sci fi – lgbtq+

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Summary: Running on caffeine and spite with nothing left to prove.  GOLDEN GIRLS meets FIREFLY in this rollicking space opera adventure! Maryn Alessi retired from mercenary service after her last assignment went horribly sideways and settled down on a quiet planet with the love of her life. Unexpectedly widowed, Maryn must fulfill a promise to return her mate’s ashes to zer home planet for funeral rites, but a brutal civil war has destabilized space travel. Former Artemis Corps sisters-in-arms and their sassy ship, the Golden Girl, are up to the task, counting on luck and their rather sketchy cargo business to get Maryn passage through the contested star lanes. But when the crew of the Girl rescues survivors of a ruthless war crime, Maryn and her ride-or-die friends must take up their old profession to save the lives of innocents from a genocidal dictator.   WHISKEY AND WARFARE is the first of The Team Huntress Flights.  

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Summary: Can you leave your heart on the other side of the galaxy? When Wouter, a down-to-earth dyslexic caretaker, accidentally activates a travel disc sent by his late brother, he finds himself whisked away to a distant planet. Desperate to go home and reassure his grieving mother he’s alive, he’s instead stuck struggling to fill his brother’s shoes to keep the amphibian bani from freezing to death. Nif, a bani healer, clings to human music as a lifeline to memories of joy and a world beyond grief after losing his mate. Intrigued by the culture behind the songs he cherishes, he volunteers for Wouter’s support team—even as many of his kin distrust the humans, fearing exploitation of their fuel production. Their first meeting is one of necessity—a human in need and a bani ready to mend. As they navigate mistranslations, killer plants, and space pirates, a deeper connection blossoms between them. Each shared moment and conquered challenge draws them closer to an inevitable farewell. Will Wouter leave his heart or his home? In this slow-burn ace romance, discover a low-angst intergalactic adventure where true connection transcends stars and species. ___________________________ Content notes are available in the book's front matter and on the author's website.

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Summary: In Space, No One Can Hear You Sing … Grayson Eck's life is a drag, in all the best possible ways. He's perfectly happy working in the belt alone as a wildcatter, prospecting asteroids by … well, not exactly by day. At night, he transforms into the Inner System's most famous Valeriana Storm — a secret identity that even his closest friends and family don't know about. When someone tries to steal one of Greyson's mining scores, he has half a mind to just toss the guy off his rock and into open space. But that all changes when he discovers the stranger's identity — and that he knows Greyson's secret. Now he's being chased by a pirate, and has to decide what to do with the apparent thief while also putting on his show. What's a space drag queen to do?

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Summary: Earth on the Cusp of the Twenty-Second Century Just think how the world has changed in the last seventy-six years. In 1948, scientists ran the first computer program, and "the Ultimate Car of the Future," the futuristic, three wheeled Davis Divan, debuted. Since then, a succession of inventions—the personal computer, the internet, the World Wide Web, smart phones and social media—have transformed every aspect of our lives. How might the next seventy-six years change us, in ways we can barely even begin to imagine, as culture, climate change, politics and technology continue to reshape the world? Earth in 2100 will be as unrecognizable to us as today would be to someone from 1948. Eighteen writers tackled this challenge, creating an amazing array of sci-fi possibilities. From emotional AI's to photosynthetic children, from virtual worlds to a post-urban society, our writers serve up compelling slices of life from an Earth that's just around the corner. So dive in and and take a wild ride into these amazing visions of our collective future.

Word Count: Click here to reveal85000 (Click here to hide)

Summary: The fate of Lida looms. Agetha thought her fate was sealed, pushed to the edge of the colony to die. But with the revelation that the biomass is not only intelligent, but sentient, changes to colony are accelerating, threatening its very existence. Those who were controlled by the biomass once again have free will. Now, the human colonists are raising their voices and for the first time really influencing their new home. The planet-wide consciousness is slipping into a crisis of identity, when it doesn’t even have a sense of self. The wilds surrounding the colony are becoming increasingly unstable, and the colonists find themselves divided into those who have been touched by the biomass and those who are still wholly human. Can one small colony survive its inner conflicts as well as the titanic might of an entire planet?

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Summary: Silya comes into her own, but will she be enough? Silya finally has everything she always wanted: She's the Hencha Queen, head of the Temple, and is mastering her newfound talents. So why does the world pick now to fall apart? Her once-nemesis Raven is off riding dragons, and their mutual friend (and her ex) Aik is nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, a new threat menaces the Heartland from the East. If she can't convince a reluctant city council to prepare for the worst, she may lose everything—and everyone—she's ever cared about. As Silya wields her abilities, dry wit, and sheer determination to save her city, she's joined by Raven and his new friends, just as a dark storm threatens to sweep them all away. Will their aid help tip the scales? And will she and Raven finally find out what happened to Aik? Forget messy. Things just got apocalyptic.

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Summary: In November 2039, marine scientist Wend Taylor heaves themself aboard a zero-emissions boat skippered by elusive nature photographer Viola Yang. Guided by instinct, ocean dreams, and a shared birthday in 1972, they barter stories for passage across the Pacific. Aljon, Viola’s younger cousin, keeps a watchful eye and an innovative galley. Story by story, the trio rethink secrets, flying dreams, and how they experience their own minds. When they reach Hawaiʻi and prepare to part ways, opportunity and mystery pull them closer together. Both scientific and personal discoveries take shape as they join with ex-lovers, lost friends, and found family. Wend must navigate an ever-shifting future, complicated by bioengineered microbes and a plot to silence scientists, entangled with inexplicable dreams and a calling to Be the Sea.

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Summary: If we know anything by the third and final installment of this thrilling trilogy, it's that Royal Connate Olivienne Dracore is an adventurist, not a soldier. Yet after the events over King's Marsh, the people and land are in need of both. It's a good thing her beloved Captain Castellan Tosh is one of the most powerful psi their world has ever seen. Together, with Olivienne's protective Shield team, they seek to not only right generations of wrongs perpetrated by one family, but to finally solve the mystery of the Makers.

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Summary: For years, the whispers and legends of a lost city hiding in the Pacific Ocean were just that; legend. On the day Kaimi discovers his parents, the Queen and King of Mu, murdered, Mu’s most powerful weapon fired, sending a pulse rushing towards the North American west coast. After the 2025 Great Pacific Pulse Event, or Pulse, vomited up much of humankind’s trash in the Pacific Ocean along the North American west coast. The mysterious occurrence causing the largest environmental disaster in human history, people are no longer certain there is nothing concealed in the depths of the ocean. Scientist Karen Linn and billionaire investor Michael Donovan want to find out what actually happened that day five years ago. Will Michael’s life in the adult entertainment industry and Karen’s moniker in pseudoscience keep them as social pariahs, or are they on the cusp of finding a civilization that has been kept out of our grasp, deep in the world’s largest ocean? How does the event from five years ago tie into the murder of the Queen and King of Mu? What lies under the sea may be bigger than anyone can imagine, and neither civilization may be ready for the truth.

Word Count: Click here to reveal72000 (Click here to hide)

Summary: On a peaceful evening, Suicide's meditation is interrupted when a ship crashes near her remote home on Amargosa. It's a modified lifepod containing Tishla, First Citizen of Hanar, and her daughter. A coup has sent Tishla fleeing for help from Suicide and her surrogate son, JT Austin. Together, they will smuggle Tishla to the Realm, humanity's reluctant enemy, to plead for help from the Sovereign, the absolute ruler dubbed "the Father of All Gelt." Tishla will submit to a life of indentured servitude if He will restore Hanar's independent status. But an old foe seizes the opportunity to claim Tishla for himself, revenge for the deaths of his uncle and cousins, the Laral family, who brutally occupied Amargosa for a year. JT refuses to allow this and challenges her would-be master to a duel for her indenture contract. Both JT and Suicide will risk death in the arena to save Tishla and Hanar. But is it already too late? Through flashbacks to her time on Aphrodite, Suicide's past is revealed, how she met the founder of Cubism and the radical who corrupted the new faith, how she worked to build a new Aphrodite after centuries of civil conflict, and how a woman named Priya awakened both a capacity for love and a need to create art in Suicide.

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Summary: RISE (noun / verb) Eight definitions to inspire writers around the world, and an unlimited number of possible stories to tell: 1) An upward slope or movement 2) A beginning or origin 3) An increase in amount or number 4) An angry reaction 5) To take up arms 6) To return from death 7) To become heartened or elated 8) To exert oneself to meet a challenge Rise features 300-word speculative flash fiction stories from across the rainbow spectrum, from the minds of the writers of Queer Sci Fi.

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Summary: Look to the skies! Brave adventurers face new relationships and adversity in all sizes, from steampunk dirigibles to harpies, giant bees to garden gnomes, and winged dinosaurs to sky pirates. Isolated mountain peaks, clifftop cities, and battles in the sky abound in this sapphic anthology focused on overcoming challenges awaiting in the clouds. If you like diverse stories with lesbian and sapphic-centric heroines enjoying the thrill of adventure high in the air, buy Lofty Mountains today! With stories by: Seanan McGuire, Rosiee Thor, Rebecca Kim Wells, Maya Gittelman, Carmen Loup, Sara Codair, William C. Tracy, N.L. Bates, L.R. Gould, Robin C.M. Duncan, and J.S. Fields

Word Count: Click here to reveal125000 (Click here to hide)

Summary: Taking shelter from a sudden rainstorm, Ardyn of the Athla’naa finds a strange object, inscribed with the ancient writing of his people. Except, it’s all wrong. The artifact is made of a metal he’s never seen before, not even among the metal-forging Medellans. What’s even stranger? Whenever he touches the object, the inscription glows. In a quest to seek the truth behind this discovery, Ardyn meets Jevan, a Medellan trader. They risk both their lives and the tenuous truce between their people by venturing deep into forbidden woods, known as the Aria'una. What Jevan and Ardyn discover could change their world forever. Before they can decide what to do, hunters bring them before the Athla’naa Triumvirate, who are intent on making an example of them for daring to trespass in the Aria'una. Will they face the consequences of their defiance or risk everything to flee and expose the truth?

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Summary: A guard and a thief. What could go wrong? Aik has fallen hopelessly in love with his best friend. But Raven's a thief, which makes things … complicated. Oh, and Raven has just been kidnapped by a dragon. Now Aik is off on a quest of his own, to hunt down the foul beast and make them give back his … friend? Lover? Soulmate? The whole not-knowing thing just makes everything harder. Meanwhile, the world of Tharassas is falling apart, besieged by earthquakes, floods, and strange creatures no one has ever seen before. Aik's ex, Silya has gone back to Gullton to try to save her people as the Hencha Queen, and Aik's stuck in a caravan with her mother and a damnable magical gauntlet that won't let him be. He has to find Raven, before it’s too late. Things were messy before … but now they're much, much worse.

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Summary: The near future is progressively free from discrimination based on race, class, and sexual orientation. But in a world populated by the gifted, fifteen-year-old Alejandro Aragon (Alé) is part of the only remaining minority—he’s a Deficient. Powerless. The one that accelerated genetics left behind. Alé knows that he’ll need a miracle to graduate and pursue his dream of a legal career in the capital. His only ally is his best friend Yalamba, an outspoken and exceptionally gifted artist renowned for her unique ability to draw things into existence. But when she’s kidnapped in a hate crime against her ability, it appears that Alé has every motive and no believable alibi. To prove his innocence and track down the real culprit, Alé teams up with the other outcasts in school, who each have their own reasons for getting involved. But the deeper they dig, the more they fear Yalamba’s kidnapping is linked to a string of unsolved murders against the exceptionally gifted. With time running out, Alé must discover who he really is if he and his new friends plan to track down the culprit, clear his name, and rescue Yalamba—all before she herself is drawn out of existence.

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Summary: "Today I swam through MOMA. Leon says it was a waste, encasing the art, then flooding the museum—frivolous and elitist. I say it was a gesture of optimism, a triumph of technology and political will." Want to thrill to the possibilities of a hopeful future? We asked a bunch of sci-fi writers to spin tales of a better future, imagining ways in which the world might become a better place. From a swim through an underwater museum to a joyous dance at a futuristic concert, from the eco-friendly aftermath of an alien invasion and retreat to the refurbishing of an old climate-ravaged home in New Vancouver, these fourteen short sci-fi stories will to restore your faith in the future. A world transformed is a world we can all hope for. Book three in the Writers Save the World short story anthologies. If you enjoy this book, check out Fix the World and Save the World.

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Summary: After a job gone wrong, Special Agent Olgo is trapped within the bowels of Mars with no means of escape. The device that imprisons the trauma within them is about to fail, and the past terrors kept hidden by it must be contained for Olgo’s sanity and everyone's safety. From the darkness comes a tiny voice, and a tinier hope: "Hello?" *** The first book in the ‘Cold Rush' Verse follows Agent Olgo as their corporate masters give them what could be their big break: a mission to Mars. But trying to change the working conditions in the planet's underground cities proves more challenging than the agent could have imagined. When a wearable device Olgo uses to block emotions begins to fail, an unlikely friendship changes everything as Olgo struggles to prevent spilling more blood on the Red Planet.

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Summary: The commander writes strategy in ink, the captain in orders, the trooper in blood. – Teachings of the Jeskan Guard The nation of Jeska stands at a crossroads. As the newly-appointed king, Corren must contend with civilian distrust, an imminent invasion, and his fractured family. His wife and son are missing—trapped behind enemy lines. He’s brought evidence the rising insurrection is funded by the shamans, but instead of disbanding that guild, the Council of Elders believes the enemy’s lies that Corren’s corrupt. In days, an army of invaders—including hundreds of child conscripts brainwashed by the shamans and their allies—will march into Jeska. To save his country, Corren will need all his strategic genius, the determination of his guardsmen … and dangerous new technology wrested from a device that doesn’t belong in this world.

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Summary: A damaged ship, a dying shipmate–can she save both? Under attack! The flight back to Hyvilma should have been the easy part for the crew of the Majera–until a deadly ambush by pirates sends them reeling through hyperspace. Now getting to the planet in time is the only way Captain Kitra Yilmaz can save her dying friend. But landing at Hyvilma may be impossible: war has broken out on the Frontier. With illustrations by Hugo Finalist Lorelei Esther.

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Summary: A single father fights to retain control as he shares his body and mind with an evolving AI. It’s been nine years since the government banned all technology. So, when Joel Lodowick, a young transgender father struggling to support his five-year-old daughter, has an old bionic upload itself into his head, he is faced with a decision: Go to the cops and risk prosecution? Or use the robot’s skills to turn his life around? Scared of losing his daughter, Joel chooses the latter. Heightened intelligence and physical enhancements quickly land him a better job and a brighter future. But things take a sinister turn when Joel realizes his uninvited companion has an agenda of its own, which may or may not include leaving him in control. Unable to approach the government who covered up the truth about AI sentience, Joel finds himself on the run. With his daughter’s life on the line and his own body turning against him, he must find a way to convince the bionic in his head to value his human life before he loses the chance forever. Find out what happens in My Heart is Human by Reese Hogan!