cigar-box faust

September 23, 2021

Join Peter S. Beagle and Michael Swanwick at Capclave 2021

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Tachyon authors Peter S. Beagle and Michael Swanwick are attending Capclave 2021 in Rockville, Maryland, October 1-3.

Sponsored by the Washington Science Fiction Association, Capclave is a small relaxed literary convention with a program that usually focuses on the short fiction form. Guests of Honor and other notable authors, editors, artists, and fans of the short fiction form will explore the creation and enjoyment of short fantasy and science fiction genre stories.

Both Beagle and Swanwick will be participating in many of Capclave’s large selection of readings, signings, and panels.

Friday Oct 1

7PM

I’ve Done My Research & You’re Going to Like It

Participants: Mark Huston, Alan Smale (M), Michael Swanwick, Darcy Wold
Writers will often do extensive (and possibly even excessive) background research in the service of worldbuilding, character development and setting description. How much of this research is safe to include in the final story? How do you avoid pulling the readers down the rabbit hole of unneeded detail? What can you do to make the results of your research intriguing and entertaining, rather than boring?

Saturday Oct 2

11AM

Non-Traditional Protagonists

Participants: Peter S. Beagle, Mary Fan, Aliza Greenblatt, J. S. Kelley, Jennifer Povey (M)
The typical protagonist is an unmarried young white male (or more recently female). But what about protagonists who don’t fit this mold. What about older characters, non-white characters, and characters with disabilities or handicaps? How does changing the protagonist change the story? And are there stories that require such a character to be told?

1PM

Yesterday’s Tomorrows and Today’s Futures

Participants: Eric Flint, Carolyn Ives Gilman, Sarah Pinsker, Michael Swanwick, David Walton (M), Ted Weber
Writers of SF’s golden age considered the year 2021 to be the distant future. How does our present compare with what they envisioned? What did they get right and wrong? Why did they imagine this future world as they did? What did they never imagine changing and what unconscious assumptions proved to be completely incorrect? How are today’s writers making similar mistakes with the unconscious assumptions about today’s world? What futures might emerge from our own day?

2PM

All Writing is Political

Participants: Natalie Luhrs, Michael Swanwick, Caias Ward, Joy Ward, A.C. Wise (M)
Some critics say SF, Fantasy, and Comics have become too political. Has there been a change in the political content from the days of Brave New World, 1984, and Starship Troopers? Should entertainment be free from politics? Is it even possible? When something claims to be apolitical, what is it actually supporting? How can we be more conscious of the political implications of our own work?

3PM

Guest of Honor Interview — Peter S. Beagle

Ghost Stories

Participants: Tom Doyle, Dina Leacock, Darrell Schweitzer (M), Michael Swanwick, A.C. Wise
Humans have been telling ghost stories since the first campfire. Peter S. Beagle has ghosts in ‘A Fine and Private Place’ and ‘Tamsin’. What is so attractive about ghosts? How are ghosts used in fiction – both in scary stories and non-horror fantasies? Are ghosts more important in cultures with religions focused on the afterlife? What are some of the best ghost stories in fiction? Do you believe in ghosts and if so why?

4PM

Author Reading — Michael Swanwick

Sunday Oct 3

11AM

A Century of Robots

John Ashmead (M), Jennifer Povey, Michael Swanwick, Joy Ward
The play RUR (Rossum’s Universal Robots) premiered in January 1921. This play was the first to use the word robot for a scientifically created mechanical worker. Why has the concept of robots been so popular? How have robots evolved in fiction?

Convincing Fantasies

Participants: Scott H. Andrews, Peter S. Beagle, Leah Cypess, Karlo Yeager Rodriguez, Jean Marie Ward (M)
Some fantasies ring true while others just lie flat. What makes some fantasies work and others not? Is it the background? The magic system? The political or economic structure? Or the writing? What can writers do to make their worlds more convincing?

November 18, 2016

Happy birthday to the incredible Michael Swanwick

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Photo by Beth Gwynn

One of the most
acclaimed science-fiction and fantasy short-story writers of his
generation, Michael Swanwick won an extraordinary five Hugo Awards
in six years (1999-2000 and 2002-2004). His stories also garnered
World Fantasy, Theodore Sturgeon, Asimov’s Readers’ Awards, Locus,
and SF Chronicle awards. Swanwick’s STATIONS OF THE TIDE (1991) won
the prestigious Nebula Award for Best Novel.

His other novels
include IN THE DRIFT (1985), VACUUM FLOWERS (1987), JACK FAUST
(1997), and BONES OF THE EARTH (2002). The many collections of
Swanwick’s numerous acclaimed short tales include GRAVITY’S ANGELS
(1991), TALES OF OLD EARTH (2000), CIGAR-BOX FAUST AND OTHER MINATURES (2003), MICHAEL SWANWICK’S FIELD GUIDE TO THE MESOZOIC MEGAFAUNA (2004), THE DOG SAID BOW-WOW (2007), THE BEST OF MICHAEL
SWANWICK (2008), SOLSTICE FIRE (2013), SEASON’S GREETINGS (2014), and
NOT SO MUCH SAID THE CAT (2016).

OMNI, PENTHOUSE,
AMAZING, ASIMOV’S SCIENCE FICTION, NEW DIMENSIONS, and FULL
SPECTRUM number among the many venues with Swanwick’s short
fiction. A frequent contributor to the NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE
FICTION, he previously published the controversial essays on the
state of the science fiction and fantasy fields: The
User’s Guide to the Postmoderns (1986) and “In the Tradition…” (1994).
Both
essays were collected in THE POSTMODERN ARCHIPELAGO (1997).

All of us at Tachyon wish the extraordinary Micheal an amazing birthday.

For more information on NOT SO MUCH, SAID THE CAT, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

For more info on GRAVITY’S ANGELS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Michael Dashow

For more info on TALES OF OLD EARTH, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Michael Dashow

For more info on CIGAR-BOX FAUST AND OTHER MINIATURES, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Freddie Baer

For more info on MICHAEL SWANWICK’S FIELD GUIDE TO THE MESOZOIC MEGAFAUNA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law

For more info on THE DOG SAID BOW-WOW, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Ann Monn

For more info on THE POSTMODERN ARCHIPELAGO, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Michael Dashow

October 26, 2016

Tachyon tidbits featuring Peter S. Beagle, Nalo Hopkinson, and Michael Swanwick

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized anglia ruskin unversity, Ann Monn, beauty in ruins, bob r milne, carl slaughter, cigar-box faust, cigar-box faust and other minatures, collection, elizabeth story, fantasy, farah mendlesohn, file 770, freddie baer, in calabria, magdalena korzeniewska, mailbox monday, michael swanwick, michael swanwick's field guide to the mesozoic megafauna, nalo hopkinson, peter s beagle, review, short stories, stacking the shelves, stephanie pui-mun law, summerlong, the dog said bow-wow, the emerald city book review, twitter

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

Peter S. Beagle (photo: Rina Weisman), Nalo Hopkinson (David Findlay), and Michael Swanwick (Beth Gwinn)

THE EMERALD CITY BOOK REVIEW praises Peter S. Beagle’s SUMMERLONG.

The Puget Sound setting and mythological overtones of Peter S. Beagle’s new novel, SUMMERLONG, made it sound irresistible to me — and it turned out to be a lovely end-of-summer read.

I really appreciated how Beagle treated the theme of mature love and relationships, a subject not often approached in fantasy fiction these days. He’s brave enough to acknowledge that some hurts cannot easily be healed, that endings in life are often not as tidy as turning the last page of a book. I liked seeing the characters constantly evolve, as old routines die away and new capacities come to light — being retirement age doesn’t mean losing one’s capacity to learn and grow, after all.

I did find that I enjoyed the build-up of the story, characters, and the setting — which is very vividly and accurately evoked — more than the denouement. To me the mythological aspects were more effective when hinted at than when overtly referenced. Still, the world and people of Summerlong will linger in my memory for more than a season, leaving traces of beauty, wisdom, and heartache behind.

For the weekly memes Stacking The Shelves and Mailbox Monday that are about sharing the books that came your way over the past week, and which you’ve added to your shelves, Bob R Milne of BEAUTY IN RUINS includes Peter S. Beagle’s forthcoming novel IN CALABRIA.

While I’ve pretty much cut myself off for new 2016 titles (with one exception below), I couldn’t resist a pair of review titles hitting shelves in the new year:

IN CALABRIA by Peter S. Beagle

THE DEAD SEEKERS by Barb & J.C. Hendee

WISE PHUUL by Daniel Stride

Via TWITTER, Professor Farah Mendlesohn, Head of the Department of English, Communication, Film and Media, presents Anglia Ruskin’s newest Doctor of Letters Nalo Hopkinson.

Nalo Hopkinson and Farah Mendlesohn

At FILE 770, Carl Slaughter gets the inside scoop behind Michael Swanwick’s short story collections.

In exclusive for FILE 770, to celebrate the publication of NOT SO MUCH, SAID THE CAT, which came out this summer, Michael Swanwick gives us the inside story on his collections.

MICHAEL SWANWICK: CIGAR-BOX FAUST gathers together pretty much all my flash fiction written to that point, save for the 26 short-shorts in Puck Aleshire’s Abecedary. The title piece was a short drama written in one day for a cigar-box theater and a cast made up of a cigar cutter, a box of matches and, in the title role, the cigar itself.

Marianne came home from work that day and asked, “What’s new?” I sat her down at the kitchen table, placed the cigar box between us, and said, “Watch.

MICHAEL SWANWICK: “I don’t think you understand how many genera of dinosaurs there are,” I replied when my editor at HarperCollins suggested that as a promotional device, I should write a brief story for every genus. But I was happy to write a goodly number, which were serialized on the Web to draw attention to my paleontology novel, BONES OF THE EARTH.

Jacob Weisman, God bless him, liked the series, added “Five British Dinosaurs,” which had appeared in Interzone, and published them all in chapbook form with lovely illustrations by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law.

I had great fun including some of my pals in the paleontologist community in the fictions. Ralph Chapman got to see his Pachycephalosaurus theories tested in the wild. Bob Walters was stranded in the Campanian Age when a hadrosaur crushed his time machine. Tom Holtz got eaten by a tyrannosaur. And Tess Kissinger went for a midnight ride with Ray Harryhausen in a pair of robot theropods.

Never let it be said that I don’t know how to show my friends a good time.

MICHAEL SWANWICK: One story was nominated for the Nebula Award and four for the Hugo Award. Of those four, three won. Introduction by Terry Bisson.

My third decade collection arrived three years early. It was named after “The Dog Said Bow-Wow,” the first Darger & Surplus story and easily one of the most popular stories I ever wrote. At the time the collection came out, there were only three stories in the series, all of which were included. Someday there will be a full collection’s worth. But that day, alas, is not here yet.

For more info on SUMMERLONG, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Magdalena Korzeniewska

Design by Elizabeth Story

For more info about IN CALABRIA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

For more info on CIGAR-BOX FAUST AND OTHER MINATURES, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Freddie Baer

For more info on MICHAEL SWANWICK’S
FIELD GUIDE TO THE MESOZOIC MEGAFAUNA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law

For more info on THE DOG SAID BOW-WOW, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Ann Monn

Tachyon Publications

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