Science Fiction Weekly just published my interview with Matthew Hughes, author of the new and excellent novel Majestrum, as well as several other fine novels and terrific short stories.

[Excerpt:] I keep an “ideas” file on my hard drive. When I decided, back in 2003, that I should try selling short stories to the magazines in order to raise my profile before Black Brillion came out, I looked through the file and came across a snippet that said something like “Suppose you came to suspect that you were living in a world that was the result of someone’s three wishes going as wrong as they always do?”

I thought, “That’ll do,” and began to sketch out a story set in my Archonate milieu. It needed a point-of-view character, and out popped Henghis Hapthorn, a Sherlock Holmesian sleuth. He is hyper-intelligent, hugely successful as a “freelance discriminator” and gloriously vain about his ability to unravel mysteries. Then he suddenly finds himself transformed into an impoverished toad of a fellow whose shining intellect has been turned down to about 15 watts.

He sets out to investigate, aided by his acerbic integrator, an artificial intelligence he designed and built to be his Dr. Watson. Their search leads him to an unlikely answer–the cause of his disabilities, which are shared by every handsome, wealthy and intelligent man in Olkney, is magic. But magic, as Hapthorn well knows, is all a lot of humbunkery.

This causes a cognitive dissonance for Hapthorn, even as he solves the case, which would not have amounted to much except that when Gordon Van Gelder read the story, entitled “Mastermindless,” he quite loved it, and I recognized that Hapthorn was too good a character to use once and throw away.

Go read the rest and tell me what you think! And go buy Matt’s books!

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Science Fiction Weekly just published my interview with Matthew Hughes, author of the new and excellent novel Majestrum, as well as several other fine novels and terrific short stories.

[Excerpt:] I keep an “ideas” file on my hard drive. When I decided, back in 2003, that I should try selling short stories to the magazines in order to raise my profile before Black Brillion came out, I looked through the file and came across a snippet that said something like “Suppose you came to suspect that you were living in a world that was the result of someone’s three wishes going as wrong as they always do?”

I thought, “That’ll do,” and began to sketch out a story set in my Archonate milieu. It needed a point-of-view character, and out popped Henghis Hapthorn, a Sherlock Holmesian sleuth. He is hyper-intelligent, hugely successful as a “freelance discriminator” and gloriously vain about his ability to unravel mysteries. Then he suddenly finds himself transformed into an impoverished toad of a fellow whose shining intellect has been turned down to about 15 watts.

He sets out to investigate, aided by his acerbic integrator, an artificial intelligence he designed and built to be his Dr. Watson. Their search leads him to an unlikely answer–the cause of his disabilities, which are shared by every handsome, wealthy and intelligent man in Olkney, is magic. But magic, as Hapthorn well knows, is all a lot of humbunkery.

This causes a cognitive dissonance for Hapthorn, even as he solves the case, which would not have amounted to much except that when Gordon Van Gelder read the story, entitled “Mastermindless,” he quite loved it, and I recognized that Hapthorn was too good a character to use once and throw away.

Go read the rest and tell me what you think! And go buy Matt’s books!

Read More