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

Peter S. Beagle (photo: Paul Todisco), Lauren Beukes, James Morrow, and Alastair Reynolds (Barbera Bella)

THE WARBLER enjoys Peter S Beagle’s SUMMERLONG.

SUMMERLONG is on the outer fringes of fantasy, more a story of modern slipstream fiction like something by Haruki Murakami. It’s the kind of book where the boundaries of reality slowly erode and the characters’ realities unravel in consonance with the surreal.

The story itself is excellent, full of emotion and tension, action and introspection, character and mystery. But the writing itself is so damn good that even if the plot was weak this would be a fantastic read. Beagle’s language is sophisticated but relatable, his characters bleeding through every word, every carefully placed comma, and the spaces between. Their pain and hope and love and confusion suffuse the text so completely that I achieved that sought-after state of readvana, wherein you look up from a book and you aren’t sure what life is, who you are, or what anything is.

I was enchanted by this book. I was transported, surprised, and amazed by it. If I had read a synopsis of it, I may have passed on it altogether, which would have been a terrible loss. It’s books like SUMMERLONG that are defining points in a budding writer’s journey, where you read something and say “I want to be able to do that.”

On his eponymous site, Tyson Adams praises Lauren Beukes’ SLIPPING: STORIES, ESSAYS, & OTHER WRITING.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Could zombies be a viable replacement for slave labour? Asking for a certain electronics company. And most clothing manufacturers.

SLIPPING is an interesting collection of writing from the brain of Lauren Beukes. From enhanced athletes to bored ghosts, these stories display Lauren’s spec-fic interests. There are also a few essays at the end of the collection, one of which explains the personal inspiration behind The Shining Girls; an essay well worth reading.

Marty Halpern on MORE RED INK lauds James Morrow’s forthcoming THE ASYLUM OF DR. CALIGARI.

I have been quite fortunate to have worked on not just one, not two, but three novellas by James Morrow that have been – or will be – published by Tachyon Publications. The first of these, SHAMBLING TOWARDS HIROSHIMA, was published in 2009.

The second, THE MADONNA AND THE STARSHIP, published in 2014, was the focus of my blog post of November 24, 2013, in which I wrote of my work on this novella.

In that blog post I stated (and I quote): “James Morrow is an absolute master of the sardonic…” – and with THE ASYLUM OF DR. CALIGARI, his third novella from Tachyon, due to be published in June, James Morrow does not disappoint.

At APPROACHING PAVONIS
MONS BY BALLOON, Alastair Reynolds announces his decision to leave Twitter.

And, rather abruptly, perhaps, I decided to leave Twitter and deactivate my account. One or two people were kind enough to ask if all was well, and indeed it was, but I’d been tweeting less and less as we went into the latter half of 2016, and it seemed as good a time as any to knock it on the head. Rather than risk temptation, I decided that the safest option was to close the account. Good thing too, as there’ve been a number of occasions when I felt the urge to tweet something, and I doubt I’d have had the self-control not to go back onto it full-time.

For more info on SUMMERLONG, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover art by Magdalena Korzeniewska

Design 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 on THE ASYLUM OF DR. CALIGARI, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Elizabeth Story

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

Cover and design by Elizabeth Story.

For more info on SHAMBLING TOWARDS HIROSHIMA, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Ann Monn