
Part of Series
HERE BE DRAGONS… A unique collection of stories by the greatest fantasy writers working today. Sparking myths and legends from Asia to Europe, Africa to North America, dragons are the most universal and awe-inspiring of magical creatures. Whether they are fearsome, rampaging monsters or benevolent sages with much to teach humanity, dragons bring creation, destruction, and adventure in stories told all around the globe. In this landmark collection, award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan combines nearly thirty never-before-seen short stories and poems, written by modern masters of science fiction and fantasy, and illustrations by acclaimed artist Rovina Cai. Featuring stories from Scott Lynch, R.F. Kuang, Garth Nix, Ken Liu, Kate Elliott, and many more, The Book of Dragons breathes fresh life and fire into the greatest magical beasts of all. Content: - Introduction by Jonathan Strahan - What Heroism Tells Us poem by Jane Yolen - Matriculation by Elle Katharine White - Hikaya Sri Bujang, or The Tale of the Naga Sage by Zen Cho - Yuli by Daniel Abraham - A Whisper of Blue by Ken Liu - Nidhog poem by Jo Walton - Where the River Turns to Concrete by Brooke Bolander - Habitat by K.J. Parker - Pox by Ellen Klages - The Nine Curves River by R.F. Kuang - Lucky's Dragon by Kelly Barnhill - I Make Myself a Dragon poem by Beth Cato - The Exile by JY Yang - Except on Saturdays by Peter S. Beagle - La Vitesse by Kelly Robson - A Final Knight to her Love and Foe poem by Amal El-Mohtar - The Long Walk by Kate Elliott - Cut Me Another Quill, Mister Fitz by Garth Nix - Hoard by Seanan McGuire - The Worm of Lirr poem by C.S.E. Cooney - The Last Hunt by Aliette de Bodard - We Continue by Ann Leckie and Rachel Swirsky - Small Bird's Plea by Todd McCaffrey - The Dragons poem by Theodora Goss - Dragon Slayer by Michael Swanwick - Camouflage by Patricia A. McKillip - We Don't Talk About the Dragon by Sarah Gailey - Maybe Just Go Up There and Talk to It by Scott Lynch - A Nice Cuppa poem by Jane Yolen
Authors

Patricia Anne McKillip was an American author of fantasy and science fiction novels, distinguished by lyrical, delicate prose and careful attention to detail and characterization. She is a past winner of the World Fantasy Award and Locus Award, and she lives in Oregon. Most of her recent novels have cover paintings by Kinuko Y. Craft. She is married to David Lunde, a poet. According to Fantasy Book Review, Patricia McKillip grew up in Oregon, England, and Germany, and received a Bachelor of Arts (English) in 1971 and a Master of Arts in 1973 from San Jose State University. McKillip's stories usually take place in a setting similar to the Middle Ages. There are forests, castles, and lords or kings, minstrels, tinkers and wizards. Her writing usually puts her characters in situations involving mysterious powers that they don't understand. Many of her characters aren't even sure of their own ancestry. Music often plays an important role. Love between family members is also important in McKillip's writing, although members of her families often disagree.

Like you, I'm a passionate reader. I spent most of my teenage years either hanging out at the drugstore waiting for new issues of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine, or when I was in the city, lurking in the SF and Fantasy section of the bookstore. This was pre-Internet and since there were no bookstores in my town and the library was pretty bare, good books—the kind that made my heart sing—were precious treasures. To this day, nothing is more important to me than reading, nothing is more delicious than a great novel, and few people are as important as my favorite writers. My writing life has been pretty diverse. I've edited science books, and from 2008 to 2012 I had the great good luck to write a monthly wine column for Chatelaine, the largest women's magazine in Canada. I've published short fiction at Tor.com, Asimov's Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, and a number of anthologies. Several of my stories have been chosen for "year's best" anthologies, and in the past two years I've been a finalist for several high-profile awards.


Neon Yang is the author of the Tensorate series of novellas from Tor.Com Publishing (The Red Threads of Fortune, The Black Tides of Heaven, The Descent of Monsters and The Ascent to Godhood). Their work has been shortlisted for the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, Lambda Literary and Locus awards, while the Tensorate novellas were a Tiptree honoree in 2018. They have over two dozen works of short fiction published in venues including Tor.com, Uncanny Magazine, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, and Strange Horizons. Neon attended the 2013 class of Clarion West, and received their MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia in 2016. In previous incarnations, they have been a molecular biologist, a writer for animation, comics and games, a science communicator, and a journalist for one of Singapore’s national papers. Neon is currently based out of Singapore. They are queer and non-binary. Find them on Twitter as @itsneonyang, and otherwise at http://neonyang.com.

Daniel James Abraham, pen names M.L.N. Hanover and James S.A. Corey, is an American novelist, comic book writer, screenwriter, and television producer. He is best known as the author of The Long Price Quartet and The Dagger and the Coin fantasy series, and with Ty Franck, as the co-author of The Expanse series of science fiction novels, written under the joint pseudonym James S.A. Corey.



Ken Liu (http://kenliu.name) is an American author of speculative fiction. He has won the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy awards, as well as top genre honors in Japan, Spain, and France, among other places. Ken's debut novel, The Grace of Kings, is the first volume in a silkpunk epic fantasy series, The Dandelion Dynasty, in which engineers play the role of wizards. His debut collection, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, has been published in more than a dozen languages. He also wrote the Star Wars novel, The Legends of Luke Skywalker. He has been involved in multiple media adaptations of his work. The most recent projects include “The Message,” under development by 21 Laps and FilmNation Entertainment; “Good Hunting,” adapted as an episode of Netflix's breakout adult animated series Love, Death + Robots; and AMC's Pantheon, which Craig Silverstein will executive produce, adapted from an interconnected series of short stories by Ken. Prior to becoming a full-time writer, Ken worked as a software engineer, corporate lawyer, and litigation consultant. Ken frequently speaks at conferences and universities on a variety of topics, including futurism, cryptocurrency, history of technology, bookmaking, the mathematics of origami, and other subjects of his expertise. Ken is also the translator for Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem, Hao Jingfang's Vagabonds, Chen Qiufan's Waste Tide, as well as the editor of Invisible Planets and Broken Stars, anthologies of contemporary Chinese science fiction. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

K.J. Parker is a pseudonym for Tom Holt. According to the biographical notes in some of Parker's books, Parker has previously worked in law, journalism, and numismatics, and now writes and makes things out of wood and metal. It is also claimed that Parker is married to a solicitor and now lives in southern England. According to an autobiographical note, Parker was raised in rural Vermont, a lifestyle which influenced Parker's work.

Todd J. McCaffrey (born as Todd Johnson) is an Irish American author of science fiction best known for continuing the Dragonriders of Pern series in collaboration with his mother Anne McCaffrey. Todd Johnson was born 27 April 1956 in Montclair, New Jersey as the second son and middle child of Horace Wright Johnson (deceased 2009), who worked for DuPont, and Anne McCaffrey (deceased 2011), who had her second short story published that year. He has two siblings: Alec Anthony, born 1952, and Georgeanne ("Gigi", Georgeanne Kennedy), born 1959. Except for a six-month DuPont transfer to Dusseldorf, Germany, the family lived most of a decade in Wilmington, Delaware, until a 1965 transfer to New York City when they moved to Sea Cliff, Long Island. All three children were then in school and Anne McCaffrey became a full-time author, primarily writing science fiction. About that time, Todd became the first of the children to read science fiction, the Space Cat series by Ruthven Todd. He attended his first science fiction convention in 1968, Lunacon in New York City. Soon after the move, Todd was directed to lower his voice as an actor in the fourth-grade school play, with his mother in the auditorium. That was the inspiration for Decision at Doona (1969) which she dedicated "To Todd Johnson—of course!" The story is set on "an overcrowded planet where just talking too loud made you a social outcast". Anne McCaffrey divorced in 1970 and emigrated to Ireland with her two younger children, soon joined by her mother. During Todd's school years the family moved several times in the vicinity of Dublin and struggled to make ends meet, supported largely by child care payments and meager royalties. Todd finished secondary education in Ireland and returned to the United States in 1974 for a summer job before matriculation at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania. He studied engineering physics and discovered computers but remained only one year. Back in Dublin he earned a Mechanical Engineering degree at the College of Technology (Bolton Street). Later he earned a Politics degree at Trinity College, Dublin. Before Trinity College, Todd Johnson served in the United States Army 1978–82, stationed in Stuttgart, Germany, and determining to pursue civilian life. After Trinity he returned to the US hoping to work in the aerospace industry but found employment in computer programming beginning 1986. He earned a pilot's license in 1988 and spent a lot of time flying, including solo trips across North America in 1989 and 1990. Meanwhile he sold his first writings and contributed "Training and Fighting Dragons" to the 1989 Dragonlover's Guide to Pern, using his military and flight experience. Next year he quit his job to write full-time and in 1992 he attended the Clarion Workshop for new science fiction and fantasy writers. Writing under the name Todd Johnson until 1997/98 he specialized in military science fiction, contributing one story each to several collective works As a boy, Todd accompanied his mother to her meetings with writers, editors, publishers, and agents; and had attended conventions from age 12. He was exposed to Pern before its beginning: soon after the move to Long Island when he was nine, his mother asked him what he thought of dragons; she was brainstorming about their "bad press all these years". The result was a "technologically regressed survival planet" whose people were united against a threat from space, in contrast to America divided by the Vietnam War. "The dragons became the biologically renewable air force." About thirty years later, Todd McCaffrey recalls, "the editor at Del Rey asked me to write a "sort of scrapbook" about Mum partly to prevent Mum from writing her autobiography instead of more Pern books. That was Dragonholder [1999]. The editor had also pitched it to me that someone ought to continue Mum's legacy when she was no longer able. At the time I had misgivings and no stor

Hi! I'm Seanan McGuire, author of the Toby Daye series (Rosemary and Rue, A Local Habitation, An Artificial Night, Late Eclipses), as well as a lot of other things. I'm also Mira Grant (www.miragrant.com), author of Feed and Deadline. Born and raised in Northern California, I fear weather and am remarkably laid-back about rattlesnakes. I watch too many horror movies, read too many comic books, and share my house with two monsters in feline form, Lilly and Alice (Siamese and Maine Coon). I do not check this inbox. Please don't send me messages through Goodreads; they won't be answered. I don't want to have to delete this account. :(


I was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on April 2, 1978, the first of three brothers. I've lived in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area my entire life; currently, just across the border in Wisconsin, about half an hour east of the Twin Cities. The Lies of Locke Lamora, my first novel, was bought by Simon Spanton at Orion Books in August, 2004. Prior to that I had just about every job you usually see in this sort of author bio—dishwasher, busboy, waiter, web designer, office manager, prep cook, and freelance writer. I trained in basic firefighting at Anoka Technical College in 2005, and became a volunteer firefighter in June of that year. In 2007 The Lies of Locke Lamora was a World Fantasy Award finalist. In 2008 I received the Sydney J. Bounds Best Newcomer Award from the British Fantasy Society. In 2010, I lost a marriage but gained a cat, a charming ball of ego and fuzz known as Muse (Musicus Maximus Butthead Rex I). My partner, the lovely and critically acclaimed SF/F writer Elizabeth Bear, lives in Massachusetts.





Beth Cato hails from Hanford, California, but currently writes and bakes cookies in a lair west of Phoenix, Arizona. She’s the Nebula Award-nominated author of A THOUSAND RECIPES FOR REVENGE from 47North (June 2023), plus the Clockwork Dagger duology and the Blood of Earth trilogy from Harper Voyager. Her short stories can be found in publications ranging from Beneath Ceaseless Skies to Uncanny Magazine. In 2019 and 2022, she won the Rhysling Award for speculative poetry. Beth shares her household with her husband, son, and two feline overlords. Her website BethCato.com includes not only a vast bibliography, but a treasure trove of recipes for delectable goodies. Find her on Twitter as @BethCato and Instagram as @catocatsandcheese.

Garth Nix was born in 1963 in Melbourne, Australia, to the sound of the Salvation Army band outside playing 'Hail the Conquering Hero Comes' or possibly 'Roll Out the Barrel'. Garth left Melbourne at an early age for Canberra (the federal capital) and stayed there till he was nineteen, when he left to drive around the UK in a beat-up Austin with a boot full of books and a Silver-Reed typewriter. Despite a wheel literally falling off the Austin, Garth survived to return to Australia and study at the University of Canberra. After finishing his degree in 1986 he worked in a bookshop, then as a book publicist, a publisher's sales representative, and editor. Along the way he was also a part-time soldier in the Australian Army Reserve, serving in an Assault Pioneer platoon for four years. Garth left publishing to work as a public relations and marketing consultant from 1994-1997, till he became a full-time writer in 1998. He did that for a year before joining Curtis Brown Australia as a part-time literary agent in 1999. In January 2002 Garth went back to dedicated writer again, despite his belief that full-time writing explains the strange behaviour of many authors. He now lives in Sydney with his wife, two sons and lots of books.

Ellen Klages was born in Ohio, and now lives in San Francisco. Her short fiction has appeared in science fiction and fantasy anthologies and magazines, both online and in print, including The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Black Gate, and Firebirds Rising. Her story, "Basement Magic," won the Best Novelette Nebula Award in 2005. Several of her other stories have been on the final ballot for the Nebula and Hugo Awards, and have been reprinted in various Year’s Best volumes. She was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award, and is a graduate of the Clarion South writing workshop. Her first novel The Green Glass Sea, about two misfit eleven-year-old girls living in Los Alamos during WWII, while their parents are creating the atomic bomb, came out in October 2006 from Sharyn November at Viking. Ellen is working on a sequel. She has also written four books of hands-on science activities for children (with Pat Murphy, et al.) for the Exploratorium museum in San Francisco. In addition to her writing, she serves on the Motherboard of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, and is somewhat notorious as the auctioneer/entertainment for the Tiptree auctions at Wiscon. When she's not writing fiction, she sells old toys and magazines on eBay, and collects lead civilians. from ellenklages.com

C.S.E. Cooney lives and writes in Queens, whose borders are water. She is an audiobook narrator, the singer/songwriter Brimstone Rhine, and author of World Fantasy Award-winning Bone Swans: Stories (Mythic Delirium 2015). Her work includes the novella Desdemona and the Deep (Tor.com 2019), three albums: Alecto! Alecto!, The Headless Bride, and Corbeau Blanc, Corbeau Noir, and a poetry collection: How to Flirt in Faerieland and Other Wild Rhymes. The latter features her 2011 Rhysling Award-winning “The Sea King’s Second Bride.” Her short fiction can be found in Ellen Datlow’s Mad Hatters and March Hares: All-New Stories from the World of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, the Sword and Sonnet anthology, edited by Aidan Doyle, Rachael K Jones, E. Catherine Tobler, Mike Allen’s Clockwork Phoenix 3 and 5, Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy (2011, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2018), Jonathan Strahan’s The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 12, Lightspeed Magazine, Fireside Magazine, Strange Horizons, Apex, Uncanny Magazine, Black Gate, Papaveria Press, GigaNotoSaurus, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, and elsewhere.