The weather is getting warmer and the sun is sticking around later, which means it’s time to shake off some cobwebs and party at a Tor.com meet-up! This time, we’re throwing a shindig on Thursday March 14^th (3.14), better known to those lovers of maths as Pi Day! As usual we’ll be meeting at our regular party haunt in NYC, Professor Thom’s (219 2nd Avenue between East 13th and 14th Street) The whole Tor.com crew will be at the upstairs bar from 6 through 11 PM, and there will be plenty of snacks, free books and swag on hand, as always. Plus this time, there is a chance you’ll be able to win some free pie!

Please save the date and come on out (and if you follow Tor.com on Facebook, you can check out the event page and totally RSVP). Hope to see you all on Pi Day, March 14th...

Kirk/Spock DJ illustration by Chris Whetzel

Here at Tor.com, we’re readying for an eventual nuts-and-bolts redesign of our site—but don’t panic, we want your input first! Listed below are a few questions we have about your user experience, and the technical ways you navigate Tor.com. Please feel free to list other suggestions, concerns, and questions, in addition to the topics below. Again, right now we’re concentrating on technical issues here, not content, so let’s stick to discussing what works, and what we can make better, in terms of site design!

[Questions and open thread ahead]

The weather is getting warmer and the sun is sticking around later, which means it’s time to shake off some cobwebs and party at a Tor.com meet-up! This time, we’re throwing a shindig on Thursday March 14^th (3.14), better known to those lovers of maths as Pi Day! As usual we’ll be meeting at our regular party haunt in NYC, Professor Thom’s (219 2nd Avenue between East 13th and 14th Street) The whole Tor.com crew will be at the upstairs bar from 6 through 11 PM, and there will be plenty of snacks, free books and swag on hand, as always. Plus this time, there is a chance you’ll be able to win some free pie!

Please save the date and come on out (and if you follow Tor.com on Facebook, you can check out the event page and totally RSVP). Hope to see you all on Pi Day, March 14th...

Kirk/Spock DJ illustration by Chris Whetzel

Short fiction lovers take note! Starting this month, Tor.com will publish original short fiction every Wednesday in 2013!

Since our launch in 2008, Tor.com has always been a competitive market for original short sci-fi and fantasy fiction. We've been able to work outside of conventional publishing boundaries, create original illustrations for the stories, and have now garnered both Nebula and Hugo Awards! By the end of last year, Tor.com doubled our editorial staff, both in acquiring editors and first readers for our open submissions file. Our fiction team consisting of Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Liz Gorinsky, Ann VanderMeer, Ellen Datlow, Bridget Smith, and Carl Engle-Laird are working harder than ever to bring you the best of what's on the cutting edge of new speculative fiction! We've always been proud of our stories and now we’re proud to offer new ones once a week! Expect forthcoming new stories from Genevieve Valentine, Harry Turtledove, Cory Doctorow, and many, many more.

Check out every story we’ve ever told here and come back every Wednesday for a new one!

Tor.com welcomes Katharine Duckett to our full-time staff as our new Publicity Coordinator in charge of publisher outreach. She will work with publicity and editorial departments throughout all of genre publishing, facilitating increased coverage of SF/F books and authors on the site.

Katharine began her career in science fiction publishing working with the esteemed independent publishing house Small Beer Press as well as interning at io9, and now comes to us after working as a publicity assistant to Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman.

She will be working closely with our Managing Editor, Bridget McGovern, who will now be able to place a greater focus on cultivating our non-fiction content, regular contributors, and guest bloggers. You can see the rest of the Tor.com staff on our “About Us” page.

2012 was a wonderful period of growth for us, and we are excited to add Katharine to our team as we launch into the new year!

Tor.com wishes you all the best heading into the holiday weekend and 2013! We’ll be publishing lots of great new stories and articles over the holidays, so pop in and say hello if you find yourself with a quiet moment.

Art by Nelson Evergreen

It has been announced that Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2013 will include Meghan McCarron’s original Tor.com story “Swift, Brutal Retaliation” and Marissa Lingen’s “Uncle Flower’s Homecoming Waltz.”

Lingen joins McCarron, Brit Mandelo, and Pat Murphy in being chosen for various best-of anthologies being released in 2013. The 30th edition of The Year’s Best Science Fiction (edited by Gardner Dozois) will feature “The Finite Canvas” by Brit Mandelo while Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Seven will include “Swift, Brutal Retaliation” and Pat Murphy’s Tor.com original “About Fairies.”

Congrats to them all!

Other than robot unicorns, mugs of space coffee, and pictures of Benedict Cumberbatch, the sight most prevalent in our little rocket here at Tor.com are heaps of heaps of books! We get books any way we can here, and though we’re primarily a science fiction and fantasy website, we read across a myriad of genres.

Between our reviews, rereads, and regular columns such as Something Else Like..., Fiction Affliction, and Genre in the Mainstream, we’re talking about books, reading books and reviewing books around the clock! So with 2012 coming to a close, we invited our regular contributors to choose their three favorite books out of everything they’ve read in the last year, and we’re sharing their responses and recommendations below.

Please enjoy this eclectic overview of some of our favorite books, and be sure to let us know about your own favorites in the comments!

[Reviewers’ Choice 2012]

Announcing the 2012 edition of Some of the Best From Tor.com, a collection of a few of our favorite original stories published on the site in this past year. Beginning on January 14th, they’ll all be available as a single download in a free mini ebook. (Kindle readers can pre-order it now.) Of course, you can always read the stories for free right here, whenever you’d like, but for those that like to read as they’re moving about Some of the Best of Tor.com 2012 presents an ideal single package.

[The list of included stories]

The Tor.com store on Zazzle is open for the holidays! We’ve got Tor.com specific merchandise (t-shirts, etc.) plus holiday-themed items. What would the end of the year be without Cthulhu there to promise you naught but madness?

(The Tor.com crew can personally attest to the swankiness of having a t-shirt with an adorable rocket on it.)

New this year is the Santaman card; featuring the awe-inspiring deathbringing visage of Santa-with-a-sword, illustrated by GregManchess for last year’s Christmas story “If Dragon’s Mass Eve Be Cold and Clear” by Ken Scholes.

And nothing brings more joy to one’s fearful eyes than a zombie getting exactly what it wants in its stocking.

There are more cards and rocket-themed merchandise in the store, so head over and fill some stockings!

Tor.com is seeking an in-house publishing liaison. This person will work with publicity and editorial departments throughout all of genre publishing, facilitating increased coverage of SF/F books and authors. They will assist in outreach and coordination between Tor.com and other publishers, both within Macmillan and its various imprints and with outside publishing houses, small presses, and other outlets. They will work from our offices in Manhattan. Ideally, we are looking for a candidate with at least 1 year of publishing experience.

If you are outgoing, extremely organized, and both enthusiastic and knowledgeable about science fiction and fantasy across a range of media, please send your cover letter and resume to irene.gallo@tor.com. Subject line: Tor.com New Hire.

Congratulations to Victo Ngai for winning a gold medal at the Society of Illustrators for her image on the Tor.com story, “Jacks and Queens at the Green Mill.” To say Victo is a rising star is an understatement—a young illustrator whose work has been ulitized by any number of publications and advertising firms, including The New York Times, The New Yorker.

“Jacks and Queens at the Green Mill” was not an easy assignment—a fantasy story in which the magical element could not be visualized. Victo made a compelling dreamscape from it. One that catches a reader's attention in an instant and begs them to come closer and linger.

The Society of Illustrators Annual Awards are one the premiere showcases for outstanding work created worldwide throughout the year. Thousands of entries are received and juried by a team of illustrators and art directors. It is truly an honor to be selected for the annual, and a great honor to be one of the few chosen for a medal. 

To our readers in the U.S., Happy Election Day from Tor.com Central! 

Since 2008, Tor.com has been a leading market for science fiction and fantasy short fiction. Several of our stories have been Hugo and Nebula finalists, Charlie Jane Anders’ “Six Months, Three Days” won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 2012 and Kij Johnson’s “Ponies” won the Nebula in 2011. Since the beginning, much of our fiction has been acquired and edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden. In 2010, Liz Gorinsky began buying and editing for the site, and earlier this year, Ann VanderMeer also joined our team.

Now, we’re pleased to announce that Ellen Datlow is joining us as a Consulting Fiction Editor! Ellen has had an impressive career in the field, having edited fiction at Omni from 1981-1998. She’s also edited The Years Best Fantasy and Horror from 1988-2008 and is responsible for Night Shade’s The Best Horror of the Year anthologies. Ellen was won numerous awards for her editorial achievements including the Hugo, three Bram Stoker Awards, and nine World Fantasy Awards. She’s been the co-host of the Fantastic Fiction  series at the KGB bar since the year 2000.

We are very excited to welcome Ellen aboard the rocket and can’t wait to see what stories she will bring to Tor.com.

As before, all fiction subissions should be sent to  tordotcomsubs@gmail.com. Tor.com welcomes original short SF and fantasy, broadly defined. Check out our full guidelines here.

If you attended the Geek Thoughts: Top Blogs Discuss Writing About Science Fiction, Fantasy and Fandom panel at New York Comic Con this past weekend then you discovered the terrible secret behind what makes sci-fi/fantasy blogs like io9, Blastr, Boing Boing, The Mary Sue, Bleeding Cool, and Tor.com so entertaining: We’re all complete goofballs.

Really smart total goofballs, that is. The panel, moderated by Tor.com’s Ryan Britt, went into both the practical and quirkier bits of what it’s like to fashion minute-to-minute sci-fi/fantasy/comics news and original content for a wide internet audience. And revealed the sharp, deeply terrified wit that drives it all forward.

[“If I have to look at another cat dressed like an Avenger I’m going to kill Batman!”]

We’re calling it. Now that The Bourne Legacy is out and Renner-ing the hell out of us, the summer movie season is officially over (wth Dredd running behind like a third grader who’s missed the field trip bus). This summer threw genre films at us practically every week, so what did we all think? Are we happy with what we saw? Satisfied with the new memes we get to bat around in conversation? Let’s review in the least serious way possible.

[ShawarmaEngineersBaneMask]

For their 4th birthday this year, Tor.com commissioned a new illustration based on their logo (affectionately called Stubby the Rocket). I designed the rocket with Irene Gallo four years ago. Every year in honor of Tor.com’s birthday, which just happens to be NASA’s moon-landing day, July 20th, a new story about Stubby’s adventures will be released. The first one was recently published, “A Tall Tail,” by Charles Stross.

[And it required Stubby to actually fly in space]

Tomorrow, party peoples. The night you’ve been waiting for. Tor.com is having a 4th birthday meet-up, and we want you to be there! (You and your friends.) If you’re in New York City this Thursday, August 2nd, then you’ll be at our party.

The details: the meet-up is FREE and starts at 6 PM on Thursday, August 2nd. Professor Thom’s is located at 219 2nd Avenue between East 13th and 14th Street. We’ll be in the upstairs bar. Come have a drink and hang out! Our special “Rocket Fuel” cocktail from Barker and Mills will be on hand to get you blasted alongside our rocket-themed cakes and party favors. At this point, our meet-ups are legendary, so you can’t miss it.

RSVP at our Facebook invite here.

Kirk/Spock DJ illustration by Chris Whetzel

Stubby the Rocket is the voice and mascot of Tor.com and will make an appearance at this party.