Tais Teng

Tais Teng (born 1952 in The Hague) is the pen name of a Dutch writer of fantasy fiction, hardboiled detective, children's books and science fiction. He also works as an illustrator, sculptor and writing coach. His real name is Thijs van Ebbenhorst Tengbergen. The length of his name proved cumbersome, as he tells in an interview with Mad Scientist Journal, leaving little room for a title and a picture on the cover of his novels so he shortened it to Tais Teng. Other pen names he used are Eban Hourst and Ben Bergen. This was mostly in search of a pen name which was pronounceable in other languages than Dutch.

Tais Teng
BornThijs van Ebbenhorst Tengbergen
1952 (age 68–69)
The Hague, Netherlands
OccupationWriter, sculptor, illustrator, writing coach
NationalityDutch
EducationStudied biology in Utrecht University
Genrefantasy fiction, detective, historical fiction, horror, middle grade fiction, Young Adult Fiction and science fiction
Notable awardsPaul Harland Prize (x4) Archeon Oeuvre Prijs
Website
taisteng.atspace.com

To date Tais Teng has written more than a hundred novels both for adults and children in the Dutch language and he has won the Paul Harland Prize four times. His books have been translated in German, Finnish, French and English.

Tais Teng is a bilingual writer and writes in both Dutch and English.

He likes to work together with other writers and has co authored short stories and novels with Paul Harland, Eddy C. Bertin, Bies van Ede, Roderick Leeuwenhart, Roelof Goudriaan and Jaap Boekestein.

Griezelgenootschap

In the Netherlands Tais Teng is best known as a member of the Griezelgenootschap, a group of Dutch horror writers who published a yearbook of horror stories and gave performances and signing sessions for interested fans from 1994 to 2003. Paul van Loon was the chairman.
The horror wave was just at her top then, so these were massive happenings, with thousands of participants. The series Gooseflesh of R.L. Stine had the same effect in the English speaking countries.
Tais Teng wrote the three-novel-series Duisterlingen (Darklings) with Eddy C. Bertin and Bies van Ede about three children with special powers who can travel into the nightmarish dreamland Yldorgei.
As a member Tais Teng produced two dozen more horror novels, ranging from Middle Grade to Young Adult.
His most popular series was the Griezelklas (Monsterclass) for very special children. Their long suffering teacher has to keep order in a class with vampire sisters, a man-eating kelpie, a witch, a hot-tempered dwarf with a sledgehammer and half a dozen even more dangerous pupils.

Literary influences

Homegrown Dutch science fiction

When Tais Teng started reading in earnest fantasy was almost nonexistent in the Netherlands, but science fiction flourished, most of it homegrown. So he grew up with the idea that the Dutch engineering know-how would put them on the Moon and Mars first. Monus, de Man van de Maan (Monus, the Man from the Moon) by A.D. Hildebrandt was an extremely popular audioplay which was aired every week.
Wim van der Gaag wrote with De Kristallen Tiran (The Crystal Tiran) a kind of cyberpunk avant la lettre: very short and with very information-dense sentences. This tale about a war between an Earth computer system and the vegetable brain of Mars made Tais Teng decide that he wanted to be a writer.
Partly it was the style: it was revelation that one could tell so many original things on a single page. It was a style he still like to use for any Hard science fiction story.[1]

English SF and fantasy

The moment Tais Teng started writing Jack Vance was the most important writer for the fledgling Dutch sf-writers, more so than Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. They wanted to write like him, but is soon became apparent that imitating his style wasn't enough: you still had to tell a good tale.
Several of Tais Teng's first tales were Jack Vance imitations.
In 2019 wrote the novel Phaedra: Alastor 824, an authorised sequel to the Alastor Cluster novels of the grandmaster himself.[1]
It was published by Spatterlight Press as part of the Paladins of Vance imprint.
Several older fantasy writers inspired him, most notably Lord Dunsany with The Gods of Pegana These very short stories form an early example of Flash stories.
Tais Teng's collection Glazen Speren can be seen as the kind of homage to Lord Dunsany.
The same is the case of several stories set in The Night Land of William Hope Hodgson and the Zothique tales inspired by Clark Ashton Smith.
With Paul Harland he co-wrote Computer Code Cthulhu a Cthulhu Mythos novel set in the near future. The horror writer H. P. Lovecraft remains a strong influence in his horror stories and Tais Teng named his first English collection Lovecraft, My Love.

The Dutch Ziltpunk movement

Tais Teng is one of the founders of Ziltpunk, a literary movement that seeks to counter the apathetic dismay of so many Dystopian novels. The Ziltpunk stories are climate fiction which looks for solutions: the Dutch equivalent of solarpunk.
The raising of the sea level is a rather urgent problem for the Dutch, with half of their land lying below sea level. Al Gore didn't see much of future for the Dutch in An Inconvenient Truth.
Ziltpunk describes the massive geoengineering projects which writers consider the only way to counter the hothouse changes. Think of sixty meter high dikes, mangrove islands planted in the sea to counter floodwaves or even raising the land itself by injecting the underlying chalk layers with hydrogen sulfide.
The stories seldom describe a rosy utopia: survival with some joie de vivre is enough. The focus of ziltpunk stories is mainly on the Netherlands, with a can-do mentality reminiscent of the Golden Age Science Fiction.
Part of the ziltpunk future is already here: the Dutch are building ever higher dunes along the sea coast and movable dikes like the Maeslantkering to control the both the sea and rivers.
To date the ziltpunk movement has published three novels and some two dozen stories. Roderick Leeuwenhart and Johan Klein Haneveld recently joined the founders and wrote their own stories and novels.
Several ziltpunk stories have been published in English: Any house in the Storm, Tidal treasures or Growing up along the Mile-high Dyke and Buitendyks, where the Night-gulls yodel.[2]

Bibliography

(English works only, see the Dutch Wikipedia version for novels in that language)

Novels and collections
  • The Emerald Boy (YA novel), Miyu Magic stones, ISBN 978-90-810858-2-3
  • With Musket and Ducat (novella), XIII Stories of Transformation
  • Embrace the Night (novella set in the Nightland of Willam Hope Hodgson), nightland.website
  • Lovecraft, my love (collection)
  • Embrace the night and other stories (collection)
  • Phaedra: Alastor 824 (novel, in the Alastor Cluster series), Spatterlight Press
  • When the Night-gaunt Knows your Name (Children's book)

Short stories
  • "Slow as glaciers and their swords all aflame," Aurelia Lion
  • "Praying to Thasaidon," Cirsova (set in Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique)
  • "Riders on the storm," Dimension Six
  • "Walking the thrice-blessed road," Stories for the Thoughtful Young
  • "The shipwright's Lover," Longshot Island 9 (set in Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique)
  • "True silk," Unreal 4
  • "Make the second shot count," Low life Journal
  • "Slow-boat inspector," Daily science fiction
  • "Playing stalker in the night," Itty Bitty writing space
  • "Ice words and fire fonts," Mad scientist Journal
  • "A perfect day with the dead men shrieking and the sky filled with northern light," Red Sun magazine (Cthulhu Mythos)
  • "Why we are standing on a broken wall, clutching swords too rusty to take an edge," Battling in all her finery
  • "You should have seen their faces," Daily Science Fiction
  • "The story of Mynheer Reynaerde and the purloined tails," The Worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror
  • "Assassin's Scroll," Black cat magazine
  • "In her fingerless hands she holds the ice and all the oceans," Unfit Magazine
  • "Tidal Treasure, or Growing up along the Mile-high Dyke," Future science fiction digest
  • "Watching the Space-stations Rise," Write Ahead, volume 2
  • "The Magician's Left Hand," Switchblade #6
  • "Doch das Messer sieht man nicht," Switchblade #4
  • "The cowboy who loved lady Liberty," Albedo One #47
  • "America first," More Alternative truths
  • "Dancing for Azathoth," The Worlds of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror (Cthulhu Mythos)
  • "For the greater good of all," Singular Irregularity
  • "Growing up with your dead sister," Pulp Literature #8
  • "Tokyo Nights," Tokyo Yakuza: Issues #1 - #24
  • "Any house in the storm," Crossed Genres
  • "An Overview of the Infernal Regions," Hell II: Citizens
  • "Al-Adrian and the magic lamp," Faery wicked tales
  • "The art of losing wars gracefully," The end is the beginning
  • "The further adventures of Jesus: The First seal: Conquest"
  • "And the sky is filled with eyes," nightland.website (set in William Hope Hodgson's Night Land)
  • "Respect of Headwaiters," Perihelion Science Fiction (12-AUG-2014)
  • "Expiating ancestral sins," Albedo One #31 (2006)
  • "Crowned by Lightning," Albedo One #18 (1998)
  • "A Girl Like Tiadi," Pandora #21 (1988)
  • "Green-ache," Amazing (Nov. 1989)
  • "Worthy enemy," Hardboiled #10
  • "What Avails a Psalm in the Cinders of Gehenna?," SF International #2 (1987)
  • "Palimpsests," Dragon
  • "Disslish the Aquamancer," Terra sf

Essays

Art

Tais Teng began first selling his art work in 1981, the same year he wrote his first children's book and published a sf collection for adults.
He got his start making B & W interior illustrations for Atlan, a spin-off of the German sf series Perry Rhodan. This was Space Opera: he had to draw a lot of exploding starships, robots and aliens.
At the same time he got a commission to paint the sf covers for CentriPress most notably the Jerry Cornelius novels by Michael Moorcock.
He used oils and acrylic paint and while oil paint looked better, it also took a fortnight to dry, which can be a problem when a publisher is waiting for the cover.
He soon switched to Airbrushing. The technique was perfect to paint the surrealistic Salvador Dali inspired twilight skies so often used in science fiction, but the painting was easily spoiled when the flow of paint started spattering. For each part of the picture one also had to cut out plastic stencils to preserve earlier parts.
When Photoshop came around, he embraced digital painting. Here any mistake can be corrected and there is no drying time.
Nowadays Tais Teng makes use of computer generated Fractals and kaleidoscopic madalas to construct his landscapes.[3] An avid photographer he has a extensive databank of figures and objects. For his Black & white illustrations he often uses Scraperboard or digital etchings. He also painted murals and background decors for plays, for which he followed a training as decor painter at art academy Artibus in Utrecht.[4]

Pulp Literature Press
  • Pulp Literature, Issue 3, 2014
  • Pulp Literature, Issue 6, 2015
  • Pulp Literature, Issue 9, 2016
  • Pulp Literature, Issue 19, 2018

Sculpture

Tais Teng mainly works in marl, a rather soft stone that was used by mediaeval artisan to decorate cathedrals with saint and gargoyles. Being a horror writer he prefers making gargoyles. For smaller pieces he also uses springstone, a quite hard material often used in African art.
The marl statues come in block of 20-20-60 centimeter. They are stacked with the lower piece forming a decorated plinth. He often uses these statues as part of a cover image, integrating them with the rest of the picture.[5][6]

Trivia

Tais Teng likes to use very long titles which tell their own mini-tale for his short stories. Two of the most extreme samples: "Why we are standing on a broken wall, clutching swords too rusty to take an edge" and "A perfect day with the dead men shrieking and the sky filled with northern light."[7]

When asked what his most heartfelt wish was, he answered as a sculptor: "A Star Wars laser cannon to carve mountains or one of Jupiter's moons."

Further reading and sources

Tais Teng

References
  1. "Channeling Jack Vance: shared worlds and writing in another man's universe". 1 March 2020.
  2. "Ziltpunk: zeker geen zure bedoening – HSF (2019/1) – NCSF".
  3. Nielsch, Astrid (30 November 1). "Asni's Art Blog: Interview with Tais Teng". Amazing Stories. Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. "Fantastische Kunstenaars: Tais Teng". www.hebban.nl.
  5. "taisteng - Professional, Digital Artist | DeviantArt". www.deviantart.com.
  6. "View from Yuggoth by taisteng on DeviantArt". www.deviantart.com.
  7. "The Joy of Very Long Titles and Why Publishers Hate Them!". 1 March 2020.
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