jo walton

December 1, 2017

Happy birthday to the Hugo Award winner Jo Walton

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized birthday, jo walton, necessity, starlings

Beginning with THE KING’S PEACE (2000), Jo Walton’s 13 novels have garnered much acclaim. Not satisfied with just her 2002 Campbell for Best New Writer, Walton has won the World Fantasy (TOOTH AND CLAW, 2003), Prometheus (HA’PENNY, 2007), Mythopoeic (LIFELODE, 2009), and Tiptree (MY REAL CHILDREN, 2014) awards. AMONG OTHERS (2011) received the trifecta of Hugo, Nebula, and British Fantasy awards.

Her three volumes of poetry include MUSES AND LURKERS (2001), SIBYLS AND SPACESHIPS (February 2009), and RIVERS AND ROBOTS IN THE HELIX AND THE HARD ROAD (2013). A selection of her non-fiction from TOR.COM were collected in WHAT MAKES THIS BOOK SO GREAT (2014).

Walton’s other works include the Thessaly trilogy (THE JUST CITY
[2015], THE PHILOSOPHER KINGS [2015], NECESSITY [2016]) and the forthcoming fiction and poetry collection STARLINGS.

All of us at Tachyon wish the talented and insightful Jo, a magnificent birthday.

For more info on STARLINGS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

November 29, 2017

Win copies of Jane Yolen’s THE EMERALD CIRCUS, Peter S. Beagle’s THE OVERNEATH, and Jo Walton’s STARLINGS

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized giveaway, Jane Yolen, jo walton, peter s beagle, starlings, the emerald circus, the overneath, tor.com

The fine folks at TOR.COM want to send you copies of Jane Yolen’s THE EMERALD CIRCUS, Peter S. Beagle’s THE OVERNEATH, and Jo Walton’s STARLINGS.

Visit TOR.COM for all the details.

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

November 27, 2017

Tachyon tidbits featuring Jo Walton, Patricia A. McKillip, Nalo Hopkinson, and Peter v. Brett

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized actusf de l’uchronie, interview, jay tomio, jo walton, mes vrais enfants, miclonian, my real children, nalo hopkinson, njeri damali campbell, outright geekery, patricia a mckillip, peter v brett, the forgotten beasts of eld, the warded man, you tube, zack saad

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

Jo Walton, Patricia A. McKillip (photo: Stephen Gold/Wikimedia Commons), Nalo Hopkinson (David Findlay), and Peter v. Brett

Congratulations to Jo Walton for winning Actusf de l’Uchronie 2017 for the French translation of her novel MY REAL CHILDREN (Mes vrais enfants).

At OUTRIGHT GEEKERY, Zack Saad includes Patricia A. McKillip’s World Fantasy Award-winner THE FORGOTTEN BEASTS OF ELD among The Beginner’s Guide To Fantasy Novels Part 3: 1970-1989.

On a mountain in the land of Eldwold, a sixteen year old girl named Sybel lives with legendary animals summoned by her father to keep her company. There is Ter, the giant falcon, Cyrin, the boar who “Knows all riddles save one”, Gules Lyon, a giant black swan, and the huge black cat Moriah, who helps Sybel with spells and charms. One day a man named a man named Coren brings her a baby, claiming it is the son of the deceased queen Rianna, and asks her to raise it. Twelve years later she must give the child back, but is leery of Coren’s intentions with the child, but would returning him to King Drede be any better? And what of her search for the white swan Liralen?

Njeri Damali
Campbell on YOU TUBE interviews her favorite author Nalo Hopkinson.

For MICLONIAN, Jay Tomio finally shares a “lost” interview with Peter V. Brett.

For the longest time I knew I had conducted an interview with Peter V. Brett but for some reason maybe the file never carried over during various iterations of the site. I finally found a copy in my email circa 2008. This would have been right before his debut novel was released and I recall vividly I had one question I really wanted to ask him after reading, so I knew my interview wasn’t something I was just imagining. Here it is and I must say he gave some great thoughtful answers to some rather base questions by yours truly.

Jay Tomio – Let’s begin by talking concept. You immediately tell us that at least on the surface what the cause of conflict is on your world, and even just remove it as a conflict and make it merely everyday life. Where did the concept of an eternal battle at night come from, and how did just putting it out there free you as a writer?

Peter Brett – Wow. Good question.

I think on the purest level, mankind has been at war with the dark since the beginning of time. We’re vulnerable in the dark, and we don’t care for that feeling one bit. Overcoming darkness has spurred countless inventions and advancements throughout human history, and yet even now we can’t do some things at night, and a simple power outage quickly reminds us that humans were meant to be diurnal. The concept of night being the time when the monsters come out is something addressed in most every culture’s folklore and mythology, as anyone who’s ever heard a vampire or werewolf story can tell you. I think it’s part of our genetic code to make up ominous shapes in the darkness.

But I was going for something a little more than that, using darkness and demons as a metaphor for the way I and many of my fellow New Yorkers (not to mention countless people worldwide) felt after September 11. Everywhere you turned, there was someone telling you to be afraid, that nothing and nowhere was safe. Every time you tried to calm down and just make dinner, the government raised the color alert code, or there was a special news report on bioterrorism or dirty bombs. It’s no wonder people went nuts for a while.

But as time went by, we all got used to the fear, the same way we got used to the fear of nuclear holocaust in the 80’s, or got used to the coming of night. Eventually, it just becomes part of life, because you can’t lock yourself away in the basement with canned food forever. Sometimes you just have to accept your mortality and learn to live with fear.

I think setting up my world in similar, if more fantastical and extreme, fashion allowed me to focus more on people just trying to live their lives as best as they can, rather than the usual “quest” stories you see in fantasy. The supernatural problems these people have are right in their backyard, and it’s how they react to them on that level that makes the story wheel turn.

For more info about THE FORGOTTEN BEASTS OF ELD, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Thomas Canty

November 10, 2017

Tachyon tidbits featuring Peter S. Beagle, Jo Walton, and Jeff VanderMeer

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized in calabria, jeff vandermeer, jo walton, mike reeves-mcmillan, nciba, peter s beagle, review, starlings, the review curmudgeon, this world is full of monsters, tor.com

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

Peter S. Beagle (photo: Rina Weisman), Jo Walton (Ada Palmer), and Jeff VanderMeer (Kyle Cassidy)

Peter S. Beagle’s IN CALABRIA was named to the NCIBA Book Award Long List.

The NCIBA presents the Northern California Book Awards every Spring. Awards are given in various categories for books published for the first time in the prior year and written by an author residing in Northern California (we make a residency exception for an author whose book is nominated in the Regional Title category).

Fiction

A Kind of Freedom by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, Counterpoint, 9781619029224
Sourdough by Robin Sloan, MCD, Macmillan, 9790374203108
Artemis by Andy Weir, Crown, 9780553448122
Less by Andrew Sean Greer, Lee Boudreaux Books, Hachette, 9780316316125
Autonomous by Analee Newitz, Tor Books, Macmillan, 9780765392077
New York 2140 by Kim Stanley Robinson, Orbit, Hachette, 9780316262347
Spoonbenders by Daryl Gregory, Knopf, Penguin Random House, 9781524731823
Lucky Boy by Shanthi Sekaran, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 9781101982242
An Excess Male by Maggie Shen King, Harper Voyager, HarperCollins, 9780062662552
Goodbye Vitamin by Rachel Khong, Henry Holt and Co., Macmillan, 9781250109163
In this Grave Hour by Jacqueline Winspear, HarperLuxe, HarperCollins, 9780062644299
All the News I Need by Joan Frank, University of Massachusetts Press, 9781625342621
IN CALABRIA by Peter S. Beagle, Tachyon Publications, 9781616962487
In the Midst of Winter by Isabel Allende, Atria Books, Simon & Schuster 9781501178139
Void Star by Zachary Mason, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Macmillan, 9780374285067
Dead on Arrival by Matt Richtel, William Morrow, HarperCollins, 9780062443274

Congrats to all the honorees.

Mike Reeves-McMillan at THE REVIEW CURMUDGEON praises Jo Walton’s STARLINGS.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

By the author’s own admission, several of the “short stories” in this book are not actually stories. They’re exercises in mode, or jokes, or the attempts of someone who knows how novels work but not how short stories work to write a short story

.

This doesn’t sound promising, but Jo Walton is such a good writer that she mostly gets away with it in any case. In fact, some of the stories have been published in prestigious publications like Strange Horizons and Subterranean. Unfairly, I occasionally thought, “I wish I had the kind of standing in the SFF community that meant I could get published in those publications by writing a story that isn’t a story,” but that’s not the only thing that’s going on. Walton is a deep thinker, a close observer, and a master of language, and all these things shine through, even when her “story” is only an exploration of a clever idea with no real beginning, middle, or (especially) end.

Overall, then, this collection is proof that, if you’re a good enough writer, you can write a successful piece of short fiction in a lot of different ways. Not all of the pieces are excellent or weighty, or even original, but those that are lift the average considerably.

Art: Armando Veve

TOR.COM shares the original Jeff VanderMeer story “This World Is Full of Monsters.”

I Did Not Recognize What Sought Me

The story that meant the end arrived late one night. A tiny story, covered in green fur or lichen, shaky on its legs. It fit in the palm of my hand. I stared at the story for a long time, trying to understand. The story had large eyes that could see in the dark, and sharp teeth. It purred, and the purr grew louder and louder: a beautiful flower bud opening and opening until I was filled up. I heard the thrush and pull of the darkness, grown so mighty inside my head.

I grew weary.

I grew weary and I fell asleep on the couch holding the story, wondering what it might be and who had delivered it to me. But there was no time left for wonder. As I slept, the story gnawed its way into my belly and then the story crawled up through my body into my head. When I woke, gasping my resistance, the story made me stumble out the door of my house and lurch through the dark down my street, giddy and disoriented, muttering, “Do not stop me. Do not stop me. Story made me this way. Story made me this way.”

I felt a compulsion to turn to the left, and then to turn to the left again. Until the story made me stop at the end of the block, where the last fence meets a forest. By now I knew that the story wasn’t a story at all. It had just made me think it was a story so it could invade my brain.

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

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

For more info on STARLINGS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

October 19, 2017

Tachyon tidbits featuring Jo Walton, Kage Baker, and Ellen Klages

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized Ann Monn, elizabeth story, ellen klages, jo walton, kage baker, liz bourke, passing strange, Publishers Weekly, review, starlings, the hotel under the sand, the little red reviewer, tor.com, wicked wonders

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

Jo Walton, Kage Baker, and Ellen Klages (photo: Scott R. Kline)

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY praises Jo Walton’s STARLINGS.

This collection of fiction and poetry from Hugo- and Nebula-winner Walton (The Just City) showcases her trademark focus on genre and philosophical questions. Most of the fiction is very brief, and fans of the form will have plenty to appreciate.

The collection will appeal most strongly to Walton’s dedicated fans and those with academic interest in her work.

THE LITTLE RED REVIEWER is charmed by Kage Baker’s THE HOTEL UNDER THE SAND.

Full of humor and happiness, THE HOTEL UNDER THE SAND was a pure joy to read. Most of the books I read have some level of darkness and tragedy. People die, lovers are separated, there is a war, the good guys lose, someone finds out they’ve been manipulated their entire life, etc. And then of course, there is social media and the news, which is a thousand times worse than any fictional story. To randomly pick up THE HOTEL UNDER THE SAND and find it to be 180 pages of pure sunshine was next level selfcare. A comfort book that makes you feel good about yourself and universe on every page? Yep, this is it.

THE HOTEL UNDER THE SAND is a wonderful book for parents to read to their kids. A kid can certainly read this to themselves with no problem, but there are a handful of jokes and subtleties that will be very meaningful to adults.

Never read a Kage Baker before? THE HOTEL UNDER THE SAND is an excellent place to start. Your children will thank you.

Liz Bourke at TOR.COM in her essay Sleeps With Monsters: My Year In Queer mentions Ellen Klages’ PASSING STRANGE. The novella contains characters and the same setting from two stories in her collection WICKED WONDERS.

This year, I’ve come across a whole eighteen new books with significant queer inclusion. (From mainstream imprints. This is important, because it means they are more likely to have bookshop distribution. People won’t necessarily have to go and specifically seek them out.) Five of them are novellas, but they’re substantial novellas. And this number represents only the new books I’ve read so far this year that represent worlds that aren’t almost entirely heterosexual. (And that aren’t genre romance. I like romance! Romance is fine. But sometimes I want other things to happen in the plot.) There may yet be one or two more. I have my fingers crossed for several—it’d be nice to have twenty-four as a number!—but that might be hoping for too much.

I have, it turns out, come across more books that include women who love women than those that include men who love men, and more of either than those that include trans characters—though there are a few. When it comes to nonbinary characters, the list is fairly short.

<snip>

Ellen Klages’s PASSING STRANGE, which is an ode to, and a love story set in, 1940s San Francisco.

For more info on STARLINGS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

For more info about THE HOTEL UNDER THE SAND, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Ann Monn

For more info on WICKED WONDERS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

October 17, 2017

Jo Walton’s entertaining STARLINGS is well worth it

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized elizabeth story, Hugo Awards, jo walton, leigh brackett, librarything, nikki @ the bibliophibian, review, starlings, the long tomorrow, tor.com, what makes this book so great

NIKK @ THE BIBLIOPHIBIAN praises Jo Walton’s STARLINGS.

It’s no secret that I love Jo Walton’s work, and I’d better add here that I’ve spent time with her as well — I’d call her a friend. Still, I knew her work first, and this is a fun collection. Jo may say she doesn’t know how to write short stories, but all the same everything here works pretty well. I only knew ‘Relentlessly Mundane’ and some of the poetry before, I think. It was nice to re-encounter the poetry here and spend some time with it — reading it online wasn’t the same at all. I hadn’t read the play, either, ‘Three Shouts on a Hill’; entertaining stuff.

My favourite of the short stories… hmm, possibly ‘Sleeper’, and I liked ‘What Joseph Felt’ a lot too.

Really, I never know quite how to review short story collections: suffice it to say that I enjoyed it, and I think it’s worth it, especially if you’re already a fan of Walton’s work. I’m glad I got to read it ahead of time.

RATING: 4/5

Paul Cranswick on LIBRARYTHING issues the British Author
Challenge – October 2017 – Jo Walton & Roald Dahl.

amanda4242 was the first to reply:

It’s here! It’s here!

I read Walton’s fantastic What Makes This Book So Great in April for the non-fiction challenge. It’s a collection of blog posts she did for tor.com, mostly concerning her re-readings, but it also has entries on what not to say when you meet an author, different types of series, and a lament that George Eliot never tried writing science fiction. All of the entries in the book, and more stuff, can be found online here.

My local library has a large collection of Dahl audiobooks, and I’ve started working my way through them. So far I’ve finished Fantastic Mr. Fox and Other Animal Stories, read by Chris O’Dowd, Geoffrey Palmer, Stephen Fry, and Hugh Laurie, and The Witches, read by Miranda Richardson. All of the readers are amazing, but Richardson and O’Dowd are real standouts.

And this from cbl_tn:

I have been dying to read Farthing for a while and this was just the nudge I needed to get it read. I had a hard time putting this one down. The alternate history is understated. By that I mean that Walton doesn’t go out of her way to emphasize the differences between the alternate reality and actual history.

Walton adds a different twist to the Golden Age country house party mystery. If all they were all like this one, it would no longer be my favorite genre. On the other hand, since I’ve read so many Golden Age mysteries, I can appreciate what Walton has done with this novel.

I have downloaded an Overdrive ebook copy of Matilda. I’ll try to get to it before it expires, but no guarantees since I’m still in the process of moving.

For TOR.COM, Jo Walton revisits the recently rediscovered 1956 Hugo Awards ballot.

When I wrote my post in 2010 about the Hugos of 1956, the nominees for that year were lost in the mists of time. Last month they were found again, by Olav Rokne in an old Progress Report, which is very exciting, because it gives me the chance to compare what I thought they might be to what they really were. It’s great to be wrong, and goodness me I was wrong!

And here’s the rediscovered actual list of nominees:

Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein [Astounding Feb,Mar,Apr 1956]

Call Him Dead, by Eric Frank Russell

The End of Eternity, by Isaac Asimov

Not this August, by Cyril Kornbluth

The Long Tomorrow, by Leigh Brackett

Double Star is the winner. I was right about The End of Eternity, so I get one point. One. One of the commenters, “Bob”, mentioned Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow, so he also gets a point.

We didn’t even find the others never mind consider them—which shows the inadequacy of relying on Wikipedia’s list of books for a year! (I later switched to using the Internet SF Database, which was better.) Of my potential nominees, it’s interesting that The Return of the King didn’t get on the actual ballot. In those days fantasy wasn’t as highly regarded, and Tolkien didn’t become big in the U.S. until the paperbacks came out, but even so, it seems very strange at this distance.

Of the real nominees, the most exciting one is the Brackett. This is the first time a woman was nominated for a best novel Hugo—or indeed, any Hugo. Zenna Henderson, Katherine MacLean, and Pauline Ashwell were all nominated in novelette in 1959, and Marion Zimmer Bradley was, until now, believed to be the first woman nominated for best novel, in 1963. But in fact Brackett beat them all to it. So that’s great to know

For more info on STARLINGS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

September 19, 2017

Win a copy of the award-winning Jo Walton’s STARLINGS

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized collection, elizabeth story, giveaway, goodreads, jo walton, starlings

With the help of fine folks over at GOODREADS, we’re giving away one advanced review copy (ARC) of the acclaimed Jo Walton’s STARLINGS.

For full details, visit GOODREADS.

An intimate first flight of short fiction from award-winning novelist Jo Walton (AMONG OTHERS, THE KING’S PEACE).

An strange Eritrean coin travels from lovers to thieves, gathering stories before meeting its match. Google becomes sentient and proceeds toward an existential crisis. An idealistic dancer on a generation ship makes an impassioned plea for creativity and survival. Three Irish siblings embark on an unlikely quest, stealing enchanted items via bad poetry, trickery, and an assist from the Queen of Cats.

With these captivating initial glimpses into her storytelling psyche, Jo Walton shines through subtle myths and wholly reinvented realities. Through eclectic stories, subtle vignettes, inspired poetry, and more, Walton soars with humans, machines, and magic—rising from the everyday into the universe itself.

Introduction by Jo Walton

Fiction

Three Twilight Tales
Jane Austen to Cassandra
Unreliable Witness
On the Wall
The Panda Coin
Remember the Allosaur
Sleeper
Relentlessly Mundane
Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction
Joyful and Triumphant: St. Zenobius and the Aliens
Turnover
At the Bottom of the Garden
Out of It
What a Piece of Work
Parable Lost
What Would Sam Spade Do?
Tradition
What Joseph Felt
The Need to Stay the Same
A Burden Shared

Script

Three Shouts on a Hill (A Play)

Poetry

Dragon’s Song
Not in this Town
Hades and Persephone
The Death of Petrach
Advice to Loki
Ask to Embla
Three Bears Norse
Machiavelli and Prospero
Cardenio
Ten Years Ahead: Oracle Poem
Pax in Forma Columba
Translated from the Original
Sleepless in New Orleans
The Godzilla Sonnets
Not a Bio for Wiscon: Jo Walton

For more info on STARLINGS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

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

September 6, 2017

Tachyon tidbits featuring Ellen Klages, Peter S. Beagle, Kage Baker, Nancy Kress, and Jo Walton

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized b&n sci-fi & fantasy blog, beggars in spain, ellen klages, fran wilde, green man review, jo walton, kage baker, marissa lingen, mind meld, Nancy Kress, passing strange, peter s beagle, rahul kanakia, the innkeepers song, The New York Review of Science Fiction, wicked wonders

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

Ellen Klages (photo: Scott R. Kline), Peter S. Beagle (Paul Todisco), Kage Baker, Nancy Kress (Ellen Datlow), and Jo Walton

For THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION, Fran Wilde reviews two recent Ellen Klages books.

In a similar way, Ellen Klages has combined physics and magic in not one but two books published during the turbulent spring of 2017. More than that, PASSING STRANGE, a novella from Tor.com publishing, and WICKED WONDERS, a collection of short stories from Tachyon Publications, seem at first glance to be entirely separate entities, but they, too, connect when folded properly.

Side characters in PASSING STRANGE, including Franny and Polly, have featured stories in WICKED WONDERS. These moments where the books meet up feel like magic in their own right as the world suddenly becomes bigger within the boundaries of Klages’s plots.

Klages is practicing a certain magic of her own between the two books because Franny isn’t the only one who combines magic and physics. The cartographer has a second counterpart in WICKED WONDERS: Mrs. Zeno, who with a friend splits a piece of cake into particles that allow many worlds to exist at the same time in “Mrs. Zeno’s Paradox.”

Klages says in her story notes that she folded together manners and physics to arrive at “Mrs. Zeno’s Paradox.” This is something she does again and again: folds disparate ideas and themes together to form new worlds.

That Klages is toying with the laws of physics both on and off the page as a cat plays with a string or as a magician connects torn pieces of paper into a unified whole will come as no surprise to those who know her. That she’s laid this unity across two spectacularly different, altogether wonderful books and invited us to play along as well?

That’s the magic of it.

GREEN MAN REVIEW recounts some kind words that Kage Baker said about Peter S. Beagle’s work.

Our What Not is about Peter S. Beagle, who is not only of one our best storytellers ever, but also without doubt one of the best loved as well. We decided to ask some of the many writers who’ve passed through our pub, errrr, offices what their favorite piece of fiction by him was, and why so. Their answers run from the obvious choices, i.e. THE LAST UNICORN, to some that greatly surprised us.

Kage pondered her answer — ‘How to decide? THE LAST UNICORN probably had the greatest effect on me, reading it as I did at an impressionable age and learning there that fantasy could cut through the mannered, medievalist crap and speak sharply of real life. I SEE BY MY OUTFIT delighted me and still does, as it must delight anyone who has ever been young, dumb, brave and ON THE ROAD. To take off across the country on motor scooters (of all things), sleeping in tents, trusting in fate, having adventures — yeah!! But my all-time favorite Beagle character I met in THE INNKEEPER’S SONG: the little, little fox with soft fur…’

At B&N SCI-FI AND FANTASY in Mind Meld: Science Fiction, Technology, and Society, Marissa Lingen discusses BEGGARS IN SPAIN by Nancy Kress and Rahul Kanakia recommends Jo Walton’s MY REAL CHILDREN.

When I was fifteen, one of the science fiction novels I fell in love with was Nancy Kress’s BEGGARS IN SPAIN. I go back to it over and over again as an influence, especially for questions like this one about science and society. Kress’s genetically engineered Sleepless form a subculture of their own, with new paradigms and ways to relate. They face suspicion, fear, and prejudice from the larger culture–and form their own suspicions, fears, and prejudices towards it. The substance of the book is the resolution of that tension from both sides: finding an interrelation and a coexistence even when it felt like there was nothing that either could give the other. I think a lot of smart teenagers need that message: that isolation and withdrawal are not the answer, no matter how much it may feel like it in the throes of high school. I’ve carried that essentially ecological view with me ever since.

One of my favorite science fiction novels of the last decade was Jo Walton’s MY REAL CHILDREN. This book, which won last year’s Tiptree Award, concerns one woman whose life diverges as the result of a fateful decision early in the book. From thenceforward the book is told in alternating chapters that detail the two very different courses her life takes. Both of her lives have their ups and downs, their joys and sorrows, but they are far from equal. In one she finds enduring love, friendship, and meaningful work, and in the other she must struggle to find anything worth holding onto. Both lives also take place in very different futures, and these futures influence the course of the lives, but they do so subtly. The stunning climax of this book really brought home to me the truth that every life is so singular and unique. In our fiction we’re often tempted to turn our characters into avatars of their times. We think people who live in totalitarian dystopias have to be sad and oppressed, while people who live in forward-looking Galactic Empires must obviously be full of zest and adventure. But the truth is clearly much more nuanced than this, and it’s in analyzing this interplay between the personal and the global that MY REAL CHILDREN really has something new and fresh to contribute.

For more info on WICKED WONDERS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

September 6, 2017

Reviewers, booksellers, and librarians get the award-winning Jo Walton’s STARLINGS

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized collection, edelweiss, elizabeth story, jo walton, netgalley, starlings

Review copies of the acclaimed Jo Waltons’s STARLINGS are now available via NETGALLEY and EDELWEISS.

These copies are only for reviewers and librarians. For more details, visit NETGALLEY and EDELWEISS.

And while you are there, check out the other Tachyon titles for review for review on NETGALLEY and EDELWEISS.

STARLINGS

by Jo Walton

ISBN: Book ISBN: 978-1-61696-056-8 Digital ISBN: 978-1-61696-057-5

Published: January 2018

Available Format(s): Trade Paperback and Digital Books

An intimate first flight of short fiction from award-winning novelist Jo Walton (AMONG OTHERS, THE KING’S PEACE).

Introduction by Jo Walton

Fiction

Three Twilight Tales
Jane Austen to Cassandra
Unreliable Witness
On the Wall
The Panda Coin
Remember the Allosaur
Sleeper
Relentlessly Mundane
Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction
Joyful and Triumphant: St. Zenobius and the Aliens
Turnover
At the Bottom of the Garden
Out of It
What a Piece of Work
Parable Lost
What Would Sam Spade Do?
Tradition
What Joseph Felt
The Need to Stay the Same
A Burden Shared

Script

Three Shouts on a Hill (A Play)

Poetry

Dragon’s Song
Not in this Town
Hades and Persephone
The Death of Petrach
Advice to Loki
Ask to Embla
Three Bears Norse
Machiavelli and Prospero
Cardenio
Ten Years Ahead: Oracle Poem
Pax in Forma Columba
Translated from the Original
Sleepless in New Orleans
The Godzilla Sonnets
Not a Bio for Wiscon: Jo Walton

For more info on STARLINGS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

«< 4 5 6 7 8 >