I’m not sure which was the first Lucius Shepard novel I read, but it was either Green Eyes (1984, USA) or Life During Wartime (1987, USA). I’m pretty sure it was at the end of the 1980s. I joined the British Science Fiction Association around then, and attended my first sf convention, Mexicon 3, in 1989. So perhaps it was a review in one of the former’s magazines, or a conversation at the latter, that prompted me to read whichever book it was. Neither were the sort of genre fiction I especially liked, although I thought they were clearly well-written.
Around this time, 1990 or 1991, I was introduced to the magazine Science Fiction Eye, which featured many of the authors I admired at the time, and from there to Journal Wired, which included work by, among others, Lucius Shepard. (Bizarrely, I have a distinct memory of borrowing Barnacle Bill the Spacer and Other Stories (1997, USA) from Coventry City Library, but the book wasn’t actually published until several years after I left Coventry. Go figure.)
Throughout his career, Shepard was something of a small press darling. An unfair term — he was an excellent writer, and was published by major imprints, and in the big genre magazines — but small presses on both sides of the Atlantic published collectable collections and novellas by him. And I do like me a good collectable.
I started reading more of his fiction. And buying his books. Even so, until reading this collection, originally published in 1991, I hadn’t realised quite how prolific Shepard had been.
His fiction tended to orbit around the same concerns — perceptions of reality, often involving drugs , often with Central American settings— and that may have persuaded people he wrote less. In as much as they thought his oeuvre consisted chiefly of those works that didn’t fit that pattern — the vampires of The Golden (1993, USA), the zombies of Green Eyes, the near-future military sf of Life During Wartime, the literary fantasy that formed the stories about the Dragon Griaule…
He was more than just those books, of course. As most of his collections demonstrate; as indeed does this one. The Ends of the Earth (1991, USA) surprised me only in the fact it was originally published thirty years ago. It’s a collection of fourteen short stories and novelettes — including ‘Fire Zone Emerald’, which I’m fairly sure became part of Life During Wartime. Most of the contents originally appeared in F&SF or Asimov’s, or original anthologies. They’re strong stories, a trifle long perhaps — Shepard seemed to like to write to novella length. But he had the writing chops to get away with long descriptive passages. (Repeat after me: there is no such thing as a novelette. It’s used only in the table of contents of the big three genre magazines — F&SF, Asimov’s and Analog — and their days are long over. And, of course, on US genre award shortlists — and then only so they can hand out yet more awards to friends.)
One story is a Vietnam War-set ghost story, but that’s ground US culture has dug over so many times, more in pursuit of catharsis than explanation, that not even Shepard can add anything meaningful. One of the best stories is ‘Aymara’, which reads as magical realism but hints at science fiction. ‘Nomans Land’ also hovers somewhere between fantasy and science fiction, throwing up explanations in both genres for what the protagonist experiences on a storm-wracked and seemingly uninhabited isle. ‘A Wooden Tiger’ is set in Nepal, another location Shepard used often, and makes strong use of local supernatural beliefs. ‘On the Border’ is one of the few outright sf stories in the collection, and the border in question is some sort of force-field between Mexico and the US, and the story is, of course, set on the Mexico side.
Much of Shepard’s fiction is probably as close to magical realism as an American author from north of the abovementioned border ever came. But it was always flavoured with science fiction, almost as if he had to drag himself back from a science-fictional underpinning to the premises of his stories (other than those which were, of course, straight-up science fiction). He also made use of locations within the United States, many of which he had lived in.
Lucius Shepard died in 2014. He was seventy. He spent a number of years in Europe — to be honest, I had thought he died in Switzerland, or somewhere like that, as I seem to reading some anti-Bush rant from him while he was based there (he was very good at ranting). According to Wikipedia, he died in Oregon, in the US. Of course, by 2014 Barack Obama was halfway through his second term in the White House. I dread to think how Shepard would have reacted to Trump.
You could do much worse than collect Shepard. I don’t think collectable editions of his books are going to appreciate much in value, but if you collect books as an investment you’re an idiot.
You should certainly read him.
In that respect, it’s good he was so prolific.
