Tachyon tidbits featuring Jo Walton, Lavie Tidhar, Peter S. Beagle, Jacob Weisman, and Michael Swanwick
The latest reviews and mentions of Tachyon titles and authors from around the web.
Jo Walton, Lavie Tidhar (photo: Kevin Nixon. © Future Publishing 2013), Jacob Weisman & Peter S. Beagle (Jill Roberts), and Michael Swanwick (Beth Gwynn)
On B&N SCI-FI & FANTASY BLOG, Jeff Somers mentions Jo Walton’s STARLINGS in The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of January 2018.
Fans of Walton will rejoice at the variety on display in this collection (though we’d expect nothing less from an author who seems determined to never write the same book twice). She offers up short stories, poetry, and plays that explore many of her favorite themes in new and interesting ways. From a tale that follows a gold coin as it changes hands on a space station to a story about a phone app that allows you to share in a loved one’s pain and loss, Walton’s lively imagination is the main selling point, as she deluges the reader with ideas. Other standouts include a story about a biographer interviewing a simulation of a 20th century subject, three brief vignettes set at a weary inn, and, oh, the poems, which are wonderful whether or not you consider yourself a fan of the form.
Tadiana Jones delivers FANTASY LITERATURE’s third review of Lavie Tidhar’s John W. Campbell Award winner CENTRAL STATION.
CENTRAL STATION is a brilliantly imagined, vividly detailed world, where Lavie Tidhar stitches together concepts about scientific developments, the future of humanity, community and family, love, religion and individual choice, all at the same time. It’s an impressive and beautiful patchwork quilt; it’s just that there isn’t a whole lot of plot to it. CENTRAL STATION is more focused on the ideas and the characters. But what scintillating ideas, and what fascinating characters!
I think my favorite creation was Carmel, the data vampire, inflicted with the Nosferatu Virus, driven to suck data from the necks of humans who have the ubiquitous data node. Like the Shambleau of old, she is feared and hunted down by humans, but the digital Others have a particular role in mind for her.
Tidhar’s rich, allusive writing contains a wealth of ideas and a breathtaking vision for what humanity may become. In the vast differences between the various types of characters, it becomes clear that it’s the similarities that are most important, connecting people in all our diversity. While I would have like a more fully developed plot, in the end I felt like I had gained in insight and compassion by being immersed in the day-to-day world of the people of CENTRAL STATION.
For THE ANTICK MUSINGS OF G. B. H. HORNSWOGGLER, GENT., Andrew Wheeler recounts the past year with mentions of Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman’s THE NEW VOICES OF FANTASY and Michael Swanwick’s NOT SO MUCH SAID THE CAT.
Every year, I do this post for New Year’s Day, linking the first and last (with some wiggle room for comprehensibility) sentences of each month of the past year to the posts where those sentences appeared.
Yes, it was once a meme. No one else does it anymore, which means it belong to me, now. Surely adverse possession can happen virtually as well?
Michael Swanwick’s last big collection of short stories was 2007’s The Dog Said Bow-Wow, which somewhat explains the title of last year’s NOT SO MUCH SAID THE CAT.
For more info on STARLINGS, visit the Tachyon page.
Cover design by Elizabeth Story
For more info about CENTRAL STATION, visit the Tachyon page.
Cover by Sarah Anne Langton
For more info about THE NEW VOICES OF FANTASY, visit the Tachyon page.
Cover art by Camille André
Cover design by Elizabeth Story
For more info on NOT SO MUCH, SAID THE CAT, visit the Tachyon page.
Cover design by Elizabeth Story
