Best Game Ever

The queer science fiction novel you’ve all been waiting for is here!

Sisu Publications is proud to announce the publication of BEST GAME EVER by R. R. Angell, a queer science fiction virtual reality thriller in the New Adult demographic. BEST GAME EVER is a novel of virtual reality games and augmented reality in which college students must battle an AI game engine to save themselves and the gaming world.

Praise for Best Game Ever

“The Best Game Ever is the science fiction Hogwarts, full of adventure and wonder, that you’ve always wanted—complete with cyber-tech instead of magic, virtual reality gaming instead of quidditch, and a diverse, queer cast of exciting characters.”

Don Sakers, author of Dance for the Ivory Madonna

Angell has captured college life in all its horrifying, glorious complexity, set against a future that’s frighteningly possible.”

Cat Rambo, author of Beasts of Tabat

Teaser

It is springtime at Bolin College and death is in the air.

The Virtual Campus Challenge demo is one week away. To make matters worse, Robby hasn’t had a boyfriend since freshman year and his gender-fluid friend is making that all too clear.

When Robby and his team uncover a link between suicides and virtual reality games, Virtuella, SaikoVR’s AI game engine, fights back. Can Robby and his friends defeat Virtuella, save the world, and find love in the BEST GAME EVER?

Buy the book!

Amazon:Amazon Trade Paperback link is here


Barnes & Nobel Print Link is here


Buy the eBook here (links to all major platforms)

Cover design by Teagan Gavet

In The Space Of Nine Lives

A deep space colony ship. A pilot’s inner conflict. Who will win?

Sisu Publications is proud to publish the novelette, In The Space Of Nine Lives, by R. R. Angell. The story was first published in the January 2006 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, edited by Sheila Williams.

About the story

The ship’s cat slipped Tom’s grip and ran up the curving floor toward the galley. As he stalked her, young Tom felt less sure of himself. He could talk it over with Pilot, but Pilot was in sim and not to be bothered unless it was an emergency. 


Tom’s best friend, his schoolmates, and all his teachers on the interstellar ship exist in virtual reality. The only other living person on board is the Pilot, and Tom is being groomed to take his place, ensuring that the colonists in hibernation reach their destination planet after their centuries-long journey.

But after Pilot retires to his own hibernation, young Tom has a life-changing event that makes him question the mission’s purpose, and his own. Meanwhile, the ship seems to have its own agenda concerning a mysterious cloud of debris.

Will Tom accept fate or choose his own destiny?

Praise for R. R. Angell

Angell looks into the psychology behind deep space exploration, with another factor, VR, in a story of the kind Asimov’s does particularly well, and which Angell handles particularly well.

A good Asimov’s debut for Angell.

– Mark Watson. http://bestsf.net

Where to buy it!

Amazon Novelette Trade Paperback link is here


Buy the eBook here (links to all major platforms)

Cover design by Teagan Gavet

Remote Control

Forget what you know about U.S. Border control.

Sisu Publications is proud to announce our first book, a short story by R. R. Angell titled Remote Control. The story first appeared in Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy magazine Issue 216 in June of 2008.

Teaser

The kid in Billings dropped his third round and was replaced by someone from Ontario, Canada. I terminated him immediately. Sometimes foreigners do get in, and maybe they squeeze off a round, but not on my watch. If one of them killed or maimed a runner, there would be all kinds of trouble. Like the training says, if someone breaks into your house and you kill them it is self-defense; a homeowner has the right to do that. They call it the Castle Precedent, and it changed the way we do everything. 


Only Americans patrol our borders. It would be illegal otherwise.

Notes from the author

Recent events have made me interested in getting REMOTE CONTROL out in the world again. I recorded the podcast and sent it along to Interzone Magazine for their podcast site, TRANSMISSIONS FROM BEYOND. TFB is still going, but the podcast of the story was taken down a few years ago. After all, the story was published in June of 2008. Oddly enough, it still reads fresh to me.

THIS STORY COULD HAPPEN….


Don’t kid yourself. I once explained this story to an acting Marine Colonel at a cocktail party in 2010, a few years after it had been published, and he said, “That’s actually a good idea.” He turned and walked away leaving me a bit nervous. 
This story is about border and immigration control along the Mexican border. It’s also about gun rights. It’s about how all that can go really, really wrong and how we need to keep believing that good will surface in even the most unlikely places.

Where to buy it!

Amazon Trade Short Story Paperback link is here

Buy the eBook here (links to all platforms)

Cover design by Teagan Gavet