The 2022 Pride Bundle

 

THE 2022 PRIDE BUNDLE

 

by Catherine Lundoff and Melissa Scott

 The 2022 Pride Bundle Bundle - Curated by Catherine Lundoff and Melissa Scott

It's time for another queer-themed bundle to celebrate Pride! This year, we have five books in the main bundle, and another ten in the bonus, for a total of fifteen if you spring for the bonus. Once again, winnowing it down to a manageable number was ready hard — there are so many writers out there who are creating intelligent, nuanced and queer SF/F.

Because this is for Pride, we looked for books that depicted queerness in all its aspects. You'll find profoundly hopeful work as well as darker themes, but what you won't find is stories in which being queer means you're evil, nor any in which it's purely a doomed and tragic fate. We've included newer writers and new work, reintroduced some older ones, and are offering a mix of novels, novellas, and short story collections; we have science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy, solarpunk, cyberpunk, ghost stories, and more. These are stories that celebrate the multitudes within our queer community, all written by authors at the top of their game. You'll find a wide range of diverse characters, an equally wide range of styles, and stories that will hook you from first to last.

We can't claim that this is anything like a definitive LGBTQIA+ collection. There is too much wonderful queer writing out there for anyone to be able claim that. Instead, we're offering a collection that celebrates queerness, and shows off the work of some of the best writers working today.

StoryBundle has always allowed its patrons to donate part of their payment to a related charity, and once again we're supporting Rainbow Railroad, an NGO helping LGBT+ people escape state-sponsored persecution and violence worldwide. Especially at this moment, their work is desperately needed, and if you choose, you can pass part of the bundle's price to them — a gift that can save a life. – Catherine Lundoff and Melissa Scott

* * *

For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you're feeling generous), you'll get the basic bundle of five books in any ebook format—WORLDWIDE.

•            Lord of the White Hell by Ginn Hale

•            We're Here edited by C.L. Clark & series editor Charles Payseur

•            The Adventure of the Incognita Countess by Cynthia Ward

•            Sanctuary by Andi C. Buchanan

•            The Language of Roses by Heather Rose Jones

 

If you pay at least the bonus price of just $20, you get all five of the regular books, plus TEN more books for a total of 15!

•            Unfettered Hexes edited by dave ring

•            The Adventure of the Dux Bellorum by Cynthia Ward

•            It Gets Even Better edited by Isabela Oliveira and Jed Sabin

•            The Hereafter Bytes by Vincent Scott

•            Water Horse by Melissa Scott

•            Friends For Robots by Merc Fenn Wolfmoor

•            The Sea of Stars by Nicole Kimberling

•            Foxhunt by Rem Wigmore

•            Pangs by Jerry L. Wheeler

•            Depart, Depart! by Sim Kern

 

This bundle is available only for a limited time via http://www.storybundle.com. It allows easy reading on computers, smartphones, and tablets as well as Kindle and other ereaders via file transfer, email, and other methods. You get multiple DRM-free formats (.epub, .mobi) for all books!

It's also super easy to give the gift of reading with StoryBundle, thanks to our gift cards – which allow you to send someone a code that they can redeem for any future StoryBundle bundle – and timed delivery, which allows you to control exactly when your recipient will get the gift of StoryBundle.

Why StoryBundle? Here are just a few benefits StoryBundle provides.

•            Get quality reads: We've chosen works from excellent authors to bundle together in one convenient package.

•            Pay what you want (minimum $5): You decide how much these fantastic books are worth. If you can only spare a little, that's fine! You'll still get access to a batch of exceptional titles.

•            Support authors who support DRM-free books: StoryBundle is a platform for authors to get exposure for their works, both for the titles featured in the bundle and for the rest of their catalog. Supporting authors who let you read their books on any device you want—restriction free—will show everyone there's nothing wrong with ditching DRM.

•            Give to worthy causes: Bundle buyers have a chance to donate a portion of their proceeds to Rainbow Railroad!

•            Receive extra books: If you beat the bonus price, you'll get the bonus books!

 

StoryBundle was created to give a platform for independent authors to showcase their work, and a source of quality titles for thirsty readers. StoryBundle works with authors to create bundles of ebooks that can be purchased by readers at their desired price. Before starting StoryBundle, Founder Jason Chen covered technology and software as an editor for Gizmodo.com and Lifehacker.com.

For more information, visit our website at storybundle.com, tweet us at @storybundle and like us on Facebook. For press inquiries, please email press@storybundle.com.

Queering SF: Readings by Ritch Calvin

 

I'm pleased to announce the release, in both print and e-book editions, Queering SF: Readings, by science fiction scholar Ritch Calvin.  It's available now at www.aqueductpress.com.

The essays in Queering SF provide an introduction to some of the shades of queer in SF writing. SF is not a monolith. Queer SF is not, either. Writers of queer SF approach it in a variety of ways, with a variety of end goals. The essays here aim to introduce readers to a wide range of writers and texts, some familiar, some unfamiliar.

These essays demonstrate some of the ways in which queer SF pushes at the very generic norms of SF. The idea of SF, the characteristics of SF, the content of SF have all been shaped (a) in a particular place and time, and (b) in one's own reading experience. Many of these writers want to challenge what SF looks like and does.

Finally, Queering SF points to some of these newly imagined futures, to a way to spend some time in differently imagined societies and families, and to think about the ways in which we would like to see that in our own reality.

Advance Praise

“Queering SF takes readers on a tour of science fiction’s imaginings and reimaginings of gender and sexuality, from the tentative explorations of the early twentieth century to the burgeoning diverse visions of the twenty-first. To read this book is to be transported into an ideal college classroom, where stories and novels are carefully contextualized, generously critiqued, and expansively engaged as contributions to the projects of queer, feminist, intersectional social transformation. Calvin's accessible, friendly style and deep knowledge of both SF and queer studies make this an essential read for anyone interested in exploring the queerness of science fiction and the science-fictionality of queerness.”  —Alexis Lothian author of Old Futures: Speculative Fiction and Queer Possibility

Forkpoints: Stories of Decisions Made and Roads Not Taken by Sheila Finch

 

 I'm pleased to announce Aqueduct Press's release of Forkpoints: Stories of Decisions Made and Roads Not Taken by Sheila Finch in both print and e-book editions. You can purchase it now from Aqueduct Press at www.aqueductpress.com.  

One of our imperatives as humans is to communicate–with others, with animals, and eventually with aliens. Here, in Forkpoints, you will find stories of unlikely people–scientists and street people, athletes and musicians, the very old and the arrogant teen–meeting and connecting with others not like them at all. Another major interest of Finch’s is what Robert Frost called “the road not taken,” that haunting sense we all have from time to time that maybe there were other paths we should have explored, other doorways we should have passed through, forkpoints where our choices changed our lives forever. Science Fiction shows us many fantastic inventions that may come in the future, other worlds, other beings. But, even then, people will still be people, loving, making families, worrying about trifles, dealing with crises, making life-changing decisions as best they can.

Advance Praise

“Good reading for our hard times. These are stories of opportunities unseen, glimpsed, suddenly brought into focus—maybe to slip away, or be refused, or maybe just delayed. There’s a gentleness to them, a melancholy, that sets off the glints of new possibilities and hope. The last story gives us a child’s-eye view of the Blitz so clear and detailed—readers who loved Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight should have a look here.”
 —Suzy McKee Charnas, author of The Holdfast Chronicles and The Vampire Tapestry

“Sheila Finch is one of the treasures of modern science fiction. She’s literate, imaginative, and deeply insightful. Her contributions to the field include not only specific, awesomely good works, but her careful attention to how language shapes story structure and flow. Her short fiction works are like polished gemstones, with each facet reflecting and informing the central theme. Here is a collection of such jewels, each speaking to the profound transformative power of human understanding. We are more than our circumstances, these stories say, we have the ability to shift our perspective, to look and feel more deeply, and thereby to shift entire realities. From an elderly music teacher who could also have been an iconic physicist to an extraordinary communication across species to a time-traveler visiting his own ancestor during the World War II London bombings, each tale reaches deep into the mind of the reader, inviting us with Finch’s characteristically gentle wisdom to see the universe and ourselves in a revolutionary light.”
 —Deborah Ross, author of Collaborators and The Seven-Petaled Shield fantasy series

Reviews

Nebula Award winner Finch (Reading the Bones) delivers an impressive, career-spanning collection celebrating the power a single decision holds to change the shape of the world. Some of the 12 stories focus in on those pivotal moments; the gripping “Not This Tide” leaps between the inexplicable supernatural experiences of a girl and her father in WWII England, and the year 2035, in which the now-elderly woman is a renowned world peace activist. Others place the fateful decision in the background and chart the consequences, like the wistful “The Old Man and C,” which imagines a world where Albert Einstein followed his talent for violin instead of physics. Fans of Finch’s Xenolinguist stories will enjoy encountering the author at her lyrical best in “Sequoia Dreams,” about alien visitors who have a profound ecological message to convey, and “Czerny at Midnight,” in which a marine biologist’s autistic son communicates with an octopus through music. Though pieces like “Forkpoints” and “Where Two or Three” are weakened by plentiful hints that there are better stories happening in the background, this collection as a whole is delightfully cohesive and thought-provoking. It’s a showcase of a legend at her finest.  
  —Publishers Weekly, April 2022