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This is the home page of Aliette de Bodard, writer of fantasy and science fiction (and the very occasional horror piece). Aliette has won the BSFA Award for Best Short Fiction, as well as Writers of the Future. She has also been nominated for the Hugo, Nebula and Campbell Award.
Her Aztec mystery-fantasies, Servant of the Underworld, Harbinger of the Storm, and Master of the House of Darts, are published by Angry Robot, worldwide.
Her short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in a number of venues, such as Interzone, Realms of Fantasy, Asimov’s, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction.
She lives in Paris, France, in a flat with more computers than she really needs, and uses her spare time to indulge in her love of mythology and history.
As a Franco-Vietnamese, Aliette has a strong interest in non-Western cultures, particularly the Aztecs, Ancient Vietnam and Ancient China, and will gladly use any excuse to shoehorn those into her short or long fiction.
A more extensive biography is available here, and a list of her fiction can be found here.
In the resources section, you will also find lists of research books for Pre-Columbian America and Ancient China.
Here is a random excerpt from Aliette’s free online fiction (click on quote to refresh):
For years after Masani turned her back on us, no other hermit came to the citadel of Lhira. On Lord Rakhte's orders, I had carved the patterns of cobras and elephant tusks into the gates, to deny the god-touched wanderers entrance. But my wards were weak, and the dead wood of the carvings decayed with time.
Seven years after Masani's departure, another hermit came to me.
I found him one morning in my workshop; as I entered, he turned to me, his eyes silently reproaching me for abandoning Masani's teachings. We faced each other without speaking. I did not know his name, but I knew his kind. All too well.
His face, framed by a shock of snow-white hair, was covered with a fine network of wrinkles, and veins stood on the back of his hands. Despite that, I knew he had been born after me. Contact with the gods aged hermits.
If the gods had been kind, they would never have allowed him to enter Lhira. But the gods have always been on the hermits' side.
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from "Citadel of Cobras", The Sword Review
Recent Reads
-Range of Ghosts, by Elizabeth Bear (ARC provided by author): set in a fantasy version of the Silk Road Empires (their cultures spanning the gamut between pseudo-Muslim, pseudo-Mongol and pseudo-Chinese), Range of Ghosts. Temur was left for dead by his uncle in a power struggle–his brother slain, his true name lost, and with a horde of ghosts hunting after him. Meanwhile, Samarkar, who was once a princess, sacrifices her body to become a wizard, away from the petty squabbles of her family. But when an entire city is laid waste by sorcery and hungry ghosts, both Temur and Samarkar find themselves drawn into a fight that could change their entire world…
It’s hard to talk about this book without gushing, because it’s so good. It has Bear’s gorgeous prose and complex characters, as well as intricate worldbuilding that recalls the cultures of the Silk Road–a rarity in a field where non-Western fantasy is still the odd thing out rather than the norm. And [...]
Original Picture Credits
Portrait: Ines de Bodard
