clarkesworld

December 12, 2019

PETER WATTS IS AN ANGRY SENTIENT TUMOR is an exciting and energizing journey

Alec Checkerfield blog alle bücher müssen gelesen werden, arley song, beyond the rift, clarkesworld, death is bad, dispatches from the the end of historicity, hyperobjective, interview, marissa lingen, mayfly, novel gazing redux, Peter Watts, peter watts is an angry sentient tumor, podcast, review, strange horizons, the freeze frame revolution, vivian wagner

Over at STRANGE HORIZONS, Vivian Wagner in a lengthy review praises PETER WATTS IS AN ANGRY SENTIENT TUMOR.

Collected from his blog, The ‘Crawl, and other sources, these essays often take the form of rants, but they’re endearing and engaging ones. Watts, a former marine biologist and Hugo Award-winning Canadian science fiction writer, rails against climate change one moment and movingly describes his relationship with a cat the next. You never know where his writing’s going to lead, and reading his essays is an exciting, energizing, and occasionally bewildering journey.

In this entertaining overview, Marissa Lingen at NOVEL GAZING REDUX enjoys the collection.

As with any contentious blogger, you’ll probably find at least some of the posts/essays in here to cheerfully disagree with–or to bury your head in your hands, groan, and wish you could disagree with. But remember: the reader expectations should be set pretty clearly. This is what it says on the tin. Not: Peter Watts Is An Angry Sentient Tumor But Look! A Butterfly! or Peter Watts Seems Like An Angry Sentient Tumor But In Just Three Essays You’ll Find Out How He Learned To Play His Cares Away On The Ukulele–And So Can You! There’s a lot of climate change realism, a lot of anger at police brutality and surveillance state assholery, a lot of frustration at entirely valid frustrating human behavior. Also a little bit of talking out his ass about YA fiction, some movie reviews, mourning for some much-loved humans and cats. This is a set of blog posts, not a two-minutes’ hate, no matter how well-directed. It’s easy to slip into “just one more” here even when you’re wincing and going “oh God too much truth.” Just a little more truth though, just one more blog post worth of truth before I go back to my fever dreams….

For CLARKESWORLD, Arley Song interviews Watts.

The table of contents for PETER WATTS IS AN ANGRY SENTIENT TUMOR offers everything from “Why I Suck” to “Pearls Before Cows: Thoughts on Blade Runner 2049.” Is there an organizational principle at work behind what pieces were in the collection? Are there new pieces only available in the book?

You’ll have to ask Jacob (my editor at Tachyon) about any grand organizational architecture; I handed him a bunch of pieces and he made the selection. I did serve them up according to theme—Reviews, Writing, Science, and so on—but they all ended up getting mooshed into a single unpartitioned volume.

Tumor is a reprint collection; the only piece that hasn’t previously appeared anywhere on the planet is my Introduction. That said, you’d have to be one hard-core fan to have seen it all before. If you’ve only followed my blog you won’t have seen the Nowa Fantastyka columns that appeared only in Poland; if you’ve devoured those columns in their original Polish you might not have seen essays that appeared in places like Aeon and The Daily. It doesn’t break physics to posit a fan so devoted they’ve stalked me across the Internet and into every dead-tree venue I’ve ever written for, but it is vanishingly unlikely.

November 5, 2019

Bringing The Pieces Together: Three Interviews with Tachyon creators

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized all worlds are real, arley song, bending the moon, clarkesworld, elizabeth story, Ellen Datlow, hannu rajaniemi, interview, jacob weisman, josh beatman, kirkus, matt dixon, susan palwick, the cutting room, the new voices of science fiction

For CLARKESWORLD, Arley Sorg interviewed the World Fantasy Award winning Tachyon publisher/editor Jacob Weisman about his latest anthology THE NEW VOICES OF SCIENCE FICTION.

You had the successful, World Fantasy Award-winning THE NEW VOICES OF FANTASY in 2017, coedited by Peter S. Beagle. Now you have the November 2019 release THE NEW VOICES OF SCIENCE FICTION coedited with Summerland author Hannu Rajaniemi. How did you pick your coeditors for these anthologies?

The New Voices of Fantasy was created with Peter S. Beagle in mind. I’d published several of his story collections and one anthology, The Secret History of Fantasy,
so we had a very good working relationship. I also felt that this was
the perfect book for Peter. He had very much been one of the loudest new
voices himself back in the early 1960s, just as he is now an elder
statesman. Peter had started his career precociously, selling his
classic novel, A Fine and Private Place, at the age of 19 and publishing it by the time he was 20. I couldn’t imagine a better collaborator for this book.

The decision to work with Hannu Rajaniemi was somewhat different. I
enjoyed working with Peter on the fantasy volume and I knew I wanted to
publish a companion volume dedicated to SF. Hannu had been in the
fantasy volume I’d edited with Peter, I’d recently published Hannu’s
short story collection, and he’d just moved to San Francisco. Everything
with Hannu just fell into place.

Sorg also interviews acclaimed author Susan Palwick at CLARKESWORLD.

Your second collection, All Worlds Are Real,
is due out from Fairwood Press in November 2019. How did the collection
come about, and what was the process of putting it together like for
you? Do you see the collection as thematic, or is it more a “Best Of”?

The book came about because I’d published a bunch of
stories since my first collection came out in 2007. A couple had been
reprinted in “Best Of” anthologies, but I wanted them all in one place,
between covers, so they wouldn’t fade into oblivion. So, while there are
certainly themes that wind through the collection, because they’re
perennial preoccupations of mine—community, faith, loss, existence on
the margins—the collection’s neither consciously thematic nor a “Best
Of.” It’s more of an omnibus (a modest one, because my output’s so
small).

Putting it together involved striving for balance. I tried to
alternate different kinds of narration (voice, gender, POV). I’ve
sometimes been described as a “women’s writer,” a label I loathe—I
certainly address feminist concerns, but I see them more generally as
human concerns—but many of the stories in the collection, almost half,
are narrated by men.

The trickiest thing was producing new material. As I’ve mentioned, I
write very slowly, but I wanted three new stories in the book. I managed
to push out three stories in three months, which is something of a
record. They’re all very short, though!

Meanwhile over at KIRKUS, John DeNardo talks with superstar editor Ellen Datlow about her latest book Echoes.

Photo courtesy of Brent N. Clarke/FilmMagic

Echoes is not the first ghost-themed anthology Datlow has
edited. You might say ghost stories have been part of her entire life.
“I’ve enjoyed all kinds of supernatural stories since I was a child,”
says Datlow, “among them ghost stories. But I only started separating
them out, if you will, from the rest of the supernatural, with my
anthology The Dark [Tor Books, 2003]. Some ghost stories not
only play on our fear of death and what’s beyond, but they can be quite
moving, avoiding what we think of as ‘horror.’ I’d read (and loved) a
few heartbreaking ghost stories in the ’90s, and those stories inspired
me to create an anthology of much darker tales. Hence, The Dark. Then, several years later I edited HAUNTINGS [Tachyon Publications, 2013], a reprint anthology of ghost stories/hauntings originally published between 1982 and 2012.”

Echoes is predominantly founded on new original ghost stories.
It includes stories by Pat Cadigan, Aliette de Bodard, Brian Evenson,
Jeffrey Ford, Seanan McGuire, Garth Nix, Joyce Carol Oates, A. C. Wise,
and others. “I’d been wanting to edit another anthology of original
ghost stories for the past five years or so, and I approached Joe Monti
at Saga about the idea,” she says. “He was interested, I solicited
stories from a host of writers, chose two classics and one other
reprint, and voila!” The result is a massive 800-page anthology offering
30 stories designed to leave you unsettled.

For more info about THE NEW VOICES OF SCIENCE FICTION, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Matt Dixon
Cover design by Elizabeth Story

For more info about THE CUTTING ROOM: DARK REFLECTIONS OF THE SILVER SCREEN, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Josh Beatman

March 12, 2019

Interviews, short stories, CENTRAL STATION, and more with Lavie Tidhar

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized andrea viscusi, asimov's, best of 2018, central station, clarkesworld, dem bones, from earth to the stars, interview, italian, k chess, lavie tidhar, Locus, massimo luciani, michele chiappetta, neom, netmassio, osama, recursor, review, rich horton, sarah anne langton, stan lee, stay nerd, strange horizons, terminale terra, the buried giant, the memcordist, the violent century, tor.com, venus in bloom

It’s become abundantly obvious that this is Lavie Tidhar’s reality and we’re all just living it.

Tidhar was interviewed in FROM EARTH TO THE STARS, the ASIMOV’S author and editor blog, about his short story “Neom.”

Asimov’s Editor: What is the story behind “Neom”?

LT: I’ve been visiting the Red Sea for twenty years now (on the Egyptian side), and I was always struck by looking just across the water to the Arabian Peninsula, and that huge stretch of desert along the Red Sea coast is, of course, Saudi Arabia. Then I came across crown prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS)’s plan to build this sort of cyberpunk utopia called Neom there! I mean it has a promotional Youtube video and everything … And I’ve been recently very interested in the idea of future cities, and I knew I had to write about it. If only because I find the idea of a cyberpunk utopia so very terrifying …

And by Michele Chiappetta at RECURSOR.

Your novel CENTRAL STATION has received much acclaim. What inspired you to write it?

I was living in Tel Aviv back in 2010, and I became kind of obsessed with the old Central Bus Station area, as well as the new station itself, which is this crazy, enormous place with its own nuclear fallout shelter, if you can believe it. And, you know, most of my novels fall into this weird, political, alternate history, noir sort of thing, and I wanted to do something completely different — just write about these people and this place.

And I always loved mosaic novels, especially in science fiction. That’s where a lot of the classics are. But it always struck me as quite a difficult thing to do, from a technical point of view. So, that was the challenge.

I wrote it now and then over the next five years or so. Some of the stories got into various Year’s Best anthologies. A few got translated into various languages. And then one day it was done. I just didn’t expect anyone would actually read it.

On The Italian site STAY NERD, Andrea Viscusi views Tidhar’s work through the lens of CENTRAL STATION and the short story collection Terminale Terra.

The strength of Lavie Tidhar’s stories lies precisely in this: not originality, understood as the innovative power of ideas, but the work of unification with which the author drew the constituent elements of science fiction and made it a playground. in which a multiplicity of actors and situations collide. CENTRAL STATION and Terminale Terra are not to be read for the research of mindblowing ideas, but for the naturalness with which the ideas are treated. Those who follow and know science fiction (above all literary, but not only) will be able to recognize dozens of citations and references, but those who are more distant can still appreciate the constant unfolding of stories of normal people in exceptional contexts. The enthusiast and the neophyte can therefore be considered both satisfied, even if for different reasons.

Translation courtesy of Google

Massimo Luciani on the Italian site NETMASSIO reviews the short story "The Memcordist.“

"The Memcordist” is set in the same narrative universe as the novel CENTRAL STATION: the two works are autonomous but Pym is explicitly mentioned in the novel therefore among the stories of Lavie Tidhar is perhaps the one that most completes the novel. The various contrasts created by the author in my opinion give the story its emotional strength which is why I believe it is worth reading.

Translation courtesy of Google

Rich Horton’s “Memories of 2018″ for LOCUS includes Tidhar’s “The Buried Giant.”

“The Buried Giant”, by Lavie Tidhar (Robots vs Fairies) tells (literally – it’s an expertly framed story) of the dangerous adventures of a boy in a post-apocalyptic world who wants to be a “real boy” (i.e. robot), and in the process encounters a robot cat and a robot fox, and a dead girl and a manshonyagger. Powerful work.

Two new Tidhar stories appeared recently: “Venus in Bloom” (CLARKESWORLD ISSUE 148, JANUARY 2019) and “Dem Bones” (STRANGE HORIZONS 18 FEBRUARY 2019).

At TOR.COM, K Chess’ Five Fictional Books Inside of Real Books includes The Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante series.

The Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante series (from Osama by Lavie Tidhar)

Joe, a private investigator in an alternate reality, loves to read novels that detail the planning and execution of terrorist attacks—because global terrorism does not exist beyond their pages. A client who hires him to track down the series’ author sends Joe across the globe from Laos to Paris, London and New York, while shadowy operatives who want to keep the realities apart tail, assail, and finally imprison him. The Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante books are popular trade paperbacks with garish covers, released by an imprint that also publishes porn, but as Joe points out, they “read like the lab reports of a morgue, full of facts and figures all concerned with death.” The clinical excerpts Tidher includes from the books made me think about the chance casualties of these real attacks; it is Joe’s world that feels like a pulp.

And perhaps the most unexpected Tidhar sighting comes from the Stan Lee Wikipedia page under Fiction Portrayals.

In Lavie Tidhar’s 2013 THE VIOLENT CENTURY , Lee appears – as Stanley Martin Lieber – as a historian of superhumans.

For more info about CENTRAL STATION, visit the Tachyon page.

For more info about THE VIOLENT CENTURY, visit the Tachyon page.

Covers by Sarah Anne Langton

July 19, 2018

A box of little miracles, Lavie Tidhar’s UNHOLY LAND is a stunning achievement

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized candy, clarkesworld, gubbinal, interview, kate baker, lavie tidhar, orbital operations, review, sarah anne langton, scholastic blog, the speculative herald, unholy land, warren ellis

The first notices and reviews reviews for World Fantasy Award winner Lavie Tidhar’s forthcoming UNHOLY LAND have started coming in.

Warren Ellis in his ORBITAL OPERATIONS newsletter praises the novel.

I read an advance copy of Lavie Tidhar’s UNHOLY LAND last week. It’s one of those lovely books that starts out presenting itself as one thing, and mutates into another almost without you seeing it.

It begins with a minor pulp detective-fiction writer leaving his home in Berlin to revisit the land of his birth – a Jewish state in Africa. Right away, we’re in alternate-history space – this was actually a floated idea around 1900, the British Uganda Program, also referred to as the Uganda Scheme, in the wake of Russian pogroms against the Jewish people. So far, an African take on THE YIDDISH POLICEMAN’S UNION.

But. The writer’s name is Lior Tirosh. Compare that to Lavie Tidhar. Partway through, Tidhar ascribes the authorship of one of his own books to Tirosh. OSAMA. An alternate-history novel featuring a detective and a series of pulp novels. One detects the wake of the grand galleon of Michael Moorcock sailing by on the way to Tanelorn. Tidhar, as most recently evidenced by CENTRAL STATION, is a game-player of a writer who uses the spectrum of science fiction canon for his pieces.

And then the book turns into what it’s really about, a grand game of alternate worlds cast like jewels on the sand. The long second act is all dust and blood and madness and glory, and the fast third act comes down on you like a sharpened spade.

Lavie Tidhar is a clever bastard, and this book is a box of little miracles. I liked it.

THE SPECULATIVE SHELF enjoys their first encounter with Lavie Tidhar.

Unholy Land is a stunning achievement. It is packed to the brim with engaging ideas and features a captivating story that I could not stop puzzling over. It will certainly find itself in my Top 10 of 2018 when the year comes to a close.

<snip>

I can’t say more about the plot without taking away from what I found to be a marvelous reading experience. There is such an ethereal and intoxicating quality to the story and Tidhar’s writing that I found myself floating through the chapters, not always sure what was happening, or whose perspective we were seeing, but knowing that I wanted to keep reading. The intersecting story threads twisted my brain into a pretzel and I loved it.

Having never read any other work by author Lavie Tidhar, I was blown away by his command of language — every sight, smell, and feeling of a scene is accounted for and communicated in vivid detail. On prose alone, I would have enjoyed this book, but pairing such good writing with such a conceptually intriguing story made for truly enjoyable reading. I look forward to exploring Tidhar’s other works and I hope he continues to write beautiful and thought-provoking speculative fiction.

★★★★½ out of 5

Photo: Kevin Nixon

At SCHOLASTIC BLOG, Tidhar takes 10 Minutes to discuss his new children’s book Candy.

Q: You’re known as an adult writer – why did you decide to write a children’s book?

A: It was just the book that spoke to me most at that particular time. To me, Candy is a book anyone could read, I like to think it’s for children aged 9 to 90! My favourite children’s books have a resonance that means you can pick them up at any time in your life, and that’s what I was at least aiming for. I actually see it as very much a part of everything else I’ve written. It’s a very me book – the parody of the detective story, the fantastical background, the ridiculous number of hidden jokes… and all this tries to engage with some big questions, which I think children’s books do brilliantly. It tries to engage with the question of right and wrong; what does it mean to do the right thing? I hope Candy does do that, if in a fun way.

Q: Is there a difference between writing for children and writing for adults?

A: I don’t think so. There was definitely a stage in the editing process that took that into account. But mostly it was technical stuff like speeding up the action at the end – which is good advice for any book! – and making the whole reading experience more seamless. But I very much approached it as I would any novel.

Q: Where did the inspiration for Candy come from and why will kids enjoy it?

A: I had this image in my head for years – a kid standing by the sewage pipes looking up at the abandoned chocolate factory on the hill and wondering how to get in – but I was never sure what to do with it.

Then I sat down to write Candy and it all started coming out. I think it’s a fun book! I say that as I’m not entirely sure you can apply that term to some of my other books…

So I was very much going for, you know, have as much fun as possible, and I hope that comes through in the book. I was trying to write a book that I would have liked at that age.

Art by Luis Carlos Barragán

CLARKESWORLD (Issue 142, July 2018) features the Tidhar short story “Gubbinal” in both print and audio by Kate Baker.

Sahar, moving softly through the river valley, made sure to listen. The sound filtered into her helmet from the external mics, and she imagined this must be what hiking on Earth must be like. She listened to the wind; to the rumble overhead from the active ice volcano; to the storm raging on the horizon. But most of all she listened for any movement, for anything with design that may be scuttling about or trying to hide.

Titan was a cacophony of sound, a heavenly orchestra: the percussion of breaking ice and the patter of methane rains as they fell. The whisper and shout of the winds. In the northern summertime, cyclones howled and screamed over the Kraken Sea. If Sahar shifted to infrared she could see rainbows overhead and sometimes, through a gap in the ever-present canopy of clouds, glimpse Saturn rising low on the horizon. The world was always alive, awash in sound and fury. Sahar was left all alone to listen to it.

She preferred it that way.

For more info on UNHOLY LAND, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Sarah Anne Langton

May 17, 2018

Tachyon tidbits featuring Pat Murphy, James Patrick Kelly, and Michael Swanwick

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized arthur hass, clarkesworld, cold comfort, flogging babel, grace's story, James Patrick Kelly, jun cen, michael swanwick, pat murphy, paul doherty, rutgers university-new brunswick writer's conference, tor.com

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

Pat Murphy (photo: Lawrence Person), James Patrick Kelly (Bill Clemente), and Michael Swanwick (Beth Gwynn)

CLARKESWORLD (ISSUE 140, MAY 2018) reprints “Cold Comfort” by Pat Murphy and Paul Doherty.

I stood in the center of the frozen Arctic lake, chipping at the ice with an ice chisel, a sharp-edged piece of steel attached to a five-foot-long handle. It was the middle of May, and the ice was still about a meter thick. I made an indentation large enough to hold a bundle of six explosive cartridges.

One cartridge in the bundle was primed with a number 6 electric blasting cap. I attached the lead wires to the cap, placed the cartridges in the crater I had made, then scraped the ice chips back into the hole to cover them. The afternoon sun would warm the surface and melt the snow a little. In the chill of the evening, it would refreeze, sealing the charge in place.

I walked north on the ice, unrolling the lead wires. The spruce trees that surrounded the lake tilted this way and that, leaning on each other like drunks at closing time. A drunken forest. The trees had grown in the permafrost, the permanently frozen soil of the Arctic Circle, and their roots were shallow. As the frozen soil had melted, the trees had abandoned their upright posture, beginning a slow motion fall toward the ground. As the permafrost melted, it released methane, the main component of natural gas.

Art by Arthur Haas

TOR.COM publishes James Patrick Kelly’s new story “Grace’s Story.”

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

—Carl Sagan

I set my coffee cup on the watch officer’s console, careful not to spill. “Not even the next episode of the Fleeners?” I said, already knowing how Grace would reply. We’d had this argument about stories before. Not always about the Fleeners, but still. “Come on, it’s even kind of educational.”

Art by Jun Cen

Grace was her usual adamant self. “Jojin, you’re standing watch. That means you need to pay attention. Stories in their proper time.”

“But you can keep watch on yourself. You do all the time.” No matter how many times I’d asked, Grace never got impatient about this. She treated each request for a story break as if it were the first. Annoying, yes, but it also gave me hope that she might change her mind someday, so I kept trying. If I’d nagged Mom or Dad this way, they would’ve half-seriously threatened to space me. “I happen to know that you were alone for two and a half hours yesterday. All alone.”

“Only because your dad couldn’t stand watch. And I wasn’t always alone. Your sister did half-hour check-ins.” Grace dialed the color temperature in the command center’s lighting down to her most intimate yellow-rose glow to soften her refusal. Sometimes I thought her need for an audience was pathetic. “It’s not just about the watch. You know I like the company.” She purred like she was about to introduce one of my sex stories. “Your company, dear Jojin.”

On his FLOGGING BABEL blog, Micheal Swanwick reveals that he’ll be teaching this summer.

I’ll be teaching for two days at Rutgers University next month. I don’t teach very often – and less with each passing decade – so this is a rare event for me.

Aaaaand… apparently they’re full up. But there’s a waiting list. You can find it and everything else about the conference here.

April 19, 2018

STARLINGS delivers an entertaining look into Jo Walton’s imagination

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized chris urie, clarkesworld, elizabeth story, gary k wolfe, interview, jo walton, juli witte, Locus, national poetry month, review, starlings, stubby the rocket, the godzilla sonnets, the imaginaries, thessaly: the complete trilogy, tor.com, universe in words

Three fresh reviews of Jo Walton’s interesting STARLINGS plus some other interesting JoWaltonian bits.

For LOCUS, Gary K. Wolfe praises the collection.

All this may suggest that Starlings is something of a farrago, and it is – an entertaining if often uneven look into the mostly lighter side of Walton’s imagination. But STARLINGS also displays Walton’s formidable erudition, and her fascination with the various forms stories can take. When she deals with folkloric or mythical materials, she can evoke the haunting rhythms of the told tale, as in the three elegantly interwoven stories that make up “Three Twilight Tales” – the most structurally complex piece here – or turn the tale of the Bacchae into a small-town drama told in Kiplingesque rhymes. The longest piece in the book, “Three Shouts on a Hill”, is a hilariously manic quest tale in dramatic form, as three hapless sons of an Irish lord try to atone for more-or-less inadvertently murdering the king’s father, an adventure which eventually involves African, Incan, and Japanese gatekeepers, not to mention the King of the Cats, the Pope, and Oliver Cromwell. “Three Bears Norse” retells Goldilocks as a Norse skald might have told it, complete with kemmings and caesuras. As might be evident by now, even though readers might be tempted to skip over them, the poems in this collection are as important to understanding Walton’s approach to story as they were in Jane Yolen’s recent Tachyon collection. The simple fact that one sequence is titled “The Godzilla Sonnets” – which I won’t describe further – should give a good sense of Walton’s wandering, curious, and unique imagination, and STARLINGS as a whole may be the most interesting anatomy of that imagination than we’ve yet seen in one volume.

Juli Witte at UNIVERSE IN WORDS enjoys the book.

It is no secret that I love short stories. They are so hard to write, but are beautiful to read. There is something brilliant about how authors manage to create a whole world, complete characters and stunning story in just a few pages. So when I saw STARLINGS, I wanted to read it straight away. I had heart of Jo Walton before but actually hadn’t read anything by her yet. Knowing she writes Science Fiction and then seeing the mention of legends in the below blurb, I had a feeling that I would love STARLINGS. And guess what, I did!

<snip>

Walton is an award-winning novelist, so she really doesn’t need me commenting on her writing style. But I’m going to anyway. I really enjoyed how surprising each story was. By being open in the introduction about the fact she was experimenting with these stories, I went into STARLINGS not knowing what to expect and being excited about that. Almost every story felt like a thought exercise, especially when you could see Walton had been inspired by something and had decided to take it one step further, to see how far she could push a certain thought or idea. I enjoyed all the different directions that STARLINGS went to, whether it was into space, into the mind of a computer, heaven, or the future. Also, if something perhaps didn’t entirely work, then Jo Walton is the first to admit it and suggest why. For an established author to take risks like these is really interesting and as an aspiring author myself I actually found it really inspiring. I will definitely be rereading STARLINGS in the future, even if only for the sheer fun of some of her stories.

I give this collection…

4 Universes!

I adored STARLINGS and pretty much raced through the different stories! Jo Walton takes risks with her stories and imagery and it really pays off. I loved being surprised by every story, wondering what was going to happen next etc. Whether you’ve already read her novels or are new to Walton like me, definitely check out STARLINGS!

THE IMAGINARIES likes the book.

Having purchased Thessaly: The Complete Trilogy through our local book exchange some time ago and having (typically) not found the bravery to pick it up yet (it’s a massive compendium), I am familiar with the name Jo Walton without having actually read a single work of hers. STARLINGS provides, I think, the perfect entry point into her voice and way of being in the way that all single-author short story collections do. It is not a perfect book in that it suffers from the usual ailments that such collections suffer: namely, unevenness in quality, content, and voice. In her introduction, Walton herself admits that it is something of a grab-bag of odds and ends. (She writes: “So here in one place for your reading convenience are two short stories that I wrote after I knew what I was doing, two I wrote before I knew what I was doing, some exercises, some extended jokes, some first chapters of books I didn’t write, some poems with the line breaks taken out, and some poems with the line breaks left in.”) But that is not to say this is not a worthwhile or enjoyable book; it absolutely is!

I will confess to being moved more easily by Walton’s prose than her poetry (or her play, alas) but I emerge from this collection encouraged, and affirmed in my decision to purchase Thessaly: The Complete Trilogy without knowing the first thing about it. Walton is an author with range, and talent. I will be reversing time and reading her past works in the future with pleasure.

At TOR.COM in celebration of National Poetry Month, Stubby the Rocket shares the first part of Walton’s THE GODZILLA SONNETS.

The first sonnet clearly inspired Walton to insert Godzilla into a number of tales, Shakespearean and otherwise. Subsequent sonnets show us Verona fallen to those massive feet (the Montague/Capulet feud stood no chance), and the kaiju even weeping for Baldur…

Here’s the poem that started everything:

i) Godzilla Vs Shakespeare

Up on the ramparts all await their time
Each heroine, the fools and knaves, each king,
Ready to catch our hearts, the play’s the thing
A cockpit where they arm themselves with rhyme.

The monster tries to hide, but shows through plain,
Behind a frond ripped up with giant claws
We see his scaly hide and gaping jaws
As Birnam tropics come to Dunsinane.

All rally to defend now, each with each,
Juliet with dagger, Richard on a horse,
Dear Hamlet with his poisoned foil of course,
Harry with swords and longbows, at the breach.

Godzilla, shuffling closer, knows what’s what.
Size matters. But then so do prose and plot.

Chris Urie at CLARKESWORLD interviews Walton.

In your introduction for STARLINGS, you talk about not so much being a short story writer, but more of a poet. Can you elaborate on this?

Poetry is often my natural response to things. And it feels odd and uncomfortable to say that, it feels pretentious and fake, because culturally we often class poetry as “high culture” in a way that makes saying that feel like making a claim about all kinds of things that have nothing to do with actual poetry. I have always written poetry, I’ve always read poetry. Sometimes poetry is easier for me than actually talking. When John M. Ford died—he was a friend, and he was a writer I admired, and his death was very sudden and shocking—I wrote a sestina in which the end words were the last words of titles of his books. And that sounds like a very abstract distanced thing, but I did it in the early hours of the morning with tears running down my face and that was my grief response, my raw response. (It’s in my NESFA collection Sibyls and Spaceships and it’s on my website if you want to read it.) I have a poem bio in the Starlings collection that says a poem is much easier than writing a short bio listing your accomplishments, and for me that’s true.

Whereas short fiction, though I read it, has never come naturally. I almost never have an idea and think it’s a short story idea. I’ll have an idea and think it’s a novel idea. I’ll want to say something and it’ll come out as poetry. But short stories are almost always a deliberate effort, an exercise in form. So, this collection collects all the short things I’ve written over almost twenty years, and it’s barely enough for a book, we had to put a play and some poetry in too.

And on the topic of poetry, who would be one poet you feel influenced you most throughout your short fiction?

I can’t answer that with one. I think the answer is T. S. Eliot, and Tolkien, and Auden, and the Romantics especially Keats. T. S. Eliot and Tolkien were contemporaries, though we don’t think of them that way.

Voice and tone play an important role in this collection. What comes first when writing, the voice or the plot?

Voice every time. Voice—or what I call “mode,” which is voice plus a bunch of related things, is what I need before I can write anything. I can have all the plot in the world and without the right voice it’s just a handful of vacuum.

For more info on STARLINGS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

August 14, 2017

Tachyon tidbits featuring Peter S. Beagle, Julie Phillips, Neil Clarke, and dystopia

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized andrea blythe, clarkesworld, dystopia, elizabeth story, Harlan Ellison, her smoke rose up forever, in calabria, jacob weisman, james tiptree jr, james tiptree jr.: the double life of alice b. sheldon, jill roberts, jo walton, John Picacio, julie phillips, lauren beukes, mary shelley, nalo hopkinson, neil clarke, novella, pascal blanche, peter s beagle, review, the baby on the fire escape, vulture

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

Peter S. Beagle (photo: Rina Weisman), Julie Phillips (Chris van Houts), and Neil Clarke (Shawn McConnell)

Andrea Blythe on her eponymous site praises Peter S. Beagle’s IN CALABRIA

I also enjoyed IN CALABRIA by Peter S. Beagle, which presents a lovely story of an ornery old farmer who discovers that unicorns have decided to take up residence on his land.

Julie Phillips, author of the extraordinary, award-winning biography JAMES TIPTREE, JR.: THE DOUBLE LIFE OF ALICE B. SHELDON, and her daughter Jooske van Houten, stopped by the Tachyon offices for a visit.

Jooske van Houten, Jullie Phillips, publisher Jacob Weisman, and managing editor Jill Roberts (photo: Rina Weisman)

Jooske, Jacob, Rina, Jill, and Julie hung out for several hours. Discussions ranged from Tiptree (of course) to Julie’s book projects (she’s working on a Le Guin biography and on a nonfiction book on writing and mothering, THE BABY ON THE FIRE ESCAPE), about not being at the Helsinki WorldCon, and the forthcoming eclipse.

For the Issue 131, August 2017 CLARKESWORLD, founder/editor Neil Clarke answered Twitter questions in his latest editorial.

Emily Swaim @swaimea: Return of the novella as a storytelling medium, in regards to companion stories for franchises and the popularity of Japanese light novels

I can’t speak with much experience about the Japanese light novels, but the return of the novella is a rather nice development. You might have noticed that we’ve snuck in a few in the that last couple of years. For us, it’s always been a budget and space issue and I’d love to do more. In some ways, the novella is just catching the tail-end of what caused the increase in short fiction readership in recent years: online and digital publishing. I’ll single Tor.com and Tachyon Publications as two publishers that have made a mark with their novellas. More will follow.

Art by Pascal Blanche

VULTURE cites 100 Great Works of Dystopian Fiction, which includes selections from six Tachyon authors.

Among the magnificent authors listed are Lauren Beukes (MOXYLAND), Harlan Ellison (“I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream”), Nalo Hopkinson (BROWN GIRL IN THE RING), Mary Shelley (THE LAST MAN), James Tiptree, Jr. (”The Girl Who Was Plugged In,” reprinted in HER SMOKE ROSE UP FOREVER), and Jo Walton (THE JUST CITY).

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

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

For more info about HER SMOKE ROSE UP FOREVER, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by John Picacio

October 31, 2016

Tachyon tidbits (Halloween edition) featuring Ellen Datlow, Laird Barron, Jeff VanderMeer, and Lauren Beukes

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized adam morgan, adam sockel, anthology, broken monsters, chicago review of books, clarkesworld, Ellen Datlow, Halloween, horror, jacob mcmurray, jeff vandermeer, john denardo, kirkus, Laird Barron, lauren beukes, nightmares, nightmares: a new decade of modern horror, nihil, overdrive, short story, swift to chase, the third bear

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

Ellen Datlow (credit: THIS IS HORROR), Laird Barron (opionator.files.wordpress.com), Jeff VanderMeer (Kyle Cassidy), and Lauren Beukes

At KIRKUS, John DeNardo’s 13 Horror Books to Put You in the Mood for Halloween includes Ellen Datlow’s new anthology NIGHTMARES: A NEW DECADE OF MODERN HORROR and frequent contributor to Datlow’s books (NIGHTMARES, CUTTING ROOM, LOVECRAFT’S MONSTERS) Laird Barron’s new novel SWIFT CHASE.

NIGHTMARES: A NEW
DECADE OF MODERN HORROR edited by Ellen Datlow

I cannot think of
any single editor more qualified to helm an anthology of modern
horror than Ellen Datlow. NIGHTMARES, her latest themed horror
anthology, collects the best short horror fiction from the last 10
years. Stories include ones where a home invasion goes horribly,
horribly wrong for the invaders…and an antique bookseller teams up
with a mob enforcer to retrieve the Atlas of Hell. Serving as a
companion volume to DARKNESS: TWO DECADES OF MODERN HORROR, this
edition includes terrifying tales by Margo Lanagan, Gene Wolfe, M.
Rickert, Richard Kadrey, Kaaron Warren, Garth Nix, Laird Barron and
more.

SWIFT TO CHASE by
Laird Barron

Speaking of modern
horror and Laird Barron, you’d be hard-pressed to find a collection
as suitable for Halloween reading than Barron’s fourth collection. A
peek at just some of the dozen stories contained herein: a modern day
Jack the Ripper is set loose in a massive apartment complex during a
blizzard; a team of man hunters, searching for a missing B-movie
actor, crash lands in the Yukon Delta where their hell has only just
begun; an atomic-powered cyborg war dog loyally assists his master
with the overthrow of a dystopian empire in the far-future; and a man
is stalked by a psychopathic sorority girl and her team of
horrifically disfigured henchmen.

Adam Morgan for CHICAGO REVIEW OF BOOKS lists Jeff VanderMeer’s “The Third Bear” among The 9 Best Horror Stories You Can Read Online (For Free) This Halloween.

The author of the
SOUTHERN REACH trilogy, CITY OF SAINTS AND MADMEN, and FINCH is also
a prolific short story writer, including this gem that was nominated
for a Shirley Jackson Award in 2007. It’s also the title story from
his 2010 collection by Tachyon Publications. He must really like
bears, given the appearance of a giant one in his next novel from
FSG, BORNE.

For OVERDRIVE, Adam Sockel places Lauren Beukes’ BROKEN MONSTERS on his list of THE BEST IN BOOOOOKS FOR HORROR LOVERS.

Set in one of America’s broken cities, Beukes gives us a cast of equally broken characters. It takes a look at a horror that we’ve all imagined looming in all of our backyards, a very familiar monster, a serial killer hell-bent on ruining the world. When broken bodies start turning up, part animal, part man, fused together in horrific and grotesque fashion, a city of nightmares is born. What’s so great about this one, is how much the reader hopes to escape reality. You’ll hope, beyond anything, for something supernatural by it’s end. Because the worst scary stories are those that are very real.

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

Cover by Nihil

Design by Elizabeth Story

For more info about THE THIRD BEAR, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Jacob McMurray

October 19, 2016

Peter S. Beagle’s SUMMERLONG fuses the fantastic with everyday life

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized afterwords, Charlie Jane Anders, chris urie, clarkesworld, dan pratt, fantasy, interview, peter s beagle, review, summerlong, tattoo, the elliott bay book company, the last unicorn, wired

An interview with the legendary Peter S. Beagle plus three fresh reviews of the beautiful SUMMERLONG.

Photo by Rina Weisman

Charlie Jane Anders at WIRED adores the novel.

Good fantasy writing makes the world of magic seem believable and immanent, as if you could reach out and touch a mystic amulet. But great fantasy writing makes the real world around us, the world of buses and cars and phones and asphalt, feel suffused with magic. When you’re in the hands of a master like Peter S. Beagle, you can feel as if this transformative wonder was there all along, in your surroundings, and you just weren’t paying enough attention. And Beagle’s new novel, SUMMERLONG, is a master class in how to reveal the fantastic in everyday life.

<snip>

Beagle’s eye for detail has never been sharper—his description of what it’s like to be in a tiny boat on the ocean might just make you feel the sea spray in your face. And in particular, he has an incredible gift for conveying the little details that make a long-term relationship between two older people.

SUMMERLONG is full of sly observations about gods, magic and the uncanny—including some ways of thinking about myths and fables that feel brand new and hard won. But the real insights in this book are all about relationships, and closeness, and growing older. And in the end, Beagle leaves you feeling that maybe Ray Bradbury was right, and one ought not to be let alone—you need to be really bothered, every once in a while.

At AFTERWORDS, Dan Pratt praises the novel.

Peter Beagle has long held a special place in my heart as the creator of
THE
LAST UNICORN. I mean a very special place. For years I had a stuffed unicorn that was the unicorn from
THE
LAST UNICORN for me. I’ve maintained my love for
THE
LAST UNICORN such that when I planned out my fantasy tattoo sleeve, Beagle’s Unicorn and Red Bull both feature prominently.

Tattoo by Stina at Grim North Tattoo.

SUMMERLONG is a much more subtle fantasy than THE LAST UNICORN. There are hints at magic and fantasy, but as outsiders looking in, we’re not exactly sure if what we’re seeing is really magic. The writing is subtle, sensitive, and heartfelt. The story is wonderful, revealing who the characters truly are as we move through the narrative; additionally, the cover is gorgeous.

This isn’t high fantasy, so if you demand elves and dwarves and giants and ogres from your fiction, this won’t be your cup of tea. But if a beautiful story that weaves in elements of Greek mythology sounds like fun, you’ll love SUMMERLONG. I know I do.

Justus
of THE ELLIOTT BAY BOOK COMPANY recommends SUMMERLONG.

Peter S. Beagle, author of THE LAST UNICORN, gives readers a unique twist on the myth of Persephone in his much-anticipated novel SUMMERLONG. Based in and around the Seattle area, SUMMERLONG follows a family of three trying to stay connected while growth seems to be pushing them apart. Joanna and Abe have been lovers for years, yet what previously existed between them seems worn thin. Joanna’s daughter Lily tries to be independent but gives the people in her life power over her decisions. When Lioness Lazos, a charismatic and mysterious young woman, appears in their lives, everything they understand about themselves and each other is profoundly challenged.

For CLARKESWORLD, Chris Urie interviews Peter S. Beagle.

Why did you choose to set SUMMERLONG in the Pacific Northwest?

I lived in Seattle for six years (well, one year in Seattle proper, and five on Bainbridge Island, six miles offshore), but SUMMERLONG didn’t begin to happen until I’d been gone from the Northwest for about a decade. I’ve no idea why that should be so … perhaps simply because it takes me a long time to realize what I’m looking at. Reviewers have complimented me specifically on my sense of the atmosphere of Seattle and Puget Sound, which pleases me a great deal. It’s something I admire in other writers, whether they’re dealing in genre fantasy or the grittiest realism, and I’m rarely sure that I’m getting it right myself.

The characters in SUMMERLONG feel complex and real. How do you create characters like Abe, Lily, and Lioness? Are the pastiche of traits you’ve picked up from people or more formed completely from your imagination?

My characters are always a mixed bag. Abe’s got a good deal of my more aggravating characteristics, certainly. Joanna is based, in her occupation, on a very sweet neighbor who lived downstairs from me in Seattle. In her personality—not to mention her love for basketball and rollerblading—on a dear friend who was once my literary agent. Lioness … well, I really do know a remarkable lady in Portland, Oregon, by that name. And Lily—my favorite character, or anyway the one who touches me the most deeply—Lily just came out of nowhere, the way it happens when I’m lucky. Mostly my characters begin as voices in my head, as they always have. It’s all right: I’m officially a Writer—an Artist—so I’m entitled to hear voices. I can produce a license whenever requested.

What was it about the story of Persephone that inspired you?

Persephone actually got me into college, by the way. I was so intrigued by the legend that I wrote a sonnet, “Persephone In September,” which my high-school creative writing teacher Mollie Epstein—may her name and all her descendants be blessed for a thousand generations—submitted to Scholastic Magazine’s annual writing contest. The winner—that little old failing-in-everything-but-English-and-history, me—received a full tuition scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh.

The fantastical aspects of SUMMERLONG can be subtle and intertwine seamlessly with reality within your novel. Do you find there is a bit of fantasy to be found in reality?

I’ve always thought of fantasy as that thing that exists just to the side of my peripheral vision, so to speak; but the moment I snap my head around for a full view … it’s just gone. I have written non-fantasy works (spent a fellowship year at Stanford, in a class with people like Larry McMurtry, Ken Kesey, Jim Hall, Judy Rascoe, Joanna Macdonald and others, and spent it writing a godawful novel about a young musician in Paris); but very little of it could ever be considered fantasy. It just seems to be the way I think, from my earliest childhood all the way to … well, to where I am. Wherever that actually is.

For more info on SUMMERLONG, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Magdalena Korzeniewska

Design by Elizabeth Story

October 18, 2016

Tachyon tidbits featuring Nalo Hopkinson, Kage Baker, and James Patrick Kelly

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized anglia ruskin unversity, chuma hill, clarkesworld, company, elizabeth story, falling in love with hominids, in the company of thieves, James Patrick Kelly, kage baker, kate baker, nalo hopkinson, one sister two sisters three, Stefan Raets, the graveyard game, Thomas Canty, tor.com

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

Nalo Hopkinson (Photo: David Findlay), Kage Baker, and James Patrick Kelly (Bill Clemente)

World Fantasy Award winner Nalo Hopkinson, author of the acclaimed FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS, is receiving an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Anglia Ruskin University.

Thousands of students will receive their degree certificates from Vice Chancellor Professor Iain Martin during ceremonies to be held at the Corn Exchange, Cambridge, between Monday 17 and Thursday 20 October.

They will be joined by several special guests who have been chosen to receive honorary degrees from Anglia Ruskin for excellence in their respective fields and their contribution to society.

The guests include Nalo Hopkinson, a critically-acclaimed author, Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside, and valued mentor to several of Anglia Ruskin’s Creative Writing students. Nalo’s passionate and insightful commitment to the literary exploration of issues such as race, class and sexuality, exemplify the focus, determination and talent required to excel at the highest level. She will receive the award of Honorary Doctor of Letters.

Stefan Raets at TOR.COM continues the reread of Kage Baker’s Company Series with THE GRAVEYARD GAME.

Part
of the reason why this chapter is so wonderful is that it’s one of
only a few parts of this series that take place in a contemporary
setting. There’s something thrilling about seeing these characters,
who we’ve followed through several centuries and will follow far
into the future, navigating a recognizable environment. It makes
perfect sense that Joseph and Lewis would be involved with the
Hollywood entertainment industry and that Juan Bautista is working in
an Audubon Society bird sanctuary, but it’s still amazing to see
how well their long careers translated into 20th century jobs. For
me, seeing these characters living and working in contemporary
California always made them feel more relatable and more alien at the
same time. It gives the series an odd “they walk among us” secret
history vibe I really love, especially when you add in some of the
little details Kage Baker slipped into the story, like Lewis
complaining to Joseph that the VR simulation is unrealistic because
there weren’t any druids yet when Stonehenge was finished: “I was
one, I should know.”

But
aside from this general appreciation for the setting of the chapter,
so different from anything that came before in the series, I also
love it because it’s the first time we see the dynamic duo of Lewis
and Joseph in action. (I’m disregarding the brief meeting at start
of SKY
COYOTE because
yes, they met, but they didn’t really work together on a “mission”
like they do here and in some of the stories I mentioned earlier.) If
Kage Baker had lived longer and launched an ongoing series of The
Continued Adventures of Joseph and Lewis stories, I would have gladly
bought and read them as fast as they became available. (I should also
note here, that “Hollywood Ikons”, one of the stories Kathleen
Bartholomew completed posthumously, is a Joseph and Lewis story. You
can find it in the Tachyon Publications anthology IN THE COMPANY OF THIEVES.)

At CLARKESWORLD, Kate Baker reads James Patrick Kelly’s “One Sister, Two Sisters, Three.”

This isn’t my story—I’m nobody. It’s my sister’s. Zana is the one who got away, leaving me on this sad little world where we were born. Where I’ll die someday, as the Divine Moya wills. Moya expects us to die, each and every one. That’s her plan for those who still follow the human way.

For more information on FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Chuma Hill

Design by Elizabeth Story

For more info about IN THE COMPANY OF THIEVES, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Thomas Canty

1 2 3