The story of a freed slave and a robot professor, trying to figure out what it means to be in love while they watch old anime from the 21st century.

When the seeds rained down from deep space, it may have been the first stage of an alien invasion—or something else entirely.

The language of the originators defines reality, every word warping the world to fit its meaning…

Lou has a magic box. It makes people do things they normally wouldn’t. And Lou likes to watch.

A tale of magic, revenge, and bitter death on the rain-spattered streets of the great city. This is epic fantasy not in the tradition of Tolkien, but, instead, sensual, ominous, shot through with t…

Of the son of a High Duke of the interstellar Empire, much glory is expected. And expected. And still expected, despite endless proof that young Dennison Crestmar has no talent whatsoever for war. …

Read a new piece of original short fiction by Marissa K. Lingen: Uncle Flower’s Homecoming Waltz

Enjoy this new original short story by author Pat Murphy. In “About Fairies,” Jennifer and her co-workers create fairy lands for a toy company, all the while cultivating their own perso…

Which is harder: seeing your own future – or truly knowing your past? Enjoy this year’s Tor.com holiday story “The Ghosts of Christmas,” a new original story by Paul Cornell…

The language of the originators defines reality, every word warping the world to fit its meaning. Its study transforms the mind and body, and is closely guarded by stodgy, paranoid academics. via Pocket

Please enjoy this reprint from Gateways, edited by Elizabeth Anne Hull, an anthology of original stories inspired by science fiction great Frederik Pohl. Pohl’s latest novel, All the Lives He Led, comes out on April 12th from Tor Books. via Pocket

JENNIFER DIDN’T KNOW WHERE Tricia was taking her until her friend dragged her out of the subway car onto the 2nd Avenue-Lower East Side platform. via Pocket

My name is Rose Sullivan. Although I’ve been on the earth for two hundred years, I was turned on my twenty-fifty birthday. I am eternally frozen in the physical form of a twenty-five year old. Blonde hair, blue eyes, five feet two inches tall, one h…

The eerie thing about Paige Adolpha wasn’t just that she turned up right when I was reading about her in the paper. It wasn’t her fame as the star witness in the big local werewolf trial. via Pocket

Charlie is dealing with complicated grief, and even his therabot is out of ideas. But the back-alley grief counselors might have something to help: it looks like blue asparagus, and it’s call…

Connor is a food crafter just getting back into the business after his mother’s death. To cope with his grief, Connor spends day after day recreating her potstickers, but they are never quite what …

Paxton and the neighbor’s kid are inseparable—sweethearts, even, and Paxton barely six. He doesn’t mind her antennae and clicking mandibles at all….

When the seeds rained down from deep space, it may have been the first stage of an alien invasion—or something else entirely.

A Wild Cards story. A failed contestant of the superhero reality TV show, American Hero, Robin Ruttiger now works as a high school guidance counselor to reluctant students. Things change, however, …

An act of compassion puts a trapeze master in India on a collision course with a terrifying supernatural power.

A woman in New York City finds herself doomed to perpetually celebrate her early-mid-life birthday, cycling through the same rote interactions with friends and searching for a way to escape the pat…

Everyone turns up for a car chase at the end of the world, and the cars won’t start. Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men is a movie of exquisite direction, and I’m madly in love with…

There is no single archetype of the female time traveler. She may be a young newlywed on her honeymoon, or a septuagenarian acting as a secret government weapon. She is black, or white, or from a f…

When I heard of Chronin: The Knife At Your Back, the first in a time-travel graphic novel duology, I was intrigued. A comic set in 1864 Japan, featuring a time-travelling female college student fro…

2080: at a remote site on the edge of the Arctic Circle, a group of scientists, engineers and physicians gather to gamble humanity’s future on one last-ditch experiment.

Time travel occurs in contexts both science fictional and fantastical. Stories centered around it can explore the bizarre paradoxes that it generates, or lose the reader in the thrills or dangers t…

I’m coming to the conclusion that Kate Heartfield may be the author whose work proves the exception to my “time travel stories never satisfy me” rule. Time travel is messy, and in…

I was about a third of the way through Robert Jackson Bennett’s Foundryside when I realized I was reading a fantasy novel about the future. Not in any literal sense, so far as I know; this is a sec…

In this new biweekly series, we’ll be exploring the evolution of both major and minor figures in Tolkien’s legendarium, tracing the transformations of these characters through drafts and early manu…