Redgunk Tales:
Apocalypse and Kudzu from Redgunk, Mississippi
by William R. Eakin
“Eloquent and witty, thoughtful and even heart-rending... Redgunk is a wondrous place and Bill Eakin is a brilliant storyteller.”
—Kim Mohan, Amazing Stories
“Sort of like Thomas Wolfe on acid, or James Joyce on moonshine, Bill Eakin takes the words, the rhythms, the heat, the mud, the cicadas and the kudzu of the south and turns them into stories that touch your heart while messing with your brain stem and possibly tampering with your DNA. A truly original and unique voice, I'm proud to have been the first to publish his Redgunk stories in Realms of Fantasy.”
—Shawna McCarthy, editor, Realms of Fantasy
Redgunk Tales brings together the award-winning short stories of William Eakin, a fast-rising star in the science-fiction world. Set in Redgunk, Mississippi—a town with a population of 400-some-odd people, a dog with black, smelly lips, and a mummy—these interwoven stories owe as much to Sophocles as they do to Flannery O'Connor, capturing the heart of the human condition in a miasma of swamp gas and lawnmower fumes. Redgunk is a place where Otis Zebrowsky, cable television repairman, can be suddenly sucked into a mythic world older than ancient Greece, through which he reconciles himself with his own manhood; where intelligent women like Mina Thorton can find absolute happiness in the guise of a made-to-order alien mate, yet hurl it all away. In these stories of ghosts, flying saucer abductions, and genetic experiments gone awry, immersed in a setting piled high with junk, singing with cicadas, crawling with kudzu, and as redneck as any in the South, we encounter—suddenly, unexpectedly—real people, real heart, the absolute beauty of being human.
William Eakin's short stories have appeared in some fifty publications, primarily Amazing Stories, Realms of Fantasy, Science Fiction Age, and Fantasy & Science Fiction. Many have appeared on various suggested reading lists or have been recommended by the Science Fiction Writers of America for Nebula Awards. Eakin's works have been translated into various languages, from Dutch to Hindi. He also served as editor for a book series on world religions and ecology for Orbis Books and has spent decades teaching wildly assorted college courses. A father of three, he lives in Clarksville, Arkansas.
Redgunk bibliography