strange horizons

May 1, 2019

Wonderful, strange, horrid, and lovely, THE VERY BEST OF CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN is a rollercoaster of unexpected beauty

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized adri joy, des lewis gestalt real-time reviews, duncan lawie, elizabeth story, hannes hummel, nerds of a feather flock together, review, strange horizons, the very best of caitlin r kiernan

THE VERY BEST OF CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN continues to astound.

At NERDS OF FEATHER, FLOCK TOGETHER, Adri Joy praises the collection.

A few days on, I don’t feel equipped to translate my reactions to this rollercoaster of unexpected beauty, unapologetic queerness and distilled “oh, YIKES” into a coherent review. All I can say is, like all good rollercoasters, it left me dizzy and excited and desperate to go around again, even though I know the many, many moments during the experience itself where I just wanted it to be over.

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I made more save-for-later highlights in this book than I have in any other title in 2019 so far. I come out of the other end wide eyed, hands clenched in hair, adrenalin spent and memories perhaps less reliable than they should be: this collection has done its job well.

Rating: 8/10

Photo: Kyle Cassidy

Duncan Lawie for STRANGE HORIZONS likes the book.

Still, having read all the wonderful, strange, horrid, lovely stories in this volume, I would not trust any of her narrators to be reliable enough, or sure enough of themselves, to tell me their author’s intent. Stories told in the first person, which make up the majority of the collection, give Kiernan a powerful tool to avoid telling too much, placing the perspective of the narrator outside the events or, more often, sufficiently disturbed or confused by what is happening that she—or, occasionally, he—is unable to tell the story directly. Even when the story is not first person, though, there is significant opportunity for elision or distraction via the use of “chapterising” and placing components out of linear order.

<snip>

With 250 stories to Kiernan’s name, it is impossible for this reader to tell how representative these are of her fiction career of nearly thirty years. Indeed, even within this collection I have named fewer than half the available stories, but I hold each of them close—except the ones I want to forget, and those seem to hold on to me.

DES LEWIS GESTALT REAL-TIME REVIEWS comments on every tale.

THE APE’S WIFE

“History is a steamroller. History is a litany of war.”

Including those two suns upon Japan, then Korea, and the Beauty and the Beast, the building of Trump’s wall, one with large enough gate for killing’s bait, Satan and God, angels in Milton and Blake. This incredible work, another vision for my mind’s still living tapestry of others’ discrete visions. It is of Ann Darrow and King Kong, including our archetypal images from the Fay Wray film. And various alternate paths Ann could have taken as stemming from that. The island itself a primordial orphan. The Art-Deco Calvary of Empire’s State. The beast “…hauled away in the rusty hold of that evil-smelling ship.” The beauty “hauled free of the morass of her own nightmares.” To that “All-At-Once time”, and become the girl as well as the ‘Golden Mother’. “Once I built a tower up to the sun,” not a wall of division hugging the land.

For more info about THE VERY BEST OF CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Hannes Hummel
Design by Elizabeth Story

April 29, 2019

Tachyon tidbits featuring James Tiptree Jr., Joe R. Lansdale, Jaymee Goh, and Bruce Sterling

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized all hail the popcorn king, b&n sci-fi & fantasy blog, bruce sterling, go fund me, hansi oppenheimer, her smoke rose up forever, james tiptree jr, jaymee goh, jeff somers, Joe R. Lansdale, john picaio, kay steiger, strange horizons, vox

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

James Tiptree Jr., Joe R. Lansdale (photo: Karen Lansdale), Jaymee Goh (Francesca Myman), and Bruce Sterling (THE VERGE)

For VOX, Kay Steiger profiles James Tiptree Jr. as the most prescient science fiction author you aren’t reading.

Dystopias are having a moment. A popular and critically acclaimed adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale is on TV. George Orwell’s 1984 recently became a best-seller again, more than 60 years after it was published. A slew of newer releases, such as Idra Novey’s Those Who Knew, have explored the “messy, continuing aftermath of the MeToo movement,” as Alexandra Alter wrote for the New York Times.

But one writer whose work feels especially relevant isn’t even in the mix: Alice Sheldon.

Sheldon primarily wrote under a male pseudonym — James Tiptree Jr. — in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Today, that work has an eerily contemporary feel. Her short stories depict worlds defined by familiar gender dynamics, shot through with dark themes and, often, wry humor.

At the time, “Tiptree’s” work was received as sharp and innovative, earning Hugo and Nebula awards and drawing a fervent fan base. Admirers included fellow science fiction writers like Philip K. Dick and Ursula K. Le Guin.

But today, a mere handful of universities list these stories on syllabi of science fiction classics. The last time a publisher put out a collection of Sheldon’s work was 1990 (reissued in the mid-2000s). She has only a few thousand reviews on the popular book website Goodreads — compared to the hundreds of thousands for Le Guin or the more than 1 million for The Handmaid’s Tale alone.

Sheldon has been all but forgotten in this modern dystopia resurgence, even though what she created as James Tiptree might resonate louder now than ever. But the author herself is a fascinating figure and deserves to be recognized today.

Hansi Oppenheimer has started a GO FUND ME for the forthcoming All Hail The Popcorn King, a documentary on Joe R. Lansdale, and the ensuing release party.

From Bubba Ho-Tep to Hap and Leonard and for all of the fans that have followed along throughout Joe R Lansdale’s storied career, All Hail The Popcorn King the documentary is something of a monument.

This is a film that we can all get excited about!

Joe’s unique voice has spanned multiple genres and been adapted for film and TV. He has supported and collaborated with generations of writers, filmmakers and fans. Our film celebrates his contributions to Pop Culture through interviews with his many colleagues, fans and collaborators.

Joe himself has collaborated with our team on this documentary, and he has generously granted us access to invaluable interviews and materials from his private collection. We can’t wait to give The Popcorn King a grand salute with this premiere, but to do that, we need your help.

Our goal through this campaign is to raise $2,000, which will cover the costs of Post Production and booking Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse for a once-in-a-lifetime event that will include Joe’s friends and family.

STRANGE HORIZONS (April 22, 2019) features Jaymee Goh’s essay “Variations on a Name: The -Punks of our Times.”

Steampunk is dead, I am told. “An agent told me I can’t use the word ‘steampunk’ to describe my novel,” a friend told me, “and I asked other editor friends and they said the same thing. You can’t call your book steampunk anymore.”

Steampunk, an aesthetic of accelerated technology in settings inspired by industrial revolutions, has always had a fraught problem with definition. When I first participated in steampunk, I noticed that we almost always had to figure out how to define it so that people could recognise it when described with words, and then we had to define it so people could have flexibility with it. Is it set only in Victorian times? Can it be non-British? If it was American, can it be Native American? I had to listen to people describe it as “Victorian science fiction” because that was their easy short-hand to explain “science fiction inspired by the Victorians” and immediately locked it up to a specific time and place, a specific look and vocabulary, rooted in an imperialist history that directly shaped the white supremacist conditions of today’s world.

In Technological Innovations Science Fiction Predicted with 100 Percent Accuracy on B&N SCI-FI & FANTASY BLOG, Jeff Somers includes the prescient Bruce Sterling.

But to be fair, most of examples of sci-fi prophecy are only kind of accurate. Verne’s vision of going to the moon is remarkable—but he also thought the spaceship would be fired out of a giant gun. Bellamy’s concept of debit cards is amazingly prescient—but he also assumed those cards would draw on a common fund of government-managed money. And all of those Star Trek technologies are close-but-no-cigar. Generally, SF predictions tend to be just that: similar in concept but wildly different in the details.

And then there are the books on this list: the technologies imagined by these five writers are so accurate, you have to wonder if they used a time machine to conduct their research.

Technology: Cryptocurrency
Book: Heavy Weather, by Bruce Sterling (1994)

Bruce Sterling’s 1994 novel deserves to be high on to-read lists these days; it’s a great story, and a trailblazer in the cli-fi subgenre. It also contains a few amazingly accurate predictions about the future world of 2031. Although the main thrust of the story revolves around a group of high-tech stormchasers in a world where climate change generates incredibly destructive weather phenomena, in one passage Sterling casually describes cryptocurrencies so accurately, it’s made more than one person speculate only half-jokingly that he might be Satoshi Nakamoto, the unknown person who launched Bitcoin in 2009. As Sterling wrote 15 years earlier, “electronic, private cash, unbacked by any government, untraceable, completely anonymous, global in reach, lightninglike in speed, ubiquitous, fungible, and usually highly volatile” was the way of the future. The only thing he got wrong: it didn’t take until 2031 to hit the market

For more info about HER SMOKE ROSE UP FOREVER, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by John Picacio

March 12, 2019

Interviews, short stories, CENTRAL STATION, and more with Lavie Tidhar

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized andrea viscusi, asimov's, best of 2018, central station, clarkesworld, dem bones, from earth to the stars, interview, italian, k chess, lavie tidhar, Locus, massimo luciani, michele chiappetta, neom, netmassio, osama, recursor, review, rich horton, sarah anne langton, stan lee, stay nerd, strange horizons, terminale terra, the buried giant, the memcordist, the violent century, tor.com, venus in bloom

It’s become abundantly obvious that this is Lavie Tidhar’s reality and we’re all just living it.

Tidhar was interviewed in FROM EARTH TO THE STARS, the ASIMOV’S author and editor blog, about his short story “Neom.”

Asimov’s Editor: What is the story behind “Neom”?

LT: I’ve been visiting the Red Sea for twenty years now (on the Egyptian side), and I was always struck by looking just across the water to the Arabian Peninsula, and that huge stretch of desert along the Red Sea coast is, of course, Saudi Arabia. Then I came across crown prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS)’s plan to build this sort of cyberpunk utopia called Neom there! I mean it has a promotional Youtube video and everything … And I’ve been recently very interested in the idea of future cities, and I knew I had to write about it. If only because I find the idea of a cyberpunk utopia so very terrifying …

And by Michele Chiappetta at RECURSOR.

Your novel CENTRAL STATION has received much acclaim. What inspired you to write it?

I was living in Tel Aviv back in 2010, and I became kind of obsessed with the old Central Bus Station area, as well as the new station itself, which is this crazy, enormous place with its own nuclear fallout shelter, if you can believe it. And, you know, most of my novels fall into this weird, political, alternate history, noir sort of thing, and I wanted to do something completely different — just write about these people and this place.

And I always loved mosaic novels, especially in science fiction. That’s where a lot of the classics are. But it always struck me as quite a difficult thing to do, from a technical point of view. So, that was the challenge.

I wrote it now and then over the next five years or so. Some of the stories got into various Year’s Best anthologies. A few got translated into various languages. And then one day it was done. I just didn’t expect anyone would actually read it.

On The Italian site STAY NERD, Andrea Viscusi views Tidhar’s work through the lens of CENTRAL STATION and the short story collection Terminale Terra.

The strength of Lavie Tidhar’s stories lies precisely in this: not originality, understood as the innovative power of ideas, but the work of unification with which the author drew the constituent elements of science fiction and made it a playground. in which a multiplicity of actors and situations collide. CENTRAL STATION and Terminale Terra are not to be read for the research of mindblowing ideas, but for the naturalness with which the ideas are treated. Those who follow and know science fiction (above all literary, but not only) will be able to recognize dozens of citations and references, but those who are more distant can still appreciate the constant unfolding of stories of normal people in exceptional contexts. The enthusiast and the neophyte can therefore be considered both satisfied, even if for different reasons.

Translation courtesy of Google

Massimo Luciani on the Italian site NETMASSIO reviews the short story "The Memcordist.“

"The Memcordist” is set in the same narrative universe as the novel CENTRAL STATION: the two works are autonomous but Pym is explicitly mentioned in the novel therefore among the stories of Lavie Tidhar is perhaps the one that most completes the novel. The various contrasts created by the author in my opinion give the story its emotional strength which is why I believe it is worth reading.

Translation courtesy of Google

Rich Horton’s “Memories of 2018″ for LOCUS includes Tidhar’s “The Buried Giant.”

“The Buried Giant”, by Lavie Tidhar (Robots vs Fairies) tells (literally – it’s an expertly framed story) of the dangerous adventures of a boy in a post-apocalyptic world who wants to be a “real boy” (i.e. robot), and in the process encounters a robot cat and a robot fox, and a dead girl and a manshonyagger. Powerful work.

Two new Tidhar stories appeared recently: “Venus in Bloom” (CLARKESWORLD ISSUE 148, JANUARY 2019) and “Dem Bones” (STRANGE HORIZONS 18 FEBRUARY 2019).

At TOR.COM, K Chess’ Five Fictional Books Inside of Real Books includes The Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante series.

The Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante series (from Osama by Lavie Tidhar)

Joe, a private investigator in an alternate reality, loves to read novels that detail the planning and execution of terrorist attacks—because global terrorism does not exist beyond their pages. A client who hires him to track down the series’ author sends Joe across the globe from Laos to Paris, London and New York, while shadowy operatives who want to keep the realities apart tail, assail, and finally imprison him. The Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante books are popular trade paperbacks with garish covers, released by an imprint that also publishes porn, but as Joe points out, they “read like the lab reports of a morgue, full of facts and figures all concerned with death.” The clinical excerpts Tidher includes from the books made me think about the chance casualties of these real attacks; it is Joe’s world that feels like a pulp.

And perhaps the most unexpected Tidhar sighting comes from the Stan Lee Wikipedia page under Fiction Portrayals.

In Lavie Tidhar’s 2013 THE VIOLENT CENTURY , Lee appears – as Stanley Martin Lieber – as a historian of superhumans.

For more info about CENTRAL STATION, visit the Tachyon page.

For more info about THE VIOLENT CENTURY, visit the Tachyon page.

Covers by Sarah Anne Langton

September 6, 2018

Nick Mamatas’ great collection THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF EVERYTHING makes for a memorable foray

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized aditya singh, ama, elizabeth story, lashawn m wanak, lightspeed, Nick Mamatas, reddit, review, strange horizons, the people's republic of everything, tobias carroll, vol. 1 brooklyn

A trio of fresh reviews for Nick Mamatas’ recently released THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF EVERYTHING.

For VOL. 1 BROOKLYN, Tobias Carroll praises the collection.

There’s a telling moment to be found in the history of one of the stories in Nick Mamatas’s new collection THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF EVERYTHING, likely the only collection you’ll encounter this year that includes both a counterfactual account of Trotsky’s early days and an account of a garden gnome-turned-nuclear weapon. It comes after “Slice of Life,” a tale of a particular corner of medical research and the philosophical tangents it inspires among those involved in it.

Mamatas discusses the history of each of the components of the collection–which includes a short novel. For “Slice of Life,” he discusses his plans to retire from writing science fiction in early 2013–a plan which was abandoned after his wife announced that she was pregnant. “Babies cost money,” Mamatas writes. “Crime doesn’t pay. Neither does literature.”

Even so, there’s a tension found in these stories and their relationship to genre that provides an interesting subtext for the collection as a whole. “Slice of Life” is one of the handful of realistic stories in the collection, but even it feints in the direction of the surreal, as it opens with the donation of a particularly singular body to science.

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It’s probably no coincidence that these tales of suburbia also fold in nods in the direction of omnipresent surveillance. Mamatas’s fiction is at its best when its approach to genre is dizzying; the convergence and misdirection on display here make for a memorable foray into their creator’s mind–and into world that might have been.

Lashawn M. Wanak at LIGHTSPEED enjoys the book.

Nick Mamatas is a sharp, sarcastic, amazing writer whose fiction runs the gamut from horror to speculative to literary. THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF EVERYTHING gathers his short fiction from the past decade and puts it in one book. It’s a great collection, and if you’re a writer, I highly suggest reading it, not just for the stories, but also for the story notes, where Mamatas gives insights into the history, inspiration, and challenges he had getting the stories published.

For STRANGE HORIZONS, Aditya Singh reviews THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF EVERYTHING.

But one thing that the reader will notice about the novel and short stories collected in THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF EVERYTHING is that they form a good, enjoyable collection, where Mamatas has drawn upon a wide range of personal and political concerns—the life of the writer, ruminations on parenthood, the fate of left-wing politics—to write stories that are funny, deeply evocative and bewildering.

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But the few shortcomings of the collection are easily overcome by its stronger elements. Mamatas’s fiction has clearly been shaped by years of political activism and time spent in the indigent parts of American cities—and a sense of familiarity with the subject, often absent in the sort of overtly political American fiction so excoriated by Gray, shines through. Read it and you will not forget what is brought out most clearly in his work: a sense of despair and righteous anger at the present, balanced with some hope of a better future.

Mamatas participated in a REDDIT AMA.

sblinnThe Girl in the Road

Hey! Finally a preorder by me of one of your books has been shipped and delivered before the relevant credit card expired!

My question is, how did you go about selecting stories for this book? Selfishly I would have loved to see “O, Harvard Square!” in there…

NMamatas AMA Author

Well, I collected a bunch of stories from the past ten years—not all of them, but “Oh, Harvard Square” was I think in there—and submitted it to Tachyon under the name The Spook School and Other Stories.

However, a couple of years prior, when it looked like my novel Under My Roof was going to be made into a feature film, I got the rights back and submitted that to Tachyon, with an eye toward a new movie tie-in edition. Tachnyon, as an independent press, is nimble enough to quickly start working on a book when it looks like there might be a market for it, and independent film production is always haphazard when it comes to distribution or even releasing at all. Indeed, scenes from the film were shot, which was enough to get me a biggish payout on a realized option, but the movie was never completed.

Anyway, after some months, Jacob and Jill from Tachyon invited me out to lunch, which is always a good sign. And they pitched a counter-idea: get rid of half the stories, especially ones that were thematically similar to one another, add the one Lovecraftian story I’d forgotten to include in The Nickronomicon (whoops!) and also reprint Under My Roof, as collections do better when there is a giant honking story in it somewhere. Wanting a book more than wanting not-a-book, I said sure. “Oh, Harvard Square” got flushed at that point, along with some other pieces, including even “Thy Shiny Car in the Night”, which was a Best American Mystery Stories reprint. So, it happens! Big-deal stories and not just obscure ones were cut.

A bit later we got some feedback that “spook school” sounds suggestive of spies, so we went with THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF EVERYTHING, which refers in a way both to Under My Roof and to “The People’s Republic of Everywhere and Everything”, one of the crime/SF hybrid stories that made the cut into the final book.

For more info on THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF EVERYTHING, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Elizabeth Story

May 2, 2018

Peter S. Beagle’s masterful expression informs the entertaining and thoughtful stories of THE OVERNEATH

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized elizabeth story, fogknife, jason mcintosh, matt colborn, nardiviews, peter s beagle, strange horizons, the overneath

Photo: Rina Weisman

For STRANGE HORIZONS, Matt Colborn praises Peter S. Beagle’s Locus Award finalist THE OVERNEATH.

In fact, there are occasions when Beagle’s deeper or more challenging concerns get crowded out by his strengths as a comic fantasist: this is most apparent in the “Trinity County” story, with its uneasy mix of dragons and hard drugs, but also occurs in “Schmendrick Alone,” when a light story ends with the supernatural death of Lord Buccleuch. Beagle is at his best when he balances the comedy with thoughtful metaphysics and mystery, as in “The Way It Works Out and All” and “Olfert Dapper’s Day.” In toto, this volume represents a worthy publication by Tachyon Press, an entertaining and thoughtful read.

Jason McIntosh at FOGKNIFE enjoys his first Peter S. Beagle experience.

Continuing my streak of reading only the most recent books by writers with careers reaching back a half-century, I borrowed THE OVERNEATH as soon as I noticed it on my local library’s new-fiction shelves. My knowledge of Beagle extends to dim memories of seeing the animated adaptation of 1968’s The Last Unicorn on HBO, and my eight-year-old self finding it too quiet and sad to enjoy. As such, I fell into this book with no expectations other than let’s read some fantasy shorts by a super-old dude. Well: I loved it.

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I cannot lie: Knowing practically nothing about the author other than his age, I expected at every page to cringe at some evidence of oh-grandpa outdated cultural mores. Part of me had my bony finger raised and ready for an extended tut-tut session given the lack of women in the initial triad of unicorn stories, but these are immediately followed by two stories that neatly neutralized that complaint. Had I really wanted to reach for it, I’m sure I could have found something to offend in Beagle’s depiction of an ancient Chinese judge, or a Native American mystic, or a Jamaican-born exorcist. But I chose not to strain myself so, and allowed myself to instead feel utterly charmed at the diverse cast with whom Beagle has peopled these stories.

<snip>

Personally, I found the book full of writing lessons, even though I seldom write fiction per se — the whole volume shot through with so much quietly masterful expression. I recall, for example, a particular moment in the final story as a reformed scoundrel prepares to end his exile in colonial Maine. He packs nothing but a few mementos from his time in the wilderness, each suffused with memory and experience, and reflects that he leaves with far more than he arrived with. I have to say that I felt rather the same way, by the time I finished this book.

(And if that sounds hokey, it is only because I can’t write as well as Peter S. Beagle.)

NARDIVIEWS lauds the collection.

I’ve been a fan of Peter S. Beagle’s work ever since I read The Last Unicorn, a cheerfully bittersweet examination of life and fairy tales. I also enjoyed IN CALABRIA, Beagle’s more recent take on unicorns. However, aside from a short sequel to The Last Unicorn, I hadn’t read any of Beagle’s shorter fiction. THE OVERNEATH is a collection Beagle’s short stories, some previously published and some new to this volume. It’s a great introduction to Beagle’s fiction.

<snip>

With over a dozen stories, its difficult to derive any general themes or narrative threads from OVERNEATH. One common thread is Peter Beagle’s unique ability to mix and meld two opposite emotions into something greater. His stories manage to evoke both melancholy and wonder, cynicism and hope, frustration and love at the same time. Several of the stories, including the two about Schmendrick, involve people blinded by love. There seems to be a theme, an implicit message against trusting the heart… and yet it’s hard to read these stories simply as cynical diatribes against love. If there’s a message, it seems to be that people are flawed, although they might be touched by magic every once in a while – or a unicorn.

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

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

April 4, 2018

Tachyon tidbits featuring Peter S. Beagle, Jacob Weisman, James Morrow, Peter Watts, and Nick Mamatas

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized bigfoot and the bodhisattva, Interviews, jacob weisman, James Morrow, Lit Reactor, matt hilliard, mylifemybooksmyescape, Nick Mamatas, particle books, peter s beagle, Peter Watts, review, strange horizons, superstardrifter, the architecture of fear, the freeze frame revolution, the new voices of fantasy, the people's republic of everything, writing class

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

Jacob Weisman & Peter S. Beagle (photo: Jill Roberts), James Morrow, Peter Watts, and Nick Mamatas

For STRANGE HORIZONS, Matt Hilliard praises Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman’s THE NEW VOICES IN FANTASY.

Of course, the first question to ask of any anthology is: are there some great stories in it? The answer is yes!

For example, I hadn’t read any short fiction from Ursula Vernon before, though, based on her Hugo Award-winning graphic novel Digger—an epic fantasy that manages to be whimsical, humorous, and philosophical—my expectations were high. Her story here, “Jackalope Wives,” takes some familiar themes (it’s essentially a selkie story, one of several in this collection), but manages to pack an outsized emotional heft into its fairly short length. Its storytelling voice gives the text the air of something that is drawn from deeply-rooted folklore, so it’s interesting to note that the existence of “jackalopes” seem to be a recent and rather silly tall tale, made up by a guy in Wyoming in the 1930s and never taken seriously by anyone. I’m not sure Vernon was thinking about cultural appropriation when she made this choice, but regardless it’s an interesting solution to the otherwise thorny issues which surround incorporating myth into modern stories. Instead of taking, say, an authentic Native American tradition and possibly being seen as cheapening it, Vernon has taken a piece of inauthentic kitsch and given it more gravitas. But more important than all that is the fact the story is wonderfully told and fairly unique in choosing an old grandmother as its protagonist.

Carmen Maria Mochado’s “The Husband Stitch” isn’t quite a selkie story, but it’s close, and she gives it a horrific twist that makes it the collection’s most memorable story. The narrator recounts a long life with a single fantastic element, a mysterious ribbon around the narrator’s neck, but which is otherwise filled with mostly normal things: falling in love, getting married, having children, then returning to an empty nest. Yet this biography is imparted in a way that turns a normal life into something both banal and suffocating. Carefully selected details depict the narrator’s life as being completely defined by the desires of her husband. Only the ribbon is her own, yet he wants to possess that as well. Throughout, the narrator freely makes her own choices, yet the story suggests she’s completely trapped by her circumstances.

Had you asked me before reading this collection, I might have said that the distinction between fantastic mainstream works and genre fantasy is that, for mainstream fiction, the fantastic is simply a means to explore a particular theme or idea. Genre fantasy, on the other hand, can be thought of as truly positing a different sort of world and persuading the reader to believe in it for the duration of the story. I think this is still a useful distinction, but it comes close to defining nearly all the stories in this collection as mainstream, so something is amiss. I’ll come back to this in a moment, but for now I’ll observe that two mainstream authors in this collection include some fantastic elements, but the stories feel different because they are not working in any sort of recognizable fantastic tradition. The duck in love with the rock presupposes no reader knowledge, no great dialogue, except a little bit about ducks and human nature. “The Philosophers” likewise connects with Borges and HG Wells but not genre fantasy or older folklore.

In contrast, nearly every other story in the collection is somehow building upon some fantastic tradition or other, more or less directly. Max Gladstone’s “A Kiss With Teeth” is a vampire story, Hannu Rajaniemi’s “The Haunting of Apollo A7LB” is a ghost story that feels like fantasy despite involving the space program, and Sofia Samatar’s “Selkie Stories are For Losers” is, despite its title, a selkie story. “Jackalope Wives” and “Cartographer Wasps” don’t build on any real traditions that I’m aware of, but they are told in the sort of folklore voice often used in traditional fairy tales, and so evoke these traditions for most readers.

MYLIFEMYBOOKSMYESCAPE interviews James Morrow about BIGFOOT AND THE BODHISATTVA.

DJ: What is “Bigfoot and the Bodhisattva” about?

JM: The plot turns on the angst of the Abominable Snowman, Taktra Kunga, denizen of the Himalayas, who feels compelled to devour the cerebrums of doomed yuppie mountain climbers. In a quest to enlarge his soul, my yeti apprentices himself to the Fifteenth Dalai Lama, His Holiness, Chögi Gyatso, who promises to teach him about Tibetan Buddhism. Taktra reciprocates by protecting Chögi from the predations of the Chinese, who for generations have sought to destroy, or at least assimilate, Tibetan culture.

DJ: What were some of your influences for “Bigfoot and the Bodhisattva”?

JM: The biggest single influence was John Gardner’s short novel Grendel, which gamely tells the saga of Beowulf from the monster’s point of view. As I began the project, I assumed I would also draw energy and inspiration from B movies about the yeti—I’m always looking for excuses to collect DVDs of dubious horror and science-fiction films—but it turns out they’re unwatchable, with the exception of an obscure British effort called The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas, based on a BBC teleplay by the prolific Nigel Kneale, creator of the Professor Quatermass cycle.

SUPERSTARDRIFTER enjoys Peter Watts’ forthcoming THE FREEZE-FRAME REVOLUTION.

I was absolutely enthralled by this book. As I said, I’m not certain that I ‘got’ all the intricacies of the science/technology and probably theoretical physics that this ship runs on, but I absolutely loved the premise and the adventure that Sunday and her friends had. I really liked Sunday as a character as well. She’s pretty snarky at times, which I always like in a character. Having her story be in first person, seeing things from her point of view, which I could somewhat relate to as a sometimes-snarky gal who swears a lot… well, even when I didn’t always get it, it didn’t matter. I was never bored with it. I never felt like the really sciencey bits (that didn’t always so much go over my head as smacked me in the forehead a bit) really made this hard to understand or boring. I’m not sure if I can put this more eloquently, lol. You don’t have to be a theoretical physicist to enjoy this story. It’s pretty hard sci-fi which I’m not always a fan of, but I hoped since I liked Blindsight that I’d like this one, and it turns out that I liked this one a lot!

LIT REACTOR is now enrolling students for the upcoming writing class “The Architecture of Fiction” with the award-winning Nick Mamatas, author of the forthcoming THE PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF EVERYTHING.

Your Instructor: Nick Mamatas, author of LOVE IS THE LAW and I AM PROVIDENCE

Where: Online — Available everywhere!

When: April 17, 2018 – May 15, 2018

Enrollment: 16 students

Price: $350

For more info about THE NEW VOICES OF FANTASY, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Camille André

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

For more info on BIGFOOT AND THE BODHISATTVA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Richard Braithwaite

Design by Elizabeth Story

For more info on THE FREEZE-FRAME REVOLUTION, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Elizabeth Story

For more info on THE PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF EVERYTHING, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Elizabeth Story

February 1, 2018

Support STRANGE HORIZONS and win books by Peter S. Beagle, Ellen Klages, Jacob Weisman, Brandon Sanderson, Cory Doctorow, and others

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized brandon sanderson, camille andre, contest, cory doctorow, edgedancer, elizabeth story, ellen klages, giveaway, magdalena korzeniewska, peter s beagle, strange horizons, summerlong, the new voices of fantasy, walkaway, wicked wonders

The folks over at STRANGE HORIZONS have started their annual fundraiser.

Here’s how it works:

Everyone who donates at least $1 via PayPal or joins our Patreon will be entered into the running for one of the prizes below. Once the fund drive has run its course, we’ll do a random drawing for each prize and contact the winner for their shipping information.

If you’d like to donate more than $1, that’s great, and we really appreciate it! However, in an effort to keep the prize draw fun and fair, your donation will only count for one entry, regardless of the amount. So if you donate $1, you get one entry, and if you donate $10, you still get one entry. If you donate more than once, you still get one entry.

We’d like to thank the publishers, supports, and contributors who donated a prize for their generosity. We can’t run this event without you.

Among the numerous prizes:

Tachyon Fantasy Bundle: Are you a fan of Peter S. Beagle and Ellen Klages? Then this is the bundle for you!. SUMMERLONG is Peter S. Beagle’s long-awaited novel published in 2017. Set in Puget Sound, SH reviewer Stephen Case called it “urban fantasy (or, more accurately, “American northwestern fantasy”) at its best” here. Ellen Klages’ 2017 short story collection, WICKED WONDERS (also reviewed by Stephen Case in 2017), has stories that run the gamut from pure science fiction to contemporary fantasy to high fantasy and darkly autobiographical. In THE NEW VOICES OF FANTASY, edited (and signed!) by Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman, discover the most exciting, must read, up-and-coming fantasy writers of the last five years. Authors include SH alums Eugene Fischer, Brooke Bolander, Amal El-Mohtar, Carmen Maria Machado, Usman T. Malik, Sarah Pinsker, Sofia Samatar, Kelly Sandoval, A. C. Wise, Alyssa Wong, and JY Yang. All trade paperbacks. (Donated by Tachyon Publishing.)

Tor mini hardback bundle: five canonical works published by Tor US as gift-sized 4"x6" paper-over-board hardcovers: Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, From the Two Rivers by Robert Jordan, Wild Cards vol I edited by George R. R. Martin, Edgedancer by Brandon Sanderson, and Old Man’s War by John Scalzi.

Walkaway by Cory Doctorow: a copy of the hardback Tor US edition of Doctorow’s most recent novel, which Redfern Jon Barrett wrote enthusiastically about for us last year: “a remarkable, imperfect book … As a manifesto it excels, demonstrating the most realistic utopia I’ve ever read. As a novel it’s greatly enjoyable, but not without its flaws … It sacrifices the personal for the political, and honestly this did nothing to harm my enjoyment in reading it, nor did it diminish the power of its vision. This book genuinely inspired me.”

For more info on SUMMERLONG, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Magdalena Korzeniewska

Design by Elizabeth Story

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

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

For more info about THE NEW VOICES OF FANTASY, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Camille André

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

January 10, 2018

THE OVERNEATH finds Peter S. Beagle operating at the height of his powers

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized benjamin wald, best of 2017, elizabeth story, peter s beagle, review, stephen case, strange horizons, the arched doorway, the overneath

Benjamin Wald for SFREVU praises Peter S. Beagle’s THE OVERNEATH.

There is a distinct pleasure to be found in reading a true master of the craft of writing. You can relax with the knowledge that you are in good hands, and savour the facility with language and character that shines from every page. Reading Peter S. Beagle provides exactly this variety of pleasure, and his newest collection of short fiction, THE OVERNEATH, will not disappoint. Beagle is a master of prose and his every sentence delights. In addition, he combines aa shrewd appreciation of character and human nature with a warmth and sympathy that makes even his least impressive characters instantly sympathetic. While best known for the deservedly beloved The Last Unicorn, Beagle has lost none of his skill in the intervening five decades of writing and his work remains one of the jewels of the genre.

<snip>

Overall, this is an excellent collection from an accomplished fantasist operating at the height of his powers. Pull up a chair, open the cover, and relax. You are in good hands.

Photo: Rina Weisman

At STRANGE HORIZONS, Stephen Case chose the collection as one of his genre favorites of 2017.

My first was Peter S. Beagle’s collection THE OVERNEATH, which besides some excellent urban fantasy revisited a character from The Last Unicorn and offered a sequence of stories featuring unicorns in various settings (including Colonial America) without being trite. In fact, this whole collection pretty much nailed it, showing Beagle at his wry and whimsical best.

THE ARCHED DOORWAY includes the book, without comment on their 15 Books We Enjoyed In 2017.

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

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

November 2, 2017

Jane Yolen’s brilliant THE EMERALD CIRCUS delivers deft, toothy, and graceful pleasures

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized catherine rockwood, confessions of a book addict, elizabeth story, foreword reviews, Jane Yolen, meagan logsdon, review, sabrina's library, strange horizons, the emerald circus

A quartet of reviews for Jane Yolen’s recommended THE EMERALD CIRCUS.

Photo: Jason Stemple

In a starred review, Meagan Logsdon for FOREWORD REVIEWS enjoys the collection.

THE EMERALD CIRCUS is a moving collection of stories that conveys timeless truths as it affectionately plays with traditional tales.

Jane Yolen’s latest collection is a wonderful menagerie of twists on classic fairy tales, legends, and the lives of literary figures. These stories parade beneath a circus tent knit by the underlying theme of the power of art.

<snip>

The prose never fails to entrance, and the creativity on display impresses. There is an obvious depth of research and care, particularly evident in “The Jewel in the Toad Queen’s Crown,” a tale centering on Disraeli, the intriguing Jewish-turned-Anglican prime minister of Victoria’s England on two separate occasions. Notes in the back on each individual story offer a peek into the mind of the writer and give context for Yolen’s inspiration. These are interspersed with a few of her own poems, which are warm and inviting.

THE EMERALD CIRCUS dances at the border between bucking tradition and paying homage to the great stories and figures of ages past. The result is a brilliant assemblage of narratives with the potential to leave an audience spellbound.

At STRANGE HORIZONS, Catherine Rockwood praises the book.

Yolen is justly famous for revisions or retellings of stories from the diverse, high-piled treasure-house of folklore and myth, and in places here she also engages with received historical anecdote. (For instance, “A Knot of Toads” is plotted around the 16th-century accusation and trial of the Witches of Berwick, instigated by King James VI of Scotland, aka James I of England.) In all cases, it’s worth asking a few questions: “Does this retelling need to be done? For whom is it being done, and why?” “Need” is of course a tricky word. We’re getting better at embracing pleasure-in-reading as sufficient cause for carrying on as much as we bloody well like with whichever authors have the knack of delivering what we enjoy. And as I hope I’ve made clear, a good number of deft, toothy, and graceful pleasures reside in Yolen’s EMERALD CIRCUS.

SABRINA’S LIBRARY recommends the volume.

THE EMERALD CIRCUS has a story for everyone. Yolen selects old tales and makes them new and surprising and yet instantly recognizable. The collection features a slate of disenfranchised Wendys (from Peter Pan); Guinevere, Lancelot, and Merlin of the Arthurian legends; Alice and company from the Wonderland stories; Dorothy and the gang before the big twister. These stories are also rich in atmosphere inspired by Yolen’s travels, particularly “A Knot of Toads,” which is spooky and moody and makes me want to move to Scotland immediately.

<snip>

For lovers of fairy tales, folklore, and a cracking good yarn, I highly recommend THE EMERALD CIRCUS.

CONFESSIONS OF A BOOK ADDICT gives THE EMERALD CIRCUS a 5 of 5 stars.

It is definitely one worth reading. I loved it! It’s a little funny that this is being released this year, as I just re-read Sister Light, Sister Dark a few months ago. Up until then I hadn’t read a Yolen book in years. It was sitting on the shelf in my bedroom staring at me, and so I picked it up and loved it all over again. Seeing this on the NetGalley roster brought back a flood of emotions. I was excited to read THE EMERALD CIRCUS, and was not disappointed in the least.

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

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

September 20, 2017

Tachyon tidbits featuring Ellen Klages, Nalo Hopkinson, Hannu Rajaniemi, and Lauren Beukes

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized ann foster, book riot, brown girl begins, brown girl in the ring, ellen klages, hannu rajaniemi, jean flambeur, lauren beukes, nalo hopkinson, review, sharon lewis, shining girls, stephen case, strange horizons, urbanworld, wicked wonders

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

Ellen Klages (photo: Scott R. Kline), Nalo Hopkinson (David Findlay), Hannu Rajaniemi, and Lauren Beukes

At STRANGE HORIZONS, Stephen Case praises Ellen Klages’ WICKED WONDERS.

If novels are the currency of the fiction publishing world, then short stories are the bits of that currency. Or rather, to bend a metaphor, short stories are the coins. If novels are like dollar bills, short stories are the shiny silvers and coppers that you hold in the palm of your hand. Ellen Klages, in her latest collection of short fiction, pours out a handful of these bright coppers and silver crescents (together with the tokens to some old arcades along summer boardwalks); they catch the mind and the eye with their brilliance.

The short stories built out of Klages’s ideas in this collection run the gamut from pure science fiction (“Goodnight Moons” and “Amicae Aeternum”) to contemporary fantasy (“Echoes of Aurora,” “Friday Night at St. Cecelia’s,” and “Caligo Lane”) to one piece of high fantasy, though tongue-in-cheek (“Sponda the Suet Girl and the Secret of the French Pearl”). There are also a few that are merely touched with the hint of fantasy, such as the darkly autobiographical “The Education of a Witch” and the wistful “Gone to the Library.” Finally though, there are pieces without any tangible speculative elements at all, such as “Hey, Presto!,” “The Scary Ham,” and the most powerful piece in the collection, “Woodsmoke.” That the three of these non-speculative works fit so seamlessly in with the rest speaks to the source that Klages draws upon for her stories. They are built on memories of childhood, or at least her understanding of childhood. It is this sense of memory that makes her stories piercing and mournful, like a dimly remembered train whistle, once heard in the distance beyond an open bedroom window.

Klages writes out of a sort of childlike wonder, peopling her stories with main characters who are innocent and strong. She builds her descriptions on the earthy richness of halcyon childhoods, the sights and sounds made larger than life in the way they are perceived through her (usually female) child characters.

Halo Hopkinson on her eponymous site reveals a screening date for BROWN GIRL BEGINS, a prequel to her first novel, BROWN GIRL IN THE RING.

The quick and dirty version: My first novel was titled BROWN GIRL IN THE RING. It was published in 1998. A few years ago, Caribbean-Canadian actor/director Sharon Lewis asked my permission to make a film inspired by that novel. I replied, as one does, “Talk to my agent.” Sharon did so, and they hammered out a contract. I signed off on it. Then Sharon wrote the script, fundraised, hired the cast and crew, and made the film. Let me restate: Sharon Lewis is the artist who created the film BROWN GIRL BEGINS.

BROWN GIRL BEGINS is inspired by my novel, but Sharon’s story makes significant departures from mine. BROWN GIRL BEGINS is her project, her first feature film. It was her idea, initiated and created with blood, sweat and tears by her. I didn’t approach her. I didn’t hire her. In fact, I wasn’t the least bit interested in making a film. That was all Sharon. I didn’t do much beyond cashing a small option cheque once a year for the past few years and encouraging Sharon as she went through this gruelling process. I understand that people are excited to see a film made in the world of one of my novels; I am, too. I’ve seen the film, and it’s beautiful and the actors delight me and the people involved in every aspect of making it have been freaking ingenious. So I’m getting increasingly irked when people say, “Nalo’s book is a film!” with no mention of the actual artist responsible for everything about the film, including the idea and the drive to make it in the first place. Please, have a care. Artists deserve credit for their work. On the IMDB page you can also see a list of all the actors, technical experts, musicians, crew, etc (artists in their own right) as well as the list of producers. You’ll note that my name is not among them. That is entirely appropriate.

And here’s the exciting part: BROWN GIRL BEGINS is having a premier screening! It’ll be at Urbanworld in New York on September 23.

At BOOK RIOT, Ann Foster suggests What To Read Based on Your Favorite Board Game. While no Tachyon publications are mentioned, two authors are recommended.

For fans of COSMIC ENCOUNTER, TWILIGHT IMPERIUM, STAR REALMS, and other games of galactic conquest, we suggest THE EXPANSE series by James S.A. Corey, Ann Leckie’s IMPERIAL RADCH series, the JEAN LE FLAMBEUR series by Hannu Rajaniemi, and THE STARS ARE LEGION by Kameron Hurley.

For fans of TRAGEDY LOOPER, T.I.M.E. STORIES, and other games where time travel merges with magic, try THE SHINING GIRLS by Lauren Beukes, THE FIRST FIFTEEN LIVES OF HARRY AUGUST by Claire North, THE JANE AUSTEN PROJECT by Kathleen A. Flynn, and ALL OUR WRONG TODAYS by Elan Mastai.

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

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

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