Search Worlds Without End

From 1933 to 1934, Jorge Luis Borges, the master of fiction whose work would change the literary world, published a series of "falsifications and distortions" in the Buenos Aires newspaper Critica. These "falsifications" used as their starting point the lives of real villains and desperados. Borges then elaborated using all of the anecdotes and myths about these historical characters, creating what amounted to "nonfictional fictions." The entire series was then published in book form as A Universal History of Infamy. Now Rhys Hughes, a Welshman of some infamy himself, has summoned his vast storytelling powers to create A New Universal History of Infamy, with all-new historical characters as the focus of his nonfiction fictions. Come along on a wild ride with unsavory types of every description. Entertaining and erudite at the same time, Hughes' book also includes some of the literary parodies Borges himself delighted in creating. With an introduction by noted critic John Clute and an afterword by Michael Simanoff.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by John Clute
• Preface to the Unpublished Edition - essay by Rhys Hughes
• Preface to an Imaginary Edition - essay by Rhys Hughes
• The Brutal Buddha: Baron von Ungern-Sternberg
• The Honest Liar: Denis Zachaire
• Chewer of Hearts: François l'Olonnais
• Trader of Doom: Basil Zaharoff
• The Worm Supreme: Francisco Solano Lopez
• The Worst Hero: Dick Turpin
• The Maddest King: Henry Christophe
• Streetcorner Mouse
• City of Blinks
• The Landscape Player
• The Spanish Cyclops
• The Unsubtle Cages
• Celia the Impaler
• Alone with a Longwinded Soul
• Monkeybreath (Halitosis Simians)
• Of Exactitude in Theology
• Finding the Book of Sand
• The Hyperacusis of Chumbly Mucker
• Ictus Purr
• Ignoble Notes - essay by Rhys Hughes
• Unwise Appendix

Engelbrecht Again! is one of the funniest, funnest, original and highly imaginative books that I've read in a while. The exploits of the dwarf surrealist boxer are so downright whacky at times that you just shake your head and wonder how in the hell did Hughes come up with this scenario because he's one of those writers that is popping with ideas. His throwaway ideas would be other, lesser writers' centerpiece ideas.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Album Zutique (2003), edited by Jeff VanderMeer, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, September 2014.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Milkwood is not a nice place to be. With the passing of generations, it has curdled. At night it casts a buttery light on the moon. Fortunately, all the action in this book occurs elsewhere. It mostly happens in a warped version of the music industry or in an impossible tavern or in a future where everything is illegal. It sometimes even happens outside the narrative. But never in Milkwood. Never. Milkwood is barely even mentioned. For it is not a nice place to be.

Table of Contents:

• In the Moonless Gutter
• Adventures in the Grin Trade
• Nowhere Near Milkwood
• Prologue (Taller Stories) - [The Tall Story]
• Rainbow's End - [The Tall Story]
• Ghost Holiday - [The Tall Story]
• Those Wonderful Words - [The Tall Story]
• Learning to Fly -
• Learning to Fall -
• The Banshee - [The Tall Story]
• The Queen of Jazz - [The Tall Story]
• Anna and the Dragon - [The Tall Story]
• Three Friends
• The Rake and the Fool - [The Tall Story]
• Goblin Sunrise - [Little People Inc.]
• The Juggler
• The Peat Fire
• Knight on a Bear Mountain - [Thornton Excelsior]
• Something About a Demon - [The Tall Story]
• The Furious Walnuts
• The Illustrated Student
• The Story with a Clever Title - [The Tall Story]
• The Silver Necks
• Never Hug an Aardvark
• Epilogue (Taller Stories) - [The Tall Story]
• The Catastrophe Trials - [Titian Grundy]
• The Crime Continuum - [Titian Grundy]
• Judgment Day - [Titian Grundy]
• The Thirty-Nine Million Steps - [Titian Grundy]
• The Impossible Mirror - [Titian Grundy]
• Crawling King Prawn - [Titian Grundy]
• Pyramids of the Purple Atom - [Titian Grundy]
• The Suppertime Sting - [Titian Grundy]
• The Mischief Towers - [Titian Grundy]

Welsh writer Rhys Hughes regards this as his favourite book, and with good reason. It is one of the funniest and most intelligent books from the lighter side of macabre writing I have ever seen. It clamours with a cast of pirates, floppy-wristed welsh bards, explorers and inventors, imps, squonks, moving public houses, M R Jamesian revenants, M R Jamesian punctuation, blueberry pies, trousers, noses, clocks, carrots... I cant list them all here, there isn't room. Like all the best books, this quirky and surreal collection is hard to classify, but it lies in that region where the macabre and eerie worlds of classic horror and fantasy become a basis for something else - for a dark and original sense of humour filled with unexpected cross-references, homages, satires and black comedy. What makes this collection remarkable is not just the delightfully murky and skewed tales themselves, but the complex and ingenious way they all lock together and interrelate. I was going to say 'tessellate' but if this is a tessellation then it is filled with impossible-sided polygons, non-Euclidean three-dimensional geometry, unexpurgated curves and cracks from which blueberry-scented steam emerges with a screaming hiss. But what is without doubt is that The Smell of Telescopes is a magnificent book and a cornerstone of the rather oddly shaped corner of literature that it occupies.

Table of Contents:

• The Banker of Ingolstadt - (2000)
• Ten Grim Bottles - (1996)
• Spermaceti Whiskers - (2000)
• The Blue Dwarf - (1999)
• The Purloined Liver - (1997)
• The Squonk Laughed - (2000)
• Telegram Ma'am - (2000)
• Depressurised Ghost Story - (2000)
• Thanatology Spleen - (2000)
• The Tell-Tale Nose - (2000)
• A Girl Like a Doric Column - (1998)
• The Orange Goat - (2000)
• Nothing More Common - (1999)
• Muscovado Lashes - (2000)
• A Person Not in the Story - (2000)
• Bridge Over Troubled Blood - (1999)
• Burke and Rabbit - (2000)
• The Yellow Imp - (2000)
• Lanolin Brows - (2000)
• The Haunted Womb - (2000)
• Mister Humphrey's Clock's Inheritance - (2000)
• There Was a Ghoul Dwelt by a Mosque - (2000)
• The Purple Pastor - (2000)
• The Hush of Falling Houses - (2000)
• The Sickness of Satan - (2000)
• Omophagia Ankles - (2000)

Rhys Hughes plumbs the depths of perversity and satire in the shockingly brilliant novel Mister Gum, which follows the adventures of the world's most notorious creative writing tutor and his friends. On his way he discovers haunted hymens, Fellatio Nelson and Canon Alberic's Photo Album.