Catherine Kasper
Last Transmission or Man with a Robotic Ermine—Joshua Cohen
Peace Rituals—Darren Speegle
Incipit—Jay Lake and Ruth Nestvold
Six Questions for an Alien—Lance Olsen
A Play for a Boy and Sock Puppets—E. Sedia
Documenting My Abduction—Christine Boyka Kluge
The Fifth Tale: When the Devil Met Baldrick Beckenbauer—Tom Miller
The Scouring—Rikki Ducornet
Fugue-State—Brian Evenson
Most Excellent and Lamentable—Jason Erik Lundberg
What They’re Saying About This Book
“Those familiar with editor Forrest Aguirre’s work in the Leviathan anthology series will already have an idea what type of story to expect: experimental, literate, at times cerebral, and overall well-crafted strangeness.”
—Tangent
“Aguirre’s prolific editing ventures led to a World Fantasy Award forLeviathan 3 (2002). Judging by the high caliber of the selections in his latest anthology, another prize may come his way. With diverse and intriguing themes, ranging from the unique problems of immortal humans to the fate of an alien who can answer only six questions put by its earthling hosts, the 20 stories here display remarkable degrees of creativity and craftsmanship. Many have a conspicuously experimental flavor, such as Tom Miller’s modern fable about the devil infiltrating humankind to rebuild a temple, “The Fifth Tasle: When the Devil Met Baldrick Beckenbauer,” in which a more intriguing story is told by the lengthy footnotes. Others turn Kafkaesque, such as Brian Evenson’s “Fugue State,” describing contemporary society’s decline during a memory-wasting plague. To serve as interludes between longer pieces, Christina Boyka Kluge contributes three whimsical, one-page prose poems. Readers looking for speculative fiction that defies classification as either sf or fantasy will find it in this captivating volume.”
—Booklist
“Aguirre has done an admirable job of assembling authors and stories that have few fellows in the current marketplace. This will lead readers to love or hate the selections he has made, but this matters little, since Text: UR — The New Book of Masks is not for a general reading audience. To reiterate, then: who is it for? It is ostensibly for readers who feel that such famously off-the-wall writers as Mark Danielewski, David Foster Wallace, Kurt Vonnegut, and Anthony Burgess are simply too mainstream. And maybe that’s you.”
—Craig’s Book Club
“Fantasy fans looking for familiar themes and names among the 20 stories in Aguirre’s boldly original anthology will be disappointed. Those who like experimental fiction that’s not always readily accessible will be richly rewarded. Highlights include Nadia Gregor’s enigmatic “Faure, Envenomed, Dictates,” Eric Schaller’s hilarious “Monkey Shines,” Catherine Kasper’s gently satiric “The Theater Spectacular,” and Joshua Cohen’s breathless, fabulous split-sentence split-thought confession, “Last Transmission or Man with a Robotic Ermine.” Aguirre, who won a World Fantasy Award forLeviathan 3 (edited with Jeff VanderMeer), demonstrates once again why he’s one of today’s more innovative genre editors.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Text:Ur is diverse, fun, and well-crafted. A rich introduction to these innovative authors, it is filled with inventive, audacious, and intelligent work. Anyone looking for a compilation of high-quality fiction will enjoy this book.”
—Midwest Book Review
Fugue XXIX
