Wexler, Robert Freeman

Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.

(1961- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Suspension" in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet for June 2001, which was later assembled in his first collection, Psychological Methods to Sell Should Be Destroyed (coll 2008). Its multiple transactions with the generic agencies of Fantastika have been described as surreal, but might be as fittingly thought of as kaleidoscopic: hence its relevance to contemporary sf. The eponymous Zone depicted in In Springdale Town (2003) is both agglutinative of tropes and oneiric. But when Wexler slackens control, the kaleidoscope can descend into Kipple, a fate perhaps suffered in the very loose-slung picaresqueness of Circus of the Grand Design (2004). A Secret History of New York [for Fantasies of History see The Encyclopedia of Fantasy under links below] is here conveyed through the long story of a mysterious painting, whose potency is again oneiric. The Silverberg Business (2022), which presents itself as a Weird Detective Western, conveys an aura of sf buttressing through hints that the tale, set in 1888, may occupy an Alternate History, at which points where it escapes seeming to work primarily as a mashup of the real world. [JC]

Robert Freeman Wexler

born Houston, Texas: 12 March 1961

works

Circus of the Grand Design (Canon, Ohio: Prime Press, 2004) [pb/Jane Andrews]
The Painting and the City (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2008) [hb/Buddy Drake]
The Silverberg Business (San Francisco, California: Tachyon, 2022) [pb/Jon Langford]

collections and stories

In Springdale Town (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2003) [novella: chap: hb/Les Edwards as Edward Miller]
Psychological Methods to Sell Should Be Destroyed (Bettendorf, Iowa: Spilt Milk Press, 2008) [coll: chap: pb/Tim Robinson]
Undiscovered Territories (Hornsea, East Yorkshire: PS Publishing, 2021) [coll: hb/Buddy Drake]

links

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