#peter s. beagle

[gollancz]

Guys. Christmas is coming. Consumerism is in the driver's seat and GAWD don't I know about the existential ennui of all these faceless corporations trying to schill you their wares. It's cold. Impersonal. Bleak.

So I, a fellow tumblr user, will instead try to schill you MY wares, so that when you purchase these items you can say "Hey, that person from tumblr worked on this", and feel the warmth of HUMAN CONNECTION in a way that is completely normal and not parasocial at all. We really are friends. I promise. Yes, you. Love you, bestie. Remember the boop war? Good times. Fond memories.

THIRTEEN STOREYS and FAMILY BUSINESS by Jonathan Sims

Tumblr's favourite Nightmare Factory @jonnywaistcoat has two novels out and they're phenomenal horror that also punch you in the throat with SOCIAL COMMENTARY and FEELINGS. He's so adept at tapping into the specific part of my brain that feels fear like a small child - not the adult creepy scared that I normally get around horror, but specifically the kind of fear that almost freezes your limbs and vocal chords with a terror you don't quite understand because there is so much in the world that you don't know, but you know that somehow this thing might be quick enough or smart enough or sneaky enough to get you before you can get to the safety of your parents sort of fear.

THIRTEEN STOREYS is a haunted house novel, but set in a refurbished block of flats. Each chapter follows a different resident being haunted in a different way, with a style to match the flavour of ghost. It's all tied together phenomenally and brutally.

FAMILY BUSINESS is a story about ghosts in a different way, following a woman who joins a post-mortem house cleaning service while grieving the death of her best friend. But as she removes the stains from the houses of the dead, she begins to suspect something else is removing even more.

Both of these titles are available from Gollancz worldwide!

THE LAST UNICORN, THE WAY HOME, THE INNKEEPER'S SONG and A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE by Peter S. Beagle

Obviously Peter's work needs no introduction, and our editions aren't available in the US and Canada, but I've had a wonderful time working with Peter and his team to bring these beautiful books back to the UK. Meeting him at Worldcon this year was such a magical moment, and he was jet-lagged and I had gone through sleep deprived into hyper and was bringing an Extremely Weird Energy to every interaction I had that day, resulting in this photo:

THE LAST UNICORN and THE WAY HOME are a matched pair of wonderful fairy stories. THE WAY HOME has two novellettes in it, and the first - 'Two Hearts' - won the Hugo award. It will also destroy you.

A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE was Peter's first ever novel, and it's wistful and romantic and so beautiful.

THE INNKEEPER'S SONG is his epic fantasy quest, it's an adventure story that reads almost lyrically. Also there's an orgy in the middle which caught me by surprise when I was reading it for the first time on the train into work.

HIGH VAULTAGE by Chris and Jen Sugden

It's possible that someone on this website doesn't know I was involved with this book but don't worry, I will HUNT THEM DOWN AND TELL THEM. This is the first book I took all the way through the editorial process from end to end and I am SO PROUD of it and Chris and Jen and their wonderful world of @victoriocity. Officially one of the seven funniest books published in the UK this year, shortlisted for the Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. It's a chaotic, bonkers murder mystery set in an alternate Victorian London which is the most gleeful dystopia I have ever encountered.

Featuring:

Grumpy Sunshine besties

The Victorian Equivalent of the Chuck Norris Meme

A robot who undertook a course in People Management

An indefatigable beagle

This is another book that you can get from Gollancz all over the world, and you SHOULD because it's amazing. Go into your local bookshop and ask them to order it into stock. It's a great Christmas present. It's my firstborn book baby (like that's a completely normal thing to say when I didn't even write it). Also if you're a fan of the podcast, why not tell the Guardian how great it is, and make a nuisance of yourself until they review. (I would, but the form asks for your name and then they'd know I didn't suddenly discover Victoriocity this year. Either that or think I was a very careless editor.) If you've not listened to the podcast yet, you absolutely should. It pings all my Douglas Adams receptors in the best way. If you like HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE, if you like CABIN PRESSURE, VICTORIOCITY is the perfect addition.

HAMMAJANG LUCK by Makana Yamamoto

SLIGHTLY cheating because HAMMAJANG LUCK isn't out in North America until January (pre-orders make great Christmas presents guys), but it IS out in the UK and the rest of the world next week! This is my second big editorial project and it's a Big Gay Space Heist ft. disaster lesbians, trans characters, and a tech billionaire getting put in his place. It's joyous and energetic and crammed full of Hawaiian pidgin as a love letter to the diaspora. @makana-yama is a phenomenal writer and this is their love letter to their communities, families both born and found, while also a statement on the victims of gentrification (and how those are disproportionally BIPOC communities). PLUS:

friends to enemies to cautious allies to lovers

trans cyborgs

Suck It Space Elon

You know that One Scene in Charlie's Angels where Cameron Diaz is in the white body suit and breaking into the safe and has to stretch out to hit two buttons at once? Yeah. That's the vibe.

Being able to work with Makana is a delight, and HAMMAJANG tapped into all the feelings I got watching LEVERAGE for the first time, so I went to watch it again while I was editing. Also OCEAN'S 8.

DEEP BLACK by Miles Cameron

So, barring Branderson, Miles Cameron may be one of our most prolific authors. He writes a minimum two books a year, one SFF and one historical fiction (as Christian Cameron) and he is... An absolute phenomenon. He IS the Chuck Norris meme. I'm obsessed with him. He's former US military intelligence turned naturalised Canadian Hippy, has written over fifty novels, can turn his hand to any genre and write it fantastically, is a practical archaeologist - running large scale re-enactments from a variety of periods ranging from Bronze Age right the way up to the Victorian era, using traditional techniques to allow academics to study how the practicalities of weapons, clothes, food etc. would have worked in practice. Two years ago he won a medieval combat tournament in Verona, a clear ten years older at least than the next oldest competitor, he teaches Historical European Martial Arts, but ties it into the history of martial arts globally. He can make his own clothes, ink, leatherwork. He's a ballet dancer. I once took him for a day out and he ended it in a different shirt and shoes from the ones he'd started in. I asked him for an author photo and he sent me this:

DEEP BLACK is the sequel to his critically acclaimed SF debut ARTIFACT SPACE, where he has taken his research and experience of global historical cultures and extrapolated to create an interplanetary future where the best of all are celebrated. And then Aliens Happen. And then, in reaction, Capitalism Happens (which is covered in the short story collection BEYOND THE FRINGE).

He's such a thoughtful and erudite speaker, if you're curious about his work, I'd recommend listening to his episodes on the Friends Talking Fantasy podcast, and also his appearance on The Publishing Rodeo.

If SF isn't your bag, he's also got:

Arthurian fantasy

Bronze Age fantasy

Medieval Mages fantasy

A CURSE OF CROWS - Lauren Dedroog

I actually inherited Lauren when a colleague of mine departed for fresh pastures, which gave me the great opportunity to work on this series which is so vastly different from my usual fare. It's epic, sweeping, romantic and lush, with such detailed description and complex political machinations, while also being brutal, dark and heavy (tw: for sexual assault, torture etc, etc.). If you like Sarah J Maas and Cassandra Clare, this should hit the sweet spot. Lauren is an ICU nurse when not writing, and this was somehow created when she was putting in a million hours in hospitals during COVID. The feat boggles my mind.

A CURSE OF CROWS is out now in the UK, Australia and Europe, and it won the People's Choice for Standaard Boek's Book of the Year award in 2023, in her home country of Belgium. It will be hitting shelves in North America next September! A DANCE OF SERPENTS is where I get to pick up the editorial mantle, and that has just landed in my inbox this week so I am excited to dig in.

Featuring:

Harold, they're lesbians

Murder baby is actually a cinnamon roll

Sensitive wings are sexy

For serious, though, I'm lucky enough to work with a lot of authors I'm genuinely obsessed and astounded by. And yes, I do get to work on Joe Abercrombie, Brandon Sanderson and Andrzej Sapkowski, but they're not MY authors - they're led by the incredible Gillian and Marcus who I'm not 100% certain sleep. There are so many people on the Gollancz list who I could recommend for DAYS (and will, if you so request), but this is my stable of superstars.

[emirrart]

04,09,2024

[amaltheathelast]

Background art from The Last Unicorn (1982); Rankin/Bass

[artbysarf]

"She's Attacking! She's Fighting Back!"

[trojan-rabbit]

Honestly, why haven’t I drawn Lady Amalthea before?? Her design is kinda perfect for my art style, tbh.

(Someone, anyone, hire me to draw a poster for The Last Unicorn.) 🦄✨

#thelastunicorn #ladyamalthea #amalthea #petersbeagle #fantasy #fanart #sketch 

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

Does grrm ever stated that The Last Unicorn is the inspiration for Dany? How about Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. I don't think the latter is likely or it's my mandela effect meddling, but I've seen some posts somewhere drawing comparisons of Dany and Nausicaa.

Fun fact, do you know the animators of The Last Unicorn are also responsible for Nausicaa, even becoming the first animators for Studio Ghibli!

While GRRM is a big fan of Peter S. Beagle and The Last Unicorn, unfortunately he's never said anything about it being an inspiration. But other fans have seen the connection, especially re the "real magic can never be made by offering up someone else's liver" quote. And GRRM and Beagle did do the cutest thing when they met:

I can't find anything where GRRM has talked about any Ghibli movies, but he says he's watched and enjoyed some anime films, mostly at his theater, which has played Nausicaa (as well as Princess Mononoke and others). Re your fun fact, the theater's FB said the very same thing about a year ago, lol. And no worries about the Mandela effect, some fanartists have indeed been inspired to draw Dany in that style!

[the-forest-library]

My latest book mail:

An ARC of The Lost Alchemist by @sdvitale - really enjoyed The Lady Alchemist, so I’m excited to dig into this one. It comes out on July 12.

A surprise from @godzilla-reads - Peter S. Beagle’s I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons. Thanks, Ehryn!

[putrefawn]

Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

[a-ramblinrose]

JOMP BPC || April 25 || Everyone Should Read This: The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

[gollancz]

Here it is! Our gorgeous cover for A FINE AND PRIVATE PLACE! It's out on the 12th October 2023, with a brand new introduction from @neil-gaiman (which got me all teary-eyed while I was proofing it, ngl). Obsessed with the sunset colours, obsessed with the stunning lineart by Borg, obsessed with how this is going to sit so perfectly next to our editions of THE LAST UNICORN and THE WAY HOME.

[imperceiveable]

“I have been hunted with bells and banners in my time,” she told him. “ . . . And even so I was never once captured.”

[amaltheathelast]

“I am a little afraid to go home. I have been mortal, and some part of me is mortal yet. I am no longer like the others, for no unicorn was ever born who could regret, but I now I do. I regret.”

– The Last Unicorn (1982); Rankin/Bass; Peter S. Beagle

[faintingcouchguy]

everyone's trans in the last unicorn

Oops it's the supermoon and I stayed up all night writing what'll have to be the first of 2-3 effortposts on transness and gender roles in Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn. This one is about the three main characters' trans-coded introductions, plus Daniel M. Lavery's 2017-2020 writing on transition as intertexts/reception of the book. All the rest under the cut.

"We all know the unicorn and Molly Grue are transgender," I said flippantly to @literarymagpie yesterday, and it turns out maybe we do not all know this, so now it's finally time I write the essays I've been drafting in my head for five years about The Last Unicorn and the things Peter S. Beagle didn't know he knew.

My secondary source for this theme is Daniel Lavery, who, in his 2017 essay on gc2b binders, described the first stages of his transition as follows:

I knew nothing of the subject. I became aware of the subject. I immediately, and carefully avoiding too much direct thought about the matter, sought consummation with it. Since that day, the subject has rarely been far from my conscious thoughts. It has felt, alternately and sometimes simultaneously, thrilling, calming to the point of near-stupor, destabilizing, reassuring, necessary, mundane, intrusive, overwhelming, compulsory, and desirable.

Beagle's last unicorn lives in a lilac wood, and she lives all alone, oblivious and content for over a century. Upon overhearing that there may be no other unicorns left, she considers her identity and questions her place in the world for the first time. Here she is on pp. 6-7, quite certain at first that she belongs in her familiar forest:

"Oh, I could never leave this, I never could, not even if I really were the only unicorn in the world. I know how to live here, I know how everything smells, and tastes, and is."

[...]But suppose they are hiding together, somewhere far away? What if they are hiding and waiting for me?

From that first moment of doubt, there was no peace for her; from the time she first imagined leaving her forest, she could not stand in one place without wanting to be somewhere else. She trotted up and down beside her pool, restless and unhappy. Unicorns are not meant to make choices. She said no, and yes, and no again, day and night, and for the first time she began to feel the minutes crawling over her like worms.

I'm not even sure I want hormones. I'm pretty sure I don't want them, because I think about going on hormones all the time, and those thoughts always end in some variation of "I can't, not ever," and if I really wanted to try hormones obviously I wouldn't keep thinking about how I can't try them. I think about them all the time and have to constantly stop myself, so I must not really want them. You know how when you're profoundly curious and sick with longing about something, it usually passes pretty quickly.

—Lavery again, from Something That May Shock and Discredit You, "The Stages of Not Going on T" (p. 60).

Speaking of T and not going on it, Beagle's next introduced main character is Schmendrick. Schmendrick is a wizard living in an insecure, stagnant, uncomfortable state that is explicitly symbolized by the fact that he can’t grow a beard and would like to. I don’t even need to make a case here. (I will anyway, though, in another installment.)

Our other main ally is Molly Grue, "a thin thorn of a woman" who stands out as the steel spine of Captain Cully's otherwise all-male, ridiculous crew. She's tough, smart, grizzled, kicked around by life. Her relationship with Cully is ambiguous; her feelings are clearly not warm. When Schmendrick scatters the merry men with a chaotic summoning, Molly's the only one to land on her feet and follow him into the wood.

Then she saw the unicorn. She neither moved nor spoke, but her tawny eyes were suddenly big with tears. [...] "Where have you been?" she cried. "Damn you, where have you been?" She took a few steps toward Schmendrick, but she was looking beyond him, at the unicorn. [...] "Where have you been?" Before the whiteness and the shining horn, Molly shrank to a shrilling beetle, but this time it was the unicorn's old dark eyes that looked down. "I am here now," she said at last. Molly laughed with her lips flat. "And what good is it to me that you're here now? Where were you twenty years ago, ten years ago? How dare you, how dare you come to me now, when I am this?" With a flap of her hand she summed herself up: barren face, desert eyes, and yellowing heart. "I wish you had never come, why do you come now?" The tears began to slide down the side of her nose. The unicorn made no reply, and Schmendrick said, "She is the last. She is the last unicorn in the world." "She would be," Molly sniffed. "She would be the last unicorn in the world to come to Molly Grue." She reached up then to lay her hand upon the unicorn's cheek; but both of them flinched a little, and the touch came to rest on the swift, shivering place under the jaw. Molly said, "It's all right. I forgive you." "Unicorns are not to be forgiven." The magician felt himself growing giddy with jealousy, not only of the touch but of something like a secret that was moving between Molly and the unicorn. "Unicorns are for beginnings," he said, "for innocence and purity, for newness. Unicorns are for young girls." Molly was stroking the unicorn's throat as timidly as though she were blind. She dried her grimy tears on the white mane. "You don't know much about unicorns," she said.

(pp. 96-98)

It leaps out to me that the crux of Schmendrick's jealousy is not the wish that he could touch a unicorn. More emphasis is placed on his envy of Molly's emotional experience—the recognition, the sobbing relief. Schmendrick needs this magnitude of affirmation too, but won't get it until the end of the book, and from a different front. More on his weird gender stuff in the second and probably third installments of this that I have to write next.

I'm not the only one to note this scene's transgender resonance. I first got it, once again, from Lavery, who borrowed Molly's despairing cry for a monologue in Something That May Shock and Discredit You. "Do You Know Athena Used to Be a Tomboy?" spoofs transphobic responses to trans men coming out, Greek drama style: the listener is "encouraged" to remain a woman by the goddess Athena (I didn't want to be a girl either, but then I learned to love myself, and to become the tutelary of Athens. Have you tried being the tutelary of Athens?); a Chorus: ("Well, of course we'd all be trans now, wouldn't we? Anyone born nowadays, that's just a given, they just—someone tells you at school, or something—everyone's trans now."); and a Deuteragonist, whose concern-trollish speeches gradually reveal more and more intense personal gender anxieties. From the final meltdown (pp. 188-189):

I mean, if I were thirty years younger—if I were twenty-five years younger—if I were eighteen years younger—God, if I were just ten years younger—if I were a year and a day younger—if you'd asked me just five minutes ago, four and a half even, if I'd picked up on the first ring instead of the third, I'd transition. Hell, I'd transition. Oh my God, I wish I could transition. Ask me again, but sooner. Come back yesterday. Come back a week ago. What good are you to me now, when I am—this? Where were you when there was still summer in my heart? Come back a month ago, a decade, but come back to me before I had to forgive you. Just come back and ask again; I'll wait if it takes forever this time.

I don't have much to add to that, really.

Next post will have to talk about the transformation of Amalthea. I'm not the first to observe that it's a potent dysphoria metaphor, but I've got more to unpack about Schmendrick's perspectives if he's trans, and there's a lot to dig into re. the love story with Prince Lir. I've also got some intense takes cooking on the tower scene with Haggard, if I get there. Anyway, thanks for reading! And thanks @endetithei for sharing this book with me as much as you have. (Sorry that this is how you'll find out I was up all night.)

[dwellordream]

"The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam, but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea."

Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

[specificpollsaboutbooks]

F/M Couples

Round 1

[rains-of-words]

“There are no happy endings, because nothing ends.”

— Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn