Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2020 Edition
ByPublisher Description
A collection of some of the best original science fiction and fantasy short fiction published on Tor.com in 2020.
Includes stories by:
Charlie Jane Anders
G. V. Anderson
Gregory Norman Bossert
Jeremy Packert Burke
Katharine Duckett
Brian Evenson
Carolyn Ives Gilman
Maria Dahvana Headley
Stephen Graham Jones
Justin C. Key
Naomi Kritzer
Rich Larson
Yoon Ha Lee
S. Qiouyi Lu
Usman T. Malik
Melissa Marr
Maureen McHugh
Tamsyn Muir
Sarah Pinsker
C. L. Polk
Matthew Pridham
M. Rickert
Zin E. Rocklyn
Rachel Swirsky
Lavie Tidhar
Carrie Vaughn
Fran Wilde
Claire Wrenwood
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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About Charlie Jane Anders
Charlie Jane Anders is the author of Lessons in Magic and Disaster, coming August 2025 from Tor Books. Her other novels include All the Birds in the Sky, The City in the Middle of the Night and the young-adult Unstoppable trilogy. She's also the author of the short story collection Even Greater Mistakes, and Never Say You Can't Survive (August 2021), a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times. She's won the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Lambda Literary, Crawford and Locus Awards. She co-created Escapade, a transgender superhero, for Marvel Comics and wrote her into the long-running New Mutants comic. And she's currently the science fiction and fantasy book reviewer for the Washington Post. With Annalee Newitz, she co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.
Other books by Charlie Jane Anders
G. V. Anderson
G. V. Anderson is a speculative fiction author whose short stories have won a World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award, and been nominated for a Nebula Award. Her work can be found in Strange Horizons and Lightspeed, as well as anthologies such as The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror. She resides in Dorset, UK, and is currently writing her first novel.
Gregory Norman Bossert
Gregory Norman Bossert is an author, filmmaker, and musician, based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He started writing on a dare in 2009 at the age of 47. Since then his fiction has appeared in print and online, in audio, foreign translation, and Year’s Best anthologies, with stories in Conjunctions, the Saturday Evening Post, and The Unquiet Dreamer: A Tribute to Harlan Ellison. His story “The Telling” won the 2013 World Fantasy Award. When not writing, he wrangles spaceships and superheroes for legendary visual effects studio Industrial Light & Magic.
Other books by Gregory Norman Bossert
Katharine Duckett
KATHARINE DUCKETT’s fiction has appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Apex Magazine, Interzone, PseudoPod, and various anthologies. She is also the guest fiction editor for the Disabled People Destroy Fantasy issue of Uncanny. She hails from East Tennessee, has lived in Turkey and Kazakhstan, and attended Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where she majored in minotaurs. Miranda in Milan is her first book. In addition to writing, Katharine works as the Publicity Manager for Tor.com Publishing. She currently resides in Brooklyn with her wife.
Brian Evenson
BRIAN EVENSON is the author of a dozen books, most recently the story collection The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell (2021). His penultimate collection, Song for the Unraveling of the World (2019), won the Shirley Jackson Award and the World Fantasy Award and was a finalist for the Ray Bradbury Prize. Other recent books include A Collapse of Horses (2016) and The Warren (2016). His novel Last Days won the ALA-RUSA award for Best Horror Novel of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an International Horror Guild (IHG) Award. His 2003 collection The Wavering Knife won the IHG Award. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes, an NEA fellowship, and a Guggenheim Award. His work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at CalArts.
Other books by Brian Evenson
Carolyn Ives Gilman
CAROLYN IVES GILMAN is a Nebula and Hugo Award-nominated writer of science fiction and fantasy. Her novels include Halfway Human and the two-volume novel Isles of the Forsaken and Ison of the Isles. Her short fiction appears in many Best of the Year collections and has been translated into seven languages. She lives in Washington, D.C., and works for the National Museum of the American Indian.
Maria Dahvana Headley
Maria Dahvana Headley is a #1 New York Times-bestselling author and editor. Her novels include Magonia, Aerie, and Queen of Kings, and she has also written a memoir, The Year of Yes. With Kat Howard, she is the author of The End of the Sentence, and with Neil Gaiman, she is co-editor of Unnatural Creatures. Her short stories have been shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, and her work has been supported by the MacDowell Colony and by Arte Studio Ginestrelle, where the first draft of The Mere Wife was written. She was raised with a wolf and a pack of sled dogs in the high desert of rural Idaho, and now lives in Brooklyn.
Other books by Maria Dahvana Headley
Stephen Graham Jones
Stephen Graham Jones is the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians. He has been an NEA fellowship recipient and a recipient of several awards including the Ray Bradbury Award from the Los Angeles Times, The Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, the Bram Stoker Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Locus Award, the Jesse Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, and the Alex Award from American Library Association. He is the Ivena Baldwin Professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Other books by Stephen Graham Jones
Justin C. Key
Justin C. Key is a speculative fiction writer and psychiatrist. His short stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Strange Horizons, and Crossed Genres. He's currently working on a near-future novel inspired by his medical training. When Justin isn't writing, working in the hospital, or exploring Los Angeles with his wife, he's chasing after his two young (and energetic!) sons.
Naomi Kritzer
NAOMI KRITZER has been re-reading favorite books since childhood, and probably still has passages from A Wrinkle in Time memorized. She writes for both adults and teens, including Catfishing on CatNet and Chaos on CatNet from Tor Teen and Liberty's Daughter from Fairwood Press. Her writing has won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Edgar Award, the Locus Award, and the Minnesota Book Award. Naomi lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her family and three cats. The number of cats is subject to change without notice.
Other books by Naomi Kritzer
Rich Larson
Rich Larson was born in Galmi, Niger; has lived in Spain and Czech Republic; and currently writes from Montreal, Canada. He is the author of the novels Ymir and Annex, as well as the collection Tomorrow Factory. His fiction has been translated into over a dozen languages, including Polish, Italian, Romanian, and Japanese, and adapted into an Emmy-winning episode of LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS.
Other books by Rich Larson
Yoon Ha Lee
Yoon Ha Lee is an American science fiction writer born on January 26, 1979 in Houston, Texas. His first published story, "The Hundredth Question," appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1999; since then, over two dozen further stories have appeared. He lives in Pasadena, California.
Other books by Yoon Ha Lee
S. Qiouyi Lu
S. Qiouyi Lu writes and translates between two coasts of the Pacific. Ær work, including fiction, poetry, and essays, has appeared in several award-winning venues. In the Watchful City is ær first novella. You can find out more about S. at ær website or on Twitter.
Other books by S. Qiouyi Lu
Usman T. Malik
Usman T. Malik is a Pakistani vagrant camped in Florida. He reads Sufi poetry, likes long walks, and occasionally strums naats on the guitar. His work is forthcoming in the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Year's Best Weird Fiction, Nightmare, and other venues. In December 2014, Usman led Pakistan's first speculative fiction workshop in Lahore in conjunction with Desi Writers Lounge.
Other books by Usman T. Malik
Melissa Marr
Melissa Marr writes fiction for adults, teens, and children. Her books have been translated into over 28 languages and been bestsellers in the US (New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal) as well as overseas. Wicked Lovely, her debut novel, was an instant New York Times bestseller and evolved into an internationally bestselling multi-book series with a myriad of accolades. If she's not writing, you can find her in a kayak or on a trail with her wife.
Other books by Melissa Marr
Maureen McHugh
With her groundbreaking novel, China Mountain Zhang, Maureen F. McHugh established herself as one of the decade's best science fiction writers. She is the winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Memorial Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the Locus Award for Best First Novel, and a Hugo and Nebula Award nominee.
Tamsyn Muir
TAMSYN MUIR is the bestselling author of the Locked Tomb Series. Her fiction has won the Locus and Crawford awards, and been nominated for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Dragon Award, and the Eugie Foster Memorial Award. A Kiwi, she has spent most of her life in Howick, New Zealand, with time living in Waiuku and central Wellington. She currently lives and works in Oxford, in the United Kingdom.
Other books by Tamsyn Muir
Sarah Pinsker
Sarah Pinsker is the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K Dick Award winning author of A Song For A New Day, We Are Satellites, Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea, Lost Places, and over sixty works of short fiction. Her stories have appeared in Asimov's, Strange Horizons, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Uncanny, and in numerous anthologies and year’s bests. She is also a singer/songwriter with four albums on various independent labels. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland with her wife and two weird dogs.
Other books by Sarah Pinsker
C. L. Polk
C. L. Polk wrote the Hugo-nominated Kingston Cycle, including the World Fantasy Award-winning Witchmark. They are also the author of the CBC Canada Reads finalist The Midnight Bargain and the Nebula-winning, USA Today bestseller Even Though I Knew The End.
Before writing fantasy novels, they worked as a film extra, a costermonger, and also identified lepidoptera by eye. Mx. Polk lives in Calgary, on the territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy, the Tsuut’ina, the Îyâxe Nakoda Nations, and the Métis Nation (Region 3).
Other books by C. L. Polk
Matthew Pridham
Matthew Pridham was born in New Jersey and spent his childhood chasing trolls in Bergen, Norway. He has since mostly lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After working 13 years as a bookseller, he succumbed to the glittering allure of academia and earned degrees in philosophy, literature, and creative writing. His haunted house novella, “Renovations,” was printed in Weird Tales magazine issue 348, his film criticism has been published in WeirdFictionReview.com, and he’s written fiction and nonfiction for The Thought Erotic. He is currently at work on a novel.
Other books by Matthew Pridham
Zin E. Rocklyn
Zin E. Rocklyn is a contributor to Bram Stoker-nominated and This is Horror Award-winning Nox Pareidolia, Kaiju Rising II: Reign of Monsters, Brigands: A Blackguards Anthology, and Forever Vacancy anthologies and Weird Luck Tales No. 7 zine. Their story "Summer Skin" in the Bram Stoker-nominated anthology Sycorax's Daughters received an honorable mention for Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year, Volume Ten. Zin contributed the nonfiction essay “My Genre Makes a Monster of Me” to Uncanny Magazine’s Hugo Award-winning Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction. Their short story "The Night Sun" and flash fiction "teatime" were published on Tor.com. Flowers for the Sea is their debut novella. Zin is a 2017 VONA and 2018 Viable Paradise graduate as well as a 2022 Clarion West candidate.
Rachel Swirsky
Rachel Swirsky lives in Portland, Oregon, where she roams happily under overcast skies with the hipsters. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop. Her fiction has appeared in venues including Tor.com, Asimov’s, and The Best American Non-Required Reading. Her fiction has been nominated for the Hugo Award, the World Fantasy Award, and the Locus Award, and twice won the Nebula Award. Her books include Placed into Abyss (Mise en Abyse) and A Memory of Wind.
Other books by Rachel Swirsky
K.M. Szpara
K.M. Szpara is a queer and trans author who lives in Baltimore, MD, with a small dog and long cat. He is the author of speculative novels such as FIRST, BECOME ASHES (2021), DOCILE (2020), and a novel that will follow up on his Hugo and Nebula nominated novelette, "Small Changes Over Long Periods of Time." They're about cults and trauma, consent and debt, and a horny trans vampire, respectively. His short fiction appears in Tor.com, Uncanny, Lightspeed, and more. You can find himme on the Internet at kmszpara.com and on Twitter and Instagram at @kmszpara.
Lavie Tidhar
Lavie Tidhar's work encompasses literary fiction (Maror, Adama and Six Lives, cross-genre classics such as Jerwood Prize winner A Man Lies Dreaming (2014) and World Fantasy Award winner Osama (2011) and genre works like the Campbell and Neukom prize winner Central Station (2016). He has also written comics (Adler, 2020) and children's books such as Candy (2018) and A Child's Book of the Future (2024). He is a former columnist for the Washington Post and a current honorary Visiting Professor and Writer in Residence at the American International University in London.
Other books by Lavie Tidhar
Carrie Vaughn
Carrie Vaughn is best known for her New York Times bestselling Kitty Norville series of novels about a werewolf who hosts a talk radio show for the supernaturally disadvantaged. Her novels include a near-Earth space opera, Martians Abroad, from Tor Books, and the post-apocalyptic murder mysteries Bannerless and The Wild Dead. She's written several other contemporary fantasy and young adult novels, as well as upwards of 80 short stories, two of which have been finalists for the Hugo Award. She's a contributor to the Wild Cards series of shared world superhero books edited by George R. R. Martin and a graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop. An Air Force brat, she survived her nomadic childhood and managed to put down roots in Boulder, Colorado.
Other books by Carrie Vaughn
Fran Wilde
Two-time Nebula Award-winner Fran Wilde’s novels and short stories have been finalists for six Nebula Awards, a World Fantasy Award, four Hugo Awards, three Locus Awards, and a Lodestar. They include her Nebula- and Compton Crook Award-winning debut novel Updraft, and her Nebula award-winning, Best of NPR 2019, debut Middle Grade novel Riverland. Her short stories appear in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, Nature, Uncanny Magazine, and multiple years' best anthologies.
Fran teaches for the Genre Fiction MFA concentration at Western Colorado University and the Writing for Children and Young Adults MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She also writes nonfiction for publications including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and Tor.com. You can find her on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and at franwilde.net.
Other books by Fran Wilde
M. Rickert
Before earning her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, M. Rickert worked as a kindergarten teacher, coffee shop barista, Disneyland balloon vendor, and personnel assistant in Sequoia National Park. She has published the short story collections Map of Dreams, Holiday, and You Have Never Been Here. Her first novel, The Memory Garden, won the Locus award. Her second novel was The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie. She is the winner of the Crawford Award, World Fantasy Award, and Shirley Jackson Award. She has also lost several awards for which she was nominated, including the Nebula, Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, Sturgeon, and British Science Fiction Award. She currently lives in Cedarburg, Wisconsin.
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