👽 Tor.com Short Stories
What is there to do, when you have the power to do anything? John can fly, he can see through solid objects, he can take over the world and give it back again, but what he's looking for is something else…
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"Burning Girls", by Veronica Schanoes, is a fascinating dark fantasy novella about a Jewish girl educated by her grandmother as a healer and witch growing up in an increasingly hostile environment in Poland in the late nineteenth century. In addition to the natural danger of destruction by Cossacks, she must deal with a demon plaguing her family.
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An all-new tale of Marcus Yallow, the hero of the bestselling novels <I>Little Brother </I>and <I>Homeland</I>—as he deals with the aftermath of a devastating Oakland earthquake, with the help of friends, hacker allies, and some very clever crowdsourced drones. "I'd recommend Little Brother over pretty much any book I've read this year." –Neil Gaiman
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Answering the question asked by innumerable readers of the Charlie Jane Anders's novel <i>All the Birds in the Sky:</i> what happened to Patricia's cat? Find out in this Tor.com Original, <i>Clover</i>.
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Hannah and Melanie: sisters, apart and together. Weather workers. Time benders. When two people so determined have opposing desires, it's hard to say who will win—or even what victory might look like. This stunning, haunting short story from rising star Alyssa Wong explores the depth and fierceness of love and the trauma of family.
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In a universe of harsh interstellar conflict, the practice of interspecies diplomacy—when possible—is important. So being a Colonial Union officer attached to an interplanetary diplomatic mission sometimes means taking a fall. Literally. John Scalzi's <I>Old Man's War</I> was one of the most popular SF debut novels of the last decade; its sequels are <I>The Ghost Brigades, The Last Colony,</I>and<I> Zoe's Tale.</I> Other novels include<I> The Android's Dream</I> and <I>Agent to the Stars. </...
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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 her through the city’s underbelly as she encounters rampaging ghouls, saucy assassins, clockwork angels, and plot that could unravel time itself, in P. Djèlí Clark's Tor.Com Original, <i>A Dead </i><i>Djinn ...
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In the near future water falls from the sky whenever someone lies (either a mist or a torrential flood depending on the intensity of the lie). This makes life difficult for Matt as he maneuvers the marriage question with his lover and how best to "come out" to his traditional Chinese parents.
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Doug and Judy have both had a secret power all their life. Judy can see every possible future, branching out from each moment like infinite trees. Doug can also see the future, but for him, it's a single, locked-in, inexorable sequence of foreordained events. They can't both be right, but over and over again, they are. Obviously these are the last two people in the world who should date. So, naturally, they do. <I>Six Months, Three Days</I> is the winner of the 2012 Hugo Award for Best N...
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Baltimore isn't safe. Not even for the predatory meat that stalks its nights. Searching for victims who won't be missed, meat doesn't feel regret or pain—only thirst. But the meat remembers something more... doesn't it? is there more to eternal life than finding another drink?
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In this standalone short story by N. K. Jemisin, author of <i>The Fifth Season</i>, 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 enemies who cannot tolerate new life. Thus New York will live or die by the efforts of a reluctant midwife...and how well he can learn to sing the city's mighty song. <i> The City Born Grea...
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A stranger claiming knowledge of realms beyond the known world attempts to stop a war.
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Between her obscenely muscular new capoeira teacher, her crush going off with a new girl in their favorite park, and trigonometry homework, Kia figures she has enough going on without some creepy ghost causing car crashes and hit-and-runs in her neighborhood. Carlos Delacruz, the half-dead half-resurrected soulcatcher for the New York Council of the Dead, would love to keep her out of it, but things don't usually go the way he intends. From the world of Daniel José Older's immensely popular B...
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"The Story of Kao Yu” is a new fantasy short story by the legendary Peter S. Beagle which tells of an aging judge traveling through rural China and of a criminal he encounters. Of the story, Beagle says it “comes out of a lifelong fascination with Asian legendry — Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, Indonesian — all drawn from cultures where storytelling, in one form of another, remains a living art. As a young writer I loved everything from Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee mysteries to Lafcadio H...
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All prayers are answered, but sometimes the answer is no. And sometimes the answer is "let me talk to my manager and get back to you." From author Laurie Penny (<i>Unspeakable) </i>comes the Tor.Com Original novella, <i>Your Orisons May Be Recorded. </i>
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Nebula Award-nominated author Maria Dahvana Headley has always loved Damon Runyon's stylized faux-reporting on New York City. This is her version of a Runyon tale—this one dealing with the architectural guys and dolls of New York City—and a valentine to all the beautiful buildings she knows. It's Valentine's Day, 1938, and the Chrysler Building's tired of waiting on the corner of Forty-second and Lex for a certain edifice to notice her. Here's the story of what might happen if two of New Yor...
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"A Short History of the Twentieth Century, or, When You Wish Upon a Star", by Kathleen Ann Goonan, is about the daughter of a rocket scientist in the post 1950s who wants to go to the moon, despite being discouraged because "girls don't do that." A novelette that's science fiction by association.
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Raymond Chandler famously hated science fiction, saying "They pay brisk money for this crap?" However, it has recently come to light that Chandler secretly wrote a series of stories and novels starring a robot detective. He then burnt all the manuscripts and went on writing his noir masterpieces. Unknown to Chandler, his housekeeper had managed to save some of these discarded manuscripts from the grate in his study, preserving the tales for future generations. The first of these stories was ...
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<b>Finalist for the World Fantasy Award and Nebula Award, and winner of the Aurora Award</b> <i>Waters of Versailles</i> is a historical fantasy about sex, magic, and plumbing. In 1738 France, soldier and courtier Sylvain de Guilherand enlists magical help to bring modern conveniences to the court of Louis XV. The innovation sparks a cold war in the hothouse palace environment as the nobles compete to outdo each other. Everyone wants what Sylvain has, but can he control the magical creature ...
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The eerie thing about Paige Adolpha wasn't how she turned up right when I was reading about her in the paper. It wasn't her fame as the star witness in the local werewolf trial. What brought on the gooseflesh, first time I saw her, was she's the spitting image of her murdered identical twin.
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When Mr. Sorensen—a drab, cipher of a man—passes away, his lovely widow falls in love with a most unsuitable mate. Enraged and scandalized (and armed with hot-dish and gossip and seven-layer bars), the Parish Council turns to the old priest to fix the situation—to convince Mrs. Sorensen to reject the green world and live as a widow ought. But the pretty widow has plans of her own, in Kelly Barnhill's <I>Mrs. Sorenson and the Sasquatch</I>.
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Scant years after the Civil War, a mysterious family confronts the legacy that has pursued them across centuries, out of slavery, and finally to the idyllic peace of the town of Rosetree. The shattering consequences of this confrontation echo backwards and forwards in time, even to the present day.
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Just in time for Halloween, we have a funny, sweet, and slightly skewed short story by Aaron Corwin, an up-and-coming writer from Seattle. All Mathilde wanted for her birthday was a pony. Instead, she got a demon. Sometimes growing up means learning that what you think you want is not always what you need.
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Tor.com blogger, fantasy writer, and insatiable reader Mari Ness makes her Tor.com short fiction debut with a beautifully told tale of complicated and conflicted love, a translation and transformation of a very old story that is sure to be familiar to every fan of folklore and history.
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"The Pauper Prince and the Eucalyptus Jinn" by Usman T. Malik is a fantasy novella about a disenchanted young Pakistani professor who grew up and lives in the United States, but is haunted by the magical, mystical tales his grandfather told him of a princess and a Jinn who lived in Lahore when the grandfather was a boy.
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"Her Scales Shine Like Music" by Rajnar Vajra is a moving science fiction novelette about an encounter and budding relationship between two aliens, one human, who are the only living creatures occupying a planet in deep space. The human is assigned to guard a valuable find, while his colleagues leave, to file a report with the company that hired them.
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There was a time when the woods near Duva ate girls…or so the story goes. But it's just possible that the danger may be a little bit closer to home. This story is a companion folk tale to Leigh Bardugo's debut novel, <I>Shadow and Bone</I>.
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