Dreaming of Fish & Other Apocalyptic Stories
Of Foreboding and Grace

►"Charles Frode’s Dreaming of Fish & Other Apocalyptic Stories is a masterclass in compressed dread and quiet astonishment. Each story operates like a slow eclipse, darkness arriving not with a roar but with the sudden wrongness of familiar light. Frode’s ‘you’ narration doesn’t alienate; it implicates, making the reader a reluctant prophet in rooms they never chose to enter. The three algorithmic apocalypses alone are worth the price of entry, cold, inevitable, and strangely beautiful. Yet for all its foreboding, the collection never succumbs to nihilism. Grace here is hard-won, nested in cockroach wings, crooked spines, and the memory of a boar’s spirit. A bitter, luminous harvest from an author who trusts his readers to hold contradictions. Essential for anyone who believes short fiction can still break new ground."

Henry James May 26, 2026

►"Frode dismantles the conventional short story chassis and rebuilds it as a vehicle for metaphysical unease. His apocalyptic modes, arboreal, archaeological, algorithmic, operate less as genre exercises than as epistemological thought experiments. The collection’s true genius lies in its tonal elasticity: one page delivers the sterile horror of a mass shooter’s interiority; the next, the sacramental strangeness of sanctified cockroaches. Frode’s ‘you’ narrator collapses the reader-story barrier without gimmickry, forcing a confrontation with complicity and grace alike. The ALS story alone redefines how fiction can bear witness to bodily dissolution. This is experimentalism in service of the visceral, not the obscure. A necessary addition to any graduate seminar on contemporary ecological or post-humanist fiction."

Merilyn Spires May 26, 2026

►"In the crowded landscape of short story collections, Charles Frode’s Dreaming of Fish stands as a singular, glittering gem, an artifact from a world where storytelling is a sacred and mystical act. From the first page, you are swept into a universe where the boundaries between the mundane and the miraculous are delightfully blurred. This is a book for those who yearn for fiction that ignites the imagination, offering a stunning array of scenarios that range from the quietly uncanny to the breathtakingly apocalyptic, all rendered with a prose that is as sharp as it is lyrical.

Each story in this collection is a perfectly constructed little universe, populated by characters that are unforgettable in their specific and often strange humanity. I found myself utterly captivated by the "You" narratives, feeling a thrilling sense of personal stake in the stories' outcomes, as if Frode had reached out and pulled me into his peculiar world. Whether he is exploring the poignant mystery of ALS, or painting the bizarre life of a hunchback and a hermaphrodite in a Greek monastery, there is a palpable sense of wonder and a deep, abiding empathy for the human (and non-human) condition. The prose is so evocative that I felt the weight of the accumulating cultures and saw the distortion of the ancient trees as vividly as a film.

This collection is nothing short of a masterpiece of the form. It is a testament to the power of fiction to not only entertain but to expand our understanding of what it means to be alive in a world that is often baffling and strange. It is charming in its audacity, compelling in its depth, and utterly impossible to put down. If you are searching for a book that will transport you, challenge you, and leave you with a profound sense of wonder, look no further. This is the literary treasure you’ve been waiting for."

Bruce Ranny July 3, 2026