Matthew Hughes

Biography

The name I answer to is Matt Hughes. I write science fiction, fantasy and suspense fiction. To keep the genres separate, I now use my full name, Matthew Hughes, for sff, and the shorter form for the crime stuff. I also write media tie-ins as Hugh Matthews.

I’ve won the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award, and have been shortlisted for the Aurora, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, A.E. Van Vogt, Endeavour, and Derringer Awards.

I was born sixty-four years ago in Liverpool, England, but my family moved to Canada when I was five. I’ve made my living as a writer all of my adult life, first as a journalist, then as a staff speechwriter to the Canadian Ministers of Justice and Environment, and — from 1979 until a few years back– as a freelance corporate and political speechwriter in British Columbia.

I’m a university drop-out from a working poor background. Before getting into newspapers, I worked in a factory that made school desks, drove a grocery delivery truck, was night janitor in a GM dealership, and did a short stint as an orderly in a private mental hospital. As a teenager, I served a year as a volunteer with the Company of Young Canadians (something like VISTA in the US).

I’ve been married to a very patient woman since the late 1960s, and I have three grown sons. In late 2007, I took up a secondary occupation — that of an unpaid housesitter — so that I can afford to keep on writing fiction yet still eat every day.

These days, any snail-mail address of mine must be considered temporary; but you can send me an e-mail via the address on my web page: www.matthewhughes.org. I’m always interested to hear from people who’ve read my work.

Books

The Compleat Guth Bandar
Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 102,080. Language: English. Published: March 23, 2014 . Categories: Fiction » Fantasy » Short stories, Fiction » Science fiction » Adventure
Guth Bandar hopes for a career exploring the noösphere, the dream-world that is humanity's collective unconscious. But he's beginning to suspect that the unconscious is waking up -- and it has a plan for him. Includes all the Bandar stories from the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (including the Nebula-nominated "The Helper and His Hero") and later "fized up" as the novel The Commons.
Paroxysm
Price: $3.99 USD. Words: 94,880. Language: English. Published: August 15, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Thriller & suspense » Action & suspense
Ruthless mercenaries, hired by an ex-Pentagon chemical-weapons designer gone rogue, take over a small town in Oregon. The plan: use the citizenry as guinea pigs in a test-run of a bootlegged bio-agent for an Islamist terror organization. But things go wrong and the mercs and their clients find themselves surrounded by townsfolk who have become hyper-coordinated killing machines.
The Meaning of Luff and Other Stories
Price: $3.99 USD. Words: 107,450. Language: English. Published: August 15, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Science fiction » Space opera, Fiction » Science fiction » Short stories
In Old Earth’s penultimate age, master criminal Luff Imbry moves through the halfworld like a full-fleshed shark. Thief, forger, confidence man, and sometimes go-between, he maps out his illicit operations with exquisite care then carries them out with courage and panache. Seven space-opera short stories and two novellas from the author Booklist calls "heir apparent to Jack Vance."
Hespira: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn
Price: $3.99 USD. Words: 95,910. Language: English. Published: August 15, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Science fiction » Space opera
Henghis Hapthorn leaves Old Earth to solve the mystery of Hespira, an ungainly off-world woman who has lost her memory. The investigation takes him down The Spray to the rank-obsessed world of Ikkibal and the rustic Shannery, where he unravels Hespira's role in a deadly feud between aristocrats. But behind the scenes an unseen antagonist is plotting the discriminator's destruction.
The Spiral Labyrinth: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn
Price: $3.99 USD. Words: 86,240. Language: English. Published: August 15, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Science fiction » Space opera
In the sequel to Majestrum, Old Earth's foremost discriminator continues to struggle with a world in which science must give way to magic. Then his intuitive alter ego's researches thrust him centuries forward in time, into a world where magic rules unchallenged and Henghis Hapthorn becomes the pawn of five contending wizards of the Dying Earth.
Majestrum: A Tale of Henghis Hapthorn
Price: $3.99 USD. Words: 83,950. Language: English. Published: August 15, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Science fiction » Space opera
Henghis Hapthorn is the foremost penetrator of mysteries in a decadent, far-future Old Earth, just before the Dying Earth. Superbly rational, he disdains the notion that the universe might have an alternative organizing principle: magic. But now a new age is dawning, overturning the very foundations of his existence, and he must struggle to survive in a world where all the rules are changing.
Fool Me Twice
Price: $3.99 USD. Words: 85,140. Language: English. Published: August 15, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Science fiction » Space opera
In another sparkling and slightly askew adventure in the mode of Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams and Jack Vance, errant fop Filidor Vesh sashays once more through the penultimate age, finding that love is a many splintered thing. A sequel to Fools Errant from the author Booklist calls "heir apparent to Jack Vance."
Fools Errant
Price: $3.99 USD. Words: 73,060. Language: English. Published: August 15, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Science fiction » Space opera
Foppish young Filidor Vesh wants only to dally among his shallow pastimes. But a simple errand for his uncle, the vaguely all-powerful Archon of Old Earth, becomes a frenetic odyssey across a planet speckled with eccentric nations pursuing odd aims with intense determination. A satirical fantasy by the author Booklist calls "heir apparent to Jack Vance."
9 Tales of Henghis Hapthorn
Price: $3.99 USD. Words: 71,890. Language: English. Published: August 7, 2013 . Categories: Fiction » Science fiction » Space opera, Fiction » Mystery & detective » Short Stories
(3.50 from 2 reviews)
Here are nine tales of Henghis Hapthorn, foremost freelance discriminator of Old Earth in the planet's penultimate age. Included are the six stories that ran in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (and were previously collected in The Gist Hunter and Other Stories), leading up to the events that began the first Hapthorn novel, Majestrum, plus three more.

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