“As well as character, Lenton has a real knack for narrative: when he leads you down a twisted path, you feel compelled to follow. It seemed to me that many of the pieces began as “what if” questions and were extrapolated to their very extremes: What if every toaster in the world stopped working? What if sex robots became sentient? What if Bono took over the world and you needed to resurrect a computerised version of Princess Diana to take him down…? Lenton’s imagination runs rampant and it is a delight to see.”
A pile of rats having an identity crisis. A sexy robot rebellion. A velociraptor revenge wedding. The world’s horniest scientist. Enter Sexy Tales of Paleontology: a world of queer romance, (dis)connection, and artifical intelligence told with Patrick Lenton’s idiosyncratic bizarreness and heart.
Lenton’s short stories combine laugh-out-loud humour with an honest-to-goodness sensibility. Sci-fi oddities, pop culture, a lesser-known Kardashian who lives on the moon, and a deft turn of comic absurdity bound through this truly queer romp of a book. But beyond all this, at the beating heart of the book, is the foolishness, horror, and delight that is love and heartbreak and 43 rats.
Praise for Sexy Tales of Paleontology:
“Lenton has an imagination like dropped pudding — delicious, and a crime to waste it. This collection is wicked, witty and only occasionally horny. Here Lenton writes with enviable verve around the intersection of science, inhumanity and the clarifying force of love. It is a book teeming with life and brilliance and I am very mad that I did not write it.” - Rick Morton (One Hundred Years of Dirt, My Year of Living Vulnerably)
“Patrick Lenton is a hot little piece of ass, and his book is a hot little piece of ass (for the mind).” - Nina Oyama (Utopia, The Weekly)
“Wildly inventive, refreshingly bonkers. I verify this attempt at humour by this human male.” - Julie Koh (Portable Curiosities)
💥 Shortlisted: 2023 Russell Prize for Humour Writing >
💥 Shortlisted: 2022 Small Press Network Book of the Year Award >
💥 Read an egg-cerpt over at Aniko Press >
💥 Read an interview with Patrick over at Booktopia >
💥 Read a review over at Aniko Press >
Release date: 26 July 2021.
First edition. Perfect bound. 280 pages.
ISBN 9780645152449 (paperback)
ISBN 9780645152470 (eBook)