Search Worlds Without End

Hugo and Locus Award winning and Nebula Award nominated short story. It was published in Clarkesworld, Issue 100 and can also be found in The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016, edited by Rich Horton The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 1 (2016), edited by Neil Clarke, Nebula Awards Showcase 2017, edited by Julie E. Czerneda, and Clarkesworld Year Nine: Volume One (2018), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke. It is included in the collection Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories (2017).

Read the full story for free at Clakesworld.

Acclaimed writer Naomi Kritzer's marvelous tales of science fiction and fantasy are collected in Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories. Here are seventeen short stories, including her Hugo Award-winning story "Cat Pictures Please," about what would happen if artificial intelligence was born out of our search engine history. Two stories are previously unpublished. Kritzer has a gift for telling tales both humorous and tender. Her stories are filled with both wit and intelligence, and require thoughtful reading.

Table of Contents::

• "Cat Pictures Please"
• "Ace of Spades"
• "The Golem"; "Wind"
• "In The Witch's Garden"
• "What Happened at Blessing Creek"
• "Cleanout"; "Artifice"
• "Perfection"
• "The Good Son"
• "Scrap Dragon"
• "Comrade Grandmother"
• "Isabella's Garden"
• "Bits"
• "Honest Man"
• "The Wall"
• "So Much Cooking"

This short story originally appeared in Apex Magazine, September 2018. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year: Volume Thirteen (2019), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Read the full story for free at Apex Magazine.

This novelette originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May-June 2012. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 18 (2013), edited by David G. Hartwell.

Liberty's Daughter and the other short fiction in the Seastead series have been compiled into a larger narrative and packaged as a new novel, Liberty's Daughter, published in 2023.

Beck Garrison lives on a seastead — an archipelago of constructed platforms and old cruise ships, assembled by libertarian separatists a generation ago. She's grown up comfortable and sheltered, but starts doing odd jobs for pocket money.

To her surprise, she finds that she's the only detective that a debt slave can afford to hire to track down the woman's missing sister. When she tackles this investigation, she learns things about life on the other side of the waterline — not to mention about herself and her father — that she did not expect. And that some people will stop at nothing to keep her from talking about...

Liberty's Daughter is a combination and expansion of the original short story, Liberty's Daughter and the sequels in the series Seastead, published 2012-2015.

This Novelette was first Published by Clarkesworld, the January 2020 issue.

Cecily goes in search of her highschool best friend, who seems to have hidden in China where he's using her research to try to create enhanced human beings.

You can read this for free, here.

Clark's World - Monster

This story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 16, May-June 2017.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny Magazine.

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January-February 2012. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2013, edited by Rich Horton. The story is included in the collection Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories (2017).

This novelette originally appeared in Clarkesworld, #110 November 2015. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 1 (2016), edited by Neil Clarke. The story is included in the collection Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories (2017).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This short story originally appeared in Jim Baen's Universe, February 2009, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, March 2015. The story is included in the collection Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories (2017).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This Hugo Award-nominated novelette originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 25, November-December 2018.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

This Clarkesworld Reader's Poll Finalist short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld, #126, March 2017. 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 Clarkesworld.

How much does the internet know about YOU?

Because her mom is always on the move, Steph hasn't lived anyplace longer than six months. Her only constant is an online community called CatNet - a social media site where users upload cat pictures - a place she knows she is welcome. What Steph doesn't know is that the admin of the site, CheshireCat, is a sentient A.I.

When a threat from Steph's past catches up to her and ChesireCat's existence is discovered by outsiders, it's up to Steph and her friends, both online and IRL, to save her.

When a mysterious entity starts hacking into social networks and chat rooms to instigate paranoia and violence in the real world, it's up to Steph and her new friend, Nell, to find a way to stop it – with the help of their benevolent AI friend, CheshireCat.

From the acclaimed author of Fires of the Faithful comes the tale of an impetuous young woman, freeborn in a world of slavery and magic. Twenty-year-old Lauria is the favorite aide to Kyros, a powerful military officer. On his authority, she is messenger, observer, and spy. But now she is entrusted with a mission more dangerous than any that have come before Freedom's Gate.

After years of relative peace, word has come to Kyros's compound that the bandit tribe known as the Alashi is planning an offensive. It is up to Lauria to infiltrate the Alashi by posing as an escaped slave--a charge that requires she serve in the household of a neighboring officer. From there, she will stage an escape and continue on in her guise as a runaway. But posing as a slave--a virgin concubine, no less--may prove the least of her troubles. For even if she does escape and the Alashi do accept her, how can this freeborn woman convince them she is slave, not spy? And, worse, what if her own views are gradually changing, calling everything she believes about her world into question?

With Freedom's Gate, acclaimed author Naomi Kritzer introduced a dangerous world of magic and intrigue. Now she continues the story of Lauria, a bold young woman who has turned against a way of life she once believed in....

FREEDOM'S APPRENTICE

Once the trusted aide to powerful military commander Kyros, freeborn Lauria hunted down his escaped slaves. But during a mission to infiltrate the bandit tribe known as the Alashi, Lauria's loyalties shifted. When her identity was discovered, she was cast out by both sides. Now Lauria is determined to regain the trust of the Alashi, and, with the help of her blood-sister Tamar, liberate those she once returned to captivity. But they cannot accomplish the daunting task alone. Desperate for a spell-chain to free a mine slave, Lauria turns to her enemies--the Sisterhood of Weavers--and apprentices herself to a sorceress. But learning to harness magic will come at a greater price than she ever imagined.

With a magical gift for bringing sorcery to vivid life, acclaimed author Naomi Kritzer continues the suspenseful tale of Lauria and Tamar, sisters-in-arms bonded by blood--and torn apart by their enemies....

As a freeborn servant of the Greeks, Lauria once hunted escaped slaves. But as her loyalties shifted, she found herself freeing those she once captured--and loving those she once mistrusted--like Tamar, of the bandit Alashi tribe. Tamar is now Lauria's blood-sister. But the powerful Greek sorceresses, the Sisterhood of Weavers, do not take treason lightly... especially when the traitor has liberated the djinni who serve them.

Soon Lauria is imprisoned. Desperate, Tamar pleads her case to the Alashi, who send her to sow discord among the Sisterhood. As Tamar searches for Lauria both in reality and in the dreamlike realm known as the borderland, Lauria must trust the magic within to fulfill a wish both desired and feared: freedom for all....

From a gifted new voice in fantasy fiction comes the thrilling saga of a war-ravaged land and the remarkable young woman destined to restore it...

Fires of the Faithful

For sixteen-year-old Eliana, life at her conservatory of music is a pleasant interlude between youth and adulthood, with the hope of a prestigious Imperial Court appointment at the end. But beyond the conservatory walls is a land blighted by war and inexplicable famine and dominated by a fearsome religious order known as the Fedeli, who are systematically stamping out all traces of the land's old beliefs. Soon not even the conservatory walls can hold out reality. When one classmate is brutally killed by the Fedeli for clinging to the forbidden ways and another is kidnapped by the Circle--the mysterious and powerful mages who rule the land--Eliana can take no more. Especially not after she learns one of the Circle's most closely guarded secrets.

Now, determined to escape the Circle's power, burning with rage at the Fedeli, and drawn herself to the beliefs of the Old Way, Eliana embarks on a treacherous journey to spread the truth. And what she finds shakes her to her core: a past destroyed, a future in doubt, and a desperate people in need of a leader--no matter how young or inexperienced....

A powerful new voice in fantasy fiction, the acclaimed author of Fires of the Faithful continues her enthralling epic of persecution and war, passion and triumph, and of the brave young woman who must succeed in...

Turning the Storm

She is called musician, rebel, soldier, legend. After months of leading an uprising against the treacherous religious order of the Fedeli and the ruling Circle of Mages, young Eliana is known throughout the land. Striking from the blighted wastelands, her army of reformers has grown in number--adding liberated slaves to its ranks. Driven by their beliefs in the Old Way, Eliana and the soldiers of the Lupi stand on faith alone.

But faith won't save the Lupi from traitors in their midst--or from the magical fires of the mages. Seeing her soldiers reduced to ashes around her, Eliana takes a desperate gamble: she steps down from command. Then, armed with stolen orders to attend one of the musical ensembles within the Imperial enclave, she disguises herself as a boy, takes up her violin, and heads straight into enemy territory. And now the girl-turned-general adds another title to her rank: spy.