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

Jane Yolen (photo: Jason Stemple), James Morrow, Jeff VanderMeer (Kyle Cassidy), Patricia A. McKillip (Stephen Gold/Wikimedia Commons), and Pat Murphy (Lawrence Person)

On INSTAGRAM, Marissa Meyer is excited about Jane Yolen’s forthcoming collection HOW TO FRACTURE A FAIRY TALE.

I am sooo honored and excited to be writing the introduction for Jane Yolen’s newest collection: HOW TO FRACTURE A FAIRY TALE! I cannot wait to read it!!!

Andrew Wheeler on THE ANTICK MUSINGS OF G.B.H. HORNSWOGGLER, GENT. praises James Morrow’s Shirley Jackson Award nominee THE ASYLUM OF DR. CALIGARI.

Morrow, here as always, has the courage of his convictions and the fervency of his belief to brush aside any concerns about plausibility or reasonableness. Yes, all of the armies of The Great War are funneling through this one small country, detouring on their way to fight each other. Yes, the paintings have mystical power, changing the men who view them forever, for good or ill. Yes, this is the only way to save the world. Yes, the paintings are more than just paint on canvas – they are real worlds of Platonic ideas, with the painting itself just a gateway.

Saying that any of that is too much to swallow is a possible reaction to a Morrow book, of course. But all of his books are entirely too much in the same way, and are too much from their very foundations – it’s like complaining that a novel has named characters who do things in a time sequence. This is a Morrow book, and he’s not about to change now – if you can come along on that journey with him, you will have an fascinating and unique ride.

Austin Farmer on his eponymous site discusses the importance of Jeff VanderMeer’s BOOKLIFE: STRATEGIES AND SURVIVAL TIPS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY WRITER.

How does this tie into BOOKLIFE? In this book, VanderMeer discusses the concepts of a Private Booklife and the Public Booklife. I realized my anxiety prevented me from starting a Public Booklife like this. But now, I’m willing to have a typo or two without a copy editor in a post like this to share such a great resource. This book was probably one of the reasons I started my website in general.

Since reading BOOKLIFE, I feel like I received the encouragement and advice I needed to start sharing more art, connecting with friends online as a fellow writer, and having the confidence to even share a blog post like this. Seriously, go read it. I am so excited to start my Public Booklife with you, and here’s a sincere thank you to Jeff VanderMeer for writing this book.

For TOR.COM, James Davis Nicoll includes Patricia A. McKillip and Pat Murphy in Fighting Erasure: Women SF Writers of the 1970s, Part VII.

At this stage of James’ Tour of Disco-Era Women SF Authors, we have reached M. Certain letters are deficient in authors whose surnames begin with that particular letter. Not so M. There is an abundance of authors whose surnames begin with M. Perhaps an excess. In fact, there are more authors named Murphy than the authors I listed whose names begin with I. Efforts to address this, by providing authors with exciting new initials, perhaps involving the exclamation mark or ampersand, have thus far been greeted with something less than enthusiasm by the powers-that-be.

Patricia A. McKillip is an author I first encountered thanks to my inability to send back the Science Fiction Book Club forms in a timely fashion (the SFBC assumed one wanted each month’s books unless readers actively told them otherwise). So, sloth for the win! Since her 1973 debut novel The House on Parchment Street, McKillip has written over two dozen novels, garnering World Fantasy Awards, Balrog Awards, Mythopoeic Awards, the Endeavour Award, as well as too many nominations to mention. 1974’s dreamlike fairy tale THE FORGOTTEN BEASTS OF ELD won the following year’s World Fantasy Award, and contemporary readers can enjoy the recent Tachyon reprint.

As established elsewhere, my favourite James Tiptree, Jr. Award co-founder Pat Murphy’s work is 1999’s There And Back Again, an SFnal reimaging of a certain tale of a reluctant burglar and his diminutive companions. For various reasons, There And Back Again is hard to find. In contrast, Murphy’s 1989 hopeful post-apocalyptic The City Not Long After, which pits a self-aggrandizing warlord bent on conquest against a seemingly defenceless artists’ colony in the ruins of San Francisco, is available from Open Road Media.

For more info on HOW TO FRACTURE A FAIRY TALE, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

For more info on THE ASYLUM OF DR. CALIGARI, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Elizabeth Story

For more info about BOOKLIFE: STRATEGIES AND SURVIVAL TIPS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY WRITER, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by John Coulthart

For more info about THE FORGOTTEN BEASTS OF ELD, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Thomas Canty

For more info about THE SHADOW HUNTER, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Rob Alexander