Shades Fantastic [Mass Market Paperback]

Bruce Boston (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 2006

Bruce Boston's poetry collection contains 37 works, including the winner of the 2005 Asimov's Readers'Award, "Heavy Weather", and five poems that are appearing for the first time anywhere. Boston's powerful, sweeping creations are enhanced by black and white illustrations by the award-winning Marge Simon.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Boston exhibits a stoned blind love of the fantastic." -- Robert Frazier, author of The Daily Chernobyl

"Our premier sci-fi-poet-sorcerer conjures up the miraculous again." -- G.O Clark, author of Bone Sprockets

"Poetry with insights into science, art, and music flow on a bright stream of imagination." -- Joe Haldeman, author of Camouflage

About the Author

Bruce Boston has received the Bram Stoker Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Poetry association. He is the author of forty books and chapbooks, including the novel "Stained Glass Rain". His poems and stories have appeared in hundreds of publications, including Year's Best Fantasy and Horror and the Nebula Awards Showcase.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 52 pages
• ISBN-10: 0977666530
• ISBN-13: 978-0977666539
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5 x 0.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,358,141 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Three-time Bram Stoker Award winner Bruce Boston is the author of forty-five books and chapbooks, including the novels The Guardener's Tale and Stained Glass Rain. His fiction and poetry have appeared in hundreds of publications, most visibly in Asimov's SF Magazine, Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, Realms of Fantasy, Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and The Nebula Awards Showcase. In addition to the Bram Stoker Award, Boston has received a Pushcart Prize, the Asimov's Readers Award, the Rhysling Award, and the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. He lives in Ocala, Florida, with his wife, writer-artist Marge Simon. For more information, you can visit his website at http://www.bruceboston.com/.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Carved in Stone, Scrawled in Blood, Inscribed with the Finest Pen, July 26, 2006

By 

Malcolm J. Deeley - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shades Fantastic (Mass Market Paperback)

A collection by Bruce Boston is a living thing. There is a vitality to each of his books that is remarkable in so prolific and author. Shades Fantastic continues this amazing creative run -- from the moment I was swept into the book by a cover painting that throbs and soars with energy, I could not put it down. Here are the first words, from the spare and powerful
"Dig": Into the dark wild/the legends flee/tales not in jest...

It is the dark wild indeed, and in the pages that follow there will be echoes and refrains of music and art, thought and experience, out from the heart and hand and spiraling into the cosmos. History and the raw moments on which it turns are not forgotten, as in this passage from "In the Sweltering Ruins of the Old City": When the barefoot girls enter/the great hall of the South Gallery/they are puzzled and disturbed by/the visual magnitude of antiquity...

Dead Masters will walk before us, there will be kings, savages, great ladies, and dreamers. Shades Fantastic lives up the promise of its name. It is an experience you will not soon forget.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Boston Does Willis, August 28, 2006

By 

A. Baruch (Tokyo, Japan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shades Fantastic (Mass Market Paperback)

In this recent work, Bruce Boston continues, much as his astronauts once fell toward a cosmic singularity, his descent into the succinct. In earlier days he served up buffets of succulent verbiage, words you had to look up, but even if you didn't, ravished you with their colors and, should you speak them, the taste of them upon your tongue. Now he is more severe though no less skillful, cultivating a brevity that evokes a sense of resignation and detachment. Shells are broken, the city overwhelms the stars, Dali and the other greats can barely connect despite their genius, and all is finally incomprehensible. Boston remains a master, and his words touch those of us who share his ennui, his dreams, and his anger at both the outrages of this world and the inscrutability of the infinity around it. Yet we long for another Dylanesque jingle-jangle morning, for Master Boston to take us on one more long, wild trip filled with passion and undreamt of surprises. Readers are, after all, a greedy lot. But not - at least this one - ungrateful.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Secular Supernaturalism, July 22, 2006

By 

Gary W. Crawford (Baton Rouge, Louisiana USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shades Fantastic (Mass Market Paperback)

This collection of Boston's recent science fiction, fantasy, and horror poetry continues to present Boston's precise, detailed observance of man's condition in the universe. These poems are very much a "secular superanturalism," a keen descriptive eye that is almost religious. Taking into this eye great works of art by Dali and others, Boston creates a rich fabric that shows man alone with Mystery. Boston has weaved a tapestry that is so much like every man's position in a sometimes hostile univere. Its richness lies in its poetry, and poetry is the most noble, in Boston's view, of man's activities.