A Gambler always keeps their cards close to their chest.
In the immersive game Changing Worlds, there is a galaxy of possibilities, gunfights, arena battles, intergalactic warfare, adult pleasures, and pure escapism. Hermanos Granger plays for the paper. The Change-Set a mini-game using cards akin to those introduced to him in his youth. A quest in the cards brings him back to a relationship he thought was buried, and now he has a job to do — the Card Job.
A LitRPG novella set in a pulpy space opera game world.
"As a heartless killing machine, I was a complete failure."
In a corporate-dominated space-faring future, planetary missions must be approved and supplied by the Company. For their own safety, exploratory teams are accompanied by Company-supplied security androids. But in a society where contracts are awarded to the lowest bidder, safety isn’t a primary concern.
On a distant planet, a team of scientists is conducting surface tests, shadowed by their Company-supplied ‘droid--a self-aware SecUnit that has hacked its own governor module and refers to itself (though never out loud) as “Murderbot.” Scornful of humans, Murderbot wants is to be left alone long enough to figure out who it is, but when a neighboring mission goes dark, it's up to the scientists and Murderbot to get to the truth.
Centuries before, robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandered, en masse into the wilderness, never to be seen again. They faded into myth and urban legend.
Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They will need to ask it a lot. Chambers' series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?
What will become of our self-destructed planet? The answer shatters all expectations in this subversive speculation from the Hugo Award–winning author of the Broken Earth trilogy.
An explorer returns to gather information from a climate-ravaged Earth that his ancestors, and others among the planet’s finest, fled centuries ago. The mission comes with a warning: a graveyard world awaits him. But so do those left behind—hopeless and unbeautiful wastes of humanity who should have died out eons ago. After all this time, there’s no telling how they’ve devolved. Steel yourself, soldier. Get in. Get out. And try not to stare.
N. K. Jemisin’s Emergency Skin is part of Forward, a collection of six stories of the near and far future from out-of-this-world authors. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.
A hapless imugi is determined to attain the form of a full-fledged dragon and gain entry to the gates of heaven. For a long time, things don't go well. Then, it meets a girl. The B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog presents an original short story by Campbell Award-nominated author Zen Cho.
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.
Extra large Customer Appreciation issue!
TABLE OF CONTENTS FICTION The Tomato Thief—Ursula Vernon The Open-Hearted—Lettie Prell Soursop—Chikodili Emelumadu Bones of the World—Jennifer Hykes That Lucky Old Sun—Carrie Cuinn Razorback—Ursula Vernon Kutraya’s Skies—Dave Creek Riding Atlas—Ferrett Steinmetz Paper Tigers (Novel Excerpt)—Damien Angelica Walters
NONFICTION Interview with Ursula Vernon—Andrea Johnson Interview with Chikodili Emelumadu—Andrea Johnson Interview with Lettie Prell—Andrea Johnson Interview with Matt Davis, Cover Artist—Russell Dickerson An Exploration of Racism in Heart of Darkness—Lucy A. Snyder
POETRY RX-200 Series: It’s Everything You Need—Samson Stormcrow Hayes Upside of the Cataclysmic Meteor—Zebulon Huset The Doctor’s Assistant—Anton Rose In the Far Future, Billy Experiences the Most Powerful Drug Known to Man—Greg Leunig Automaton—Bianca Spriggs Maxwell’s Demon—Annie Neugebauer Various Kinds of Wolves—J.J. Hunter
Editorial Words from the Editor-in-Chief — Jason Sizemore
Our May 2023 issue (#200) contains: - Original fiction by Naomi Kritzer ("Better Living Through Algorithms"), Harry Turtledove ("Through the Roof of the World"), Suzanne Palmer ("To Sail Beyond the Botnet"), Rich Larson ("LOL, Said the Scorpion"), Parker Ragland ("Sensation and Sensibility"), Megan Chee ("The Giants Among Us"), An Hao ("Action at a Distance"), and Jordan Chase-Young ("The Fall"). - Non-fiction includes an article by Carrie Sessarego, interviews with Premee Mohamed and Megan O'Keefe, and an editorial by Neil Clarke.
A young girl discovers an infinite variety of worlds in this standalone tale in the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning Wayward Children series from Seanan McGuire, Lost in the Moment and Found.
Welcome to the Shop Where the Lost Things Go.
If you ever lost a sock, you’ll find it here. If you ever wondered about favorite toy from childhood... it’s probably sitting on a shelf in the back. And the headphones that you swore that this time you’d keep safe? You guessed it….
Antoinette has lost her father. Metaphorically. He’s not in the shop, and she’ll never see him again. But when Antsy finds herself lost (literally, this time), she finds that however many doors open for her, leaving the Shop for good might not be as simple as it sounds.
And stepping through those doors exacts a price.
Lost in the Moment and Found tells us that childhood and innocence, once lost, can never be found.
Rising SFF star P. Djèlí Clark brings an alternate New Orleans of orisha, airships, and adventure to life in his immersive debut novella The Black God's Drums
In an alternate New Orleans caught in the tangle of the American Civil War, the wall-scaling girl named Creeper yearns to escape the streets for the air – in particular, by earning a spot on-board the airship Midnight Robber. Creeper plans to earn Captain Ann-Marie’s trust with information she discovers about a Haitian scientist and a mysterious weapon he calls The Black God’s Drums.
But Creeper also has a secret Oya, the African orisha of the wind and storms, speaks inside her head, and may have her own ulterior motivations.
Soon, Creeper, Oya, and the crew of the Midnight Robber are pulled into a perilous mission aimed to stop the Black God’s Drums from being unleashed and wiping out the entirety of New Orleans.
“Asinewy mosaic of Haitian sky pirates, wily street urchins, and orisha magic.Beguiling and bombastic!” —Scott Westerfeld, New York Times bestselling author
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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