Fantasy Short Fiction

A nearby lightning strike triggers an ancient stone portal, whisking Alex away to a mysterious alien world teeming with magic and danger. Elves, Orcs, monsters, and fantastic beasts abound in this realm of endless adventure and limitless potential. And as Alex discovers, he possesses a powerful gift that sets him apart from the rest. With his newfound strength coursing through his body, Alex embarks on a perilous journey to carve out his place in this strange new world.

Tackling some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine, these stories will change the way you think, feel, and see the world. They are Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic, revelatory. Ted Chiang tackles some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine.

Here are delightful upendings of genre clichés and heartfelt revitalizations of classic tropes. Here is social commentary with teeth, and here are scenes of pants-wettingly funny comedy. Here are characters and situations that by their very outrageousness achieve a heightened realism unlike any other. And here is one of the strongest voices in modern science fiction, the writer called by Andrew Sean Greer “this generation’s Le Guin”.

I was hanging out with some buddies, doing a little caving, when everything went south. When I woke up, I was in some kind of medieval dungeon. Totally naked and in the dark. Luckily, I had a neighbor in a cell near me. One with a decidedly sexy feminine voice. When she explained to me that she was due to be executed and I was in line to be brainwashed, there was only one thing to do. We had to escape.

For the first time as an Orbit special edition, Brent Weeks's blockbuster novella Perfect Shadow tells the origin story of the Night Angel trilogy's most enigmatic character: Durzo Blint. Gaelan Starfire is a farmer, happy to be a husband and a father; a careful, quiet, simple man. He's also an immortal, peerless in the arts of war. Over the centuries, he's worn many faces to hide his gift, but he is a man ill-fit for obscurity, and all too often he's become a hero, his very names passing into legend.

The Bite of Winter: She is theirs to claim. They are hers to save. Zoey finds herself caught in Ian's and Connor's web of seduction. But as Christmas draws near and her grief deepens, happiness seems far out of reach. And Ian and Connor join forces to prove their love is sacred, special...and forever. His Little Vixen: Sadie Harris doesn't like immortals. After vampires leave her an orphan, she's raised by her grandmother at the edge of a werewolf pack's territory. As a fox shifter she knows the rules about werewolves.

"The Red House”, a story by Robert McCammon, was originally published in the 1985 anthology Greystone Bay and was selected for inclusion in The Year's Best Fantasy Stories 1985.

Seven superb stories, from the world's no. one storyteller. Meet the boy who can talk to animals and the man who can see with his eyes closed. And find out about the treasure buried deep underground. A cleaver mix of fact and fiction, this collection also includes how master storyteller Roald Dahl became a writer. With Roald Dahl, you can never be sure where reality ends and fantasy begins.

I thought the last thing I would have expected while working at the mall during the holiday season was to meet a real elf woman. Then the blue-skinned ogre tore through the mall. The elf and I made a quick escape and ended up in a strange fantasy world. Now, I’m finding out that the elves have been in decline for centuries and are being hunted to extinction for their magical abilities. They need someone to help them. Someone to protect them. Someone with magical powers that could make elves strong like they used to be.

An IT whiz at the Babylon Casino is enlisted to upgrade security for the game of keno and its random-number generator. The new quantum computer system is foolproof. But someone on the inside is no fool. For once the odds may not favor the house - unless human ingenuity isn’t entirely a thing of the past.

Only true love can survive a journey through heaven and hell. My name is Evan, and I’m a Soldier of Death. For centuries I’ve killed mortals in order to ferry their souls to the other side. Until I met her. Her fate is sealed - I must take her soul. What never occurred to me was that I would fall in love with her. If I don't kill her, the forces of heaven and hell will be unleashed, and others will come to take her.... Will I be able to protect her?

Fonda Lee returns to the acclaimed Green Bone Saga with four prequel short stories that delve into the personal histories of the Kaul and Ayt families.

The essential short story collection set in the universe of Ninefox Gambit. An ex-Kel art thief has to save the world from a galaxy-shattering prototype weapon.... A general outnumbered eight-to-one must outsmart his opponent.... A renegade returns from seclusion to bury an old comrade....

Fearful Rock and Other Precarious Locales is the third volume of Night Shade Books' five volume "Selected Stories of Manly Wade Wellman." This volume is made up of eight novella length stories. It includes Wellman's "Judge Pursivant" and "Sergeant Jaeger" stories, as well as a lost classic from Strange Stories (1939).

SKIN - An anthology of dark fiction. A collection of stories from some of the best up-and-coming authors of horror.

Society runs smoothly because a secret team adjusts it, stepping in occasionally to bring about changes by adjusting people and their attitudes unbeknownst to them. As you can imagine timing is of the utmost importance, because if one individual is not adjusted, that sets the whole thing out of balance.

It’s a story you may think you know - an aging baseball coach is challenged by the very boy he took in and raised. But in this near future world, "smart” houses talk and listen, and - privy as they are to the secret life of the household - family life gets interesting. Creepy and funny, unsettling and entertaining, this is a story that stands on its own even as it proves the perfect follow up to Gish Jen’s critically acclaimed novel The Resisters.

Herbert George Wells was one of the most prolific and visionary British writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. H. G. Wells is now best remembered for his science fiction novels, although he wrote across many genres, including nonfiction. His fiction embraces history, science fiction, horror, satire, fantasy, and social commentary. Wells was also a futurist, foreseeing air travel, tanks (as in “The Land Ironclads” - part of this anthology) space travel, nuclear weapons, and even satellite television.

The world is rapidly changing. We surf future-shock every day, as the progress of technology races ever on. Increasingly we are asking: how do we change to live in the world to come? Multi-award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan brings us another incredible volume in his much praised science-fiction anthology series.

The title story of this collection - a devilishly ironic riff on H. P. Lovecraft's "Pickman's Model" - was nominated for a World Fantasy Award, while "Probiscus" was nominated for an International Horror Guild award and reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 19. In addition to his previously published work, this collection contains an original story.