Matthew Hughes: the Archonate

Archonate: the Fiction of Matthew Hughes

elcome to the web page of Matthew Hughes, science fiction and fantasy author. If you’re looking for Matt Hughes, the crime writer, you’re in the right place. Same goes for Hugh Matthews, who writes media tie-ins.

This web site offers excerpts, the latest news on my novel and story sales, a bio, and a complete bibliography.

You can also buy my books (in digital form or in paperback) directly from me in the Archonate Bookstore. The excerpts and posts here often also link to the books for sale elsewhere on the web; just bear in mind that when you buy direct from the author, the author gets a much larger share of the price of the book.

Posts filed under News and On Writing are open for comments (which are moderated). If you’d rather send me an email, I’m always happy to hear from people who have read my work.

If you’re an aspiring author, or an established pro, who needs a copy- or developmental editor, that’s another one of the hats I fit under. I also give evaluations of manuscripts of book-length fiction and short stories.

Praise for the Archonate and other works by Matthew Hughes

“Hapthorn's picaresque adventures, an adroit blend of SF and fantasy, pay homage both to Vance's Dying Earth fantasies and his classic Demon Princes future history... A tremendous amount of fun.”

George R. R. Martin

“Look, Matt Hughes is one of the most entertaining writers in the SF/fantasy field, now or ever -- his writing is reminiscent of Jack Vance at his lightest, P.G. Wodehouse at his least cow-creamer-focused, and Arthur Conan Doyle at his most frivolous. This is not my opinion; it's a fact.”

Andrew Wheeler

“Matthew Hughes is one of those writers whose witty, wry writing style is as enjoyable as the story he's writing about. His Archonate universe is a wonderfully compelling far future that mixes fantasy and science fiction.”

John DeNardo, for Kirkus Reviews

“Hughes has effectively captured Vance’s colorfully ironic way of portraying an exotic society and its inhabitants in a few strokes, as in the elaborate dress code on one of the worlds Hapthorn visits. He also has much of Vance’s touch with witty yet highly stylized dialogue. But perhaps the most Vanceian aspect of this series is Hapthorn himself, who may share professions with Sherlock Holmes, but whose overblown ego is more reminiscent of Cugel the Clever, one of Vance’s most memorable protagonists.”

Paul DiFillipo, in Asimov's Science Fiction


Featured Post:

Compleat Guth Bandar coming soon

I’ve gone through all the Guth Bandar stories that appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction  between 2004 and 2007, assembling them into a collection: The Compleat Guth Bandar.  I’ve turned the text over to my excellent ebook designer, Bradley Schenck;  I’ve arranged an ISBN;  and I’ve asked the inestimable artist Ben Baldwin for a cover.  If all goes well, by March, we should have an ebook.  Like the others, it will sell for $2.99.

Guth Bandar was a key character in Black Brillion (Tor, 2004), but I didn’t have enough room in that book to tell the full story of his career as a noönaut (an explorer of the collective unconscious).  So I wrote a series of stories that told how he came to be an unwilling helper to the somewhat tragic hero of Black Brillion, Baro Harkless.

The stories were later stitched together to make the novel The Commons, but The Compleat Guth Bandar comprises the magazine stories in in their original form.  The collection includes “The Helper and His Hero,” which was shortlisted for a Nebula Award in the novella category.

One of the stories, “A Little Learning,” is available for a free read in my excerpts.

Posted by Matthew Hughes on Saturday, February 15th, 2014 at 6:38 pm and filed under Home Page Features, News.
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