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Charlie Jane Anders

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Fiction and Excerpts [10]
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Fiction and Excerpts [10]

All the Birds in the Sky, Chapter 3

Thu Jul 23, 2015 10:00am
|| Childhood friends Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead didn't expect to see each other again, after parting ways under mysterious circumstances during high school. But now they're both adults, living in the hipster mecca San Francisco, and the planet is falling apart around them.

Karaoke Is Magic!

Fri Dec 18, 2015 12:00pm 3 comments

In this ongoing series, we ask SF/F authors to describe a specialty in their lives that has nothing (or very little) to do with writing. Join us as we discover what draws authors to their various hobbies, how they fit into their daily lives, and how and they inform the author’s literary identity!

Some people don’t like karaoke. Some people even consider karaoke some kind of abomination, in which amateur singers inflict their dreadful tunesmithing on their fellow humans. I do not understand those people. To me, karaoke is a vital cultural tradition, that takes the best aspects of pop music and our pomo “remixing” and participatory culture and makes them even more amazing.

[Read more]

All the Birds in the Sky, Chapter 4

Fri Jul 24, 2015 10:00am Post a comment

Childhood friends Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead didn’t expect to see each other again, after parting ways under mysterious circumstances during high school. After all, the development of magical powers and the invention of a two-second time machine could hardly fail to alarm one’s peers and families.

But now they’re both adults, living in the hipster mecca San Francisco, and the planet is falling apart around them. Laurence is an engineering genius who’s working with a group that aims to avert catastrophic breakdown through technological intervention into the changing global climate. Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the world’s magically gifted, and works with a small band of other magicians to secretly repair the world’s every-growing ailments. Little do they realize that something bigger than either of them, something begun years ago in their youth, is determined to bring them together–to either save the world, or plunge it into a new dark ages.

A deeply magical, darkly funny examination of life, love, and the apocalypse, Charlie Jane Anders’ All the Birds in the Sky is available in January 2016 from Tor Books. Read chapter four below, or head back to the start with chapter one!

[Chapter 4]

All the Birds in the Sky, Chapter 3

Thu Jul 23, 2015 10:00am 1 comment

Childhood friends Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead didn’t expect to see each other again, after parting ways under mysterious circumstances during high school. After all, the development of magical powers and the invention of a two-second time machine could hardly fail to alarm one’s peers and families.

But now they’re both adults, living in the hipster mecca San Francisco, and the planet is falling apart around them. Laurence is an engineering genius who’s working with a group that aims to avert catastrophic breakdown through technological intervention into the changing global climate. Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the world’s magically gifted, and works with a small band of other magicians to secretly repair the world’s every-growing ailments. Little do they realize that something bigger than either of them, something begun years ago in their youth, is determined to bring them together–to either save the world, or plunge it into a new dark ages.

A deeply magical, darkly funny examination of life, love, and the apocalypse, Charlie Jane Anders’ All the Birds in the Sky is available in January 2016 from Tor Books. Read chapter three below, and come back all week for additional excerpts!

[Chapter 3]

All the Birds in the Sky, Chapter 2

Wed Jul 22, 2015 11:00am Post a comment

Childhood friends Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead didn’t expect to see each other again, after parting ways under mysterious circumstances during high school. After all, the development of magical powers and the invention of a two-second time machine could hardly fail to alarm one’s peers and families.

But now they’re both adults, living in the hipster mecca San Francisco, and the planet is falling apart around them. Laurence is an engineering genius who’s working with a group that aims to avert catastrophic breakdown through technological intervention into the changing global climate. Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the world’s magically gifted, and works with a small band of other magicians to secretly repair the world’s every-growing ailments. Little do they realize that something bigger than either of them, something begun years ago in their youth, is determined to bring them together–to either save the world, or plunge it into a new dark ages.

A deeply magical, darkly funny examination of life, love, and the apocalypse, Charlie Jane Anders’ All the Birds in the Sky is available in January 2016 from Tor Books. Read chapter two below, and come back all week for additional excerpts!

[Chapter 2]

All the Birds in the Sky, Chapter 1

Tue Jul 21, 2015 10:00am Post a comment

Childhood friends Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead didn’t expect to see each other again, after parting ways under mysterious circumstances during high school. After all, the development of magical powers and the invention of a two-second time machine could hardly fail to alarm one’s peers and families.

But now they’re both adults, living in the hipster mecca San Francisco, and the planet is falling apart around them. Laurence is an engineering genius who’s working with a group that aims to avert catastrophic breakdown through technological intervention into the changing global climate. Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the world’s magically gifted, and works with a small band of other magicians to secretly repair the world’s every-growing ailments. Little do they realize that something bigger than either of them, something begun years ago in their youth, is determined to bring them together–to either save the world, or plunge it into a new dark ages.

A deeply magical, darkly funny examination of life, love, and the apocalypse, Charlie Jane Anders’ All the Birds in the Sky is available in January 2016 from Tor Books. Read chapter one below, and come back all week for additional excerpts!

[Chapter 1]

The Unfathomable Sisterhood of Ick

Mon Jun 16, 2014 12:00pm 3 comments

Tor.com is honored to reprint “The Unfathomable Sisterhood of Ick,” a short story by Charlie Jane Anders available now in the special “Women Destroy Science Fiction!” June 2014 issue of Lightspeed Magazine!

“The Unfathomable Sisterhood of Ick” explores the bonds and boundaries between friends in a future where one’s most intimate memories can downloaded and shared.

Guest-edited by longtime Lightspeed assistant editor Christie Yant, the “Women Destroy Science Fiction!” issue is over 180,000 words and features original short stories by Seanan McGuire, Charlie Jane Anders, N.K. Jemisin, Carrie Vaughn, Maria Dahvana Headley, Amal El-Mohtar, and many others. You can purchase the issue in a variety of ebook formats directly though Lightspeed or your preferred ebook retailer, as well as in print through Amazon or CreateSpace.

[Read “The Unfathomable Sisterhood of Ick”]

Six Months, Three Days

Wed Jun 8, 2011 9:30am 68 comments

Enjoy “Six Months, Three Days” a story by Charlie Jane Anders and winner of the 2012 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.

 

The man who can see the future has a date with the woman who can see many possible futures.

Judy is nervous but excited, keeps looking at things she’s spotted out of the corner of her eye. She’s wearing a floral Laura Ashley style dress with an Ankh necklace and her legs are rambunctious, her calves moving under the table. It’s distracting because Doug knows that in two and a half weeks, those cucumber-smooth ankles will be hooked on his shoulders, and that curly reddish-brown hair will spill everywhere onto her lemon-floral pillows; this image of their future coitus has been in Doug’s head for years, with varying degrees of clarity, and now it’s almost here. The knowledge makes Doug almost giggle at the wrong moment, but then it hits him: she’s seen this future too — or she may have, anyway.

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The Fermi Paradox Is Our Business Model

Wed Aug 11, 2010 9:30am 34 comments

This story is also available for download from major ebook retailers.

The thing about seeking out new civilizations is, every discovery brings a day of vomiting. There’s no way to wake from a thousand years of Interdream without all of your stomachs clenching and rejecting, like marrow fists. The worst of it was, Jon always woke up hungry as well as nauseous.

This particular time, Jon started puking before the autosystems had even lifted him out of the Interdream envelope. He fell on his haunches and vomited some more, even as he fought the starving urge to suck in flavors through his feed-holes. He missed Toku, even though he’d seen her minutes ago, subjective time.

Instigator didn’t have the decency to let Jon finish puking before it started reporting on the latest discovery. “We have picked up—”

“Just—” Jon heaved again. He looked like a child’s flatdoll on the smooth green floor, his body too oval from long recumbence, so that his face grimaced out of his sternum. “Just give me a moment.”

[Instigator waited exactly one standard moment…]

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