Talus

Talus is an Anthology of collected works that define a decades-long career of a South African Speculative Fiction author, where each short story originates in a different decade and collected side-by-side serves to track the development of the author's hallmark Voice. TALUS reflect the later works in these four decades.

This collection includes the Short Stories: Portmanteau: In the horror that is the Yemeni Civil War, Mahdi does his best... One step at a a time. Jamais Vu: A young farming couple out to make good, just like any other normal couple except for the fact you are farming on Pluto in the 25th Century. Dancers: Reece and Durant are both haunted by PTSD, their own sexual attraction and a Revenant over the color-line in Petite Apartheid South Africa, as they investigate the murder of their black Drag Queen friend. Ifrit: In a climatically hostile planet Earth in the 28th Century a struggling band of isolated survivors provide shelter for a stranded explorer. How different are we from each other in the future? Neid-fire: Two cousins flee an uncertain future to relocate to their Ancestral Home to discover that their family history hides deeper and stranger secrets than they thought possible.

TALUS represents the best of Caldon Mull's short works at the end of each new decade and is the third volume in the 'Smithereens' format series for this type of work.