Jeffrey Thomas | |
|---|---|
| Born | October 3, 1957 |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Genre | Science fiction, horror |
| Website | |
| www | |
Jeffrey Thomas (born October 3, 1957[1]) is a prolific writer of science fiction and horror, best known for his stories set in the nightmarish future city called Punktown, such as the novel Deadstock (Solaris Books) and the collection Punktown (Ministry of Whimsy Press), from which a story was reprinted in St. Martin's The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror #14. His fiction has also been reprinted in Daw's The Year's Best Horror Stories XXII, The Year's Best Fantastic Fiction and Quick Chills II: The Best Horror Fiction from the Specialty Press. He has been a 2003 finalist for the Bram Stoker Award (Best First Novel) for Monstrocity, and a 2008 finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Deadstock.
Other books by Thomas include the novels Letters from Hades (Bedlam Press) and Monstrocity (Prime Books), and the novella Godhead Dying Downwards (Earthling Publications). The German edition of Punktown has cover art by H. R. Giger.
Thomas is also responsible for Necropolitan Press, an independent publisher in the genres of horror, science fiction, dark fantasy, and "the unclassifiable.", which was founded in 1993 and ceased production between 2001 and March 2008.
Jeffrey Thomas lives in Massachusetts. His brother Scott is also an accomplished short story writer, collected in such books as Cobwebs and Whispers (Delirium Books) and Westermead (Raw Dog Screaming Press).
Punktown is a far future megalopolis, infamous for its level of crime. Originally given the name Paxton, it is described as “a vast city established by Earth on the planet Oasis but since colonized by numerous other races as well. Even the Chooms, who had lived here before the first Earth people, had come to refer to the city by its nickname of Punktown.” Besides the indigenous Choom, human in appearance aside from wide mouths cut back to their ears, the stories often include or focus on a variety of alien races, clones, mutants, and sentient machines. The stories tend to feature common citizens as their protagonists, rather than the larger-than-life heroes of cliché science fiction, an exception being mutant private eye Jeremy Stake, protagonist of the novels Deadstock and Blue War. Beyond their grounding in science fiction, Punktown stories also notably combine elements of horror, fantasy and occasionally detective noir.[2]
Thomas has related in interviews that he first devised the city in 1980,[3] with a handful of short stories appearing in small press publications before the collection Punktown was released in 2000. The Punktown stories are sometimes cited as early examples of the New Weird subgenre; Paul Di Filippo in Asimov's describing the initial collection as "a harbinger of the New Weird... Not that the concept of Punktown really needs any shoring-up by cliques or claques."[4]
Foreign language editions of a number of Punktown books have appeared in Germany, Russia, Poland, and Greece. Three collections of audio adaptations created by the German company Lausch.[5]
