The tale is set against a backdrop of animated machines, airships of silk and ancient legends brought to life.

    By day, she creates monsters for the world, by night she's raiding dungeons. Most importantly, it's her one connection to her dead brother whose buffs still linger within the game. When his virtual shrine is threatened by an update Justine reforges his guild to complete the Dragonsbane quest in his honor. As an experienced tank, she's no stranger to the bandit attacks, PvP combat, and dragons Freehaven will throw at her. Little does she know, a hacker organization known as Archangel tampers with the update, leaving thousands of players, including Justine, stranded in full immersion virtual reality. As if that weren't strange enough, NPCs are getting smarter, and some marooned players don't want to escape. They're ready to jump at the chance for virtual immortality. Justine must temper the fervent emotions stirring in her guild and unite them to complete the quest. If she doesn't, friends will break from sanity, and others will die in real life.

    Two psychic talents are required to mine it. Three species seeking control. Taymar is telekinetic, violent and deadly. She is also the first of her kind to be telepathic as well, making her an intolerable threat to the ruling species of her home planet. They want to control her. To tame her. She just wants to be free. A cruel twist of fate has Nevvis tasked with managing Taymar when he is supposed to be managing a planet on the verge of war. But, she is hard to ignore and impossible to forget. When the Shreet invaders attack, Taymar jumps at the chance to escape. Nevvis would love nothing better than to let her go, but he can’t. If he is to save their home from the Shreet, he must twist her into a weapon and somehow convince her to help save a planet that has only ever tried to destroy her.

    He comes to the city of Sherit seeking the criminal, Luff Imbry. Luff Imbry has devoted his young life to the enjoyment of wealth. A gourmet, a charmer, and an ever-so-stylish fop, he has come to Sherit to pursue a new fortune. Not, mind you, his own, for Luff is also a mountebank, swindler, and forger of the first water. Yoked together by circumstance, they form an uneasy truce and discover a common goal: capturing the grandest con-man of them all, Horselan Gebbling. Gebbling, who made off with Imbry's previous fortune, is posing as Father Olwyn, Sacredotal Eminence of the Assembly of Tangible Unity, and now claims to cure the invariably fatal ailment known as the lassitude with Black Brillion. But the gemstone is a myth, as our heroes know.Filled with dollops of drollery and an ancient evil, Black Brillion is a science fantasy caper that grows into a metaphysical exploration of the human psyche. Matt Hughes has crossed Jack Vance with Carl Jung to come up with a bold new novel of life on an Earth grown older by millions of years.

    The good news is that the USA is finally out of debt. The bad news is that we were bought out by Valor National Bank, and debtors are the new big game, thanks to a tricky little clause hidden deep in the fine print of a credit card application. Now, after a swift and silent takeover that leaves 9-1-1 calls going through to Valor voicemail, they’re unleashing a wave of anarchy across the country. Patsy didn’t have much of a choice. When the suits showed up at her house threatening to kill her mother then and there for outstanding debt unless Patsy agreed to be an indentured assassin, what was she supposed to do? Let her own mother die? Patsy is forced to take on a five-day mission to complete a hit list of ten names. Each name on Patsy's list has only three choices: pay the debt on the spot, agree to work as a bounty hunter, or die. And Patsy has to kill them personally, or else her mom takes a bullet of her own.Since yarn bombing is the only rebellion in Patsy's past, she’s horrified and overwhelmed, especially as she realizes that most of the ten people on her list aren't strangers. Things get even more complicated when a moment of mercy lands her with a sidekick: a hot rich kid named Wyatt whose brother is the last name on Patsy's list. The two share an intense chemistry even as every tick of the clock draws them closer to an impossible choice. Delilah S. Dawson offers an absorbing, frightening glimpse at a reality just steps away from ours—a taut, suspenseful thriller that absolutely mesmerizes from start to finish.

    Lover. Sniper. Thief. Scourge of the wicked. In fact, scourge of anyone if there's money to be made. A lawless man in a galaxy overrun by villains, Mork beasts, Dildonians and the dreaded imperial forces of Crem Slumdump. Aided by his otherwise unemployable crew of drunks, criminals, assassins and broken down combat droids, Bodega seeks fortune, and trouble seeks him. Armed with his array of hi-tech gadgets, and of course his famous las-gun, Bodega careens around the corners of the known Universe in his ship, the Disco Volante, guided by his unique sense of justice, and his love for the psychic entity known only as Majesta.Bodega: Tales from the Bodegaverse contains all the episodes of Bodega previously transmitted via the Triforce Podcast, and heaps more Bodega action besides. What're ya waiting for, pard?

    Writer and editor Nalo Hopkinson notes that the science fiction/fantasy genre “speaks so much about the experience of being alienated but contains so little writing by alienated people themselves.” It’s an oversight that Hopkinson and Mehan aim to correct with this anthology.The book depicts imagined futures from the perspectives of writers associated with what might loosely be termed the “third world.” It includes stories that are bold, imaginative, edgy; stories that are centered in the worlds of the “developing” nations; stories that dare to dream what we might develop into.The wealth of postcolonial literature has included many who have written insightfully about their pasts and presents. With So Long Been Dreaming they creatively address their futures.Contributors include: Opal Palmer Adisa, Tobias Buckell, Wayde Compton, Hiromi Goto, Andrea Hairston, Tamai Kobayashi, Karin Lowachee, devorah major, Carole McDonnell, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu, Eden Robinson, Nisi Shawl, Vandana Singh, Sheree Renee Thomas and Greg Van Eekhout.Nalo Hopkinson is the internationally-acclaimed author of Brown Girl in the Ring, Skin Folk, and Salt Roads. Her books have been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, Tiptree, and Philip K. Dick Awards; Skin Folk won a World Fantasy Award and the Sunburst Award. Born in Jamaica, Nalo moved to Canada when she was sixteen. She lives in Toronto.Uppinder Mehan is a scholar of science fiction and postcolonial literature. A South Asian Canadian, he currently lives in Boston and teaches at Emerson College.

    And nobody talks about their past.But when a face from Captain Ichabod Drift’s former life send them on a run to Old Earth, all the rules change.Trust will be broken, and blood will be spilled.

    Wandering the galaxy alone, from one anonymous job to another, he avoids trouble--especially with the Empire--at all costs. So when he discovers a deadly conflict brewing between ruthless Imperial forces and desperate revolutionaries, he's not about to get caught in the crossfire. Then the brutal death of a friend at the Empire's hands forces the ex-Jedi to make a choice: bow down to fear, or stand up and fight.But Jarrus won't be fighting alone. Unlikely allies, including a bomb-throwing radical, a former Imperial surveillance agent, a vengeful security officer, and the mysterious Hera Syndulla--an agent provocateur with motives of her own--team up with Jarrus to challenge the Empire. As a crisis of apocalyptic proportions unfolds on the planet Gorse, they must stand together against one of the Emperor's most fearsome enforcers--for the sake of a world and its people.

    When a team of scientists is assembled to investigate this world, exoethnologist Sara Callicot is recruited to keep an eye on an unstable crewmate. Thora was once a member of the interplanetary elite, but since her prophetic delusions helped mobilize a revolt on Orem, she’s been banished to the farthest reaches of space, because of the risk that her very presence could revive unrest.Upon arrival, the team finds an extraordinary crystalline planet, laden with dark matter. Then a crew member is murdered and Thora mysteriously disappears. Thought to be uninhabited, the planet is in fact home to a blind, sentient species whose members navigate their world with a bizarre vocabulary and extrasensory perceptions.Lost in the deep crevasses of the planet among these people, Thora must battle her demons and learn to comprehend the native inhabitants in order to find her crewmates and warn them of an impending danger. But her most difficult task may lie in persuading the crew that some powers lie beyond the boundaries of science.

    A new technology of linked jump gates has rendered most forms of transporation--including starships--virtually obsolete. Every place on earth, every distant planet mankind has settled, is now merely a step away from any other. And all seems wonderful...until a crashed alien spaceship is found on a newly-located world 89 light years from Earth, harboring seventeen human victims. And of the high-powered team dispatched to investigate the mystery, one is an alien spy...Bursting with tension and big ideas, this standalone series highlights the inventiveness of an author at the top of his game, as the interweaving story lines tell us not only how humanity arrived at this moment, but also the far-future consequences that spin off from it.

    One morning he misses his bus when he stops to put a strange caterpillar in a matchbox. As the bus passes he’s shocked to spot himself inside. Like Schrödinger’s Cat in the famous quantum thought experiment, the caterpillar's spawned parallel possibilities. This comic novel explores Graham’s search for a better life among the various overlapping alternatives.Another clone, Grim Dupeint, is a loathsome international arms dealer. Graham infiltrates Grim’s corporation, then embezzles cash for charity. When a furious Grim realises, Graham must act fast. And right now he's acting like fish food.Graham launches upon a new lifestyle (and sex life) as he dons the designer suits of power. But sinister figures soon see through Graham’s clothing. Now Graham’s under attack from the corporation, the police, his ex-wife’s private detective, and an infuriatingly pompous water-colourist who Graham might have been if he’d gone to art college rather than business school. To survive (and steal the artist’s wonderful woman) Graham needs to find hidden resources. By definition Dopplegraham’s equally resourceful. Bugger...Schrödinger's Caterpillar - a stupid book for brainy people!

    Mystified experts, confounded by the impossible timeline they receive from traditional dating methods, call upon a stubborn twenty-something with a unique talent. Matthew Turner's gift is also his curse: whenever he touches an object, his consciousness is flooded with the thoughts and feelings of those who touched it before him, be it last week or centuries ago. It's a talent that many covet, some fear, and almost no one understands. Despite being exploited as a child and tormented by the unpleasant experiences imprinted on him from the various items he's "read," Matt agrees to travel from New York to the forests of Kenya. There, threatened by unknown enemies, and helped by a beautiful but prickly ally who begins to understand his strange ability, his mind journeys back in geological time to make a discovery so shocking that it forces us to rewrite all human history.

    Fleeing into the wintry streets of Toronto, Sheldon realizes he’s now a zombie—as if he didn’t have enough on his plate already. His last audition, reading for the reality television series House Bingo, had gone disastrously wrong. His mother is in the late stages of dementia, his savings are depleted, his agent couldn’t care less, and his boyfriend is little more than a set of nice abs. All Sheldon has to his name is a house he can barely hold onto and a cat that is more pillow than mammal. Now he also has to contend with decomposition, the scent of the open grave, and an unending appetite for human flesh—and on top of it all, there’s another audition in the morning. In order to survive his death without literally falling apart, Sheldon must find a way to combine his old life with his new addiction, which would be a lot easier if he could stop eating vagrants. A hysterical take on fame, love, religion, politics, and appetite, this is the story of the “everyzombie” people long to be.

    This was published as a Clarkesworld audiobook podcast in 2020.