The incomparable grandmaster Harlan Ellison was born 88 years ago
(Credit: Barbara Alper/Getty Images/New York Times)
Once described by Robert Bloch as “the only living organism I know whose natural habitat is hot water,” the contentious writer/editor Harlan Ellison in a 60 year career produced more than 75 books, over 1,700 stories, essays, articles, and newspaper columns, two dozen teleplays, and a dozen movies. His many influential works included classics as Deathbird Stories, Dangerous Visions, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Strangewine, Angry Candy, Slippage, and SHATTERDAY.
In his extraordinary career, Ellison won multiple Hugo, Nebula, Edgar, Stoker, Locus, Audie awards as well as the Silver Pen, World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Bradbury, and American Mystery awards. He was honored with Stoker and World Fantasy Life Achievement Awards and is a SFWA Grandmaster.
Happy birthday to the exceptional Caitlín R. Kiernan
Born in Dublin, Ireland, and raised in the southeastern U.S., writer, vertebrate paleontologist, and musician Caitlín R. Kiernan is the author of thirteen acclaimed novels including Silk (1998; winner of International Horror Guild Award), Threshold (2001; International Horror Guild), Murder of Angels (2004), The Red Tree (2009), The Drowning Girl (2012; Tiptree and Stoker), the Siobhan Quinn series (all as by Kathleen Tierney; Blood Oranges [2013], Red Delicious [2014], and Cherry Bomb [2015]), Tinfoil Dossier (Agents of Dreamland [2017], Black Helicopters [2018], The Tindalos Asset [2020]), and La Belle Fleur Sauvage: Plague of the Womb (2019).
Design by Elizabeth Story
Their more than two hundred and fifty short stories have been collected in Candles for Elizabeth (1998), Tales of Pain and Wonder (1999), Wrong Things (2001 with Poppy Z. Brite), To Charles Fort, with Love (2005), A Is for Alien (2009), Two Worlds and In Between (2011), Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart (2012), The Ape’s Wife and Other Stories (2013; winner of the World Fantasy Award), Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea (2015), Dear Sweet Filthy World (2017), The Dinosaur Tourist (2018), Houses Under the Sea (2019), A Little Yellow Book of Fever Dreams (2019), THE VERY BEST OF CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN (2019), Comes a Pale Rider (2020), Vile Affections (2021), and several others.
Kiernan has written graphic novels for both DC/Vertigo and Dark Horse Comics including The Dreaming (1996-2001 with various artists), a spin off series from Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, and the Stoker Award winning Alabaster: Wolves (2013; with artist Steve Lieber). They fronted Death’s Little Sister, a short-lived goth-rock band.
A vertebrate paleontologist, Kiernan co-founded the Birmingham Paleontological Society (1984). They co-authored papers describing a new genus and species of an ancient marine lizard the mosasaur Selmasaurus russelli (1988) and in 2020, a new large fossil sea turtle, Asmodochelys parhami. In 2019, Kiernan became a research associate and fossil preparator at McWane Science Center in Birmingham, Alabama.
In November 2005, they began publishing the Sirenia Digest, “a monthly subscription-only e-zine continuing Caitlín’s exploration of the fusion of erotic literature with elements of dark fantasy and science fiction, usually creating brief, dreamlike vignettes, and sometimes much longer short stories.” There are currently sixty-six issues and more than eighty vignettes.
Kiernan lives in Birmingham, Alabama with their partner, Kathryn Pollnac, and two very large cats, Selwyn and Lydia.
All of us at Tachyon wish the lyrical and memorable Caitlín a happy birthday, full of dark fantasy and dinosaurs.
Join David Ebenbach, Sam J. Miller, Patrick O’Leary, and Kimberly Unger for Awesome Con 2022
Tachyon authors David Ebenbach (HOW TO MARS), Sam J. Miller (BOYS, BEASTS & MEN), Patrick O’Leary (51), and Kimberly Unger (THE EXTRACTIONIST, NUCLEATION) are all attending this years Awesome Con, June 3-5 at Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.
Awesome Con is Washington DC’s Comic Con! We’re a star-studded celebration of geek culture, bringing over 70,000 fans together with their favorite stars from across comics, movies, television, toys, games, and more! And just like DC, we’re smart, family-friendly, and inclusive – as Awesome Con is home to:
Awesome Con
Science Fair, an area of Awesome Con exploring where science and science fiction meet!
Book Fair, THE area of Awesome Con for passionate book dragons, dewy-eyed indie authors, casual readers, and lit lovers of all ages!
Awesome Con Jr, an all-ages destination for the next generation of fans
Pride Alley, a celebration of queer creators and fans curated by GeeksOUT
Destination Cosplay, an area of Awesome Con for cosplay fanatics with photo opportunities, Cosplay Meetups, and much much more!
Design by Elizabeth Story
David Ebenbach, Sam J. Miller, Patrick O’Leary, and Kimberly Unger are all participating in the varied and extensive Awesome Con programming.
Friday June 3
3:30 PM
Creative Worldbuilding in Fiction
Building a fully fleshed out world is the first step in making your creation real to the reader. Unless you can fully understand the world in which your characters live, you won’t be able to effectively write about their experiences. Another incredible part of worldbuilding in fiction is taking your readers into a completely fantasical and magical place. Let’s explore how a fictitious world can seem completely real while overwhelmingly magical through excellent writing.
Panelists: Sam J. Miller (Boys, Beasts & Men), Patrick O’Leary (51), Kami Garcia (Beautiful Creatures), E.J. Wenstrom (Rain – Chronicles of the Third Realm War), Megan Lynch (moderator)
Saturday June 4
12:30 PM
Writing the Tech of the Future
No one knows what the future holds, but it’s exciting to imagine what technology can be and then see it imagined as reality through writing. Join Kimberly Unger, author of the virtual reality science-fiction thriller Nucleation and game designer, Patrick O’Leary, science fiction author of Fifty One and Door Number Three, Dr. Timothy Brown, author of Black Panther and Philosophy: What Can Wakanda Offer the World, and David Ebenbach, science fiction author of How to Mars, for this conversation about writing the what-ifs and the realities of the world of tech and science fiction.
Panelists: Patrick O’Leary (51), Kimberly Unger (The Extractionist), Dr. Timothy Brown (Black Panther and Philosophy), David Ebenbach (How to Mars), Jonathan Williams (moderator)
Sunday June 5
11 AM
SFF Author and Real World Ideas
How do real world religious beliefs, political doctrines, and views on society impact science fiction/fantasy writers, and the direction they take in their novels? This panel will explore how personal beliefs and reality can become subtly infused into science fiction/fantasy works. Explore how the lines between SFF and reality become blurred in this can’t miss conversation among well-known authors.
Panelists: Sam J. Miller (Boys, Beasts & Men), Patrick O’Leary (51), Kimberly Unger (The Extractionist), David Ebenbach (How to Mars), Emily Whitten (moderator)
2 PM
Ask an Author
Interested in becoming an author? Curious what it takes to go the distance as a writer? Your burning and bookish questions will be answered during this Q&A session with a variety of established authors across various genres including fiction, fantasy, science fiction, technology, and more.
Panelists: Sam J. Miller (Boys, Beasts & Men), Patrick O’Leary (51), Kimberly Unger (The Extractionist), David Ebenbach (How to Mars), Emily Whitten (moderator)
The incomparable W. P. Kinsella was born 87 years ago
Though now best remembered for his baseball stories, the incomparable W. P. Kinsella first established his literary reputation with his humorous and gritty short stories about the Hobbema Reserve in central Alberta. These tales, largely narrated by Silas Ermineskin, usually focused sympathetically on the lives of Indigenous people in their perennial skirmishes with blundering white institutions and bureaucracies. The first of Kinsella’s many short story collections Dance Me Outside (1977) featured the Hobbema tales. His other collection of the Hobbema stories include Scars (1978), Born Indian (1981), Moccasin Telegraph (1983), The Fencepost Chronicles (1986), The Miss Hobbema Pageant (1989), Brother Frank’s Gospel Hour (1994), and The Secret of the Northern Lights (1998).
Kinsella’s first collection of baseball stories Shoeless Joe Jackson Comes To Iowa (1980) presaged his classic magic realism novel Shoeless Joe (1982), which won the Canadian Authors Association Prize, the Alberta Achievement Award, Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship. The novel was adapted into the popular movie Field of Dreams (1989) and garnered three Academy Award nominations for Best Original Score, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Picture. He produced four other baseball novels: The Iowa Baseball Confederacy (1986), If Wishes Were Horses (1996), Magic Time (1998), and Butterfly Winter (2011). Kinsella’s baseball stories were also collected in The Thrill of the Grass (1984), The Further Adventures of Slugger McBatt (1988), The Dixon Cornbelt League and Other Baseball Stories (1993), and Japanese Baseball and Other Stories (2000). He co-wrote the Japanese non-fiction book Ichiro Dreams: Ichiro Suzuki and the Seattle Mariners (2002). Kinsella edited two baseball anthologies, the non-fiction Diamonds Forever: Reflections from the Field, the Dugout, and the Bleachers (1997) and the fiction Baseball Fantastic (2001).
His other novels and collections include Box Socials (1991), The Winter Helen Dropped By (1994), The Alligator Report (1985), Red Wolf, Red Wolf (1987), and Russian Dolls (2016). Tachyon was honored to produce THE ESSENTIAL W. P. KINSELLA (2015), the last collection to be published during Kinsella’s lifetime.
Celebrate the first publication anniversary of David Ebenbach’s funny, fresh, and winsome HOW TO MARS with a special one day event!
One year ago, Tachyon wowed the world with the release of David Ebenbach’s interplanetary delight HOW TO MARS. In celebration of this momentous occasion, Tachyon Publications is offering the title that Booklist described as “Andy Weir’s The Martian (2014) infused with poetry in a superbly concise package” for 20% off TODAY (MAY 24)!*
HOW TO MARS
by
David Ebenbach
ISBN: Print ISBN: 9781616963569: Digital ISBN: 9781616963576
Published: May 2021
Available Format(s): Trade Paperback and Digital
A poignant examination of what it means to be human.
—Kirkus
What happens when your dream mission to Mars is a reality television nightmare? This debut science-fiction romp with heart follows the tradition of Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles, with a dash of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and The Real World.
For the six lucky scientists selected by the Destination Mars! corporation, a one-way ticket to Mars—in exchange for a lifetime of research—was an absolute no-brainer. The incredible opportunity was clearly worth even the most absurdly tedious screening process. Perhaps worth following the strange protocols in a nonsensical handbook written by an eccentric billionaire. Possibly even worth their constant surveillance, the video of which is carefully edited into a ratings-bonanza back on Earth.
But it turns out that after a while even scientists can get bored of science. Tempers begin to fray; unsanctioned affairs blossom. When perfectly good equipment begins to fail, the Marsonauts are faced with a possibility that their training just cannot explain.
Irreverent, poignant, and perfectly weird, David Ebenbach’s debut science-fiction outing, like a mission to Mars, is an incredible trip you will never forget.
Among scenes that find the six establishing mundane Martian routines come riotous clips from the Destination Mars! handbook, flashbacks to the torturous tests that Destination Mars! subjected its applicants to, and notes from the field (both the Martian landscape, and the six’s internal topographies). The combination is irresistible fun. Through its heartbreaks and surprises, How to Mars is an interplanetary delight.
—Foreword
*Sale is from Wednesday May 24 12AM PT through May 25 12AM PT. Includes print and digital. Free medial mail within continental US
Jazz great Sidney Bechet was born 125 years ago
Born in New Orleans on May 14, 1897, Sidney Bechet was the first great Jazz clarinetist. He famously performed with many famous musicians including Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker, and Josephine Baker. A master of improvisation, Bechet often played lead parts that were usually reserved for trumpets.
In 2004, Tachyon produced a chapbook of Bechet’s OMAR, a tale of of passion, danger, and betrayal in the Bayou. Infused with voodoo, love, music, and death, the chronicle is wrought out of a brutal period in American history, passed down by a family born into slavery. It is jazz legend Sidney Bechet’s story.
Sidney Bechet died in Paris on May 14, 1959 at the age of 62.
Are you a bookseller attending New Voices, New Rooms? Pick up arcs of forthcoming Tachyon titles from Naseem Jamnia, Sam J. Miller, and Lavie Tidhar
Design by Elizabeth Story
For attendees of New Voices, New Rooms (May 17-18), Tachyon is offering digital arcs of Lavie Tidhar’s NEOM, Sam J. Miller’s BOYS, BEASTS & MEN, and Naseem Jaminia’s THE BRUISING OF QILWA.
Fresh and innovative virtual trade show and programming created by NAIBA and SIBA for booksellers and industry.
New Voices, New Rooms
Going to Turin International Book Fair? Visit with Joe R. Lansdale and Lavie Tidhar while you’re there
Edgar Award winner Joe R. Lansdale (BORN FOR TROUBLE), World Fantasy Award winner Lavie Tidhar (THE ESCAPEMENT), and Tachyon publicist Kasey Lansdale are attending Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino (Turin International Book Fair) in Turin, Italy, May 19-23.
Every year in Turin in the frame of the Lingotto Fiere the entire book supply chain gathers: publishing houses, writers, booksellers, librarians, agents, illustrators, translators and many, many readers. For publishers, from large groups to independents, the Show is the most important opportunity to sell and present editorial news. For all readers, the Salone is a great international culture festival: 2,000 guests from all over the world for a total of 1,200 events. Every year the authors who have made the history of literature of the twentieth century and our century arrive at the Salone.
Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino (translation courtesy of Google)
Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino offers a massive programming schedule including events featuring Joe R Lansdale and Lavie Tidhar.
May 21 7:30PM
50 years of Fanucci Editore
At what point is science fiction? The ideas, discoveries, history and stories of the publisher who marked a literary genre
With Simone Bonaccorso, Aurora Cancian, Loredana Lipperini, Maurizio Manzieri, Lavie Tidhar and Francesco Verso
(translation courtesy of Google)
May 22 2:45pm
Joe R. Lansdale with Davide Longo
Join Edgar Award winner David Liss for the 10th Annual San Antonio Book Festival
David Liss, author of the acclaimed THE PECULIARITIES, is attending the San Antonio Book Festival on Saturday May 21.
The San Antonio Book Festival unites readers and writers in a celebration of ideas, books, libraries, and literary culture.
San Antonio Book Festival mission
The festival hosts several speaking events including one featuring Liss.
12:15 PM
Texans Talk: A Conversation with Stephen Harrigan and David Liss
(followed by a signing)