Venera Dreams: A Weird Entertainment

by Claude Lalumiïre

Overview

Venera Dreams is a mosaic novel, a surreal history of a fictional and fantastical European city-state, inspired in part by Venice, The Arabian Nights, and the architecture of Antoni Gaudí. It is divided in three sections. The first, The Lure of Vermilion, describes the impact of Venera's lure on various characters. The second section, Adventures in Times Past, ranges from the Roman Empire's invasion of Venera and an intrigue involving a Veneran spy at the court of the Chinese Zhengde Emperor during the Renaissance to a tale of Salvador Dalí's ties to Venera and a metafictional exploration of Scheherazade's relationship to Venera. The final section, The Secret Histories of Magus Amore, returns to the present to resolve the mysteries of Venera.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771832168
Publisher:	Guernica Editions, Incorporated
Publication date:	08/01/2017
Series:	MiroLand , #12
Edition description:	First edition
Pages:	252
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Claude Lalumière (claudepages.info) is the author of three previous books: Objects of Worship (CZP 2009), The Door to Lost Pages (CZP 2011), and Nocturnes and Other Nocturnes (Infinity Plus 2013). He has edited or co-edited fourteen anthologies in various genres. Originally from Montreal, he's currently headquartered in Ottawa.

Table of Contents

Overture: Bedtime Stories 3

Part 1 Strange Romances

The City of Unrequited Dreams 19

Xandra's Brine 29

At the World Tree Hotel 41

The Venera Fantasy Convention 57

Interlude: Vermilion Dreams: The Complete Works of Bram Jameson 67

Part 2 Adventures in Times Past

The Hecate Centuria 93

The Secret Dragon of Imperial Power 97

Agents of the Vermilion Eye 113

The Surrealist Lanterns 157

Interlude: The Phantasmagorical Odysseys of Scheherazade 169

Part 3 The Secret Histories of Magus Amore

The Subterranean Odyssey of Magus Amore 183

Adventures in Crypto-Alchemy: The Golden Cryptograph 189

The Thirteenth Goddess 207

Vermilion Wine 227

Acknowledgements 241

About the Author 243

Editorial Reviews

★ 11/06/2017
The city of Venera, if it exists, is a Mediterranean island that exports the psychedelic drug vermilion and is ruled by a repressive Earth-worshipping church. Or it’s ruled by fish-goddess-cultist near-mermaids. Or it’s an alternate dimension accessible through a Montreal bookshop. Or it’s simply an aspect of Venice. Lalumière (The Door to Lost Pages) has created a lushly gorgeous mosaic that falls somewhere between collection and novel; the through-line is the city itself, but a city in many different, refracting, sometimes contradictory versions. The individual stories don’t begin or end where one might expect. A few in-jokes aimed at science fiction fans fortunately don’t break the spell, though they don’t particularly land as either satire or humor, and the overall pattern turns out to be both shockingly clever and startlingly gorgeous. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"Insanely brilliant ... wildly entertaining" — Barnes & Noble Book Club


"Filled with blunt, carnal imagery and a moist, pulsing energy ... with unique characters" — Tangent Online


"Bizarre, fascinating, hilarious" — The Portal / The World SF Blog

From the Publisher

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