Search Worlds Without End

This short story originally appeared in the crowd-funded collection Mitigated Futures (2012) and was reprinted in Lightspeed, November 2012.

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This novelette originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, May 2010. It can also be found in the anthologies Robots: The Recent A. I. (2012), edited by Rich Horton and Sean Wallace, Clarkesworld: Year Four (2013), edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace, and The Final Frontier (2018), edited by Neil Clarke. The story is included in the collection Mitigated Futures (2012).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This novelette originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #62 November 2011. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection (2012), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Clarkesworld: Year Six (2014), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

The life of the youngest musketress of Ninetha has been one of hard training. But Lilith's days have also contained many pleasures, the royal privileges of her family's guardianship of the Cornucopia, a mystical source of limitless bounty. Lilith has never seen a book, and she never expects to encounter one within the safety of the citadel.

When Ishmael, an outcast librarian, shows up outside the Afriq Gate, Lilith saves him from immediate execution by her father's second-in-command, the zealot Kira. As Lilith's curiosity draws her to Ishmael, she lets slip her family's most dangerous secret, sparking a deadly rebellion and an unexpected journey full of stunning revelations.

Global warming has transformed the Earth, and it's about to get even hotter. The Arctic Ice Cap has all but melted, and the international community is racing desperately to claim the massive amounts of oil beneath the newly accessible ocean.

Enter the Gaia Corporation. Its two founders have come up with a plan to roll back global warming. Thousands of tiny mirrors floating in the air can create a giant sunshade, capable of redirecting heat and cooling the earth's surface. They plan to terraform Earth to save it from itself-but in doing so, they have created a superweapon the likes of which the world has never seen.

Anika Duncan is an airship pilot for the underfunded United Nations Polar Guard. She's intent on capturing a smuggled nuclear weapon that has made it into the Polar Circle and bringing the smugglers to justice.

Anika finds herself caught up in a plot by a cabal of military agencies and corporations who want Gaia Corporation stopped. But when Gaia Corp loses control of their superweapon, it will be Anika who has to decide the future of the world. The nuclear weapon she has risked her life to find is the only thing that can stop the floating sunshade after it falls into the wrong hands.

A storm is coming.... Introducing a pulse-pounding technothriller by the New York Times bestselling author of Arctic Rising

Prudence "Roo" Jones never thought he'd have a family to look after — until suddenly he found himself taking care of his orphaned teenage nephew. Roo, a former Caribbean Intelligence operative, spends his downtime on his catamaran dodging the punishing hurricanes that are the new norm in the Caribbean. Roo enjoys the simple calm of his new life — until an unexpected package from a murdered fellow spy shows up. Suddenly Roo is thrown into the center of the biggest storm of all.

Using his wits — and some of the more violent tricks of his former trade — Roo begins to unravel the mystery that got his friend killed. When a polished and cunning woman claiming to be murdered spy's sister appears, the two find themselves caught up in a global conspiracy with a weapon that could change the face of the world forever.

In Hurricane Fever, New York Times bestselling author Tobias Buckell (Arctic Rising, Halo: The Cole Protocol) has crafted a kinetic technothriller perfect for fans of action-packed espionage within a smartly drawn geo-political landscape. Roo is an anti – James Bond for a new generation.

This short story originally appeared in Jim Baen's Universe, April 2008 and was reprinted in Lightspeed, July 2010. It can also be found in the anthology Lightspeed: Year One (2011), edited by John Joseph Adams.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Fast Forward 2 (2008), edited by Lou Anders. It can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 14 (2009), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, and Loosed Upon the World: The Saga Anthology of Climate Fiction (2015), edited by John Joseph Adams. The story is included in the Buckell collection Mitigated Futures (2016).

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, July 2009. It can also be found in the anthology Clarkesworld: Year Three (2013), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This short story originally appeared in the collection Xenowealth: A Collection (2015), and was reprinted in Lightspeed, May 2017.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared on the author's Patreon page and was reprinted in Lighspeed, September 2017. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2018, edtied by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed Magazine.

This short story originally appeared on the author's Patreon site in august 2017. It was reprinted in Lightspeed, May 2018.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #72 September 2012. It can also be found in the anthology Clarkesworld: Year Six (2014), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Sturgeon Award-nominated Short Story

A cab driver spends an ordinary day ferrying passengers around Manhattan - until an incident involving a wealthy alien tourist imperils his livelihood.

This story was originally published in the anthology New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color, edited by Nisi Shawl, and has also been anthologized in The Year's Best Science Fiction Vol. 1: The Saga Anthology of Science Fiction 2020, edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Listen to this story for free at LeVar Burton Reads.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Bridging Infinity (2016), edited by Jonathan Strahan. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 2 (2017), edited by Neil Clarke.

Caribbean born novelist Tobias Buckell established himself as a gifted new voice in science fiction with his stunning first novel Crystal Rain. Now, in his first collection, Buckell demonstrates his strengths in the short form, offering readers a collection of stories that are compelling, smart, wonderfully imagined, and entertaining.

Tides from the New Worlds contains 19 stories that range from multicultural science fiction to magical realism, some in print for the first time.

Table of Contents:

• Fish Merchant
• Anakoinosis
• Aerophilia
• In The Heart of Kalikuata
• The Shackles of Freedom (with Mike Resnick)
• Shoah Sry (with Ilsa Bick)
• Her
• In Orbite Medievali
• Four Eyes
• Trinkets
• Spurn Babylon
• Death's Dreadlocks
• Smooth Talking
• Tides
• Something In The Rock
• A Green Thumb
• All Her Children Fought
• Necahual
• Toy Planes

This short story originally appeared in Nature, October 13, 2005. It can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 11 (2005), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, and Twenty-First Century Science Fiction (2013), edited by David G. Hartwell and Partick Nielsen Hayden. The story is included in the collection Tides From the New Worlds (2009).

Read the full story for free at Nature.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Cosmic Powers: The Saga Anthology of Far-Away Galaxies (2017), edited by John Joseph Adams, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, February 2018. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Twelve (2018), edited by Jonathan Strahan, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection (2018), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3 (2018), edited by Neil Clarke, and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018, edited by N. K. Jemisin and John Joseph Adams.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

In the first, desperate days of the Human-Covenant War, the UNSC has enacted the Cole Protocol to safeguard Earth and its Inner Colonies from discovery by a merciless alien foe. Many are called upon to rid the universe of lingering navigation data that would reveal the location of Earth. Among them is Navy Lieutenant Jacob Keyes. Thrust back into action after being sidelined, Keyes is saddled with a top secret mission by ONI. One that will take him deep behind enemy lines, to a corner of the universe 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, helped by a stronghold of human Insurrectionists, are fleeing to the asteroid belt 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 sides. Luckily for the UNSC, this uneasy alliance is in the path of the Spartan Gray Team, a three-man 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 best---an ambitious and ruthless Elite, whose quest for nobility and rank is matched only by his brutality... and who will do anything to secure his Ascendancy and walk the Path.

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.

Magic has a price. But someone else will pay. Every time a spell is cast, a bit of bramble sprouts, sending up tangling vines, bloody thorns, and threatening a poisonous sleep. It sprouts in tilled fields and in neighbors' roof beams, thrusts up from between street cobbles, and bursts forth from sacks of powdered spice. A bit of magic, and bramble follows. A little at first, and then more--until whole cities are dragged down under tangling vines and empires lie dead, ruins choked by bramble forest. Monuments to people who loved magic too much.

In paired novellas, award-winning authors Tobias Buckell and Paolo Bacigalupi explore a shared world where magic is forbidden and its use is rewarded with the axe. A world of glittering memories and a desperate present, where everyone uses a little magic, and someone else always pays the price.

Magic has a price.

In Khaim, that price is your head if you're found using it. For the use of magic comes with a side effect: it creates bramble. The bramble is a creeping, choking menace that has covered majestic ancient cities, and felled civilizations. In order to prevent the spread of the bramble, many lose their heads to the cloaked executioners of Khaim.

Tana is one of these executioners, taking the job over from her ailing father in secret, desperate to keep her family from starvation. But now her family has been captured by raiders, and taken to a foreign city.

So Khaim's only female executioner begins a quest to bring her family back together. A bloody quest that will change lives, cities, and even an entire land, forever. A quest that will create the legend of The Executioness.

Long ago, so the stories say, the old-fathers came to Nanagada through a worm's hole in the sky. Looking for a new world to call their own, they brought with them a rich melange of cultures, religions, and dialects from a far-off planet called Earth. Mighty were the old-fathers, with the power to shape the world to their liking---but that was many generations ago, and what was once known has long been lost. Steamboats and gas-filled blimps now traverse the planet, where people once looked up to see great silver cities in the sky.

Like his world, John deBrun has forgotten more than he remembers. Twenty-seven years ago, he washed up onto the shore of Nanagada with no memory of his past. Although he has made a new life for himself among the peaceful islanders, his soul remains haunted by unanswered questions about his own identity.

These mysteries take on new urgency when the fearsome Azteca storm over the Wicked High Mountains in search of fresh blood and hearts to feed their cruel, inhuman gods. Nanagada's only hope lies in a mythical artifact, the Ma Wi Jung, said to be hidden somewhere in the frozen north. And only John deBrun knows the device's secrets, even if he can't remember why or how!

Crystal Rain is the much-anticipated debut novel by one of science fiction's newest and most promising talents.

The Benevolent Satrapy rule an empire of forty-eight worlds, linked by thousands of wormholes strung throughout the galaxy. Human beings, while technically "free," mostly skulk around the fringes of the Satrapy, struggling to get by. The secretive alien Satraps tightly restrict the technological development of the species under their control. Entire worlds have been placed under interdiction, cut off from the rest of the universe.

Descended from the islanders of lost Earth, the Ragamuffins are pirates and smugglers, plying the lonely spaceways around a dead wormhole. For years, the Satraps have tolerated the Raga, but no longer. Now they have embarked on a campaign of extermination, determined to wipe out the unruly humans once and for all.

But one runaway woman may complicate their plans. Combat enabled, Nashara is more machine than flesh, and she carries inside her a doomsday weapon that could reduce the entire galaxy to chaos. A hunted fugitive, she just wants to get home before shes forced to destroy civilization --- and herself.

Welcome to Chilo, a planet blasted by corrosive rain, crushing pressure, and deadly heat. A planet where people live in floating cities high above the inferno. A select group of young men, including fourteen-year-old Timas, risk death to obtain the raw materials necessary for survival by travelling down through the acid clouds to mine the planet's surface.

Timas's life is turned upside down when a man named Pepper crash-lands on the city. Pepper is fleeing a bizarre alien intelligence, and he bears ominous news that a full-scale invasion cannot be far behind.

As Timas and Pepper try to convince the reluctant city government to prepare for war, floating cities all across Chilo fall silent one by one. Time is running out for Timas and Pepper to discover how to defeat an enemy that turns Chilo's own citizens into monsters, and to discover the secret hidden beneath Chilo's deadly clouds--a secret that could save the planet, and may prevent interplanetary war.