Happy birthday to the New York Times bestselling and award-winning Jeff VanderMeer
The New York Times bestselling writer, editor, teacher, and publisher, Jeff VanderMeer has won the Rhysling Award, British Fantasy Award, BSFA Award, the World Fantasy Award three times, Nebula Award, and Shirley Jackson Award. His acclaimed novels include Dradin, in Love (1996), Veniss Underground (2003), Shriek: An Afterword (2006), South China Sea (2008), Finch (2009), The Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation [2014], Authority [2014] and Acceptance [2014]), Borne (2017), The Strange Bird (2017), Dead Astronauts (2019), A Peculiar Peril (2020), and Hummingbird Salamander (2021). The film Annihilation, directed by Alex Garland and starring Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Tessa Thompson and based on the VanderMeer novel, premiered in 2018.
Many of his shorter works have been collected in The Book of Frog (1989), Lyric of the Highway Mariner: A Collection of Poems (1991), The Book of Lost Places (1996), City of Saints and Madmen (2001), The Day Dali Died (2003), Secret Life (2004), Ein Herz für Lukretia [German] (2007), Secret Lives (2008), The Surgeon’s Tale and Other Stories (2007; with Cat Rambo), THE THIRD BEAR (2010), Balzac’s War (2011), and The Compass of his Bones and Other Stories (2011).
VanderMeer co-edited (unless otherwise noted all alongside award-winning editor Ann VanderMeer) several groundbreaking and popular anthologies including Leviathan, Volume One: Into the Gray (1996 with Luke O’Grady), Leviathan 2 (1998 with Rose Secrest), Leviathan 3 (2002 with Forrest Aguirre), The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide To Eccentric & Discredited Diseases (2003; with Mark Roberts), Best American Fantasy (2007; Vol 2 2008), Fast Ships, Black Sails (2008), THE NEW WEIRD (2008), STEAMPUNK (2008), Last Drink Bird Head: Flash Fiction for Charity (2009), STEAMPUNK II: STEAMPUNK RELOADED (2010), ODD? (2011), The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities (2011), The Weird (2011), The Time Traveler’s Almanac (2013), Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology (2015), The Big Book of Science Fiction (2016), The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (2019), and The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (2020). Also with Ann, he created THE KOSHER GUIDE TO IMAGINARY ANIMALS (2010).
Among his numerous nonfiction volumes are the acclaimed Why Should I Cut Your Throat? Excursions in the World of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror (2004), BOOKLIFE: STRATEGIES AND SURVIVAL TIPS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY WRITER (2009), Monstrous Creatures: Explorations of Fantasy through Essays, Articles and Reviews (2011), The Steampunk Bible (2011; with S. J. Chambers), Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction (2013), and The Steampunk User’s Manual: An Illustrated Practical and Whimsical Guide to Creating Retro-Futurist Dreams (2014 with Desirina Boskovich).
All of us at Tachyon wish the multi-faceted Jeff a squidastic birthday, full of fungi and other things that creep in the darkness.
