SL Huang

Speculative fiction author. Mathematician. Gunslinger.

audio

THE WATER OUTLAWS is out!

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The Water Outlaws book cover shows a woman with a weapon on a rearing horse, martial arts bandits in the background

Buy links in the US * Buy links in the UK

A 2023 Pick for Vulture | Men’s Health | IGN | Polygon | Goodreads | Amazon | Nerd Daily | WeAreBookish| Paste | Books, Bones & Buffy | The Escapist | Paste Magazine | SciFixFantasy | Distractify | Gizmodo| Ms. Magazine | Popsugar | Book Riot | Autostraddle| The Mary Sue & others

Inspired by a classic of martial arts literature, S. L. Huang’s The Water Outlaws are bandits of devastating ruthlessness, unseemly femininity, dangerous philosophies, and ungovernable gender who are ready to make history―or tear it apart.

“S.L. Huang’s new epic fantasy is a battle cry of a book. . . . A glorious, wuxia-inspired saga of femme and queer resistance in the face of oppression.”―BookPage, starred review

In the jianghu, you break the law to make it your own.

Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor’s soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job.

Until a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully-built life away.

Disgraced, tattooed as a criminal, and on the run from an Imperial Marshall who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by the Bandits of Liangshan. Mountain outlaws on the margins of society, the Liangshan Bandits proclaim a belief in justice―for women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt Empire would imprison or destroy. They’re also murderers, thieves, smugglers, and cutthroats.

Apart, they love like demons and fight like tigers. Together, they could bring down an empire.

Buy it now in the US!

Buy it now in the UK!

2022 Awards Eligibility Post

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Hilariously, my last news post was my 2021 eligibility post. It’s not that nothing has been happening — I’ve apparently just gotten very bad at updating here. Huh, I suppose I should do a post soon about preorders for The Water Outlaws now being available…

But that post is not this one!

In 2022, I had three publications available for awards consideration.

BEST RELATED WORK / NONFICTION

The Ghost of Workshops Past: How Communism, Conservatism, and the Cold War Still Mold Our Paths Into SFF Writing (Tor.com, 7,000 words, August 2022)

A deep dive into the history of SFF workshops and their pedagogy that sparked a lot of discussion in genre.

I wrote about 60,000 words while putting this piece together (even if only 7k ended up in the final product), and interviewed over 80 people. I also posted a little more about the process and extra community and historical information on Twitter here.

This article has now been BSFA longlisted!

NOVELETTE

“Murder By Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness” (7850 words, Clarkesworld)

Link to read
Link for audio

This is a short near-future SF novelette. It won top story of the month from Compelling SF, with the commentary “It’s rare that I see near-future AI stories that really feel true-to-life and are also page-turners, Huang knocked this one out of the park.” Reviewer Vanessa Fogg recommends it with “A truly thought-provoking piece on automated chatbots, healers, and trolls. And our own culpability in the birth of technology’s demons.”

Content notes (ROT13): Unenffzrag/fgnyxvat, fhvpvqr (aba-tencuvp, abg ol n cebgntbavfg be CBI punenpgre)

SHORT STORY

“The Ship Cat of the Suzaku Maru” (4700 words, Outland Entertainment)

This story appears in Outland Entertainment’s Bridge to Elsewhere anthology. It’s about a cat on a ship. A most excellent cat. Who has an adventure…

New Release: THE VELA is out!

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The first episode of the serial I’ve been writing with Yoon Ha Lee, Rivers Solomon, and Becky Chambers is now OUT! It’s called “A Leisurely Extinction” and you can read it here for free!

Subscribe to get the whole series as it comes out. You get both text and audio bundled for every episode — with the audio timed to be commute-length!

Not convinced? Here’s what people are saying:

“…nothing less than excellent, which is only to be expected from its writing team.” — Liz Bourke, Tor.com

“These authors are at the forefront of diverse, inclusive, fresh and imaginative scifi. They’re the best of the best in current science fiction…it’s gritty and real, and it will not cease to surprise you…it’s the book we’ve been waiting for for a long time now. Or rather, it’s the book women, queer people, disabled people and any allies have been waiting for for a loooooooong time” — Avalinah’s Books

“The best comparison I can think of is The Expanse meets Battlestar Galactica but 100% queerer.” — The Illustrated Page

“…fast-paced action, fundamentally irreconcilable political showdowns, and some highly entertaining twists” — Nerds of a Feather

“…this is a dream team of writers, and so far they are doing something really special with this story.” — Lady Business

“The novel’s climactic action scenes are breathtaking, and once the book enters its final stages, it’s almost impossible to put down. It’s an intoxicating mix of high-octane action and human emotion.” — Geek Dad

“OOF. Tear my heart into tiny pieces, why don’t you, The Vela writing team?” — Reading the End

COME TRY THE FIRST EPISODE FOR FREE!!

ZERO SUM GAME is Out in the World!

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* SOUNDS KLAXONS *

The Tor re-release of Zero Sum Game is OUT OUT OUT OUT today! today! today!

You can get it in hardcover! Ebook! Audio read by Lauren Fortgang! It’s a “book of the month” at both Barnes and Noble and Amazon! GO GO GO LITTLE BOOK GO!

What Other People Say…

“The best novel I’ve read this year; a heroine I fell in love with.”—Eric Van Lustbader, #1 New York Timesbestselling author

“Cas Russell is who I want to be when I grow up. She kicks ass with her fists and her brain—a true twenty-first century action hero. I loved this book.”—Richard Kadrey

“This book lines up like a perfect, elegant equation — it’s fast, furious, and adds up to one of the coolest, most crackin’ reads this year. ”—Chuck Wendig, NYT bestselling author of Invasive and Star Wars: Aftermath

“The smartest and thrillingest book you’ll read all year.”—Ken Liu, author of The Grace of Kings and The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories

“Paced at a flat out sprint, Zero Sum Game deploys an astonishing array of weapons together with the prickly charms of its math genius protagonist on her turbulent journey toward trust and connection.”—Kate Elliott

“Intense, vivid, and insanely clever, with a great heroine—I couldn’t put it down. If only more authors with math degrees used them like this!”—Yoon Ha Lee

“A fast-paced, darkly humorous read with a lot of heart for fans of action and urban fantasy, as well as lovers of Wolverine and other morally ambiguous, gritty superheroes with a mysterious past.”—Booklist, Starred Review

“This hard-to-put-down, action-packed sf debut is intelligent and entertaining. With Cas, Huang has created an indelible, flawed character who makes mathematics seem almost magical.”—Library Journal, Starred Review

“A paranormal thriller in which both the action and the questions don’t stop….Cas is an awesome antiheroine…exciting, nasty fun…an excellent harbinger for books to come.”—Kirkus

The blurb…

A blockbuster, near-future science fiction thriller, S.L. Huang’s Zero Sum Game introduces a math-genius mercenary who finds herself being manipulated by someone possessing unimaginable power…

Cas Russell is good at math. Scary good. The vector calculus blazing through her head lets her smash through armed men twice her size and dodge every bullet in a gunfight, and she’ll take any job for the right price.

As far as Cas knows, she’s the only person around with a superpower…until she discovers someone with a power even more dangerous than her own. Someone who can reach directly into people’s minds and twist their brains into Moebius strips. Someone intent on becoming the world’s puppet master.

Cas should run, like she usually does, but for once she’s involved. There’s only one problem…

She doesn’t know which of her thoughts are her own anymore.

And HERE BE ALL THE BUY LINKS! Wheeeeeeeee BOOK!

Half a Year of Updates

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It turns out that when I’m on Facebook and Twitter and have a newsletter, I become terrible at updating a blog. Oops. To stay more current, follow me those places!

I last posted here that the Cas Russell books are coming to Tor — YEEHAW! This year has been a whirlwind of preparation for the big re-release, including a series of stellar edits with my editor at Tor, Diana Gill.

I’ve also had two more short stories published in the meantime, which I neglected to post about at the time:

  • “Split Shadow” in the anthology Haunted Futures. Publishers Weekly said of my story: “the outstanding ‘Split Shadow’ by S.L. Huang, an essential portrayal of mental health attitudes and treatment.”
  • “Time Travel Is Only For the Poor” in Analog Science Fiction & Fact. This one’s a tale of when society starts trying to use technology to “fix” what it sees as social ills…
  • And “The Last Robot” also got an audio recording! Check it out here!

Finally, my writer friend Maddox Hahn and I started a charity Patreon we’re calling The Ink Harpies — once we hit $200, we’ll start releasing new short stories through it! I’m planning to post a bit more behind the scenes stuff about my publishing journey on the news feed as well.

So that’s what’s been happening — what’s coming up?

Zero Sum Game, of course, with the big re-release in October. But there’s more! I’ll have at least three short stories and novelettes dropping this year, including “The Woman Who Destroyed Us” in MIT Press’s Twelve Tomorrows anthology, alongside with stories by Elizabeth Bear, Liu Cixin, Ken Liu, Nnedi Okorafor, and more. And I’ll have novella in the “Hunting Monsters” universe coming out from The Book Smugglers!

Lastly, something really exciting — you can meet me in meatspace this year! I’ll be heading back to the United States, and you’ll be able to find me at the following events:

  • Wiscon (May 2018, Madison WI)
  • BookCon (June 2018, NYC), where I’ll be on this panel with Charlie Jane Anders, V.E. Schwab, and Seth Dickinson
  • This Twelve Tomorrows promotional event, with Ken Liu and Elizabeth Bear (June 2018, Boston)
  • Worldcon (August 2018, San Jose)
  • New York City Comic Con (October 2018, NYC)

(That list might change a bit as the year goes on — subscribe to my newsletter for up-to-date announcements.)

If you’re going to be at any of those, come say hi!

That’s the plan ramping up to my Zero Sum Game release. And after THAT…

After that, we shall see. 😀

(If you really, really want me to do an event near your town? Email me or tweet me and tell me so. No guarantees, but I can try!)