Tor.com is an online magazine and community site that covers science fiction, fantasy, and all the many related subjects that interest us as readers.
We regularly publish new original short fiction from voices both new and legendary (and on very special occasions, both at once), as well as daily commentary on science fiction, fantasy, and related subjects from a wide range of writers from all corners of the field. Our aim is to explore, encourage, and enable interesting and rewarding conversations with and between readers.
Tor.com is publisher neutral, and as such, boasts contributors and content from many different publishers and fandoms. Tor.com debuted online on July 20, 2008.
Tor.com Magazine Masthead
Irene Gallo
Publisher
Irene Gallo is the Publisher of Tor.com and Vice President of Tom Doherty Associates (TDA). Since Tor.com’s launch on July 20th, 2008 (not coincidentally, the anniversary of humankind landing on the moon) it has grown into a thriving community and a must-read site for science fiction and fantasy fans, winning numerous awards for both its original fiction and non-fiction, including the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Locus Awards. In 2015, Gallo expanded Tor.com’s fiction to include commercially available titles in print and ebook that start at 20,000 words up through full-length novels. Tor.com enjoys being a home for both commercial fiction and the quirkier or more literary end of the market.
Chris Lough
Director
Chris Lough began at Tor.com’s community site/magazine in 2010 and became Director in 2018. With Bridget McGovern, he is co-editor of Rocket Fuel: Some of the Best of Tor.com Non-Fiction, and his own essays and commentary can be found throughout Tor.com’s archives. Robert Jordan’s The Eye of the World was published on his birthday and he probably should have realized on that day just how formative Jordan’s work would become in his life. A graduate of NYU, his previous regenerations include managing a rock music venue, writing extensive X-Men fanfiction, and running the NYC Marathon.
Bridget McGovern
Managing Editor
Bridget McGovern is the Managing Editor of Tor.com, the co-editor of Rocket Fuel: Some of the Best of Tor.com Non-Fiction, and a full-time lit, film, and pop culture geek. When not editing and commissioning articles, she has something to say about everything from Alice’s Adventures, Batman, and Crow T. Robot to X-Ray Spex, Yggdrasil, and Zardoz, and is generally fun to have around at cocktail parties.
Emmet Asher-Perrin
News & Entertainment Editor
Emmet Asher-Perrin is a literal cyborg who probably comes from an alternate universe, but don’t let that bother you. They have been a pop culture critic, essayist, and film reviewer on Tor.com for the past decade. Outside of the site, their thoughts have showed up in places like the Hugo-nominated Queers Dig Time Lords, Lost Transmissions: The Secret History of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and podcasts such as Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy and Imaginary Worlds. Twitter @use_theforce_em.
Christina Orlando
Books Editor & Publicity Coordinator
Christina Orlando is the Books Editor & Publicity Coordinator for Tor.com, where they get to be a book nerd all day. As a freelance writer covering poetry, gender, and sexuality, their work has appeared in Electric Literature, gal-dem, THEM, Adroit Journal, and Book Riot. They are the winner of Spotify’s Sound Up grant for people of color in podcasting, and their first audiodrama will debut later this year. They are a champion for diversity in the literary community, and dedicated to supporting marginalized voices across the publishing industry.
Stefan Raets
Moderator & Production Associate
Stefan Raets is a Tor.com moderator, production associate, and a frequent book reviewer for the site. He’s usually reading and writing about SFF whenever he’s not distracted by less important things like eating and sleeping. Twitter @sraets.
Leah Schnelbach
Senior Staff Writer
What is Leah Leah Schnelbach’s plan for us?
They’re the Senior Staff Writer for Tor.com, and a fiction editor for the literary journal No Tokens. In past lives they wrote an SFF column for Lithub’s Book Marks site, edited prose for Fairy Tale Review, and earned an MA in Religious Studies because they like to go where the money is.
Their fiction and criticism appears in The Rumpus, Joyland, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Tin House Online, and Electric Literature, and they’ve guested on Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. According to Sarah Lawrence College they are a Master of Fiction. (This does not always seem accurate.) Their mind is a nest of vipers, but they are kind, thoughtful vipers. Twitter @cloudy_vision.
Sarah Tolf
Production Manager
Sarah Tolf began at Tor.com in 2013 and became the Production Manager in 2017, coordinating, producing, and monitoring all written and visual content within the website. Finally, her lifetime devotion to nerdy pursuits and campaigns against misplaced modifiers have proven lucrative!
Tor.com Acquiring Fiction Editors
Ellen Datlow
Ellen Datlow is a consulting editor at Tordotcom Publishing and Tor.com and has had an impressive career in the field, having edited fiction at Omni from 1981-1998. She’s also edited The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror from 1988-2008 and is responsible for Night Shade’s The Best Horror of the Year anthologies. Ellen was won numerous awards for her editorial achievements including the Hugo, three Bram Stoker Awards, and nine World Fantasy Awards. She’s been the co-host of the Fantastic Fiction series at the KGB bar since the year 2000.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden
Patrick Nielsen Hayden is the Vice President, Associate Publisher, and Editor-in-Chief of Tor Books and has been with the imprint for nearly thirty years, during which time he has had the good fortune to work both with some of the great figures of SF and fantasy’s past—writers he grew up reading, like Arthur C. Clarke, Poul Anderson, and Damon Knight—and also with some of the best younger writers to emerge in the last quarter-century. He is particularly proud of the debut novels he has published, by writers including Maureen F. McHugh, Susan Palwick, Cory Doctorow, Jo Walton, John Scalzi, Ada Palmer, and Charlie Jane Anders. Novels he has edited for Tor have won Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, and, to his amazement, he has personally won three Hugo Awards and a World Fantasy Award for editing.
In the rest of his life, he teaches, edits the occasional anthology, and plays lead guitar for the New York City band Whisperado. With his wife, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, he helped run the 1978 Worldcon, published the science fiction fanzine Izzard, and won TAFF in 1985; today, the Nielsen Haydens operate the weblog Making Light.
Jonathan Strahan
Jonathan Strahan is a consulting editor for Tordotcom Publishing. A fourteen time Hugo Award finalist, he has edited more than 90 books, has been reviews editor for Locus: The Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field since 2002, co-host of The Coode Street Podcast with Gary K Wolfe since 2010, and was awarded the World Fantasy Award for his editing. He lives on the opposite side of the world from the Flatiron Building, where Tor.com was born, with his family, a cat, and a lot of books. He travels occasionally.
Ann VanderMeer
Ann VanderMeer is a consulting editor at Tordotcom Publishing and Tor.com and a Hugo-award winning editor and publisher. From 2007-2011 she was the fiction editor of Weird Tales. She has edited the Best American Fantasy series as well as numerous other anthologies including The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, Steampunk, and Fast Ships, Black Sails. She is the founder of Buzzcity Press. Upon leaving Weird Tales, Ann founded The Weird Fiction Review with her husband Jeff VanderMeer.
Tordotcom Publishing Masthead
Tordotcom Publishing, an imprint for science fiction and fantasy novellas and novels launched in 2015, is a line that provides a home for emerging and established writers to tell focused, engaging stories in exactly the number of words they choose. Most of its titles are available globally in print and DRM-free ebook format.
Tom Doherty
Founder and Chairman of Tor Books
Tom Doherty is the Founder of Tor Books, founded in 1979 and launched in 1980, and Chairman of Tom Doherty Associates (TDA). Tor Books and its associated imprints–Forge, Starscape, Tordotcom Publishing, Tor Teen, and Nightfire–publish the largest SF and fantasy list in the English-speaking world.
“When I founded the company,” Doherty says. “Our intent was to focus on fiction, often grounded in science past, present, and future, starting with prehistoric fiction—which would be science fiction based on anthropology—and stretching across history and the present into a future which is often extrapolated from possibilities suggested in physics and other scientific fields of today. The resulting list not only included books from a wide range of genres, but has managed to win recognition in all of these fields.
“A diverse list like ours comes from an editorial staff with diverse interests. I want editors to reach beyond those founding concepts. To have the freedom to do work that interests them with authors that they enjoy reading. Our editors bring passion to every project and are dedicated to finding and publishing the best books in every genre.”
Fritz Foy
President of Tor Books & Publisher of Tom Doherty Associates (TDA)
Fritz Foy is the President of Tor Books and the Publisher of Tom Doherty Associates (TDA). His involvement with science fiction and fantasy began in January 1967 when he bought the first Star Trek novel, the Ace edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, and a used copy of Detective Comics #326 in Marley’s in East Hampton NY. He still has all three.
“I want a book to show me a new world,” Foy explains. “Be it a season of history I’ve not yet explored, a new scientific frontier, or a cosmos that only previously existed within the soul of its author. My hope as the Publisher of Tom Doherty Associates is to create well-written books that impart a sense of wonder through the pleasure of reading and the beauty of language. If you can approach a story with the same limitless excitement and curiosity as if it were a storybook from childhood, you can explore further than you ever thought possible.”
Irene Gallo
Publisher, Tordotcom Publishing
Irene Gallo is the Publisher of Tor.com and Vice President of Tom Doherty Associates (TDA). Since Tor.com’s launch on July 20th, 2008 (not coincidentally, the anniversary of humankind landing on the moon) it has grown into a thriving community and a must-read site for science fiction and fantasy fans, winning numerous awards for both its original fiction and non-fiction, including the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Locus Awards. In 2015, Gallo expanded Tor.com’s fiction to include commercially available titles in print and ebook that start at 20,000 words up through full-length novels. Tor.com enjoys being a home for both commercial fiction and the quirkier or more literary end of the market.
Lee Harris
Senior Editor, Tordotcom Publishing
Lee Harris joined Tordotcom Publishing in 2014 in order to head up the editorial arm of the new imprint, publishing full-length novels, as well as novelettes and novellas including Binti by Nnedi Okorafor, Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire, The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, and many more. In 2014 he became the first British editor to be nominated for a Hugo. He hates dried fruit, but loves mince pies, and no, he doesn’t understand that, either.
Lauren Anesta
Senior Publicist, Tordotcom Publishing
Lauren Anesta is the Senior Publicist for Tordotcom Publishing, having previously worked at Bloomsbury, Oxford University Press, and others. When she’s not yelling about books, she’s also a bassoonist, a baker, and an obsessive watcher of cozy British murder mysteries. Twitter @laurenalexis11.
Ruoxi Chen
Associate Editor, Tordotcom Publishing
Ruoxi Chen joined Tordotcom Publishing in 2017, having pivoted from trade nonfiction full tilt into science fiction and fantasy. She prefers her socio-political narratives intersectional, her fantasy post-colonial, and her families found. She’s had the pleasure of debuting authors like Emily Tesh, Kerstin Hall, and Nghi Vo, in addition to working with established stars like Tochi Onyebuchi, Sarah Gailey, and more. Books she’s edited have been finalists for the World Fantasy and New England Book Awards. You can find her on Twitter @jruoxichen.
Carl Engle-Laird
Editor, Tordotcom Publishing
Carl Engle-Laird began at Tor Books and Tor.com in 2012, and was brought on to Tordotcom Publishing as an editorial assistant in 2014. During this time, he has had the pleasure of debuting Hugo and Nebula-nominated authors such as Kai Ashante Wilson (A Taste of Honey) and JY Yang (The Black Tides of Heaven), and of acquiring Tordotcom Publishing’s first full-length novels, Malka Older’s Infomocracy and Ruthanna Emrys’ Winter Tide. And then came Tamsyn Muir and Gideon the Ninth… Twitter @EngleLaird.
Christine Foltzer
Associate Art Director, Tordotcom Publishing
Christine Foltzer is the Associate Art Director for Tordotcom Publishing, and the designer behind Michael Blumlein’s Longer, Tade Thompson’s The Murders of Molly Southbourne, Jennifer Giesbrecht’s The Monster of Elendhaven, and many more. She has also done in-house and freelance work for St. Martin’s Press, Oxford University Press. Grand Central Publishing and more. Twitter @CFoltzer.
Emily Goldman
Short Fiction Coordinator, Tordotcom Publishing
Emily Goldman is the Short Fiction Coordinator at Tor.com, a 2016 graduate of Portland State University’s book publishing program, and a full-time book nerd since forever. They fully blame Tamora Pierce, Robin Hobb, Yoon Ha Lee, and Frances Hardinge for the person they ended up becoming.
Mordicai Knode
Marketing Manager, Tordotcom Publishing
Mordicai Knode is the Marketing Manager for Tor.com. He keeps a Tumblr stuffed full of spooky images and a Twitter packed with non sequiturs. Interests include: spiders, spells, and laser swords. Twitter @mordicai.
Amanda Melfi
Assistant & Social Media, Tordotcom Publishing
Amanda Melfi is a graduate of Pace University and joined Tordotcom Publishing in 2017. She enjoys science fiction and fantasy books and true crime/paranormal podcasts. She owns too many books and wishes she had more time to read them all. Twitter @amandamelfi.
