Next SFF Author: Joseph Sheridan Le_Fanu

Previous SFF Author: Victoria Lee

SFF Author: Yoon Ha Lee

Yoon Ha Lee is a writer and mathematician from Houston, Texas, whose work has appeared in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He has published over forty short stories, and his critically acclaimed collection Conservation of Shadows was released in 2013. He lives in Louisiana with his family and an extremely lazy cat, and has not yet been eaten by gators.
Click here for more stories by Yoon Ha Lee.

Ninefox Gambit: Geeky, hard sci-fi for Stephenson fans

Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

In an advanced, multi-planetary empire replete with advanced technology and magical mysticism, Captain Kel Cheris finds herself resorting to heretical tactics to save her troops when she puts down a sacrilegious rebellion. Unfortunately, her superiors in Ninefox Gambit (2016) aren’t quite sympathetic to her play, choosing to use her as a tool to revive and serve as a bodily host to the immortal spirit form of General Shuos Jedao to save the Fortress of Scattered Needles, a religious stronghold that’s critical to the civilization’s magics.

Raven Stratagem: A must-read for fans of Ninefox Gambit

Raven Stratagem by Yoon Ha Lee

In the second installment of Yoon Ha Lee’s MACHINERIES OF EMPIRE series, Raven Stratagem (2017), Captain Kel Charis finds herself possessed by the 300-odd year old General Shuos Jedao. Naturally, Jedao’s existence isn’t good news for anyone nearby, which a Kel fleet soon discovers when Jedao (posing as Charis) takes command of the fleet for reasons unknown. Though Jedao has promised to carry out the fleet’s original mission, fighting the heritical Haftn whose exotic technologies mysteriously function in calendrical space,

Kevin Wei´s rating: 4 | Yoon Ha Lee | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |

Revenant Gun: Saving the best for last

Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee

The finale to Yoon Ha Lee’s MACHINERIES OF EMPIRE trilogy, Hugo-nominated Revenant Gun (2018) tells the story of what remains of the Hexarchate ten years after Kel Cheris/Jedao threw it headfirst into civil war. On one side of the war, the Protectorate attempts to reunite the former Hexarchate and restore its violent calendrical (magic) system. On the other side of the war is the Compact, Cheris’s newborn state founded on a completely different calendrical system that simultaneously ends the gory human sacrifices of the Hexarchate and grants its subjects a higher level of individual choice and control over the system’s calendrical effects.

Kevin Wei´s rating: 4.5 | Yoon Ha Lee | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Dragon Pearl: A young girl, chasing adventure, finds herself

Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee

The Rick Riordan Presents imprint’s mission statement is, in part, “to publish great middle grade authors from underrepresented cultures and backgrounds, to let them tell their own stories inspired by the mythology and folklore of their own heritage,” leading to the publication of novels like Roshani Chokshi’s Aru Shah and the End of Time and J.C. Cervantes’ The Storm Runner, and most recently joined by Yoon Ha Lee’s Dragon Pearl (2019),

Magazine Monday: Theodore Sturgeon Award Nominees

The Theodore Sturgeon Award will be given to one lucky author at next weekend’s Campbell Conference Awards Banquet in Lawrence, Kansas. The banquet caps both the Writers Workshop in Science Fiction and the Novel Writers Workshop in Science fiction, and is the kick-off event for the Intensive English Institute on the Teaching of Science Fiction. Writers mingle with academics, which must make gathering that a studious reader would find pretty lively. I wish I were going to be there myself.

Instead, I’m doing the next best thing and reviewing all of the nominees for the Sturgeon Award.

Magazine Monday: Clarkesworld, Issue 80

“Soulcatcher,” the opening story in the May 2013 issue of Clarkesworld, is one of James Patrick Kelly’s best stories. His protagonist, Klary, is the owner of an art gallery who has lured xeni-Harvel Asher, the ambassador from the Four Worlds, into her establishment. The xeni is “embodied” as a human male, but he retains the charisma that causes some to liken his species to the human legend of faeries; he is nearly irresistible. But Klary has been on a regimen of emotion, and besides, this xeni ruined her life,

Magazine Monday: Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issues 142 and 143

Issue 142 of Beneath Ceaseless Skies is a special double issue for BCS Science-Fantasy Month 2, which, according to the magazine’s website, features “stories that combine the awe-inspiring fantastical settings of BCS fiction with futuristic details like spacecraft, laser rifles, and advanced scientific concepts.” It makes for the best issue of the magazine so far in 2014.

“The Breath of War” by Aliette de Bodard takes place at the end, or at least near the end, of a war, on Voc,

SHORTS: Lee, Lingen, Skerry, Sanderson, St George, Benford

There is so much free or inexpensive short fiction available on the internet these days. Here are a few stories we read this week that we wanted you to know about.

“Variations on an Apple” by Yoon Ha Lee (2016, free at Tor.com or $0.99 at Amazon)

I want to thank Tadiana for bringing this story to my attention. I probably wouldn’t have found it on my own, and it’s a stunner.

This is a retelling of the siege of Troy,

SHORTS: Lee, Jones, Pratt, Skillingstead & Courtier

Our weekly sampling of free short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories that caught our attention this week.

“The Pirate Captain’s Daughter” by Yoon Ha Lee (2009, free at Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

A female pirate captain sails the Unwritten Sea on her ship, the Improbable Dragon. Her crew includes her daughter, who is still unnamed despite growing into a young woman, for the Unwritten Sea has its laws and traditions, and a pirate must have the soul of a poet, and write a poem to the sea with enough power in it to move a ship.

SHORTS: Larson, Barnhill, Jones, Levine, Marzioli, Lee

Our weekly sampling of free short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few stories that caught our attention this week.

“Masked” by Rich Larson (July 2016, free at Apex, $2.99 Kindle magazine issue. Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction)

It’s been a whole month since anyone’s seen Vera, and the circumstances of us finally seeing her this weekend are going to be ultra grody-odd, so I deliberate forever doing my Face. In the end I decide to go subtle: an airbrushed conglom of three of my most flattering private snaps,

SHORTS: Yap, Lee, Bear, Jemisin, Okorafor

SHORTS: Our weekly exploration of free and inexpensive short fiction available on the internet. Here are a few more Locus-nominated stories we’ve read that we wanted you to know about.

“How to Swallow the Moon” by Isabel Yap (2018, free at Uncanny magazine, $3.03 Kindle magazine issue). 2019 Locus award nominee (novelette).

“How to Swallow the Moon,” a Locus-nominated novelette by Isabel Yap, follows the cadence and arc of a traditional fairy tale — a village periodically plies a dangerous supernatural being with strictly-cloistered maidens,

SHORTS: Hugo and Locus Award finalists

This week’s SHORTS column features some of the 2021 Locus and Hugo award finalists in the novelette and short story categories.

“Wait for Night” by Stephen Graham Jones (2020, free at Tor.com)

Chessup is a day laborer working as part of a crew outside of Boulder, Colorado, helping to clean up a creek that was filled with trash in the aftermath of a flood. At the end of the day, looking to borrow a battery from the crew’s bulldozer to jumpstart his old car, Chessup finds something very old tangled up in the roots of a tree that the bulldozer had pulled down.

Twenty-First Century Science Fiction: Packed full of excellent SF stories

Twenty-First Century Science Fiction edited by David G. Hartwell

Twenty-First Century Science Fiction is packed full of excellent science fiction stories. I’ve been reading anthologies lately, partly to improve my own short story writing, and this is the best I’ve found so far. It contains stories by authors such as Paolo Bacigalupi, Cory Doctorow, Catherynne M. Valente, John Scalzi, Jo Walton, Charles Stross, Elizabeth Bear, Mary Robinette Kowal,

Mike Reeves-McMillan´s rating: 5 | Brenda Cooper, Catherynne M. Valente, Charles Stross, Cory Doctorow, Daryl Gregory, David D. Levine, Elizabeth Bear, Genevieve Valentine, James L. Cambias, Jo Walton, John Scalzi, Kage Baker, Karl Schroeder, Liz Williams, Madeline Ashby, Mary Robinette Kowal, Paolo Bacigalupi, Rachel Swirsky, Tobias Buckell, Yoon Ha Lee | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |

The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014: An enjoyable collection

The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014 edited by Rich Horton

I’ve been reading a lot of anthologies lately, including another of the several “Year’s Best” collections (the Jonathan Strahan one). I was pleased to find that, unlike some of the others, this one matched my tastes fairly well for the most part.

I enjoy stories in which capable, likeable or sympathetic characters, confronted by challenges, confront them right back and bring the situation to some sort of meaningful conclusion. I was worried when I read the editor’s introduction and saw him praising Lightspeed and Clarkesworld magazines,

Mike Reeves-McMillan´s rating: 4 | Angélica Gorodischer, Carrie Vaughn, Christopher Barzak, Harry Turtledove, Ian R. MacLeod, James Patrick Kelly, K.J. Parker, Karin Tidbeck, Ken Liu, Lavie Tidhar, Linda Nagata, Madeline Ashby, Maria Dahvana Headley, Maureen McHugh, Peter Watts, Theodora Goss, Yoon Ha Lee | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |

Next SFF Author: Joseph Sheridan Le_Fanu

Previous SFF Author: Victoria Lee

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David C Walton on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 5, 2025
Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
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David C Walton on Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil: Ambitious, atmospheric, and ultimately unevenJuly 3, 2025
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
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SFF Author: Yoon Ha Lee

Ninefox Gambit: Geeky, hard sci-fi for Stephenson fans

Raven Stratagem: A must-read for fans of Ninefox Gambit

Revenant Gun: Saving the best for last

Dragon Pearl: A young girl, chasing adventure, finds herself

Magazine Monday: Theodore Sturgeon Award Nominees

Magazine Monday: Clarkesworld, Issue 80

Magazine Monday: Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Issues 142 and 143

SHORTS: Lee, Lingen, Skerry, Sanderson, St George, Benford

SHORTS: Lee, Jones, Pratt, Skillingstead & Courtier

SHORTS: Larson, Barnhill, Jones, Levine, Marzioli, Lee

SHORTS: Yap, Lee, Bear, Jemisin, Okorafor

SHORTS: Hugo and Locus Award finalists

Twenty-First Century Science Fiction: Packed full of excellent SF stories

The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014: An enjoyable collection

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