The Well-Built City Trilogy: The Physiognomy, Memoranda, and The Beyond
Jeffrey Ford
Oct 2017 · Open Road Media
Ebook
750
Pages
About this ebook
An epic masterwork about the trials of a man of “science” in a Kafkaesque realm of persecution and paranoia from a World Fantasy Award–winning author.
The Well-Built City is a hellish place of unrelenting nightmare, ruled with cruelty, oppression, and terror by the inscrutable madman Drachton Below. In his multiple-award-winning, New York Times Notable trilogy, Jeffrey Ford creates a dystopia that chronicles the hubris, downfall, and damnation of a highly placed functionary responsible for determining who will live or die according to their facial structure.
The Physiognomy: With his unimpeachable authority to condemn and destroy, the pompous, drug-addicted Cley is one of the most feared civil servants in Drachton Below’s Well-Built City. But when the Master himself dispatches him to a remote mining town to recover a stolen object of unimaginable power, events will cause the physiognomist to doubt his science and the reality of his world.
Memoranda: Exiled in the wilderness, Cley’s newfound peace is shattered when his village is struck with a terrible sleeping sickness. Joining forces with Drachton Below’s demon son, Misrix, the former physiognomist must reenter the now-ruined city to find a cure hidden in the insane labyrinth of the Master’s mind.
The Beyond: On a journey chronicled by the half-demon Misrix, one-time physiognomist Cley travels deep into a mysterious and dangerous Beyond to face untold terrors as he attempts to right an unspeakable wrong.
The Well-Built City is a hellish place of unrelenting nightmare, ruled with cruelty, oppression, and terror by the inscrutable madman Drachton Below. In his multiple-award-winning, New York Times Notable trilogy, Jeffrey Ford creates a dystopia that chronicles the hubris, downfall, and damnation of a highly placed functionary responsible for determining who will live or die according to their facial structure.
The Physiognomy: With his unimpeachable authority to condemn and destroy, the pompous, drug-addicted Cley is one of the most feared civil servants in Drachton Below’s Well-Built City. But when the Master himself dispatches him to a remote mining town to recover a stolen object of unimaginable power, events will cause the physiognomist to doubt his science and the reality of his world.
Memoranda: Exiled in the wilderness, Cley’s newfound peace is shattered when his village is struck with a terrible sleeping sickness. Joining forces with Drachton Below’s demon son, Misrix, the former physiognomist must reenter the now-ruined city to find a cure hidden in the insane labyrinth of the Master’s mind.
The Beyond: On a journey chronicled by the half-demon Misrix, one-time physiognomist Cley travels deep into a mysterious and dangerous Beyond to face untold terrors as he attempts to right an unspeakable wrong.
About the author
Jeffrey Ford is the author of the novels Vanitas, The Physiognomy, Memoranda, The Beyond, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, The Cosmology of the Wider World, and The Shadow Year. His story collections are The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, and Crackpot Palace. Ford has published over one hundred short stories, which have appeared in numerous journals, magazines, and anthologies, from the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction to The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. He is the recipient of the World Fantasy Award, the Nebula Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Edgar Award, France’s Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, and Japan’s Hayakawa’s SF Magazine Reader’s Award.
Ford’s fiction has been translated into twenty languages. In addition to writing, he has been a professor of literature and writing for thirty years and has been a guest lecturer at the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, the Stone Coast MFA in Creative Writing Program, Richard Hugo House in Seattle, and the Antioch Writers’ Workshop. Ford lives in Ohio and currently teaches at Ohio Wesleyan University.
Ford’s fiction has been translated into twenty languages. In addition to writing, he has been a professor of literature and writing for thirty years and has been a guest lecturer at the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, the Stone Coast MFA in Creative Writing Program, Richard Hugo House in Seattle, and the Antioch Writers’ Workshop. Ford lives in Ohio and currently teaches at Ohio Wesleyan University.
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