Urban Fantastic
Rarely has modern British writing witnessed an authorial voice as distinctive, as exciting and as wonderfully original as that of urban fantasist, Allen Ashley. These are stories shot through with science fiction's sense of wonder, coupled with psychological horror's sense of unease. In short – the urban fantastic! Ashley's great skill lies in his ability to treat the extraordinary as reality, to make plausible the incredible. He creates worlds which differ only minutely - but so significantly – from our own, and imbues them with a normality that is at once disturbing and compelling. From the girl who attempts to control her family through their dolls' house counterparts in "Playing Statues", to the claustrophobic horror of "Dead to the World" – via the verve and wit of "Felicia and the Cheese and Onion", the wistful longing of "Dead Dot Com", and the examination of inspiration in "The Ideas Mountain" – Ashley takes the reader into landscapes that are fantastic indeed. Faint whiffs of magic weave in and out of every story, while reality and surrealism, allegory and anecdote, collide, ensuring breathtaking results for urbanites and fantasists alike.
"Urban Fantastic" is set to become the defining text in a new genre for the 21st Century.
"Ashley purposefully upsets every apple cart in the genre 'produce' market... more radically imaginative than many of his peers in the indie press," Steven Hampton, The Zone
"Allen Ashley... master storyteller and fantasist," David Hebblethwaite, The Alien Online
"Quite frankly, this book is almost too good." Peter Crowther
Contents:
- Introduction by Peter Crowther
- My Wild Love
- The Overwhelm
- Listen to the Lion
- The Fern House
- The Ideas Mountain
- Theseus Rex
- Barleycorn Wife
- Queen of Clubs
- Rubik's Fruit
- Dead to the World
- Scarricrow
- Professor Clork and the Love Darts
- The Quiet House
- Playing Statues
- Styx and Stones
- A Life in Maps
- There is Nothing Left to Write
- The Blessed Damozel
- Dead Dot Com
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Allen Ashley
One of the most distinctive voices in modern literature, Allen Ashley has been published in dozens of books and magazines in the UK, USA, Canada and Spain and has now passed his first century of short story publications. Allen is a highly respected author equally adept at novels, short stories, poetry and lyrics. He is also well known for a wealth of critical commentary and non-fiction articles and, more recently, as an acclaimed and award winning editor.
Allen has run successful writing workshops in Newham and Tower Hamlets libraries. In October 2005 he gave two readings at the Norwich Fringe Festival. In November 2005 he was the special guest of the Birmingham Science Fiction Group. In May 2006 he ran a writing workshop in Derby as part of the very first "Alt. Fiction Day". On 2nd June 2006 he was the Guest of Honour at The British Fantasy Society (BFS) Open Night at The Devereux Arms, London WC2. On 7th July 2006 he compered the annual BFS "Showcase" evening, also at The Devereux.. At Fantasycon 2006 he moderated a panel on "Independent Versus Mainstream Editing" and was also thrilled to receive the BFS Best Anthology award as editor of "The Elastic Book Of Numbers". At Fantasycon 2007 he moderated a panel entitled "The Small Press - Building and Maintaining an Audience".
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