Treasures to Return To: The Best of Lucius Shepard
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The Best of Lucius Shepard, Volumes One and Two (Subterranean Press,
August 2008 and December 2021). Covers by J. K. Potter and Armando Veve
I think the first thing I ever read by Lucius Shepard was his famous novella “R&R,” an ultra-realistic tale of American G.I’s in near-future Guatemala caught up in a senseless war guided by psychics, and fought by young men on a dangerous cocktail of combat drugs. It was unlike anything I’d ever read before, and it took home many of the industry’s top awards, including the Locus and Nebula. Shepard, who died in 2014, published a dozen novels — including Philip K. Dick nominee Life During Wartime (1987), Locus Award winner The Golden (1993) and A Handbook of American Prayer (2004) — but his major work was at short length.
Fourteen years ago William Schafer at Subterranean Press did the world a favor and published The Best of Lucius Shepard, a monumental volume collecting seventeen of his most famous and acclaimed works of short fiction. For most writers that would certainly be adequate, but it was not for Shepard, and at the end of last year Subterranean finally released a massive 848-companion volume containing over a dozen new tales, including Nebula nominee “A Traveler’s Tale,” Hugo Award-winner “Barnacle Bill the Spacer,” the Dragon Griaule tale “Liar’s House,” and three previously uncollected novellas.
