Karl Schroeder

A bitter and friendless young man who has been living with pirates, Hayden Griffin journeys to the city of Rush in the nation of Slipstream to seek revenge for the deaths of his parents when his home nation of Aerie was conquered by Admiral Chaison Fanning, leader of the fleet of Slipstream, in the first volume in a futuristic adventure series. 12,500 first printing.

Book One of Virga

Sun of Suns

Awakening after 14,000 years to discover that the decimated planet he was orbiting has become a thriving empire of citizens who extend their lives through strategic hibernations, 17-year-old Toby McGonigal reconnects with his family, including a tyrannical and power-crazed brother. 15,000 first printing.

Lockstep

From Karl Schroeder, author of Lockstep, comes the near-future, science fiction, hacker’s heist, Stealing Worlds. Sura Neelin is on the run from her creditors, from her past, and her father’s murderers. She can’t get a job, she can’t get a place to live, she can’t even walk down the street: the total surveillance society that is mid-21st century America means that every camera and every pair of smart glasses is her enemy. But Sura might have a chance in the alternate reality of the games. People can disappear in the LARP game worlds, into the alternate economy of Notchcoin and blockchains. The people who build the games also program the surveillance networks—she just needs an introduction, and the skills to play. Turns out, she has very valuable skills, and some very surprising friends. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Stealing Worlds

When the human civilization of Teven Coronal is threatened by powerful invaders, brilliant but troubled Livia Kodaly attempts to safeguard the ringworld's fragile ecologies and human diversity. By the author of Ventus and Permanence. Reprint.

Lady of Mazes

Futurist Karl Schroeder imagines infiltrating the elite of a marginal society in The Million Every thirty years, ten billion visitors overrun Earth during one month of madness: partying, polluting, and brawling. In between, the world is ruled by the Million; the inheritors and custodians of all of humanity’s wealth and history, they lead unimaginable lives of privilege and wealth, and they see it as their due. Gavin Penn-of-Chaffee is an illegal child—a visitor hidden among the Million. When the family that raised him in secret is torn apart, Gavin must impersonate a dead boy to survive. What he doesn’t know is that his new identity is expected at the School of Auditors—the Million’s feared police force, sworn to find and capture outcasts like him to keep the peace. In order to solve the murder of his adoptive father, Gavin must keep his disguise and his wits intact within the stronghold of those threatened by his very existence.

The Million

After terrifying and titanic struggles, a godlike artificial intelligence gone rogue has finally been destroyed. But not before it scattered seeds of itself throughout the galaxy. On the terraformed planet Ventus, benign AIs -- the godlike Winds – which shaped and guarded its transformation, have fallen silent. Calandria May is sent down to the surface where she quickly finds that an extension of the rogue AI, a cyborg called Armiger, has planted a strange and powerful device in a young man named Jordan Mason. Jordan has visions. He is desperate to find their meaning and source -- desperate enough to risk awakening the Winds, perhaps invoking the power that can destroy technology to protect the environment they created. Ventus is an epic journey across a fascinating planet with two big mysteries -- why have the Winds fallen silent? And is Armiger, or Jordan, carrying a Resurrection Seed?

Ventus

A gripping saga follows young Rue Cassels of the Cycler Compact, a civilization centered around remote brown dwarf stars, as she escapes from her brutal brother in a single-person aircraft and stumbles upon an ancient alien starship, which she claims for herself, while interstellar war erupts all around her. Reprint.

Permanence

Venera Fanning enters the artificial worlds of Virga far from her home and husband, where she is forced to decide who among her new allies is trustworthy while she protects the powerful Key of Candesce.

Book Two of Virga

Queen of Candesce

Return to Virga, a bubble universe artificially separated from our own future universe, and the setting of Sun of Suns and Queen of Candesce. Chaison Fanning, the admiral of a fleet of warships, has been captured and imprisoned by his enemies, but is suddenly rescued and set free. He flees through the sky to his home city to confront the ruler who betrayed him. And perhaps even to regain his lovely, powerful, and subversive wife, Venera, who he has not seen since she fled with the key to the artificial sun at the center of Virga, Candesce. Schroeder sets a whole new standard for hard SF space opera.

Book Three of Virga

Pirate Sun

The sunless countries

It is the distant future. The world known as Virga is a fullerene balloon three thousand kilometers in diameter, filled with air, water, and aimlessly floating chunks of rock. The humans who live in this vast environment must build their own fusion suns and "towns" that are in the shape of enormous wood and rope wheels that are spun for gravity. Young, fit, bitter, and friendless, Hayden Griffin is a very dangerous man. He's come to the city of Rush in the nation of Slipstream with one thing in mind: to take murderous revenge for the deaths of his parents six years ago. His target is Admiral Chaison Fanning, head of the fleet of Slipstream, which conquered Hayden's nation of Aerie years ago. And the fact that Hayden's spent his adolescence living with pirates doesn't bode well for Fanning's chances.

Cory Doctorow

Offers advice on how to get a science fiction novel or short story published, including tips on the basic elements of a work of science fiction to getting an agent, and signing a contract.

Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Science Fiction

When the human civilization of Teven Coronal is threatened by powerful invaders, brilliant but troubled Livia Kodaly attempts to safeguard the ringworld's fragile ecologies and human diversity. By the author of Ventus and Permanence. 12,500 first printing.

Ashes of Candesce

Roman

Segel der Zeit

Aliette de Bodard

Jay Lake

Kij Johnson

Neil Clarke

Damien Broderick

Naomi Kritzer

Catherynne Valente

Tang Fei

Zhang Ran

Clarkesworld is a Hugo Award-winning science fiction and fantasy magazine. Each month we bring you a mix of fiction (new and classic works), articles, interviews and art. Our January 2015 issue, supersized for our 100th issue, contains: Original Fiction by Aliette de Bodard ("Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight"), Tang Fei ("A Universal Elegy"), Naomi Kritzer ("Cat Pictures Please"), Kij Johnson ("The Apartment Dweller's Bestiary"), Zhang Ran ("Ether"), Catherynne M. Valente ("The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild"), and Jay Lake ("An Exile of the Heart"). Classic stories by Damien Broderick ("This Wind Blowing, and This Tide"), and Karl Schroeder ("Laika's Ghost"). Non-fiction by Jason Heller (Song for a City-Universe: Lucius Shepard's Abandoned Vermillion), an interview with Xia Jia, an Another Word column by Cat Rambo, and an editorial by Neil Clarke.

Clarkesworld

Young Rue Cassels of the Cycler Compact -- a civilization based around remote brown dwarf stars -- is running for her life from her bullying brother, Jentry, who has stolen her family inheritance and threatens to sell her into slavery. Fleeing in a shuttle spacecraft from the sparsely populated and austere comet-mining habitat she has lived in her whole life, she spots a distant, approaching object, and stakes a legal claim to it. It is not the valuable comet she hoped for but something even more wonderful, an abandoned Cycler starship. Since the discovery of a faster-than-light drive, unfortunately operable only between larger stars, the Cycler Compact civilization has gradually dwindled. It's much cheaper for the star-based civilizations of the new Rights Economy to bypass the stops that can't be made with the new technology, and the civilizations of the brown stars are gradually sinking into anarchy and chaos. It has been decades since the last Cycler ship passed anywhere near the system in which Rue grew up. Her discovery unleashes a fury of action, greed, and interstellar intrigue as many factions attempt to take advantage of the last great opportunity to revitalize-and perhaps control--the Compact. This is the story of Rue's quest to visit and claim this ship and its treasures, set against a background of warring empires, strange alien artifacts, and fantastic science. It is a story of hope and danger, of a strange and compelling religion, Permanence, unique to this star-faring age, and of the rebirth of life and belief in a place at the edge of forever. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

It is the distant future. The world known as Virga is a fullerene balloon three thousand kilometers in diameter, filled with air, water, and floating chunks of rock. The humans who live in this vast environment must build their own fusion suns and "towns" —enormous wood and rope wheels that are spun for centripetal gravity. This complex and fascinating world is the setting for the novels of Virga, Karl Schroeder's interstellar far-future space habitat sealed off from contamination by the rest of the inhabited universe. These books have set a high standard for hard SF adventure in the last decade, and now the first two novels, Sun of Suns and Queen of Candesce, are brought out for the first time in one trade paper omnibus. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Karl Schroeder

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