In celebration of the release of Sam J. Miller’s debut collection BOYS, BEASTS & MEN, Tachyon presents glimpses from the new collection.

 “Miller’s (The Blade Between, 2020) debut story collection gathers together a large selection of his short fiction. Most stories use various fantastical devices to reflect on gay men, their families, or their lovers. Some stories are sf, like ‘We Are the Cloud,’ where a young gay Black man deals with the insecurity of newfound love as well as the dataport in his neck, or Miller’s rewriting of John Carpenter’s horror classic The Thing as a story of AIDS and the closet in ‘Things With Beards.’ Others are more fantastical or gothic such as ‘The Heat of Us: Notes Toward an Oral History,’ where the rage of the Stonewall Riots results in literal pyrokinesis or the fictional famous gay artist created by three men with AIDS (an echo of Miller’s last novel) in ‘Angel, Monster, Man.’ Even the stories that don’t feature gay relationships directly, such as the internal monologue of a Salvation Army chair in ‘Sun in an Empty Room,’ feature Miller’s frequent concerns of longing, heartbreak, and the deep desire for, but great difficulty of, love. Highly recommended for any reader interested in speculative fiction that concerns itself with queer themes, particularly messy or emotional ones.”

—Booklist

The previews included:

• Allosaurus Burgers
• Angel, Monster, Man
• The Heat of Us: Notes Toward an Oral History
• Shattered Sidewalks of the Human Heart
• When Your Child Strays from God