Books in the Punktown series:
Punktown is considered by many critics and readers to be one of the new classics of SF short story collections.
In the nightmarish city they call Punktown, on a planet where countless sentient species collide, you can become a creator of clones. You can become a piece of performance art. You might even become a library of sorrows…
Locus magazine says, “All the gritty immediacy and romantic cynicism of classic cyberpunk, along with morally complex, vividly disturbing evocations of supernatural eruptions and corruptions.”
There are haunted places. Haunted houses. The metropolis of Punktown, on the planet Oasis, is a haunted city. An unassuming and aimless young man has begun to perceive the city’s dark tentacles in the lay of the streets. Its roots in the labyrinth of the subways. Its polluted taint in the eyes of the people he knows, and even loves. And this evil is stirring, building toward an apocalyptic culmination. The city is not only haunted – it’s perhaps a living thing.
A finalist for the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel, Monstrocity combines elements of science fiction with horror in the vein of H. P. Lovecraft, taking place in the milieu of Jeffrey Thomas’s acclaimed collection, Punktown – which China Mieville described as “searing and alien and anxious and rich.”
Punktown, crime-ridden metropolis on the colony world, Oasis, is home to countless alien races. Among those stalking its mean streets is Jeremy Stake, a private detective with chameleon-like abilities he does not want and can’t always control. There’s his wealthy client, Fukuda, whose company makes synthetic life forms as playthings for the rich. Then there’s Fukuda’s beautiful teenage daughter, whose priceless one-of-a-kind living doll has been stolen. And there is the doll itself, growing in size, intelligence, and resentment. The destinies of all these individuals will converge, and collide, in Punktown.
A finalist for the John W. Campbell Award, Deadstock received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, who said, “For a wild ride… readers will be hard-pressed to find a better vehicle than Thomas’s bizarre multiverse.”
It is a jungle of blue vegetation, on a world in another dimension. Here, over a decade earlier, Earth’s Colonial Forces battled against the blue-skinned Ha Jiin people, in order to help support the autonomy of the Jin Haa people. Now, an attempt to grow an apartment village from an organic material has strangely led to the Earth colony of Punktown being replicated at an astonishing and dangerous rate. More strangely yet, a Ha Jiin security patrol has found three clones that the organic city seems to have regenerated from long dead remains. Shapeshifting private detective Jeremy Stake – a former Colonial Forces operative – is called in to solve the mystery, and soon finds himself fighting to avert another interdimensional war.
Fantasy Book Critic called Blue War “another impressive entry in the Punktown mythos.”
Private detective and mutant shapeshifter Jeremy Stake (hero of the novels Deadstock and Blue War) has fallen on hard times in the far-future city of Punktown. When he is offered an opportunity to masquerade as another man to do his prison sentence for him, Stake agrees, but this is a new type of penitentiary – existing in its own pocket universe.
In this isolated prison, a series of gruesome murders has occurred, and the inmates soon force Stake to investigate. Can Stake catch a killer that might not even be human, without becoming just another victim?
Praise for the Punktown series
Punktown is on the verge of becoming one of those classic, timeless destinations for dark fantasy and SF readers.
Punktown is searing and alien and anxious and rich, and it is humane, and it is moving. Jeffrey Thomas has done something wonderful.
Punktown is one of the best examples of SF horror currently out there.
All the gritty immediacy and romantic cynicism of classic cyberpunk, along with morally complex, vividly disturbing evocations of supernatural eruptions and corruptions.
Thomas’s control of pacing and plot is expert, while Punktown has the chaotic immediacy and lived-in feel of a real place.
Thomas is a master at crafting atmosphere in his writing – in the loving portrayals of his fictional town in all its seedy glory, and in the way he uses the mood he creates around his characters and their dilemmas to subvert the reader’s expectations.
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Jeffrey Thomas.
All rights reserved.
Red Cells was originally published by DarkFuse, 2014.
Cover art by Veronika Surovtseva/Shutterstock.com.
Frontispiece art by Jeffrey Thomas.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.