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DF Lewis. Prime Books, 2003, 383pp+.

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This volume collects 67 stories by the darling of the small press of the 1990s, DF Lewis, who has reputedly seen over 1,500 of his short stories published in a multitude of magazines, anthologies and journals.

I make no apology for the lateness of this review – though this book has been on the market for a good few years, it only recently came into my possession, and from its opening words I was convinced of its utmost importance, and felt the need to produce a review. That is the effect that the first story had upon me. However, as to the rest of the book I can say relatively little, with good reason.

One of the editors of this esteemed journal once said of James H Schmitz that upon reading that author for the first time ("Harvest Time", in the collection Trigger & Friends), he immediately put the book down and vowed never to read another word. It was so exactly how he imagined his own writing to be, that he could not have read any more without branding himself a James H Schmitz imitator for life.

So it was with DF Lewis for me, but to an even greater extent. I wouldn’t dare to compare my own writing to his, but after reading the first story in this collection – "The Abacus" – I knew that to read any more would doom me to a lifetime of fruitless emulation, or else a lifetime of awkward avoidance of Lewis’s themes and styles.

Eventually, the editor I mentioned before became secure enough (or arrogant enough) in his own writing style to venture into further tales by James H Schmitz, bringing him a happiness that is, however, tinged with sadness, because he knows that in only a matter of months he will have completed all seven volumes of the collected works of that fine author. One day, perhaps, I might unfortunately join him in that complacency, and decide to delve further into the mind of the Weirdmonger, and if I do, there will be no sadness, since these sixty-seven "Synchronised Shards of Random Truth & Fiction" barely scratch the surface of this remarkable writer’s literary output, and so, when I do gain the courage to read his work, I will never have to stop. – HP

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Originally published in Theaker's Quarterly Fiction #16. The cover picture was taken from Goodreads – my copy is actually orange.

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