Tais Teng | |
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Born | Thijs van Ebbenhorst Tengbergen 1952 (age 71–72) The Hague, Netherlands |
Occupation | Writer, sculptor, illustrator, writing coach |
Nationality | Dutch |
Education | Studied biology in Utrecht University |
Genre | fantasy fiction, detective, historical fiction, horror, middle grade fiction, Young Adult Fiction and science fiction |
Notable awards | Paul Harland Prize (x4) Archeon Oeuvre Prijs |
Website | |
taisteng |
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. Additionally, Teng works as an illustrator, sculptor, and writing coach. His real name is Thijs van Ebbenhorst Tengbergen, which he had to shorten (as revealed in his interview with Mad Scientist Journal) due to spacing issues on the covers of his books. Other pen names he has used are Eban Hourst and Ben Bergen, which reflect his search for a pseudonym that was pronounceable in languages other than Dutch.
Tais Teng has written more than a hundred novels both for adults and children in the Dutch language. He has won the Paul Harland Prize four times. His books have been translated into German, Finnish, French, and English, with Teng himself being a Dutch and English bilingual writer.
He has co-authored short stories and novels with Paul Harland, Eddy C. Bertin, Bies van Ede, Roderick Leeuwenhart, Roelof Goudriaan, and Jaap Boekestein.
In the Netherlands, Tais Teng is best known as a member of the Griezelgenootschap, a group of Dutch horror writers who published yearbooks of horror stories and gave performances and signing sessions for interested fans from 1994 to 2003. Paul van Loon was the chairman of the organization.
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. The plot included a long-suffering teacher who 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 more dangerous pupils.
When Tais Teng started reading, fantasy was almost nonexistent in the Netherlands. However, science fiction flourished, with most of it being homegrown. 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 audio play that was aired every week. Teng decided that he wanted to be a writer after reading De Kristallen Tiran (The Crystal Tyrant) by Wim van der Gaag, a tale about a war between an earthly computer system and a vegetative brain of Mars. It was partly due to the highly information-dense style: the revelation that one could tell so many original things on a single page. It is a style he still enjoys using for any of his Hard science fiction stories.[1]
When Teng started writing, Jack Vance was the most influential writer for fledgling Dutch sci-fi writers at the time, more so than Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. Teng wanted to write like him, but realized that imitating a style wasn't enough: he still had to have a good story. Several of Tais Teng's first stories were Jack Vance imitations.
In 2019, he wrote the novel Phaedra: Alastor 824, an authorized sequel to the Alastor Cluster novels of Jack Vance.[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 are from an early example of Flash stories.
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 on his horror stories with Teng naming his first English collection Lovecraft, My Love.
Tais Teng is one of the founders of Ziltpunk, a literary movement that seeks to counter the apathetic dismay of many Dystopian novels. The Ziltpunk stories belong to climate fiction, which looks for solutions to the climate crisis. It is also the Dutch equivalent of solarpunk. The rising sea level is an urgent problem for the Dutch, with half their land below sea level.
Ziltpunk describes massive geoengineering projects which writers consider the only way to counter climate change. Sixty-meter-high dikes, mangrove islands planted in the sea to counter flood waves, or even raising the land itself by injecting the underlying chalk layers with hydrogen sulfide are some key examples in the text.
The stories seldom describe a rosy utopia. In it, survival with some joie de vivre is enough. The focus of the Ziltpunk stories is mainly set in the Netherlands, with a mentality reminiscent of the Golden Age Science Fiction.
Part of the ziltpunk future described in Teng's works is already here. The Dutch are building higher dunes along the coast and movable dykes like the Maeslantkering to control 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 and wrote their own stories and novels.
Several ziltpunk stories have been published in English. Examples include Any House in the Storm, Tidal Treasures or Growing Up Along the Mile-High Dyke, Buitendyks, and Where the Night-Gulls Yodel.[2]