For years now, 40,000
readers of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction have
been reveling in the adventures of Matt Hughes's Guth
Bandar, the hero of this novel. Hughes is one of the top
voices in modern SF, and this book has a huge audience
waiting for it.
Old Earth's Institute for Historical Inquiry has mapped
the collective unconscious of the human race for 100,000 years. They have
encountered all the archetypal figures - the Wise Man and the Fool, the
Destroyer and the Redeemer - the "usual suspects" that populate the myths and
legends at the back of the human mind.
And now young Guth Bandar suspects the collective
unconscious has become aware of itself. Worse, it has an agenda. And worst of
all, it can force Bandar to go deep into the darkest forests of the mind, where
the only escape from madness is death.
"A fascinating premise. There is interest for the
reader here on several levels: in following Guth Bandar's adventures, in the
various archetypical personality types he encounters, in his reflections on the
more philosophical questions of the nature of consciousness. In The Commons,
Hughes has created a universe with particularly fertile prospects for
speculative activity."
-- Tangent
"Irresistibly good reading."
-- Booklist on Black Brillion
"Hughes’s boldness is admirable."
-- The New York Review of Science Fiction
Matthew Hughes’s
work has appeared frequently in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science
Fiction, and numerous Year's Best anthologies. His previous novels include
Fool's Errant and Black Brillion. He lives in British Columbia.
Visit Matthew's web site at
www.archonate.com.
Order book from:
Fitzhenry & Whiteside
cloth or
paperback
