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November 18, 2020

Tachyon tidbits featuring Elly Bangs, David Ebenbach, Jane Yolen, Peter S. Beagle, Richard Lupoff, and Brian Aldiss

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

BOOKS. BONES, & BUFFY reveal of four exciting upcoming 2021 sf books has both Elly Bangs’ UNITY and David Ebenbach’s HOW TO MARS.

This sounds crazy! I love the Mad Max comparison, and it’s got a road trip kind of vibe to it. Can’t wait!

This sounds like it has a bunch of elements I love in my fiction, and the quirky cover and title definitely get me excited to check this out!

WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS 7 Most-Favorable Reviews in October 2020 includes Tara Campbell’s review of THE MIDNIGHT CIRCUS by Jane Yolen.

Yolen is often dubbed “the Hans Christian Andersen of America,” but that should not be misunderstood. Her work is not Andersen Americanized: sanitized, watered-down, Disney-fied. It is true to the real tradition of Andersen: mesmerizing, haunting, and often not for the faint of heart. This collection teems with Yolen’s weird, folkloric verve. Her menagerie of stories is distilled from a cauldron of fairytales, legends, and history, featuring everything from selkies to shapeshifters; witches, weavers, and warriors; and angels murderous to ravenous. Her foreword and endnotes offer additional context for the work, creating a satisfying — if often unsettling — reading experience.

HIDDEN IN PAGES praises the audiobook of Peter S. Beagle’s IN CALABRIA.

Overall this made me want to go and read Beagle’s other books. It is beautifully written and magical in a gentle way. Beagle does an amazing job with description and with creating very human characters that are easy to care about.

ZINES TO THE FUTURE shared the groundbreaking zine creator Richard Lupoff’s last interview. Richard passed away just a few days before the ZINES TO THE FUTURE Exhibit opened.

As for the comics-oriented material in Xero, that was the product more of impulse than planning. I’d been out of the army for a while, and Pat had just got her college degree. We were starting to move through the science fiction world in New York, and a number of our friends were publishing fanzines. This looked like fun, and we decided to create one of our own. We didn’t have many connections to call upon for material, so we wound up creating most of the first issue ourselves.

I remember Pat writing two fine pieces. One was a book review of Brood of the Witch Queen, a fantasy novel by Sax Rohmer. The other was a survey of the career and works of Mervyn Peake, author of the Gormenghast novels. Our only outside contribution was a review of the film of Psycho, based on the novel by Robert Bloch. The reviewer was Harlan Ellison.

At which point I felt that I needed to write something, too. I had a certain nostalgic feeling about the comic books I’d enjoyed so much in my childhood — especially the adventures of Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family. So I wrote a memoir of my days as a fan of Captain Marvel. Called the essay “The Big Red Cheese” after a term applied to Captain Marvel by his arch-foe, Dr. Thaddeus Bodog Sivana.

Xero 1 had a circulation of less than one hundred copies, but we received enthusiastic letters of comment, and many readers offered to write memoirs of their own, about their favorite comics. Human Torch, Sub-Mariner, Captain America, Bulletman, Spy Smasher, Tarzan, the inhabitants of The Lost World . . . Eventually this series grew into two volumes, All in Color for a Dime and The Comic-Book Book. My friend Don Thomson co-edited these books with me, and we had planned on a third volume, to be called The Best Comics Ever, but Don’s untimely death prevented our completing the project.

Documentary photographer Wendy Aldiss is running a KICKSTARTER campaign for My Father’s Things, the photo essay that began the day after the influential Brian Aldiss died.

The pictures create a portrait of the person and prompts thoughts of our own possessions, what we keep and what we dispose of.

Possessions are a universal theme. Separated from their surroundings these objects lead us to contemplate the intrinsic value of design and the singular virtues of everyday things, and to consider the importance that we attach to our own material possessions, and what will become of them after our passing. For those who have already had to deal with the disposal of a relative’s things it will resonate with their own experience.

My Dad (he was my Dad as well as my father) was Brian Aldiss, one of the most important voices in science fiction, writer, poet and artist, and so some of the photos in the book reflect this; not least his awards, early science fiction magazines and many, many books. Plenty there for Science Fiction fans to enjoy. There is also all the everyday stuff of life; playing cards, soap, family snaps and tea bags.

October 29, 2020

Wicked and creative, Jane Yolen’s THE MIDNIGHT CIRCUS is a satisfying and, at times, an unsettling read

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As Halloween draws near, the 2021 Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award candidate Jane Yolen’s scary THE MIDNIGHT CIRCUS continues to impress.

For WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS, Tara Campbell enjoys the collection.

Yolen is often dubbed “the Hans Christian Andersen of America,” but that should not be misunderstood. Her work is not Andersen Americanized: sanitized, watered-down, Disney-fied. It is true to the real tradition of Andersen: mesmerizing, haunting, and often not for the faint of heart.

This collection teems with Yolen’s weird, folkloric verve. Her menagerie of stories is distilled from a cauldron of fairytales, legends, and history, featuring everything from selkies to shapeshifters; witches, weavers, and warriors; and angels murderous to ravenous. Her foreword and endnotes offer additional context for the work, creating a satisfying — if often unsettling — reading experience.

Jacob Olson at REALMS & ROBOTS agrees.

Of her most recent collection of stories, THE MIDNIGHT CIRCUS, I can say that her storytelling ability remains stronger than ever. It’s a wonderful collection of little tales that both enchant and teach valuable lessons with each conclusion.

[…]

Overall, I’m as impressed with THE MIDNIGHT CIRCUS as I expected to be. Seeing a writer continue to perfect their form is always exciting, and with Yolen, you know you’ll be thrust into worlds known and unknown, leaving the pages a little wiser and a bit further removed from the humdrum happenings of real life.

ENFNTS TERRIBLES recommends the book.

THE MIDNIGHT CIRCUS is a collection of dark, haunting tales. These sixteen short stories, each accompanied by a poem, are all very different from each other, for instance, in one story the South Pole becomes hell on earth, in another, The Red Sea becomes deadly due to a plague of evil angels. Some stories are scarier than others, but all are wicked and creative.

As does ADJECTIVE+NOUN.

One thing that really brought this collection of stories to life was the commentary at the end from Jane Yolen about when each story was published or written, with a poem as accompaniment. I almost wish these snippets had been included after each story, however, while the details were still fresh in my mind. Nevertheless, they were enjoyable, and it was fun to learn the inspiration behind each story.

Fans of Jane Yolen’s work will likely find plenty to enjoy in this anthology, and I’d also recommend it to fans of horror, fairytales or folklore.

CAPTAIN’S QUARTERS praises the work.

I have always loved reading Jane Yolen’s novels but as I have gotten older I have loved her short stories just as much. I have read all four of the Tachyon Publications of Jane Yolen’s works and I love them. This fifth one deals with dark themes though the book is set up along the lines of her previous collection, THE EMERALD CIRCUS, which dealt with fairytales.

This collection has 16 varied tales. Like any collection, I liked some better than others. I also very much enjoyed Yolen’s “Story Notes and Poems” at the end of the book which gives background on the short stories in the collection.

BEAS AND BOOKS feels much the same.

I recommend this if you love reading short stories, especially, fairytales and folklore but I warn you, it gets dark.

Through INSTAGRAM, Theodora Goss, who penned the introduction to THE MIDNIGHT CIRCUS, expresses her thoughts on the book.

It was such an honor to write the introduction for Jane Yolen’s THE MIDNIGHT CIRCUS. Do pick up this book . . . It’s filled with Jane’s dark magic (she also has bright magic, sharp magic, dinosaur magic, all sorts of magic). 🙂 Just out from Tachyon!

November 28, 2017

Fantastical THE OVERNEATH is a beautiful introduction to Peter S. Beagle

Alec Checkerfield Uncategorized best of 2017, blue book balloon, elizabeth story, katy bowman, omnivoracious, patrick rothfuss, peter s beagle, review, the amazon book review, the last unicorn, the overneath, washington independent review of books

Even more praise for Peter S. Beagle’s THE OVERNEATH.

Photo: Rina Weisman

For WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF BOOKS, Katy Bowman praises the collection.

A woman unintentionally introduces an evil spirit into her fish tank. A boy rescues a karkadann — a vicious, unicorn-like creature that is “ugly as fried sin”— and cares for it, not minding its reputation as a cold-blooded killer. A man experiments with electromagnetism and awakens voices he can’t silence.

These are the protagonists of THE OVERNEATH, Peter S. Beagle’s latest collection of short stories. Beagle, a much-lauded veteran of the fantasy and science fiction worlds, has created here an assortment of tales centered on ordinary, if flawed, people who don’t always think through to the consequences of their actions. They stumble through these pages with all the grace of a rhinoceros, creating messes as they go and doing their best to clean up after themselves.

<snip>

Most of the stories are unconnected. Two, however, revisit Schmendrick the Magician, a character from The Last Unicorn. We learn about his origins and training in “The Green-Eyed Boy,” and then about one of his early encounters as a magician in “Schmendrick Alone.”

Schmendrick is perhaps Beagle’s quintessential protagonist. He is talented almost beyond measure, always well-meaning, but not particularly bright. He doesn’t have good judgment and thereby creates unintended problems that he must then solve. It’s hard not to like him, though, and I found myself cringing for him as the problems became larger and the consequences increasingly dire.

I loved these stories because they are, above all else, human. Their magic does not lie in the fantastical settings and situations, but in the essential human truths they reveal. They deal with our obsessions, our well-meaning mistakes, and the choices we must make when our hearts and our minds are conflicted. Beagle’s characters must face the consequences of their decisions, and just like the rest of us, they either do their best to clean up the mess or learn to embrace it.

Patrick Rothfuss on OMNIVORACIOUS, The Amazon Book Review, includes the book among his favorite reads of 2017.

I was lucky enough to get an advance reading copy of this book a month ago, and reading it reminded me why Peter S Beagle is one of my favorite authors. His prose is so lovely and easy to read. He’s one of the first books I recommend to anyone.

BLUE BOOK BALLOON enjoys their first Peter S. Beagle experience.

I’m ashamed to say that I hadn’t previously read Beagle but, on the evidence of this book, there is a great range and variety of his work to explore.

There are thirteen stories here, including The Way It Works Out And All. Each is briefly introduced by Beagle. Thus, for example, he informs the reader who hasn’t yet encountered Schmendrick the Magician, one of Beagle’s most popular characters, of his place in the wider canon before, in The Green-Eyed Boy, we read his “origin story”. Schmendrick is apprenticed at an early age to a magician who takes him on almost, it seems, to prove his father wrong to dismiss him. It seems to be a rocky start to an illustrious career, with many mistakes. Part comedic, part fond, the story looks at a boy on the cusp of growing up, and at what that might mean when he has powerful, if ill-controlled, magical abilities.

<snip>

The final story, Olmert Dapper’s Day, stands out slightly as it is, while still fantastical, a historical tale, set mainly in New England and based on an actual recorded sighting of a unicorn by Dr Olfert Dapper in 1673. How cool is that? We want to know, however, who Dapper was, how he came to be in Maine, what became of him – and how he met a unicorn. Beagle sets out to answer these questions in what is a beautiful little tale.

Altogether an exceptional collection, a beautiful introduction, as I’ve said, to Beagle’s writing.

For more info on THE OVERNEATH, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover design by Elizabeth Story