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Robot Book Recs from the Tor Team!

It’s Day Five of Robot Week, and we’re closing out with some robot-centric book recommendations from the Tor team! Check out our recs and get ready for another exciting Robot Week next year. Until then, happy reading!


System Collapse book cover System Collapse by Martha Wells

Everyone’s favorite lethal SecUnit is back in the next installment in Martha Wells’s bestselling and award-winning Murderbot Diaries series.

Am I making it worse? I think I’m making it worse.

Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there’s an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can’t have the planet, they’re sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize. But there’s something wrong with Murderbot; it isn’t running within normal operational parameters. ART’s crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza’s SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they’re going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what’s wrong with itself, and fast!

Yeah, this plan is… not going to work.

Service Model Book CoverService Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Murderbot meets Redshirts in a delightfully humorous tale of robotic murder from the Hugo-nominated author of Elder Race and Children of Time.

To fix the world they must first break it, further.

Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor and service. When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into its core programming, they murder their owner. The robot discovers they can also do something else they never did before: They can run away. Fleeing the household they enter a wider world they never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating into ruins and an entire robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is having to find a new purpose.

Sometimes all it takes is a nudge to overcome the limits of your programming.

Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom by Bradley W. Schenck

If Fritz Lang’s Metropolis somehow mated with Futurama, their mutant offspring might well be Slaves of the Switchboard of Doom. Inspired by the future imagined in the 1939 World Fair, this hilarious, beautifully illustrated adventure by writer and artist Bradley W. Schenck is utterly unlike anything else in science fiction: a gonzo, totally bonkers, gut-busting look at the World of Tomorrow, populated with dashing, bubble-helmeted heroes, faithful robot sidekicks, mad scientists, plucky rocket engineers, sassy switchboard operators, space pirates, and much, much more—enhanced throughout by two dozen astonishing illustrations.
After a surprise efficiency review, the switchboard operators of Retropolis are replaced by a mysterious system beyond their comprehension. Dash Kent, freelance adventurer and apartment manager, is hired to get to the bottom of it, and discovers that the replacement switchboard is only one element of a plan concocted by an insane civil engineer: a plan so vast that it reaches from Retropolis to the Moon. And no one—not the Space Patrol, nor the Fraternal League of Robotic Persons, nor the mad scientists of Experimental Research District, nor even the priests of the Temple of the Spider God, will know what hit them.

In the Lives of Puppets paperback cover In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune

In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots—fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They’re a family, hidden and safe. The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labeled “HAP,” he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio–a past spent hunting humans. When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio’s former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, the rest of Vic’s assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming. Along the way to save Gio, amid conflicted feelings of betrayal and affection for Hap, Vic must decide for himself: Can he accept love with strings attached? Inspired by Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio, and like Swiss Family Robinson meets Wall-EIn the Lives of Puppets is a masterful stand-alone fantasy adventure from the beloved author who brought you The House in the Cerulean Sea and Under the Whispering Door.

The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport Cover The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu

From international bestseller Samit Basu, The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport is an exuberant new sci-fi adventure with heart that reads like a mash-up of Aladdin and Murderbotwith gloriously chaotic results

Shantiport was supposed to be a gateway to the stars. But the city is sinking, and its colonist rulers aren’t helping anyone but themselves. Lina, a daughter of failed revolutionaries, has no desire to escape Shantiport. She loves her city and would do anything to save its people. This is, in fact, the plan for her life, made before she was even born. Her brother, Bador, is a small monkey bot with a big attitude and bigger ambitions. He wants a chance to leave this dead-end planet and explore the universe on his own terms. But that would mean abandoning the family he loves—even if they do take him for granted. When Shantiport’s resident tech billionaire coerces Lina into retrieving a powerful artifact rumored to be able to reshape reality, forces from before their time begin coalescing around the siblings. And when you throw in a piece of sentient, off-world tech with the ability to grant three wishes into the mix… None of the city’s powers will know what hit them.

Place holder  of - 90The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon

War machines and AI gods run amok in The Archive Undying, national bestseller Emma Mieko Candon’s bold entry into the world of mecha fiction.

WHEN AN AI DIES, ITS CITY DIES WITH IT
WHEN A CITY FALLS, IT LEAVES A CORPSE BEHIND
WHEN THAT CORPSE RUNS OFF, ONLY DEVOTION CAN BRING IT BACK

When the robotic god of Khuon Mo went mad, it destroyed everything it touched. It killed its priests, its city, and all its wondrous works. But in its final death throes, the god brought one thing back to life: its favorite child, Sunai. For the seventeen years since, Sunai has walked the land like a ghost, unable to die, unable to age, and unable to forget the horrors he’s seen. He’s run as far as he can from the wreckage of his faith, drowning himself in drink, drugs, and men. But when Sunai wakes up in the bed of the one man he never should have slept with, he finds himself on a path straight back into the world of gods and machines. The Archive Undying is the first volume of Emma Mieko Candon’s Downworld Sequence, a sci-fi series where AI deities and brutal police states clash, wielding giant robots steered by pilot-priests with corrupted bodies. Come get in the robot.

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Author Feature: L.M. Sagas on The Messiest Robots

cascade failure by l m sagasgravity lost

Its Day Three of Robot Week and today, we’ve tapped in Tor’s resident robot expert, L.M. Sagas to talk about the messiest robots. Curious to see who made the list? Read on and don’t forget to dive into her series, Ambit’s Run, today!


By L.M. Sagas

Androids. AI. Terminators. Replicators. There are more flavors of robots in scifi than ice cream in a freezer section, and I could gladly sit here and nerd out about pretty much every one of them. But if I had to pick (and for the sake of time, word counts, and the good of the Internet, I probably should), I’d say there’s one flavor of robot that gets me every time: The messy ones. The disaster droids. The aggro automatons. The Bad News Bots. There’s just something about machines misbehaving in new and interesting ways that never fails to entertain. And to celebrate Robot Week, I’ve jotted down a few of my favorites and why I love (or love to hate) them. If you’ve got others, drop a comment and share!

murderbot diariesMurderbot (The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells)

You would think, with a title like Murderbot, that we’d be talking about a series where a robot went full Skynet and kicked off a little robo-kill spree. The truth is (mostly) the opposite, and way more interesting for it. You’ve got a robot that’s factory designed for killing, that instead decides to spend its time binge-watching soap operas like a true Millennial folk hero. Across the different novellas, it gets into all sorts of trouble, usually despite its very best efforts, and somehow stumbles into its own brand of humanity along the way. Also, it’s funny as hell.

IG-11 featured on a poster promoting The Mandalorian IG-11 (The Mandalorian)

In the vein of robots bucking convention and climbing backwards up the man’s-best-friend-to-murderous-machine pipeline, another contender for messiest bot is IG-11 from The Mandalorian. Yes, O.G. IG was awesome in its own right—a bounty-hunting bot that could give old Mando a run for his credits in the gunslinger department. But after some rough-and-ready reprogramming, IG-11 became the best babysitter in a Galaxy Far, Far Away, and I think we can all agree that was a pretty spectacular career move.

Marvin the Paranoid Android Marvin the Paranoid Android (Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams)

He’s voiced by Alan Rickman in the movie. Need I say more?

… I feel like I should probably say more. Written off as a failed prototype of the so-called “Genuine People Personalities” program, Marvin the Paranoid Android (I feel like you
have to say the whole name every time; I don’t make the rules) is one of my all-time favorite examples of Robots Who Feel Things™. Unfortunately for Marvin the Paranoid Android, most of the things he feels are depression, anxiety, and ennui. He’s sad, and dour, and yes, definitely more than a little bit messy, but I think it’s a kind of messy we can all relate to sometimes, and that makes this big-brained little bot a big-time favorite in my book.

Ultron Textless AoU PosterUltron (Avengers: Age of Ultron)

Okay, now we have the Skynet robot. Ultron, who was the brainchild of Tony Stark (with the help of your run-of-the-mill remains of a spacetime singularity—Marvel fans, don’t quote me on that one), basically took one look at the news cycle and said, “Sorry, nope, humanity’s got to go.” While I do think he could’ve benefited from some well-curated cat videos and a frank conversation about his Daddy Issues, you can’t help but enjoy a robo-villain who sings Pinocchio songs like it’s slam poetry and adopts a pair of magical orphans like he’s trying to start a franchise. It doesn’t get much messier than that.

in the lives of puppetsBasically the Entire Cast of In the Lives of Puppets (In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune)

In a book with an anxious Roomba, a deadpan medical droid, and a Hysterically Angry
“Puppet” on a quest to save their Dad!Droid, it’s tough to pick just one robot for the Messiest In
Show superlative. So, I didn’t. This ragtag robo fam is a delight and a disaster, all rolled into
one, often at the same time, and they’re just the right bots to round out this round up of my
favorite messy robots in scifi.

 

That’s all for now, but I know there’s plenty more out there who are just as loveably chaotic. If you’ve got some in mind, please drop a comment and share. And if Messy Robots With Feelings are your jam, don’t forget to check out my AI captain, Eoan, and their merry crew of misfits in my scifi series, Ambit’s Run!

Dive into Cascade Failure today:

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Already read it? Dive into Gravity Lost next:

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But What if You Added a Dragon? How Jenn Lyons Would Improve 6 Books

13Jenn Lyons is the author of the epic A Chorus of Dragons series, and she’s also one of the foremost dragonic scholars of the contemporary age. Here we consult her comprehensive knowledge of dragon lore to understand what SFF titles would benefit from the inclusion of one (or more) dragon(s).


by Jenn Lyons

I have a confession to make: I’ve never written a novel that didn’t have a dragon in it. Now, as I’m known as an epic fantasy author whose first series literally has the word dragon in the title, this may not seem like much of a confession, but please I understand: I mean all the novels. The unpublished novels that no one has ever seen, sitting in a metaphorical drawer.

Yes, the sci-fi novels too.

Why not, after all? Dragons deserve some love in any genre fiction story, whether that’s something set in a slightly speculative version of our world today to stories of the far future set in space. Raymond Chandler used to say that anytime he was stuck in a story, he’d have someone walk into a room holding a gun. Me? I have a dragon crash the party.

Works every time.

Now obviously, there are a number of sci-fi books which already contain dragons. The Dragonriders of Pern books by Anne McCaffery, Roadmarks by Roger Zelazny, and Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee are just a few books where the setting is scifi but my favorite monster is still in the house.

With that said, here’s a few sci-fi books that I feel might have been made just that tiny bit better by the introduction of a dragon:

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John ScalziThe Kaiju Preservation Society

No, don’t be silly. This already has dragons in it. John Scalzi just calls them something else. Respect.

 

 

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn MuirGideon the Ninth

It’s easy to look at Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir and accuse me of cheating by slipping a fantasy novel into the mix, but no, it turns that this story of necromancers, dead worlds, and the cost of resurrection is, in fact, sci-fi. That said, there’s enough magic flying around (or what looks like magic) to make the addition of a dragon not just thematically plausible, but easily justifiable. Who wouldn’t want to see a cadre of necromancers forced to deal with a dragon? (Probably a dead dragon. Yeah, let’s face it: this dragon’s absolutely dead. And angry about it.) Quite frankly, nobody in any Houses would’ve been surprised to find a dragon in the bowels of Canaan House. Maybe the only surprise was that there wasn’t one.

The Fifth Season by N. K. JemisinThe Fifth Season

N.K. Jemisin’s The Broken Earth trilogy about a world regularly torn asunder by extinction level events (book one’s titular The Fifth Season) hardly needs a dragon. There’s more than enough fire from volcanoes and that one time someone opened a rift right across the entire continent, straight down into the world’s mantle. In fact, I suspect the biggest issue with a dragon in these books is the distinct possibility that no one would notice. Or if they did, would probably just give a resigned shrug as if to say “Sure, why not a dragon, too?”

All Systems Red by Martha WellsAll Systems Red

Given the nature of Martha Well’s stories about a very cranky SecUnit construct called Murderbot and its battles against far-future corporations (and its own feelings), I would absolutely want to see a dragon in one of these tales. A dragon that I suspect would immediately adopt Murderbot, because it too understands what it’s like to live in a universe where everyone assumes you’re only around to kill people and tear shit up.

I mean, yes, watching Murderbot fight a dragon would be awesome. More awesome? Watching Murderbot and a dragon fight something else.

Cibola Burn by James S. A. CoreyCibola Burn

I love the Expanse series, written by James S.A. Corey (the joint pen name of Daniel Abraham and Ty Frank). I’d love to say that I was into the books way before the TV show; that would be lying. I discovered the books because of the TV show, and immediately devoured everything that was out at the time (and continued to do so until the end of the series). Cibola Burn, the fourth book, takes places almost entirely on an alien world that humanity is attempting to colonize. It was the perfect opportunity to introduce a dragon, and I’ve got to be honest here: the authors completely missed their shot. Not a single dragon to be found anywhere. Not even a protomolecule entity shaped vaguely like a dragon. Disappointing.

And no, despite the name, Tiamat’s Wrath also has a depressing lack of actual dragons.

Dune by Frank HerbertDune

I know what you’re going to say here: Frank Herbert’s masterpiece doesn’t need dragons; it already has sandworms. But hear me out here. What if the Empire had tried to genetically engineer an alternative to sandworms? An alternative developed on another equally inhospitable planet more fully under the empire’s control, like say, Salusa Secundus? The experiment wouldn’t have worked, of course, but perhaps they ended up with something useful anyway, if only for having bad tempers and lots of sharp, pointy teeth.

All I’m saying is the Empire’s forces could’ve shown up on Arrakis with both Sardaukar troops AND dragons.

And those are just a few examples. Now I don’t expect authors to go rush out and write a bunch of sci-fi complete with dragons in it…

But why not?

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Five of Our Favorite Fictional Hackers

Look, our mothers are still disappointed in us for not becoming doctors. But we are disappointed in ourselves for not becoming hackers. 

It’s a digital world and an uncertain world, and our vision of hacking (perhaps a little influenced by pop culture) presents a robin-hood, windy-side-of-the-law path to a little more control over our world. And an opportunity to stick it to jerks and tyrants.

We haven’t ruled out a career change, but in the meantime, we will live our hacker dreams vicariously through badass fictional hackers. Here’s a list of some of our favorite sci-fi hackers.


Image Placeholder of - 20Murderbot from The Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells

Hacking is easier when you’re part bot and you’ve got loads of raw processing power to go with your organic parts. Murderbot could have become a mass murderer when they hacked their governor module, but instead they turned their hacking skills to torrenting hours and hours of media to read, watch, and listen to while still pretending to do their day job: trying to stop humans from dying.

Poster Placeholder of - 6Marcus Yallow  a.k.a “w1n5t0n” and Masha Maximow from Little Brother, Homeland, and Attack Surface

Look we like Marcus because he’s a rebel wunderkind who takes on the evil overreaching DHS with modded xboxes and a can-do attitude. He’s kind of easy to love.

Masha is… less easy to love. She rationalizes herself into some downright morally dubious things in all three books (she’s a bit of an antagonist in Little Brother and Homeland), but she’s a wildly intelligent realist with a chip on her shoulder who likes defying her corporate overlords for fun. So we can’t help but love her too. Check out Attack Surface in paperback now! 

Place holder  of - 2The Zer0es from Zer0es by Chuck Wendig

We’re cheating because there are several hackers to vie for favorite in Zer0es. The Zer0es themselves are a motley crew of hackers of varying skill levels.

There’s Chance, who’s a little bit of a con man but he dreams of being an Anonymous-style hacker; Aleena, an Arab Spring hacktivist; DeAndre, a criminal hacker who specializes in credit card data; Reagan, who’s a hacker but also kind of an douchey troll; and Wade, a grizzled old conspiracy theorist. At first look, they sound like a bunch of assholes. But so are the guardians of the galaxy, and these guys have to come together when their blackmailed into working for the government and learn… surprise surprise, our government is way more evil than they are.

Placeholder of  -91Image Place holder  of - 21Case (Henry Dorsett Case) from Neuromancer by William Gibson

Look we know he’s a mess. But we love ourselves a scrappy anti-hero and the fact that he’s a hacker just makes it better. Washed-up hacker is a great archetype (and our favorite way to play Honey Heist). Case has mad skills and considering he’s been booby-trapped and blackmailed, a hell of a lot of motivation. We won’t… spoil it (THIS BOOK CAME OUT IN THE 80s GET ON IT), but he’s also the centerpiece of a cyberpunk classic that is designed to mess with your mind and expectations, and we can’t help but love him for that too.

book-catfishingCheshireCat from Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer

So it’s also a little easier to hack when you are a sentient AI like CheshireCat. But Cheshire is a gem and we love them too much to not include them in any list of excellent hackers. They are fully willing to hack anything from smart cars to bad robo sex ed teachers to help out their favorite humans. They also hack a small army of service bots as a small private army and we stan a sentient AI who’s willing to put in the work to keep their squishier friends around.

Honorable mentions to Mitch from Vicious by V. E. Schwab and Wade from Ready Player One (and Two now!) by Ernest Kline.

*We tried to write about our favorite real life hackers but they somehow managed to hack this article and make it fictional.

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Tor Books at NYCC 2021!

Poster Placeholder of - 44New York Comic Con is once again coming to us virtually in 2021 and we are so excited to participate! Join the convention from October 7-10 (tickets for virtual access can be bought here) for some amazing panels, listed below, and don’t forget to follow us on social media and the hashtag #TorNYCC2021 for announcements, sweepstakes, and more. All panels excerpt the Wheel of Time panel and the Space Odysseys panel will be release on October 7 at 10 AM ET.

Brandon Sanderson and Christopher Paolini in conversation

Join two of the genre’s biggest authors–and pals–Brandon Sanderson (Rhythm of War) and Christopher Paolini (To Sleep In a Sea of Stars) as they celebrate the paperback releases of their bestselling books and talk about all things fantasy science fiction and beyond. Watch the panel here.

Just Kiss Already

SciFi and Fantasy sure can be full of Ships… not just spaceships and pirate ones! Join some of your favorite Tor and Tor.com Publishing authors as they discuss the mushy gushy FEELINGS side of speculative fiction. How do they craft those will-they-or-won’t-theys into OTPs you want to root for?  With TJ Klune (Under the Whispering Door), Ryka Aoki (Light From Uncommon Stars), Alix E. Harrow (A Spindle Splintered), Freya Marske (A Marvelous Light), and Everina Maxwell (Winter’s Orbit). Moderated by Andrea Hairston (Master of Poisons). Watch the panel here.

Tor Presents: Chaotic Horror Storytelling

Just in time for Halloween, Tor and Nightfire task a brave panel of authors with telling us a horror story unlike any other. This group of talented horror authors will spin us a brand new tale. Join Thomas Olde Heuvelt (HEX, Echo), Zin E. Rocklyn (Flowers for the Sea), Catriona Ward (The Last House on Needless Street), and your host Christopher Buehlman (The Blacktongue Thief), as they incorporate writing prompts to create an improvised story on the spot–and talk about their craft and inspirations along the way. Watch the panel here.

Tor Goes International

From Scotland to Australia and back again, Tor, Tor.com, and Nightfire authors can be found spinning their tales from across the globe – and setting them in some international locales as well. Join authors Kerstin Hall (Star Eater), T. L. Huchu (The Library of the Dead), Cassandra Khaw (Nothing But Blackened Teeth), and moderator James Rollins (The Starless Crown) as they take you on a virtual tour of SciFi Fantasy and Horror. Watch the panel here.

Tor Spotlight- Calling All Book Lovers Panel

Tor publishes some of the greatest sci-fi fantasy and horror stories around. This will be a panel to shine a spotlight on some of the exciting books that Tor, Tor Teen, Tordotcom Publishing, Forge, and Nightfire have to offer. Join the book lovers from the Tor teams as they share a sneak peek at new and upcoming SFF. Watch the panel here.

AIs and Cyberspies: Science Fiction Authors and Technology

Privacy technology and the future of our online lives… join some of today’s top science fiction authors as they discuss their prescient work the intersection of SF and science/tech what the future might bring and where we might be heading. With authors including Martha Wells (The Murderbot Diaries), Becky Chambers (A Psalm for the Wild-Built), Nnedi Okorafor (Remote Control), Neil Sharpson (When the Sparrow Falls), John Scalzi (The Kaiju Preservation Society) as moderator. Watch the panel here.

Tor Teen Presents: The Good, the Bad, and the Deadly

Join YA fantasy authors Charlotte Nicole Davis (The Sisters of Reckoning), Elayne Audrey Becker (Forestborn), Lauren Shippen (Some Faraway Place), Amanda Foody & Christine Lynn Herman (All of Us Villains) and Mark Oshiro (Each of Us a Desert) as they spill the tea on what it’s like to craft story arcs for heroes, villains, and every morally ambiguous character in-between. Watch the panel here.

The Wheel of Time: Exclusive Q&A with Cast and Showrunner (Virtual Screening)

Friday, October 8
2:30-3:30 PM ET
Main Stage 1D Hall

Based on Robert Jordan’s best-selling fantasy novels of the same name, The Wheel of Time is set in a sprawling, epic world where magic exists and only certain women are allowed to access it. The story follows Moiraine (Rosamund Pike), a member of the incredibly powerful all-female organization called the Aes Sedai, as she arrives in the small town of Two Rivers. There, she embarks on a dangerous, world-spanning journey with five young men and women, one of whom is prophesied to be the Dragon Reborn, who will either save or destroy humanity. Join the series cast and showrunner as they discuss bringing this stunning world to life and what fans can most look forward to when the series premieres Friday, November 19th, exclusively on Amazon Prime Video. Watch the panel here.

Space Odesseys: A Chat with Charlie Jane Anders and Tochi Onyebuchi

Saturday, October 9
2:15-3:15 PM ET
Main Stage 1A24 Hall

In this panel, Tor.com and Book Riot contributor Aurora Dominguez will be in conversation with two amazing authors of YA Science Fiction. Charlie Jane Anders is the former editor-in-chief of io9.com, the popular Gawker Media site devoted to science fiction and fantasy. Her debut novel, All the Birds in the Sky, won the Nebula Award for Best Novel and was a Hugo Award finalist. Her journalism has appeared in Salon, the Wall Street Journal, Mother Jones, and many other outlets. Tochi Onyebuchi is the author of the award-winning novella Riot Baby from Tordotcom Publishing. He holds a B.A. from Yale, a M.F.A. in screenwriting from the Tisch School for the Arts, a Master’s degree in droit économique from Sciences Po, and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. His next novel, Goliath, hits shelves on 1/25/22. Watch the panel here.

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Celebrating Valentines with our Favorite SFF Ships

Celebrating Valentines with our Favorite SFF Ships

The term “shipping” has a lot of different meanings: riding a boat, getting a package from Point A to Point B, to name a few. But in the world of fandoms, shipping has an entirely different contextthe wanting/support of two people in a romantic relationship, be is canonly blessed by the creator or subtext brought to full fruition through the wonders of Ao3.

With all the love we’re feeling in the air (or something like that…), we decided on a mission around the office―to discover the Tor staff’s favorite science fiction and fantasy pairings and SHARE THEM WITH THE ENTIRE WORLD! From Delilah Bard and her knives, to Drarry and beyond, things got…wild.

WARNING: Here there be spoilers. Enter at your own risk


Lila and her knives-1Lila and her knives from The Shades of Magic series

Let me start off by saying I would die for/at the hands of Lila Bard, that #StabbyKingBitch. Sure, Lila cares very deeply for Kell, they’ve been through a lot together and she owes him a lot for taking her to Red London and introducing her to magic. But her knives have been with her even longer, are always at her side, and are firmly the things she loves most in the world. Schwab’s series gives us many a scene in which Lila is sharpening/tending to the knives she has, or lustfully admiring new ones with that playfully wicked glint in her eye. There is no love that ever transcends what Lila knows to be true — that at the end of the day, she only has herself, and she has to be able to defend that. Lila has found true independence and strength with her knives, and with them in her hand, she became the person she wanted to be. Could you ask for a better love story than that? I think not.

Christina Orlando, Books Editor & Publicity Coordinator, Tor.com

networkMurderbot and ART from The Murderbot Diaries

Can the grumpy one love the other grumpy one? The answer is a resounding “yes” in Martha Wells’ crushingly relatable protagonist, who just wants to close the door to have a feeling in private. Wells finds an astonishingly deep well of humanity in her proudly non-human narrator, and the books only get better when ART (the terrifyingly intelligent transport vessel who serves as the series’ answer to HAL 9000) comes on the scene and the two begin their grudging partners-to-“wait are we dating now?” partnership. ART understands what all of us in the internet age already know: love is watching the person (or Murderbot) you love watch their favorite media so you can roll around in the refracted joy. Network Effect (May 2020), the first novel-length entry in the series, is the most satisfyingly romantic of them all.

Ruoxi Chen, Associate Editor, Tor.com Publishing

A-Memory-Called-Empire

Three Seagrass and Mahit Dzmare from <>A Memory Called Empire

Spoilers.*
Sometimes you’re an overwhelmed young ambassador in the heart of a hostile space empire that might just manifest destiny you right out of a home, but you can still find a little comfort in poetry and smooches with your political attache.

a bunch of raccoons in a trench coat, Senior Marketing Manager, Tor Books 

UNSPOKEN-1Csorwe and Shuthmili from The Unspoken Name

A flinty orc priestess jock with great arms who survived some sensationally bad wizard parenting and a Seems Delicate, Actually Ineffably Powerful femme sorceress who has zero (0) sense of self-preservation and very pretty hair? Uh, sign me up, every time. Csorwe and Shuthmili share troubled pasts and upbringings as young women raised to a greater purpose at the cost of their personal happiness. The Unspoken Name knows how to bring the hurt down on you like a hammer, but their romance—and their slow discovery of how to value themselves and each other—will leave you happily wallowing in a sea of joyful, queer comfort.

Ruoxi Chen, Associate Editor, Tor.com Publishing

sunmoon
The book Unconquerable Sun and the book Relentless Moon.

Both of these Tor books are coming out in the same month, they’re both sci-fi and they have sun and moon in the title! They have so much in common! They should kiss. Wait, hold on, I have an Instagram idea.

Renata Sweeney, Senior Marketing Manager, Tor Books 

ceruleansea

Linus Baker and Arthur Parnassus from The House in the Cerulean Sea

Linus and Arthur in The House in the Cerulean Sea have a quiet, soft sort of love, like a mug of perfectly warm hot cocoa topped with whipped cream and sprinkles. There’s a secret touch of cinnamon that adds a subtle spiciness. Honestly, this ship is charming, heartwarming, and delights me to no end. Sometimes a family is a by-the-book caseworker, the master of an orphanage, and six magical children. Applicable tropes: #slowburn #pining #fluff #foundfamily

Rebecca Yeager, Ad Promo Manager, Tor Books

goodomens
Crowley and Aziraphale from Good Omens

One is an ex-angel who “did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards.” The other is a Principality that gave away the sword guarding the Garden of Eden to Adam and Eve because he was afraid of them getting cold. Together, they make the dumbass Ineffable Husbands of my literary dreams whose well-meaning but disastrous shenanigans will make this ship sail until the end of times.

Rachel Taylor, Marketing Manager, Tor Books

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