Rhys Hughes

Rhys Henry Hughes (born 1966, Cardiff, Wales) is a Welsh fantasy writer, playwright and essayist.<ref name="ISFB">Template:Cite web</ref>

Career

Born in Cardiff, Hughes has written in a variety of forms, from short stories to novels.

His long novel Engelbrecht Again! is a sequel to Maurice Richardson's 1950 cult classic The Exploits of Engelbrecht and is the most radical of Hughes's books, making extensive use of lipograms, typographical tricks, coded passages and other OuLiPo techniques.<ref name="ESF">Template:Cite web</ref>

His major project consisted of authoring a 1,000-story cycle of both tightly and loosely interconnected tales, a project that was completed in 2022.<ref name=ESF />

His books have had introductions and afterwords provided by Michael Moorcock, Jeff VanderMeer, A.A. Attanasio, Michael Cisco, Paul Di Filippo, John Clute, E.F. Bleiler and others.

Bibliography

Novels

• The Percolated Stars: An Astro-Caffeine Romp in Three Cups Featuring Batavus Droogstoppel Merchant and Scientist and Bourgeois Monster: One Lump or Two? (RazorBlade Press; 2003)<ref name=ESF />
• Engelbrecht Again! (Dead Letter Press; 2008; Template:ISBN)
• Mister Gum; Or: The Possibly Phoney Profundity of Puerility (Dog Horn Publishing; 2009)<ref name=ESF />
• Twisthorn Bellow (Atomic Fez Publishing; 2010; Template:ISBN)<ref name=ESF />
• The Abnormalities of Stringent Strange (Meteor House; 2013; Template:ISBN)<ref name=ESF />
• The Young Dictator (Pillar International Publishing; 2013; Template:ISBN)<ref name=ESF />
• Captains Stupendous; Or, the Fantastical Family Faraway (expansion of The Coandă Effect: A Corto Maltese Adventure) (Telos Moonrise; 2014; Template:ISBN<ref name=ESF />
• The Pilgrim's Regress (Gloomy Seahorse Press; 2014; Template:ISBN)
• Cloud Farming in Wales (Snuggly Books; 2017; Template:ISBN)
• The Honeymoon Gorillas (Bizarro Pulp Press; 2018; Template:ISBN)
• The Wistful Wanderings of Perceval Pitthelm (Telos Publishing; 2023; Template:ISBN)
• Growl at the Moon (Telos Publishing; 2024; Template:ISBN)
• The Devil's Halo (Elsewhen Press; 2025; Template:ISBN)
• Trumpet Face (Incunabula Media; 2025; Template:ISBN)

Novellas

• Eyelidiad (1996)<ref name="Joshi368">Template:Cite book</ref>
• Rawhead & Bloody Bones (1998)<ref name="Clute">Template:Cite book</ref>
• Elusive Plato (1998)<ref name="Clute" />
• The Crystal Cosmos (PS Publishing; December 2007; Template:ISBN)
• The Coandă Effect (Ex Occidente Press; November 2010)
• The Sticky Situations of Zwicky Fingers (Gloomy Seahorse Press; 2014; Template:ISBN)
• World Muses (Ex Occidente Press; 2017)
• Students of Myself (Elsewhen Press; 2014; Template:ISBN)
• My Rabbit's Shadow Looks Like a Hand (Eibonvale Press; 2021; Template:ISBN)
• The Ghost Loser (Gibbon Moon Books; 2022; Template:ISBN)
• Three Novellas (The Darktree Wheel, The Impossible Inferno, The Swine Taster) (Gibbon Moon Books; 2022; Template:ISBN)
• Robots in Love (Eibonvale Press; 2025; Template:ISBN)

Collections

• Worming the Harpy and Other Bitter Pills (Tartarus Press, 1995;<ref name=Joshi368 /> Template:ISBN)
• The Smell of Telescopes (Tartarus Press, 2000; Template:ISBN)<ref name=Joshi368 />
• Stories from a Lost Anthology (Tartarus Press, 2002; Template:ISBN)<ref name="Clute" />
• Nowhere Near Milk Wood (1997, expanded 2002)<ref name="Clute" />
• Journeys Beyond Advice (2002)<ref name="Clute" />
• A New Universal History of Infamy (2004): a parody of and homage to Jorge Luis Borges's collection A Universal History of Infamy.<ref name="Clute"/>
• The Less Lonely Planet (Humdrumming, Ltd.; May 2008; Template:ISBN)
• The Postmodern Mariner (Screaming Dreams; June 2008; Template:ISBN)
• The Brothel Creeper (Gray Friar Press; March 2011; Template:ISBN)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Link Arms With Toads! (Chômu Press; May 2011; Template:ISBN)
• Tallest Stories (Eibonvale Press; January 2013; Template:ISBN)
• The Just Not So Stories (Exaggerated Press; October 2013; Template:ISBN)
• More Than a Feline (Gloomy Seahorse Press; December 2013; Template:ISBN)
• Flash in the Pantheon (Gloomy Seahorse Press; 2014; Template:ISBN)
• Rhysop's Fables (Gloomy Seahorse Press; 2014; Template:ISBN)
• Bone Idle in the Charnel House (Hippocampus Press; 2014; Template:ISBN)
• Orpheus on the Underground (Tartarus Press; 2015; Template:ISBN)
• Mirrors in the Deluge (Elsewhen Press; 2015; Template:ISBN)
• Brutal Pantomimes (Egaeus Press; 2016; Template:ISBN)
• Salty Kiss Island (Immanion Press; 2017; Template:ISBN)
• How Many Times? (Eibonvale Press; 2018; Template:ISBN)
• Crepuscularks and Phantomimes (Raphus Press; 2020)
• Weirdly Out West (Black Scat Books; 2021; Template:ISBN)
• Utopia in Trouble (Raphus Press; 2021)
• Comfy Rascals (Raphus Press;2022)
• The Senile Pagodas (Centipede Press; 2022; Template:ISBN)
• Adventures With Immortality (Oddness Books; 2023; Template:ISBN)
• The Eleventh Commandment (Recital Publishing; 2025; Template:ISBN)
• That Other Egypt (Eibonvale Press; 2025; Template:ISBN)

Poetry

• The Gloomy Seahorse (Gloomy Seahorse Press; 2014; Template:ISBN)
• Bunny Queue (ImpSpired Press; 2021; Template:ISBN)
• Robot Poems (Gibbon Moon Books; 2022; Template:ISBN)

Ebooks

• The Rhys Hughes Fantastic MEGAPACK® (Wildside Press; 2022)

External links

• The Spoons That Are My Ears!, Rhys Hughes's weblog
• Rhys Hughes, the man who laughs at goldfish, interview by Steve Redwood
• Interview at Weird Fiction Review, 7 March 2016