In Our Own Worlds: Four LGBTQ+ Tor.com Novellas
About this ebook
In these stories you’ll find reflections of queer identity both as it exists in our world and in imagined worlds from queer authors, augmenting lived experiences with fantastical flourishes, magical monks, alternate realities, time travel, and demonic deer.
The Black Tides of Heaven introduces JY Yang's world of magic, martial arts, imperial intrigue, and dinosaurs, which The New York Times calls "joyously wild." Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Finalist for Best Novella.
Mokoya and Akeha, the twin children of the Protector, were sold to the Grand Monastery as infants. While Mokoya developed her strange prophetic gift, Akeha was always the one who could see the strings that moved adults to action. While Mokoya received visions of what would be, Akeha realized what could be. What's more, they saw the sickness at the heart of their mother's Protectorate.
Unwilling to continue as a pawn in their mother's twisted schemes, Akeha leaves the Tensorate behind and falls in with the rebels. But every step Akeha takes towards the Machinists is a step away from Mokoya. Can Akeha find peace without shattering the bond they share with their twin?
A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson is the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Theodore Sturgeon, and Locus finalist novella that N. K. Jemisin calls "a love story as painful as it is beautiful and complex".
Long after the Towers left the world but before the dragons came to Daluça, the emperor brought his delegation of gods and diplomats to Olorum. As the royalty negotiates over trade routes and public services, the divinity seeks arcane assistance among the local gods.
Aqib bgm Sadiqi has more mortal and pressing concerns. His heart has been captured for the first time by a handsome Daluçan soldier named Lucrio. In defiance of Saintly Canon, gossiping servants, and the furious disapproval of his father and brother, Aqib finds himself swept up in a whirlwind gay romance.
The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion by Margaret Killjoy pits utopian anarchists against rogue demon deer in this dropkick-in-the-mouth punk fantasy that Alan Moore calls "scary and energetic."
Searching for clues about her best friend’s mysterious suicide, Danielle ventures to the squatter, utopian town of Freedom, Iowa, and witnesses a protector spirit — in the form of a blood-red, three-antlered deer — begin to turn on its summoners. She and her new friends have to act fast if they’re going to save the town — or get out alive.
Inspired by the pulps, film noir, and screwball comedy, Passing Strange is a story as unusual and complex as San Francisco itself from World Fantasy Award winning author Ellen Klages, and a 2017 Nebula Award Finalist for Best Novella
San Francisco in 1940 is a haven for the unconventional. Tourists flock to the cities within the city: the Magic City of the World’s Fair on an island created of artifice and illusion; the forbidden city of Chinatown, a separate, alien world of exotic food and nightclubs that offer “authentic” experiences, straight from the pages of the pulps; and the twilight world of forbidden love, where outcasts from conventional society can meet.
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About the author
MARGARET KILLJOY is a transfeminine author, born and raised in Maryland, who has spent her adult life traveling with no fixed home. A life on the road has given her a healthy respect for hobos, street kids, and other elements of the criminal class. A 2015 graduate of Clarion West, Margaret’s short fiction has been published by Tor.com, Strange Horizons, Vice’s Terraform, and Fireside Fiction amongst others. She founded SteamPunk Magazine in 2006, and her nonfiction books have been published by anarchist publisher AK Press. Margaret’s wrote A Country of Ghosts, a utopian novel published by Combustion Books in 2014. She is also the author of the Danielle Cain series, starting with The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion, from Tor.com Publishing.
ELLEN KLAGES is the author of the acclaimed historical novels: The Green Glass Sea, which won the Scott O’Dell Award, and the New Mexico Book Award; and White Sands, Red Menace, which won the California and New Mexico Book awards. Her story, “Basement Magic,” won a Nebula Award and “Wakulla Springs,” co-authored with Andy Duncan, was nominated for the Nebula, Hugo, and Locus awards, and won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella. She lives in San Francisco, in a small house full of strange and wondrous things.
KAI ASHANTE WILSON was the 2010 Octavia Butler scholar at Clarion writing workshop in San Diego. He won the Crawford award for best first novel of 2016, and his works have been shortlisted for the Hugo, Nebula, Shirley Jackson, Theodore Sturgeon, Locus, and World Fantasy awards. Most of his stories can be read at Tor.com, and the rest at Fantasy-magazine.com or in the anthology Stories for Chip. His novellas The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps and A Taste of Honey are available from all fine e-book purveyors. Kai Ashante Wilson lives in New York City.
JY YANG is the author of The Black Tides of Heaven and The Red Threads of Fortune. They are also a lapsed journalist, a former practicing scientist, and a master of hermitry. A queer, non-binary, postcolonial intersectional feminist, they have over two dozen pieces of short fiction published. They live in Singapore where they work as a science communicator, and have a MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia.
