Multiple award-winning novelist Christine Morgan has just reviewed my short story collection, CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES. Here's an excerpt:
People often ask “what IS bizarro?” as if there’s a single handy definition, but there isn’t. Indeed, even within the category of bizarro itself, multiple sub-genres thrive, from the sheer comedic wackadoo to the elevated philosophical.
As I write this review, Robert Guffey’s delightfully wackadoo previous work, The Expectant Mother Disinformation Handbook, recently received the Wonderland Award, yet here I am looking at Cryptopolis, which is well to the other end of the spectrum. Proving, not that proof is necessary, he’s a talented multi-threat who should be watched very closely.
Wait, that sounds like a threat. Oh well; you get the gist. Cryptopolis, a collection of interconnected and cleverly interwoven short stories, is simply beautiful, while at the same time exceedingly surreal.
To read Morgan's entire review, click HERE.
FYI: One of the tales in CRYPTOPOLIS, "Initiation," was recently adapted by StarShipSofa! If you want to hear Doni Nicoll-Duir's evocative reading of "Initiation," click HERE!
And you can hear me talking about the secret origins of CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES on several different podcasts and radio shows including Tarek Al-Ubaidi's CROPfm, Seriah Azkath's WHERE DID THE ROAD GO?, Solaris Blueraven's HYPERSPACE, Matthew Hopewell's THE AP STRANGE SHOW, and Chris Mathieu's FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE NEWS.
PRAISE FOR CRYPTOPOLIS & OTHER STORIES:
"The stories in Cryptopolis
feel like the bloody, star-filled lovechildren of Burroughs and Delany,
with each tale ostensibly one part of a greater whole; abstract limbs
and organs tethered together by strained flesh. Cryptopolis
will take readers on a hallucinogenic journey through worlds fractured
by time and place—slipping through liminal dimensions with seamless
abandon to unveil unsettling illusions and heartbreaking realities—and
totally worth the trip."
--Philip Fracassi, author of Boys in the Valley
"If
you're tired of the same wines and you're curious about the vintage
only just whispered about, have a deep draught of Robert Guffey's Cryptopolis. You
don't have to descend with Fortunato to the deepest cellars to find
this bottle of Amontillado. Here it is! If Poe collaborated with Robert
Anton Wilson...if Borges had a lovechild with Lovecraft, which was
subsequently adopted by Kafka...you might get Cryptopolis.
I think too that Clark Ashton Smith would admire this collection.
Written with the obsessive precision of a mysterious staircase
descending into the abyss, Cryptopolis will take you to strange epiphanies..."
--John Shirley, author of The Feverish Stars
"Once
upon a time, weird and speculative fiction had an underground full of
stories that were not written as calling cards or as film treatments or
as extended internet memes. Guffey's tales resist genre gentrification;
they move into your mind to turn it into a punk house squat!"
--Nick Mamatas, author of Move Under Ground and The Second Shooter
"In Cryptopolis & Other Stories, Guffey's free-ranging intellect meshes wonderfully with his command of the language."
--John Oakes, author of The Fast
"Guffey
brings together 25 horror shorts that swing wildly between terrifying
mindtrips and gritty realism. Throughout, Guffey’s blunt prose lends a
sense of normalcy to the fantastic as his cast of losers from all walks
of life face the cruelties of their existence—sexual violence, drugs,
war, parenthood, and poverty [...]. Though not for the faint of heart,
this bizarre and over-the-top collection is sure to thrill devotees of
weird fiction."
--Publishers Weekly
"Cryptopolis may end up being a gateway drug into Robert Guffey’s work. I don’t use that term spuriously. So many of Guffey’s stories in Cryptopolis
have a hard-bitten edge and gritty feel to them that I could see him
crafting a metatext about an author whose books are physically
addictive. Across the collection’s twenty-five stories and vignettes,
Guffey displays a range of interests and foci with such depth and heart
that I wouldn’t be surprised if he became one of my favorite modern
writers [...].
"Affect,
the experience of emotional response, seems to be at issue in every one
of Guffey’s offerings. From the opening eponymous story (which is the
only outright Lovecraftian story in the collection), with its resonances
of love as a torturous paralytic, to the last, 'Esthra, Shadows, Glass,
Silence,' a parable of alternate lives and lost possibilities, the
emotional response drawn from the reader appears to be the crux of every
piece. These stories are engines designed to make the reader feel."
--Géza A. G. Reilly, Dead Reckonings
"If
you want a walk on the wild side, and I mean WILD, Robert Guffey’s
fiction delivers that and more. It’s as if you’re lying in the grass in
a park on a calm summer afternoon, you look up, and a creature you
can’t even describe is looking at you. He starts talking in an even
voice. But his words are chopping reality to pieces, and when he puts
the pieces back together again, and you see the new picture, you feel a
need to call the police. But then you realize you’re in a new place
where the last people you want to talk to are the cops. What do you do
now? You’re on your own. You better have strong resources. Very
strong."
--Jon Rappoport, author of The Secret Behind Secret Societies
