Tobias S. Buckell

This is the third volume in this highly praised series (the first won the World Fantasy Award). Previous works have been praised for their eclectic mix of stories, offering a panorama of themes and styles. For instance, the 2021 edition included a story about a woman struggling with her identity and relationship in the face of a thought-recording device, a tale of a man fostering a rapidly evolving robot, and an adventurous narrative about a sentient robot dog engaging in space piracy. These stories not only explored advanced technologies and speculative scenarios but also delved deep into human emotions, relationships, and societal issues.Themes of personal struggles, such as dealing with depression, anxiety, and feelings of alienation, were also prominent. These were manifested through unique and powerful metaphors, like a woman whose detachable body parts symbolized her sense of disintegration and invisibility, or a story that portrayed the torment of self-contempt through the constant barrage of negative thoughts from imaginary entities.The anthology also ventured into mythic dimensions, echoing the voices and histories of entire cultures through concise yet profound storytelling. For example, flash fiction pieces in the collection reached the heights of epic poetry, encapsulating the journey of human life and cultural evolution.With such a backdrop, the 2023 volume continues this tradition of blending speculative elements with profound human experiences and cultural narratives. It's likely to feature stories that push the boundaries of imagination while staying grounded in the complexities of the human condition. Readers can anticipate a collection that entertains, provokes thought, and offers new perspectives on the future and the present. The anthology is not just a showcase of speculative fiction; it's a celebration of African storytelling, creativity, and the endless possibilities within the realm of speculative fiction.

In celebration of Rosarium's fifth anniversary, publisher Bill Campbell has compiled a two-volume collection of 100 science fiction, fantasy, and horror short stories from around the world. Like space and the future, Sunspot Jungle has no boundaries and celebrates the wide varieties and possibilities this genre represents, with some of the most notable names in the field. Featuring the works of: Nick Harkaway, Ken Liu, Nalo Hopkinson, Tananarive Due, Max Gladstone, Nisi Shawl, Nick Mamatas, Carmen Maria Machado, Tobias S. Buckell, Karen Lord, and more!

Winner of the 2020 Locus, World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Ignyte, and Brave New Words Awards.“There’s nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns,” proclaimed Octavia E. Butler.New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color showcases emerging and seasoned writers of many races telling stories filled with shocking delights, powerful visions of the familiar made strange. Between this book’s covers burn tales of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and their indefinable overlappings. These are authors aware of our many possible pasts and futures, authors freed of stereotypes and clichés, ready to dazzle you with their daring genius.Unexpected brilliance shines forth from every page.Includes stories by Kathleen Alcala, Minsoo Kang, Anil Menon, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Alex Jennings, Alberto Yanez, Steven Barnes, Jaymee Goh, Karin Lowachee, E. Lily Yu, Andrea Hairston, Tobias Buckell, Hiromi Goto, Rebecca Roanhorse, Indrapramit Das, Chinelo Onwualu and Darcie Little Badger.

The Lord of the Rings meets Slaughterhouse-Five (by way of World of Warcraft) in this delirious mashup pitting the U. S. military against legendary monsters from fantasy novels and roleplaying games. From a science fiction award-winner and an author, former Marine, and extreme amateur-landscaper comes a riotous fantasy/military science fiction adventure that will delight fans of Terry Pratchett, J. R. R. Tolkien, and John Scalzi. No one could have been prepared for the day when orcs, trolls, and dragons fell from portals in the sky. But the world fought back against the invaders as best it could, with soldiers, tactical weapons, and even some rudimentary magic. Now a tough but not-quite-prepared platoon of Marines is trapped on the wrong side of the portals. The enchanting landscape looks like Middle Earth but--to the dismay of the nerdiest soldiers--is nothing like it. While the Marines fend off dangerous, improbable, and very rude assailants, their mission is to escort a VIP (Very Important Princess) who could broker a strategic alliance between worlds.

An unabridged collection spotlighting the best hard science fiction stories and novellas published in 2023 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster."The Last Cathedral of Earth, In Flight" by Tobias S. Buckell - The last of humanity flees, among the stars, from alien Prowlers."The Unpastured Sea" by Gregory Feeley - A mission to the planet Neptune runs into many setbacks."The Tinker and the Timestream" by Carolyn Ives Gilman - Colonists on a planet orbiting a decaying sun encounter interstellar time travelers."Six Incidents of Evolution Using Time Travel" by Derek K nsken - Time travel is found to be encoded in the DNA of some alien species."Cloudskimmer" by Geoffrey A. Landis - Robots and humans team up to explore Venus."Even if Such Ways Are Bad" by Rich Larson - A two-person crew goes on a deep space mission inside a living wormship."The Enthnomusicology of the Last Dreadnaught by Yoon Ha Lee - The battle glory of an atrocious weapon of war is honored."Exiled to Gravity" by Marissa Lingen - A mysterious ailment hampers an engineer's return to space."Clockwork Melting by James Maxey - An immortal races against time to complete an ice sculpture on Venus."The Elephant Maker" by Alec Nevala-Lee - Scientists clash with hunters and poachers for a rogue elephant needed to test a brain implant."The Ghosts of Mars" by Dominica Phetteplace - A teenager struggles to survive on Mars amidst peculiar phenomena attributed to ghosts."The Many Different Kinds of Love" by Geoff Ryman with David Jeffrey - After ten years of silence, an abiotic intelligence on Enceladus receives unauthorized messages from Earth."Lemuria 7 Is Missing" by Allen M. Steele - The disappearance of a passenger moonship is scrutinized."Defective" by Peter Watts - A zero-sum battle for survival rests on the ability of a scientist to communicate with an alien species."OCASTA" by Daniel H. Wilson - An AI, with an algorithm that analyzes and learns, has a story to tell.

Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance and Other Stories is Tobias S. Buckell's seventh short fiction collection and is comprised of 15 stories, several of which are original to the collection or were previously only available through his Patreon.This collection ranges from galactic adventures to intimate explorations of humanity-sometimes in the same story-rich with a sense of wonder and deft storytelling.This collection includes the following stories: Io, RobotA Jar of GoodwillPale Blue MemoriesZen and the Art of Starship MaintenanceThe Might SlingerSunsetChi's CargoDestination Day BluesThe Galactic Tourist Industrial ComplexFive Point Three MilligramsBy the Warmth of Their CalculusDWThe Very Last Curator of What Little Remains of the Western WorldA Girl and Her RoverThe Longest Distance

Finalist for the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine. Celebrate the fifteenth anniversary of cutting-edge science fiction from the hit podcast, Escape Pod. Escape Pod has been bringing the finest short fiction to millions of ears all over the world, at the forefront of a new fiction revolution. This anthology gathers together fifteen stories, including new and exclusive work from writers such as from Cory Doctorow, Ken Liu, Mary Robinette Kowal, T. Kingfisher and more. From editors Mur Laffterty and S.B. Divya comes the science fiction collection of the year, bringing together bestselling authors in celebration of the publishing phenomenon that is, Escape Pod.

How much does the average author make? How long should my book be? Should I outline my book?New York Times Bestselling author and World Fantasy Award winner Tobias Buckell started blogging about his path to becoming a writer in 1998. His website and frequent talks to writing workshops and universities contained snippets about his daily life, thoughts, and lots of tips about writing as he learned them. He set out to collect all these articles, posts, and speeches into a bundle he could give to people writing to him for advice. When he mentioned he was doing that, people suggested he turn it into a book, and here it is.Inside you'll find out the average advance a science fiction author gets, how many books it takes to break in based on survey of 150 other writers, and find out how Tobias broke into a career in writing. He talks about career, burnout, short stories, novels, craft tricks, and more.

The New York Times bestseller--part of the expanded universe based on the award-winning video game series Halo 2535. It is the first, desperate days of the Human-Covenant War, and the United Nations Space Command has enacted "the Cole Protocol" to safeguard Earth and its inner colonies from discovery by its merciless alien foe. Many are called upon to rid the galaxy of lingering navigation data that could potentially reveal the location of Earth and ensure the destruction of humanity. Among those tasked with eliminating any trace of such dangerous information is Navy Lieutenant Jacob Keyes--now saddled with a top-secret mission by the Office of Naval Intelligence...one that will take him to a corner of the galaxy where nothing is as it seems. Out beyond the Outer Colonies lies the planet Hesiod, a gas giant surrounded by a vast asteroid belt. As the Covenant continues to glass the human-occupied planets near Hesiod, many of the survivors, aided by a stronghold of human insurrectionists, are fleeing to the asteroids for refuge. They have transformed the tumbling satellites into a tenuous yet ingenious settlement known as the Rubble--and have come face-to-face with a Covenant settlement of Kig-Yar...yet somehow survived. News of this unlikely treaty has spread to the warring factions. Luckily for the UNSC, this uneasy alliance is in the path of the Spartan Gray Team, a three-person renegade squad whose simple task is to wreak havoc from behind enemy lines in any way they see fit. But the Prophets have also sent their very best--an ambitious and ruthless Elite whose quest for nobility and rank is matched only by his brutality...

The New York Times bestseller--part of the expanded universe based on the award-winning video game series Halo 2535. It is the first, desperate days of the Human-Covenant War, and the United Nations Space Command has enacted "the Cole Protocol" to safeguard Earth and its inner colonies from discovery by its merciless alien foe. Many are called upon to rid the galaxy of lingering navigation data that could potentially reveal the location of Earth and ensure the destruction of humanity. Among those tasked with eliminating any trace of such dangerous information is Navy Lieutenant Jacob Keyes--now saddled with a top-secret mission by the Office of Naval Intelligence...one that will take him to a corner of the galaxy where nothing is as it seems. Out beyond the Outer Colonies lies the planet Hesiod, a gas giant surrounded by a vast asteroid belt. As the Covenant continues to glass the human-occupied planets near Hesiod, many of the survivors, aided by a stronghold of human insurrectionists, are fleeing to the asteroids for refuge. They have transformed the tumbling satellites into a tenuous yet ingenious settlement known as the Rubble--and have come face-to-face with a Covenant settlement of Kig-Yar...yet somehow survived. News of this unlikely treaty has spread to the warring factions. Luckily for the UNSC, this uneasy alliance is in the path of the Spartan Gray Team, a three-person renegade squad whose simple task is to wreak havoc from behind enemy lines in any way they see fit. But the Prophets have also sent their very best--an ambitious and ruthless Elite whose quest for nobility and rank is matched only by his brutality...

This is the fourth annual edition of the Long List Anthology. Every year, supporting members of WorldCon nominate their favorite stories first published during the previous year to determine the top five in each category for the final Hugo Award ballot. This is an anthology collecting more of the stories from that nomination list to get them to more readersThis is the fourth annual edition of the Long List Anthology. Every year, supporting members of WorldCon nominate their favorite stories first published during the previous year to determine the top five in each category for the final Hugo Award ballot. This is an anthology collecting more of the stories from that nomination list to get them to more readersThe Long List Anthology Volume 4 collects 15 science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories from that nomination list, totaling over 300 pages of fiction by writers from all corners of the world. From utopian science fiction to dystopian horror, from a society based entirely on personal upvotes/downvotes to one where one's status is defined by enchanted gloves, from a kickass blockade-running spaceship pilot to an artist who can twist the world with his perspective. There is a wide variety of styles and types of stories here, and something for everyone. The stories included are: "Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance" by Tobias S. Buckell"Waiting Out the End of the World at Patty's Place Cafe" by Naomi Kritzer"Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue" by Charlie Jane Anders"Confessions of a Con Girl" by Nick Wolven"Utopia, LOL?" by Jamie Wahls"The Scholast in the Low Waters Kingdom" by Max Gladstone"Paradox" by Naomi Kritzer"Angel of the Blockade" by Alex Acks"The Fisher of Bones" by Sarah Gailey"Crispin's Model" by Max Gladstone"The Dark Birds" by Ursula Vernon"Waiting On a Bright Moon" by JY Yang"Pan-Humanism: Hope and Pragmatics" by Jess Barber and Sara Saab"A Human Stain" by Kelly Robson"The Worshipful Society of Glovers" by Mary Robinette Kowal

WINNER OF THE WORLD FANTASY AWARD FOR BEST COLLECTION From award-winning and New York Times bestselling authors Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias Buckell comes a fantasy novel told in four parts about a land crippled by the use of magic, and a tyrant who is trying to rebuild an empire--unless the people find a way to resist. Khaim, The Blue City, is the last remaining city in a crumbled empire that overly relied upon magic until it became toxic. It is run by a tyrant known as The Jolly Mayor and his devious right hand, the last archmage in the world. Together they try to collect all the magic for themselves so they can control the citizens of the city. But when their decadence reaches new heights and begins to destroy the environment, the people stage an uprising to stop them. In four interrelated parts, The Tangled Lands is an evocative and epic story of resistance and heroic sacrifice in the twisted remains surrounding the last great city of Khaim. Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias Buckell have created a fantasy for our times about a decadent and rotting empire facing environmental collapse from within--and yet hope emerges from unlikely places with women warriors and alchemical solutions.

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 FICTION Suzie Q - Jacqueline Carey Three Meetings of the Pregnant Man Support Group - James Beamon A Different Kind of Place - Tobias S. Buckell Close Your Eyes (Excerpt) - Paul Jessup NONFICTION Interview with James Beamon - Andrea Johnson Interview with Cover Artist Sin and May - Russell Dickerson Mindy St. Claire and the Male Gaze (Or Lack Thereof) - Mur Lafferty Countdown to Close Your Eyes - Paul Jessup COLUMNS Between the Lines with Laura Zats and Erik Hane Page Advice with Mallory O'Meara and Brea Grant

An unabridged audio collection spotlighting the "best of the best" science fiction stories published in 2017. In "My English Name," by R. S. Benedict, an intelligent alien, who parasitizes an English teacher in China, falls in love. After a victorious space battle, an indentured robot finds a refugee who makes an offer it can't refuse in "Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance" by Tobias S. Buckell. In "The Moon is Not a Battlefield," by Indrapramit Das, an Indian soldier retires on Earth after spending most of her life on the Moon. A young woman joins the U.S. Army to fight terrorists after aliens arrive on Earth bearing tech gifts unevenly dispersed to humans in "Dear Sarah" by Nancy Kress. In "An Evening with Severyn Grimes," by Rich Larson, a gifted hacker uses cyberspace to extract pay back on the rich businessman who put her in prison. Set in the author's hexarchate universe, an ex-Kel super soldier is enlisted to retrieve a weapon of mass destruction stolen by a rogue general in "The Chameleon's Gloves" by Yoon Ha Lee. In "The Martian Obelisk," by Linda Nagata, on a dying Earth, an architect remotely building a monument to mankind on Mars receives a message from an abandoned Mars colony. A petty meat counterfeiter is blackmailed into forging T-bone steaks for an anonymous thug in "A Series of Steaks" by Vina Jie-Min Prasad. In "The Residue of Fire," by Robert Reed, a torturer tries to cope with one of his alien victims who witnessed a pivotal moment in the lives of two immortals, in this Great Ship tale. And finally, in this Revelation Space tale, a starship captain wakes from hibernation with her ship stalled next to an alien artifact and a mutiny in progress in "Night Passage" by Alastair Reynolds.

WINNER OF THE WORLD FANTASY AWARD FOR BEST COLLECTION From award-winning and New York Times bestselling authors Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias Buckell comes a fantasy novel told in four parts about a land crippled by the use of magic, and a tyrant who is trying to rebuild an empire--unless the people find a way to resist. Khaim, The Blue City, is the last remaining city in a crumbled empire that overly relied upon magic until it became toxic. It is run by a tyrant known as The Jolly Mayor and his devious right hand, the last archmage in the world. Together they try to collect all the magic for themselves so they can control the citizens of the city. But when their decadence reaches new heights and begins to destroy the environment, the people stage an uprising to stop them. In four interrelated parts, The Tangled Lands is an evocative and epic story of resistance and heroic sacrifice in the twisted remains surrounding the last great city of Khaim. Paolo Bacigalupi and Tobias Buckell have created a fantasy for our times about a decadent and rotting empire facing environmental collapse from within--and yet hope emerges from unlikely places with women warriors and alchemical solutions.

Jane Hawkins lives on a floating space port where she tries to help her mothers run a failing inn. Every day she watches starships land from far-off places, bound for exotic adventures.But a new occupant under their roof is about to change everything. His name is Villem Osteonides. More machine than man, he's crewed aboard ships that sail through the universe faster than light.And he has a secret that will change Jane's life forever.

It has been six years since the end of the Covenant War ...and yet on the planet Carrow, a world on the edge of the Joint Occupation Zone, a decisive new battle suddenly erupts. Human colonists and the alien Sangheili have already been living a tension-filled coexistence in this place, with Unified Earth Government envoy Melody Azikiwe attempting to broker a lasting peace between their two species. But as civil war now engulfs the Sangheili, Melody must act on an additional covert assignment courtesy of the Office of Naval Intelligence: free the Spartan-IIs known as Gray Team, held in stasis since the end of the war by a cunning Elite fleetmaster consumed with vengeance. And none can anticipate the ongoing violence leading to the discovery of an even greater, unstoppable threat-one hidden for eons below the surface of the planet...

An original full-length novel set in the Halo universe and based on the New York Times bestselling video game series It has been six years since the end of the Covenant War...and yet on the planet Carrow, a world on the edge of the Joint Occupation Zone, a decisive new battle suddenly erupts. Human colonists and the alien Sangheili have already been living a tension-filled co-existence in this place, with Unified Earth Government envoy Melody Azikiwe attempting to broker a lasting peace between their two species. But as civil war now engulfs the Sangheili settlers, Melody must act on an additional covert assignment courtesy of the Office of Naval Intelligence: find a way to free the SPARTAN-IIs known as Gray Team, held in stasis since the end of the war by a cunning Elite fleetmaster consumed with vengeance. And none can anticipate the ongoing violence leading to the discovery of an even greater, unstoppable threat--one hidden for eons below the surface of the planet....

Thrill once more to stories of galaxy-spanning conflict and inspiring heroism-shards of an ever-expanding universe where human and alien alike face their greatest challenges with their finest hours. Spanning the age of the ancient custodial race known as the Forerunners to the aftermath of the Covenant's holy war and the Great Schism between its people, and continuing to the shocking events surrounding the resurrection of the Guardians and the subsequent artificial intelligence takeover of the Mantle of Responsibility, Fractures explores the legendary tales of bravery and sacrifice that are the very essence of the Halo universe.