Search Worlds Without End

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue Seven, November-December 2015.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny Magazine.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, April 2013. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014, edited by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Vanja, an information assistant, is sent from her home city of Essre to the austere, wintry colony of Amatka with an assignment to collect intelligence for the government. Immediately she feels that something strange is going on: people act oddly in Amatka, and citizens are monitored for signs of subversion.

Intending to stay just a short while, Vanja falls in love with her housemate, Nina, and prolongs her visit. But when she stumbles on evidence of a growing threat to the colony, and a cover-up by its administration, she embarks on an investigation that puts her at tremendous risk.

In Karin Tidbeck's world, everyone is suspect, no one is safe, and nothing--not even language, nor the very fabric of reality--can be taken for granted. Amatka is a beguiling and wholly original novel about freedom, love, and artistic creation by a captivating new voice.

The Swedish original of this short story appeared in Mitrania #3, 2009. It was published in English in Weird Tales, Spring 2011 and was reprinted in Lightspeed, October 2013. The story can also be found in the anthology The Time Traveler's Almanac (2014), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. It is included in the collection Jagannath: Stories (2012).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

"I have never read anything like Jagannath. Karin Tidbeck's imagination is recognizably Nordic, but otherwise unclassifiable -- quietly, intelligently, unutterably strange. And various. And ominous. And funny. And mysteriously tender. These are wonderful stories."--Ursula K. Le Guin

"Restrained and vivid, poised and strange, Tidbeck, with her impossible harmonies, is a vital voice."--China Mieville

Enter the strange and wonderful world of Swedish sensation Karin Tidbeck with this feast of darkly fantastical short stories. Whether through the falsified historical record of the uniquely weird Swedish creature known as the "Pyret" or the title story, "Jagannath," about a biological ark in the far future, Tidbeck's unique imagination will enthrall, amuse, and unsettle you. How else to describe a collection that includes "Cloudberry Jam," a story that opens with the line "I made you in a tin can"? Marvels, quirky character studies, and outright surreal monstrosities await you in the book widely praised by Michael Swanwick, Ursula K. Le Guin, China Mieville, and Karen Joy Fowler. Publishers Weekly calls it "brave... and brilliant." Locus Magazine says this is the most significant debut since the award-winning Margo Lanagan. Introduction by Elizabeth Hand, afterword by the author.

"Tidbeck has a gift for the uncanny and the unsettling. In these wonderful, subtle stories, magic arrives quietly. It comes from the forests or the earth or was always there in your own family or maybe exists in another realm entirely... leaving you slightly dazed and more than a little enchanted."--Karen Joy Fowler

"Were this collection to contain only its biomechanoid wonder of a title story, it would still be amazing. Jagannath heralds the arrival of a bold and brilliant new voice, which I see too few of these days. You must read Karin Tidbeck."--Caitlin R. Kiernan

"In Karin Tidbeck's collection Jagannath, the mundane becomes strange and the strange familiar with near-Hitchcockian subtlety. I loved Tidbeck's clean, classic prose. It creates beautifully eerie music for a twilight domain."--Karen Lord

"I can't think of when I last read a collection that blew me away the way that Jagannath has, or one that's left me somewhat at a loss to describe just how strange and beautiful and haunting these tales are."--Elizabeth Hand (from her introduction)

This is a sequel to Tidbeck's story "Sing", which can be read for free at Tor.com.

A strange people have appeared out of nowhere. Their speech is impossible to understand for most human beings; their agenda, they say, is to colonize the "right place". The interpreter Mika accompanies one of their ambassadors to the little moon Kiruna. Here, celestial bodies play havoc with sound, and reality may not be what it appears.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com or Uncanny.

This short story originally appeared in the collection Jagannath: Stories (2012). It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Seven (2013), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

In a village on the distant colony of Kiruna, the outcast Aino has worked hard to created a life for herself. The fragile status quo is upset when the offworlder Petr arrives and insists on becoming a part of her life. But he has no idea what it will cost him, and has cost Aino, to belong to the people who sing with inhuman voices.

This story is anthologized in Jonathan Strahan's The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eight (2014) and Alex Dally MacFarlane's The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (2014).

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

The sequel to this story, "Listen", can be read for free at Tor.com.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, February 2016.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 19, November-December 2017.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

Award-winning author Karin Tidbeck presents a science fiction adventure of a mysterious spaceship on an interstellar voyage in The Last Voyage of Skidbladnir.

Life on the transdimensional ship Skidbladnir is a strange one. The new janitor, Saga, finds herself in the company of an officious steward-bird, a surly and mysterious engineer, and the shadowy Captain. Who the odd passengers are, and according to what plan the ship travels, is unclear.

Just when Saga has begun to understand the inner workings of Skidbladnir, she discovers that something is wrong. Skidbladnir is sick. And it's up to her and the engineer to fix it.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

In a world just parallel to ours exists a mystical realm known only as the Gardens. It's a place where feasts never end, games of croquet have devastating consequences, and teenagers are punished for growing up. For a select group of Masters, it's a decadent paradise where time stands still. But for those who serve them, it's a slow torture where their lives can be ended in a blink.

In a bid to escape before their youth betrays them, Dora and Thistle – best friends and confidants – set out on a remarkable journey through time and space. Traveling between their world and ours, they hunt for the one person who can grant them freedom. Along the way, they encounter a mysterious traveler who trades in favors and never forgets debts, a crossroads at the center of the universe, our own world on the brink of war, and a traveling troupe of actors with the ability to unlock the fabric of reality.