The New York Review of Science Fiction

February 26, 2018

Nalo Hopkinson’s FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS is essential feminist science fiction

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized afrofuturism, alex brown, black panther, carla bataller estruch, fábulas estelares, falling in love with hominids, midnight robber, nalo hopkinson, nnedi okorafor, sandra lindow, The New York Review of Science Fiction, tor.com

On the Spanish site FÁBULAS
ESTELARES, Carla Bataller Estruch includes FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS and Midnight Robber among the essential title of feminist science fiction.

The list will be updated as you discover more works. It is personal, but transferable: you can write down all the titles and authors that you want. The staff part comes to that I will indicate what I have read and what I have not, what interests me more or less, what I think is complementary, basic or essential.

Andrea Blythe on her eponymous blog praises what she’s read of the collection.

The other book I’ve been working on is FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS, a short story collection by Nalo Hopkinson. I love her work and am enjoying the stories I’ve read so far.

Photo: David Findlay

At TOR.COM, Alex Brown mentions Midnight Robber in 8 Books and Comics for Your Post-Black Panther Reading List.

One of the best parts about the Black Panther cast is its pan-African diversity. Delve back into the Black diaspora with Nalo Hopkinson’s novel set on planets colonized by Caribbean space explorers. Corrupt Antonio Habib rules over Toussaint until he and his daughter Tan-Tan are driven off their planet and onto another filled with exiles and criminals. After years of abuse at his hands, Tan-Tan kills him and goes on the run. Pregnant with her father’s child, she seeks refuge with an Indigenous species out in the bush outside the town. She soon takes the moniker of the Robber Queen, doling out violent justice to protect the helpless and ease her guilt at her own crimes. Although Midnight Robber doesn’t have any strong thematic or character connections to the film, it’s one of the best examples of contemporary literary Afrofuturism, hints of which are all over the Black Panther movie.

In THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION piece on Nnedi Okorafor, Sandra J. Lindow namechecks Hopkinson several times.

Afrofuturism is a way of looking at the past and imagining a future where Africans, African-Americans, and other African diaspora can be equal participants in creating a sustainable, egalitarian future. It is a movement that has been significantly influenced by music and art. Like other writers of color such as Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, N.K. Jemisin, and Nisi Shawl, Okorafor was informed by the Civil Rights Movement’s active reclamation of black history and culture that resulted in the Afrofuturist movement. Beginning with stories written in early creative writing classes, Okorafor takes contemporary problems such as bullying, racism, bigotry, ecological disaster, and out-of-control venture capitalism and moves them into the fantastic landscapes of Afrofuturism.

<snip>

By the beginning of this century, writers of color were beginning to draw considerable critical attention. Many of them were women. In 2002, Nalo Hopkinson was the first person of color to be a WisCon guest of honor. In 2010 Nnedi Okorafor shared the honor with writer/editor Mary Anne Mohanraj, and since then there have been six more Afrofuturist guests: Nisi Shawl, Andrea Hairston, N. K. Jemisin, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Sofia Samatar, and Nalo Hopkinson again. The WisCon web site has announced that the 2018 WisCon’s invited guests of honor are Saladin Ahmed, writer of Black Bolt for Marvel Comics, and award-winning novelist/screenwriter Tananarive Due, who teaches Afrofuturism at UCLA. The feminist sf community has embraced these writers, and they in turn have infused feminist sf/f with creative energy at a time when the original second-wave feminist sf writers are no longer in the forefront. Their popularity is based on their willingness to break the mold of traditional sf tropes and not be guided by the constraints of Western mythology.

<snip>

In addition to Yaszek’s questions, Okorafor joins Nalo Hopkinson in asking, “What role will the mythic supernatural have in human evolution?“ and like Octavia Butler before them, “What role will alien intervention play?” (Hopkinson interweaves mythology and the supernatural in her fiction often in transgressive ways as in her novel The Chaos where Baba Yaga and her flying chicken-legged house appear in downtown Toronto.

For more information on FALLING IN LOVE WITH HOMINIDS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Chuma Hill

Design by Elizabeth Story

February 19, 2018

Tachyon tidbits featuring Nalo Hopkinson, Nick Mamatas, Lavie Tidhar, Ann & Jeff VanderMeer, and Micheal Swanwick

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized amal el-mohtar, ann vandermeer, annihilation, bill campbell, brooke bolander, Charlie Jane Anders, christopher brown, interview, jeff vandermeer, jeffrey ford, john jennings, kickstarter, lavie tidhar, max gladstone, michael swanwick, nalo hopkinson, Nick Mamatas, rosarium publishing, sergei lukyanenko, sunspot jungle, the day watch, the last watch, The New York Review of Science Fiction, the night watch, the twilight watch

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

Nalo Hopkinson (photo: David Findlay, Nick Mamatas, Lavie Tidhar (Kevin Nixon. © Future Publishing 2013), Ann & Jeff VanderMeer (Colin Hackley/Tampa Bay Times), and Micheal Swanwick (Beth Gwynn)

Rosarium Publishing is kickstarting the hardcover edition of Sunspot Jungle. The two volume anthology includes contributions from Nalo Hopkinson, Nick Mamatas, Lavie Tidhar, Charlie Jane Anders, Brooke Bolander, Amal El-Mohtar, Jeffrey Ford, Max Gladstone, Christopher Brown, and many others.

Art by John Jennings

On June 17, 2018, Rosarium Publishing will be turning five years old. So, we’ve decided to throw a little party. Since we like to say we “introduce the world to itself,” we just knew it had to be a global party!

Like any good party, we’ve invited some friends, acquaintances, associates, people we’ve heard good things about, and some complete strangers.

The end result is Sunspot Jungle!

A two-volume, spec fic anthology filled with stories from over 100 writers from around the world!!!

This campaign is for special hardcover editions of the anthology only available to you Kickstarter supporters.

(The paperback for Vol. 1 will be out in December while the one for Vol. 2 will be released in spring of 2019.)

Ann and Jeff VanderMeer attended the Los Angeles premiere of Annihilation, the film based on the first novel in Jeff’s Southern Reach trilogy.

Jeff VanderMeer, Alex Garland, Tuva Novotny, Tessa Thompson, Gina Rodriguez, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Natalie Portman pose together as Paramount Pictures presents the premiere of ‘Annihilation’ at The Regency Village Theater in Westwood, CA on Tuesday, February 13, 2018. .(Photo: Alex J. Berliner / ABImages).

Author Jeff VanderMeer attends the Los Angeles Premiere of ‘Annihilaton’ at Regency Village Theatre on February 13, 2018 in Westwood, California. (Photo by Rachel Murray/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures)

Ann VanderMeer (L) and author Jeff VanderMeer attend the Los Angeles Premiere of ‘Annihilaton’ at Regency Village Theatre on February 13, 2018 in Westwood, California. (Photo by Rachel Murray/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures)

At THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION, Michael Swanwick interviews Russian science fiction author Sergei Lukyanenko.

Sergei Lukyanenko is one of the most popular science fiction writers in Russia. He is best known in America and throughout the world as the creator of the Night Watch/Day Watch universe, in which human beings with supernatural powers maintain an uneasy peace in the modern world. These books became famous globally after two very successful movies, Night Watch and DayWatch, were based on them. They are, however, only a small part of the total output of this prolific author.

I interviewed Sergei in the hotel bar during a whiskey-tasting party at Roscon, the Russian national science fiction convention. Translation was provided by Alexei Bezougliy.

ms: I think all that Americans know about you is that you wrote the Night Watch books. So let’s correct that. First of all, how did you get started?

lukyanenko: I started writing when I was eighteen years old, because I couldn’t manage to find the sort of book I wanted to read. So I said to myself, Why not simply write the kind of book I want to read? Then I did.

ms: How long did it take you before you were finally published?

lukyanenko: Maybe six months, maybe a couple of years. I wrote several stories, and then I showed them to my friends. One of them, without telling me, took the manuscript of one of my stories to one of the mainstream magazines. It was published. That was the beginning of my literary career.

February 15, 2018

With WICKED WONDERS, Ellen Klages demonstrates a sensitive grasp of historical change and human development

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized eleanor farrell, elizabeth story, ellen klages, emily netterfield, John D. Berry, sandra lindow, the lesbian historic motif podcast, The New York Review of Science Fiction, wicked wonders

In THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION (January 2018), Sandra Lindow reviews Ellen Klages’ WICKED WONDERS.

WICKED WONDERS’s fourteen short stories similarly mix
the mundane and the magical. An “Introduction” by fellow
Motherboard member Karen Joy Fowler describes Klages’s
narrative style as “driving alongside, but never into, danger”. The danger is more often than not left to the imagination
of her readers. It is a technique that depends upon readers’
cultural and genre literacy, and the process is often facilitated
through the use of a naïve viewpoint character. More often
than not, her stories are thought experiments that combine
unrelated concepts. “Mrs. Zeno’s Paradox” concerns an intersection
in a cafe between a shared brownie, quantum physics,
and time travel. “Caligo Lane” combines time travel with
cartography and origami. “Goodnight Moons” deftly unites
tropes from Andy Weir’s The Martian (2011), Margaret Wise
Brown’s picture book, Goodnight Moon (1947), and Robert
A. Heinlein’s Podkayne of Mars (1962) (unconstrained by
Heinlein’s limited ability to see a meaningful, self-actualized
future for Poddy). “Amicae Aeternum” describes the last
day two best friends can spend together before one leaves
on a generation ship. “Woodsmoke” is neither sf nor fantasy
but speculative, a truly gender-bending coming-of-age tale
set realistically in a summer camp for girls.

<snip>

Klages, whose debut novel, The Green Glass Sea (2006), won the Scott O’Dell Award for Historical Fiction, shows a sensitive grasp of historical change and human development with a particular focus on that childhood time when children have agency but magical events can still be accepted, creating a semi-permeable membrane between the real and the fantastic. These are stories about love and loss but not the expected ones.

Photo: Scott R. Klein

THE LESBIAN HISTORIC MOTIF PODCAST hosts Klages.

In this episode we talk about

The long incubation for the ideas that became Passing Strange
Lesbian culture in mid-century San Francisco and the San Francisco World’s Fair on Treasure Island
The hidden interconnectedness of Ellen’s novels
The love of historic objects and texts
Historical fiction as “time travel” for the reader

Publications mentioned:

Passing Strange (tor.com, for signed copies: Borderlands Books, Amazon)
“Caligo Lane” (originally published in Subterranean Online, Winter 2014, available in the collection WICKED WONDERS Tachyon Publications, 2017, Amazon)
“Hey Presto” (originally published in the anthology Fearsome Magics by Jonathan Strahan, 2014, available in the collection WICKED WONDERS Tachyon Publications, 2017, Amazon)
The Green Glass Sea (Viking Children’s Books, 2006, Amazon)
“Time Gypsy” (originally published in Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction, edited by Nicola Griffith and Stephen Pagel (Overlook Press, 1999), also available in the collection PORTABLE CHILDHOODS Tachyon Publications, 2007, Amazon)

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

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

For more info on PORTABLE CHILDHOODS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Ellen Klages

Design by John D. Berry

For more info on TIME GYPSY, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Emily Netterfield

Design by Eleanor Farrell

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

April 13, 2017

Tachyon tidbits featuring Bruce Sterling, Jacob Weisman, and Peter Watts

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized au-delà du gouffre, beyond the rift, bruce sterling, elizabeth story, goro fujita, grand prix de l'imaginaire, Hugh Sicotte, invaders, invaders: 22 tales from the outer limits of literature, jacob weisman, joe milicia, john coulthart, Locus, patricia a mckillip, peter s beagle, Peter Watts, stephen theaker, The New York Review of Science Fiction, theaker's quarterly fiction

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

Bruce Sterling, Jacob Weisman, and Peter Watts

In THEAKER’S QUARTERLY FICTION #59, Stephen Theaker praises Bruce Sterling’s PIRATE UTOPIA.

I
really liked one bit of dialogue from Secondari, when he says, “I
don’t have to believe any more, because it’s the truth!” I’ve
often thought that when someone says they believe in a thing, that
can be a sign that they don’t think it’s actually true (or at
least isn’t true yet), whether they realise that or not. I enjoyed
the book while finding it a bit hard to get to grips with, much like
Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius and Oswald Bastable books.

Joe Milicia at THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION enjoys Jacob Weisman’s INVADERS: 22 TALES FROM THE OUTER LIMITS OF LITERATURE.

The first thing to say about INVADERS is that it’s a good collection of sf and borderline-sf short stories. I’d argue that all but a couple of the 22 are quite worth reading: a nice percentage. The stories are recent or nearly so, with copyright dates 1990 to 2015, except for one by Max Apple published in 1975.

INVADERS offers a range of stories whose humor varies from downright silliness and mordant satire to mere arches of the eyebrow. It remains for me to call attention to a few selections that take us into the unnerving—but not humorless—realms of Kafka or Dick. The stories in INVADERS that are the most Kafkaesque or Dickian—and I mean these adjectives as praise, not insinuations of lack of originality—involve some shift in reality, not merely a character’s perception (as in “A Precursor of the Cinema” and “Escape from Spiderhead”) but an actual plunge into altered states as in “Portal” and the four stories I haven’t yet mentioned.

LOCUS announced the 2017 Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire Shortlist which includes Peter Watt’s BEYOND THE RIFT. Congrats to all the nominees.

Foreign Short Fiction

“Une brève
histoire des formes à venir” [THE THING ABOUT SHAPES TO COME],
Adam-Troy Castro (ANGLE MORT #11)

Un Pont sur la brume
[THE MAN WHO BRIDGED THE MIST], Kij Johnson (Bélial’)

L’Homme qui mit
fin à l’histoire [THE MAN WHO ENDED HISTORY], Ken Liu (Bélial’)

“Honey Bear”,
Sofia Samatar (ANGLE MORT #11)

Infinités [THE
WOMAN WHO THOUGHT SHE WAS A PLANET], Vandana Singh (Denoël)

Au-delà du gouffre
[BEYOND THE RIFT], Peter Watts (Bélial’)

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

Cover and by John Coulthart

For more info on INVADERS: 22 TALES FROM THE OUTER LIMITS OF LITERATURE, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Goro Fujita

Design by Elizabeth Story

For more info about BEYOND THE RIFT, visit the Tachyon page

Cover art by Hugh Sicotte

Design by Elizabeth Story

March 9, 2017

NOT SO MUCH SAID THE CAT is enticing and delighting and horrifying all at once

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized asimov's science fiction, collection, dan’l danehy-oakes, elizabeth story, michael swanwick, not so much said the cat, peter heck, review, The New York Review of Science Fiction

For THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION, Dan’l Danehy-Oakes praises Michael Swanwick’s NOT SO MUCH SAID THE CAT.

Michael Swanwick has been around a while now, and has racked up his share of major awards. It seems to go without saying that he’s a pretty good writer. So I’ll go a little further: on the basis of this collection, he is a short story writer on the order of Theodore Sturgeon, Shirley Jackson, and Roger Zelazny. Not that he’s much like any of them, but he’s become that good.

He is a fine stylist, to begin with, but not with one characteristic style: he fits the style to the matter. And his matters are various.

<snip>

This book contains stories with gag punchlines and stories with really nasty spikes in the tail, stories sweet and bitter and bittersweet, stories to make you laugh and to make you sigh, stories that appeal to the intellect and stories that appeal to the emotions (though most of them do at least a little of both). And the words and sentences dance and shimmer like an exotic dancer with the wrong number of limbs, enticing and delighting and horrifying all at once, so you want to but maybe you don’t dare….

Yeah. Swanwick is that good.

Photo: Beth Gwynn

Peter Heck at ASIMOV’S SCIENCE FICTION enjoys the collection.

Swanwick’s latest story collection shows off the author’s impressively wide range.

In Swanwick’s case, it’s not really a cliché to call him a multi-faceted talent. This collection runs the gamut from fantasy to hard SF, with settings ranging from late Cretaceous Earth to the far future on other planets to fairy-tale worlds. The mood of the stories covers a similar range, from resignation in the face of tragedy to hard-nosed slogging through the aftermath of disaster to smug exploitation of the opportunities presented by human weaknesses.

<snip>

The book also includes an introduction in which Swanwick looks back on his career searching for an answer to the question, “Just when did I run away with the elves?” He never gives a very precise answer—though the self-portraits of himself over the years are a good indication that he ran away a long time ago. Needless to say, fans of his writing are very glad he did.

For more information on NOT SO MUCH, SAID THE CAT, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story

March 8, 2017

Fascinating CENTRAL STATION challenges the formal conservatism of genre writing

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized central station, dutch, john mccalmont, lavie tidhar, michael levy, podcast, review, sarah anne langton, sci-fi talk, the anglia ruskin centre for science fiction and fantasy, The New York Review of Science Fiction

People cannot stop talking about Lavie Tidhar’s memorable CENTRAL STATION.

Photo: Kevin Nixon. © Future Publishing 2013

For THE ANGLIA RUSKIN
CENTRE FOR SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY, Jonathan McCalmont includes the book on his personal shortlist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

As far as I am concerned, rules and procedures are important but so too is recognising the brilliance of a book like CENTRAL STATION. On paper, CENTRAL STATION should be the kind of book that is pointedly absent from my shortlist given that it not only features space stations and vampires but also started life as a series of short stories published in genre magazines. What drew me to CENTRAL STATION – aside from its multicultural and unequivocally pro-immigrant themes – was its mosaic-like structure. As markets for adult genre literature contract, genre imprints have grown ever-more cautious and that caution often manifests itself as a reluctance to indulge in anything more exotic than character-based narratives written with either close first-person or omniscient third-person narration. CENTRAL STATION not only challenges the formal conservatism of genre writing, it challenges the idea that we are ever anything more than parts of a broader whole called place. A strong contender for this year’s Clarke Award, I will be outraged if CENTRAL STATION does not land Tidhar his first ever Clarke nomination.

Michael Levy at THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION praises the work.

Tidhar has now revised these stories, adding a prologue and two new chapters, to turn them into a fascinating mosaic novel. The book has a cyberpunkish feel to it in that most of the characters are augmented in various ways and definitely on the down and out, but it also lacks (quite intentionally, it should be noted) the adrenaline-driven plotting of traditional cyberpunk fiction. Rather, these stories are ruminative, obsessed with memories and what might have been. Each of the book’s ensemble cast is deeply troubled by his, her, or its past, by missed opportunities. Each character is lonely and worried about the future, hoping against hope for some sort of human connection to fill the emptiness in their souls.

What almost all of these characters have in common, as I suggested earlier, is regret. They’ve made bad decisions or in some cases necessary but painful decisions which have left them with significant baggage. They go about their daily lives and make do. None is a hero (except, perhaps, Isobel in the context of her gaming universe), and none is a villain (though Carmel has been compelled to do awful things). They want to do what’s right but are often unsure of what that is. Most of them have the ability to love if only they can find both the nerve to do so and someone worthy of their affections. Together, the people who live beneath Central Station form as memorable a cast of characters as you will find in recent science fiction. Some folks might find Isobel Chow’s Guilds of Ashkelon universe more exciting, but mature readers who are willing to sit down in Miriam Jones’s bar, have a drink, and watch the passing Tel Aviv scene will be amply rewarded.

The Dutch podcast SCIFI SNAK discusses CENTRAL STATION.

At the foot of rumcentralen “Central Station” in Tel Aviv is a cultural melting pot where humans and human machines live in a virtual tissue of the physical world and the ubiquitous virtual “conversation”

In the book of 2016 weaves Lavie Tidhar more episodic mini-narratives together, drawing on Arab and Jewish culture and mixing it with cyberpunk and sci-fi in a present, close and kaleidoscopic narrative-patchwork.

Pour a glass of anise-steaming arak in a cut recycled glass and sit back while Jens and Ander scifi Snakker “Central Station”

(Translation from Dutch courtesy of Google)

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

Cover and image by Sarah Anne Langton

February 3, 2017

Meet two of America’s best satirists James Morrow and Jack Womack

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized brooklyn, flying saucers are real!, galápagos regained, jack womack, James Morrow, random acts of senseless violence, satire, science fiction, signing event, the brooklyn commons cafe, the madonna and the starship, The New York Review of Science Fiction, the new york review of science fiction reading series

James Morrow and Jack Womack (photo: Ellen Datlow)

As part of The New York Review of Science Fiction Reading Series, acclaimed authors James Morrow (THE MADONNA AND THE STARSHIP, GALÁPAGOS
REGAINED) and Jack Womack (FLYING
SAUCERS ARE REAL!,
RANDOM
ACTS OF SENSELESS VIOLENCE) will be appearing at The Brooklyn Commons Cafe on February 7.

WHEN:
Tuesday,
February 7
Doors
open at 6:30 — event
begins at 7

WHERE:

The
Brooklyn Commons Cafe
388 Atlantic Avenue (between Hoyt &
Bond St.)

For more info on THE MADONNA AND THE STARSHIP, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover and design by Elizabeth Story

November 30, 2016

Tachyon tidbits featuring Alastair Reynolds, Jacob Weisman, and Joe R. Lansdale

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized alastair reynolds, andrew liptak, chauncey devaga, elizabeth story, goro fujita, hap and leonard, hap and leonard: blood and lemonade, invaders, invaders: 22 tales from the outer limits of literature, jacob weisman, jeremy adam smith, Joe R. Lansdale, judaism, podcast, rina weisman, science fiction, slow bullets, The New York Review of Science Fiction, the verge, Thomas Canty

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

Alastair Reynolds (photo: Barbera Bella), Jacob Weisman (Jill Roberts), and Joe R. Lansdale (Karen Lansdale)

On THE VERGE, Andrew Liptak includes Alastair Reynolds’s Locus Award-winning and Hugo nominated novella SLOW BULLETS among his 11 science fiction adventures to escape into this Thanksgiving holiday.

If you’re looking for a bit of a shorter read, Alastair Reynold’s novella SLOW BULLETS is an excellent, bite-sized story. Protagonist Scur awakens on a prison transport to discover that everything is wrong, and nobody can remember their past. Along with another passenger, she begins to piece together what had happened before the ship’s computer dies, taking their memories with it. Along the way, the passengers must learn to cooperate, and overcome their respective histories.

Jeremy Adam Smith in THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION profiles Jacob and Rina Weisman and Tachyon for his piece “Jewish SF and the San Francisco Bay.”

You can almost see the future from Jacob and Rina Weisman’s doorstep near the top of Potrero Hill.

The couple, who met on the Jewish dating site J Date, run a range of science-fiction institutions in the Bay Area—most notably Tachyon Publications, which publishes between eight to ten books per year and gets shelf space for them nationally in major chains such as Barnes & Noble. Rina runs the “SF in SF” event series (“Science fiction, San Francisco—a perfect fit”) and stages monthly film screenings and author events around the city in venues such as the Balboa Theater in the Richmond and the American Bookbinding Museum in the Financial District. Jacob focuses on Tachyon, which publishes work by Peter S. Beagle, Bruce Sterling, Cory Doctorow, Jeff VanderMeer, Nalo Hopkinson, Nancy Kress, Lavie Tidhar, Michael Moorcock, Carol Emshwiller, and James Tiptree Jr., among others.

And they do it all out of their hillside Victorian, with a view of a Bay Area promised land that encompasses a surprising amount of the science-fiction and fantasy genres’ terrain—from locations for the Star Wars and Star Trek movie franchises to the former homes of such visionary writers as Philip K. Dick and Ursula K. Le Guin.

Rina and Jacob Weisman in their home office (Photo: Cathleen Maclearie)

What’s not easy to spot at first glance is how surprisingly Jewish the Bay Area’s science-fictional landscape is. In fact, when you shine science fiction through the prism of the San Francisco Bay Area, it splits into many colors, and Judaism is one of the brightest.

Joe R. Lansdale chats with cultural critic on Chauncey Devega on THE CHAUNCEY DEVEGA SHOW.

Author, writer extraordinaire, and friend of the podcast “Champion” Joe Lansdale stops by to share his thoughts on Donald Trump’s winning the White House, if Trump’s voters are stupid, ignorant, racist or all three, and updates us on Season Two of Hap and Leonard on SundanceTV.

For more info about SLOW BULLETS, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Thomas Canty

Design by Elizabeth Story

For more info about INVADERS: 22 TALES FROM THE OUTER LIMITS OF LITERATURE, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Goro Fujita

Design by Elizabeth Story

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

Cover by Elizabeth Story

September 9, 2016

CENTRAL STATION is fascinating

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized central station, charlie shifflet, lavie tidhar, michael levy, review, The New York Review of Science Fiction

A pair of fresh reviews of Lavie Tidhar’s CENTRAL STATION.

For THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF SCIENCE FICTION, Michael Levy praises the book.

Tidhar has now revised these stories, adding a prologue and two new chapters, to turn them into a fascinating mosaic novel. The book has a cyberpunkish feel to it in that most of the characters are augmented in various ways and definitely on the down and out, but it also lacks (quite intentionally, it should be noted) the adrenaline-driven plotting of traditional cyberpunk fiction. Rather, these stories are ruminative, obsessed with memories and what might have been. Each of the book’s ensemble cast is deeply troubled by his, her, or its past, by missed opportunities. Each character is lonely and worried about the future, hoping against hope for some sort of human connection to fill the emptiness in their souls.

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Together, the people who live beneath Central Station form as memorable a cast of characters as you will find in recent science fiction. Some folks might find Isobel Chow’s Guilds of Ashkelon universe more exciting, but mature readers who are willing to sit down in Miriam Jones’s bar, have a drink, and watch the passing Tel Aviv scene will be amply rewarded

Charlie Shifflett on his eponymous site enjoys the novel.

The characters range from a coffee shop owner to a bookseller to a doctor to homeless robots to aliens of both the scary and the non-scary variety. The novel jumps from character to character, often circling back chapters later. Around the middle of the novel, a few narrative threads begin to emerge, and that’s when the book really began to draw me in.

One of Tidhar’s accomplishments is that he is able to make the non-human characters – robots, cyborgs, and aliens especially – feel, well, human.

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Tidhar, who the GUARDIAN newspaper compared to Philip K. Dick, has given the world a fascinating and imaginative snapshot of a distant future. When you finish reading CENTRAL STATION, you will likely hope that Tidhar takes us there again – sooner rather than later.

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

Cover by Sarah Anne Langton

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