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 stories in October and November by Carrie Vaughn, Max Gladstone, Elizabeth Bear, and more.
October and November’s fiction contains a Parish Council, a vampire dad, tons of birds, and a dog. To find out all the details, check below the cut.
October 1
“Daughter of Necessity”
Written by Marie Brennan
Illustration by Ashley Mackenzie
Edited by Paul Stevens
By day she crafts; by night she unmakes. Surely somewhere, in all the myriad crossings of the threads, there is a future in which all will be well. Marie Brennan offers an intriguing new spin on a classic tale.
October 8
“Mrs. Sorensen and the Sasquatch”
Written by Kelly Barnhill
Illustration by Chris Buzelli
Edited by Ann VanderMeer
When Mr. Sorensen—a drab, cipher of a man—passes away, his lovely widow falls in love with a most unsuitable mate. Enraged and scandalized (and armed with hot-dish and gossip and seven-layer bars), the Parish Council turns to the old priest to fix the situation—to convince Mrs. Sorensen to reject the green world and live as a widow ought. But the pretty widow has plans of her own.
October 14
“The Girl in the High Tower”
Written by Gennifer Albin
Illustration by Goñi Montes
Edited by Janine O’Malley
In Arras time and space can be manipulated—and so can people. Beautiful Spinsters work day and night in four coventries to ensure a perfect world, but above them all, at the top of the high tower, works the Creweler. Until the Creweler makes a decision to help a young girl escape. Now bound by the strands of the universe, trapped between her memories and mistakes, subject to brutal experiments, Loricel has one more impossible decision to make. The Girl in the High Tower is an original short story set in Gennifer Albin’s Crewel World. The final book in the series, Unraveled, is available October 7th.
October 15
“Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza”
Written by Carrie Vaughn
Illustration by John Picacio
Edited by George R.R. Martin
The Wild Cards universe has been thrilling readers for over 25 years. In Carrie Vaughn’s “Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza,” ace Ana Cortez discovers that sometimes to be truly healed, you must return to your roots.
October 22
“This Chance Planet”
Written by Elizabeth Bear
Illustration by Robert Hunt
Edited by Ellen Datlow
“This Chance Planet” by Elizabeth Bear is a near future science fiction story about a young Russian waitress with ambitions to become an engineer and her musician boyfriend, who wants her to gestate a liver for money so his band can tour. Plus, there’s a dog.
October 29
“A Kiss with Teeth”
Written by Max Gladstone
Illustration by Dave Palumbo
Edited by Marco Palmieri
Vlad has grown distant from his wife. His son has trouble at school. And he has to keep his sharp teeth hidden.
November 5
“Where the Lost Things Are”
Written by Rudy Rucker and Terry Bisson
Illustration by Chris Buzelli
Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Thanks to “bluegene,” life is long. But out Route 42 near Goshen, it’s also kind of dull. Just the thing to encourage an expedition into the only actual other universe, the place where . . . but that would be telling.
November 12
“The Walk”
Written by Dennis Etchison
Illustration by Jeffrey Alan Love
Edited by Ellen Datlow
“The Walk,” by Dennis Etchison, is a neat little horror story about the dog eat dog world of Hollywood in which a director and writer have very different ideas of how their collaboration should proceed.
November 19
“Where the Trains Turn”
Written by Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen
Illustration by Greg Ruth
Edited by Peter Joseph
I don’t like to think about the past. But I cannot stop remembering my son.
Emma Nightingale prefers to remain grounded in reality as much as possible. Yet she’s willing to indulge her nine year-old son Rupert’s fascination with trains, as it brings him closer to his father, Gunnar, from whom she is separated. Once a month, Gunnar and Rupert venture out to follow the rails and watch the trains pass. Their trips have been pleasant, if uneventful, until one afternoon Rupert returns in tears. “The train tried to kill us,” he tells her.
Rupert’s terror strikes Emma as merely the product of an overactive imagination. After all, his fears could not be based in reality, could they?
Published here for the first time in English, “Where the Trains Turn” won first prize in the Finnish science-fiction magazine Portti’s annual short story competition and then went on to win the Atorox Award for best Finnish science fiction or fantasy short story.
