M. Darusha Wehm

Explorer of Worlds Real and Imagined

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: Hamlet, Prince of Robots. 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 latest full-length book is The Qubit Zirconium, a fun science fantasy featuring the odd-couple alien detective duo Wibble & Pplimz.

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.

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.

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

  • Major Tom and the Lucky LadyMajor Tom and the Lucky Lady
    I was balancing a cup of tea in one hand, while hanging on to the side of the companionway hatch with the other. I climbed into the cockpit sideways, compensating for the roll of the boat. I was only four days out of port and still getting used to the …
  • 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 …
  • FameFame
    “Pupusas?” The woman’s nasal voice reached Randall at the back of the bus before he saw her pushing her way down the aisle. He could smell the warm, raw meat smell of his own sweaty body, and his stomached wriggled. He was hungry, but he couldn’t face mysterious little bits …
  • 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 …

News

Three-Book Deal with my Co-Writing Team, Darkly Lem

I’m beside myself (and four other people) to be able to share that along with my co-writing team of Josh Eure, Craig Lincoln, Ben Murphy and Cadwell Turnbull, we’ve signed a three-book deal with Blackstone for a trilogy of multiversal political thrillers. The first book is planned to come out in late 2024.

Blackstone Publishing has also acquired another trilogy with Turnbull, as a part of Darkly Lem (which also includes authors Josh Eure, Craig Lincoln, Ben Murphy, and M. Darusha Wehm). Book 1 will be called Transmentation | Transience and is expected to release in Fall 2024. 

IN A (MANY) WORLD(S)… in which people can travel between universes – entering new bodies with entire in-universe identities gifted to them by a mysterious entity known as the Simulacrum – universe-spanning societies of interdimensional travelers have arisen over thousands of years. But this unchecked expansion has been curtailed in recent centuries as these societies encounter each other with greater frequency… and friction. Now they vie for power, knowledge, wealth, and control within their many worlds (actually many universes, but… that’s just not as poetic, is it?). For fans of The Expanse Series by James S.A. Corey, The Hainish Cycle by Ursula K. Le Guin, and the Southern Reach Trilogy by Jeff Vandermeer.

Darkly Lem is five authors in an impeccably-tailored trenchcoat (Josh Eure, Craig Lincoln, Ben Murphy, Cadwell Turnbull, and M. Darusha Wehm). They live in an Earth-type locality in the Central Cluster with their five kids, several spouses, and a modest menagerie, where they are at work on Many Worlds novels.

From tor.com

2022 Awards Eligibility

Happy New Year!

Here’s what I published this year:

SHORT STORIES

“The Stars Above Eos” in Fireside, March 2022 (1700 words). A short, sweet (sad?) science fiction love story about transcending death. Content notes for body modification and death.

“A Ghost of a Chance” (8400 words) in The Stars Beyond: A Twilight Imperium Anthology from Aconyte. Groundhog Day, but it’s a first contact story.

POETRY

“how to make time” in The Deadlands, March 2022. A recipe.

EXTRA

While not my things exactly, I would also like to draw your attention to the original stories we published at Many Worlds.

“Roamers of Tala” by Josh Eure 

“True Believers” by Craig Lincoln 

“And the Flower Grows and the Petal Falls and I Am Left Holding this Withered Stem” by Ben Murphy 

“What Has Vanished” by Elizabeth Sinden Pipher 

“Kichkandi” by Smriti Ravindra 

“The Cemetery for All the Mothers Who Died Way Too Young” by Mark Galarrita 

“Memento Mori” by Elliot Richards 

More...