Tor.com is home to an award-winning short fiction program, with over a decade of weekly stories for science fiction, fantasy, and horror fans to enjoy.
We want to make reading our stories even easier by offering a brand new short fiction-only newsletter. Starting in January 2019, subscribers will get two months’ worth of short fiction delivered to their inboxes in multiple digital formats on a bimonthly basis. Sign up today.
We’re excited to share the cover for The Ascent to Godhood, the fourth book in JY Yang’s silkpunk Tensorate series—forthcoming from Tor.com Publishing in July 2019.
Each month, the Tor.com eBook Club gives away a free sci-fi/fantasy ebook to club subscribers.
We’re excited to announce that the pick for December 2018 is Ian McDonald’s Luna: New Moon, the first book in McDonald’s saga of the Five Dragons! (The latest volume, Luna: Moon Rising, hits shelves on March 19, 2019.)
In Ian McDonald’s Luna: New Moon, the scions of a falling house must navigate a world of corporate warfare to maintain their family’s status in the Moon’s vicious political atmosphere.
“If you control our sleep, then you can own our dreams… And from there, it’s easy to control our entire lives.”
January is a dying planet—divided between a permanently frozen darkness on one side, and blazing endless sunshine on the other. Humanity clings to life, spread across two archaic cities built in the sliver of habitable dusk.
But life inside the cities is just as dangerous as the uninhabitable wastelands outside.
Sophie, a student and reluctant revolutionary, is supposed to be dead, after being exiled into the night. Saved only by forming an unusual bond with the enigmatic beasts who roam the ice, Sophie vows to stay hidden from the world, hoping she can heal.
But fate has other plans—and Sophie’s ensuing odyssey and the ragtag family she finds will change the entire world.
The City in the Middle of the Night is available February 12 from Tor Books, and Charlie Jane Anders is going on tour! Check out the full list of dates and venues below.
Tor.com publishes a few thousand non-fiction articles each year, and every year there are certain pieces of writing that continue to resonate long after we’ve finished reading and discussing them—pieces that make us stop and think, touch a nerve, warm our hearts, or introduce us to a new perspective on the books, movies, and TV we know and love.
Here are fifteen highlights from 2018, narrowed down from the truly massive list of articles that stood out in one way or another over the course of this year.
Goodreads has announced the winners of its annual Goodreads Choice Awards! Since 2009, “the only major book award decided by readers” has called out the year’s best books in categories including Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Graphic Novels & Comics, Young Adult Fantasy & Science Fiction, and more.
This year, which marked a decade of the awards, 5,027,741 votes were cast. V.E. Schwab’s Vengeful was voted the best science fiction novel of the year, while Madeline Miller’s Circe and Sarah J. Maas’ Kingdom of Ash won the adult and YA fantasy categories, respectively. Tomi Adeyemi was also named best debut author for Children of Blood and Bone.
Congratulations also to Sylvain Neuvel, Naomi Novik, Jen Wang, and Holly Black, whose books were all runners-up. Read on for the top five in each category, with the winners bolded.
For two decades, Jim Killen has served as the science fiction and fantasy book buyer for Barnes & Noble. Every month on Tor.com and the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, Jim shares his curated list of the month’s best science fiction & fantasy books.
Since launching in 2008, Tor.com’s short fiction program has been producing touching, funny, and thought-provoking stories, and this year was no different. In 2018, we published 14 original novelettes and 15 short stories that ran the gamut from hard science fiction to epic fantasy, from horror to steampunk, from fairy tales to space opera. We’ve rounded them all up below, and you can also find Tor.com Publishing’s impressive output of novellas and novels here.
We are tremendously proud of our authors, illustrators, and editors for creating such wonderful short fiction this year. We hope that you will nominate your favorites for the Hugos, Nebulas, and other upcoming awards which honor outstanding works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror—but most of all, we hope that you have enjoyed reading these stories as much as we have!
In 2018, Tor.com Publishing published over 30 novels, novellas, anthologies, and collections, including more Murderbot (now featuring A.R.T.!) from Martha Wells’ Hugo Award-winning series, the finale of Malka Older’s Infomocracy trilogy, the final run of the 7 Sin du Jour novellas from Matt Wallace, and so much more!
We are tremendously proud of our authors, illustrators, and editors for creating such wonderful works this year. We hope that you will nominate your favorites for the Hugos, Nebulas, and other upcoming awards which honor outstanding works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror—but most of all, we hope that you have enjoyed reading these stories as much as we have!
If the king sends you off alone to kill a dragon… you may not be well-liked.
We’re excited to share the cover for Dragonslayer, the first book in a fast-moving adventure trilogy by Duncan M. Hamilton and the author’s first traditionally-published novel after a string of self-published successes.
Disgraced former knight Guillot dal Villevauvais spends most days drinking and mourning his wife and child. He’s astonished—and wary—when the he is ordered to find and destroy a creature that was hunted to extinction centuries ago: a dragon.
Joined on his journey by Solène, a young barmaid (and likely a mage in a land where magic is forbidden), the unlikely pair might be the only two who can complete the mission at hand. And with Gill’s rusty swordsmanship and Solène’s unstable magic, what could go wrong?
It may be a slight month for sheer quantity of books, relatively speaking, but there’s still a lot of fantastical YA to keep you busy—from the latest from Cassandra Clare to a new book from Christopher Paolini! Sarah Beth Durst introduces a family of were-wyvern thieves; Arwen Elys Dayton visits a perfectionist near-future; Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner return to the Unearthed series with Undying; and Jonathan Maberry kicks off a new series with Broken Lands. Or you can go to space with Merrie Destefano or M.K. England! Or jump back into a series with Laure Eve or Sara Holland!
It’s December, and you know what that means, right? It means there are fewer new book releases than usual! OK, it also means the days are shorter and colder—at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere—and it’s time to drink all the warm cozy beverages your little heart desires, preferably while reading a book or five. This month, we’ve compiled the new SFF titles into one list—except the YA SFF; that gets its own list tomorrow. December’s SFF offerings include another Stephen King reissue; the second book in Nora Roberts’ Chronicles of the One series; and a look at the art of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse. And more, of course! There’s always more. Now, what to read first?
William Goldman, acclaimed author, screenwriter, raconteur, and chronicler of Broadway theater and Hollywood passed away yesterday at the age of 87. Goldman had a fascinating life and career, writing screenplays for classic movies in a broad array of genres, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and All the President’s Men (1976), for which he won Academy Awards, The Stepford Wives (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977) and Misery (1990). He also wrote the novel Marathon Man and the screenplay for the 1976 movie version starring Dustin Hoffman, Roy Scheider, and Laurence Olivier.
He is perhaps best known, though, for writing The Princess Bride, which was first published in 1973 and remains one of the most beloved stories of the last century. The movie version based on Goldman’s screenplay was directed and produced by Rob Reiner in 1987, and is easily one of the most delightful, most quotable, and most iconic comedy films of all time. If you’ve seen the movie and haven’t read the original novel, however, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy: Goldman’s writing, and his humor and intelligence, are worth experiencing firsthand. It’s an incredible book.
Born in Chicago in 1931, Goldman spent most of his life in New York, starting out as a novelist before his run as a sought-after screenwriter. In addition to his many fictional works, he also produced some rollicking non-fiction, such as The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway (1969) and 1983’s acerbic, often hilarious Adventures in the Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood and Screenwriting. He was a gifted, funny, insightful writer who clearly cared deeply about the act of storytelling and the bonds it creates; he had a legendary career, and will be profoundly missed.
It’s been a year, hasn’t it? It started with losing Le Guin, and it’s hard to say it’s improved since then. But books? Those were good. We picked some favorites in the middle of the year, and now we’ve picked even more—some titles make a second appearance on this list, but as is usually the case, the second half of the year packed in a lot of winners. If your TBR stack isn’t already teetering, it will be after you read this list.
What did you love in this year’s reading?
Each month, the Tor.com eBook Club gives away a free sci-fi/fantasy ebook to club subscribers.
We’re excited to announce that the pick for November 2018 is the Hugo- and Nebula-nominated novella THE BLACK TIDES OF HEAVEN by JY Yang, one of a pair of unique, standalone introductions to Yang’s Tensorate Series, which Kate Elliott calls “effortlessly fascinating.” For more of the story you can read its twin novella The Red Threads of Fortune, available simultaneously.
