doctor who Archives - Tachyon Publications

June 1, 2018

Tachyon tidbits featuring Peter Watts, Jeff VanderMeer, Michael Moorcock, Caitlín R. Kiernan, and Thomas M. Disch

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized beowulf, Caitlín R. Kiernan, crysis: legion, doctor who, jeff vandermeer, Matt Staggs, michael moorcock, Peter Watts, predator: south china sea, the coming of the terraphiles, the prisoner, thomas m disch, unbound worlds

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

Peter Watts, Jeff VanderMeer (photo: Kyle Cassiday), Michael Moorcock (A.V. CLUB), Caitlín R. Kiernan (Kyle Cassiday), and Thomas M. Disch (Houari Boumedienne/Wikimedia Commons)

At UNBOUND WORLDS, Matt Staggs penned 6 Writers You Didn’t Know Wrote Spin-Off Novels. Astoundingly, five of the six were Tachyon authors.

Call them franchise fiction, spin-offs, or novelizations: They’re the books that make your favorite video game, television shows, and movies must-reads. Many writers have taken a shot at writing franchise fiction. Some stick with it. Others don’t. Here are five celebrated authors who wrote only one spin-off novel.

Crysis:Legion

by PETER WATTS

You might know former marine biologist turned writer Peter Watts best for his novels Starfish and Blindsight: two thought-provoking works that draw heavily from his scientific education. Hardcore gamers, on the other hand, will probably recognize him as the author of Crysis: Legion: a 2011 adaptation of the video game “Crysis 2”. “Crysis 2” pits a nano-tech equipped human warrior against hordes of alien invaders. Watts’s novel follows the plot of the game, but fleshes it out with plot elements that cast the story in a new light.

Predator: South China Sea

by JEFF VANDERMEER

Jeff VanderMeer is the author of the Southern Reach trilogy, the source for the 2018 Alex Garland film “Annihilation”, as well as Finch, City of Saints and Madmen, and several other works of well regarded fiction. He’s also the author of the 2008 book Predator: South China Sea: a novel set in the expanded universe of the “Predator film” franchise. VanderMeer’s novel finds a cast of dangerous men and women — arms dealers, secret agents, pirates, and others — squaring off against the franchise’s alien hunter on a remote island stocked with exotic animals.

The Coming of the Terraphiles

by MICHAEL MOORCOCK

Michael Moorcock is a legend in the history of science fiction and fantasy literature: a prolific novelist who, among other things, created the Eternal Champions Elric of Melniboné, Dorian Hawkmoon, and Jerry Cornelius, and also wrote song lyrics for the hard rock/proto-metal band Hawkwind. In 2010, BBC Books published Moorcock’s The Coming of the Terraphiles, a Doctor Who novel that finds the Doctor squaring off against Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius in a contest for the Arrow of Law. Truly, Moorcock took the Doctor’s world and made it (one of) his own.

Beowulf

by CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN

Caitlín R. Kiernan is well known for her award-winning dark fantasy and science fiction novels (The Red Tree, The Drowning Girl, Agents of Dreamland, etc.), and comic books (The Dreaming, Alabaster Wolves). She also wrote Beowulf— or rather, the novelization of the 2007 film based on the epic Anglo Saxon saga. While you’re probably familiar with the plot already — legendary warrior called to defend a kingdom against a horrid monster and its mom — experiencing it again through Kiernan’s unique lens is a lot of fun.

The Prisoner

by THOMAS M. DISCH

Thomas M. Disch, along with Michael Moorcock, Brian Aldiss, and others was part of the New Wave of science fiction: a movement that saw writers abandoning the straight forward, hard science focus of fifties SF in favor of experimental, prose with a distinctly literary sensibility. His novels, among them Camp Concentration, and The Genocides, are just as challenging today as they ever were. In 1967, Disch turned his talents to franchise fiction with The Prisoner: a novel based on the cult BBC series about a man imprisoned in a mysterious village by captors determined to psychologically destroy him.

October 27, 2014

THE CUTTING ROOM coming attraction: “The Constantinople Archives” by Robert Shearman

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized 1453, anthology, constantinople, doctor who, Ellen Datlow, excerpt, Halloween, horror, josh beatman, robert shearman, short story, The Constantinople Archives, the cutting room, the cutting room: dark reflections of the silver screen

Over the next two weeks, in celebration of Halloween and the new anthology The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen, Tachyon and editor Ellen Datlow present excerpts from a selection of the volume’s horrifying tales.

Today’s selection comes from “The Constantinople Archives” by Robert Shearman.

We can speculate, and we can speculate, but the probability is that few of the silent movies made during the siege of Constantinople in 1453 were very good. And there are clear reasons for this, both political and cultural.

On the one hand, we have to bear in mind the extremely trying circumstances under which the movies were being filmed. In attacking Constantinople, the Ottoman Turks were also attacking the last bastion of the Roman Empire (if only in symbolic form), a direct line of power that stretched back some two thousand years. It was also the seat of the Orthodox Christian Church, a force equal and opposite to the Catholic Church in Rome. Expansionist wars were two a penny in the fifteenth century, but this was no run-of-the-mill example, it was already rife with meaning, and no doubt the Byzantines under threat would have been only too aware of that. Besides which, on a purely practical level, the constant cannoning of the city walls must surely have been a distraction. Even making silent movies, surely, some peace and quiet is required for concentration’s sake.

On the other hand, and perhaps more pertinently, Byzantine art had always defined itself by a certain flat austerity. Their mosaics and paintings that we can study today are colourful, but there’s a grim functionality to all that colour; the lines are severely drawn and make the characters depicted seem two-dimensional and undramatic. It would be foolish to expect that in the creation of an entire new art form that several centuries of engrained Byzantine culture would be abandoned overnight. It is unfair to imagine that the clowns who pratfalled and danced and poked each other in the eyes in Constantinople cinema were other Chaplins, or Keatons, even other Fatty Arbuckles. The conditions were wrong. Their genius could not have flowered.

And yet, of course, we remain fascinated by those movies from the Byzantine age. And again, partly this will be because they were the pioneers, the history of cinema begins here with these shadowy figures by the Bosporus doomed to be killed or enslaved by the Muslim potentate. But I hope our fascination is not purely academic. That we honour not merely the historical significance of what was invented, but that, with care and study, and an open mind, we try to appreciate the art on its own terms.

For information on The Cutting Room: Dark Reflections of the Silver Screen, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Josh Beatman.

October 27, 2014

Journey to The Pop Quiz at the End of the Universe with Daryl Gregory

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized dalek, daryl gregory, doctor who, elizabeth story, horror, interview, novella, sesquipedalianist, the pop quiz at the end of the universe, tor.com, we are all completely fine

Daryl Gregory, author of the acclaimed We Are All Completely Fine, recently participated in Tor.com’s irreverent interview series The Pop Quiz at the End of the Universe.

If you regenerated as a new Doctor, what would your signature outfit/accessory be?

I would be the first all-naked Doctor. I’d be unstoppable! Even the Daleks would be like, “EXTERMINATE. EX—DAMN IT, WOULD YOU PLEASE PUT SOME CLOTHES ON?”

<snip>

Do you have a favorite word?

For years I’ve been evangelizing for the word antisesquipedalianist. A sesquipedalianist is a person who uses extremely long words, so anybody who’s an antisesquipedalianist and says so is a hypocrite. Gotcha, illiterate pompous person!

Experience the rest of the geeky fun with Gregory at Tor.com.

For information on We Are All Completely Fine the book, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story.