Tordotcom Publishing is delighted to announce the acquisition of two science fiction novellas from Seth Haddon, author of Reborn and Reforged. Maeve MacLysaght of Copps Literary Services negotiated the deal with Oliver Dougherty at Tor Books under the Tordotcom imprint for world rights.
In a galaxy dominated by commercial and military interests, scavengers like Wylla—the unprofitable and unemployable, those who buck the gender binary or other forms of social control—survive on the speed of their engines and the skills of their masks: AI HUDs with the characteristics of the animal they’re shaped after. Wylla’s ship is practically scrap and her Mark I RABBIT is among the crappiest masks on the market, so when she gets a ping about a top-of-the-line mask free for the taking, she relies on all the swiftness of her prey animal instincts to beat other hunters to it.
What she finds isn’t a payday— it’s a woman’s corpse, clearly murdered, and a mask so advanced it’s a classified military secret. When she touches the mask, she hears the voice of Sable, a woman who’s been officially dead for years yet whose body is rapidly cooling at Wylla’s feet. Masks aren’t supposed to retain memory, much less identity, but Sable is real, and she sees Wylla in a way no one ever has. Sees her, and doesn’t find her wanting or unwhole.
Wylla won’t give Sable back to the control of a military that won’t see her as a woman or even a person. Armed with military-grade tech and a lifetime of staying one step ahead of the hunters, Wylla and Sable set off to get answers about Sable’s existence after death from the man who discarded her once before: Sable’s ex-husband.
“I don’t think I’ve ever written something that came together quite like Volatile Memory. I won’t say my other books resisted me, but sometimes the flow was elusive for a chapter or two. Not this novella. I knew Sable instantly, and I learnt who Wylla was through Sable’s eyes, the way I might from overhearing a good friend reminisce on a friendship. I can’t explain it any other way: I knew them. Gender, capitalism, identity, and rage—in a way, I think these are the four tenets of transhumanism, posthumanism, and cyberhumanism, all of which are philosophies I believe are natural reactions to the current state of our world and concern about its future, and all of which I was drawn to when writing Volatile Memory.
“When I envisioned a publisher for this book, I hoped for Tordotcom—a publisher that would embrace the weirdness of the form, the unabashed queerness, and the uncomfortable questions Volatile Memory asks of its readers. To not only have this publisher but an editor who right from the start saw what Volatile Memory is at its core is, quite frankly, a dream come true. I can’t wait to share it with the world.”
—Seth Haddon, author
“I am over the moon to be working with Seth on this strange, bloody, and heartfelt book. Volatile Memory captivated me immediately with its incredible tension and immediacy, and it kept me thinking long after my first read with its complex questions about embodiment and humanity. I’m so excited for readers to dive headfirst into this sapphic, anticapitalist whirlwind.”
—Oliver Dougherty, editor
“Volatile Memory does what good sci-fi should do: it takes us to worlds unknown in a dilapidated spaceship to explore the strangeness of our own world from the perspective of the queer, the gender weirdos, the boundary pushers of today. It says, ‘we’re going to the stars someday.’ It’s a hug and a good cry and a weird, delightful, sometimes gross romp. And it looks stylish as hell doing it.”
—Maeve MacLysaght, literary agent
Seth Haddon is the queer Australian writer of Reforged and Reborn. He is a video game designer and producer, has a degree in Ancient History, and previously worked with cats. He lives in Sydney with his geriatric cat. Some of his previous adventures include exploring Pompeii with a famous archaeologist and being chased through a train station by a nun.
