the geek curmudgeon

May 11, 2017

Tachyon tidbits featuring Joe R. Lansdale, Ellen Datlow, Nancy Kress, and Rick Klaw

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized Ann Monn, ann vandermeer, becky spratford, blood and lemonade, comicpalooza, darkness, darkness: two decades of modern horror, dead trees review blog, elizabeth story, Ellen Datlow, hap and leonard: blood and lemonade, jeff vandermeer, Joe R. Lansdale, library journal, Nancy Kress, nightmares, nightmares: a new decade of modern horror, nihil, review, Richard Klaw, Rick Klaw, steampunk, texas books in review, the geek curmudgeon, Thomas Canty, william jensen

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

Joe R. Lansdale (photo: Karen Lansdale), Ellen Datlow, Nancy Kress, and Rick Klaw (Brandy Whitten)

For TEXAS BOOKS IN REVIEW, William Jensen praises Joe R. Lansdale’s HAP AND LEONARD: BLOOD AND LEMONADE.

If Frank Dobie is the Lone Star State’s Homer, if Larry McMurtry is the Texas equivalent of Henry James, then Joe R. Lansdale has to be the Mark Twain behind the pine curtain. No other writer—in Texas or any other state in the union—can switch between gut-bursting humor and nail-biting suspense with as much heart and grace as Lansdale. His newest book is billed as a companion piece to the television show HAP AND LEONARD, which is based on the author’s bestselling series of novels involving (white, liberal, and straight) Hap and (black, conservative, and gay) Leonard. Of course one does not need to have seen the show or even have read the previous thrillers to enjoy this fantastic book. Rather than a singular narrative, BLOOD AND LEMONADE is more a collection of short stories about Hap’s youth and his first run-ins and adventures with Leonard. Though crime and criminals appear throughout, the stories are more about growing up—specifically growing up in the ’50s and ’60s in East Texas during segregation and the civil rights movement. The tales are linked via memory of the characters, but each story is able to stand on its own as a flash of passing innocence or as a lesson in well-intentioned cynicism.

The main ingredient that makes BLOOD AND LEMONADE stand out is that these bits and pieces reflect the racially charged violence that plagued East Texas (and the rest of America) for so long. Recently, there has been such a rise of hate crimes that it is difficult to read these passages without reflecting more on the present instead of the past. But because of recent events, these stories are more important than ever since they serve to remind us of how ugly and brutish things were not that long ago and how quickly we could fall back into such behavior if we allow it.

By combining elements of crime genre with layered characters in a world where race and sexuality are never whitewashed, BLOOD AND LEMONADE is a must-have for just about everyone. Joe R. Lansdale is one of the best writers to come out of Texas. Whatever he writes, I’ll read.

Becky Spratford at Library Journal in her article Early Scares: Halfway to Halloween highlights Ellen Datlow’s NIGHTMARES: A NEW DECADE OF MODERN HORROR.

The reigning sovereign of horror editing is Ellen Datlow, who is an acknowledged master of identifying and amassing the very best frights. Case in point is NIGHTMARES: A NEW DECADE OF MODERN HORROR (Tachyon. 2016. ISBN 9781616962326. pap. $16.95; ebk. ISBN 9781616962333). Beginning where her essential DARKNESS: TWO DECADES OF MODERN HORROR ends and spanning up to 2015, Datlow has compiled 24 of the finest stories written over the last ten years. By arranging them in chronological order, she illustrates the evolution and breadth of the genre, while spotlighting its brilliant new voices. Read this to see what you have been missing and to identify important titles to add to your collection before Halloween hits.

DEAD TREES REVIEW BLOG enjoys Nancy Kress’ Nebula award-winning YESTERDAY’S KIN.

Several months previously, an alien ship landed in New York Harbor. They suddenly really want to talk to Dr Marianne Jenner, author of a scientific paper all about mitochondria. They tell Jenner, and the UN Secretary General, some really interesting things. The aliens (humanity calls them “Denebs” even though they aren’t from the star Deneb) and humanity are almost genetically identical. Also, very bad things are going to happen to Earth in less than one year.

This book easily gets five stars. It is full of ideas on a variety of topics, it is really easy to read and the hard science is kept to a “reasonable’ level. Will there be a sequel? I hope so

On THE GEEK CURMUDGEON, Rick Klaw shares his essay “The Steam-Driven Time Machine:A Pop Culture Survey” that originally appeared in Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s STEAMPUNK.

As revealed in my previous post, I’m moderating the Steampunk panel at this weekend’s Comicpalooza. Newer folks may wonder why I’m moderating such a panel. (Or not, but I’m going to share this with you anyway).

Way back in 2008, I produced this little essay for Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s bestselling, seminal anthology STEAMPUNK. The magnificent book came out just at the beginnings of the latest Steampunk craze. After nine printings, one could argue it helped fan the flames of the movement.

When I was a child in the seventies, it seemed like the 1961 Ray Harryhausen special effects-laden The Mysterious Island played constantly on the TV. Not that I minded. Michael Craig leads a crew of Confederate P.O.W. escapees as they pilot a hot air balloon toward points unknown. Crash landing on an apparently deserted island, the castaways encounter giant animals: a crab, a flightless bird, bees and an cephalopod, all presented in Harryhausen’s dynamic stop motion animation. The group discovers the presumed dead Captain Nemo, who had mutated the animals as part of an experiment. Throw in the pirates that attack the island and you have the recipe for a near-perfect movie. By nine years old, after many repeated viewings the film entered my personal zeitgeist, informing my later tastes and many of my creative decisions.

Mysterious Island was my first exposure to steampunk, long before K. W. Jeter coined the word in the late 1980s.

Personally, I think Victorian fantasies are going to be the next big thing, as long as we can come up with a fitting collective term for [Tim] Powers, [James] Blaylock and myself. Something based on the appropriate technology of the era; like “steampunks,” perhaps… (Locus, #315 April 1987)

For more info on HAP AND LEONARD: BLOOD AND LEMONADE, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Elizabeth Story

For more info on NIGHTMARES: A NEW DECADE OF MODERN HORROR, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Nihil

Design by Elizabeth Story

For more info on DARKNESS: TWO DECADES OF MODERN HORROR, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Ann Monn

For more info on YESTERDAY’S KIN, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Thomas Canty

For more info on STEAMPUNK, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Ann Monn

October 6, 2016

PIRATE UTOPIA is bizarre and wildly entertaining

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized bruce sterling, dieselpunk, fiume, interview, john coulthart, pirate utopia, Publishers Weekly, review, Rick Klaw, science fiction, the geek curmudgeon

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY gives Bruce Sterling’s forthcoming alt history, dieselpunk adventure PIRATE UTOPIA a starred review.

Cyberpunk progenitor Sterling’s alternate history novella is bizarre, chock-full of famous people in improbable situations, and wildly entertaining, even when the worldbuilding seems to go a little off the rails. Lorenzo Secondari, a veteran of the recently ended Great War and forever changed by it, is the head engineer of the titular utopia, the Italian free state of Fiume.

Rick Klaw at THE GEEK CURMUDGEON shares the unpublished parts of the Bruce Sterling interview from PIRATE UTOPIA.

Back in April on the eve of the annual SXSW Interactive Festival, I met with Bruce Sterling for an interview that’ll be in the forthcoming PIRATE UTOPIA. While roughly 90% of the original discussion made it’s way into the finished book (due out in November from Tachyon Publications), this bit, which I post following the description of the story, was deemed too timely an accompaniment for a tale about events set in Fiume following the First World War.

RICK: Are we talking about “we” as the world?

BRUCE: Everywhere, really. The people in the US are obsessed with Donald Trump; in Italy they’ve just…they’re not worried about him, they just know he’s [Silvio] Berlusconi. “Oh, you’ve got Berlusconi! You’ve got a Berlusconi!” Everybody knows what’s going to happen: he’s going to feather his own nest and have a lot of sex with very young women and everyone around him will be as corrupt as he is, ‘cause he bullshits all the time. The thing that is attractive about Berlusconi is that he doesn’t make you do anything. It’s actually kind of relaxing; everybody knows what he’s going to do: he’s just gonna get up and start bullshitting, laughing, swinging his dick around, cheering for the soccer team, driving fast cars. He’s not particularly malignant or anything, and you know he’s not gonna bother you. He’s not going to like, ask you to rise to the level of you better nature. On the contrary, everybody should be in the mud with me! Let’s just relax! Where’s the problem? We’re winning! It’s just very hard to accomplish anything with this bullshit all the time. The fix is in; his cronies aren’t very good, he doesn’t really have a plan, he’s kind of winging it, and it’s very debilitating for stuff like foreign policy, tough economic decisions, infrastructure development, like “Where are you gonna put the highway?” “Who cares?” It’s hard to get rid of him because everybody’s so demoralized by the louche atmosphere of the fish rotting from the head down. Until the guy just becomes nuts and just like, starts having public orgies and just loses all sense of proportion, then it becomes sort of embarrassing. It’s like, well, if we allow ourselves to be associated with this utter pervert. But he’s still in business in Italy and scheming to return to power, and he has guys in his court.

For more info on PIRATE UTOPIA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover and image by John Coulthart

September 1, 2016

Tachyon tidbits featuring Joe R. Lansdale, Lauren Beukes, Lavie Tidhar, and Ellen Datlow

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized blood and lemonade, central station, charles tan, clara bacou, coode street podcast, elizabeth story, Ellen Datlow, gary k wolfe, hap and leonard, hap and leonard: blood and lemonade, Hugo Awards, ian mond, james bradley, Joe R. Lansdale, jonathan strahan, lauren beukes, lavie tidhar, pages and pints, podcast, review, Rick Klaw, sarah anne langton, science fiction, slipping, slipping: stories essays & other writing, swamp noir, texas noir, the geek curmudgeon, video, you tube

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

Joe R. Lansdale (photo: Karen Lansdale), Lauren Beukes, Lavie Tidhar (Kevin Nixon. © Future Publishing 2013), and Ellen Datlow (THIS IS HORROR)

Editor Rick Klaw at The Geek Curmudgeon reveals info and the cover for Joe R. Lansdale’s forthcoming HAP AND LEONARD: BLOOD AND LEMONADE.

The book HAP AND LEONARD: BLOOD AND LEMONADE is a mosaic novel of sorts. That’s when you take a bunch of related stories and connect them with adjoining pieces ala THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES and the like.

Here’s some copy I threw together to help explain the book. I hope the fine folks at Tachyon can gussy it up a bit.

Since their first appearance in Savage Season through the recent hit SundanceTV series, the unconventional ass kicking duo of Hap Collins and Leonard Pine captured the hearts of fans everywhere. Now in this unconventional novel, creator Joe R. Lansdale explores the beginnings of the decades long friendship between the white, liberal, good ‘ol boy Hap and the black, Republican, gay, Vietnam veteran Leonard. The complicated tale of violence and humor, set in the racist, homophobic late 60s East Texas, introduces the two boys who grew up into the men, who become far more than friends. They call each other brother.

Watch for BLOOD AND LEMONADE this March.

PAGES AND PINTS reviews Lauren Beukes’ debut collection SLIPPING: STORIES, ESSAYS, & OTHER WRITING.

SLIPPING is an
interesting compilation of stories that tackle topics ranging from
the frightening future of technology/social media to issues of
extreme poverty and race. While some stories are particularly heavy
on the science fiction (“Unathi Battles the Black Hairballs” and
“The Green”) others like “Smileys” and “My Insect Skin”
are made all the more chilling by their realism.

While each story in
this collection is unique, they all have that one piece in common
that make me so passionate about her previous novels – there’s a
sense of some underlying real world threat in even the most intensely
science fiction story lines. Much like Margaret Atwood’s THE
HANDMAID’S TALE, the reader is left with feelings of unease, that
though what you’ve just read is fiction, it still hits too close to
home to not make you nervous.

SLIPPING ends with a
brief collection of non-fiction that helped to make her fiction even
more meaningful. “Adventures in Journalism” gives an intensely
personal description of Beukes career as a journalist in South
Africa, while “All the Pretty Corpses” shares insight into how
THE SHINING GIRLS came to be and why gender issues (sexism, domestic
violence, etc.) play such a prevalent role in much of her work. I
felt that this glimpse in Beukes’ own life and personal experiences
made her fiction even more meaningful.

Lavie Tidhar’s CENTRAL STATION was the subject of COODE
STREET ROUNDTABLE 7.

Welcome to the seventh episode of The Coode Street Roundtable. The Roundtable is a monthly podcast from Coode Street Productions where panelists James Bradley, Ian Mond, and Jonathan Strahan, joined by occasional special guests, discuss a new or recently released science fiction or fantasy novel. With James busy with housemoving and such, we’re joined by award-winning critic Gary K Wolfe.

If you’re keen to avoid spoilers, we recommend reading the book before listening to the episode.

Charles Tan shared video of Ellen Datlow accepting her recent Hugo Award.

And of Datlow presenting the Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

HAP AND LEONARD: BLOOD AND LEMONADE cover by Elizabeth Story

For more information about SLIPPING: STORIES, ESSAYS, & OTHER WRITING, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Clara Bacou

Design by Elizabeth Story

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

Cover by Sarah Anne Langton

March 19, 2015

THE APES OF WRATH swings into academia

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized alex solis, anthology, apes, elizabeth story, fantasy, horror, joan gordon, Richard Klaw, Rick Klaw, science fiction, short stories, the apes of wrath, the geek curmudgeon

At THE GEEK CURMUDGEON, editor Richard Klaw reports that his anthology THE APES OF WRATH is the main text for Dr. Joan Gordon’s class on apes in fiction.

846. GOING APE IN FICTION Joan Gordon

This seminar will look at the portrayal of our close cousins, the apes, in fiction, as allegories, symbols, mirrors of ourselves, and mindful subjects. We will begin by reading selections from the anthology The Apes of Wrath, edited by Richard Klaw, and conclude with the novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, by Karen Joy Fowler. In between, we will discuss relevant short non-fiction readings. For the first class, please read from The Apes of Wrath “The Apes and the Two Travelers” by Aesop, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Poe, and “Tarzan’s First Love” by Burroughs. You might want to prepare by visiting the zoo and eating a banana monkey-style.

More details and the rest of Klaw’s article are available at THE GEEK CURMUDGEON.

For more info about THE APES OF WRATH, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Alex Solis.

Design by Elizabeth Story.