International bestselling editor and writer with over 35 million books in print, Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in many genres, from science fiction to mystery, from western to romance. She has written under a pile of pen names, but most of her work appears as Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov's Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.

Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award.

She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own.

To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com).

Becalmed by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Mae, chief linguist on the Ivoire, heads a diplomatic mission to Ukhanda. Her handling of relations with the Quurzod lead to a battle that causes the Ivoire's anacapa drive to malfunction, stranding the ship in foldspace.

Mae can't remember what she did wrong on the mission: all she knows is that she's one of the few survivors. If she doesn't recall it, she won't be able to prevent another disaster when the Ivoire escapes foldspace. If the Ivoire escapes foldspace. Because what no one talks about—and everyone fears—is that the Ivoire is becalmed…forever.

One of the untold stories in Kristine Kathryn Rusch's award-winning "Diving" universe, "Becalmed" stands alone—yet answers questions long-time readers might have about the history of the Fleet.

CURATOR'S NOTE

•Some writers can do it all…and Kristine Rusch is one of them. Not only has she won the Hugo Award, but she writes successfully across multiple genres, from science fiction to fantasy to mystery and more. Becalmed is the latest offering from her acclaimed and long-running Diving Universe series, a space opera masterpiece featured in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine and available from WMG Publishing. If you haven't read her work before, you're in for a real treat, the kind that introduces you to an author who might just change your life and the way you look at fiction and the world. If you have read Rusch's work in the past, you'll see that she has come a long way since then and never stops progressing in her relentless quest for excellence. This book is packed with tension, action, ideas, characterization, and surprises—so many goodies that you might need a second or third read just to wrap your head around them. Her multitudes of fans—including me—can't be wrong. Kristine Kathryn Rusch is the real deal, and Becalmed is the perfect introduction—or reintroduction—to her vibrant, staggeringly exciting, and thought-provoking universe. – Robert Jeschonek

 

REVIEWS

  • "['Becalmed'] is quite fascinating and another fine tale from Rusch."

    – SFRevu

  • "Rusch delivers a page-turning space adventure..."

    – Publisher’s Weekly on Diving into the Wreck
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Becalmed

Here's what they tell you when you want to leave the Fleet:

Stay behind. Don't get back on the ship, not even to retrieve your things. Have someone bring the important items to you.

Check to see if any of your friends or any members of your family want to leave as well. Don't force them. For most of us, the ship is and has always been home. Life on a planet—any planet—is different. Very different. So different that some can't handle it, even if they think they can.

Don't go to a base. Don't ask to be dropped off. Stay. Create a new life with the grateful people you've saved/helped/rescued.

Become someone else.

They tell us these things before each mission and then again as one is ending. They tell us these things so that we can make the right choice for us, the right choice for the ship. The right choice for everyone.

They do this because they used to forbid us from leaving. We were of the ship, they'd say. We were part of the Fleet. We were specially chosen, specially bred.

We were, they said, able to overcome anything.

But that wasn't true. Even with ships built for five hundred people, there is no room for one slowly devolving intellect, one emotionally unstable but highly trained individual.

No room for the crazy, the sick, or the absolutely terrified.

The key, however, is finding that person. Figuring out who she is.

And what to do about her.

* * *

It had been a slaughter. Twenty-seven of us, and only three survived.

I am one of the survivors.

And that is all I know.

I sit on the window seat in my living area, staring out the portal. I had asked, back when I got promoted the very first time, to have an apartment on the outer edges of the ship. I'd been told apartments that brushed against the exterior were dangerous, that if the ship sustained serious damage I could lose everything.

But I like looking out the portal—a real portal, not a wall screen, not some kind of entertainment—at space as it is at this moment.

But I do not look into space.

Instead, I have activated a small section of my wall screen. I read and reread the regulations. I translate them into different languages. I have the ship's computer recite them to me. I have the children's school programs explain them.

The upshot is the same:

I should leave. I should never have come back to the ship. That was my mistake.

Theirs was to keep me and not ask me to remain planetside.

These errors make me nervous. They make me wonder what will happen next, and that is unusual. The ship thrives on structure. Structure comes from following a schedule, following the rules, following long-established traditions.

Tradition dictates an announcement to the entire crew at the beginning and end of each mission: the always familiar, easily quotable regulations about disembarking at the next stop, about leaving if you can no longer perform your duties.

We should have gotten that announcement as soon as the anacapa drive delivered us to this fold in space. We have been here too long.

Even I know that.

Each ship in the Fleet has an anacapa drive. The drive also works as a cloak, although my former husband objects to that term. If the Ivoire is under attack, the captain activates the anacapa drive, which moves us into foldspace. We stay in foldspace only a moment, then return to our original position seconds or hours later, depending on the manner in which the navigators programmed the anacapa. Sometimes, in a battle, seconds are all you need. The enemy ship moves; we do not. We vanish for a moment. Then we reappear, behind them.

Or we don't reappear for hours, and they think us long gone.

Either way, we are only in foldspace for a moment.

We have been in this foldspace for days.

I bring my feet onto the window seat, press my thighs against my breasts, and rest my head on my knees.

No one will tell me anything. I am shaky and emotional, unable to remember. Unable to think clearly about anything.

And for a woman who has spent her entire life thinking, this change terrifies me most of all.