Matthew Hughes (born 1949) is a Canadian author who writes science fiction under the name Matthew Hughes, crime fiction as Matt Hughes and media tie-ins as Hugh Matthews. Prior to his work in fiction, he was a freelance speechwriter. Hughes has written over twenty novels and he is also a prolific author of short fiction whose work has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov's Science Fiction, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Lightspeed, Postscripts, Interzone, Pulp Literature, and original anthologies edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. In 2020 he was inducted into the Canadian SF and Fantasy Association Hall of Fame.

Biography

Matthew Hughes was born in Liverpool in May 1949. His family moved to Canada when he was five. As a teenager, he was a member of the Company of Young Canadians and worked a variety of jobs before becoming a journalist. He then moved into speechwriting, first on the staff of the Minister of Justice and the Minister of the Environment and subsequently as a freelance writer for corporate executives and politicians in British Columbia. While working as a speechwriter in 1982, he wrote a 27,000-word novella for a competition which he saw advertised in the Vancouver Sun. Although he did not win the contest, he returned to the story years later and expanded it into his first published novel, Fools Errant, which was released in 1994. Since 2007 he has worked across the world as a housesitter to support his fiction career. He has been married since the late 1960s and has three sons. Hughes has written an authorised Dying Earth story ("Grolion of Almery") for the 2009 Vance tribute anthology Songs of the Dying Earth and in February 2020 was working on an authorised sequel to Vance's Demon Princes books, Hughes has praised Vance as being "a unique voice of genius."

Other significant early influences include P. G. Wodehouse, Thorne Smith, L. Sprague de Camp (especially historical novels such as An Elephant for Aristotle), Ray Bradbury, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Kurt Vonnegut, Joseph Heller and Philip K. Dick. and instead reads mostly crime fiction by authors such as Lawrence Block, Donald E. Westlake, Robert B. Parker and James Lee Burke, whom Hughes considers to be "the finest American crime novelist of them all." In 2000, his story "One More Kill" won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Short Story presented by the Crime Writers of Canada. In 2020 his contributions to science fiction and fantasy were recognised with the CSFFA Hall of Fame Trophy. and won the 2020 Endeavour Award.

Bibliography

Archonate series

In the far-future setting of Hughes's Archonate stories, the operating principle of the universe changes at intervals of several thousand years between science and magic with catastrophic effects. Science is dominant in stories set in the Penultimate Age of Old Earth and almost all of the characters are initially unaware of or disbelieve in magic: these stories tend towards space opera and planetary romance influenced by Jack Vance and Gene Wolfe. More recently, Hughes has also written stories set during or after the change in the mode of Dying Earth genre. The stories and characters of the Archonate reflect Hughes's interest and passion in crime fiction: he has described himself as "a hard-boiled crime writer working in a science-fictional mode." Hughes sold these stories to Gordon Van Gelder at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction; the first three were collected in 2005 as part of The Gist Hunter and Other Stories and Robert J. Sawyer assembled all six as a fixup novel (titled The Commons) in 2007. In 2014, Hughes self-published the stories as they first appeared in F&SF as The Compleat Guth Bandar: differences between this volume and The Commons are slight. Hapthorn's story continued in three novels published by Night Shade Books: more recent Hapthorn stories have been set before his first encounter with magic ("The Immersion") or after Hespira ("Fullbrim's Finding", "Hapthorn's Last Case").

  • Majestrum (2006)
  • The Spiral Labyrinth (2007)
  • "Sweet Trap" (a standalone excerpt of the first two chapters of The Spiral Labyrinth, first published in F&SF, June 2007)
  • Hespira (2009)
  • 9 Tales of Henghis Hapthorn (2013)
  • "Mastermindless" (First published in F&SF, March 2004)
  • "Relics of the Thim" (First published in F&SF, August 2004)
  • "Falberoth's Ruin" (First published in F&SF, September 2004)
  • "Finding Sajessarian" (First published in F&SF, April 2005)
  • "The Gist Hunter" (First published in F&SF, June 2005)
  • "Thwarting Jabbi Gloond" (First published in F&SF, August 2005)
  • "Sweet Trap" (First published in F&SF, June 2007)
  • "Fullbrim's Finding" (First published in F&SF, July 2008)
  • "The Immersion" (First published in Unfit for Eden: Postscripts 26/27, January 2012)
  • "Hapthorn's Last Case" (First published in Lightspeed Magazine, November 2018)

Conn Labro and Jenore Mordene

Template follows Conn Labro, the star duellist at a gaming house on the planet Thrais, who travels the worlds of the Spray with Old Earth dancer Jenore Mordene to investigate the murder of his only friend on the planet and the mystery of his own origins. Hughes began writing a sequel as a series of eight 10,000 word episodes but after the sale of the first episode to Amazing Stories decided to release the entire story as a novel provisionally titled Passengers and Perils, which will also feature many of Hughes's other recurring characters such as Henghis Hapthorn and Ern Kaslo in supporting roles. Hughes began serialising the novel in April 2022 as a series of Amazon Kindle ebooks, and released the full novel at the end of the month.

  • Template (2008)
  • Passengers and Perils (2022)
  • "Stopover at Meech's World" (First published in Amazing Stories, Fall 2019)

Luff Imbry

Luff Imbry is a con man, forger and thief inspired by a pair of Sydney Greenstreet characters, Kaspar Gutman (The Maltese Falcon) and Signor Ferrari (Casablanca). Luff was originally intended only as a supporting character in Black Brillion and was killed off towards the end of the novel in the first draft. Luff was spared in the final book by the intervention of Hughes's editor at Tor, David G. Hartwell and first appeared in a lead role in "The Farouche Assemblage", beginning the character's long association with Postscripts and PS Publishing. The 2011 Luff Imbry novel The Other was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. but he nonetheless attempts to salvage what he can and fight back against interplanar threats. After this serial was collected as A Wizard's Henchman in 2016, Hughes returned to the character in prequel stories set when Kaslo was still "a hard-boiled, Sam-Spade-type private eye."

  • A Wizard's Henchman (2016)
  • "And Then Some" (First published in Asimov's, February 2013, reprinted in Lightspeed, September 2013)
  • "Sleeper" (First published in Lightspeed, November 2013)
  • "His Elbow, Unkissed" (First published in Lightspeed, January 2014)
  • "Phalloon the Illimitable" (First published in Lightspeed, March 2014)
  • "The Ba of Phalloon" (First published in Lightspeed, May 2014)
  • "A Hole in the World" (First published in Lightspeed, July 2014)
  • "Under the Scab" (First published in Lightspeed, September 2014)
  • "Enter Saunterance" (First published in Lightspeed, November 2014)
  • "The Archon" (First published in Lightspeed, January 2015)
  • "A Face of Black Iron" (First published in Lightspeed, March 2015)
  • "The Blood of a Dragon" (First published in Lightspeed, May 2015)
  • "Thunderstone" (First published in Extrasolar, August 2017)
  • "Solicited Discordance" (First published in Asimov's, January–February 2018)
  • "The Bicolour Spiral" (First published in Pulp Literature, April 2020)

Raffalon

The character of Raffalon, a skilled but seldom lucky thief in the Dying Earth, was created when George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois invited Hughes to submit a story to their anthology Rogues. After writing the first Raffalon story, "The Inn of the Seven Blessings", Hughes realised the potential of the character and went on to write eight more stories about Raffalon's earlier adventures, which he collected in 2017. Subsequent stories have followed Baldemar's life from his streetwise beginnings through the rest of his time as a wizard's henchman.

  • Baldemar (2022)
  • "Ten Half-Pennies" (First published in F&SF, March–April 2017)
  • "The Prognosticant" (First published in F&SF, May–June 2017)
  • "The Sword of Destiny" (First published in The Book of Swords, October 2017)
  • "Jewel of the Heart" (First published in F&SF, January–February 2018)
  • "Argent and Sable" (First published in F&SF, May–June 2018)
  • "The Plot Against Fantucco's Armor" (First published in F&SF, March–April 2019)
  • "A Geas of the Purple School" (First published in F&SF, November–December 2019)
  • "Air of the Overworld" (First published in F&SF, January–February 2020)
  • "The Glooms" (First published in F&SF, November–December 2020)
  • "The Cat and the Merrythought" (First published in Shapers of Worlds, Volume II, October 2021)

Cascor

Cascor, a former policeman turned private detective who covertly practices magic, was originally a supporting character in Hughes's Raffalon stories.

  • Cascor (2023)
  • "Stones and Glass" (First published in F&SF, November–December 2013)
  • "Prisoner of Pandarius" (First published in F&SF, January–February 2015)
  • "The Curse of the Myrmelon" (First published in F&SF, July–August 2015)
  • "The Vindicator" (First published in F&SF, November–December 2016)
  • "The Forlorn" (First published in F&SF, September–October 2021)
  • "The Mule" (First published in F&SF, March-April 2022)
  • "The Dire Delusion" (First published in F&SF, May-June 2023)
  • "Armady Dizzerant's Avarice" (Original to this collection)
  • "Tome-Tickler" (Original to this collection)
  • "The Touch" (Original to this collection)

Standalone Dying Earth stories

Hughes has to date written three standalone short stories and four novels in the same Dying Earth setting as the Raffalon and Baldemar series.

  • "The Prevaricator" (First published in F&SF, July–August 2018)
  • "The Friends of Masquelayne the Incomparable" (First published in The Book of Magic, October 2018)
  • A God in Chains (2019)
  • "The Last Legend" (First published in F&SF, March–April 2020)
  • The Ghost-Wrangler (2023)
  • A God in Hiding (2023)
  • Margolyam (2024)

To Hell and Back

To Hell and Back is a contemporary fantasy trilogy about mild-mannered actuary and superhero fan Chesney Arnstruther, who causes chaos in the spiritual realm when he accidentally summons a demon and refuses to sell his soul. His actions cause Hell to go on strike but also provide Chesney with an opportunity to live out his comic book fantasies.

  • The Damned Busters (2011)
  • "Hell of a Fix" (an early version of the first three chapters of The Damned Busters, first published in F&SF, December 2009)
  • Costume Not Included (2012)
  • Hell to Pay (2013)

Demon Princes

Hughes's authorised sequel to Jack Vance's Demon Princes quintilogy, Barbarians of the Beyond, was released by Spatterlight Press. The book was published in the "Paladins of Vance" series, a line dedicating to preserving Vance's legacy by permitting authors to create new stories about new characters in Vance's worlds, avoiding the commodified "Frankensteinian reanimation" of characters Hughes criticised in posthumous continuations of series such those by Robert B. Parker. The critic James Nicoll positively received the book as a "worthy companion to Vance's series" which was also accessible to readers who hadn't read the original Vance books. An audiobook narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir was released by Skyboat Media in February 2022.

  • Barbarians of the Beyond (2021)

Standalone novels

Hughes has called his magic realist historical novel What the Wind Brings (Pulp Literature Press, 2019) his "magnum opus". It was inspired by a footnote Hughes read in a university textbook in 1971, which described how African slaves shipwrecked on the coast of Ecuador in the mid 16th century created a mixed society with the indigenous peoples and successfully "outfought and out-thought" the conquistadors to gain their independence.

Nonfiction (Ghostwritten)

  • Breaking Trail: The Memoirs of Senator Leonard Marchand (2000)
  • What's All This Got To Do With The Price of 2x4s? (2006)

References

  • Official Site of Matt Hughes
  • Matthew Hughes Patreon page
  • Full Bibliography
  • Facebook author page
  • Twitter profile (@hapthorn)
  • Night Shade Books, publisher of "The Tales of Henghis Hapthorn" series and The Gist Hunter and Other Stories