tor.com – serie

A deadly force has been unleashed into the world. With apocalypse on the horizon, a girl and a god have joined in order to turn back the coming end. Young, brash, and desperate, they are willing to destroy anything and everything that stands between them and their goals. The structures of the Craft are theirs to overturn, with billions of lives in the balance. And it is all Tara Abernathy’s fault.The battle for the world of the Craft is heating up. A dead god will rise. A mountain will fall. Ancient fire will be stolen. And while Tara races to stop Dawn’s plans, the end draws ever closer, skittering across the stars to swallow the world. The Craft Wars enter their second stage in Wicked Problems.

On a warm March night in 2083, Judy Wallach-Stevens wakes to a warning of unknown pollutants in the Chesapeake Bay. She heads out to check what she expects to be a false alarm—and stumbles upon the first alien visitors to Earth. These aliens have crossed the galaxy to save humanity, convinced that the people of Earth must leave their ecologically-ravaged planet behind and join them among the stars. And if humanity doesn't agree, they may need to be saved by force.The watershed networks aren't ready to give up on Earth. Decades ago, they rose up to exile the last corporations to a few artificial islands, escape the dominance of nation-states, and reorganize humanity around the hope of keeping their world liveable. By sharing the burden of decision-making, they've started to heal the wounded planet.But now corporations, nation-states, and networks all vie to represent humanity to these powerful new beings, and if any one accepts the aliens' offer, Earth may be lost. With everyone’s eyes turned skyward, everything hinges on the success of Judy's effort to create understanding, both within and beyond her own species.A literary descendent of Ursula K. Le Guin, Emrys crafts a novel of extraterrestrial diplomacy and urgent climate repair bursting with quiet, tenuous hope and an underlying warmth. A Half-Built Garden depicts a world worth building towards, a humanity worth saving from itself, and an alien community worth entering with open arms. It's not the easiest future to build, but it's one that just might be in reach.

Isobel is the Queen of the medieval rave-themed VR game Sparkle Dungeon. Her prowess in the game makes her an ideal candidate to learn the secrets of "power morphemes" - unnaturally dense units of meaning that warp perception when skilfully pronounced.But Isobel's reputation makes her the target of a strange resistance movement led by spellcasting anarchists, who may be the only thing stopping the cabal from toppling California over the edge of a terrible transformation, with forty million lives at stake.Time is short for Isobel to level up and choose a side - because the cabal has attracted much bigger and weirder enemies than the anarchist resistance, emerging from dark and vicious dimensions of reality and heading straight for planet Earth!

Welcome to the Building, an infinitely tall skyscraper in the center of the multiverse, where any floor could contain a sprawling desert oasis, a cyanide rain forest, or an entire world.Carissa loves her elevator. Up and Down she goes, content with the sometimes chewy food her reality fabricator spits out, as long as it means she doesn’t have to speak to another living person.But when a mysterious shapeshifter from an ambiguous world lands on top of her elevator, intent on stopping a plot to annihilate hundreds of floors, Carissa finds herself stepping out of her comfort zone. She is forced to flee into the Wild Massive network of theme parks in the Building, where technology, sorcery, and elaborate media tie-ins combine to form impossible ride experiences, where every guest is a VIP, the roller coasters are frequently safe, and if you don’t have a valid day pass, the automated defense lasers will escort you from being alive.

Quintus Shu'al, the world's only navigating fox, is in disgrace after guiding an expedition to its doom, leaving no survivors. One year later, Quintus is offered the chance to redeem himself: he will need to lead a motley, fractious team - both human and animal - all the way to the gates of Hell.

Cinnamon Jones dreams of stepping on stage and acting her heart out like her famous grandparents, Redwood and Wildfire. But she’s always been theatrically challenged. That won’t necessarily stop her! But her family life is a tangle of mysteries and secrets, and nobody is telling her the whole truth.Before her brother died, he gave Cinnamon The Chronicles of the Great Wanderer - a tale of a Dahomean warrior woman and an alien from another dimension who perform at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. They are a story of magic or alien science, but the connection to Cinnamon's past is unmistakable.When an act of violence wounds her family, Cinnamon and her theatre squad determine to solve the mysteries and bring her worlds crashing together.

A primal biblical epic flung into the future, Goliath weaves together disparate narratives - a space-dweller looking at New Haven as a chance to reconnect with his spiraling lover; a group of civil servants attempting to renew the promises of Earth’s crumbling cities; a journalist attempting to capture the violence of the streets; a marshal questioning what form justice could even take - into a richly urgent mosaic about race, class, gentrification, and who is allowed to be the hero of any history.

Ro, a struggling writer, knows all too well the pain and solitude that holiday festivities can awaken. When she meets four people at the local diner — all of them strangers and as lonely as Ro is — she invites them to an impromptu Christmas dinner. And when that party seems in danger of an early end, she suggests they each tell a ghost story. One that’s seasonally appropriate.But Ro will come to learn that the horrors hidden in a Christmas tale — or one’s past — can never be tamed once unleashed.

If a picture paints a thousand worlds . . .Abandoned as an infant on the local veterinarian’s front porch, Pepper Rafferty was raised by two loving mothers, and now, at thirty-six is married to the stable, supportive Ike. She’s never told anyone that at fifteen she discovered the identity of her biological mother.That’s because her birth mother is Ula Frost, a reclusive painter famous for the outrageous claims that her portraits summon their subjects’ doppelgängers from parallel universes.Researching the rumors, Pepper couldn’t help but wonder: Is there a parallel universe in which she is more confident, more accomplished, better able to accept love?A universe in which Ula decided she was worth keeping?A universe in which Ula’s rejection didn’t still hurt too much to share?Combining a thrilling pan-continental race against time with an authentic and touching personal drama, Self-Portrait with Nothing is an unforgettable debut that explores what it means to be part of a family.

Lana Baker is Aldgate's finest scribe, with a sharp pen and an even sharper wit. Gregarious, charming, and ever so eager to please, she agrees to deliver a message for another lovely scribe in exchange for kisses and ends up getting sent to Low Parliament by a temperamental fairy as a result.As Lana transcribes the endless circular arguments of Parliament, the debates grow tenser and more desperate. Due to long-standing tradition, a hung vote will cause Parliament to flood and a return to endless war. Lana must rely on an unlikely pair of comrades - Bugbite, the curmudgeonly fairy, and Eloquentia, the bewitching human deputy - to save humanity (and maybe even woo one or two lucky ladies), come hell or high water.

Long ago, a wealthy man stole an angel and hid her in a chapel, where she remains imprisoned to this day. That's the legend, anyway. A clerical student who's racked up gambling debts to a local gangster is given an ultimatum - deliver the angel his grandfather kidnapped, or forfeit various body parts in payment. And so begins a whirlwind theological paradox - with the student at its center - in which the stakes are the necessity of God, the existence of destiny - and the nature of angels.

Annae, a brilliant graduate student in psychiatric magic and survivor of academic abuse, can't stop reading people's minds. This is how she protects herself, by using her abilities to know exactly how her colleagues view her. This is how she escapes the torturous experience of her own existence.When Annae moves to England to rebuild her life and finish her studies under the seminal magician Marec Gorski - infamous for bringing to life a homunculus made from his unwanted better self - she sees, inside his head, a man who is both a destructive force to everyone around him, and her mirror image. For Annae to survive, she'll need to break free of a lifetime of conditioning to embody her own self and forge her own path.

A group of cabinet ministers query a supercomputer containing the minds of the country’s ancestors. A child robot on a dying planet uncovers signs of fragile new life. A descendent of a rain goddess inherits her grandmother’s ability to change her appearance - and perhaps the world.Created in the legacy of the award-winning anthology series Dark Matter, Africa Risen celebrates the vibrancy, diversity, and reach of African and Afro-Diasporic SFF and reaffirms that Africa is not rising - it’s already here.

The rain in Aloisville is never-ending, and no one can remember when it started. There’s not much they can remember. With every drop that hits their skin, a bit of memory is washed away. Stay too long in the wet, and you’ll lose everything you used to be.By the time Laverne begins keeping a journal, the small town she calls home has been irreparably changed. Every drop of water is dangerous, from leaky faucets to the near-constant rainfall, and a careless trip outside can mean a life down the drain. With mysterious forces preventing escape, calls for rebellion seem to be on every resident’s lips. But Laverne has no interest in fighting. She has no interest in rebellion. She just wants to survive.