New Worlds Year Three

The boundless complexity of worldbuilding can create a daunting challenge for writers of science fiction and fantasy. In the third volume of the NEW WORLDS series, award-winning fantasy author and former anthropologist Marie Brennan provides not only the building blocks for creating a setting, but advice on exposition and other aspects of craft. Whether you need guidance on security or sanitation, demographics or demons or drugs, you're sure to find inspiration here.This volume collects essays from the third year of the New Worlds Patreon.

Enter a land of infinite possibility . . . In this, the sixth volume of the NEW WORLDS series of worldbuilding guides for science fiction and fantasy writers, award-winning author Marie Brennan takes a deep dive into topics as weighty as slavery, as illicit as crime, and as fun as the inner workings of a magic system. With essays ranging from siege warfare to artistic patronage to food prohibitions, there is something here for every story! This volume collects essays from the sixth year of the New Worlds Patreon.

Bring a new world to life . . . In science fiction and fantasy, anything can provide color and conflict -- from soldiers, to schools, to shops, to sexuality. Continuing her comprehensive NEW WORLDS series of worldbuilding guides, award-winning fantasy author and former anthropologist Marie Brennan takes a deep dive into monarchy and democracy, natural disasters, warfare, gender, and the subtleties of language variation both in the world and on the page. This volume collects essays from the fifth year of the New Worlds Patreon.

Escape into another world . . . Bathing and banking, animals and adultery: human culture contains a truly daunting array of elements. The fourth volume of the NEW WORLDS series takes readers on a tour of all-new topics, delving into everything from childbirth to dream interpretation to the importance of generosity, as award-winning fantasy author and former anthropologist Marie Brennan continues her in-depth exploration of worldbuilding in science fiction and fantasy. This volume collects essays from the fourth year of the New Worlds Patreon.

Pocket Books' Strange New Worlds competitions have drawn many thousands of entries from aspiring Star Trek writers. Now, by popular demand, comes a third collection of prize-winning fiction by writers whose enthusiasm for, and knowledge of, the Star Trek universe is second to none. From the mountain of submissions received, editor and established Star Trek author Dean Wesley Smith has selected the winning stories, each one chosen for their combination of originality and style. These tales rocket across the length and breadth of Federation time and space, from the days when Captain Kirk first went 'where no man has gone before', to Captain Picard's exploration in the USS Enterprise D, to Captain Sisko's command of space station Deep Space Nine, to Captain Katherine Janeway's epic journey in the USS Voyager. Find out what happens in the Star Trek universe when its fans are allowed to take the helm!

ABOVE Victorian London is ‘the monster city” -- a place of industry and progress, poverty and disease, with veins of iron threading through its flesh. BELOW The Onyx Court is dying -- its queen missing, its criminals unchecked, and the very fabric of the Onyx Hall itself torn apart by the iron of the Underground Railroad. BETWEEN No one believed Eliza O’Malley that her childhood sweetheart was stolen from the streets of Whitechapel by the faeries. Her search for him will take her to the heart of the crumbling, corrupted faerie court -- and to a final, desperate chance that might save them all. But first she must confront the faerie who betrayed her seven years ago . . .

ABOVE It is the seventeenth century. For twenty years, the City of London has been torn apart: by war, by plague, by fire. BELOW The Onyx Court is London's faerie shadow. Dedicated to co-existence with mortals, it struggles to survive against rival courts who oppose everything it stands for. BETWEEN Now, when these two realms are at their most divided, they face a threat neither can defeat alone. The Great Fire ravaging London is more than mere flames. While the city's human residents struggle to halt the inexorable blaze, the fae must defeat a stranger foe: the embodiment of the fire itself, a monstrous Dragon that seeks to devour London both above and below. If the faerie queen Lune and her mortal consort cannot bring the two worlds together, the city itself may not survive . . . .