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

The latest episode of Levar Burton Reads features Peter S. Beagle’s short story “Mr. McCaslin” from THE ESSENTIAL PETER S. BEAGLE, VOLUME II.

For First Line Friday, Callie’s Tales shares the opening lines from Marjorie Liu’s THE TANGLEROOT PALACE.

The funeral was in a bad place, but Martha Bromes never did much care about such things, and so she put her husband into a hole at Cutter’s, and we as her family had to march up the long stone track into the hills to find the damn spot, because the only decent bits of earth in all that place were far deep in the forest, high into the darkness. Rock, everywhere else, and cairns were no good for the dead. The animals were too smart. Might find a piece of human flesh in the yard by the pump with sloppiness like that. I’d seen it myself, years past. No good at all.

Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud praises THE PECULIARITIES by David Liss.

Not a perfect read, but a good one; a lot of stuff gets wrapped up in the last ten percent of the book but not, by any means, even close to everything. That is, for me, perfectly okay because very few things in life are wrapped up in tidy little bows. THE PECULIARITIES remain peculiar. And most enjoyably so.

The Italian publication La Stampa interviews Bruce Sterling, author of ROBOT ARTISTS & BLACK SWANS: THE ITALIAN FANTASCIENZA STORIES.

What will your speech at Italian Tech Week focus on?

It will be an attempt to create awareness of what people should and should not do when faced with new technologies. And a comparison between the situation in the United States and that in Europe.

What remains today of the visions of cyberpunk?

We writers had thrown in many elements, most of which were not prospective but simple inventions. Or something that had already happened somewhere, therefore easy prophecies. In the years of American hegemony it was enough to look at what was happening in New York and project it on a large scale. As climate change and depopulation were already well underground, it didn’t take a science to understand that they could only get worse. The rest were fantasy creations and have remained so.

Translation from Italian courtesy of Google

A Deep Look by Dave Hook examines time travel tourism with a mention of THE SECRET HISTORY OF SCIENCE FICTION, edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel.

“Standing Room Only”, a short story by Karen Joy Fowler, Asimov’s August 1997. A great story of time travel tourism to Lincoln’s assassination, from the perspective of Mary Surrat’s teenage daughter. Hugo & Nebula Award finalist, & Locus Award nominee. Reprinted in three interesting places, THE SECRET HISTORY OF SCIENCE FICTION, James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel editors, 2009 Tachyon Publications (I think I need to read this, based upon the title and the editors!), the Karen Joy Fowler collection “What I Didn’t See and Other Stories“, 2010 Small Beer Press (a great book), and “Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction“, Leigh Ronald Grossman editor, 2011 Wildside Press (a great anthology for a review of this and 5 other giant SF survey anthologies, see here).