The latest reviews and mentions of Tachyon titles from around the web.

Patricia A. McKillip (Wikimedia Commons), Alastair Reynolds (Photo: Barbera Bella), and Ellen Datlow (Photo: Gregory Frost)

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY honored Patricia A. McKillip’s forthcoming collection DREAMS OF DISTANT SHORES with a starred review.

McKillip (WONDERS OF THE INVISIBLE WORLD), winner of the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, collects nine dazzling shorter pieces (both originals and reprints) in this outstanding collection.

Beyond the short fiction, the volume finishes with an essay on writing high fantasy, and an appreciation of McKillip’s work by renowned fantasist Peter S. Beagle. Fans of exquisite prose and ethereal fantasy will need to own this.

In the print publication of The Science Fiction Foundation FOUNDATION #123, Will Slocombe praises a pair of books by Alastair Reynolds: POSEIDON’S WAKE and SLOW BULLETS.

Fast forward to another Reynolds story. We’re no longer in the same
universe as the Poseidon’s Children books, but in the novella SLOW BULLETS, Reynolds returns to the far future of humanity that has given him such fertile imaginative ground in his previous fiction. As with POSEIDON’S WAKE, however, this feels like a more mature Reynolds at work; despite the setting, SLOW BULLETS is again not Reynolds dealing with galaxy-spanning action, but a tightly-written, claustrophobic tale of a group of disparate individuals trapped on a spaceship. Everything is falling apart here – social cohesion, humanity, the spaceship itself, even individual identities.

Reynolds’ exploration of this idea in SLOW BULLETS is, again, not showy. It’s a slow burn of a novella, not a bright flare, and all the better for it. There are no grand revelations or epiphanies, but instead a gradual building and dissipation of tensions, alongside a form of narration that keeps the reader questioning what is being presented. What both POSEIDON’S WAKE and SLOW BULLETS suggest is that Reynolds has yet again managed to switch tones and styles in his writing, but retain his sense of perspective and invention to still keep readers hooked. It also suggests that what comes after will probably be something completely different again, and I for one am intrigued to know what that will be like.

Ellen Datlow and Matthew Kressel joined Fran Wilde on her Cooking the Books podcast to discuss KGB, upcoming events, anthologies, novels, fantastic fiction, and great places to eat in NYC (as well as their favorite recipes). 

As well, Ellen’s
garlic chicken recipe is in the podcast along with Matt’s horror
story of rice-based flour incidents. Matt’s recipe is, as tradition
goes, below. They also talk about their wonderful recent and upcoming
publications including Matthew’s Worldmender trilogy (including
2015’s KING OF SHARDS), and Ellen’s NIGHTMARES (Tachyon, Fall
2016), CHILDREN OF LOVECRAFT (Dark Horse, September 2016), and THE
BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR, VOLUME 8 (NSB, June 2016).

For more info about DREAMS OF DISTANT SHORES, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Thomas Canty

For more info about SLOW BULLETS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Thomas Canty

Design by Elizabeth Story

For more info about NIGHTMARES: A NEW DECADE OF MODERN HORROR, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Nihil

Design by Elizabeth Story