transfer orbit Archives - Tachyon Publications

January 30, 2024

Nebula and Hugo Award-winning author Samantha Mills’ debut novel THE WINGS UPON HER BACK will stay with readers long after the final page

Rick Klaw blog andrew liptak, Kathryn's Book Review and Other Thoughts, Publishers Weekly, samantha mills, the wings upon her back, transfer orbit

With three months from publication, THE WINGS UPON HER BACK by Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Sturgeon Award winner Samantha Mills is already getting positive attention as evident by the Publishers Weekly starred review, notice in Kathryn’s Book Review and Other Thoughts, and listed as a 2024 most anticipated book by Andrew Liptak at Transfer Orbit.

THE WINGS UPON HER BACK is currently available for preorder from Tachyon and all finer booksellers.

Mills debuts with an intricate and intriguing science fantasy set in the divided city of Radezhda. Five sects each serve one of five gods who sleep behind portals floating high above the land. After a brutal civil war, the mecha sect, a group of human warriors with their nerves wired into mechanical wings that allow them to fly, reigns supreme, led by power-hungry Winged Vodaya. After Vodaya’s closest confidant, Winged Zemolai, returns home tired and aching from a month of border patrol, she makes what is perhaps the worst mistake of her life: letting a spy go free. Cast out of the sect and left to die on the streets of Radezhda, Zemolai is miraculously saved by another sect, forcing her to decide whether to beg Vodaya’s forgiveness or betray her people. Toggling between two timelines, Mills juxtaposes Zemolai’s adult regrets and childhood hopes to devastating effect. Much like the winged warriors it follows, the story begins on the ground and takes flight as the characters attempt higher stakes battles and plans, eventually achieving a complete aerial view of Zemolai’s life and the full history of Radezhda. This cathartic adventure will stay with readers long after the final page.
Publishers Weekly, STARRED REVIEW

It had a great overall tale of redemption and the use of science-fantasy elements to the story. The characters worked with what I wanted from this story and glad I was able to read this. Samantha Mills writes a great tale and can’t wait for more from the author.
Kathryn’s Book Review and Other Thoughts

Last year, Samantha Mills scored a number of awards for her story for Uncanny Magazine, “Rabbit Test.” This year, she’s publishing her debut novel, THE WINGS UPON HER BACK, in which humanity has been trying to figure out why five slumbering gods below the city of Radezhda turned their backs on humanity, sparking war between sects.
Transfer Orbit

June 15, 2022

Excitement abounds for Sam J. Miller’s debut collection BOYS, BEASTS & MEN with interviews, reviews, a book trailer & more

Rick Klaw blog Ancillary Review of Books, andrew liptak, arley song, BC Clark, boys beasts & men, buzzfeed, clarkesworld, delphic reviews, disciples of boltax, gary k wolfe, interview, just geeking by, Locus, margaret kingsbury, Melody Bowles, Neil Czeszejko, review, sam j miller, the british fantasy society, trailer, transfer orbit

The release of Sam J. Miller’s debut collection BOYS, BEASTS & MEN launched with a flurry of activity, all positive. Though the book is already sold out at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop (more copies on their way), copies should be available from your local bookstore and as always directly from Tachyon.

Cover of BOYS, BEASTS, & MEN, a collection by Sam J. Miller. — Cover by Jennifer O’Toole
Design by Elizabeth Story

**Andrew Liptak, in his Transfer Orbit newsletter, not only reviewed the book and interviewed Miller but also offered the first look at the book trailer!**

It’s a superb roundup of a prolific author’s short stories: tales that deal with complicated, messy lives of people trying to make their way through life, faced with uncertain and dangerous worlds.
Transfer Orbit

Collections are always interesting to read from short fiction authors, because of the curation involved. What was the determination that you made for each story to be placed here?

I was fortunate to be able to be very picky here, because these actually represent less than half of my published stories!

Ultimately I wanted to include the stories that got the best response from readers – including ones that got award recognition or were anthologized – but I also wanted to be able to tell a broader story about masculinity and monstrosity and patriarchy, which are obviously super important themes in my work, and these seemed like the best stories with which to tell that story.
Transfer Orbit

A whole host of reviews appeared for the collection including contributions from Margaret Kingsbury in “20 Amazing New Science Fiction And Fantasy Beach Reads“ (BuzzFeed), **Gary K. Wolfe at Locus, Melody Bowles from The British Fantasy Society, BC Clark at Ancillary Review of Books, Neil Czeszejko at Delphic Reviews, Just Geeking By, and Disciples of Boltax.**

All 14 of these brilliant, character-driven short stories are perfectly crafted, subtly altering reality using SFF elements while managing to fully explore the repercussions of doing so with the conciseness a short story requires.
20 Amazing New Science Fiction And Fantasy Beach Reads (BuzzFeed)

Miller is clearly one of the generation of writers thoroughly comfortable with genre hopping (or genre-ignoring, or genre-pillaging), and BOYS, BEASTS & MEN is no exception to that. . . . Given the pain and joy that Miller can so vividly evoke, it’s both an admonition and a celebration.
Locus

Overall, I enjoyed the wide variety of stories in BOYS, BEASTS & MEN. Not every story was a hit for me, but they were certainly all memorable. If you like your fantasy and sci-fi with realistic grit to ground it, pick this one up.
The British Fantasy Society

Sam J. Miller’s stories collected in BOYS, BEASTS & MEN are fire in about the same way a blast furnace is. They are full of evolving, disintegrating, and re-assembling identities, a funhouse hall of molten mirrors. These stories burn away façades to reveal true histories full of fierce magic. Histories queer as all hell’s furies unleashed. Histories often uncontrollable by those who bend the course of the story. An able craftsman, Miller harnesses the powers of the twin underground rivers of loneliness and desire to channel the rage and hope of his characters. And through that craft, Miller brings tales of justice regained and character reframed
Ancillary Review of Books

BOYS, BEASTS & MEN is a phenomenal short story collection that brings to mind a pack of wolves, with each story pulsing to its own heartbeat, straining at the leash that affixes it to the whole with bestial vigor.
Delphic Reviews

To be honest, the entire anthology is mesmerising. Miller’s writing is witty and hard-hitting, drawing out stories from angles that most people don’t tend to see.
Just Geeking By

The stories in this collection run the gamut from scary to angry to sad to kind but they all have a raw humanity that I loved. I recommend this book highly and hope to read more from Mr. Miller in the future.
Disciples of Boltax

**Arley Song for Clarkesworld interviewed Miller.**

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know about this book?

That the incredible Amal El-Mohtar wrote the introduction! And it’s amazing! Seriously made me choke up when I read it. In 2014, when my short story “We Are the Cloud” (included in the collection) was published in Lightspeed, it got some super homophobic reviews, which suuuuuuuuucked—any LGBTQIA+ SFF writer can tell you that queering the genre means coming up against a whole lot of really vicious trolls—and Amal wrote the most beautiful review/defense of the story; that’s how I knew she’d be the perfect person to do the introduction.
Clarkesworld

November 3, 2020

With a well-rounded and very human protagonist, Kimberly Unger’s impressive NUCLEATION is engaging

Rick Klaw blog a green man review, amazing stories, andrew liptak, ernest lilley, kimberly unger, nerds of a feather flock together, nucleation, Paul Weimer, review, transfer orbit, warner holme 0

With the imminent book birthday on November 13, excitement builds for Kimberly Unger’s NUCLEATION.

At A GREEN MAN REVIEW, Warner Holme enjoys the debut novel.

NUCLEATION by Kimberly Unger is a science fiction novel that attempts to deal with everything from possible first contact, to nanomachines, to corporate espionage and personal rivalries. This would make the book seem overpacked in other hands, yet is quite effective overall. Indeed, the iclusion of many scientific concepts in this book is impressive.

[…]

Overall, NUCLEATION is an intelligently written story that manages to combine a number of serious scientific concepts with sociological ones as well. The fact that the Helen is engaging enough to keep the reader invested contributes well.

As does Paul Weimer for NERDS OF A FEATHER, FLOCK TOGETHER.

The novel provides a well rounded and very human protagonist in Helen. She’s our sole point of view, which can be a bit awkward at times and the author goes through some pains to make sure she is witness to some important events and there is just the slightest bit of shoehorning. It’s not a real defect of the novel, merely a consequence of that tight on person point of view. The author leverages this in all sorts of ways in putting us in Helen’s head and giving us a perspective for us to try and “figure out” along with Helen just what machinations, aside from the potential alien contact, are going on. She makes for an appealing and immersive character whose triumphs, successes, and boundary pushing all feel very natural and real.

[…]

NUCLEATION ends most satisfactorily and with a good solid ending, but there are clear lines for potential sequels and follow ups. First Contact, after all, is just the beginning of a story involving human-alien relations. I am interested in seeing where the author goes with the story from the ending of this novel, and hope the strengths here can be leveraged further on with more of Helen’s story.

For AMAZING STORIES, Ernest Lilley includes the book among Science Fiction to Look for November 2020.

Closer to Earth, you’ve got NUCLEATION, Kimberly Unger’s debut, a hardcore space procedural with some very interesting ideas about micro wormholes, nanomachines, and entangled communications, set in a first contact situation and a conspiracy.

Similarly, Andrew Liptak in TRANSFER ORBIT mentions NUCLEATION as one of the 17 sci-fi and fantasy books to check out this November.