Our new ebook anthology: Some of the Best From Tor.com 2012 is out today! This features ten of our favorite original stories published on the site in the past year. All of these stories are now available as a single download in a FREE mini ebook. Of course, you can always read the stories for free right here, whenever you’d like, but for those that like to read as they’re moving about, Some of the Best of Tor.com 2012 presents an ideal single package.
Download it for:
Note: The free ebook download offer has expired as of January 1, 2014
The Table of Contents
“Dormanna” by Gene Wolfe
Illustration by John Jude Palencar
“Dormanna” is part of The Palencar Project, a five-story series curated by senior Tor Books editor David G. Hartwell. All five are based on a singular piece of art by John Jude Palencar and were released every Wednesday ths past March.
“Portrait of Lisane da Patagnia” by Rachel Swirsky
Illustration by Sam Weber
The line between art and magic is a treacherous thing.
“The Mongolian Wizard” by Michael Swanwick
Illustration by Greg Manchess
A story of a very unusual international conference in a fractured Europe that never was. This story launched a new fiction series at Tor.com of stand-alone stories all set in a common world created by Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Michael Swanwick.
“A Tall Tail” by Charles Stross
Illustration by Greg Manchess
This year’s Tor.com birthday story, which began an annual Rocket Stories tradition for the site. The rockets in this story by Charles Stross are a little dark, and perhaps, a little too real.
“The Ghosts of Christmas” by Paul Cornell
Illustration by Scott Bakal
This year’s holiday story, provided by Paul Cornell, in which the reader is asked… which is harder: seeing your own future—or truly knowing your own past?
“The Finite Canvas” by Lee Mandelo
Illustration by Rick Berry
We are marked by what we have been. And erasing either of those can have unpredictable consequences…
“Am I Free to Go?” by Kathryn Cramer
Illustration by Scott Bakal
The line between utopia and dystopia…is, often, who you are. Or who your neighbors think you are.
“About Fairies” by Pat Murphy
Illustration by Christopher Silas Neal
Jennifer and her co-workers create fairy lands for a toy company, all the while cultivating their own personal fairy worlds….
“Our Human” by Adam-Troy Castro
Illustration by John Jude Palencar
On a savage backwater world, the last ragged survivors of an expedition to hunt down the infamous war criminal known as The Beast Magrison set off into an inhospitable wilderness in search of the alien village that may be sheltering this beast.
“Faster Gun” by Elizabeth Bear
Illustration by Richard Anderson
It’s hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean, and a hundred times too big to be a ship. It looks like nothing anyone ever saw. And it’s crashed just outside Tombstone with something alive inside.
I even preordered it on Amazon.com
Already read the first two stories, I didn’t like the “Protrait” but enjoyed “Dormanna”.
Is it possible to get these as an ePub download on the site? (I know, I know it’s available for free on all those wondeful websites, but say you do not want to go through the credit card hassle?)
Thank you!
The Barnes & Noble link takes me to the 2011 edition. I can’t find the 2012 on their site even with a search.
Sorry about that, haughtc. It looks like Barnes & Noble hasn’t quite updated its system yet. We’ll re-add the link once it does.
Come on, guys, no epub version?? The Barnes & Noble offering is no good for anyone outside the US.
Nice to see the book’s available through Amazon.co.uk this year. Link for those that can’t immediately find it.
Ooh, I can get it on the Kobo site in Epub format even though I’m in Ireland! Yesssss…..
http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Some-Best-Tor-com-2012/book-EeFORhdIJ0GY8ajJEpgrLA/page1.html?s=1Wf32wLrAkWs3phAIan9Xw&r=1
iTunes doesn’t appear to be delivering to the uk, although amazon.co.uk does.
Can I add a request for an ePub version?
Please, release the book (ePUB) format on a non-regional DRM site like weightlessbooks.com or elsewhere.
Amazon gives me: “This title is not available for customers from your location in: Asia & Pacific“
Jeez, your system sees a link to your own product on a site you have authorised as spam? Oversensitive or what?
The Amazon.com link can be easily hacked into an Amazon.co.uk link by editing the URL to end .co.uk instead of .com.
Nice to see at least some bits of the world supported, though I agree entirely that it would be good to see a region free epub. Surely if Tor.Com has the rights to present these stories individually to the whole world then it has the right to do so collectively?
O.K., if I have not Kindle, how I can download this ebook to PC?
@fenrir,
There is a free Kindle application which allows you to read books on screen. You can download it from Amazon and it will enable you to read the book.
If you’ve a tablet or smartphone then there’s a kindle app for iOS or Android which will let you read on that as though it was a Kindle. Probably a better experience than reading it on a desktop PC.
If you’ve something you’d like to read it on, but it can’t get the Kindle app then a very useful bit of free software called Calibre would let you convert it to the format of your choice. Install the Kindle application on the PC, download the book and read it into Calibre then you’d be able to convert it to Sony, Rocket, Microsoft or other obscure formats as needed.
Hey, the barnes & noble nook edition is available now: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/some-of-the-best-from-torcom-patrick-nielsen-hayden/1113876857
Thanks for making this available!
Kindle titles are not available in my country. I also do not have any iOS device. Please make it available in ePUB format!
Kobo download (link above) worked for me in Austalia
No PDF version? :(
It’s a bit sad about all this giveaways cause it’s never possible for me to get it from Sweden. Can’t you make it open in more apple stores?
The Barnes and Noble version is also not available to customers outside the US. They only inform you of this AFTER you have gone through the whole registration process, though, with credit card info etc. Save yourself the trouble.
The Kobo link posted by Hatgirl in comment #8 worked for me in Sweden, though, AND it’s an ePub file! You still have to register, but there was no hassle about adresses and credit cards, just a very simple registration process and then the download button worked.
Have been reading this on Kindle while traveling — thanks so much for making these stories available in this format! For one reason and another I’d missed some of them.
“Ghosts of Christmas” is now one of my favorite short stories.