Occupy Wall Street library donations

Despite numerous police efforts to dismantle it, The People's Library has more lives than any fat cat on the New York Stock Exchange. Politics aside, the library represents free speech and the power of books to inspire social change. We're totally behind that. So thanks to the willingness of our authors, we've sent a box of Tachyon books to Occupy Wall Street. If you'd like to donate, send books to:


The UPS Store
Re: Occupy Wall Street
Attn: The People's Library
118A Fulton St. #205
New York, NY 10038

Pre-trypotophan Roundup

I think someone in the office is messing with the tachyons again. How does turkey make you sleepy two days before you've eaten it?

Anyway, good things happen around here whether we nap through them or not. Here are a few:

Lisa Goldstein's The Uncertain Places has been named one of Library Journal's Best Books 2011: SF/Fantasy. The review called the book "a modern fairy tale elegantly told." In The Agony Column, Rick Kleffel concluded "like the fairy tales it so powerfully evokes, a few pages spent in 'The Uncertain Places' offers readers the feel of whole lives lived well, of magic brushing up close before pulling away, of our world, enchanted for just long enough to know what it is missing."


Meanwhile John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly's Kafkaesque anthology received a rave from Publishers Weekly: "Kessel and Kelly (The Secret History of Science Fiction) celebrate the life and career of Franz Kafka in this eclectic, mind-blowing collection of 18 reprints."

Check out John Kessel's NPR interview and you can hear him talk about Kafkaesque and read from his new original translation of "A Hunger Artist."

Don't forget that there's still free Media Mail shipping on the Tachyon website. Order as many books as you like, they still ship for free! Everyone you give a gift to this year should get a book, preferably one of ours. Just saying.

Happy holiday, folks. See you after zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Kafkaesque is so weird

We're delighted to be included in today's feature on the excellent new Weird Fiction Review webzine, who is spotlighting all (well, many) things Kafka this week. John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly's introduction to Kafkaesque is featured, and the dynamic editorial duo are given due kudos, including:

"We hope you enjoy this bewitching essay on “the moon-blue mouse” and consider acquiring the anthology Kafkaesque."

Where in the world is Cory Doctorow?

Well, this Thursday he will be at The Wharton School in Philadelphia giving a free talk (open to the public). Then, this weekend he will be guest of honor at PhilCon. Finally, on November 22nd, Cory heads down to D.C. for a talk at the New America Foundation about technology, social media, and other topics covered in Context. East coasters, check it out!

Kafkaesque is officially out!

Happy 11/11/11! I probably should have made this post at 11:11 AM (but I forgot). But if I had posted it then, it would have been pretty Kafkaesque. Or obsessive compulsive, but let's not quibble over semantics when I have a book to talk about.

Kafkaesque, our Kafka-inspired anthology edited by John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly, is now on the shelves. This anthology features nineteen excellent short stories from a fantastic range of authors, including Jorge Luis Borges, T. C. Boyle, Carol Emshwiller, J. G. Ballard, Eileen Gunn, Terry Bisson, Philip Roth, Jeffrey Ford, Michael Blumlein, Theodora Goss, Jonathan Lethem, and Carter Scholz, all exploring the impact Franz Kafka left in the literary world.

Kafkaesque also features a new translation of Kafka's "A Hunger Artist" alongside the R. Crumb (Fritz the Cat) comic of the same story, so it's a must have for the Kafka completest (kompletest? hmm...).

The Marketplace Fairness Act

This is an unpaid political ad for the Marketplace Fairness Act, a bipartisan bill that requires online retailers to collect sales tax. That would remedy a 23 *billion* dollar a year loss to state governments, plus a blatantly unfair advantage that e-tailers have over brick and mortar businesses. Like say your local indie bookstore. If you still have one.

The bill's sponsors comment here.
Contact your senator in support of the Marketplace Fairness Act here.

We now return you to your regular Tachyon programming.

The Good Humor Man now available as an eBook

The Good Humor Man by Andrew Fox is now out as an eBook! You can find it in all eBook formats (well, all of the ones we know about) at Barnes and Noble, Amazon, the iTunes store and other major online retailers. The novel, described by Kage Baker as "a Fahrenheit 451 for the post-millennium, told with Fox's magnificent evocation of place and twisted humor," goes a little something like this:

In 2041, a pound of real chocolate is worth more on the black market than a kilo of cocaine. The evil corporation MannaSantos controls the food supply with strange genetically-modified products. And a lone ex-plastic surgeon, whose father performed a secret liposuction surgery on Elvis Presley, holds the key to humanity's future.

In a mad dash to retrieve his family heirloom—the mortal remains of the King’s belly fat—Dr. Louis Shmalzberg becomes entangled with a civil servant of questionable motives, an acquisitive assassin from a wealthy Caliphate, a power-mad preacher evangelizing anorexia, a beautiful young woman addicted to liposuction, and a homicidal clone from a MannaSantos experiment gone terribly wrong.

Can Elvis save the world sixty-four years after his death?

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For more about Andrew Fox, check out his excellent blog: Fantastical Andrew Fox. (It's foxy!)