Publishers Weekly had wonderful things to say about Steve Simpson’s debut story collection The Purpose of Reality: Solar!
Simpson’s inventive debut collection (published simultaneously with companion poetry collection The Purpose of Reality: Lunar) incorporate elements of horror, sci-fi, and weird fiction to envision the lives of people enduring apocalypses both personal and global … Punctuated by the author’s own haunting illustrations, this is ideal for weird-fiction readers seeking something a little different.
Publishers Weekly
The Purpose of Reality: Solar
Steve Simpson’s mesmerizing collection of short fiction and illustrations is surreal and wildly imaginative, with touches of playfulness throughout. Here is a selection of the beings within:
At Claire’s school, the walls were cardboard, and her chain-smoking math teacher never allowed numbers to be mentioned. He used a drawing of a press to flatten slices of air into tissue paper for kites, and he was Claire’s favorite, because all the other teachers were ghosts. One day, with a little pasta and a little mambo, everything changed.
The negentropy wars didn’t end the world, there were survivors, and in Santarém, the gringo electrician needed medicine to save his daughter’s life. To get it, he had to cross the Amazon River, where the Negentropy Horizon divided Brazil. The locals believed you could look across the river and see directly into hell. The electrician wasn’t superstitious, but he decided netting was a good idea, to keep the insects off.
Aldona worked in the Damasco Auto scrapyard, and when the electromagnet on the crane burned out and dropped the blue Passat, no one saw the electric-winged shape that had been trapped by the magnet. After all, there was nothing to be concerned about: the alien space fleet had been driven away by the earth’s nuclear defenses.
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