Tor.com | Science fiction. Fantasy. The universe. And related subjects.

Original Fiction

The Mysterious Study of Doctor Sex

Wed Jul 29, 2020 9:00am 18 comments 23 Favorites [+]

Each of the Empire’s houses keeps secrets, even from themselves. For the bookish academics of the Sixth, every secret is a mystery, and every mystery is a puzzle to be solved or a paper to be published. Deep in the bowels of their house, one such secret is about to reveal itself. The study of the famed academic Donald Sex, sealed since the moment of his death, is about to open, and archivists are ready to dissect what he left behind. They are not ready for the macabre surprise that awaits them.

Enter Palamedes Sextus and Camilla Hect, age thirteen.

Original Fiction

Yellow and the Perception of Reality

Wed Jul 22, 2020 9:00am 8 comments 27 Favorites [+]

“Yellow and the Perception of Reality” by Maureen McHugh is a science fiction story about a woman who delves into the mystery of why and how her twin sister, a physicist, has been brain damaged in a lab accident in which two of her colleagues died.

Original Fiction

Everything’s Fine

Matthew Pridham

Wed Jul 15, 2020 9:00am 10 comments 27 Favorites [+]

Eric’s day is off to a rough start: his regional managers are in town, he’s running late to work, the moon seems to be falling apart, and he just can’t seem to get his tie right. At least he has his priorities straight: it’s the little things that matter. The world may be plunging into chaos, the neighborhood children might be mutating into abominations, but that doesn’t mean he can let his standards slip. If he and his co-workers can survive their nightmare walk to the office, then Eric has a plan for success…

Original Fiction

Juice Like Wounds

Mon Jul 13, 2020 9:36am 13 comments 45 Favorites [+]

In the course of every great adventure there are multiple side-quests. All too often these go unreported—perhaps because the adventurers in question fail to return to the main narrative due to death or other distractions, and sometimes because the chronicler of the events decides to edit out that part of that particular history for reasons of their own (historians are never infallible)—but occasionally we get another window into our heroes’ world.

In Juice Like Wounds we once again get to meet Lundy, and some of her companions. Lundy’s main adventure is detailed in In an Absent Dream (which is nominated for a Hugo Award, this year!) and you should definitely read that. Before or after this tale is up to you.

Remember: Side quests are fun.

For the reader, at least…

Original Fiction

The Necessary Arthur

Wed Jul 8, 2020 9:00am 19 comments 27 Favorites [+]

Some days you find out that the world is nothing like what you think it is.

An archaeologist named Tamara working near Hadrian’s Wall is approached by a very annoyed-looking, silver-haired woman with an incomprehensible message: The game is moving on, the time has come to play a hand, and Tamara is on point. Time to find the Necessary Arthur and get down to business!

Original Fiction

The Ones Who Look

Katharine Duckett

Wed Jul 1, 2020 9:00am 12 comments 27 Favorites [+]

Ethical Empire built the gate to heaven, and their employees hold the keys. By offering custom-built afterlives through full-brain uploads, they answered the needs of a society pushed to the brink by climate change and cascading antibiotic failure. But for Zoe, who works daily to assess the sins of users and decide who’s worthy of salvation, heaven is not so simple. Despite the urging of the angels on her shoulder, she is determined to uncover heaven’s secrets, no matter the cost.

Original Fiction

The Night Soil Salvagers

Gregory Norman Bossert

Wed Jun 24, 2020 9:00am 4 comments 16 Favorites [+]

The Night Soil Salvagers no longer need to perform the service they have provided for longer than memory can account for. Instead, they pass the nights in playful and profound acts of artistry, music, trickery, gardening, and honoring the city they know and belong to more so than anyone.

Uncover the heart of this mysterious community through the tales they tell each other, the tales that others tell of them, and the scores of their Dadaesque nocturnes, as they strive to lessen the burden of the city on the Earth.

Original Fiction

Two Truths and a Lie

Wed Jun 17, 2020 9:00am 15 comments 38 Favorites [+]

Stella thought she’d made up a lie on the spot, asking her childhood friend if he remembered the strange public broadcast TV show with the unsettling host she and all the neighborhood kids appeared on years ago. But he does remember. And so does her mom. Why doesn’t Stella? The more she investigates the show and the grip it has on her hometown, the eerier the mystery grows.

Highlights from the Blog

television

Hannibal and Steven Universe Are the Same Show

Leah Schnelbach

Mon Aug 3, 2020 12:00pm 4 comments 13 Favorites [+]

Since Hannibal hit Netflix last month, a lot of people have been discovering it for the first time, while others are using it as a convenient excuse for a rewatch. I saw a fellow Tor co-worker refer to it as comfort television, and was started to realize I agree. This is a brilliant, difficult, graphically violent show about serial killing, but yes, watching it is relaxing.

A day later I saw a discussion about works of art that define different eras, with the poster positing that Hamilton was the defining work of the Obama era. That made me wonder about the defining works of our current era, and the more I let the question jangle through my brainmeat the more I came back to Hannibal—although the show is a few years old (originally airing 2013-15), it seems to be coming into its own now in a way it never did while it was on NBC. But the more I thought about, a second answer bobbed to the surface, and revealed a startling truth: The defining works of art of this era tell the same story, and those two works are Hannibal and Steven Universe.

racial issues

Eliminating Blackface Doesn’t Start By Pretending It Didn’t Happen

Tue Aug 4, 2020 10:00am 29 comments 29 Favorites [+]

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A 20-something Black and Puerto Rican college student walks into a Halloween party in the late 2000s. All of a sudden, he hears the voice of a close friend from across the room. He doesn’t see their face but sees they’re wearing normal clothes. The twenty-something Black and Puerto Rican college student walks up behind their friend and says “Who are you supposed to be?” The friend turns around—and reveals they’re wearing blackface. With a smile, the friend says to the 20-something Black and Puerto Rican college student, “I’m you.”

Unfortunately, the scenario I described is not an edgy opening bit for my future Netflix comedy special. It’s something that happened to me at a Halloween event some years ago. I hadn’t thought about that stomach-churning night until I saw a headline about 30 Rock a few weeks ago. Tina Fey, along with the show’s co-creator Robert Carlock, announced that she wanted to address the instances of blackface within the comedy series. She issued an apology and pledged to remove certain episodes from the series on various streaming platforms. Fey would make these scenes disappear.

As I watched other creators follow Fey’s lead, the memory of that Halloween night kept haunting me like a really, really offensive ghost. And I knew why. It’s because I know something that Fey and all those creators didn’t know about addressing the pain of blackface in your past:

Making it disappear doesn’t work.

Explaining the Stormlight Archive

The Ecology of Roshar: Flora and Fauna

Megan Kanne and Kellyn Neumann

Thu Aug 6, 2020 9:00am 5 comments 2 Favorites [+]

Welcome back to Roshar! I hope you enjoyed Part 2 of Deana’s incredible overview of Rosharan cuisine complete with recipes you can make at home. This week we’ll be looking at the flora and fauna that make Roshar unique. Buckle up for our trip through the ecology of the strange and fascinating world of Roshar.

[There is a frantic determination to the way it grows.]

news

Matt Reeves is Adapting Diane Cook’s The New Wilderness For TV

Fri Aug 7, 2020 1:24pm Post a comment Favorite This

Image: Harper

Diane Cook’s soon-to-be-released novel The New Wilderness is slated to hit stores next week, and it looks as though it might be head to television at some point in the near future. Warner Bros. and Matt Reeves’ 6th & Idaho has optioned the book for a series.

trailers

Janelle Monáe’s Antebellum Gets New Trailer, Will Be Released On Demand

Fri Aug 7, 2020 12:49pm Post a comment 1 Favorite [+]

Earlier this spring, Lionsgate bumped Janelle Monáe’s upcoming horror/suspense thriller Antebellum to August from its April release date, like many other films this spring. Now, the studio has pulled the film from its theatrical release entirely, opting instead to release the film directly to consumers on demand on September 18th.

Along with the announcement, we got a new trailer for the project, which shows off more of what to expect.

Harrow the Ninth

Gideon, Harrow, and Mr Bones’ Wild Ride: Tamsyn Muir on Writing, Necromancy, and Fanfic

Stubby the Rocket

Fri Aug 7, 2020 12:00pm 1 comment 1 Favorite [+]

Author photo: Vicki Bailey of VHBPhotography

Tamsyn Muir is the Locus Award-winning and Nebula Award-nominated author of Gideon the Ninth, book one in The Locked Tomb trilogy. Harrow the Ninth, the hotly anticipated sequel published earlier this week. To celebrate, the author dropped by r/Fantasy for an AMA, where she talked necromancy (obviously), favorite sentences, favorite weapons, Draco in Leather Pants, fanfic hopes, jokes and memes left on the cutting room floor, the Final Fantasy fandom, the Homestuck fandom, Alecto the Ninth, and much, much more.

We kept this highlights reel below SPOILER-FREE, so you’ll have to visit the AMA yourself if you want all the fun SPOILER-Y stuff!

news

Guillermo del Toro’s Tales of Arcadia Series Is Getting a Trollhunters Movie

Stubby the Rocket

Fri Aug 7, 2020 11:23am 1 comment 1 Favorite [+]

Screenshot: Netflix

We’re getting a Trollhunters movie! Coinciding with the release of Tales of Arcadia season 3, Wizards, Collider reports that Guillermo del Toro’s anthology series will live on with an “epic-sized feature film” on Netflix entitled Trollhunters: Rise of the Titans, featuring characters from all three installments.

Science Fiction

Three Stories You Absolutely Must Read to Learn About Automatons (And One You Definitely Shouldn’t)

Micaiah Johnson

Fri Aug 7, 2020 11:00am 4 comments 2 Favorites [+]

Photo: Marcin Wichary (CC BY 2.0)

Like any totally-normal-not-at-all-obsessed person, I spend a lot of time thinking about automatons.

Mostly, I shake my fist at the sky like an old man complaining that kids these days only like their sleek, human-passing, electric robots and no one cares about the wind, fire, water, and clockwork powered beings that preceded them. Is MonkBot not sexy? With that sweet, sweet segmented mouth action?

Automatons are usually thought of as no different from golems, living dolls, or patchwork girls. Just another category of animated being: nifty, sure, but so what? But automatons are, and have always been, important. And for two thousand years we knew that.

news

Diana M. Pho Announces the #Edits4BlackSFF Project, Which Offers Free Editorial Services to Black Speculative Writers

Stubby the Rocket

Fri Aug 7, 2020 10:33am Post a comment 3 Favorites [+]

Art by diversityhorror

Three-time Hugo Award-nominated editor Diana M. Pho has announced a new project dedicated to helping Black speculative fiction novelists get traditionally published. Entitled #Edits4BlackSFF, the project will select nine finalists for a free query letter review and 10-page line edit of their manuscript(s), with the winner receiving both a free developmental edit and consideration for representation from a pool of 8 literary agents.

Terry Pratchett Book Club

Terry Pratchett Book Club: The Light Fantastic, Part IV

Emmet Asher-Perrin

Fri Aug 7, 2020 10:00am 1 comment 1 Favorite [+]

This is the last time I can make a joke about dancing or John Milton, but I’ve elected to do neither. Still, we have plenty to be excited about because we’re here to finish The Light Fantastic!

Series: Terry Pratchett Book Club

news

FIYAH Announces Creation of Ignyte Awards As Part of the First FIYAHCON

Stubby the Rocket

Fri Aug 7, 2020 9:41am Post a comment 1 Favorite [+]

FIYAH, the Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, has announced the creation of the very first Ignyte Awards. Awarded in conjunction with the inaugural FIYAHCON, the awards “seek to celebrate the vibrancy of the current and future landscapes of science fiction, fantasy, and horror by recognizing incredible feats in storytelling and outstanding efforts toward inclusivity of the genre.”

Jo Walton Reads

Jo Walton’s Reading List: July 2020

Fri Aug 7, 2020 9:00am 10 comments 4 Favorites [+]

Yet another at home mostly isolated month, but at least I could read. I read 22 books, a reasonable number for the first time in months. And some of them were great.

trailers

I Really Hope This Korean Space Opera Film Makes Its Way to The US

Thu Aug 6, 2020 3:50pm 12 comments 4 Favorites [+]

Sarcastic robots. A crew of desperate spacers aboard a spaceship. Pitched space battles. Some very nice scenery. All of those things are present in a new trailer (h/t Bleeding Cool) for a new Korean space opera film called Space Sweepers, which looks like it’ll be a whole lot of fun to watch.

Excerpts

Read an Excerpt From Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything

Raquel Vasquez Gilliland

Thu Aug 6, 2020 3:00pm Post a comment 1 Favorite [+]

A Mexican American teen who discovers profound connections between immigration, folklore, and alien life…

We’re excited to share an excerpt from Sia Martinez and the Moonlit Beginning of Everything, a genre-bending novel from author Raquel Vasquez Gilliland—publishing August 11th with Simon Pulse.

publishing news

Uncanny Magazine Launches Kickstarter For Year Seven

Thu Aug 6, 2020 2:11pm Post a comment 3 Favorites [+]

Image: Uncanny Magazine

Fresh off of its win for Best Semiprozine at this year’s Hugo Awards, Uncanny Magazine has officially launched a Kickstarter campaign for its seventh year.

Excerpts

Read an Excerpt From Legendborn, a Contemporary YA Fantasy

Thu Aug 6, 2020 2:00pm Post a comment 2 Favorites [+]

Sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A program for bright high schoolers seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus…

We’re excited to share an excerpt from Legendborn, a contemporary YA fantasy from author Tracy Deonn—publishing September 15th with Margaret K. McElderry Books.

Star Trek: Voyager

Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch: “Alter Ego”

Keith R.A. DeCandido

Thu Aug 6, 2020 1:00pm 22 comments 4 Favorites [+]

Screenshot: CBS

“Alter Ego”
Written by Joe Menosky
Directed by Robert Picardo
Season 3, Episode 14
Production episode 155
Original air date: January 15, 1997
Stardate: 50460.3

Captain’s log. Voyager has encountered an inversion nebula, which no one from the Alpha Quadrant has ever seen up close. They’re supposed to burn out quickly, but the one they find has been around for centuries. They pause to investigate.

[Kal-toh is to chess as chess is to tic-tac-toe.]

Series: Star Trek: Voyager Rewatch

Interviews

The Magic of Translation: Interviewing Kiki’s Delivery Service Author Eiko Kadono and Translator Emily Balistrieri

Thu Aug 6, 2020 12:00pm 1 comment 1 Favorite [+]

If you’re like me, the ongoing state of the world has meant a retreat into old childhood classics. The anime Kiki’s Delivery Service, a perennial favorite, has been a particularly refreshing escape: a young witch flying around the gorgeously illustrated countryside with the help of her cat Jiji, meeting kindly people and making friends wherever she goes. It’s a classic film inspired by a classic novel—one that’s just been translated into English for a new edition, released earlier this month.

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Kiki’s Delivery Service author Eiko Kadono, and her translator Emily Balistrieri. We discuss Kadono’s original inspiration for Kiki, what it feels like to return to a book thirty-five years after publication, and the challenges of translating such a beloved children’s book from Japanese to English.