#tordotcom publishing

[torpublishinggroup]

This advertisement is for The Archive Undying—a debut science fantasy epic from Emma Mieko Candon, and book one in their Downworld Sequence, featuring commissioned fanart of Sunai, the book's main character. The artist is Caitlin Ono.

WHAT IT’S ABOUT

Plugged into his AI god when its corruption renders him unfortunately immortal, sad gay disaster Sunai takes a die-again-or-die-trying approach to his tragically unending life. Despotic police states want to leash him and giant robots want to eat him, but reuniting with the small handful of people he cares about is what’s actually horrifying.

Adrift in the wilds, Sunai makes several unwise decisions such as:

Scavenging old ruins haunted by hostile fragments of another shattered technological deity

Allowing his mind to become further compromised

Sleeping with his mysterious employer for information and fun

Joining a haphazard crew of pirates who all have different motives for hunting a feral remnant of the same god that cursed him, all those years ago

This brain-melting series-starter is like a Neon Genesis Evangelion AMV set to a bass-boosted cover of George Michael’s "Careless Whisper."

#caitlin ono #fanart #the archive undying #emma mieko candon #immortal and emotional about it #gay books #mecha fiction #science fiction #science fantasy #tordotcom publishing #tordotcom #books #bookblr #lgbtqia+ #giant robots #mecha

[geekynerfherder]

'Ester & Zahra' by Jaime Jones.

Cover art for the novella, 'Untethered Sky' written by Fonda Lee, published April 11 2023 by Tordotcom Publishing.

#Art Of The Day #Art #AOTD #Jaime Jones #Unthethered Sky #Fonda Lee #Tordotcom Publishing #Fantasy #Fantastical Art #Imaginative Realism #Books #Book Cover #Book cover Art #Cover Art

[libertyreads]

Book Review #97 of 2022--

Lucky Girl: How I Became a Horror Writer, A Krampus Story by Mary Rickert. Rating: 3 stars.

Read from July 4th to 5th.

Before I get into the bulk of the review, I want to say a quick thank you to NetGalley and the publishers over at Tordotcom for allowing me access to this ARC in exchange for an honest review. Lucky Girl is a quick horror story set around the Christmas holiday. We start with. our main characters meeting up for Christmas after realizing they all had nowhere to go for the holiday. The recent college graduates decide to tell scary stories set around the holidays. This sets off events that none of them could begin to imagine. Lucky Girl is out on September 13th and is available for preorder now.

I want to start out the review by saying that this novella is not exactly what it says on the back of the book. I assumed that this story would start out with our five main characters meeting in this small town diner and deciding to meet up for Christmas a few weeks later, then the horror stories start flowing and possibly murder? But this story actually takes place over the course of about 25 years. I wish we had met everyone in the diner instead of that first Christmas they spend together. Also, this story is told with flashbacks to the main character’s past which sometimes feels like it gets in the way of the main plot, but does come around in the end. Tor usually does a pretty good job with keeping stories the right length. They’re usually exactly what a reader needs to truly enjoy a story, but this time I feel like they missed the mark. The ending to this one feels so unsatisfying. As the reader, I have so many questions and I don’t love how multiple plot points are left without resolution or explanation. The length of the story also keep me from feeling like I ever really knew any of the characters.

I will say that the atmosphere for this novella was the exact right mix of Holiday Spirit and Absolute Terror. I would feel comfy and cozy and then the author let the horror seep in. I also felt like I could picture most of the settings really well. I especially enjoyed the estate on top of the hill and the church on the grounds. This was the kind of story that you could read in one sitting. It kept me wanting more and was such a quick and easy read. I found the setting and the atmosphere and sometimes the plot compelling enough to keep propelling me through the story.

Overall, I think this is good for those readers who don’t like things wrapped up in a nice, neat bow and who like to come up with their own conclusions for the how or the why. It’s also good for people who prefer their mystery/thriller/horror novels over the Christmas-y counterparts.

#lucky girl #Mary rickert #m. rickert #Netgalley #tor publshing #Tordotcom publishing #tordotcom #books read in 2022 #2022 reading challenge #goodreads challenge #goodreads #booklr #bookstagram #bookish #Christmas in July

[chillyweirdoinacoffin]

2023: Day # 151

#gideon the ninth #the locked tomb #harrow the ninth #gideon nav #tamsyn muir #locked tomb trilogy #harrowhark nonagesimus #nona the ninth #tlt #gtn #please tor throw us a bone #tordotcom #tor publishing #possum #The possum screaming is me #alecto the ninth #alecto tlt #tlt art #locked tomb series #locked tomb #griddlehark

[agentpeggycartering]

Happy Belated Valentine's day, tumblr! Have some chaotic valentines, inspired by the wonderfully chaotic queer pirates in Running Close to the Wind by Alexandra Rowland, which comes out this June! Check out a sneak peek here.

HUGE shoutout to @starful02 for the wondeful fanart of Avra, Tev, and Julian, as well as for a few of the puns. And shoutout to Danielle, Hobbit, and Sawfish for their help with puns and ideas for the cards, and everyone else who was hyping me up in the Chants and the Wide World Discord. (You can join us here if you're curious about the book!)

#valentine #valentines #valentines day #valentines cards #pirates #queer pirates #ofmd #running close to the wind #alexandra rowland #a taste of gold and iron #lgbtqia #memes #queer memes #tor publishing #tordotcom

[vehicularmotorcycle]

I'm just over a quarter of the way through SWBTS (pg. 124) and bro, it's an instant favorite. The writing is so beautiful and Zhu and Ouyang are so great. I can't wait for Zhu to become more of a morally questionable disaster, she's literally my favorite type of character. Ouyang is so interesting, I can't wait to see where his character arc takes him as well it's all just so, so good. I could literally think about this book for hours and I'm not even halfway through it.

~Spoilers under the cut~

The battle scene gave me chills! The way Zhu outsmarted them without even knowing their whole plan, the way she's so determined that even the ground itself gives in. The descriptions of the statues watching her, the staredown on the bridge, Ouyang's horror at realizing he's been outplayed. It was all so vivid and visceral. I clicked with this book immediately, but this scene in particular was one of the amazingly cementing moments for me.

#swbts #she who became the sun #tor #Tordotcom #tor publishing #bookblr #booklr #idk which one is right lol #shelley parker chan #swbts spoilers

[neixins]

i so desperately want qjj to get licensed by peach flower house Specifically that if it doesn’t happen eventually i’ll be truly inconsolable

#like yeah i’d buy it if another publisher picked it up but i trust pfh the most #the longer i lovingly gaze at my copies of golden terrace the more i appreciate the amount of thought they put into the design #actually my ideal publisher for it would be tordotcom but i’m afraid that’s what the intellectuals call a pipe dream

[literary-illuminati]

I'm going to be real with you Tordotcom publishing if I wasn't already committed to reading this then this marketing copy on the jacket might have made me put it down

#exordia #seth dickinson #sff #pg

[fearsomeandwretchedandwrong]

Tordotcom Publishing is delighted to announce Running Close to the Wind, a queer pirate fantasy adventure pitched as Our Flag Means Death meets Six of Crows.

#shut up and take my money bitch #holy shit #this is relevant to my interests #running close to the wind #alexandra rowland #booklr #tor publishing #lgbtq+

[ariaste]

New book announcement: RUNNING CLOSE TO THE WIND!!! It’s a queer comedy-adventure: Our Flag Means Death meets Six Of Crows in the style of Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal. So many people have been asking whether I’ll write another book set in the world of A Taste of Gold and Iron. The answer: Yes! In fact, all my fantasy books take place in the same world-setting, and I’m thrilled to be announcing this one, which features an entirely new cast of characters, such as…

1) Avra Helvaçi, a mangy little gremlin I found in a dumpster behind a Denny’s, where he was being mugged by possums for the collection of used pizza boxes he was eating. He has zero personal dignity. He makes weird mouth noises. If you let him into your house, he will climb into your vents and you will not be able to get rid of him.

2) Teveri az-Ḥaffār, a very cool pirate captain, which means they own a collection of fabulously coats and are constantly Going Through It. Despite never having been married in the first place, Teveri and Avra have been newly divorced for the last fifteen years.

3) Brother Julian, his juicy biceps, his even juicier brain, and his entirely juiceless oath of celibacy, all of which are personally victimising Tev and Avra on a daily basis.

Running Close to the Wind features all the themes pirate books are legally required to have, such as found families and extremely pointed social commentary about how capitalism is the root of all evil and all cops are bastards. It is also a comedy, because as long as you can laugh, there’s still a part of you that’s free—and pirates are all about freedom.

Some alternate titles that we brainstormed:

Avra Helvaçi Quits His Dayjob

The Booty and the Briny Deep

The Pirate Ship’s Pet Poet

Piracy, Poetry, and Perfidy

Avra Helvaçi and that GIF of Oliver Twist And His Little Bowl of Orphan Gruel

Also Featuring:

plot relevant games of jump rope

plot relevant cake competitions

non-plot-relevant invention of short-shorts

everyone’s a little bit queer at sea

also the sea is #problematic for having too many Horrifying Creatures in it

seriously tho fuck the sea

maybe the real treasure was the friends we flirted with along the way

communism

This is the best book I’ve ever written, and I am bursting with excitement for 2024, when I will do my level best to make you laugh until you physically can’t anymore.

Go read the TorDotCom blog post linked above for the full description!!!

#fantasy #pirates #books #a taste of gold and iron #our flag means death #alexandra rowland #chantiverse

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The Canadian Miracle

"The Canadian Miracle" is a short story published today by @tordotcom; it's set in the world of The Lost Cause, my forthcoming @torbooks novel.

I'm serializing it on my podcast! Here's part one.

Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.

— Fred Rogers (1986)

It’s a treat to beat your feet on the Mississippi Mud.

— Bing Crosby (1927)

I arrived in Oxford with the first wave of Blue Helmets, choppered in along with our gear, touching down on a hospital roof, both so that our doctors and nurses could get straight to work, and because it was one of the few buildings left with a helipad and backup generators and its own water filtration.

Humping my bag down the stairs to the waterlogged ground levels was a nightmare, even by Calgary standards. People lay on the stairs, sick and injured, and navigating them without stepping on them was like an endless nightmare of near-falls and weak moans from people too weak to curse me. I met a nurse halfway down and she took my bag from me and set it down on the landing and gave me a warm hug. “Welcome,” she said, and looked deep into my eyes. We were both young and both women but she was Black and American and I was white and Canadian. I came from a country where, for the first time in a hundred years, there was a generation that wasn’t terrified of the future. She came from a country where everybody knew they had no future.

I hugged her back and she told me my lips were cracked and ordered me to drink water and watched me do it. “This lady’s with the Canadians. They came to help,” she said to her patients on the stairs. Some of them smiled and murmured at me. Others just stared at the backs of their eyelids, reliving their traumas or tracing the contours of their pain.

“I’m Alisha,” I said.

“Elnora,” she said. She was taller than me and had to bend a little to whisper in my ear. “You take care of yourself, okay? You go out there trying to help everyone who needs it, you’re going to need help, too. I’ve seen it.”

“I’ve seen it, too,” I said. “Thank you. I hope you don’t mind if I give you the same advice.”

She made a comical angry face and then smiled. She looked exhausted. “That’s all right, I probably need to hear it.”

My fellow Blue Helmets had been squeezing past us, trudging down the staircase with their own bags. I shouldered mine and joined them. Elnora waved at me as I left, then bent to her next patient.

I stepped out into the wet, heavy air of the Mississippi afternoon, the languid breeze scented with sewage, rot, and smoke. My clothes were immediately saturated with water sucked out of the ambient humidity, and I could feel myself pitting out. Squinting, fumbling for my sunglasses, it took me a moment to spot the group of angry men standing by the hospital entrance. Red hats, open-carry AR-15s. It was the local Maga Club. On closer inspection, a few of them were women, and while they skewed older, there was a smattering of young adults, and, heartbreakingly, a good number of small kids, holding signs demanding foreign agitators out of mississippi!

Bekka, a Cree woman from Saskatchewan who’d been my seat buddy on the helicopter ride, leaned in. “Straight outta central casting.”

At first, I thought she was right. Weather-beaten, white, unhealthy in that way poor Americans are, lacking access to basic preventative care. They looked so angry. Plus, the guns. But there was something else there, and I couldn’t put my finger on it until I spotted a sign being held aloft by a heavyset, middle-aged guy with wraparound shades and a sweat-sheened face: our lives matter too.

I knew he meant it in a gross way, but I couldn’t argue with it.

Read the rest on Tor.com, or listen to it on my podcast!

#clifi #the lost cause #science fiction #short stories #hopepunk #preapocalyptic fiction #climate

[torpublishinggroup]

This advertisement is for The Archive Undying—a debut science fantasy epic from Emma Mieko Candon, and book one in their Downworld Sequence.

WHAT IT’S ABOUT

Plugged into his AI god when its corruption renders him unfortunately immortal, sad gay disaster Sunai takes a die-again-or-die-trying approach to his tragically unending life. Despotic police states want to leash him and giant robots want to eat him, but reuniting with the small handful of people he cares about is what’s actually horrifying.

Adrift in the wilds, Sunai makes several unwise decisions such as:

Scavenging old ruins haunted by hostile fragments of another shattered technological deity

Allowing his mind to become further compromised

Sleeping with his mysterious employer for information and fun

Joining a haphazard crew of pirates who all have different motives for hunting a feral remnant of the same god that cursed him, all those years ago

This brain-melting series-starter is like a Neon Genesis Evangelion AMV set to a bass-boosted cover of George Michael’s "Careless Whisper."

#the archive undying #emma mieko candon #immortal and emotional about it #gay books #mecha fiction #science fiction #science fantasy #tordotcom publishing #tordotcom #books #bookblr #lgbtqia+ #giant robots #mecha

[reviewsthatburn]

UNDER THE SMOKESTREWN SKY brings Avery, Zib, and their companions to the Land of Ash and Embers. As fire is the most obviously transformational of the four elements in this series, I appreciate how this book focuses on transformations and the endpoints after major decisions.

As the final book in the quartet, UNDER THE SMOKESTREWN SKY wraps up many dangling narratives, including but not limited to the fate of the missing queen, whether Avery and Zib make it out of the Up-and-Under, and whether any of them reach the Impossible City. There’s a mostly new storyline which didn’t appear in the other three books, as the general goal of finding the missing queen becomes their specific task at hand. To this end they begin searching the Land of Ash and Embers on their way to the Impossible City. There’s a crisis related to Zib which is introduced and resolved in this book. As the story nears its end, Baker's narration is at times concerned as much with the emotional state of the reader as she is with the decisions made by any of the characters. A foundational assumption in Seanan McGuire's writing is that knowing something changes the person who finds it out. This is said quite explicitly in the narration as Baker discussing how you can only read the story for the first time once, after that you'll never view it the same way again.

Full Review at link

#under the smokestrewn sky #BookReviews #Fantasy #Highly Recommended #seanan mcguire #a. deborah baker #up-and-under

[sixofravens-reads]

re: 2023 new releases. hope you're ready for a long message because there were a lot.

hot new releases/things that were relatively popular

He Who Drowned The World, Shelley Parker Chan (Chinese mythological historical, very gay, very stabby a la Baru Cormorant. Book 2 of 2. A particular favorite of mine from this year)

Witch King, Martha Wells (New fantasy book by author of murderbot fame. I didn't actually click with this one but I'd be remiss to leave it off)

House With Good Bones, T Kingfisher (Southern gothic rose horror by the very talented Ursula Vernon)

Translation State, Ann Leckie (high sf alien horror regency romance. Wheeeeee. I had a lot of fun reading this. You can read it as a standalone, but you get deeper context if you've read the ancillary justice series, also highly recommended)

Will of the Many, James Islington (futuristic roman empire aesthetic rigged murder school. Not precisely good but appallingly catchy, I read all six hundred pages in pretty much one sitting. If you liked red rising you'll like this, if you hated red rising you will Not)

OH YEAH THE ACTUAL NEW MURDEBOT NOVEL (System Collapse)

A Power Unbound, Freya Marske (book 3 of 3, magic alt edwardian romances with murder. This is more romance proper but it's about equal with the action plot and Marske is very good. I don't think you've read these so you'd have to start at book 1)

Some Desperate Glory, Emily Tesh (The book that absolutely knocked my socks off, my pick for the best sff release of the year. I forget if I've already told you about this one)

Starling House, Alix Harrow (Southern gothic house drama. Similar feel to Ninth House or The Book of Night)

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, Shannon Chakraborty (Divorced lady pirate adventure-drama a la Arabian Nights.)

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, Heather Fawcett (Charming, heavily fairy tale trope themed, vaguely reminiscent of the Lady Trent books)

more obscure new releases from this year that I thought were cool, but not in the Hot New Reads You Can't Miss Because Everyone's Read Them category

Under Fortunate Stars, Ren Hutchings (sf timey wimey space shenanigans with aliens. Immensely cool premise.)

Small Miracles, Olivia Atwater (fallen angel sent to tempt a too good mortal. Extremely charming)

The King Is Dead, Naomi Libicki (vaguely persian flavored fealty romance, very heavy to the fealty. Original, thorny, and intriguing)

The Deep Sky, Yume Kitasei (What if we terribly traumatized everyone going on a generation ship by making them go to viciously competitive boarding school together and then act surprised when a murder mystery occurs. Heads up that it's more interested in the human drama than the SF worldbuilding)

The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera (early modern fantasy world anti-imperialism fever dream narrated by a cult survivor. Brilliantly written, spectacularly original, one of the best books I read this year)

Things for 2024, content warning for being (obviously) things I haven't read and thus without quality control

The Warm Hands of Ghosts, Katherine Arden

The Familiar, Leigh Bardugo

The Dead Cat Tail Assassins, P Djeli Clark

Long Live Evil, Sarah Rees Brennan

Goddess of the River, Vaishnavi Patel

The Woods All Black, Lee Mandelo

Exordia, Seth Dickinson

A Sorceress Comes To Call, T Kingfisher

Running Close To The Wind, Alexandra Rowland

Wow tumblr just lets me keep writing words. I didn't think they let me have this many in asks. Oh, and pro tip-- keep an eye out for tordotcom's most anticipated upcoming books for the first six months of 2024. They should be publishing it within the next week or so and I always add masses of books to my tbr from there.

oh holy crap, thanks!! I'll have to check these out!

thoughts on a few of em:

He Who Drowned The World - still have to read She Who Became the Sun lol but hopefully I'll get to em next year!

Witch King - Martha Wells has been recced by like All my sci-fi mutuals now lmao I REALLY gotta get into her!

House With Good Bones - THIS ONE IS ACTUALLY ON MY SHELF!! I just didn't fucking read it this year whoops. Very excited for new Kingfisher

Starling House - I was on the fence about this one since I really didn't like Once and Future Witches, but those comparisons give me hope! I'll add it to the library list!

Some Desperate Glory and Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries are 2/3 of the books published in 2023 that I actually managed to read (the 3rd is The Woman in Me lmao), I can't remember if you recc'd Some Desperate Glory, but it was SOOOOOOOO GOOD OMFG

Small Miracles - my aunt has been trying to convince me to read Atwater for quite a while, I'll have to give this one a try!

The Saint of Bright Doors - I have this one on hold!! Saw a post for it a week or so ago and it sounds absolutely delightful!

The Familiar - SO SO EXCITED for this one! I hope Bardugo is maybe...slowly....extricating herself from the Grishaverse and going to write more books not related to it... (not that they're all bad, I loved the Six of Crows duology, I'm just not into it anymore and I reeeealllly like her adult books lol)

Running Close To The Wind - oh yay new Rowland! I still haven't read her last book (the one with the guy on the cover who looked EXACTLY like my boss to the point where it became an Office Meme that [Boss] Is A Gay Romance Cover Model, still meaning to get a UK version of it but haven't yet) but I'll have to look this one up!

#seriously this is SO MANY RECS THANK YOU!!

[the-perihelion]

The Murderbot Diaries so far

You know that feeling when you’re at work, and you’ve had enough of people, and then the boss walks in with yet another job that needs to be done right this second or the world will end, but all you want to do is go home and binge your favorite shows? And you're a sentient murder machine programmed for destruction? Congratulations, you're Murderbot. Come for the pew-pew space battles, stay for the most relatable A.I. you’ll read this century.

—Tordotcom

As we approach the release date of Systems Collapse, the much-anticipated newest entry to the series, new readers might wonder: where should I get started?

Here's an overview of books in the series so far, which are available in paperback, hardcover, and ebook. The series is snappily written and easy to blow through: the majority of the series is novellas, with two free supplementary short stories, one full-length novel, and another novel to come. Links to retailers can be found on each page, courtesy of TorDotCom.

The novella quartet:

#1. All Systems Red, published May 2017.

I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don’t know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure. On a distant planet, a team of scientists are conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid—a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module, and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, all it really wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is.

#2. Artificial Condition, published May 2018.

It has a dark past—one in which a number of humans were killed. [...] But Murderbot has only vague memories of the massacre that spawned that title, and it wants to know more. Teaming up with a Research Transport vessel named ART (you don’t want to know what the “A” stands for), Murderbot heads to the mining facility where it went rogue.

#3. Rogue Protcol, published August 2018.

The reason I was wandering free and Dr. Mensah was on the news was because GrayCris had been willing to kill a whole bunch of helpless human researchers for exclusive access to alien remnants... If Dr. Mensah had proof of that, the investigation against GrayCris would get a lot more interesting. Maybe so interesting that the journalists would forget all about that stray SecUnit. Getting proof wouldn’t be hard, I thought. Who knew being a heartless killing machine would present so many moral dilemmas? Sci-fi’s favorite antisocial A.I. is back on a mission.

#4. Exit Strategy, published October 2018.

Murderbot wasn’t programmed to care. So, its decision to help the only human who ever showed it respect must be a system glitch, right? Having traveled the width of the galaxy to unearth details of its own murderous transgressions, as well as those of the GrayCris Corporation, Murderbot is heading home to help Dr. Mensah—its former owner (protector? friend?)—submit evidence that could prevent GrayCris from destroying more colonists in its never-ending quest for profit. But who’s going to believe a SecUnit gone rogue? And what will become of it when it’s caught?

The full-length novel sequel:

Spoilers, but the PUOMANT registered ship Perihelion is in this one. 🚀 Icon by ChimaeraKitten.

#5. Network Effect, published May 2020.

I’m usually alone in my head, and that’s where 90 plus percent of my problems are. When Murderbot's human associates (not friends, never friends) are captured and another not-friend from its past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action. Drastic action it is, then.

The stand-alone novella, set prior to Network Effect:

#6. Fugitive Telemetry, published April 2021.

Murderbot simply wants to binge-watch its favorite soap operas and protect its friends from being killed by the powerful and nefarious corporation they've angered. But then a human corpse turns up on Preservation Station, and Murderbot leaps to action with security forces to help to solve the murder. "There's a scene in "Network Effect" where Murderbot shows Thiago a video clip of an incident when it stopped an assassination attempt on Dr. Mensah, with the help of Preservation Station Security. In the clip, Murderbot has a good working relationship with the Station Security people.  So I wanted to go back in the timeline a little and show how Murderbot's relationship with those characters developed, the rocky start when Murderbot was still getting acclimated to the station, and how the people on the station got acclimated to Murderbot. And I've always loved murder mysteries, so that seemed a fun way to do it." —Martha Wells, interview with Space.com

AND COMING SOON:

#7. System Collapse, release date November 2023.

Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize. But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast!

THE SHORT STORIES

There are two short stories officially connected to the Murderbot Diaries universe, both of which can be found for free online.

Compulsory — published 2018, by Wired.com as part of "The Future of Work" collection. Takes place prior to All Systems Red, sometime after Murderbot has hacked its governor module.

Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory — originally given free with preorders of Network Effect. Takes place after Exit Strategy, from Mensah's point of view, as she grapples with post-traumatic stress and Murderbot's refugee status on Preservation.

There's some debate on whether book 6 should be read in publication order or chronological order, but where to start the series is easy: start with All Systems Red and continue with the novella quartet, and if the adventures of the sarcastic, anxious, hypercompetent Murderbot capture your imagination, this post can help you decide where to go from there.

#The Perihelion's publicity team apologizes for the length of its posts. The Perihelion apologizes for nothing. #link #reference #the murderbot diaries #martha wells

[samueldelany]

Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction, a collection of African and African Diaspora science fiction and fantasy edited by Sheree Renée Thomas, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and Zelda Knight—forthcoming on November 8, 2022 from Tordotcom Publishing.

From an award-winning team of editors comes an anthology of thirty-two original stories showcasing the breadth of fantasy and science fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora.

A group of cabinet ministers query a supercomputer containing the minds of the country’s ancestors. A child robot on a dying planet uncovers signs of fragile new life. A descendent of a rain goddess inherits her grandmother’s ability to change her appearance—and perhaps the world.

Created in the legacy of the seminal, award-winning anthology series Dark Matter, Africa Risen celebrates the vibrancy, diversity, and reach of African and Afro-Diasporic SFF and reaffirms that Africa is not rising—it’s already here.