For years now, 40,000 readers of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction have been reveling in the adventures of Matt Hughes’s Guth Bandar, the hero of this novel. Hughes is one of the top voices in modern SF, and this book has a huge audience waiting for it.

For 100,000 years, Old Earth’s Institute for Historical Inquiry has mapped the collective unconscious of the human race. They have encountered all the archetypal figures - the Wise Man and the Fool, the Destroyer and the Redeemer - the “usual suspects” that populate the myths and legends at the back of the human mind.

And now young Guth Bandar suspects the collective unconscious has become aware of itself. Worse, it has an agenda. And worst of all, it can force Bandar to go deep into the darkest forests of the mind, where the only escape from madness is death.

“A fascinating premise. There is interest for the reader here on several levels: in following Guth Bandar’s adventures, in the various archetypical personality types he encounters, in his reflections on the more philosophical questions of the nature of consciousness. In The Commons, Hughes has created a universe with particularly fertile prospects for speculative activity.”
-- Tangent

“Irresistibly good reading.”
-- Booklist on Black Brillion

“Hughes’s boldness is admirable.”
-- The New York Review of Science Fiction

Reviews for The Commons:
"The frantic pace and episodic structure make reading The Commons feel a bit like watching someone play a video game, with Bandar having to complete increasingly difficult levels as he gains experience points on his way to the final showdown. But it all makes for a rollicking fun ride."
-- Quill and Quire

"Intriguing world with mind-expanding ideas; cool science-fantasy setting; deals heavily with archetypes yet avoids cliché."
-- SF Signal

Matthew Hughes’s work has appeared frequently in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and numerous Year’s Best anthologies. His previous novels include Fool’s Errant and Black Brillion. He lives in British Columbia.

Visit Matthew’s web site at www.archonate.com.

This book is one of the Robert J. Sawyer imprint of books. Visit the web site set up for his imprint at www.robertjsawyerbooks.com.

0889953910
8.5 x 5.5, 256 pages, Trade Paper
Fiction / Science Fiction