M. Darusha Wehm

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

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.

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 …

News

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!

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!

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