From the Waste Land: speculative fiction inspired by TS Eliot – available now
In 2022, I had a major project to take my mind off lockdowns and plagues: I edited an amazing anthology of stories inspired by TS Eliot’s The Waste Land. That anthology is now a reality!
I once noted that war stories never go out of style; neither do stories that question and challenge the destruction we visit upon ourselves and our beloved planet. A hundred years after the publication of The Waste Land, it’s fitting to harness storytellers to the task.
TS Eliot’s The Waste Land evokes the distress and loss of the Great War. In startling images, Eliot mourns the lost golden age and the forgotten wisdoms. Mingling the fantastical with the everyday, Eliot shows us confusion and loss, a beautiful world laid waste, lives upended and the struggles of survivors. At its essence, The Waste Land is an affirmation of life. The poem says as much to us today as it did a hundred years ago.
The stories in this anthology span why, when, what is a wasteland. There are stories of fantasy, stories of outer space, of the past, of the future and of the present. There are ghost stories, horror stories, apocalyptic, witty and hopeful stories. All of them converse with the wasteland. Meet the frozen emptiness of deep space, the heaving crowds of a metropolis, a queen of realms as she confronts a wasteland, the smallest child of an impoverished world who’s baffled by it. There’s the inner wasteland of confusion, the domestic wasteland of violence, the ravaged wasteland of climate change.
HOW each character faces the barren darkness makes each story chant. I hope you enjoy this wonderful collection, published in 2022 to mark the centenary of The Waste Land, coming to you from PS Publishing UK., the UK’s foremost specialist genre publisher, put together by a slew of decorated authors and brand new voices.
Contents:
*Death by Water, by Grace Chan
A Winter Respite, by Clare Rhoden
She Who Walks Behind You, by Leanbh Pearson
The Watcher of Greenwich, by Laura E. Goodin
Exhausted Wells, by Tee Linden
*Rats Alley, by Jeff Clulow
Fragments of Ruin, by B.P. Marshall
Dead Men, by Cat Sparks
A Dusty Handful, by Aveline Perez de Vera
*Lidless Eyes That See, by Geneve Flynn
A Witch’s Bargain, by Rebecca Dale
And Fiddled Whisper Music on Those Strings, by Eugen Bacon
Mountain of Death, by Austin P. Sheehan
Fawdaze, by Rebecca Fraser
Over the Mountains, by Tim Law
A Shadow in This Red Rock, by Louise Zedda Sampson
Dry Bones, by Robert Hood
April, by Francesca Bussey
The Violet Hour, by Nikky Lee
*Short-listed for 2022 Aurealis awards
Where to buy:
From the Waste Land, edited by Clare Rhoden. Available now in paperback from AmazonAU (from $39.00, free postage for Prime members) and BookDepository ($53.89, free postage).
Paperback copies will soon be available through my website for only $38.00 including postage (Australia only). Email me on clare[at]clarerhoden.com if you’d like to reserve a copy.
