Works by
Elizabeth Bear
(Writer)

Collections

• The Chains That You Refuse (2006)
  Here are stories that embrace experimental forms and conventional narrative with equal enthusiasm, that journey from arcane kingdoms to the future shock of first contact on a cold desert world, and from Boston of the recent past to Las Vegas of the present day and Toronto of the immediate future. Whether the inspiration is the Norse legend of Ragnarok, the family obligations of roughneck asteroid miners, the layered alternate realities created by practical applications of the folk tradition, the murder of Christopher Marlowe, the love lives of Lovecraftian subhumans, the American ballad "Stagger Lee," these twenty-one stories--several brand new or previously difficult to find--and one poem span a range from traditional speculative fiction to contemporary fabulism, with side trips through forms not so easily defined. They delight the sense of wonder and they do not flinch from the human drama, and no two are alike.

Edda of Burdens from Tor Trilogy
Norse noir steampunk.

1. All the Windwracked Stars (Projected 2008 release)

2. By the Mountain Bound (Projected 2009 release)

3. The Sea thy Mistress (Projected 2010 release)

Jenny Casey Trilogy
Near-future science fiction thrillers

• Hammered (2005)
  The waters have risen. The wars have been fought. And the only way forward is through one woman's mind.... Once Jenny Casey was somebody's daughter. Once she was somebody's enemy. Now, the former Canadian special forces warrior lives on the hellish streets of Hartford, Connecticut in the year 2062. Racked with pain, hiding from the government she served, running with a crime lord so she can save a life or two, Jenny is a month shy of fifty, and her artificially reconstructed body has started to unravel. But she is far from forgotten. A government scientist needs the perfect subject for a high-stakes artificial intelligence project, and has Jenny in his sights.
  
  Suddenly, Jenny Casey is a pawn in a furious battle, waged in the corridors of the internet, on the streets of battered cities, and in the complex wirings of her half manmade nervous system. And she needs to gain control of the game, before a brave new future spins completely out of control.

• Scardown (2005)
  The year is 2062, and after years on the run, Jenny Casey is back in the Canadian armed forces. Those who were once her enemies are now her allies, and at fifty, she’s been handpicked for the most important mission of her life—a mission for which her artificially reconstructed body is perfectly suited. With the earth capable of sustaining life for just another century, Jenny must discover brave new worlds as pilot of the starship HMCSS Montreal. And with time running out, she must succeed where others have failed.
  
  Now Jenny is caught in a desperate battle where old resentments become bitter betrayals, and justice takes the cruelest forms of vengeance. With the help of a brilliant AI, an ex-crime lord, and the man she loves, Jenny may just get her chance to save the world. If it doesn’t come to an end first…

• Worldwired (2005)
  As long as there’s an earth to defend, Jenny Casey has a job. But she may outlast the world she was custom-built to save… Give Canada’s Master Warrant Officer Jenny Casey an inch and she’ll take a galaxy. That’s just the kind of person a world on the brink of destruction needs. The year is 2063 and the Earth has been brutalized. [spoiler for Scardown redacted] Humanity must find another option...
  
  Perched above the destruction in the starship Montreal, Jenny remains in the thick of the fray. Plugged into the worldwire, connected to a brilliant AI, her mind can be everywhere and anywhere at once. But it’s focused on the mysterious alien beings right outside of her ship. Are they here to help or destroy? With the Earth a breeding ground for treason and betrayal as governments struggle to assign blame, Jenny holds the fate of humankind in her artificially reconstructed hand...

The Promethean Age
A sprawling same-world fantasy cycle that deals with the five-century-old silent war between Faerie and the iron world, and the lives altered and destroyed on either side.

• Blood and Iron (2006)
  After setting the science fiction world ablaze with her trilogy of groundbreaking novels- Hammered, Scardown, and Worldwired-John W. Campbell Award-winning author Elizabeth Bear crafts a tale of modern-day magic, chronicling an invisible war between factions of a most fantastical kind...
  
  For centuries, the human mages of the Prometheus Club and the otherworldly creatures of Faerie have battled for control over Earth's destiny with neither side capable of achieving victory over the other.

  Their impasse has come to an end...
  
  She is known as the Seeker of the Daoine Sidhe. Spellbound by the Faerie Queen, she has abducted human children for her mistress's pleasure for what seems like an eternity, unable to free herself from her servitude and reclaim her own humanity.
  
  Seeker's latest prey is a Merlin. Named after the legendary wizard of Camelot, Merlins are not simply those who wield magic, they are magic. Now, with the Prometheus Club's agents and rivals from Faerie also vying for the favor of this being of limitless magic to tip the balance of power, Seeker must persuade the Merlin to join her cause-or else risk losing something even more precious and more important to her than the fate of humanity.

• Whiskey and Water (2007 release)
  In the wake of a war that left Faerie and the Iron World devastated, a Mage with no power to do harm makes a discovery that could tip uneasy peace back into war. A girl has been murdered by a monster in the streets of New York City.
  
  And she is only the first to fall.
  
  His investigation will lead him through unlikely alliances and on dangerous journeys. into the company of a crippled Kelpie and a long-dead poet, and eventually to the court of Lucifer Morningstar himself.

• Ink & Pen (Title tentative) (Projected 2008 release)
  Takes place in and around 16th century London and feature William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe in starring roles (those from Roc).

• Hell & Earth (Title tentative) (Projected 2009 release)
  Takes place in and around 16th century London and feature William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe in starring roles (those from Roc).

Other Science Fiction

• Carnival (2006) -- Finalist, 2006 Lambda Literary Award for Science/Fiction/Fantasy/Horror
  Centuries hence, an ecoterrorist revolution has reduced Earth's population to a few million survivors. Remnants of humanity controlled by artificial intelligences known as the Governors survive under the unrelenting threat of Assessment-or culling. A fascist Colonial Coalition dominates the government, and their only goal is to prevent the extermination of the species--by any means necessary.
  
  But before humanity was Assessed for its crimes against the planet, a few ships escaped.
  
  More than a century has passed, and old lovers Michelangelo Kusanagi-Jones and Vincent Katherinessen are reunited for one final mission. Once the finest team of ambassador-spies old Earth possessed, they are now in disgrace. But only their talents can unlock the secrets of New Amazonia.
  
  Of the original colonies, only New Amazonia possesses an alien technology that seems to provide a clean, environmentally sound source of power. It's the key to freeing humanity from the rule of the Governors-and Michelangelo and Vincent are just the men to steal it, under the guise of a diplomatic mission. But what they uncover in that distant jungle may transform them-and their fragile culture-beyond recognition.

• New Amsterdam (2007 release)
  Abigail Irene Garrett drinks too much. She makes scandalous liaisons with inappropriate men, and if in her youth she was a famous beauty, now she is both formidable--and notorious. She is a forensic sorceress, and a dedicated officer of a Crown that does not deserve her loyalty. She has nothing, but obligations. Sebastien de Ulloa is the oldest creature she has ever known. He was no longer young at the Christian millennium, and that was nine hundred years ago. He has forgotten his birth-name, his birth-place, and even the year in which he was born, if he ever knew it. But he still remembers the woman who made him immortal. He has everything, but a reason to live. In a world where the sun never set on the British Empire, where Holland finally ceded New Amsterdam to the English only during the Napoleonic wars, and where the expansion of the American colonies was halted by the war magic of the Iroquois, they are exiles in the new world--and its only hope for justice.

• Undertow (2007 release)
  In the city of New Haven, on a planet known as Greene's World, André Deschênes puts a pistol in his mouth and pulls the trigger -- and a revolution begins.
  
  André Deschênes is a bad man. He's a killer with a talent for getting out alive, and he doesn't ask where the money comes from.
  
  Jean Kroc is a conjure man; he knows the illegal secrets of altering reality through arcane manipulations of quantum entanglement. He also knows the risks, as grave as any faced by a medieval sorcerer's apprentice-but he doesn't always care.
  
  Cricket Earl Murphy sleeps with guns beside her bed. She used to have another name. When she worked for the people Jean Kroc hates
  
  And Gourami was just another ranid coolie, a frog with a day-job working on shallow-water drilling operations for the alien mammals' Rim Company... until it found a human body tangled in the lines, and woke up with a mammal price on its head.

See also:

• A Companion to Wolves (2007 release) with Sarah Monette

• Dust (Projected to starting 2008)
  "SF trilogy -- Upstairs: Downstairs meets Ghormengast meets the Amber novels on a derelict generation ship, with a side of Arthurian romance." -- Elizabeth Bear