Tachyon tidbits featuring Suzy McKee Charnas, Nancy Kress, Tim Powers, Michael Swanwick, and Rupert Wyatt
The latest reviews and mentions of Tachyon titles and authors from around the web.
Suzy McKee Charnas, Nancy Kress (photo: Ellen Datlow), Tim Powers (Matt Gush), Michael Swanwick (Beth Gwynn), and Rupert Wyatt
James Davis Nicoll at TOR.COM includes Suzy Mckee Charnas in Fighting Erasure: Women SF Writers of the 1970s, A Through F.
You may have been annoyed by recurrent comments from a certain surprisingly flammable Waterloo-region reviewer. He complains about the erasure from SF memory of women writing SF back in the 1970s—but has that reviewer ever bother to name names? Suggest books? I think not. It is time to confront the erasure directly. Forward! Excelsior!
In an attempt to keep this list to a manageable length, I will focus on women authors who first published in the 1970s. That means skipping some significant authors who were already active at the time. I also reserve the right to cheat a bit by including a few works published after the 1970s. I am also going to break this list into several installments, beginning with A through F. Which should tell you just how many women have been erased. Whole binders full of women.
There are several excellent candidates for My First Charnas. First among them is The Vampire Tapestry. Charnas paints a compelling portrait of her solitary, cunning vampire living unnoticed amongst his prey. She does not romanticize the bloodsucker.
Also for TOR.COM, Max Gladstone’s Five Books Featuring Weird Spies features books by Tim Powers and Michael Swanwick.
Declare by Tim Powers
The less known about a Tim Powers novel going in, the better, so may I suggest stopping now and reading this book if you haven’t already? Declare is a tale of twentieth century weirdness that follows a world of secret knowledge struggling to reinvent itself in the face of deeper and more secret knowledge. Catching hosts of strange-but-true details of history in the net of its plot, Declare melds the plausibly deniable symbolism and grandiose, grotesque schemes of magic and espionage.
Stations of the Tide by Michael Swanwick
Like the characters at its core, Swanwick’s novel transforms before the reader’s eyes. Is it a detective story masquerading as a spy story? Vice versa? Does it start as one and become the other? Is it a story of magic, or religion, or science, or all of these at once? Hidden agendas are plumbed; power is used sparingly, viciously, unfairly; secrets are revealed and concealed, and the world changes.
Nancy Kress’ Tomorrow’s Kin is nominated for RT BOOK REVIEWS Readers Choice Award – Science Fiction & Fantasy.
USC CINEMATIC ARTS is hosting PLANET OF THE APES 50th Anniversary Screening and Panel Discussion: “Legacy of the Planet of the Apes” on February 9, 7PM. Among the speakers is Rupert Wyatt, director of Rise of the Planet of the Apes and contributor to THE APES OF WRATH.
