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Lucius Shepard

writer

Lucius Shepard (21 August 1943 – 18 March 2014) was an American writer. Classified as a science fiction and fantasy writer, he often leaned into other genres, such as magical realism.

We uncovered new forces, we took a step along what may be an endless path toward divinity, we redirected the entire thrust of psychoanalytic theory, and, as with all knowledge, we found that deeper and more compelling mysteries yet lay beyond those we had reduced to the security of fact.

Quotes

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Short fiction

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The Taylorsville Reconstruction (1983)

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Page numbers from the original publication in Terry Carr (ed.), Universe 13, ISBN 0-385-18288-0
  • The Southern education stuffs you full of incontrovertible proof that the Rebel defeat was a wild and improbable stroke of misfortune, that the unbeatable military genius of the Confederacy was foiled by an alliance of fate and Yankee treachery. If Stonewall hadn’t misplaced his boots, if Jeb hadn’t gone dancing the night before, if the creek didn’t rise. If, if, if. Acceptance of this viewpoint often leads to embarrassment in later life.
    • p. 118
  • “You must think us fools,” he said, leading me back into the gathering, “to waste ourselves in commemorating an era which never really existed.”
    • p. 119

Shades (1987)

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Page numbers from the reprint in Gardner Dozois (ed.), The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection, ISBN 0-312-01854-1
  • I glanced at him. He was wearing a pair of mirrored sunglasses, and that consolidated my anger. Why is it, I ask you, that every measly little wimp in the universe thinks he can put on a pair of mirrored sunglasses and instantly acquire magical hipness and cool, rather than—as is the case—looking like an asshole with reflecting eyes?
    • p. 345
  • In mine, while there was also agony, it was essentially a love affair with revolution, with the idea of revolution. And as with all great passions, what was most alluring was not the object of passion but the new depth of my own feelings. Thus I was blind to the realities underlying it.
    • p. 350
  • “These movies, they make war seem like a mystical opportunity. Well, man, when I was here it wasn’t quite that way, y’know. It was leeches, fungus, the shits. It was searchin’ in the weeds for your buddy’s arm. It was lookin’ into the snaky eyes of some whore you were bangin’ and feelin’ weird shit crawl along your spine and expectin’ her head to do a Linda Blair three-sixty spin.” I slipped into a chair and leaned closer to Witcover. “It was Mordor, man. Stephen King land. Horror. And now, now I look around at all these movies and monuments and crap, and it makes me wanna fuckin’ puke to see what a noble hell it’s turnin’ out to be!”
    • p. 356
  • And that in itself was a sufficient reason to hit him, purely for educational purposes: I had, you see, reached the level of drunkenness at which an amoral man such as myself understands his whimsies to be moral imperatives.
    • p. 356
  • “You had no right,” I said. “You—”
    Tuu’s face hardened. “We had no right to mislead you? Please, Mr. Puleo. Between our peoples, deception is a tradition.”
    • p. 366

Señor Volto (2003)

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Page number from the reprint in David G. Hartwell (ed.), Year’s Best Fantasy 4
  • Here was a beast for whom there could be no predator. What better definition of God is there than that?
    • p. 349

Only Partly Here (2003)

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Page numbers from the reprint in Ellen Datlow (ed.), The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror: Seventeenth Annual Collection, ISBN 0-312-32927-X
  • Doubt concerning their mental well-being creeps in. Is this an instance of healing or a freak scene? Are they two very different people who have connected on a level new to both of them, or are they emotional burnouts who aren’t even talking about the same subject and have misapprehended mild sexual attraction for a moment of truth? Just how much difference is there between those conditions?
    • p. 60
  • She’s sad because she’s drinking to be sad because she’s afraid that what she does not feel is actually a feeling. Typical post-modern Manhattan bullshit.
    • p. 62

Dog-Eared Paperback of My Life (2009)

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Page numbers from the original publication in Nick Gevers and Jay Lake (eds.), Other Earths, ISBN 978-0-7564-0546-5, first printing
  • Travel has always served to inspire me, as it has many writers, as it apparently did my alter ego; yet the farther we proceeded down the Mekong, the more I came to realize that there was a blighted sameness to the world and its various cultures. Strip away their trappings and you found that every tribe was moved by the same passions, and this was true not only in the present but also, I suspected, in ages past. Erase from your mind the images of the kings and exotic courtesans and maniacal monks that people the legends of Southeast Asia, and look to a patch of ground away from the temples and palaces of Angkor Wat—there you will find the average planetary citizen, a child eating the Khmer equivalent of a Happy Meal and longing for the invention of television.
    • p. 227
  • Depravity always incorporates obsession.
    • p. 228
  • She went on to dismiss much of postmodernism as having “an overengineered archness” and, except for a few exemplary authors, being a refuge for those writers whose “disregard for traditional narrative (was) an attempt to disguise either their laziness or their inability to master it.”
    • p. 237
  • I yearned for that future. I wanted to live in the illusion that persuades us that true-life experience can be obtained on the Internet.
    • p. 239
  • The arms dealers were of especial interest to me. They commonly operated on street corners (some nights, in certain quarters, there seemed to be one on almost every corner) and offered a wide selection of handguns and ammo, the odd assault weapon—hardly surprising in a country where you could, I've been told, blow away a cow with a rocket launcher for a fee of two hundred dollars, less if you were prepared to haggle. I saw in them the future of my own country, where death was celebrated with equal enthusiasm, although candy-coated by Technicolor and video games and television news. When the coating finally wore off, as it threatened to do, there we would all be, in Cambodia.
    • p. 249
  • All journeys end in disappointment if for no other reason than that they end.
    • p. 295
  • Evil required no real genius, only power, lack of conscience, and an inquisitive nature such as I had seen at work in the tea forest. Men were, indeed, made in Its Image…at least writers and criminals were.
    • p. 296

The Skinny Girl (2011)

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Page numbers from the original publication in Ellen Datlow (ed.) Naked City, ISBN 978-0-312-60431-8, first printing
  • That the official and the criminal are inextricably aligned should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the workings of their government, but nowhere is this juxtaposition so literal and apparent as in Mexico City.
    • p. 437
  • Doesn’t that sound like God to you? This big stupid, invulnerable thing that resembles us and whose creations are more intelligent than it is? The Bible left out that part, but it would explain a great deal.
    • p. 453

Green Eyes (1984)

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The necessary had been accomplished. That’s the way Les Invisibles work. Singular, unquantifiable events. Impossible to treat statistically, to define with theory.
All page numbers are from the mass market paperback edition published by Ace ISBN 0-441-30274-2, December 1990 printing
Nominated for the 1985 John W. Campbell Award, the 1987 Arthur C. Clarke Award, the 1984 Philip K. Dick Award, and the 1985 Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel
 
Every object, the old man had said, is but an interpretation of every other object. There is no sure knowledge, only endless process.
  • I submit that all psychotherapy is manipulation; that as psychiatrists we do not heal people, but manipulate their neuroses into functional modes.
    • Chapter 6, p. 46
  • Manipulate? Yes, I manipulated. And despite the ensuing events, I would do so again, for it is the function of psychiatry to encourage the living to live.
    • Chapter 6, p. 49
  • We uncovered new forces, we took a step along what may be an endless path toward divinity, we redirected the entire thrust of psychoanalytic theory, and, as with all knowledge, we found that deeper and more compelling mysteries yet lay beyond those we had reduced to the security of fact.
    • Chapter 6, p. 51
  • “And then along came Satan’s Eye Itself. Television.” He laughed, as at some fatal irony. “Don’t you hear the evil hum of the word, the knell of Satan? Television! It’s the ruling character of your lives, like the moon must have been for Indians. An oracle, a companion, a signal of the changing seasons. But rather than divine illumination, each night it spews forth Satan’s imagery. Murders, car crashes, mad policemen, perverted strangers! And you lie there decomposing in its flickering, blue-gray light, absorbing His horrid fantasies!”
    • Chapter 10, p. 115
  • Overwhelmed with disgust, Donnell said, “I could sell you sorry fuckers anything, couldn’t I?”
    They weren’t sure they had heard correctly; they looked at each other, puzzled, asking what had been said.
    “I could sell you sorry fuckers anything,” he repeated, “as long as it had a bright package and was wrapped around a chewy nugget of fear. I could be your green-eyed king. But it would bore me to be the salvation of cattle like you. Take my advice, though. Don’t buy the crap that’s slung into your faces by two-bit wart-healers!” He jabbed his cane at Papa Salvatino, who stood open-mouthed in the aisle, a litter of paper cups and fans and Bibles spreading out from his feet. “Find your own answers, your own salvation. If you can’t do that,” said Donnell, “then to Hell with you.”
    • Chapter 10, p. 118
  • The necessary had been accomplished. That’s the way Les Invisibles work. Singular, unquantifiable events. Impossible to treat statistically, to define with theory.
    • Chapter 14, p. 184
  • The half moon sailed high, sharp-winged shadows skimming across it, and the conical hills and the vine-shrouded trees washed silver-green under the moonlight had the look of a decaying city millennia after a great catastrophe.
    • Chapter 15, p. 192
  • It was easy to see how one could think of the family as a single terrible creature stretching back through time, some genetic flaw or chemical magic binding the spirit to the blood.
    • Chapter 15, p. 201
  • “An attic’s the afterlife of a house,” said Otille, opening the door. “Or so my mother used to say.”
    • Chapter 15, p. 201
  • Every object, the old man had said, is but an interpretation of every other object. There is no sure knowledge, only endless process.
    • Chapter 17, p. 239
  • The outcry surrounding the public disclosure of the project had taken only three months to die, this—thought Jocundra—a telling commentary upon the spongelike capacity of the American consciousness to absorb miracles, digest them along with the ordinary whey provided by the media, and reduce them to half-remembered trivia.
    • Epilogue, p. 271
  • “It’s not hope,” said Jocundra. “It’s just confusion. I know he’s dead.”
    “Sure it’s hope,” said Mr. Brisbeau. “Me, I ain’t no genius, but I can tell you ‘bout hope. When my boy he’s missin’ in action, I live wit hope for ten damn years. It’s the cruelest thing in the world. If it get a hook in you, maybe it never let you go no matter how hopeless things really is.” He closed up the sack and laughed. “I remember what my grand-mère used to say ’round breakfas’ time. My brother John he’s always after her to fix pancakes. Firs’ ting ever’ mornin’ he say, ‘Well, I hope we’re goin’ to have pancakes.’ And my grand-mère she tell him jus’ be glad his belly’s full, him, and then she say, ‘You keep your hope for tomorrow, boy, ’cause we got grits for today.’” He stood and shouldered the sack. “Maybe that’s all there is to some kinds of hopin’. It makes them grits go down easier.”
    • Epilogue, p. 274

A Walk in the Garden (2003)

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  • Things Specialist Charles N. Wilson Wants You To Know
    · · · · · 
    1: Everything I've ever known has been no more than a powerful conviction.
    2: Nothing motivates like sex and death and sound effects.
    3: Politics is the Enemy.
    4: Jesus and Mohammed would probably hang out together.
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