disciples of boltax Archives - Tachyon Publications

June 15, 2022

Excitement abounds for Sam J. Miller’s debut collection BOYS, BEASTS & MEN with interviews, reviews, a book trailer & more

Rick Klaw blog Ancillary Review of Books, andrew liptak, arley song, BC Clark, boys beasts & men, buzzfeed, clarkesworld, delphic reviews, disciples of boltax, gary k wolfe, interview, just geeking by, Locus, margaret kingsbury, Melody Bowles, Neil Czeszejko, review, sam j miller, the british fantasy society, trailer, transfer orbit

The release of Sam J. Miller’s debut collection BOYS, BEASTS & MEN launched with a flurry of activity, all positive. Though the book is already sold out at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop (more copies on their way), copies should be available from your local bookstore and as always directly from Tachyon.

Cover of BOYS, BEASTS, & MEN, a collection by Sam J. Miller. — Cover by Jennifer O’Toole
Design by Elizabeth Story

**Andrew Liptak, in his Transfer Orbit newsletter, not only reviewed the book and interviewed Miller but also offered the first look at the book trailer!**

It’s a superb roundup of a prolific author’s short stories: tales that deal with complicated, messy lives of people trying to make their way through life, faced with uncertain and dangerous worlds.
Transfer Orbit

Collections are always interesting to read from short fiction authors, because of the curation involved. What was the determination that you made for each story to be placed here?

I was fortunate to be able to be very picky here, because these actually represent less than half of my published stories!

Ultimately I wanted to include the stories that got the best response from readers – including ones that got award recognition or were anthologized – but I also wanted to be able to tell a broader story about masculinity and monstrosity and patriarchy, which are obviously super important themes in my work, and these seemed like the best stories with which to tell that story.
Transfer Orbit

A whole host of reviews appeared for the collection including contributions from Margaret Kingsbury in “20 Amazing New Science Fiction And Fantasy Beach Reads“ (BuzzFeed), **Gary K. Wolfe at Locus, Melody Bowles from The British Fantasy Society, BC Clark at Ancillary Review of Books, Neil Czeszejko at Delphic Reviews, Just Geeking By, and Disciples of Boltax.**

All 14 of these brilliant, character-driven short stories are perfectly crafted, subtly altering reality using SFF elements while managing to fully explore the repercussions of doing so with the conciseness a short story requires.
20 Amazing New Science Fiction And Fantasy Beach Reads (BuzzFeed)

Miller is clearly one of the generation of writers thoroughly comfortable with genre hopping (or genre-ignoring, or genre-pillaging), and BOYS, BEASTS & MEN is no exception to that. . . . Given the pain and joy that Miller can so vividly evoke, it’s both an admonition and a celebration.
Locus

Overall, I enjoyed the wide variety of stories in BOYS, BEASTS & MEN. Not every story was a hit for me, but they were certainly all memorable. If you like your fantasy and sci-fi with realistic grit to ground it, pick this one up.
The British Fantasy Society

Sam J. Miller’s stories collected in BOYS, BEASTS & MEN are fire in about the same way a blast furnace is. They are full of evolving, disintegrating, and re-assembling identities, a funhouse hall of molten mirrors. These stories burn away façades to reveal true histories full of fierce magic. Histories queer as all hell’s furies unleashed. Histories often uncontrollable by those who bend the course of the story. An able craftsman, Miller harnesses the powers of the twin underground rivers of loneliness and desire to channel the rage and hope of his characters. And through that craft, Miller brings tales of justice regained and character reframed
Ancillary Review of Books

BOYS, BEASTS & MEN is a phenomenal short story collection that brings to mind a pack of wolves, with each story pulsing to its own heartbeat, straining at the leash that affixes it to the whole with bestial vigor.
Delphic Reviews

To be honest, the entire anthology is mesmerising. Miller’s writing is witty and hard-hitting, drawing out stories from angles that most people don’t tend to see.
Just Geeking By

The stories in this collection run the gamut from scary to angry to sad to kind but they all have a raw humanity that I loved. I recommend this book highly and hope to read more from Mr. Miller in the future.
Disciples of Boltax

**Arley Song for Clarkesworld interviewed Miller.**

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know about this book?

That the incredible Amal El-Mohtar wrote the introduction! And it’s amazing! Seriously made me choke up when I read it. In 2014, when my short story “We Are the Cloud” (included in the collection) was published in Lightspeed, it got some super homophobic reviews, which suuuuuuuuucked—any LGBTQIA+ SFF writer can tell you that queering the genre means coming up against a whole lot of really vicious trolls—and Amal wrote the most beautiful review/defense of the story; that’s how I knew she’d be the perfect person to do the introduction.
Clarkesworld

February 11, 2020

MEET ME IN THE FUTURE is an excellent introduction to Kameron Hurley

Rick Klaw blog disciples of boltax, kameron hurley, Locus, meet me in the future, michael reads, review 0

Cover by Carl Sutton Design by Elizabeth Story

DISCIPLES OF BOLTAX likes Kameron Hurley’s MEET ME IN THE FUTURE.

I cannot recommend this short story collection enough. If you are not familiar with Kameron Hurley’s work, it is an excellent introduction and jumping off point. After reading this, I am going to check out her Worldbreaker Saga and the Bel Dame Apocrypha series. If you have read her novels before, then you definitely should buy this collection.

In this entertaining vlog, MICHEAL READS tells us what they are going to read this month, which includes MEET ME IN THE FUTURE, that they picked up at the library because the mechanical beetleborg is so cool and the Booklist quote.

In her regular LOCUS column, Hurley writes about the new decade “Into the Raging ’20s, We Ride.”

As we barrel toward the spring, I’ve resolved to spend the 2020s engaged in active work; not only the directly political kind, but also the quieter kind, the kind that is the work of crafting meaningful stories that move people. This is my profession. My vocation. Yet I’ve found so much of the headspace I need for creation stolen by a world in upheaval.

I’ve found myself seeking ways to transform how I work in the 2020s. Certainly much of this is about turning away from social sites that are especially bad at policing misinformation. It’s about checking into reputable news sites once or twice a week instead of following the latest tragedy in real time on Twitter. I no longer wake up and scroll through Twitter first thing in the morning. It’s no longer my primary source of news. I go to Twitter for discussions about books and films. My Instagram is primarily full of books and dogs. I deleted Facebook. I’ve started turning off my phone altogether an hour before I want to go to bed.

Our always-on culture has been driven by organizations that seek to get an increasing share of a finite resource: our attention. The more attention I give their services and algorithms, the less attention I have for the things that matter to me: my work, my family, my own social causes.
Read rest at LOCUS

February 5, 2020

Nancy Kress’ SEA CHANGE is another excellent, fast-paced read from one of speculative fiction’s most consistent voices

Rick Klaw blog disciples of boltax, gary wolfe, Locus, margaret kingsbury, Nancy Kress, review, russell letson, sea change, star trek, the coode street podcast 0

Excitement begins to mount for Nancy Kress’ forthcoming SEA CHANGE.

Christopher East on his eponymous blog praises the novella.

Drowning coastlines, climate refugees, and extreme weather feature prominently in most climate-change SF, but the effects of climate change on agriculture and food security are less frequently explored. Kress corrects this with a characteristically brisk and engaging science fiction thriller. This one quickly establishes an intriguing tapestry of connected mysteries, and then gradually solves them by deftly executing a flashback structure to bounce back and forth through time to fill in the puzzle pieces. Along the way, she mixes a convincing, extended romance subplot in with suspenseful intrigue and convincing futurism. It’s another excellent, fast-paced read from one of speculative fiction’s most consistent voices.

DISCIPLES OF BOLTAX shares similar sentiments.

It was, in a word, fantastic. Ms. Kress has crafted a brilliant and frighteningly realistic near future world where genetically modified foods are a crime and anyone trying to use science feed the hungry is hunted down by the government. It is a taut thriller that never slows down and leaves you wanting more.

Russell Letson in LOCUS (Issue 709, February 2020) reviews the book.

SEA CHANGE includes plenty of old-fashioned science-fictional didaxis – the actuality of the threat of biological disaster, the how and why of ecological change, the machineries of political and social panic and crackdown, the dueling protocols of underground movement and law-enforcement agency. There’s even a molecular diagram of a neurotoxin to accompany the account of how it’s generated in algae blooms. But the book kicks harder because we see and feel the impact of these processes on a whole life, close-up.

At the official STAR TREK site, Margaret Kingsbury includes SEA CHANGE in 20 2020 Sci-Fi Books to Read Based on Your Favorite Star Trek Character.

Renata/Caroline Denton is a lawyer and operative in an underground science organization whose research could save the world. B’Elanna should enjoy the who-done-it turn the book takes when a spy infiltrates the group and only Renata can discover who it is.

Gary Wolfe in The Coode Street Podcast (Episode 363: Books We’re Looking Forward to in 2020) mentions the work.