Every year those with a membership to the Hugos are rewarded with pretty amazing Voter Packet containing the various nominees in each category (excluding Best Dramatic Presentation); the packet includes 5 complete novels and a ton of other awesome prose.

That’s over $300 worth of science fiction and fantasy (at minimum), in PDF form, for the most part (there are some epub files, as well), for a voting membership that costs $50.

Visit Chicon 7, this year’s World Con for more information on Hugo voting memberships, the packet, and the awards.

[Hugo Voter Packet Contents]

As part of the run up to the final book in the Wheel of Time series, Tor.com will be releasing free wallpapers of all available ebook art! This week we’re featuring the ebook art for A Crown of Swords, illustrated by Mélanie Delon and featuring the moment when Nynaeve finally overcomes the block that prevents her from channeling at will. A moment that would have killed her had it not been for her future husband Lan Mandragoran.

Check out this process post on how the ebook art was created, or just get straight to downloading!

[A Crown of Swords ebook cover wallpaper]

If you feel a void in your reading it’s probably because you haven’t read a space opera story lately! Tor Books is pleased to announce a special ebook promotion for three select space opera titles. All the books are also the first in their respective series and $2.99 in the US for only one more week!

[Titles and links below]

This year Tor/Forge’s events at BookExpo America will feature an all-star panel of Tor Books authors, exclusive book signings, a science fiction event at the New York Public Library, information on Tor/Forge DRM-free ebooks, and more kittens then you’ll know what to do with! (We’re not actually sure about the kittens part, but we’ll keep you posted.)

The full BEA Tor/Forge schedule is below.

[Read more]

Look at that Michael Whelan cover for A Memory of Light. Epic, isn’t it? So epic that it should be on your desktop computer, your phone, or mobile pad-esque device. Agreed? Good.

Now that we’re all in agreement, let’s download some free Memory of Light Michael Whelan wallpaper! We’ve got two versions for you, the art alone and the art with the title and authors.

[A Memory of Light wallpaper]

Tor author Walter Mosley has just released a double-header book; The Gift of Fire/On the Head of a Pin, both of which are tales of speculative fiction which delve into worlds where gods still walk among us, and a world where long-dead stars can come back to life.

You can read Walter’s thoughts on genre on the site today (or an excerpt from both stories in the dual book) and catch him on the radio Wednesday, May 9 at  8:45 AM EST on the The Tom Moyner Morning Show (streaming here).

He also kicks off his book tour today! Check below to see if he’s coming to your town.

[Tour dates below]

From Hugo winner Ann VanderMeer and World Fantasy Winner Jeff VanderMeer comes the editorial duo’s most ambitious anthology yet; The Weird. The book’s 110 stories run an impressive range of names from superstars like Stephen King and George R.R. Martin, to genre mainstays like Harlan Ellison and Octavia Butler, to more mainstream literary authors like Joyce Carol Oates, Karen Joy Fowler, and Haruki Murakami. In short, this massive volume has more varities of weird than any anthology of of strange and macabre musings. It also includes an “AfterWeird” by China Miéville.

Check out the webcomic review of The Weird by Leah Thomas.

The full table of contents is here.

Among their many accomplishments, Ann and Jeff VanderMeer also edit the web magazine the Weird Fiction Review. Catch them at Book Expo America in June.

Tor.com contributor and literary SF author Brian Francis Slattery will be in Connecticut and NYC this month to highlight the release of his Lost Everything. Brian is the author of the critically acclaimed books Spaceman Blues and Liberation has now created an incandescent and thrilling post-apocalyptic tale in the vein of 1984 or The Road. Read an excerpt of Lost Everything here.

Catch Brian Francis Slattery on the road at one of the locations below.

Tuesday, May 8, 7:00 PM
RJ Julia Booksellers, Madison, CT

Wednesday, May 17, 7:00 PM
WORD Bookstore, Brooklyn, NY

Longtime Tor.com contributor A.M. Dellamonica is also a talented author! Her new novel Blue Magic picks up where Indigo Spring left off. Now that the magic blue “vitagua” has been unleashed, what will become of Sahara, Will and Astrid?

Alyx is on a very brief book tour, so go say hello and tell you how much you appreciate her books, or her original short stories, Buffy essays, 1980s horror book coverage, or her Quantum Leap lovefest. Be sure to catch her at one of the dates below.

Monday, May 7, 7:00 PM
Powell’s Books, Beaverton, OR

Saturday, June 23, 3:00 PM
Borderlands Books, San Francisco, CA

Monday, June 25, 7:00 PM
University Bookstore, Seattle, WA

Tor Books has announced the title, release date, and cover for the second novel in the Karen Traviss’s “Kilo-Five Trilogy” of Halo books, the follow-up to last October’s Halo: Glasslands. Halo: The Thursday War will release on October 2, 2012.

Halo: The Thursday War picks up immediately where Halo: Glasslands left off, with forces on Earth and among the Covenant threatening a peace that is precarious at best. With a splinter group among the Sangheili pushing for war, some human colonies rebel against earth authority; and as ONI policy continues to shift with the volatile situation in space, the discovery of a trove of Forerunner technology on Onyx provokes leaders on Earth to seek uses for it in the conflict. For the fight is far from over….

[Read more]

Tor Books author and kitten lover John Scalzi has confirmed his book tour for Redshirts today! Hot from the success of his novel Fuzzy Nation and his Hugo-nominated short story The Shadow War of the Night Dragons, Scalzi returns with a look at what happens to the “expendable” people on a big spaceship. Redshirts releases 6/5/12 and you can read an exclusive excerpt here.

[Tour dates below]

For over a decade, Barnes & Noble buyer Jim Killen has been a driving force behind Barnes & Noble’s science fiction and fantasy sections. Each month on Tor.com, Mr. Killen curates a list of science fiction & fantasy titles, sometimes focused on upcoming titles and sometimes focused on a theme.

Here’s the Barnes & Noble science fiction and fantasy picks for May.

[The list below]

Tor UK, Pan Macmillan’s science fiction and fantasy imprint, has announced today that it will make its ebooks DRM-free over the next three months.

“We know that this is what many Tor authors passionately want. We also understand that readers in this community feel strongly about this,” says Jeremy Trevathan, Pan Macmillan’s Fiction Publisher.

[Read more]

Tom Doherty Associates, publishers of Tor, Forge, Orb, Starscape, and Tor Teen, today announced that by early July 2012, their entire list of e-books will be available DRM-free.

“Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time,” said president and publisher Tom Doherty. “They’re a technically sophisticated bunch, and DRM is a constant annoyance to them. It prevents them from using legitimately-purchased e-books in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of e-reader to another.”

DRM-free titles from Tom Doherty Associates will be available from the same range of retailers that currently sell their e-books. In addition, the company expects to begin selling titles through retailers that sell only DRM-free books.

[Read more]

Starting this May, a collection of debut Young Adult authors from Mac Kids will be hitting the road on the Fierce Reads joint tour!

Fierce Reads consists of:

• Anna Banks (Of Poseidon)
• Leigh Bardugo (Shadow and Bone)
• Jennifer Bosworth (Struck and the Tor.com story “Prophet”)
• Emmy Laybourne (Monument 14)
• Marissa Meyer (Cinder and Tor.com story “Glitches”)
• and more

The tour circuit will begin with some individual book launches, then come together into a cross-country jaunt! Check out a list of the cities where they’ll be stopping below the cut.

[Fierce Reads Tour Schedule]

If you feel a void in your reading it’s probably because you haven’t read a space opera story lately! (Get it because space and... void. Nevermind, it’s early.) Tor Books is pleased to announce a special ebook promotion for three select space opera titles. All the books are also the first in their respective series and $2.99 in the US for the next four weeks.

Sun of Suns by Karl Schroeder (First in the Virga series)

The world known as Virga is a fullerene balloon three thousand kilometers in diameter, filled with air, water, and aimlessly floating chunks of rock. Enter Hayden Griffin, a man bent on avenging the murder of his parents...

Amazon / B&N / Apple

The January Dancer by Michael Flynn

Full of rich echoes of the space opera classics from Doc Smith to Cordwainer Smith, it tells the fateful story of an ancient pre-human artifact of great power, and the people who found it.

Amazon / B&N / Apple

The Price of Stars by Debra Doyle and James MacDonald (First in the Mageworlds series)

The war with the Mageworlds is over.  Now it’s time for the real struggle to begin. Freebooter at heart, spacer by trade, Beka pilots spacecraft—as far from her famous family as possible, thanks very much.

Amazon / B&N / Apple

This evening, April 23rd, 30 different young adult and literary novels (including The Hunger Games, Kindred, Ender’s Game, and many more) will be given away for free across the U.S. as part of World Book Night.

The initiative began in the U.K. in 2011 and has expanded to the U.S. this year. The free books will be handed out by interested individuals, some bookstores and libraries. There is no list of locations, as the idea behind World Book Night is to promote literacy on a face-to-face basis.

So if someone tries to to hand you a free copy of Ender’s Game, don’t worry, it’s alright. Already have a copy? Hand it off to someone else! That’s the whole point of World Book Night. (We still suggest using common sense if someone tries to hand you a band flyer/eyebrow-threading coupon/religious tract.)

You can read more information on the World Book Night website or keep track of book donations and events on their Facebook page.

As part of the run up to the final book in the Wheel of Time series, Tor.com will be releasing free wallpapers of all available ebook art! This week we’re featuring the ebook art for Lord of Chaos, illustrated by Gregory Manchess and featuring the climactic battle at Dumai’s Wells, where we get to see Asha’man in action for the first time.

This wallpaper is a particularly special treat, as we’re finally able to reveal the full painting of the battle! Check out this process post on how the ebook art was created, or just get straight to downloading!

[Download Lord of Chaos ebook art]

First established in the beloved anthologies edited by Terri Windling, the shared world of Bordertown changed the face of fantasy as we know it, as a host of talented young writers broke new ground, exploring the intersection of urban and magical realms... and now a new generation of writers have brought Bordertown to the 21st century.

Just released in paperback (with a brand new cover!), the anthology Welcome to Bordertown, is edited by Ellen Kushner and Holly Black with stories and poems by Neil Gaiman, Cory Doctorow, Catherynne Valente, Emma Bull, Cassandra Clare, and more. To celebrate its release, we’ll be sharing some new perspectives on Bordertown in the coming weeks on Tor.com.

In the meantime, you can check out all of the previous essays and musings on the magic of the Borderlands, including the Bordertown reread by Kat Howard and guest posts by Seanan McGuire, Tim Pratt, and comic artist Dylan Meconis, just to name a few, as well as “Shannon’s Law,” a short story by Cory Doctorow.

Check out our full index here and head over to the Bordertown website for even more information.