A young man rejects his chosen-one upbringing and discovers a much stranger life in a city full of doors and powers. Through layered storytelling that is both fantastical and familiar, Chandrasekera re-mythologizes the boundless ways that people shape and reshape history and the world.

At the grave of her beloved aunt, a queer, blue-skinned, Palestinian American woman ponders the next stage of her life and how it is informed by her family’s past. Cypher deftly explores the complexities of the stories we tell about ourselves, and the histories hidden in tales of magic and transformation. 

In De Marcken’s compassionate novella, a nameless, undead protagonist finds new ways to navigate the landscapes shared by the living and the dead, the human and the inhuman. Her journey poignantly demonstrates new ways to grieve in and for a world we often take for granted. 

Over the course of a single day, six astronauts orbit the earth, witnessing repeated sunrises, tending to their tasks and their bodies, and watching as a typhoon gathers far below. Meditative and precise, Orbital fosters an essential and global shift in perspective. 

Hattman’s elegiac novella follows two women as they cross a shifting, surreal, post-climate disaster landscape, seeking a place where they can grow food. Tender and rich with memories of the world as we know it, Sift is a meditation on isolation, change, and loss. 

The loyal mechanic to an emperor tells a story of revolution, community, and love in Johnson’s novel, which begins as a supernatural murder mystery before expanding to fearlessly consider what it might take for one world in the multiverse to achieve massive structural change. 

Johnson’s novel takes the form of the story a young woman tells to an AI god she intends to destroy. Encompassing several worlds, many gods, and peoples displaced and destroyed by war and colonialism, her tale is woven through with complex ideas about selfhood, history, and freedom. 

In a world long divided by conflict, a famed pacifist is coerced into a mission of war alongside a zealot who cares only for victory. Mohamed melds inventive worldbuilding with a nuanced consideration of power, violence, nationalism, and what it takes to achieve peace. 

A space opera and a profound lesson in changing one’s mind, Some Desperate Glory follows a girl raised in a violent space cult who learns how to unravel the lies of her upbringing. Tesh shows that paradigm shifts are possible, however wrenchingly difficult they may be. 

Returning after a long absence, a story-collecting cleric finds that their abbey’s leader has died, and their distant family waits at the gates, demanding the body. Tracing the multitude of connections that exist in a single life, Vo illustrates the transformative power that grief has for an individual and for a community.