We live our lives in the daylight. Our stories take place under the sun: bright, clear, unafraid.
This is not a book of those stories.
These are the stories of people who live at night; under neon and starlight, and never the light of day.
These are the stories of poets and police; writers and waiters; gamers and goddesses; tourists and traders; the hidden and the forbidden; the lonely and the lovers.
These are their lives. These are their stories. And this is their time:
The Outcast Hours.
Ah, welcome traveller. You’ve come a long way and the night is drawing in. Can I offer you a little something to ease you through the night? For these are the Outcast Hours, filled with stories from the darkness.
We have a veritable smörgåsbord on offer for you. Perhaps we can tempt you with the tale of a book that will come when you need it, but be verycareful what you wish for.
Or a babysitter with a certain unique set of skills. A secret show that you’ll never find on your own, but if you buy the right girl a coffee and a slice of pie, maybe she’ll take you there. A man delivering a case containing something, and heaven help you if you try to get in his way.
Or there’s Berezov the chemist, and what happens when a rival comes to set up in the same town. A ghost story about wallpaper. A collector of toys. A dog sitter with her puppers on the night shift. A rogue tooth fairy. A hike through the mountains at night. Just whatever you do, don’t look back.
All interspersed with microfiction from China Miéville, king of the new weird.
The Outcast Hours reminded me of just how good a short story can be, how it can get under your skin and leave you thinking about it days later. How, with an almost effortless turn of phrase, perceptions are given a nudge, revealing a new viewpoint on what you’ve just read.
The Outcast Hours is a fantastic, diverse collection of fantastically diverse short fiction. There are some authors I recognise and love – the fabulous Lauren Beukes and China Miéville are two writers whose books I adore. But there’s a huge host of other talent on display here which stands shoulder to shoulder with them, and which I’ll be keeping a very close eye on in future.
The Outcast Hours, edited by Mahvesh Murad & Jared Shurin is published by Solaris. Many thanks to Tracy Fenton for inviting me to take part in the blog tour, and to Remy Njambi from Rebellion Publishing for the review copy of the book.
The Outcast Hours features stories by Marina Warner, China Miéville, Frances Hardinge, Will Hill, Sally Partridge, Jesse Bullington, Jeffrey Alan Love, Kuzhali Manickavel, Amira Salah-Ahmed, Cecilia Ekbäck, Celeste Baker, Karen Onojaife, Daniel Polansky, Genevieve Valentine, Indrapramit Das, Leah Moore, Sam Beckbessinger, Sami Shah, Lauren Beukes, Dale Halvorsen, Yukimi Ogawa, Lavie Tidhar, Silvia Moreno Garcia, Genevieve Valentine, Maha Khan Phillips, William Boyle, S.L. Grey, M. Suddain, and Omar Robert Hamilton.
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