Most Excellent and Lamentable: Selected Stories

Most Excellent and Lamentable

Enter the strange mind of Jason Erik Lundberg, hailed by The Guardian for “achieving emotionally resonant effects within just a few pages”. Let his imagination introduce you to an unearthly stargirl, a foul-mouthed wombat, slithering immortals, a fish with premonitions, and much more.

These short stories, painstakingly selected from Lundberg’s first three collections, include a brand-new novelette—“Slowly Slowly Slowly” takes place in a future Singapore where an old folks’ home takes the form of an actual zoo—and the author’s preferred texts of “The Stargirl and the Potter” and “Ikan Berbudi (Wise Fish)”.

Contents

§ Only available in Most Excellent and Lamentable
◊ Author’s preferred text

Praise for Most Excellent and Lamentable

“This is a superb collection of beautifully crafted stories. They range from exquisite miniatures that render entire worlds within a few words to longer stories rich with the complexities of human interactions with the Other—where the Other might be a foreign tourist, a shaman, a fish that speaks or a wombat. Infused with a Southeast Asian sensibility, these tales transcend boundaries in the best tradition of speculative fiction.”
—Vandana Singh, author of Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories

“Phlogiston (I am assured by usually reliable sources) does not exist…and yet something rare is powering these shimmering, surprising, infinitely combustible stories. Strange energies crackle throughout this most excellent collection.”
—Andy Duncan, author of An Agent of Utopia and three-time World Fantasy Award winner

“In Lundberg’s narratives, endings are transformations, a change from one state to another: from ignorance to knowledge, from pain to understanding, from confusion to bliss. Death is a primary instigator, but it is not alone. Epiphanies and sad wisdom inhabit endings as well, and reveal the seeds of continuance. ‘What comes after’ and ‘what happens next’ are concerns of the author’s work, and he shares his take on karmic cycles and serpentine circles as he reveals the tantalising ever-afters. It is love that happens afterwards. Love continues. Identity continues. Remembrance continues. The story continues for it never truly ends, with each ending offering a new beginning, or a continuation, after profound changes. It is this insight, this narrative truth, that creates impact—that hope is never truly lost, and what is now is only for now.”
–Dean Francis Alfar, Palanca Grand Prize-winning author of Salamanca and The Field Guide to the Roads of Manila (from the introduction)

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