The Workshop of Filthy Creation
WINNER of the 2022 Next Generation Indie Book Awards for Horror
SHORTLISTED for the 2022 Rubery Prize for Fiction
“The Workshop of Filthy Creation is a remarkable book visceral and philosophical in equal measure. The perfect combination of big ideas and a rattling good yarn. Hell of a read.”
– James Kinsley author of Playtime’s Over and Greyskin
“Always convincing and placed authentically in its historical context. The believable well-drawn characters even Maria who forms her own moral pathways draw us in and earn our interest and sympathy although some of the more gruesome details are not for the faint-hearted. The plot is intricate full of action and very exciting with plenty of wonderful set pieces – a sinister secret organisation that has permeated all levels of society a chase in a horse and carriage through the streets of London and a climax in the British Museum”
– 2022 Rubery Prize listing
In the autumn of 1879 an intelligent artificially-created being–outwardly a young woman called Maria–arrives in London under the protection of biologist Professor George Hobson. Hobson gathers a few close friends and reveals her existence explaining that she is the final result of a research programme undertaken by a dynasty of unethical scientists the von Frakkens–all now dead.
Unknown to Hobson one of his friends Jabez Pell is linked to an underground scientific organisation the Promethean Society. Set up in the early 1800s its aim is to conquer death by whatever means possible. Pell immediately recognises the potential that Maria’s regenerative abilities can offer to the Prometheans–but after his attempt to kidnap her turns deadly Maria goes on the run.
Maria finds herself at the heart of raging controversy: some want her jailed some want her dead and some want to peel the flesh from her bones. Worse she is now hunted not only by members of the Prometheans but also by the police–and her creator Wilhelm von Frakken who as it turns out is alive (in a sense).
Thrilling and evocative fantastical and grotesque The Workshop of Filthy Creation uses a Frankenstein-ian thread to stitch together elements of real scientific history with the darkest parts of Victorian London and speculation on the nature of human life.
Richard Gadz
Richard Gadz was bolted together many centuries ago, in a secret laboratory hidden deep in the Carpathian mountains. Following a series of bizarre adventures he now lives in the UK, at Keynsham in Bristol, although he spends most of his time in a world of his own. He’s the author of the award-winning gothic chiller The Workshop of Filthy Creation, the highly acclaimed cosmic horror/urban crime novel The Burn Street Haunting, and, under his real name Simon Cheshire, the contemporary horror novel Flesh & Blood.
