edinburgh book festival Archives - Tachyon Publications

September 12, 2017

Tachyon tidbits featuring Jane Yolen, Peter S. Beagle, Jo Walton, and Nalo Hopkinson

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized changing hands bookstore, cheryl eddy, chuma hill, edinburgh book festival, elizabeth story, fantasy faction, io9, Jane Yolen, jo walton, kirkus, nalo hopkinson, peter s beagle, the emerald circus

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

Jane Yolen (photo: Jason Stemple), Peter S. Beagle (Rina Weisman), Jo Wallton, and Nalo Hopkinson (Sanna Pudas)

KIRKUS praises Jane Yolen’s THE EMERALD CIRCUS.

An impressive overview of the author’s breadth and career, this collection will appeal to the author’s existing devotees—or to anyone who has ever thought that “happily ever after” left too many questions.

Cheryl Eddy at IO9 includes Peter S. Beagle’s forthcoming collection THE OVERNEATH among All the Science Fiction and Fantasy Books to Keep on Your Radar This Fall.

This short-story collection includes a callback to the author’s classic, THE LAST UNICORN, along with several other new fantasy tales.

At the 2017 Edinburgh International Book Festival, FANTASY FACTION interviewed Jo Walton

Your most recent series of novels, the THESSALY trilogy, came to an end last year. It deals with time travel, alien planets and Plato’s REPUBLIC. What is it like writing something so complex yet keeping it engaging and approachable?

It is actually quite an old fashioned thing. It is a family saga, a generational saga. The first book is about Greek gods and philosophers from throughout time, a handful of slave children, and a bunch of robots setting up Plato’s Republic. The first book takes place a bit over ten years. It’s kind of a Utopian experiment with, and one of the things I say about it is, what could possibly go wrong? Well, things go wrong and things go right. What I wanted to do with it is explore issues of liberty and consensuality and axiomatically different ways of thinking about living. Different things are important to these people. Plato said, start with ten-year-olds, as if ten-year-olds are nothing, are blank. But ten-year-olds are not blank slates. And, I think, because I read THE REPUBLIC (380 BC) when I was fifteen, I was very aware of that.

You have a short story collection coming out at the beginning of next year.

Yes, yes I do. STARLINGS, which has all of my short stories that have been published, and a play, and a bunch of poetry. I very seldom write short stories, but I write poetry all the time. So this is my first short story collection but my third poetry collection. STARLINGS, is coming out from Tachyon in January.

Now that the Thessaly series has come to an end, what’s next for Jo Walton?

Right now I’m writing a book called LENT, which is about Savonarola. My short hand way of describing this is it’s Savonarola Groundhog Day. It’s not probably what you would expect but I’m really enjoying it. I’ve written sixty thousand words and I’m probably about 60% of the way through it. I was just in Florence for six weeks writing it, and I got so much done. If I had stayed there another two weeks I would have finished it. But I’m hoping it’ll be done by Christmas. I’m very excited about that book.

Changing Hands Bookstore via Instagram shared this about Nalo Hopkinson’s FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS.

For #SciFiSunday today we’re #reading Nalo Hopkinson’s short story collection, FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS. Hopkinson, who was born in Jamaica and has lived in the U.S., Trinidad, Guyana, and Canada, continues to “expand the boundaries of culture and imagination” here. There’s a retelling of THE TEMPEST as a Caribbean myth in this collection that is not to be missed!

For more info on THE EMERALD CIRCUS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

For more info on THE OVERNEATH, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

For more info on STARLINGS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

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

Cover art by Chuma Hill

Design by Elizabeth Story

August 28, 2017

Nalo Hopkinson’s FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS is a perfect summer read

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized chuma hill, edinburgh book festival, elizabeth story, falling in love with hominids, lyle enright, nalo hopkinson, nightmare, rock & sling, sanna pudas, shift, short story, worldcon 75

Photo: Sanna Pudas

At ROCK & SLING, Lyle Enright includes Nalo Hopkinson’s FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS among his Summer Reading: Spending Summer Scared selections.

“Think of just about any horror film,” says Houston Baptist professor Philip Tallon, “and you will find that it works upon us by tearing down some boundary we had in place, but perhaps forgot was there.” Tallon explains that this sense of violation “is a discomforting aspect of horror, but there is also a desirable quality to it. It terrifies us and gives us a sense of moral, social, and aesthetic stability.” Perhaps, but do we really believe in such stability today? Is there a place for such stories–or even their subversion–when our politics are unpredictable, people live in fear of being scapegoated and harassed, and it seems the threat of a new war is around every corner? In a widely-read essay appropriately titled “Real Horror” (2003), the late professor Robert C. Solomon said that “art-horror” provided a buffer for our psyche simply because it wasn’t real; that buffer collapsed on September 11, 2001 and took the pleasure of horror stories with it.

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Reflecting on the works of Hans Christian Andersen, the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska said that “The Importance of Being Scared” is less complicated than Tallon makes it out to be. Rather, it involves recognizing that “evil stems from intellectual and emotional stuntedness and is the one form of poverty that should be shunned.” If Szymborska is right, and evil is a form of intellectual poverty, this is a lesson that is often lost under the din of partisan politics, where the “bad guy”–the “monster”–is always someone else, whether it be the person in power, or the person who wishes they were. Perhaps horror stories remain a better, subtler means of drawing us towards that realization and placing us on our guard, even against ourselves. That, at least, is the rationale with which I will be teaching my students in the Fall. During the Summer, I’ll be re-reading my way through the course syllabus, and re-learning the lessons I hope to convey.

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FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS, by Nalo Hopkinson (2000-2015). Perfect for summer reading, Jamaican speculative fiction writer Nalo Hopkinson infuses her stories with Jamaican folklore and magic to create tense and unsettling post-colonial scares that touch a number of nerves.

NIGHTMARE (August 2017 Issue 59) reprints Nalo Hopkinson’s “Shift,” which also appears in FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS.

“Did you sleep well?” she asks, and you make sure that your face is fixed into a dreamy smile as you open your eyes into the morning after. It had been an awkward third date; a clumsy fumbling in her bed, both of you apologizing and then fleeing gratefully into sleep.

“I dreamt that you kissed me,” you say. That line’s worked before. She’s lovely as she was the first time you met her, particularly seen through eyes with colour vision. “You said you wanted me to be your frog.” Say it, say it, you think.

She laughs. “Isn’t that kind of backwards?”

“Well, it’d be a way to start over, right?”

Her eyes narrow at that. You ignore it. “You could kiss me,” you tell her, as playfully as you can manage, “and make me your prince again.”

She looks thoughtful at that. You reach for her, pull her close. She comes willingly, a fall of little blonde plaits brushing your face like fingers. Her hair’s too straight to hold the plaits; they’re already feathered all along their lengths. “Will you be my slimy little frog?” she whispers, a gleam of amusement in her eyes, and your heart double-times, but she kisses you on the forehead instead of the mouth. You could scream with frustration.

Nalo Hopkinson writers about her experiences at Worldcon 75 (Helsinki) & the Edinburgh Book Festival.

Worldcon 75 in Helsinki was amazing, just bloody amazing. It was one of the best attended Worldcons ever. The general aura of the con was jubilant. Helsinki is very easy on the eyes, but I didn’t take many pics. When you’re a Guest of Honour at a Worldcon, you don’t get much breathing room. It wasn’t only the many panels and events I was on, but I gave a couple of interviews practically every day of the con. I didn’t get to any events I wasn’t on. On con Thursday, I was so busy that the only reason I ate at all was because Juha (my official con “handler,” who described himself as my “designated Finn”) filled his knapsack with apples, water and food bars and offered me one whenever I began to look wan. I finally managed to grab a plate of hot food that evening at the very crowded Hugo Losers’ Party hosted by George R. R. Martin (thanks, George!). Understand, I’m not complaining. It was five days of headlong fun. Farah and Edward had created a display about me and my work that just about took my breath away. (The mermaid soft sculpture in the photo is a gift I made for Farah last year. The twin-headed catmaid doll the mermaid is holding represents Farah’s two cats.) They even made a puzzle of covers of my books. I’m afraid I don’t remember the name of the artist who created the mermaid family on one of the posters. There was also a kids’ activity area where they could make “Carnival” masks. Farah and Edward have promised to send me the posters and the puzzle.

This is me presenting the Hugo Award for Best Novelette. I believe the photograph was taken by one of the Worldcon photographers, but I haven’t been able to find out the person’s name yet. [It was Sanna Pudas]

The headgear I’m wearing is a gele. Someone who knows what they’re doing can fold and tie one from a single rectangle of fabric. I’ve been practising, but the art of gele-tying is a cross between origami and higher physics. So I cheated and bought a pre-tied one. The gown is from Pinup Girl Clothing. They carry vintage-look clothing, and their sizes go up to extreme buxom.

So many good memories and eyeball kicks from the Hugo Award ceremony. Toastmaster Karen Lord acquitted herself with grace and humour. Perhaps the most hilarious memory from the ceremony is Ursula Venon’s “Whale Fall” acceptance speech. I really hope there’ll be a transcript of that.

And I met an astronaut! Kjell Lindgren was at the con. I finally was able to ask someone who’d actually been upstairs what the vertigo effects are. And yep, I’m never going into space. I get vertigo if I even think about vertigo.

After Worldcon, I was off to the Edinburgh Book Festival. I’d been invited by author Ken Macleod, who curated science fiction events at the festival this year. I took part in an evening of performances and readings, and was on a panel on science fiction and utopia. It was my first time visiting Scotland. I really enjoyed my brief stay. Edinburgh apparently comes alive in August; there’s a massive book festival, a massive theatre festival, a gin festival… And so many different accents! It seems as though almost everyone who lives in Edinburgh is from somewhere else, and of course even those who are originally local sound like a “different” accent to me because I don’t hear it daily. The hotel was right on the Book Festival route. Our room an actual apartment; fridge, stove, oven, etc, including pots and pans and cooking utensils. It’s all very compact; the washing machine and the dryer are the same machine, as are the oven and the microwave.

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

Cover art by Chuma Hill

Design by Elizabeth Story