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M. Darusha Wehm

Science fiction and mainstream books by award-winning author M. Darusha Wehm

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A white person with short pink and teal hair, wearing mirrorshades and a black sleeveless shirt, sitting in front of a brink wall.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you’ll find something you like here.

Out now: Transmentation | Transience by the co-writing team Darkly Lem (Josh Eure, Craig Lincoln, Ben Murphy, Cadwell Turnbull, and me). Publisher’s Weekly said, “Lem’s masterful worldbuilding is both sweeping and detailed, with believably delineated planets, ecologies, cultures, and governments. Sci-fi readers will be eager for a swift return to this setting.” 

My most recent solo book is Shores of a New Horizon, a Terraforming Mars novel. Estranged siblings must reunite to travel Mars and uncover a mystery which could threaten the future of humanity on the planet.

Hamlet, Prince of Robots, winner of the 2024 Sir Julius Vogel Award for best novella, is a beat-by-beat retelling of the Shakespeare classic which grapples with conscience, ambition, and pain, and what it means to be, or not to be, human.

My Nebula Award nominated and Sir Julius Vogel Award winning game The Martian Job is interactive fiction where you play a safecracker called in to do one last casino heist… on Mars. There is also a standalone prequel novella, Retaking Elysium.

If you want to read something short, check out the free stories available here or the links under “Publications” go to other places my stories have been published. Some of those are free to read online.

If you prefer longer works, there are free samples of most of my books available on the site. Beautiful Red was my first book, and is a standalone cyberpunk story. Self Made, Act of Will, The Beauty of Our Weapons and Pixels and Flesh are a series (in that order) about future detective Andersson Dexter. Children of Arkadia is a standalone political space station epic and The Voyage of the White Cloud is a novel-in-stories about the middle years on a generation starship. The Qubit Zirconium is a fun science fantasy featuring the odd-couple alien detective duo Wibble & Pplimz, and is part of the KeyForge universe.

My newest mainstream book, The Home for Wayward Parrots, is a lighthearted coming-of-age story full of geek pop culture and foul-mouthed birds. The YA series, Devi Jones’ Locker, is mainstream fiction — a light beach read that brings the beach to you. The first book in this series is Packet Trade.

  • Short Stories
    • Bodies at Rest, Bodies in Motion
    • Fire. Escape. – Sample
    • The Foreigner
    • Major Tom and the Lucky Lady
    • The Interview
    • Lucidity
    • Fame
    • Chekhov’s Phaser
    • Career Opportunities
  • Science Fiction
    • Beautiful Red
    • Children of Arkadia
    • Andersson Dexter
      • Self Made
      • Act of Will
      • The Beauty of Our Weapons
      • Pixels and Flesh
    • Modern Love and other stories
    • The Voyage of the White Cloud
    • Retaking Elysium
    • The Qubit Zirconium
    • Hamlet, Prince of Robots
    • Shores of a New Horizon
    • As Darkly Lem
  • Mainstream Fiction
    • Devi Jones’ Locker
      • Packet Trade
      • Sea Change
      • Storm Cloud
      • Floating Point
    • The Home for Wayward Parrots
  • Anthologies
    • Many Worlds or The Simulacra
    • Immigrant Sci-Fi Short Stories
    • The Stars Beyond
    • Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy, Volume 4
    • KeyForge: Tales From the Crucible
    • Trans-Galactic Bike Ride
    • Fireweed: Stories from the Revolution
    • Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy: Volume I
    • The Dame Was Trouble
    • Dystopia Utopia Short Stories
    • Science Fiction Short Stories
    • Procyon Press Science Fiction Anthology 2016
    • Use Only As Directed
  • Games/Interactive
    • The Martian Job
    • Alexander Systems
    • You Do You
    • if ink could flow backward
  • Books
A teal, purple and amber circular swirl with images of different landscapes (various futuristic cityscapes, an endless suburban street, a desert world) and flying whales. Text reading Transmentation | Transience by Darkly Lem.
Book One

Transmentation | Transience: Or, An Accession to the People’s Council for Nine Thousand Worlds (The Formation Saga)

By Darkly Lem

Learn More

The cover for Shores of a New Horizon by M. Darusha Wehm. A Martian landscape with mountains, a lake and industrialization in the background, with two unhelmeted figures in the foreground next to a rover.

Shores of a New Horizon

By M. Darusha Wehm

Learn More

Book cover for “Hamlet, Prince of Robots” by M. Darusha Wehm. A blue-green robot skull with a golden crown in the style of a neon sign, over a dark glitchy background. In the top left is a quote reading “Enormous fun and a real gift to lovers of Shakespeare or science fiction or both. Familiar and surprising, clever and moving.” From Kate Heartfield, author of Sunday Times bestseller The Embroidered Book.
SJV Winner

Hamlet, Prince of Robots

By M. Darusha Wehm

Learn More

The Qubit Zirconium

By M. Darusha Wehm

Learn More

Retaking Elysium cover

Retaking Elysium

By M. Darusha Wehm

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SJV Finalist

The Voyage of the White Cloud

By M. Darusha Wehm

Learn More

The Home for Wayward Parrots

By Darusha Wehm

Learn More

Book One

Packet Trade

By Darusha Wehm

Learn More

Book One

Self Made

By M. Darusha Wehm

Learn More

Reviews

Children of Arkadia
Wehm writes novels of ideas in which the ideas genuinely matter… [I]t’s a pleasure to see political and ethical questions, so often relegated to the background in science fiction, allowed so much scope to drive the story. — David Larsen, New Zealand Herald
The Home for Wayward Parrots
Exceptionally readable... This novel should be devoured in a single sitting. — Megan Kuklis, The Fiddlehead
A bittersweet tale of eccentricity, delayed development and getting on with the messy business of life. Plus parrots. — Toronto Star
The Voyage of the White Cloud
The novel is ambitious, with each chapter hosting new characters in a different era. … The genius of this arrangement soon becomes apparent. M Darusha Wehm is adept at creating characters who are immediately recognisable and engaging. Despite the short time we spend with each, we care about their progress, fears, triumphs and shortcomings. — Clare Rhoden, Aurealis #132
The Qubit Zirconium
an instant classic … a novel which provides an accessible introduction to this wonderfully absurd world, a mystery that keeps twisting and turning as fast as you can guess what might be coming next, and some genuinely laugh-out-loud moments from the witty dialogue and engaging interaction between the main characters. — The Story Board
Hugely imaginative, powerfully written and imbued with an innate sense of fun and enjoyment that makes everything sparkle with energy... — The Sci-Fi and Fantasy Reviewer
Hamlet, Prince of Robots
Through queering and technologising this classic, Wehm makes it possible to ask freshly and, in many cases, more deeply the questions the original Hamlet raises around grief and pain and the ways we know ourselves. The post-human characters in this book open doors into ourselves.— Pip Adam

Free Stories

  • LucidityLucidity
    last night I had the most wonderful dream Carly moaned softly in her sleep, and rolled over. She dreamed and dreamed, and when she woke, she found that she still had the lingering shadow of a smile on her lips. Her body was loose with the remnants of her orgasm. …
  • Chekhov’s PhaserChekhov’s Phaser
    I never planned to end up here. I’ve never planned anything, really. All my life has been like that: I see an opportunity and I take it. Sometimes that works out better than other times. So why should this be any different? I’d just been by docking station three, slipping …
  • Career OpportunitiesCareer Opportunities
    Jo-Lynn had always laughed at Charlotte, her stupid sister-in-law, who believed the crap in those so-called newspapers she bought at the supermarket every week. It was no wonder that her no-good brother married Charlotte; he’d always liked them dumb and easy. Once Charlotte moved in to the small house Jo-Lynn …
  • Fire. Escape. – SampleFire. Escape. – Sample
    This is a novelette that explores a different aspect of the world of the Andersson Dexter novels. You can get the complete ebook for free when you sign up to my mailing list. It all started with the explosion. It wasn’t the first time Grey had heard the tell-tale bang… whoosh …

Publications

  • Preventative Maintenance
  • A Most Elegant Solution
  • Homecoming
  • War Profiteering
  • The Care and Feeding of Mammalian Bipeds, v. 2.1
  • Home Sick
  • Modern Love (audio)
  • we are all energy
  • Fear of Lying
  • Modern Love
  • War Profiteering (audio)
  • . ….. ..story .. time
  • Good Hunting
  • Showing the Colours (audio)
  • recursion
  • A Thorn in Your Memory
  • The Interview
  • A Wish and a Hope and a Dream
  • Force Nine
  • Home Sick (audio)
  • The Stars Above Eos
  • I Open My Eyes
  • A Most Elegant Solution (audio)
  • Reflections on a Life Story
  • Microfiction @Thaumatrope
  • if ink could flow backward
  • Alexander Systems

News

A spaceship flies into blue and white light, with the text A Death in Hyperspace

A Death in Hyperspace is a Nebula Awards Finalist!

I worked on a really fun collaborative interactive fiction project called A Death in Hyperspace, and it is a finalist for the Nebula Award in Game Writing this year!

Thanks to my collaborators: Stewart C Baker, Phoebe Barton, James Beamon, Kate Heartfield, Isabel J. Kim, Sara S. Messenger, Naca Rat, Natalia Theodoridou, and Merc Fenn Wolfmoor.

Screenshot reading Finalist — Game Writing. A Death in Hyperspace.
STEWART C BAKER, PHOEBE BARTON, JAMES BEAMON, KATE HEARTFIELD, ISABEL J. KIM, SARA S. MESSENGER, NACA RAT, NATALIA THEODORIDOU,
M. DARUSHA WEHM, MERC FENN WOLFMOOR
NEBULA AWARD FINALISTS - GAME WRITING
1000xRESIST
Restore, Reflect, Retry 
A Death in Hyperspace
Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree
The Ghost and the Golem
Pacific Drive
Slay the Princess - The Pristine Cut
Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast

2024 Year in Review

Happy new year all! Here’s what I did in 2024:

My tie-in novel with the board game Terraforming Mars, Shores of a New Horizon, came out.

I contributed to the short interactive fiction project A Death in Hyperspace for the IF Comp.

Hamlet, Prince of Robots, won the Sir Julius Vogel award for best novella!

A teal, purple and amber circular swirl with images of different landscapes (various futuristic cityscapes, an endless suburban street, a desert world) and flying whales. Text reading Transmentation | Transience by Darkly Lem.

And, of course, along with the other darklies, I was working on the trilogy project which begins with Transmentation | Transience, which will be out in March.

It will be here before we know it!

A teal, purple and amber circular swirl with images of different landscapes (various futuristic cityscapes, an endless suburban street, a desert world) and flying whales. Text reading Transmentation | Transience by Darkly Lem.

Transmentation | Transience Cover Reveal

Over at Many Worlds, we’ve shared the incredible cover for Darkly Lem’s Transmentation | Transience: Or, An Accession to the People’s Council for Nine Thousand Worlds (Book One of The Formation Saga).

Phew, that’s a mouthful!

A teal, purple and amber circular swirl with images of different landscapes (various futuristic cityscapes, an endless suburban street, a desert world) and flying whales. Text reading Transmentation | Transience by Darkly Lem.

The book is the first in a trilogy coming in March 2025 from Blackstone, and the cover was designed by Kathryn English.

Darkly Lem is the shared pseudonym for five members of the Many Worlds collective: John Eure, Craig Lincoln, Ben Murphy, Cadwell Turnbull, and me! We are so excited to share these worlds with you all!

More...

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Poetry

  • . ….. ..story .. time
  • 140 and Counting
  • creation myth
  • Force Nine
  • how to make time
  • if ink could flow backward
  • recursion
  • the chrononaut
  • we are all energy

Non-fiction

  • 90ways.com

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Copyright © 2025 M. Darusha Wehm