Tony Thorne MBE

Tony Thorne MBE

About

I am an Englishman, born and technically educated in London, England mas a design engineer. For developments in low temperature (cryo)surgery instruments, and very high temperature (carbon fibre) processing furnaces, the Queen awarded me an MBE.

Earlier in life I wrote and sold some science-fiction and humorous stories, was an active SF Fan, and a spare time lecturer for the British Interplanetary -Society. Now retired, I am a writer of easy-to-read speculative fiction, with young adults in mind. My latest book, TENERIFE TALL TALES won the SF Category in the 2009 New York Beach Book Festival Contest.

A Shadow in Yucatan

A Shadow in Yucatan

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Description

<p>A mythical jewel of a story… A true story told on a beach in Yucatan, A Shadow tells Stephanie's story but it was also the story of the golden time. Its nostalgia sings like cicadas in the heat.</p><p>An American ‘Under Milkwood’, this distilled novel of the Sixties evokes the sounds, music and optimism on the free-wheelin streets and parks of Coconut Grove. You can hear Bob Dylan still strumming acoustic; smoke a joint with Fred Neil; and Everybody’s Talkin is carried on the wind.</p><p>Stephanie, a young hairdresser living in lodgings finds herself pregnant. Refused help from her hard Catholic mother in New York, unable to abort her baby, she accepts the kindness of Miriam, her Jewish landlady, whose own barren life spills into compassionate assistance for the daughter she never had.</p><p>The poignancy of its ending, its generosity and acceptance, echoes the bitter disappointment of those of us who hoped for so much more, but who remember its joy, and its promise, as though untarnished by time.</p>

Story Behind The Book

An entertaining collection of speculative tales, with an introduction by the late, legendary SF author, Harry Harrison: “Tony Thorne has the mind of a scientist and the soul of an artist. His science and technology are correct, his extrapolations wonderful and ingenious. But then – surprise! A blackness may descend – or a brilliant flash of black humour. Read and enjoy” That generous introduction by Harry Harrison, the celebrated American author of dozens of novels, and many collections of short stories, came about when he visited Tony in Tenerife for a warm sunny week back in 2007, after they met up again at the Eurocon in Copenhagen earlier that year. Together they had a great time discussing old times and their past memories of authors, fans and convention attendances. Harry also inspired Tony to keep writing, hence most of these quirky short stories set in, around and even under the magic tropical island of Tenerife…which is also featured, more recently, in Tony’s new series of near future novels, POINTS OF VIEW.

Reviews

<p><span style="line-height:1.6em;">Review by</span></p> <p><strong>Rhetta Akamatsu, USA<em>,</em></strong><font face="Arial" size="2"><font face="Arial" size="2"> author of Ghost to Coast, a paranormal handbook, and the newly published Ghost to Coast Tours and Haunted Locations. She is the assistant editor of The NexusWorld Journal of Anomolous Sciences.</font></font></p> <p>&quot;An exotic island, one of the Canary Islands, Tenerife certainly seems like an appropriate place for adventure. And when a scientist and design engineer with a taste for Science Fiction decides to set his speculative tall tales there, amazing adventures do, indeed, ensue.</p> <p>Set, for the most part, in the near future, the tales use very believable twists on emergent technology, sometimes ours and sometimes possibly from some other place entirely.</p> <p>What Thorne creates in Tenerife is a world where the reader never knows what to expect under the sea, in caves, on the land and in the air. The island becomes, in various tales, a land where animals act as intelligently as humans, where attempts to handle environmental issues have very unexpected results, where exotic locations and experimental science create sometimes dark, sometimes humorous, and always amazing and utterly intriguing results.</p> <p>Tony Thorne's grasp of the science that looms just over the horizon and his love for Science Fiction come together, in these stories, to create speculative fiction of the very best kind. &quot;</p> <p>.&quot;Review by <em>Autumn Conley,editor of some of the stories.</em></p> <p>American author of two novels, numerous articles, reviews and short fiction items for many USA magazines and newspapers.</p> <p>&quot;With all the fervor and creativity an author can muster, Tony Thorne MBE has put together a remarkable collection of short stories, inspired by the island he loves and the genre of shadowy imagination that he is so very good at capturing. Thorne's stories are meticulously laced with a perfect concoction of urban legend, scientific precision, and his own edgy yarns to be almost believable, yet far beyond the imaginations of what we know as reality. Anyone who enjoys good fiction with a tinge of daunting possibility should consider Tenerife Tales a must for their reading list.</p>