Search Worlds Without End

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, September-October 2017.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

Three-time Hugo Award winner N. K. Jemisin's first collection of short fiction challenges and enchants with breathtaking stories of destruction, rebirth, and redemption.

N. K. Jemisin is one of the most powerful and acclaimed speculative fiction authors of our time. In the first collection of her evocative short fiction, Jemisin equally challenges and delights readers with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption.

Dragons and hateful spirits haunt the flooded streets of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a parallel universe, a utopian society watches our world, trying to learn from our mistakes. A black mother in the Jim Crow South must save her daughter from a fey offering impossible promises. And in the Hugo award-nominated short story "The City Born Great," a young street kid fights to give birth to an old metropolis's soul.

The laws of probability change in New York so that low probability events become common.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, November 2010. The story can also be found in the anthology Clarkesworld: Year Five (2013), edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

In "Playing Nice with God's Bowling Ball," a police detective tries to understand how a children's dispute over a playing card could have led to a mysterious disappearance.

The story was originally published in Jim Baen's Universe, August 2008.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

The White Lady is coming for the future of Emmaline's family, but the red soil of Alabama grows a different sort of magic in defense.

This short story originally appeared in Fantasy Magazine, December 2016, People of Colo(u)r Destroy Fantasy! special issue. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eleven (2017), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2017, edited by Paula Guran.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology The Company He Keeps (2010), edited by Peter Crowther and Nick Gevers, and was reprinted in Uncanny Magazine, Issue Six, September/October 2015.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny Magazine.

This novelette origianlly appeared in the anthology Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories (2011), edited by JoSelle Vanderhooft, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, March 2018. The story can also be found in the anthologies Heiresses of Russ 2011: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction (2011), edited by Steve Berman and JoSelle Vanderhooft, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk (2012), edited by Sean Wallace, Steampunk III: Steampunk Revolution (2012), edited by Ann VanderMeer, and The Mammoth Book of Gaslit Romance (2014), edited by Ekaterina Sedia.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia (2012), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. It was reprinted in Lightspeed, December 2014.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed: Women Destroy Science Fiction! Special Issue, June 2014.

Read the full story for fee at Lightspeed.

The city burned beneath the Dreaming Moon.

In the ancient city-state of Gujaareh, peace is the only law. Upon its rooftops and amongst the shadows of its cobbled streets wait the Gatherers - the keepers of this peace. Priests of the dream-goddess, their duty is to harvest the magic of the sleeping mind and use it to heal, soothe . . . and kill those judged corrupt.

But when a conspiracy blooms within Gujaareh's great temple, Ehiru - the most famous of the city's Gatherers - must question everything he knows. Someone, or something, is murdering dreamers in the goddess' name, stalking its prey both in Gujaareh's alleys and the realm of dreams. Ehiru must now protect the woman he was sent to kill - or watch the city be devoured by war and forbidden magic.

Gujaareh, the city of dreams, suffers under the imperial rule of the Kisuati Protectorate. A city where the only law was peace now knows violence and oppression. And nightmares: a mysterious and deadly plague haunts the citizens of Gujaareh, dooming the infected to die screaming in their sleep. Trapped between dark dreams and cruel overlords, the people yearn to rise up -- but Gujaareh has known peace for too long.

Someone must show them the way.

Hope lies with two outcasts: the first woman ever allowed to join the dream goddess' priesthood and an exiled prince who longs to reclaim his birthright. Together, they must resist the Kisuati occupation and uncover the source of the killing dreams... before Gujaareh is lost forever.

Hugo Award-nominated Novelette

An explorer returns to gather information from a climate-ravaged Earth that his ancestors, and others among the planet's finest, fled centuries ago. The mission comes with a warning: a graveyard world awaits him. But so do those left behind -- hopeless and unbeautiful wastes of humanity who should have died out ages ago. After all this time, there's no telling how they've devolved. Steel yourself, soldier. Get in. Get out. And try not to stare.

An original novel written by Hugo Award-winning author N. K. Jemisin and Mass Effect creative director Mac Walters

Lieutenant Cora Harper joined the Systems Alliance to develop and enhance her powerful biotic talents. She was assigned to the asari commando unit Talein's Daughters, where she honed her abilities to become a skilled and deadly huntress.

Returning to Earth, Cora finds herself a stranger among other humans, and joins the Andromeda Initiative as Alec Ryder's second-in-command. The mission will send 100,000 colonists on a one-way, 600-year-long journey into the unknown. When essential--and dangerous--tech is stolen, Cora is assigned to recover it before it can be used against the Initiative, and end the mission before it can begin.

Today's readers of science fiction and fantasy have an appetite for stories that address a wide variety of voices, perspectives, and styles. There is an openness to experiment and pushing boundaries, combined with the classic desire to read about space ships and dragons, future technology and ancient magic, and the places where they intersect. Contemporary science fiction and fantasy looks to accomplish the same goal as ever--to illuminate what it means to be human. With a diverse selection of stories chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and guest editor N. K. Jemisin, The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018 explores the ever-expanding and changing world of SFF today, with Jemisin bringing her lyrical, endlessly curious point of view to the series' latest edition.

Table of Contents:

FANTASY

• Loneliness is in Your Blood by Cadwell Turnbull
  from Nightmare Magazine
• The Resident by Carmen Maria Machado
  from Her Body and Other Parties
• Carnival Nine by Caroline M. Yoachim
  from Beneath Ceaseless Skies
• Rivers Run Free by Charles Payseur
  from Beneath Ceaseless Skies
  
• Tasting Notes on the Varietals of the Southern Coast by Gwendolyn Clare
  from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
• The Last Cheng Beng Gift by Jaymee Goh
  from Lightspeed Magazine
• You Will Always Have Family: A Triptych by Kathleen Kayembe
  from Nightmare Magazine
• Black Powder by Maria Dahvana Headley
  from The Djinn Falls in Love (ed. Mahvesh Murad and Jared Shurin)
• The Orange Tree by Maria Dahvana Headley
  from The Weight of Words (ed. Dave McKean and William Schafer)
• Church of Birds by Micah Dean Hicks
  from Kenyon Review

SCIENCE FICTION

• Brightened Star, Ascending Dawn by A. Merc Rustad
  from Humans Wanted (ed. Vivian Caethe)
• Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue by Charlie Jane Anders
  from Boston Review: Global Dystopias
• The Wretched and the Beautiful by E. Lily Yu
  from Terraform
• Destroy the City with Me Tonight by Kate Alice Marshall
  from Behind the Mask (ed. Tricia Reeks and Kyle Richardson)
• Justice Systems in Quantum Parallel Probabilities by Lettie Prell
  from Clarkesworld Magazine
• Cannibal Acts by Maureen F. McHugh
  from Boston Review: Global Dystopias
• ZeroS by Peter Watts
  from Infinity Wars (ed. Jonathan Strahan)
• The Greatest One-Star Restaurant in the Whole Quadrant by Rachael K. Jones
  from Lightspeed Magazine
• The Hermit of Houston by Samuel R. Delany
  from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
• Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance by Tobias S. Buckell
  from Cosmic Powers (ed. John Joseph Adams)

THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS. AGAIN.

Three terrible things happen in a single day.

Essun, masquerading as an ordinary schoolteacher in a quiet small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Mighty Sanze, the empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years, collapses as its greatest city is destroyed by a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the heartland of the world's sole continent, a great red rift has been been torn which spews ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

But this is the Stillness, a land long familiar with struggle, and where orogenes -- those who wield the power of the earth as a weapon -- are feared far more than the long cold night. Essun has remembered herself, and she will have her daughter back.

She does not care if the world falls apart around her. Essun will break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.

The season of endings grows darker as civilization fades into the long cold night. Alabaster Tenring -- madman, world-crusher, savior -- has returned with a mission: to train his successor, Essun, and thus seal the fate of the Stillness forever.

It continues with a lost daughter, found by the enemy.

It continues with the obelisks, and an ancient mystery converging on answers at last.

The Stillness is the wall which stands against the flow of tradition, the spark of hope long buried under the thickening ashfall. And it will not be broken.

THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS... FOR THE LAST TIME.

The Moon will soon return. Whether this heralds the destruction of humankind or something worse will depend on two women.

Essun has inherited the power of Alabaster Tenring. With it, she hopes to find her daughter Nassun and forge a world in which every orogene child can grow up safe.

For Nassun, her mother's mastery of the Obelisk Gate comes too late. She has seen the evil of the world, and accepted what her mother will not admit: that sometimes what is corrupt cannot be cleansed, only destroyed.

Hugo Award nominated short story.

New York City is about to go through a few changes. Like all great metropolises before it, when a city gets big enough, old enough, it must be born; but there are ancient enemies who cannot tolerate new life. Thus New York will live or die by the efforts of a reluctant midwife... and how well he can learn to sing the city's mighty song.

This story originally appeared on Tor.com, September 28, 2016. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017, edited by John Joseph Adams and Charles Yu, New York Fantastic (2017), edited by Paula Guran, and Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited by Irene Gallo.

Read this story online for free at Tor.com.

Every great city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She's got six.

But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs in the halls of power, threatening to destroy the city and her six newborn avatars unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.

Every great city has a soul. A human avatar that embodies their city's heart and wields its magic. New York? She's got six.

But all is not well in the city that never sleeps. Though Brooklyn, Manny, Bronca, Venezia, Padmini, and Neek have temporarily managed to stop the Woman in White from invading--and destroying the entire universe in the process--the mysterious capital "E" Enemy has more subtle powers at her disposal. A new candidate for mayor wielding the populist rhetoric of gentrification, xenophobia, and "law and order" may have what it takes to change the very nature of New York itself and take it down from the inside. In order to defeat him, and the Enemy who holds his purse strings, the avatars will have to join together with the other Great Cities of the world in order to bring her down for good and protect their world from complete destruction.

Three brand new short stories by Hugo, Nebula & World Fantasy Award-nominated author N.K. Jemisin, set in the world of The Inheritance Trilogy.

From the shadows of the greater stories, away from the bright light of Sky and wending 'round the sagas of the Arameri, come three quieter tales: A newborn god with an old, old soul struggles to find a reason to live. A powerful demon searches for her father, and answers. And in a prequel to The Inheritance Trilogy, a newly-enslaved Nahadoth forges a dark alliance with a mortal, for survival... and revenge.

"The Wild Boy" is a prequel, set in the early days of Nahadoth's confinement, and tells a story of his relationship with a mortal determined to avenge himself against those who enslaved him.

In "The God without a Name," a new god born from the body used by Nahadoth during his enslavement searches for his nature and for a reason to continue living.

And in "The Third Why," Glee Oree, demon daughter of Itempas, seeks out her father in the hopes that through him she will find answers to questions she scarcely knows how to ask.

Return to the world of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms in these three interconnected short tales.

The Inheritance Trilogy omnibus includes the novels: The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Broken Kingdoms, The Kingdom of Gods, and a brand new novella set in the same world: The Awakened Kingdom.

A REALM OF GODS AND MORTALS.

Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle.

Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is the debut novel from a major new voice in fantasy fiction.

In the city of Shadow, beneath the World Tree, alleyways shimmer with magic and godlings live hidden among mortalkind. Oree Shoth, a blind artist, takes in a strange homeless man on an impulse. This act of kindness engulfs Oree in a nightmarish conspiracy. Someone, somehow, is murdering godlings, leaving their desecrated bodies all over the city. And Oree's guest is at the heart of it. . .

The incredible conclusion to the Inheritance Trilogy, from one of fantasy's most acclaimed stars.

For two thousand years the Arameri family has ruled the world by enslaving the very gods that created mortalkind. Now the gods are free, and the Arameri's ruthless grip is slipping. Yet they are all that stands between peace and world-spanning, unending war.

Shahar, last scion of the family, must choose her loyalties. She yearns to trust Sieh, the godling she loves. Yet her duty as Arameri heir is to uphold the family's interests, even if that means using and destroying everyone she cares for.

As long-suppressed rage and terrible new magics consume the world, the Maelstrom -- which even gods fear -- is summoned forth. Shahar and Sieh: mortal and god, lovers and enemies. Can they stand together against the chaos that threatens?

Includes a never before seen story set in the world of the Inheritance Trilogy.

The long awaited sequel to the Inheritance trilogy -- a novella by award winning author N. K. Jemisin where a godling must struggle to grow in the shadow of her parents.

SOME TRUTHS MUST BE LEARNED THE HARD WAY...

As the first new godling born in thousands of years -- and the heir presumptive to Sieh the Trickster -- Shill's got big shoes to fill. She's well on her way when she defies her parents and sneaks off to the mortal realm, which is no place for an impressionable young god. In short order she steals a demon's grandchild, gets herself embroiled in a secret underground magical dance competition, and offends her oldest and most powerful sibling.

But for Eino, the young Darren man whom Shill has befriended, the god-child's silly games are serious business. Trapped in an arranged marriage and prohibited from pursuing his dreams, he has had enough. He will choose his own fate, even if he must betray a friend in the process -- and Shill might just have to grow up faster than she thinks.