Lucius Shepard
Beast of the Heartland
and other stories

The fiction of Lucius Shepard has more to do with Joseph Conrad than Isaac Asimov. Fascinated by deception and decay, he is hard to characterize; although generally labeled a cyberpunk writer, he is one whose work transcends the border between popular fiction and literature.

Beast of the Heartland contains seven tales that explore the dark side where science fiction meets horror. It is the work of a roving mind which refuses to accept the pigeon-hole label of science fiction: Shepard shows the influence of, among others, Shelley's Frankenstein, Conrad's Heart of Darkness — and Heston's Planet of the Apes.

Headed by the Hugo Award-winning "Barnacle Bill the Spacer," a story of high-space mutiny, Beast of the Heartland includes "A Little Night Music," a gothic tale of insanity; "All the Perfumes of Araby," where an adventurer in the Middle East links up with an ancient entity; "Human History," a post-apocalyptic chiller; "Sports in America," a noire tale in the best Chandler tradition; "The Sun Spider," a mini space opera; and the title story — a literary portrayal of a battered boxer on the decline that uses a quasi-fantastic element to "generate a heightened sense of reality," in Shepard's own words.

Termed the "Neil Young of horror writing" (Spin), "a prodigious talent" (Locus), Lucius Shepard lives in Seattle, where he works as a screenwriter. In 1992, he won the World Fantasy Award for his collection The Ends of the Earth. He won the same award in 1987 for his novel The Jaguar Hunter. He has won the Nebula Award and the Locus Award for science fiction writing several times. Shepard is also the author of the novels Green Eyes (1987) and Life During Wartime (1987). In 1985 he won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

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