I see that Tachyon Publications have revamped their website. It’s still not quite perfect, but it’s a major improvement over the old site that they’d had for quite a while. They’ve added a blog, have more information on forthcoming books (the section I always want sites to improve on), and even a news page (which I always think should be on the home page. Now, if you could just shop easily online…
I am very impressed with their 2007 line-up. In addition to the terrific Ellen Klages’ collection, Portable Childhoods, which I mentioned earlier, they’re publishing Susan Palwick’s The Fate of Mice, Carol Emshwiller’s The Secret City, a reprint of Peter Beagle’s A Fine and Private Place, The Asimov’s SF 30th Anniversary Anthology, and, happily, Year’s Best Fantasy 7 by David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. The only item on their list that I don’t quite ‘get’, and I never have, is the Tiptree Awards volume. I hope it’s an enormous success, but it puzzles me.
A certain amount of a year’s best editor is being a detective. I’ve written (far too many times) in introductions to anthologies that stories are coming out in a greater range of outlets than ever before. I just found out today, for example, that UK publishers Serpent’s Tail Press are publishing a series of anthologies of short stories ‘inspired’ by certain independent bands. The first two books in the series, Perverted By Language: Fiction Inspired by The Fall and The Empty Page: Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Sonic Youth, are both due in the first half of 2007. Anthologies are also planned that cover The Smiths, The Ramones, Joy Division and The Velvet Underground. And of course genre writers are involved, so there are stories by people like Jeff VanderMeer and Paul Di Filippo. They could be very cool books and may be great stories, but they’re not easy to stumble across. Still, this is one of the reasons we do it I guess.
I took my eye off the ball, but somewhere, a while back the good folk at comics.com began posting the latest Opus Returns comic strips, all legal and timely like. I’ll be checking ’em out every week.
I’ve just seen that Subterranean Press is offering 40% off a whole bunch of their forthcoming titles. And yes, it includes The Jack Vance Treasury! This means if you order in the next 48 hours it’ll only cost you $22.80 plus postage. That’s for a 220,000 word book. It’s an amazing price. You’d be made not to! There’s also a full list of sale titles.
