Catherynne Valente - Tor/Forge Blog

Presenting our stellar list of authors and their events at BEA 2011!

An Editor’s Buzz Pick, a Ticketed Autographing and an two Author Spotlight Stages are just some of the highlights of the show this year. We have a table in the autographing area reserved exclusively for Tor/Forge authors this year; all signings will take place at Table 12 unless otherwise noted. Read on for show highlights and a day-by-day guide to this year’s BEA!

Highlights for Tuesday, May 24^th

Ice-T & Coco Ticketed Autographed Signing! 175 tickets and copies of Kings of Vice and Angel will be available on a first come first serve basis.
1:30pm – 2:30pm

Bill Willingham’s Down the Mysterly River has been selected as an Editor’s Buzz Pick for Children! The book is only one of four chosen within all of the publishing houses; Editor Susan Chang will present.
2:00pm – 3:00pm
Room 1E15

New York Book Week Science Fiction & Fantasy Evening at the NYPL

Tor authors John Scalzi & Catherynne Valente along with Lev Grossman & Scott Westerfeld will read with improvisational music courtesy of our own Brian Slattery, followed by a Q&A.
6:00pm – 7:45pm
Stephen A. Schwarzman Bldg, South Court Auditorium
New York Public Library

Other events on Tuesday:

Forge In-Booth signing

David Hagberg / Abyss / Macmillan Booth 3352 / 11:00am –11:30am

Tor In-Booth Giveaway

Card & Card / Laddertop / Macmillan Booth 3352 / 3:30pm – 4pm

Mystery Writers of America Booth Signings (#4482)

Hilary Davidson / The Damage Done / 9:30am – 10:30am
H.T. Narea / The Fund / 2:00pm – 2:30pm
David Black / The Extinction Event/ 2:45pm – 3:15pm
David Hagberg / Abyss/ 3:30pm – 4:00pm

Formal Autographings at the Tor & Forge Table (Table #12)

David Lubar / Attack of the Vampire Weenies / 9:30-10:30am
Edward Lazellari & Lev A. Rosen / Awakenings & All Men of Genius / 10:30am-11:30am / “A salute to debut authors from Tor”
Margaret McLean & H.T. Narea / Under Fire & The Fund / 11:30am-12:30pm/ “A salute to debut authors from Forge”
Lisa Desrochers & Kiki Hamilton / Original Sin & The Faerie Ring/ 2:30pm – 3:30pm / “A salute to debut authors from Tor Teen”
Bill Evans / Dry Ice / 3:30pm – 4:30pm

Highlights for Wednesday, May 25^th

Author Spotlight Stage with Bill Willingham! Heidi MacDonald, Graphic Novel Editor, Publishers Weekly to moderate.
10:30pm – 11:00pm
Midtown Stage

SFF Author Insight Stage: Tor Authors with John Scalzi, Carrie Vaughn & Vernor Vinge . Moderated by Ron Hogan, founder of Beatrice.com and SFF reviewer for Shelf Awareness.
1:30pm – 2:10pm
Midtown Stage

Other events on Wednesday:

Tor In-Booth signing

Bill Willingham / Down the Mysterly River / Macmillan Booth 3352 / 11:30am –12:00am

Forge In-Booth Giveaway

Bruce Cameron / Emory’s Gift/ Macmillan Booth 3352 / 10:00am – 10:30am

Mystery Writers of America Booth Signing (#4482)

Bruce DeSilva / Rogue Island / 12:30pm – 1pm

Formal Autographings at the Tor & Forge Table (Table #12)

Carrie Vaughn & CJ Henderson / Kitty’s Greatest Hits & Central Park Knight / 9:30-10:30am “A salute to urban fantasy from Tor”
Jon Land / Strong at the Break / 10:30am – 11:30am / “Forge Books very own Energizer bunny!” (Just kidding, wanted to see if you’re still paying attention)
Ellen Datlow & F. Paul Wilson / The Dark at the End & Blood and other Cravings / 11:30 – 12:30 “A salute to horror legends from Tor”
Bob Gleason / End of Days / 1:30pm – 2:30pm /”A new thriller from Forge Executive Editor”
Bruce DeSilva /Rogue Island / 2:30pm – 3:30pm / “2011 Edgar Award winner”
Vernor Vinge & John Scalzi / 3:30pm – 4:30pm / “Science fiction legends from Tor”

By Catherynne M. Valente

Fairy tales have always been about getting through the worst of everything, the darkest and the deepest and the bloodiest of events. They are about surviving, and what you look like when you emerge from the trial. The reason we keep telling fairy tales over and over, that we need to keep telling them, is that the trials change. So the stories change too, and the heroines and villains and magical objects, to keep them true. Fairy tales are the closets where the world keeps its skeletons.

Deathless is that kind of fairy tale.

In Russian fairy tales, the narrative flows a little differently. In those stories, you won’t find a tale for Cinderella, one for Snow White, one for Rapunzel. Instead, a peculiar cast of characters recurs over and over, in nearly every story, performing different acts and suffering different sorrows, but remaining the same. Ivan the Fool. Yelena the Bright. Baba Yaga. Vasilisa the Brave. Koschei the Deathless.

Ivan is always the youngest of three sons. Baba Yaga sometimes helps and sometimes harms, but her house on chicken legs always makes a grand entrance. Koschei always hides his death in the eye of a needle, inside an egg, inside a chicken, inside a cat, inside a hound, inside a horse, and so on. Like a soap opera, these characters play out a hundred different dramas. Some of them are known in the West—for instance, Baba Yaga made the transition to popular mythology. Some, like Koschei, are almost completely unknown—though I note with a little smile how infatuated our culture seems to be with a certain twilit archetype, the kind of man who steals young girls away, who drinks blood but can still come out in the daylight, deathless and dangerous but still oh so seduced by human women.

And then there’s Marya Morevna, who appears just once, in one grand story, and no more. She is a warrior, the queen from beyond the sea, not just beautiful or clever like the princesses of the other tales, but a queen, with terrible power–power enough to keep Koschei the Deathless chained up in her basement for the always-unfortunate Ivan to find. The sly tale offers no explanation for the contents of Marya’s cellar. She opens the story by killing a vast field of soldiers, and the reason for that is also left mysterious. She is a female Bluebeard, with a moral standing somewhere between Snow White and Snow White’s stepmother.

Deathless is her book.

This is a story that lives in the gaps of the original–why does Marya Morevna kill, what does she want, how did the very devil come to be chained against her basement wall? Alongside these answers lies the long dark fairy tale of the Russian Revolution, World War II, and the siege of Leningrad. Magic and politics have been bedfellows for a long time, you see. Once, it was the only way to write about oppression without incurring official wrath. Stalin didn’t do that terrible thing–Baba Yaga did. It’s just a story, you know. Russia has a long tradition of tucking true stories of blood and pain into fairy tales, closing them away for safekeeping in the eye of a needle, in the center of an egg. Though I will not suffer for the tales I tell as some brave authors did, Deathless is part of that tradition, and I have tried to give it all the respect and love I have.

The trials change.

The tale stays the same.

Deathless (978-0-7653-2630-0 / $24.99) by Catherynne M. Valente became available from Tor Books in March.

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Tag: Catherynne Valente

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