Bibliography

Novels

Vellum: The Book of All Hours 1

"Hal Duncan has, at the very least, created the Guernica of science fiction." Lucius Shepard, author of A Handbook of American Prayer [more]

Macmillan, 2005

Ink: The Book of All Hours 2

"In the end, The Book of All Hours is a furious lament, a work of love and anger. It's very much about reality; not (or not only) in a metaphorical sense, but in its address of very real human experiences." Infinity Plus [more]

Macmillan, 2007

Short Story Collections

Scruffians! Deluxe Edition (w/ 1 bonus story & 40 full colour photos)

"... a wickedly entertaining collection of short fiction fantastical and queer in nature—full of “scruffians and scamps and sodomites,” with some pirates and fairies besides. These stories range from comedic romps to lyrical and meditative explorations on the nature of meaning-making..." Brit Mandelo, Tor.com [more]

Lethe Press, 2014

Scruffians! Trade Edition

"... a wickedly entertaining collection of short fiction fantastical and queer in nature—full of “scruffians and scamps and sodomites,” with some pirates and fairies besides. These stories range from comedic romps to lyrical and meditative explorations on the nature of meaning-making..." Brit Mandelo, Tor.com [more]

Lethe Press, 2014

Non Fiction

Rhapsody: Notes on Strange Fictions

"Rhapsody, though it is Duncan’s first long-form critical work, is a strong and elegant—and sometimes wickedly crass—project, complexly argued and incisive while also managing to remain eminently readable and engaging." Brit Mandelo, Tor.com [more]

Lethe Press, 2014

Novellas and Chapbooks

Errata

Collecting for the first time, and revising for this edition, all four stories in the Errata sequence--"The City of Rotted Names," "The Prince of End Times," "The Whenever at the City's Heart," and "The Tower of Morning's Bones"--this chapbook is a cubist collage of wordplay and worldblazing, a mosaic narrative of the battle for the city of the soul. [more]

New Sodom Press, 2013

An A-Z of the Fantastic City

“Loving, clever, entertaining, and of course as we expect from Hal Duncan, quite excellently written.” Rich Horton, Locus [more]

Small Beer Press, 2012

Escape from Hell!

"... a gripping and stylish read from one of the most talented new fantasy writers to emerge in a long time." Keith Brooke, The Guardian [more]

Monkeybrain Books, 2008

Scruffians
 

Fabbles: 0.5 (ebook only)

Meet the Scruffians, workhouse tykes and street arabs scrobbled by the Waiftaker General, dragged to the Institute and put to the Stamp, Fixed forever as they are, never ageing, never starving... the perfect child labour. [more]

New Sodom Press, 2013

The Taking of the Stamp (ebook only)

Meet Flashjack the hellion and Puckerscruff the urchin; Squirlet Nicely and Vermintrude Toerag; Yapper, the Scruffian who learned to speak Dog; Whelp, the dog Fixed as a Scruffian; and Rake Jake Scallion. Meet Gob, the fabbler of this here crib, here to tell ye the most important fabble of em all... the fabble of how the Scruffians took the Stamp! [more]

Popcorn, 2013

Fabbles: 1 (print only)

Bringing together "A Scruffian Christmas" and "The Beast of Buskerville" from Fabbles: 0.5 with "The Taking of the Stamp," this chapbook is a print edition of all the Scruffians stories (to date) not included in the SCRUFFIANS! collection. ORDER DIRECT for a Speshul Edition collector's copy. [more]

New Sodom Press, 2013

Anthologies

Caledonia Dreamin' (ed. with Chris Kelso)

"Glaikit, mockit, droukit, drouthy, couthy, scunner, thrawn – the Scots language is rich with words too gallus not to glory in, dialect terms that deserve better than to be boxed away as precious oddities..." [more]

Eibonvale Press, 2013

Poetry Collections

Songs for the Devil and Death

"A primal collection of verse from the master of language, Hal Duncan, Songs for the Devil and Death touches the very heart of what it is to be human in this most inhuman world. Here is deep grief. Here is red rage. Here is the genesis of pain, and an ecstasy to soothe it. Here are words that pare lies from truth, and damn all those who think otherwise." Erzebet YellowBoy [more]

Papaveria Press, 2011

OUT OF PRINT

Scripts / Screenplays:

Nowhere Town: A Punk-Ass Musical

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,

I bid you welcome, from a drunken poet to this cruel world.

Sit down, take off your coats, and just kick back.

We have a tale for you tonight, my friends, a tale of Jack. [more]

New Sodom Press, 2013

Whatever the Fuck You Want

A brain, a beauty, a jock, a rebel and a recluse, Orlando is the Breakfast Club all rolled up into one, Ross’s perfect man. But when they meet at the football try-outs, Ross is in drag, and it’s “Rosalind” that Orlando falls for. Fun and games ensue in this high school movie queering of As You Like It. [more]

New Sodom Press, 2013

Sodom! The Musical

Being an Adaptation and Modernisation of "The Farce of Sodom, or The Quintessence of Debauchery," by Lord Rochester, Rakehell and Libertine, as Versified and Perversified by THE.... Sodomite Hal Duncan!! (sic). [more]

New Sodom Press, 2013

Short Stories

"Slab City, April 16th"

The rasta angel started slowly down Jesus Hill, climbing round 'LOVE' and over the Sacred Bleeding Heart, cracking 'CONSIDER THE LILIES' under his feet and scuffing dirt on 'THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD'.

Flamingo Scottish Short Stories 1995, Harper Collins, 1995

*

"The Face of the Divine"

-- But stories are like trees, growing into vast canopies from a single seed or from a broken branch that takes root in the right soil. They grow wild and proud, but sometimes, sometimes, they should be pruned back, no? [read]

Notes from the Geek Show, May 2005

*

"The Disappearance of James H___ "

There is a new boy at the school. He sits at the desk where Brown once sat, and carved his name in the wood with a pocketknife's point, and was caned for it; but he is not Brown. He is green. [read]

Strange Horizons, June 2005

*

"The Last Shift"

As a kid, he was always being told off by his ma for playing on the rock, him and his mates daring each other to walk out onto the slimy surface of it, jump, wings batting the air, across the whitewater where it broke through.

Nova Scotia, Mercat Press, 2005
Tähtivaeltaja #3/2007 (Finnish)

*

"The Chiaroscurist"

His stunted body is of as little interest now as when it was hidden in the shadows of the nook. His deep-lined face, as robust as it is wrecked, is all I see. The face of God. [read]

Electric Velocipede #9, Fall 2005
Pandora #1, Frühjahr 2007 (German)
Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories, Bantam, 2007
Ikarie #18, Časopis 8/2008 (Czech)

*

"The Angel of Gamblers"

“In a world of laws passed down from On High, good form is the most rebellious notion ever conceived, I’ve always thought. Whose bet is it?”

Eidolon, Eidolon Press, 2006

*

"Bizarre Cubiques"

In the Azurian Collection of the Louvre Zoo, I sketch a karibu, its eagle wings folded along its oxen torso, human head lowered to feed, the curls of its great braided beard, long as a hobben scholar's, jutting out beneath the nosebag. [read]

Fantasy #4, November 2006
Serendipity #9, 2008

*

"The Last Straw"

I click the juice on full to let them know that I mean business. No mistaking that salty-ozone scent-and-tingle of orgone energy that fills the air. Sex pistols, honeybuns. Can’t beat them.

Glorifying Terrorism, Rackstraw Press, 2007
Tähtivaeltaja #4/2009 (Finnish)

*

"The Whenever at the City's Heart"

Twelve o’clock and all's hell in the city, drunken angels screaming fire-bombs into crowded taverns, sandminers rioting in the Litan Quarter, host princes and rebel reachers murdered in unending vendettas.

Interzone #209, March 2007

* 

"The Drifter's Tale"

Anyway, yeah, so the Drifter is the stranger, right? The Man With No Name. Nobody knows him. You could be sitting at a bar beside him and you wouldn’t even know it. He could be me or you. You could be sitting at a bar with me and I wouldn’t even know it.

Dislocations, Newcon Press, 2007

*

"The Prince of End Times"

Across the yellowed vellum of the book, across its pages thin and dry as parched skin, the black ink of the bitmites crawls in scribbles, scrawls a texture of text upon the parchment that the prince’s fingers, drifting over living Braille, cannot make smooth, cannot unrumple meaning from.

Solaris Book of New Fantasy, 2007

*

"The Tower of Morning's Bones"

Opium smoke on Lethe water drifts, gold with the touch of day’s first light. A wake of shifting serpents in his streams slaps up a wash of water over this narcotic drowned in hyacinths and lotus petals.

Paper Cities, Senses Five Press, 2008

*

"The Island of the Pirate Gods"

The toot of the flute sounds a little ways back in the trees, followed by more laughter, and I gather meself with a scowl and a growl. Right then, ye bugger, I think. I'll not be made a fool of by some tree-hopping powder monkey as dresses like a whoring parrot.

Postscripts, Winter 2007
Wilde Stories 2008: The Best of the Year's Gay Speculative Fiction, 2009

*

"Die, Vampire! Die!"

Actually there’s a few things that are pretty damned lethal – basically anything with a sufficient concentration of carbon in it. And it took me – what? – a few months to find that out. The elders still think the worst they have to worry about is some mad Hun with a sharpened table-leg. [read]

Notes from the Geek Show, April 2008
New Sodom Press, 2013

*

"The Behold of the Eye"

"The Behold of the Eye," Flashjack's laternal grandsister (adopted), Pebbleskip had told him, "is where the humans store the imagos of their appetence -- which is to say, all the things they prize most highly, having had their breath taken away by the glimmering glamour of it." [read]

Lone Star Stories, August 2008
Wilde Stories 2009, Lethe Press, 2009
Unloaded: The Web's Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy 2008, Wyrm Publishing, 2009

*

"The Toymaker's Grief"

Once far ago -— or maybe twice or three times —- there lived a toymaker with a beautiful wife and a charming daughter. [read]

Lone Star Stories, October 2008

*

"violent eRa"

-- And in their mouth was found the cowardly lie: Amen! And therefore are they before the Lord God the Almighty, and serve him day and night within his temple, his servants, the Lamb's murderers and destroyers of the earth. [read]

Notes from the Geek Show, December 2008

*

"Last Drink Bird Head"

...and the world began to shudder apart again to trails of red and green streaming dreams down curtains, round the edges of it all, friend's faces glowing golden, leonine and haloed...

Last Drink Bird Head, Ministry of Whimsy, 2009

*

"Scruffians Stamp"

Orphan was the first Scruffian, they says. See, he had the sweetest voice ever heard, did Orphan; so sweet it was, there's many as think he must have come from Heaven. Well, he was found as a babe, abandoned on a mountainside. [read]

The Scruffians Project, Notes from the Geek Show

*

"Jack Scallywag"

You challenge me? snarls the red knight. Do I get your armour if I win? says Jack. Impudence! roars the knight. Straightforward question, says Jack, but if you're going to be a twat about it, come ahead. [read]

The Scruffians Project, Notes from the Geek Show

*

"How a Scruffian Starts Their Story"

All of them have weapons — chains, cut-throat razors and fucking — Christ, even the kids have Stanley knives. And all of them advance with slow menace, flourishing chains like nunchuks, thumping weapons against chests, stamping feet. Choreographed in perfect time with the chant. [read]

The Scruffians Project, Notes from the Geek Show

*

"An Alfabetcha of Scruffian Names"

Fabbler? Well, mostly fabbles is fibs what we babble to fob off groanhuffs, but there's the tales what we tells between us too, so's to teach new Scruffians how it is. Every crib has to have a fabbler for that, like meself. Rest of me name's a long story what I'll tell you sometime, just not right now when we're trying to learn you letters. [read]

The Scruffians Project, Notes from the Geek Show

*

"A Scruffian Christmas"

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the workhouse not a creature was stirring... on account of any stirring'd most likely lead to a sound thrashing and a night in the mortuary, like, if the master heard a peep of it.

The Scruffians Project, Notes from the Geek Show (limited release)
Fabbles: 1, New Sodom Press , 2013

*

"The Beast of Buskerville"

But more'n that, scamps, this here's a tale of the single most villainest villain ever to prey on the likes of us, the vulture of vagabonds, the buzzard of beggars, the scavenger of Scruffians... the Waiftaker General himself.

The Scruffians Project, Notes from the Geek Show
Fabbles: 1, New Sodom Press, 2013

*

"Oneirica"

Oh, the nights they have shared in honey rum and rotgut and ecstasy both chemical and physical, spray-painting Mercury's Dog on the most inaccessible walls of the city, tagging their names and their union -- The Messenger Boys. Daring each other to greater dangers.

Icarus #5, Summer 2010

*

"The Tale of the Six Monkey's Tails"

“Silence!” said the fire goddess. “If I give one of you a boon, I must give you all a boon. And I must have something in exchange, the most precious thing that you possess — your tails. Give me your tails and I will grant you each one wish.”

Sybil's Garage #7, 2010

*

"Styx Water and a Sippy Cup"

The formula feed is basically cold water, but the babe still locks his cherub lips around the rubber teat like it's the mother's breast he'll never now taste. They always do, right enough. [read]

Strange Horizons, September 2010

*

"The Death of a Love"

You gotta let that love live for itself, find its own way, even if that freedom is the freedom to fade away or go cold; a cupid’s progenitors don’t own it, you know?

Speculative Horizons, Subterranean Press, 2010

*

"Broken Hearts in Bullet Time"

It's Casablanca, 1941, a bustling market square of refugees and rogues. A corpse with a bullet in its back, face-down in the dust beneath a poster of Petain. That would be me, of course, Jack Flash, your ever-loving agent of eternity's resistance...

Icarus, Summer 2011

*

"The Wolf and the Three Wise Monkeys"

Once upon a time, there was a Big Bad Wolf, a cultivated guy, top hat and tails, but a bit of a cad, a cur, a bounder, not a bad sort per se, but of dubious scruples and insatiable appetites... [read]

Cabinet des Fées, Issue 14, December 2011

*

"Sons of the Law"

The four strangers know that every eye in the place is on them, flicking from one to another, to the next, to the last, watching them all the time. For their part, they study each other across the saloon, silent and wary, like cougars meeting in the woods might circle to size each other up.

Fantastique Unfettered, Issue 4 (Ralewing), December 2011

*

"Sic Him, Hellhound! Kill! Kill!"

Skin-tingling shudders running up and down your spine, every inch of you alive with sensitivity. It's not so visual, natch, but if you can imagine a psychedelia of smell, that's how it rushes in on you when you turn wolf. [read]

Subterranean Magazine, Spring 2012
Wilde Stories 2013, Lethe Press, 2013

*

"The Origin of the Fiend"

A five-and-dime store on Lincoln Street, just round the corner from Sam's Malt Café. You stand at the comic rack, captivated by Overman on the cover of Adventure Comics. Circus strong man's leotard in white, blue trunks, boots and cape, he's knocking seven bells out of a robot army straight from the Flash Gordon strips.

The Lavender Menace, Northwest Press, 2013
Best Gay Stories 2013, Lethe Press, 2013

*

"The Boy Who Loved Death"

Death had come to the boy one day, as he walked home from school through catcalls and jeers he no longer even cringed at, a shape with the body of an ape and the skull of a wolf where its head ought to be. [read]

Apex Magazine, Issue 52, September 2013

*