Search Worlds Without End

This short story originally appeared in GUD Issue 6 - Summer 2010 and was reprinted in Lightspeed, November 2012. It can also be found in the anthology Epic: Legends of Fantasy (2012), edited by John Joseph Adams.

Read the full story for three at Lightspeed.

Fire burns bright and has a long memory...

Quiet, thoughtful princess Thanh was sent away as a hostage to the powerful faraway country of Ephteria as a child. Now she's returned to her mother's imperial court, haunted not only by memories of her first romance, but by worrying magical echoes of a fire that devastated Ephteria's royal palace.

Thanh's new role as a diplomat places her once again in the path of her first love, the powerful and magnetic Eldris of Ephteria, who knows exactly what she wants: romance from Thanh and much more from Thanh's home. Eldris won't take no for an answer, on either front. But the fire that burned down one palace is tempting Thanh with the possibility of making her own dangerous decisions.

Can Thanh find the freedom to shape her country's fate - and her own?

Tiptree nominated novelette originally published in Electric Velocipede, Issue #24, Summer 2012. Later anthologized in Rich Horton's The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy: 2013 Edition (2013)

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Infinity Wars (2017), edited by Jonathan Strahan. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3 (2018), edited by Neil Clarke

From the award-winning author of the Dominion of the Fallen series comes a dark retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

In a ruined, devastated world, where the earth is poisoned and beings of nightmares roam the land...

A woman, betrayed, terrified, sold into indenture to pay her village's debts and struggling to survive in a spirit world.

A dragon, among the last of her kind, cold and aloof but desperately trying to make a difference.

When failed scholar Yên is sold to Vu Côn, one of the last dragons walking the earth, she expects to be tortured or killed for Vu Côn's amusement.

But Vu Côn, it turns out, has a use for Yên: she needs a scholar to tutor her two unruly children. She takes Yên back to her home, a vast, vertiginous palace-prison where every door can lead to death. Vu Côn seems stern and unbending, but as the days pass Yên comes to see her kinder and caring side. She finds herself dangerously attracted to the dragon who is her master and jailer. In the end, Yên will have to decide where her own happiness lies--and whether it will survive the revelation of Vu Côn's dark, unspeakable secrets...

Charlotte died to shore up her master's house. Her bones grew into the foundation and pushed up through the walls, feeding his power and continuing the cycle. As time passes and the ones she loved fade away, the house and the master remain, and she yearns ever more deeply for vengeance.

The story is included in the anthology The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2017 edited by Paula Guran.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

A major first collection from a writer fast becoming one of the stars of the genre... Aliette de Bodard, multiple award winner and author of The Tea Master and the Detective, now brings readers fourteen dazzling tales that showcase the richly textured worldbuilding and beloved characters that have brought her so much acclaim.

Come discover the breadth and endless invention of her universes, ranging from a dark Gothic Paris devastated by a magical war; to the multiple award-winning Xuya, a far-future space opera inspired by Vietnamese culture where scholars administrate planets and sentient spaceships are part of families.

In the Nebula award and Locus award winning "Immersion", a young girl working in a restaurant on a colonized space station crosses paths with an older woman who has cast off her own identity.

In the novelette "Children of Thorns, Children of Water", a shapeshifting dragon infiltrating a ruined mansion finds more than he's bargained for when his partner is snatched by eerie, child-like creatures.

And in the award-winning "Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight", three very different people--a scholar, an engineer, and a spaceship--all must deal with the loss of a woman who was the cornerstone of their world.

This collection includes a never-before seen 20,000-word novella, "Of Birthdays, and Fungus, and Kindness", set in Bodard's alternative dark Paris.

Table of Contents

• Introduction - essay
• The Shipmaker [Xuya] (2010) - short story
• The Jaguar House, in Shadow [Xuya] (2010) - novelette
• Scattered Along the River of Heaven [Xuya] (2012) - short story
• Immersion [Xuya] (2012) - short story
• The Waiting Stars [Xuya] (2013) - novelette
• Memorials [Xuya] (2014) - novelette
• The Breath of War [Xuya] (2014) - short story
• The Days of the War, as Red as Blood, as Dark as Bile [Xuya] (2014) - short story
• The Dust Queen • (2014) - short story
• Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight [Xuya] (2015) - short story
• A Salvaging of Ghosts [Xuya] (2016) - short story
• Pearl [Xuya] (2016) - novelette
• Children of Thorns, Children of Water [Dominion of the Fallen] (2017) - novelette
• Of Birthdays, and Fungus, and Kindness [Dominion of the Fallen] - novella
• Story Notes - essay

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology The Mammoth Book of Steampunk (2012), edited by Sean Wallace, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, September 2014.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Installing a network for the Church of Accelerated Redemption is just another crappy job in a series of crappy jobs for Lisa, an American engineer stuck doing menial work in Paris. That the Church uses artificial intelligences to power its never-ending prayer machines doesn't interest her at all: they're paying, and she needs enough money to survive in an increasingly crumbling world. Until a demonstration outside the Church's headquarters, and the appearance of Stéphane, an enigmatic man Lisa finds herself powerfully drawn to. What lies beneath his headscarf, why is he so interested in the Church--and how far will she be willing to go in order to earn his trust?

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Shine: An Anthology of Optimistic Science-Fiction (2010), edited by Jetse de Vries.

This short story originally appeared in Electric Velocipede, Issue #15/16, Winter 2008, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, October 2016.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This Novelette was first Published by Uncanny Magazine, the July/August issue for 2020.

Something dark is butchering Fallen angels in an alternate Paris leaving only claws' marks on their bodies behind. Human witch Samantha is contacted by the Fallen angel Arvedai to investigate this mystery.

Sam is companion of another Fallen, Calariel, who cares about human suffering, but wants Sam to stay out of this.

Soon, she realizes that a rebellion is behind it, and the driving force of being part of the Celestial City. Cal and Arvedai are hiding something.

You can read it for free here.

Uncanny - the inaccessibility of heaven

This short story originally appeared in Black Static, February-March 2009, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, January 2015. It can also be found in the anthology Eight Against Reality (2010), edited by Dario Ciriello.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

In a Paris that never was, a city of magicians, alchemists and Fallen angels struggling to recover from a devastating magical war...

Once each year, the House of Hawthorn tests the Houseless: for those chosen, success means the difference between a safe life and the devastation of the streets. However, for Thuan and his friend Kim Cuc, -- dragons in human shapes and envoys from the dying underwater kingdom of the Seine -- the stakes are entirely different. Charged with infiltrating a House that keeps encroaching on the Seine, if they are caught, they face a painful death.

Worse, mysterious children of thorns stalk the candidates through Hawthorn's corridors. Will Thuan and Kim Cuc survive and succeed?

This story originally appeared as an extra for the pre-orders of The House of Binding Thorns (2017). It can also be found in Uncanny Magazine, July/August 2017. The story is included in the anthology The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2018, edited by Paula Guran.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

Multi-award winning author Aliette de Bodard, brings her story of the War in Heaven to Paris, igniting the City of Light in a fantasy of divine power and deep conspiracy...

In the late Twentieth Century, the streets of Paris are lined with haunted ruins. The Great Magicians' War left a trail of devastation in its wake. The Grand Magasins have been reduced to piles of debris, Notre-Dame is a burnt-out shell, and the Seine has turned black with ashes and rubble and the remnants of the spells that tore the city apart. But those that survived still retain their irrepressible appetite for novelty and distraction, and The Great Houses still vie for dominion over France's once grand capital.

Once the most powerful and formidable, House Silverspires now lies in disarray. Its magic is ailing; its founder, Morningstar, has been missing for decades; and now something from the shadows stalks its people inside their very own walls.

Within the House, three very different people must come together: a naive but powerful Fallen angel; an alchemist with a self-destructive addiction; and a resentful young man wielding spells of unknown origin. They may be Silverspires' salvation--or the architects of its last, irreversible fall. And if Silverspires falls, so may the city itself.

As the city rebuilds from the onslaught of sorcery that nearly destroyed it, the great Houses of Paris, ruled by fallen angels, still contest one another for control over the capital.

House Silverspires was once the most powerful, but just as it sought to rise again, an ancient evil brought it low. Phillippe, an immortal who escaped the carnage, has a singular goal -- to resurrect someone he lost. But the cost of such magic might be more than he can bear.

In House Hawthorn, Madeleine the alchemist has had her addiction to angel essence savagely broken. Struggling to live on, she is forced on a perilous diplomatic mission to the underwater dragon kingdom -- and finds herself in the midst of intrigues that have already caused one previous emissary to mysteriously disappear...

As the Houses seek a peace more devastating than war, those caught between new fears and old hatreds must find strength -- or fall prey to a magic that seeks to bind all to its will.

The great magical Houses of Paris - headed by Fallen angels and magicians - were, however temporarily, at peace with each other. Until House Harrier was levelled by a powerful explosion. Now that peace has become chaos, tearing apart old alliances and setting off a race in which each House hoards magic and resources to protect itself against another such blast.

Thuan, the Dragon head of the divided House Hawthorn, is still consolidating his power when war comes to his doorstep. Aurore -exiled from and almost beaten to death by House Harrier - sees her moment to seek power in order to protect her family, even if she must venture back to her destroyed former home to get it. And Emmanuelle finds herself alone in the middle of it all, driven to protect others, trying to piece together what has happened, andhoping - eventually - to make sense of it all.

None of them know what destroyed House Harrier, though... and when they do uncover that fiery, destructive magic then divided Houses, old enemies and estranged friends will all have to make a decision: stand together, or burn alone...

Lunar New Year should be a time for familial reunions, ancestor worship, and consumption of an unhealthy amount of candied fruit.

But when dragon prince Thuan brings home his brooding and ruthless husband Asmodeus for the New Year, they find not interminable family gatherings, but a corpse outside their quarters. Asmodeus is thrilled by the murder investigation; Thuan, who gets dragged into the political plotting he'd sworn off when he left, is less enthusiastic.

It'll take all of Asmodeus's skill with knives, and all of Thuan's diplomacy, to navigate this one--as well as the troubled waters of their own relationship...

It was supposed to be a holiday, with nothing more challenging than babysitting, navigating familial politics and arguing about the proper way to brew tea.

But when dragon prince Thuan and his ruthless husband Asmodeus find a corpse in a ruined shrine and a hungry ghost who is the only witness to the crime, their holiday goes from restful to high-pressure. Someone is trying to silence the ghost and everyone involved. Asmodeus wants revenge for the murder; Thuan would like everyone, including Asmodeus, to stay alive.

Chased by bloodthirsty paper charms and struggling to protect their family, Thuan and Asmodeus are going to need all the allies they can--and, as the cracks in their relationship widen, they'll have to face the scariest challenge of all: how to bring together their two vastly different ideas of their future...

This volume contains all three books in the Ombinus and Blood series: Servant of the Underworld + Harbinger of the Storm + Master of the House of Darts

Servant of the Underworld: Year One-Knife, Tenochtitlan - the capital of the Aztecs. The end of the world is kept at bay only by the magic of human sacrifice. A priestess disappears from an empty room drenched in blood. Acatl, high priest, must find her, or break the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead.

Harbinger of the Storm: The year is Two House and the Mexica Empire teeters on the brink of destruction, lying vulnerable to the flesh-eating star-demons - and to the return of their creator, a malevolent goddess only held in check by the Protector God's power. The council is convening to choose a new emperor, but when a councilman is found dead, only Acatl, High Priest of the Dead, can solve the mystery.

Master of the House of Darts: The year is Three Rabbit, and the storm is coming... The coronation war for the new Emperor has just ended in a failure, the armies retreating with a mere forty prisoners of war - not near enough sacrifices to ensure the favor of the gods. When one of those prisoners of war dies of a magical illness, Acatl, High Priest for the Dead, is summoned to investigate.

Table of Contents:

• Servant of the Underworld - (2010)
• Harbinger of the Storm - (2011)
• Master of the House of Darts - (2011)

It is the year One-Knife in Tenochtitlan - the capital of the Aztecs. The end of the world is kept at bay only by the magic of human sacrifice. A Priestess disappears from an empty room drenched in blood.

Acatl, High Priest of the Dead must find her, or break the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead. But how do you find someone, living or dead, in a world where blood sacrifices are an everyday occurrence and the very gods stalk the streets?

The Aztec Empire teeters on the brink of extinction. As the political infighting starts within the imperial court, Acatl, High Priest for the Dead, makes a macabre discovery in the palace: a high-ranking nobleman has been torn to pieces by an invocation - and it looks like the summoner belongs to the court itself...

The year is Three Rabbit, and the storm is coming...

The coronation war for the new Emperor has just ended in a failure, the armies retreating with a mere forty prisoners of war - not near enough sacrifices to ensure the favor of the gods.

When one of those prisoners of war dies of a magical illness, ACATL, High Priest for the Dead, is summoned to investigate.

The Scattered Pearls Belt is a string of habitats on the edge of a huge galactic empire--a glittering, decadent society rife with corruption. Now, one of its victims--Qu?nh, a scholar betrayed and left for dead--has come back for her revenge, under the guise of the glamorous and enigmatic Alchemist of Streams and Hills.

Qu?nh's path intersects that of Minh, the daughter of one of her oldest enemies, who chafes at her own lack of freedom; and of Hoà, a near-destitute engineer who poses a threat to all Qu?nh's careful plans. Qu?nh finds herself inexorably attracted to Hoà, even as her plans upend the fragile political equilibrium of the Belt.

Falling in love wasn't part of Qu?nh's plans; but will she be able to grasp this second chance at happiness, or will she cling on to a revenge that may well consume her whole?

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 11, July-August 2016.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

Short story in De Bodard's Xuya universe. It originally appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issue #195, March 17, 2016. It is also included in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 11 (2017), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read the full story for free at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

This novelette originally appeared in Interzone, #219 December 2008. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection (2009), edited by Gardner Dozois.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology To Shape the Dark (2016), edited by Athena Andreadis, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, October 2017.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Novelette in De Bodard's Xuya setting. It originally appeared in Space and Time, #111, Summer 2010.

A Xuya universe story. Winner, Locus and Nebula Award, 2012; shortlisted for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, the Hugo Award, and the British Science Fiction Association Award, 2012.

The story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #69 June 2012. It can also be found in the anthologies:

• The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Seven (2013), edited by Jonathan Strahan
  
• Clarkesworld: Year Six (2014), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke
• Nebula Awards Showcase 2014, edtied by Kij Johnson
• The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (2014), edited by Alex Dally MacFarlane

Read this story online for free at Clarkesworld.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Meeting Infinity (2015), and was reprinted in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 22, May-June 2018. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 1 (2016), edited by Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

Jockeying navigator clans guide spaceships through the Hollows: an area of space populated by the mysterious but deadly creatures known as Tanglers. When a Tangler escapes the Hollows for the first time in living memory, each clan must send a representative to help capture it - but the mission may be doomed and the hearts of two clan juniors may be in danger too.

Vi?t Nhi is not good with people. Or politics. Which is a problem when the Rooster clan sends her on the mission against her will, forcing her to work with an ill-matched group of squabbling teammates from rival clans, including one who she can't avoid, and maybe doesn't want to.

H?c Cúc of the Snake clan has always been better at poisoning and stabbing than at making friends, but she's drawn to Nhi's perceptiveness and obliviousness to social conventions?including the ones that really should make Nhi think twice about spending time with her.

But when their imperial envoy and nominal leader is poisoned, this crew of expendable apprentices will have to learn to work together - fast - before the invisible Tangler can wreak havoc on a civilian city and destroy the fragile reputation of the clans. Along the way, Nhi and H?c Cúc will have to learn the hardest lesson of all: to see past their own misconceptions and learn to trust their growing feelings for each other.

Hugo- and Nebula-nominated Novella

For generations Prosper Station has thrived under the guidance of its Honoured Ancestress: born of a human womb, the station's artificial intelligence has offered guidance and protection to its human relatives.

But war has come to the Dai Viet Empire. Prosper's brightest minds have been called away to defend the Emperor; and a flood of disorientated refugees strain the station's resources. As deprivations cause the station's ordinary life to unravel, uncovering old grudges and tearing apart the decimated family, Station Mistress Quyen and the Honoured Ancestress struggle to keep their relatives united and safe. What Quyen does not know is that the Honoured Ancestress herself is faltering, her mind eaten away by a disease that seems to have no cure; and that the future of the station itself might hang in the balance...

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales (2016), edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 2 (2017), edited by Neil Clarke.

This story in de Bodard's Xuya universe originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #64 January 2012. It has been anthologized in The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy: 2013 Edition, edited by Rich Horton and Clarkesworld: Year Six (2014), edited by Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Vân is a scholar from a poor background, eking out a living in the orbitals of the Scattered Pearls Belt as a tutor to a rich family, while hiding the illegal artificial mem-implant she manufactured as a student.

Sunless Woods is a mindship – and not just any mindship, but a notorious thief and a master of disguise. She's come to the Belt to retire, but is drawn to Vân's resolute integrity.

When a mysterious corpse is found in the quarters of Vân's student, Vân and Sunless Woods find themselves following a trail of greed and murder that will lead them from teahouses and ascetic havens to the wreck of a mindship – and to the devastating secrets they've kept from each other.

2012 Nebula Award Nominee. Aztecs in space and more...

Read this story online for free at the author's website.

Short story in de Bodard's Xuya universe. It originally appeared in Interzone, #241 July-August 2012. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection (2013), edited by Gardner Dozois

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

A Xuya science fantasy story published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, March 2014. Finalist for a Nebula Award for Best Short Story (2014). It can also be found in the anthologies Nebula Awards Showcase 2016, edited by Mercedes Lackey, and The Long List Anthology: More Stories from the Hugo Awards Nomination List, edited by David Steffen.

Read this story online for free at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

Locus Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, October-November 2015. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection (2016), edited by Gardner Dozois and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2016, edited by Paula Guran.

Short story set in de Bodard's Xuya universe. It was originally published in Subterranean Magazine, Spring 2014. I can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection (2015), edited by Gardner Dozois and Warrior Women (2015) edited by Paula Guran.

Read the full story for free at Subterranean Magazine.

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 Uncanny Magazine, Issue 27, March-April 2019. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection (2018), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

Originally published in Asimov's, July 2010 issue.

Read this story online for free at the author's website.

When tech scavenger Xích Si is captured and imprisoned by the infamous pirates of the Red Banner, she expects to be tortured or killed. Instead, their leader, Rice Fish, makes Xích Si an utterly incredible proposition: an offer of marriage.

Both have their reasons for this arrangement: Xích Si needs protection; Rice Fish, a sentient spaceship, needs a technical expert to investigate the death of her first wife, the Red Scholar. That's all there is to it.

But as the interstellar war against piracy rages on and their own investigation reaches a dire conclusion, the two of them discover that their arrangement has evolved into something much less business-focused and more personal... and tender. And maybe the best thing that's ever happened to either of them--but only if they can find a way to survive together.

A Xuya universe story. Winner of the British Science Fiction Association Award, 2010. The story originally appeared in Interzone, #231 November-December 2010, and was reprinted in Clarkesworld, #124, January 2017. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection (2011), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Robots: The Recent A. I. (2012), edited by Rich Horton and Sean Wallace.

Read this story online for free at Interzone (PDF), or at Clarkesworld.

Nebula Award-winning and Hugo Award-nominated Novella

Welcome to the Scattered Pearls Belt, a collection of ring habitats and orbitals ruled by exiled human scholars and powerful families, and held together by living mindships who carry people and freight between the stars. In this fluid society, human and mindship avatars mingle in corridors and in function rooms, and physical and virtual realities overlap, the appareance of environments easily modified and adapted to interlocutors or current mood.

A transport ship discharged from military service after a traumatic injury, The Shadow's Child now ekes out a precarious living as a brewer of mind-altering drugs for the comfort of space-travellers. Meanwhile, abrasive and eccentric scholar Long Chau wants to find a corpse for a scientific study. When Long Chau walks into her office, The Shadow's Child expects an unpleasant but easy assignment. When the corpse turns out to have been murdered, Long Chau feels compelled to investigate, dragging The Shadow's Child with her.

As they dig deep into the victim's past, The Shadow's Child realises that the investigation points to Long Chau's own murky past--and, ultimately, to the dark and unbearable void that lies between the stars...

A Xuya universe story. Nebula Award for Best Novelette, 2013. Shortlisted for the Hugo and Locus Award, 2013. It was originally published in the anthology The Other Half of the Sky (2013), edited by Athena Andreadis and Kay Holt. It has been reprinted in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection (2014), edited by Gardner Dozois, the Nebula Awards Showcase 2015, edited by Greg Bear, and Galactic Empires (2017), edited by Neil Clarke.

Read this story online for free at the author's website, at Lightspeed, or at Clarkesword.

This BSFA winning story in De Bodard's Xuya universe originally appeared in Clarkesworld, Issue 100, January 2015. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection (2016), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Clarkesworld Year Nine: Volume One (2018), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This story was originally published in Solaris Rising 1.5: An Exclusive Ebook of New Science Fiction (2012), edited by Ian Whates. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 18 (2013), edited by David G. Hartwell.