Swords and Spaceships for May 4

In a world ravaged by climate change, Cee has been trapped alone on an island for three years. She doesn’t remember how she got there or who she was before, but she knows her sister Kay needs her, and so she works to build a raft from salvaged junk. In an eco-city where residents must spend a third of their time in stasis pods, Kasey has given up her sister Celia for dead after she sailed out to sea and never returned. But public pressure makes her rethink this assumption, and she begins to retrace Celia’s path.

While Queen Talyien has at last returned home, she does not find peace in her father’s castle. Her son has been stolen, her warlords plot rebellion, and war and invasion threaten. Worse, her father’s secrets seek to unbury themselves and ruin all of Jin-Sayeng. Will the queen flee that darkness or embrace it?

In the near future, the US has been inundated by rising waters and the surviving states divided between two megacorporations, Stellaxis Innovations and Greenleaf. One city is split between them, and thus in a constant state of civil war. Mallory lives in that city, where she streams wargames for Stellaxis and lives off tips. But when an in-game tip leads to an IRL mission for a missing girl, she finds herself in real danger that she only knows how to handle in a virtual world.

As the Princess of Crete, Ariadne grows up with the ever-present specter of her brother, the Minotaur, and the knowledge that he demands a blood sacrifice. The arrival of Theseus offers her escape, at the price of defying the gods and betraying her people and her family. But will escape become a happy ending for her–and what of the younger sister she leaves behind?

An anthology of LGBTQ+ science fiction and fantasy short fiction published during the last decade, with stories by Nalo Hopkinson, Charlie Jane Anders, Neon Yang, Amal El-Mohtar, and others.

Ryland Grace can’t remember anything; he’s been awoken millions of miles from home with only two corpses for company, in a ship that must have an important mission… if only he could recall. Ryland Grace is, even though he doesn’t know it yet, humanity’s only hope for survival.