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This Nebula Award nominated novelette originally appeared in the collection An Agent of Utopia (2018). It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year: Volume Thirteen (2019), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

In the tales gathered in An Agent of Utopia: New and Selected Stories you will meet a Utopian assassin, an aging UFO contactee, a haunted Mohawk steelworker, a time-traveling prizefighter, a yam-eating Zombie, and a child who loves a frizzled chicken--not to mention Harry Houdini, Zora Neale Hurston, Sir Thomas More, and all their fellow travelers riding the steamer-trunk imagination of a unique twenty-first-century fabulist.

From the Florida folktales of the perennial prison escapee Daddy Mention and the dangerous gator-man Uncle Monday that inspired "Daddy Mention and the Monday Skull" (first published in Mojo: Conjure Stories, edited by Nalo Hopkinson) to the imagined story of boxer and historical bit player Jess Willard in World Fantasy Award winner "The Pottawatomie Giant" (first published on SciFiction), or the Ozark UFO contactees in Nebula Award winner "Close Encounters" to Flannery O'Connor's childhood celebrity in Shirley Jackson Award finalist "Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse" (first published in Eclipse) Duncan's historical juxtapositions come alive on the page as if this Southern storyteller was sitting on a rocking chair stretching the truth out beside you.

Duncan rounds out his explorations of the nooks and crannies of history in two irresistible new stories, "Joe Diabo's Farewell" -- in which a gang of Native American ironworkers in 1920s New York City go to a show -- and the title story, "An Agent of Utopia" -- where he reveals what really (might have) happened to Thomas More's head.

Table of Contents:

• An Agent of Utopia
• Joe Diabo's Farewell
• Beluthahatchie
• The Map to the Homes of the Stars
• The Pottawatomie Giant (World Fantasy Award winner)
• Senator Bilbo
• The Big Rock Candy Mountain
• Daddy Mention and the Monday Skull
• Zora and the Zombie
• Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse
• Slow as a Bullet
• Close Encounters (Nebula Award Winner)

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, March 1997 and was reprinted in Clarkesworld Magazine, #92 May 2014. The story can also be found in the anthologies Sympathy for the Devil (2010), edited by Tim Pratt, and Telling Tales: The Clarion West 30th Anniversary Anthology (2013), edited by Ellen Datlow. It is included in the collections Beluthahatchie and Other Stories (2000) and An Agent of Utopia (2018).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This collection of fiction includes two never-before-published pieces in addition to a Hugo- and Nebula-nominated story. The title story spins the tale of a guitarist who refuses to disembark the train at Hell and his adventures at the next stop, Beluthahatchie. Other stories include plot lines about the career concerns of a member of "The Executioner's Guild" and graveyard romances in "The Premature Burials." These science fiction and speculative stories are told with a flair for Southern patois and are followed by comprehensive author's notes.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword: The Once and Future Andy Duncan - essay by Michael Bishop
• Beluthahatchie - (1997)
• Saved - (1997)
• Grand Guignol - (1999)
• The Executioners' Guild - (1999)
• The Premature Burials - (1998)
• Fenneman's Mouth - (2000)
• Lincoln in Frogmore - (2000)
• The Map to the Homes of the Stars - (1997)
• From Alfano's Reliquary - (1999)
• Liza and the Crazy Water Man - (1996)
• Fortitude - (1999)
• Afterword, Final Grade Report: Andy Duncan - essay by John Kessel
• Author Notes - essay by Andy Duncan

Nebula Award winning novelette. It originally appaered in the collection The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories (2012). The first publication in the US was in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September-October 2012. The story can also be found in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Seven (2013), edited by Jonathan Strahan, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection (2013), edited by Gardner Dozois, Year's Best SF 18 (2013), edited by David G. Hartwell and Nebula Awards Showcase 2014, edited by Kij Johnson. The story is included in the collection An Agent of Utopia (2018).

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Realms of Fantasy, June 1999. The story is included in the collection Beluthahatchie and Other Stories (2000).

WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the collection Beluthahatchie and Other Stories (2000), and was reprinted in Asimov's Science Fiction, October-November 2001.

Enjoy "On 20468 Petercook," a new original story by author Andy Duncan about Stanley and George, two resolute employees of Trans-Space Enterprises tasked with adjusting reflective sheets on solar sails attached to asteroids, miniature planetoids, and the like. It doesn't seem like an exciting life, but perhaps you're simply not realizing the full dramatic potential of two mates sitting amongst asteroids, adjusting sails.

Ah, tea's up.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Sturgeon Award winning and Hugo, Nebula and Locus Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, June 2001. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Nineteenth Annual Collection (2002), edited by Gardner Dozios. It is included in the collection The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories (2012).

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, August 1999. The story is included in the collection Beluthahatchie and Other Stories (2000).

WFA and Shirley Jackson Award nomintated novelette.

When Jenny, lowly cashier for a certain major book store chain, flirts with female customers, it is not in the expectation of lasting romance. But at last one of them reciprocates sincerely, and a deep love is born, as if predestined, and indeed Jenny's new lover is called Destiny, Destiny Creech, initiate in an eccentric subculture that hunts carefully concealed caches by means of GPS readings, coded co-ordinates, and oddball intuition. The happiness of the two persists for a time, but when death sunders the partnership, the living and the departed must find one another again, and now the clues are cryptic indeed...

The story was first published as a chapbook. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Four (2010), edited by Jonathan Strahan. It is included in the collection The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories (2012).

WFA winning and Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared on Sci Fiction, November 1, 2000. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fourteenth Annual Collection (2001), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling and Digital Domains: A Decade of Science Fiction & Fantasy (2010). edited by Ellen Datlow. It is included in the collections The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories (2012) and An Agent of Utopia (2018).

In this book you will meet an Appalachian dragon, a phantom geocacher, a racist halfling, a torturer of paintings, a homicidal gator-man, the devil's son-in-law, the King of the Tramps, the Wizard of the Blue Ridge, a chicken named Jesus Christ, and the first Haitian Zombie ever photographed, as well as Yuri Gagarin, Harry Houdini, Zora Neale Hurston, Flannery O'Connor, and Sun Records headliners the Prisonaires, live from the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville. The appearance of the Space Brother Bob Solomon is unconfirmed, but we can always hope.

In other words, this is the second fiction collection from Andy Duncan, whom Gardner Dozois calls “a genre to himself.” It includes the World Fantasy Award-winning title story, the Theodore Sturgeon Award-winning novella “The Chief Designer,” and Hugo, Nebula, Bram Stoker, and Shirley Jackson Award nominees, as well as extensive story notes and a new novelette, “Close Encounters.”

Table of Contents

• The Pottawatomie Giant - (2000)
• Senator Bilbo - (2001)
• The Big Rock Candy Mountain - (2002)
• Daddy Mention and the Monday Skull - (2003)
• Zora and the Zombie - (2004)
• Unique Chicken Goes in Reverse - (2007)
• Provenance - (2002)
• A Diorama of the Infernal Regions, or The Devil's Ninth Question - (2007)
• The Dragaman's Bride - (2009)
• The Night Cache - (2009)
• Close Encounters - (2012)
• The Chief Designer - (2001)
• Story Notes - essay by Andy Duncan

This short story originally appeared on Gothic.Net in 1998. It was reprinted in Realms of Fantasy, April 2001, and Lightspeed, March 2016. The story is included in the collection Beluthahatchie and Other Stories (2000).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally apeared in the anthology Eclipse One: New Science Fiction and Fantasy (2007), edited by Jonathan Strahan. It can also be found in the Nebula Award Showcase 2009, edited by Ellen Datlow, and the collections The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories (2012) and An Agent of Utopia (2018).

Read the full story for free at Nightshade Books (pdf), or listen to a podcast of this story at Drabblecast.

Hugo- and Nebula-nominated Novella

Wakulla Springs, in the deep jungle of the Florida panhandle, is the deepest submerged freshwater cave system in the world. In its unfathomable depths, a variety of curious creatures have left a record of their coming, of their struggle to survive, and of their eventual end. And that's just the local human beings over the last seventy-five years. Then there are the prehistoric creatures... and, just maybe, something else.

Ranging from the late 1930s to the present day, "Wakulla Springs" is a tour de force of the human, the strange, and the miraculous.

Read this story online for free at Tor.com.

Stoke and Nebula Award nominated novelette. It orginally appeared on Sci Fiction, February 4, 2004. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Eighteenth Annual Collection (2005), edited by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link, Gavin J. Grant, Nebula Awards Showcase 2006, edited by Gardner Dozois and The Living Dead (2008), edited by John Joseph Adams. It is included in the collections The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories (2012), and An Agent of Utopia (2018).

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Wizards: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy (2007), edtied by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann. It can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best Fantasy 8 (2008), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, and Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2008 Edition, edteid by Rich Horton. The story is included in the collection The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories (2012).