ORACLE OF THE THOUSAND HANDS
The biography of D’Arcy’s life isn’t meant to be definitive, but D’Arcy’s biographer is being as diligent in his efforts as he can. Scant attention will be paid to his childhood. D’Arcy’s story will start with his formative years, detailing his discovery of The Magazine and the curious pleasures D’Arcy experiences within, setting him on his path of sexual discovery. The biographer promises that he will present “a shattering picture of our protagonist, revealing wonders and implications hitherto never before revealed.” Unfortunately, the biographer himself is operating under a certain degree of restraint, confined as he is to an institute that he is not free to leave. Fortunately, he has the biography of D’Arcy to distract him.
IN MY PARENTS’ BEDROOM
Michael and his companion are taking the Westfield Tour, a fascinating look into the lives of the Westfield family. Michael has a rather special insight into the family, for Michael is the youngest son of the Westfields, forbidden by the terms of the grant to set foot in the family home—but compelled to do so. He and his companion—girlfriend? he thinks so, though he can’t quite remember her name—join a small group and their tour guide through the various rooms in the house. Each room prods at Michael’s memories. While the group and the tour guide argue over the fine points of the Westfield’s predications and proclivities, Michael journeys into his own past. And as each revelation brings Michael new insight, it also leads to the final mystery.
“There is no one, with the possible exception of Philip K. Dick, whose works, each one of them, are so unpredictable or so outrageous and outraged.” Theodore Sturgeon, Galaxy magazine
“Barry Malzberg is a comic genius.” Michael Hurd, Review
“...a master of black humour.” The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
“Incisive, heartbreaking, wildly imaginative, and darkly hilarious.” Brian Doherty, Reason magazine
ORACLE OF THE THOUSAND HANDS
“The sexual odyssey of an American male.” Denver Post
“It sports all the trappings of early postmodernism, with a somewhat complicated flashback structure, and unreliable narrator; it also features Malzberg’s usual superior sense of language, even parodying itself at one point.” GoodReads
IN MY PARENTS’ BEDROOM
“SF writer Malzberg in an early career quasi-erotic mode, via a literate fiction about a man who tours his childhood home, which has become a museum. As expected with anything published by Olympia in this era, it is a sex novel—but as any devotee of Malzberg will tell you, there’s never anything erotically stimulating in this author’s depictions of sexual matters.” Amazon.com
ORACLE OF THE THOUSAND HANDS /
IN MY PARENTS’ BEDROOM
Published by Stark House Press
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Eureka, CA 95501, USA
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www.starkhousepress.com
ORACLE OF THE THOUSAND HANDS
Copyright © 1968 by Barry N. Malzberg and published
by The Olympia Press, Inc., New York.
IN MY PARENTS’ BEDROOM
Copyright © 1971 by Barry Malzberg, and published
by The Olympia Press, Inc., New York.
All editions reprinted by arrangement with the author.
All rights reserved.
“The Man in the Glass Booth” and “Behold Goliath”
copyright © 2021 by Barry N. Malzberg.
ISBN-13: 978-1-951473-25-9
Book design by Mark Shepard, shepgraphics.com
Proofreading by Bill Kelly
PUBLISHER’S NOTE:
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictionally, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or introduced into a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.
First Stark House Press Edition: January 2021
Oracle of the Thousand Hands
by Barry N. Malzberg
