Turing's Graveyard

by Terence Hawkins

Overview

Ideas drive the narrative in all Terence Hawkins’s work. His first novel, The Rage of Achilles, is a deeply researched account of the Iliad that describes a Trojan War as it really happened, informed by the theory of the bicameral mind—now the basis for HBO’s Westworld. His second, American Neolithic, explores a dystopian near-future America from the point of view of the last surviving Neanderthals, who live in an abandoned warehouse on the Lower Easy Side. In naming it a Year’s Best, Kirkus Reviews called it “a towering work of speculative fiction.” These stories test the boundaries of science and superstition, reason and faith. They are for readers who can’t wait for the next season of Black Mirror and think the best thing about New Year’s is the Twilight Zone marathon on SyFy. Explore the limits. ======

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781733647489
Publisher:	Calliope Group
Publication date:	10/05/2021
Pages:	234
Sales rank:	1,052,000
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.53(d)

About the Author

Terence Hawkins was raised in Fayette County, PA, a former coal hub later distinguished as the setting for the original Night of the Living Dead and American Rust. He graduated from Yale, where he was Publisher of the Yale Daily News, and received a law degree from the University of Wisconsin. In 2012 he became the founding Director of the Yale Writers’ Conference, which he developed and managed through 2015. He is now the Director of the Company of Writers and Prose Editor of Blue Mountain Review. His first novel, The Rage of Achilles, is a realistic and sometimes brutal account of the Iliad based on the theory of the bicameral mind. Tom Perrotta called it a “genuinely fresh take on a classic text.” In naming it a Year’s Best, Kirkus Reviews called his second, American Neolithic, “a towering work of speculative fiction.” He lives in Connecticut.

Table of Contents

TURING’S GRAVEYARD

AN EVENT IN JUDEA IN THE CONSULATES OF GALBA AND SULLA, IN THE 787TH YEAR AFTER THE FOUNDATION OF ROME

A CALL TO ARMS

THE DARKNESS AT THE CENTER OF EVERYTHING

CROSSED WIRES

MY SUMMER VACATION

ACTS OF CONTRITION

THE THING THAT MATTERED

TOKENS OF AFFECTION

LIKE LEONARDO’S NOTEBOOKS

COAL TOWN HEART

A FRAGMENT FROM RAYMOND CHANDLER’S FIRST SCENARIO FOR THE SOPRANOS

Acknowledgements

Editorial Reviews

"These thirteen powerful, well-crafted stories by Hawkins have been aptly compared to The Twilight Zone: they offer a similar sense of dread and moral disquiet. These are tales of how things go wrong...they provide a beautiful reading experience"- Booklist

"Hawkins' collection of tales ranges from unnerving Science Fiction to exceedingly dark comedy...Extraordinary stories that will make readers laugh, shiver, or perhaps both."- Kirkus Reviews, A Best Book of 2020.

"Turing's Graveyard is a collection of provocative and mesmerizing short stories that force the reader to confront the nature of life and death, intimacy and indifference, and even the boundaries of reality itself...Brilliant."- Tonya Hurley, New York Times and international bestselling author of the Ghost Girl series

From the Publisher

★ 2020-01-02
Hawkins’ (American Neolithic, 2019, etc.) collection of tales ranges from unnerving SF to exceedingly dark comedy.

Opening with the creepy title story, an unnamed narrator connects online with a woman named Sophie for a steamy cyber encounter. But when he goes to meet her in the flesh, he learns Sophie had died months ago. So to whom had he been talking? Some of the subsequent stories are equally unsettling. In “The Darkness at the Center of Everything,” for example, the sun seemingly vanishes—from the entire world. Hawkins, however, also excels at genres other than SF. The amusing “A Call to Arms” follows a young boy who’s a reluctant participant in his stepfather’s American Civil War reenactment weekends. Watching the stepfather embarrass him in front of “the hottest girl in the whole Middle School” is hilarious, though the ending is a shocker. Similarly, “The Thing That Mattered” plays like a murder mystery, as Hemingway, in 1956 Cuba, tries to identify the person who shot and killed his friend Rick. Despite the multigenre approach, certain topics recur, most notably religion and infidelity. One of the most memorable tales involves the author’s take on the crucifixion of Christ. It’s engrossing without going to extremes; the man on the cross experiences human emotions, such as doubt, but is unquestionably the son of God. As for infidelity, several characters among the stories are—or may be—having extramarital affairs. “Crossed Wires” takes the issue seriously while the hungover and possibly philandering husband in “Like Leonardo’s Notebooks” comes across as a hapless buffoon. Hawkins often uses a first-person narrator, which doesn’t preclude descriptive passages. In one instance, he writes, “The mayor always made me wonder whether there was an extra Stooge who didn’t get through the screen test. He had rubbery lips and pop eyes and really bad hair.” The collection ends fittingly with two very short and very different stories: a farcical comedy trailed by a story featuring the book’s single most disturbing image.

Extraordinary stories that will make readers laugh, shiver, or perhaps both.

Kirkus Reviews