At the beginning of each month, we here at Tor.com will post the next two months of our schedule of original short fiction. Check back monthly to get excited for upcoming short stories, novelettes, and novellas on Tor.com! Below the cut you’ll find information on new stories in January and February by Charlie Jane Anders, Ken Liu, Harry Turtledove, and more.
January 1
“Ekaterina and the Firebird”
Written by Abra Staffin-Wiebe
Edited by Liz Gorinsky
Illustration by Anna and Elena Balbusso
Minneapolis writer Abra Staffin-Wiebe brings us a new take on an old Russian fairy tale: the quest for a blessing from the elusive firebird. In this iteration, young Ekaterina celebrates her fourteenth birthday, and a rare firebird sighting sets in motion a chain of events that will change her life forever.
January 8
“The Eighth-Grade History Class Visits the Hebrew Home for the Aging”
Written by Harry Turtledove
Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Illustration by Robert Hunt
Some people will tell you that world-class fame is better than living to a contented old age. Other people disagree. One of those other people might possibly be the protagonist of this tale by Harry Turtledove, master of the counterfactual.
January 14
“The Intelligence Director”
Written by Jessica Brody
Edited by Janine O’Malley
Illustrated by Goñi Montes
Hidden deep in the southwest desert, away from civilization, a top-secret, high-tech research facility is experimenting with many forbidden things. Things that even most of the employees don’t know about. The task of protecting the compound and keeping its various experiments under wraps is Director Raze, Head of Security for Diotech Corporation. But when one of those experiments manages to escape and Raze is to blame, he must figure out a way to recover the missing property without exposing himself. In a place where minds can be manipulated and secrets can be wiped from existence, how far will one man go to keep his own secrets buried?
January 15
“The Cartography of Sudden Death”
Written by Charlie Jane Anders
Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Illustration by Richard Anderson
Time travel doesn’t actually solve problems. It just makes them more complex…
January 22
“Nighttime in Caeli-Amur”
Written by Rjurik Davidson
Illustration by Allen Williams
Caeli-Amur is a city-state where magic and technology are interchangeable; where minotaurs and sirens are real; where philosopher-assassins and seditionists are not the most dangerous elements in a city alive with threat. During the day, the ordinary citizens do what they must to get along. But at night, the spirit of the ancient city comes alive, to haunt the old places.
January 28
“The Bridge of Snow”
Written by Marie Rutkoski
Edited by Janine O’Malley
Illustration by Pascal Campion
In Arin’s childhood, before the war, there was still time to tell stories.
January 29
The Anderson Project
Written by Ken Liu, Judith Moffett, and Kathleen Ann Goonan
Edited by David G. Hartwell
Illustration by Richard Anderson
The Anderson Project is the successor to 2012’s Palencar Project. Judith Moffett and Ken Liu have written one story each, inspired by a beautiful original illustration by artist Richard Anderson.
January 29
“Reborn”
Written by Ken Liu
Edited by David G. Hartwell
Illustration by Richard Anderson
Ken Liu is among the most prominent new award-winning SF writers of the last decade, and this vision of a really uncanny alien invasion set in Boston, MA, is a stunner, with echoing reverberations, of love, identity, resistance and revolution.
February 4
“Space Ballet”
Written by Judith Moffett
Edited by David G. Harwell
Illustration by Richard Anderson
Students at the Center for Dream Research struggle to interpret a cryptic precognitive dream, a group effort that may avert a disaster.
February 5
“Mad Maudlin”
Written by Marie Brennan
Edited by Paul Stevens
Illustration by Iain McCraig
For to see mad Tom o’Bedlam, ten thousand miles she’s traveled.
February 12
“Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?”
Written by Kathleen Goonan
Edited by David G. Hartwell
Illustration by Richard Anderson
Kathleen Ann Goonan’s stories and novels often evoke a deep desire for some form of utopian future, both better and somehow wilder that the present. This is a story about an animal rights activist and a genius parrot, inter-species communication, and the dream of space, a great leap forward in several ways.
February 19
“The Price of Doing Business”
Written by D.B. Jackson
Illustration by Chris McGrath
Ethan Kaille is a Thieftaker in Boston in the years leading up to the American Revolution. Having suffered losses and reversals in his life, he is neither naive nor without considerable personal resources. He isn’t just a detective; he’s also a conjurer, which makes him someone who lives on the margins of polite society. Some people fear his powers; others merely find him a distasteful rogue who should simply go away.
February 25
“Cold War”
Written by Adam Christopher
Edited by Paul Stevens
Illustration by Victor Mosquera
Dropped on a frozen planet under suspicious circumstances, a group of marines struggles to discover the true objective of their mission. “Cold War” is set in the same universe as Adam Christopher’s novel The Burning Dark.
February 26
“Jubilee”
Written by Karl Schroeder
Edited by Marco Palmieri
Illustration by Richard Anderson
A new short story by Karl Schroeder, set in the same universe as his upcoming science fiction novel Lockstep.
