The Mongolian Wizard
10 best books like The Mongolian Wizard (Michael Swanwick): If at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again, The Haunting of Tram Car 015, Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City, The Grand Dark, A Dead Djinn in Cairo, A Kiss With Teeth, The City Born Great, The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections, Old Media, Cold Storage
If at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again
This pleasant novelette won the 2019 Hugo Award, and it’s free online. An imugi (a magical serpent that’s an earlier stage of a dragon, at least in this world’s mythology) wants nothing more than to become a full-fledged dragon and live in the heavens. Every thousand years the imugi, Byam, gets...
The Haunting of Tram Car 015
| Author | P. Djèlí Clark |
| ISBN | 1250294800 |
The Haunting of Tram Car 015 returns to the alternate Cairo of Clark’s short fiction, where humans live and work alongside otherworldly beings; the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities handles the issues that can arise between the magical and the mundane. Senior Agent Hamed...
Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City
| Author | K.J. Parker |
| ISBN | 0316270792 |
This is the story of Orhan, son of Siyyah Doctus Felix Praeclarissimus, and his history of the Great Siege, written down so that the deeds and sufferings of great men may never be forgotten.
A siege is approaching, and the city has little time to prepare. The people have no food and no weapons,...
| Author | Richard Kadrey |
| ISBN | 0062672533 |
From the bestselling author of the Sandman Slim series, a lush, dark, stand-alone fantasy built off the insurgent tradition of China Mieville and M. John Harrison—a subversive tale that immerses us in a world where the extremes of bleakness and beauty exist together in dangerous harmony in a city...
| Author | P. Djèlí Clark |
| ISBN | 0765389444 |
Egypt, 1912. In an alternate Cairo infused with the otherworldly, the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities investigate disturbances between the mortal and the (possibly) divine. What starts off as an odd suicide case for Special Investigator Fatma el-Sha’arawi leads...
I'm upping my rating from 4.5 stars to 5 stars on rereading this Tor.com online freebie. I love this story! Vlad the vampire is married to a human (in fact, the woman who was originally hunting him down!). They have a young son, and Vlad tries to live like a regular human, denying his darker self and powers....
In this standalone short story by N. K. Jemisin, author of The Fifth Season, the winner of this year's Hugo Award for Best Novel, New York City is about to go through a few changes.
Like all great metropolises before it, when a city gets big enough, old enough, it must be born; but there are ancient...
The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections
| Author | Tina Connolly |
| ISBN | 1250296994 |
Nebula nominee for best novelette in 2018! 4.5 stars for this excellent Tor fantasy story, free online here at Tor.com. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
Saffron is one of the official food tasters for Duke Michal, the regent for an infant prince. There is no doubt in anyone’s mind...
| Author | Annalee Newitz |
| ISBN | 1250231140 |
I was actually pretty excited when I recognized the characters in this story from Autonomous. We have John and Med and it sounds like this is set a year or two after the events of Autonomous.
John was definitely one of the better, more interesting, complex characters from that book and I was happy...
| Author | David Koepp |
| ISBN | 0062916432 |
For readers of Andy Weir and Noah Hawley comes an astonishing debut by the screenwriter of Jurassic Park: a wild and terrifying adventure about three strangers who must work together to contain a highly contagious, deadly organism
When Pentagon bioterror operative Roberto Diaz was sent...
Apex Magazine Issue 105, February 2018
Apex Magazine is a monthly science fiction, fantasy, and horror magazine featuring original, mind-bending short fiction from many of the top pros of the field. New issues are released on the first Tuesday of every month.
EDITORIAL
Words from the Editor-in-Chief—Jason Sizemore
...
Nine Last Days on Planet Earth
| Author | Daryl Gregory |
| ISBN | 1250209455 |
When the seeds rained down from deep space, it may have been the first stage of an alien invasion--or something else entirely. How much time do we have left, and do we even understand what timescale to use? As a slow apocalypse blooms across the Earth, planets and plants, animals and microbes, all live...
Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 145
| Author | Neil Clarke |
| ISBN | 1642360066 |
CONTENT
FICTION
"The Miracle Lambs of Minane" by Finbarr O’Reilly
"Sparrow" by Yilin Wang
"When We Were Starless" by Simone Heller
"The Facecrafter" by Anna Wu
"Thirty-Three Percent Joe" by Suzanne Palmer
"In Everlasting Wisdom" by Aliette de Bodard
"The...
| Author | Theodora Goss |
| ISBN | 0765395673 |
I am improbable, am I not?
Almost, but not quite, impossible.
theodora goss won my heart with the stunning free tor short Red as Blood and White as Bone, and after giving me something so perfectly perfect, it would have taken a complete dud to mar my high opinion of her. fortunately,...
A video game developer becomes obsessed with a willful character in her new project, in a mind-bending exploration of what it means to be human by the New York Times bestselling author of Recursion.
Maxine was made to do one thing: die. Except the minor non-player character in the world Riley...
Circus Girl, The Hunter, and Mirror Boy
| Author | J.Y. Yang |
| ISBN | 1250317851 |
As an orphaned sixteen-year-old, Lynette was haunted by the ghost of Mirror Boy, the drowned child who replaced her reflection. Ten years later, she’s built herself a new life, but all that is threatened when Mirror Boy returns, warning of danger. A hunter has come for both of them, and unless Lynette...
| Author | Siobhan Carroll |
| ISBN | 1250237564 |
A Tor.com original, Siobhan Carroll's For He Can Creep is a dark fantasy story of poetry, devilry, and cats in a battle of good vs. evil for the fate of humanity.
Nineteenth century poet Christopher Smart has been committed to St. Luke's Hospital for Lunatics believing God has commissioned...
She was the first to fall. As she walked the dog one night, it saw something off to the side and bolted.
A couple is concerned when their dog behaves increasingly bizarrely: first to their chagrin, and, eventually, to their alarm. . . in Jonathan Carroll's Mama Bruise, a Tor.com Original short story.At...
"I’m tired of this. They warned me when I started that one day I’d be tired of this, and I thought they were ranting and raving the way hidebound old fools always rant and rave when there’s a scientific advancement at hand—it’s as much a part of the process as the grandiose declarations of showing...
| Author | Carole Johnstone |
| ISBN | 1250234379 |
"Skinner Box," a Tor.com Original short story from award-winning author Carole Johnston.
A disturbing science fiction story about space exploration and a seemingly routine scientific mission to Jupiter that is threatened by the interpersonal relationships of its crew.
Content...
| Author | Christopher Rowe |
| ISBN | 1250317940 |
An ex-police dog turned detective is asked to investigate a human professor's murder. Things go badly.
One paragraph of world-building, but it's intriguing enough that I would read more set in this universe:
"What cannot be denied is that it’s the alchemical processes developed by...
| Author | Mary Robinette Kowal |
| ISBN | 1250241308 |
3.5 stars for this SF short story, free online here at Tor.com. Review first posted here on Fantasy Literature:
Ruby Donaldson, an astronaut stationed on the Neutral Buoyancy Lab or NBL, is nursing a severely sprained ankle, which she twisted while practicing a Charleston Flip in a dance rehearsal,...
Blue Morphos in the Garden
| Author | Lis Mitchell |
| ISBN | 1250241294 |
Read Lis Mitchell's magical realist tale, Blue Morphos in the Garden, a Tor.com original short story. When Vivian and her daughter witness the family matriarch die without leaving a corpse, Vivian can no longer ignore the family "gift" or the choice that lies before her.
At the Publisher's...
You Know How the Story Goes
| Author | Thomas Olde Heuvelt |
| ISBN | 1250192862 |
It’s the same old story. Take a chance and pick up a hitchhiker. But only after midnight and only when you need some company. Of course, the hitchhiker will disappear. That’s the way the story goes, right? But this time you are the hitchhiker. And there’s a tunnel up ahead.
From the acclaimed...
Disturbing. Haunting. Deliciously creepy. The illustrations are beautiful (although now likely to give me nightmares for the foreseeable future) and perfectly fit alongside the sparse text to give off an aura of confusion and terror.
Perhaps not the best thing to read on my own in the dark...
| Author | Linda Nagata |
| ISBN | 1250162408 |
This is a 2017 Hugo nominated SF short story, free to read online here at Tor.com. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
In another tale that explores human choices in the face of apocalyptic events, Susannah Li-Langford is an eighty year old architect who has spent the last seventeen...
| Author | Kathleen Ann Goonan |
| ISBN | 1250206111 |
A near future novelette about the surge in AI that might bring hope to humanity if used well.
In war-torn Kurdistan, a group of traumatized orphans is given a gift that could change their lives and the lives of everyone in the world, while in Washington, DC, an elderly woman undergoes medical...
AI and the Trolley Problem
| Author | Pat Cadigan |
| ISBN | 1250316251 |
“Machine logic can be tricky,” Helen said. “Especially when you’re not a machine.”
i liked this one a lot, although it does make me itch for more. a lot more. which is probably the sign of a successful story, right? honestly, i don't have it in me this morning to write a proper...
“Bloody stubborn—move!” Houndstooth shouted into Ruby’s face as loudly as he dared.
Ruby did not care for shouting.
i broke my own rule with this one -i try not to read any free tor shorts that are attached to books i haven't read; whether they're prequels or fill-in-the-gaps...
