Two dozen dark tales from one of Australia's finest genre writers. Drawing on inspiration from such diverse sources as Japanese mythology, European folklore, modern urban legends, and ancient native Australian and American traditions, as well as the literature of Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, Bram Stoker, Lewis Carroll, and Edgar Allan Poe -- the author tells stories of humanity's deepest desires and most dreadful nightmares. Dedman journeys into the past, present, and future...to the jungles of Malaysia, outback ghost towns, and modern metropolises...to places both too familiar and unfamiliar to give comfort. An accomplished storyteller, Dedman re-imagines supernatural entities like vampires, succubi, and ghosts and combines them with modern terrors such as ecological and scientific horrors and the eternal evils of the political and the rperverse. His stories are disturbing, erotic, or amusing -- or any combination of the three. With one original story and several never published in the United States or the United Kingdom, Never Seen by Waking Eyes will serve as an apt introduction for many to the darker short works of Stephen Dedman.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Australian author Dedman (Foreign Bodies) fills his first U.S. story collection with 24 erudite, highly unusual weird tales, many with a strong erotic charge. Several selections pay tribute to favorite authors, most notably Lewis Carroll in the poignant title story, which refreshingly does not depict the author of Alice in Wonderland as a pedophile. Vampires mix strangely with T.S. Eliot's poetry in "Waste Land." Other memorable tales include "'Til Human Voices Wake Us," which Dedman describes in his brief afterword as "the best erotic cross-dressing lesbian cowboy romance ghost story I've ever written"; "Upon the Midnight Clear," a grisly Christmas yarn; and "Salvation," set in an Australian desert town with a porn museum dedicated to the memory of a former resident who succeeded in the larger world but returned home in an urn. At times Dedman can't resist going for the easy gag, but his more serious efforts show he's an imaginative writer who deserves wider recognition. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
Someone really ought to kill that Dedman chracter. He's that good. -- Spider Robinson, author
Stephen Dedman is the proverbial writer to watch. -- Jack Dann, author and editor
Stephen Dedman is the proverbial writer to watch. -- Jack Dann, author and editor
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More About the Author
Where to begin? I grew up (though many would dispute this) on the outer limits of Perth's metropolitan area, far enough from a good library that I had to make up my own sf and horror stories. I continued to do this when I should have been studying, and after false starts at two other universities, received a B.A. in Creative Writing and Film in 1984. Since then, I've held too many boring jobs and a few interesting ones, including actor, tutor, experimental subject, editorial assistant for Australian Physicist magazine, education officer and used dinosaur salesman for the WA Museum, and the manager of a science fiction bookshop. I've been writing for fun for more than thirty years, and for money for twenty; I sold my first short story in 1977, and my first novel in 1995. I quit yet another boring job in 1996 to write full time, and am currently working on two novels and (usually) writing one new story a month.
My novels are THE ART OF ARROW CUTTING (Tor, 1997) and FOREIGN BODIES (Tor, 1999); I've also written a non-fiction book BONE HUNTERS: ON THE TRAIL OF THE DINOSAURS (Omnibus, 1998), and 13 of my best short stories are collected THE LADY OF SITUATIONS (Ticonderoga Publications, 1999). A bibliography can be found at www.eidolon.net/stephen_dedman
I still live in Western Australia, and enjoy reading, travel, movies, complicated relationships, talking to cats, and startling people.
My novels are THE ART OF ARROW CUTTING (Tor, 1997) and FOREIGN BODIES (Tor, 1999); I've also written a non-fiction book BONE HUNTERS: ON THE TRAIL OF THE DINOSAURS (Omnibus, 1998), and 13 of my best short stories are collected THE LADY OF SITUATIONS (Ticonderoga Publications, 1999). A bibliography can be found at www.eidolon.net/stephen_dedman
I still live in Western Australia, and enjoy reading, travel, movies, complicated relationships, talking to cats, and startling people.
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This review is from: Never Seen by Waking Eyes (Paperback)
The short story is a tricky art form, and I think that Dedman does much better with novels. I enjoyed several gems in this collection, and just for those, this book is worth reading.
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