Some of the Best of Tor.com 2021


Book Description

A collection of some of the best original science fiction and fantasy short fiction published on Tor.com in 2021. Includes stories by: 'Pemi Aguda G. V. Anderson Elizabeth Bear Kate Elliott Aliza Greenblatt Glen Hirshberg Elsie Kathleen Jennings Cheri Kamei Jasmin Kirkbride Matthew Kressel Usman T. Malik Sam J. Miller Annalee Newitz noc Sarah Pinsker Daniel Polansky Peng Shepherd Cooper Shrivastava Lavie Tidhar Catherynne M. Valente Carrie Vaughn E. Lily Yu At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




Firebreak


Book Description

"New Liberty City, 2134. Two corporations have replaced the US, splitting the country's remaining forty-five states (five have been submerged under the ocean) between them: Stellaxis Innovations and Greenleaf. There are nine supercities within the continental US, and New Liberty City is the only amalgamated city split between the two megacorps, and thus at a perpetual state of civil war as the feeds broadcast the atrocities committed by each side. Here, Mallory streams Stellaxis's wargame SecOps on BestLife, spending more time jacked in than in the world just to eke out a hardscrabble living from tips. When a chance encounter with one of the game's rare super-soldiers leads to a side job for Mal - looking to link an actual missing girl to one of the SecOps characters. Mal's sudden burst in online fame rivals her deepening fear of what she is uncovering about BestLife's developer, and puts her in the kind of danger she's only experienced through her avatar."--Publisher's description




What Makes This Book So Great


Book Description

“A remarkable guided tour through the field—a kind of nonfiction companion to Among Others. It’s very good. It’s great.” —Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing As any reader of Jo Walton’s Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic re-reader of books. In 2008, then-new science-fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her re-reading—about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor.com. Now this volumes presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field’s most ambitious series. Among Walton’s many subjects here are the Zones of Thought novels of Vernor Vinge; the question of what genre readers mean by “mainstream”; the underappreciated SF adventures of C. J. Cherryh; the field’s many approaches to time travel; the masterful science fiction of Samuel R. Delany; Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children; the early Hainish novels of Ursula K. Le Guin; and a Robert A. Heinlein novel you have most certainly never read. Over 130 essays in all, What Makes This Book So Great is an immensely readable, engaging collection of provocative, opinionated thoughts about past and present-day fantasy and science fiction, from one of our best writers. “For readers unschooled in the history of SF/F, this book is a treasure trove.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)




Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2020 Edition


Book Description

A collection of some of the best original science fiction and fantasy short fiction published on Tor.com in 2020. Includes stories by: Charlie Jane Anders G. V. Anderson Gregory Norman Bossert Jeremy Packert Burke Katharine Duckett Brian Evenson Carolyn Ives Gilman Maria Dahvana Headley Stephen Graham Jones Justin C. Key Naomi Kritzer Rich Larson Yoon Ha Lee S. Qiouyi Lu Usman T. Malik Melissa Marr Maureen McHugh Tamsyn Muir Sarah Pinsker C. L. Polk Matthew Pridham M. Rickert Zin E. Rocklyn Rachel Swirsky Lavie Tidhar Carrie Vaughn Fran Wilde Claire Wrenwood At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




Masquerade Season


Book Description

From Nigerian author Pemi Aguda comes "Masquerade Season," a Tor.com Original short story Pauly is a good son. When he brings home three beautiful Masquerades, he's expecting that his mother will be proud of him. But when his mother begins asking favors of his Masquerades, he realizes that being a good son sometimes means disobeying. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




Dead Space


Book Description

Nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award An investigator must solve a brutal murder on a claustrophobic space station in this tense science fiction thriller from the author of Salvation Day. Hester Marley used to have a plan for her life. But when a catastrophic attack left her injured, indebted, and stranded far from home, she was forced to take a dead-end security job with a powerful mining company in the asteroid belt. Now she spends her days investigating petty crimes to help her employer maximize its profits. She's surprised to hear from an old friend and fellow victim of the terrorist attack that ruined her life—and that surprise quickly turns to suspicion when he claims to have discovered something shocking about their shared history and the tragedy that neither of them can leave behind. Before Hester can learn more, her friend is violently murdered at a remote asteroid mine. Hester joins the investigation to find the truth, both about her friend's death and the information he believed he had uncovered. But catching a killer is only the beginning of Hester's worries, and she soon realizes that everything she learns about her friend, his fellow miners, and the outpost they call home brings her closer to revealing secrets that very powerful and very dangerous people would rather keep hidden in the depths of space.




Night of the Mannequins


Book Description

Award-winning author Stephen Graham Jones returns with Night of the Mannequins, a contemporary horror story where a teen prank goes very wrong and all hell breaks loose: is there a supernatural cause, a psychopath on the loose, or both? We thought we'd play a fun prank on her, and now most of us are dead. One last laugh for the summer as it winds down. One last prank just to scare a friend. Bringing a mannequin into a theater is just some harmless fun, right? Until it wakes up. Until it starts killing. Luckily, Sawyer has a plan. He’ll be a hero. He'll save everyone to the best of his ability. He'll do whatever he needs to so he can save the day. That's the thing about heroes—sometimes you have to become a monster first. "Suffused with questions about the nature of change and friendship, “Night of the Mannequins” is a fairy tale of impermanence showcasing Graham Jones’s signature style of smart, irreverent horror." —The New York Times At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2015


Book Description

A collection of some of the best original short fiction published on Tor.com in 2015. Includes stories by Nino Cipri, Seth Dickinson, Jeffrey Ford, Yoon Ha Lee, Maria Dahvana Headley, David Herter, Kameron Hurley, Noah Keller, David D. Levine, Michael Livingston, Usman T. Malik, Haralambi Markov, Daniel José Older, Malka Older, Kim Stanley Robinson, Kelley Robson, Veronica Schanoes, Priya Sharma, Brian Staveley, Sabrina Vourvoulias, and Ray Wood. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




Even Greater Mistakes


Book Description

In her short story collection, Even Greater Mistakes, Charlie Jane Anders upends genre cliches and revitalizes classic tropes with heartfelt and pants-wettingly funny social commentary. The woman who can see all possible futures is dating the man who can see the one and only foreordained future. A wildly popular slapstick filmmaker is drawn, against his better judgment, into working with a fascist militia, against a background of social collapse. Two friends must embark on an Epic Quest To Capture The Weapon That Threatens The Galaxy, or else they’ll never achieve their dream of opening a restaurant. The stories in this collection, by their very outrageousness, achieve a heightened realism unlike any other. Anders once again proves she is one of the strongest voices in modern science fiction, the writer called by Andrew Sean Greer, “this generation’s Le Guin.” At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.




The Helm of Midnight


Book Description

Hannibal meets Mistborn in Marina Lostetter’s THE HELM OF MIDNIGHT, the dark and stunning first novel in a new trilogy that combines the intricate worldbuilding and rigorous magic system of the best of epic fantasy with a dark and chilling thriller. In a daring and deadly heist, thieves have made away with an artifact of terrible power—the death mask of Louis Charbon. Made by a master craftsman, it is imbued with the spirit of a monster from history, a serial murderer who terrorized the city. Now Charbon is loose once more, killing from beyond the grave. But these murders are different from before, not simply random but the work of a deliberate mind probing for answers to a sinister question. It is up to Krona Hirvath and her fellow Regulators to enter the mind of madness to stop this insatiable killer while facing the terrible truths left in his wake. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.