RIP Tanith Lee

[Acutely decayed]

Quote Originally Posted by Robert Adam Gilmour

Do you mean Ataraxia was an event she cancelled her appearance at or do you mean the band Ataraxia cancelled playing, allowing you to see Tanith Lee instead? What are your favourite works by her?

sorry just saw your enquiry - Ataraxia cancelled at the Red Rose if I remember correctly and so I went to the signing for a Stephen Jones anthology (also saw M Smith and Christopher Fowler)

my favourites may be The Blood of Roses, Dark Dance, Scarabesque (ss), The Blake's Seven episodes, Winter's players (ss) but this is just off the top of my head... really wish Darker Ages had seen the light of day

[Ibrahim]

Although there are streets now, and hard concrete, over the wooded tracks, and the stream runs in a canal with seats on the banks and refuse in the water, and the trees have gone to copses on near lawns, even so, the town keeps its dreams and nightmares of legends. They know what they think this is."

"It came to me that the town had remained a wood for him, and in a way I wondered if he even saw the buildings and the roads as such, or if they were somehow caves and trees, and savage woodland glades."

" 'Do you actually think,' he said,'that any one of us is truly what we're pleased to call 'real'? All matter, flesh, skin, trees, stone, bricks, blood - it's all illusory, fluid, non-existent, formed from nothing - therefore capable of any alteration, and of complete change. Wouldn't you say? Where else do the woods go, when they turn into concrete?..."

"You can rely on the constancy of nothing."

From 'Bloodmantle" by Tanith Lee

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Quote Originally Posted by Robert Adam Gilmour

two books forthcoming: Animate Objects and Redder Than Blood.

Animate Objects was actually a reprint. Immanion and DAW have been doing a lot of reprints.

I think all the new books since her death have been...

Dancing Through the Fire: A Collection of Stories in Five Moves (2015)
Blood 20: Tales of Vampire Horror (2015)
Legenda Maris (2015)
Redder Than Blood (2017)
The Weird Tales of Tanith Lee (2017)
Tanith by Choice: The Best of Tanith Lee (2017)

I started Tempting The Gods, so far pretty good. I thought the big cat humming in "Tiger I" was much funnier than it was probably supposed to be. Still reading the story about chariot racers with their wives and prostitutes.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Her Arkham House book Dreams Of Dark And Light is out of my price range now, should have grabbed it earlier, but most of the contents are easy to find in other books.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

SPOILER alert. On the subject of religion in fiction and the stakes it puts on the story, I found "The Kingdoms Of The Air" very interesting for its ending.

It's an old fashioned grail quest and for most of the duration some might feel it's main point is to show you lovely fantasy locations but it ends with a knight succeeding in his quest, but failing his own idea of how he should have succeeded. God is going to reward him, but the knight absolutely refuses the reward because he has tarnished his own religious ideal that is not God's own.

[Gnosticangel]

Thanks for reviving this thread! For some reason, Tanith Lee has been coming up for me again recently.

A request - Out of the works released since her death (conveniently posted below) which is best and why?

Also, I wonder if Jerad at Centiepede has any upcoming Lee publications scheduled? I would love a high quality edition of Tales From The Flat Earth or a collection of her short stories.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Despite making this thread, I'm still a beginner on her work. Would be interested to see if anyone here has been keeping up with her releases.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

"Cain" has kind of a twincest fantasy, but one of the twins is a ghost. It's good but I thought it deserved a better ending.

"Lady Of The Shallott House" is very simple yet surpsingly filling considering how little happens. Kind of wish those wild flowers were of more significance though.

"Where Does The Town Go At Night?" veers dangerously close to treacle overload at one point but then becomes a very blunt portrayal of depressing and unfortunate people.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Another new collection called Venus Burning: Realms came out months ago but I didn't notice. It collects stories from Realms Of Fantasy magazine.

[Robert Adam Gilmour]

Strindbergs Ghost Sonata, Tanith Lee - Catalogue

Quote

Tanith Lee wrote hundreds of short stories in her lifetime, many of which appeared only in small press magazines and anthologies, and other rare publications. A great many of these pieces have remained uncollected, unseen by a wider readership. Strindberg’s Ghost Sonata and Other Uncollected Tales is the first of three anthologies to be published by Immanion Press that will showcase a wide selection of these sought-after tales. From the horror fantasy of ‘Persian Eyes’ set in ancient Rome, via the fantastical fairy-tale realm of ‘Among the Leaves So Green’, through the frozen landscape of ‘Cold Spell’ and into the doomed city of ‘The Woman’, this collection spans the genres of horror and fantasy, showcasing Tanith Lee’s ability to conjure wondrous, vivid and mysterious worlds. The book includes a story that has never been published before – ‘Iron City’, which was written in 1987 – as well as two tales set in Tanith’s Flat Earth mythos; ‘The Pain of Glass’ and ‘The Origin of Snow’, the latter of which only ever appeared briefly on the author’s now defunct web site. This collection presents a jewel casket of twenty stories, and even to the most avid fan of Tanith Lee will contain gems they’ve not read before. Contents: Strindberg’s Ghost Sonata, Among the Leaves so Green, Beauty is the Beast, Ceres Passing,Cold Spell, Elvenbrood, Felidis, Goldenhair, Herowhine (vignette), In the Balance, Iron City, Last Drink Bird Head (vignette), The Origin of Snow (the Flat Earth), The Pain of Glass (the Flat Earth), Persian Eyes, Question a Stone, The Three Brides of Hamid-Dar, A Tower of Arkrondurl, Two Lions, a Witch and the War-Robe, The Woman