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Matthew Hughes
I'm writing fantasy and science fiction, often in a Jack Vance mode.
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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, Endeavour (twice), A.E. Van Vogt, Neffy, and Derringer Awards. I was born seventy-one 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.
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Fiction
Osfeo Tales
Published Jun 30, 2021 · 5,807 words (22 minutes) · 1 like · 178 views
If you're familiar with the Sufi teaching parables of the mullah Nasruddin, these might ring a bell. If you're not familiar with Nasruddin, you're missing out.
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Fiction
Shadow Man
Published May 4, 2021 · 1,578 words (6 minutes) · 173 views
Science Fiction psychopaths voyeurism time travel Matthew Hughes
“Shadow Man” is a reminder that I’m a crime writer trapped in a science fiction author’s career. It’s a little meditation on what might happen if the sordidness of some parts of the internet ever coincides with time travel. It originally ran in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and was reprinted in Pulp Literature.
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Fiction
Thwarting Jabbi Gloond
Published Mar 30, 2021 · 7,403 words (27 minutes) · 1 like · 237 views
Science Fiction Henghis Hapthorn Sherlock Holmes discriminator Archonate Matthew Hughes
Back when I was writing the original Henghis Hapthorn stories reviewers kept calling my discriminator a “far-future Sherlock Holmes.” I had never read a Sherlock Holmes story. My only experience with Holmes was Basil Rathbone in old black and white movies. So I decided to discover what Holmes’s first case was and see about adapting it to space opera. It was “The Adventure of the Gloria Scott,” with Sherlock still at university. I turned it into “Thwarting Jabbi Gloond” and it ran in F&SF.
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Fiction
Falberoth's Ruin
Published Nov 30, 2020 · 3,648 words (14 minutes) · 397 views
Fantasy Science Fiction Old Earth Henghis Hapthorn far-future SF
This is one of the early Henghis Hapthorn stories that ran in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction sixteen years ago. I was taking poor Henghis through his time of uncertainty, as the moment of the great change from rationalism to magic was about to upend his world.
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Fiction
The Immersion
Published Nov 4, 2020 · 10,975 words (40 minutes) · 379 views
Science Fiction Old Earth Henghis Hapthorn the Archoonate
A tale of Henghis Hapthorn, a prequel to the trilogy of novels.
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Fiction
Song of the Serpent
Published Oct 5, 2020 · 5,318 words (20 minutes) · 368 views
Fantasy Cugel the Clever picaresque fantasy Golarion Pathfinder
This is the opening of Song of the Serpent, a Cugel-type novel I was hired to write as a media tie-in for Paizo Press, set in the RPG gaming world of Golarion. The publisher has given permission for this excerpt.
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Go Tell the Phoenicians
Published Apr 29, 2020 · 8,597 words (32 minutes) · 1 like · 627 views
This is a bit of old-fashioned space-opera science fiction, the kind written in the 1940s and 1950s that I used to read in the 1960s. Consider it a case of my working a little nostalgia out of my system.
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Fiction
Mastermindless
Published Mar 30, 2020 · 7,633 words (28 minutes) · 715 views
Fantasy Mystery Hapthorn Archonate
The story that introduced Henghis Hapthorn, foremost freelance discriminator of Old Earth in its penultimate age.
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