David Keffer: 16 books

"June and Jitter (the bugs)" can most succinctly be described as the bastard child produced from the unholy union of Ray Bradbury's "The Martian Chronicles" and an unrelenting dose of the clinical absurdism of Kobo Abé. A crew of ten leave Earth to explore the planet, Simuliidae, but only one...

Two well-loved books by Italo Calvino are “Invisible Cities” and “Cosmicomics”. In the former, Marco Polo regales Kublai Khan with descriptions, both profound and fanciful, of imagined cities that lie within the emperor’s vast domain. In the latter, Calvino develops short stories based on...

As astrophysicists have long known, stars are alive. Stars are born and they work, converting matter into energy. When their work is done, they die. Like their celestial constituents, constellations also live. Constellations love, they weep, they battle the seemingly infinite expanse of cosmic ennui...

Ethnographers travel to distant lands to collect and study fables and fairy tales in order to better understand existing peoples and their culture. Archeologists must be content to study bone and stone, in order to better understand a people now gone. Surely, an archeologist frequently thinks to herself,...

This novel is a modern adaptation of “The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath” originally written by H.P. Lovecraft in 1927. In this version, a father and his young son travel together through the Dreamlands in search of Unknown Kadath. The father’s goal is not to recapture the happiness of his own...

I Saw Blood and then Everything Went Black contains sixteen visions of the future experienced during periods of blackout. The stories arrived, one at a time, sometimes in pairs with arms linked. They were led by muses. When this book was empty, when this book had nothing, the muses filled it with...

Reality is defined reluctantly by common consensus. Each of us participates in the process in a unique way and contributes our own idiosyncratic slant to the reality that emerges. Wouldn’t the Wood Weird follows four individuals--a drowned woman, a psychic, an astronaut and Wouldn’t himself--each...

Eugenia was the greatest sorceress of our age, though she took pains to make sure that no one knew of it. Her mission was simply stated, though not to easy to accomplish, to reduce the sum total of misery on planet Earth. To aid her in this endeavor was her comrade in arms, Alton, a reluctant zombie,...

Let it be said that, even in simplicity, there is the opportunity to become befuddled and to lose one's way. A Memory of Fire follows a simple man who was guided by his conscience and natural impulses until he encountered a homeless man who was simultaneously damaged, vulnerable, enigmatic and...

In the future, when Darwin's laws of evolution are judged insufficient by the minds of the creatures they have produced, an artificial intelligence is assembled to seek out a new set of characteristic traits suitable for perpetuating human life. "The Horties" brings a happy American family...

The Poison Pie Publishing House presents "Slow Ecclesiastes", a sprawling novel of America at the end of the twentieth century. Written from 1997-1999, "Slow Ecclesiastes" is unapologetically a monstrous psychological drama in the grand tradition of Fyodor Dostoyevsky. An extended...

Unique, engaging, superbly written and presented, "The Implacable Absence: A Non-Idiomatic Improvisational Duet" is a seminal reading experience from beginning to end. Erudite, complex, and solidly entertaining, "The Implacable Absence" is very highly recommended for community...

People routinely explore a variety of peculiar avenues, many of which are spiritual in nature, in the pursuit of purpose and meaning in their lives. One should therefore not be taken completely by surprise that Poppy Hortie too opted to invite spirits inside himself in his goal of becoming a better...

The author asks that the following disclaimer be included at the beginning of the description of Symptoms of the Lunatic.Symptoms of the Lunatic is a novel written about a lunatic in the manner of a lunatic. Readers possessed of a sane mind may find that the writing of a lunatic contains what...