Many Worlds, or The Simulacra is an anthology of reality-bending stories from a one-of-a-kind collective of authors building a shared multiverse. The stories in this anthology range from quietly strange to ambitiously speculative. Humans transform into cosmic energy or sentient algae. A man wakes up in a new body in a world with continents cut out, months absent from the calendar year, and souls misplaced. Students at a high school regularly vanish without a trace. A woman descends into the depths of the ocean and encounters all-knowing creatures who may have the answers to her deepest questions. Mech-suits and parallel selves, conspiracy forums and interstellar telepaths, and a mysterious cosmic force connecting it all; the stories in this collection are revelatory and offer a breathtaking portal into worlds far more mysterious than our own. Subversive, transgressive, and utterly original, this collection compels the reader to believe in the fantastical.

To dive into the universe of Many Worlds, read the opening story, “Notes on the Forum of the Simulacra” by editor Cadwell Turnbull.

Here’s a bonus story from the anthology, “The Other Me” by Rebekah Bergman.

Pre-orders will begin via Kickstarter in March 2023. Head to the pre-launch page and sign up to be notified when the project launches so you don’t miss a thing!

Many Worlds is edited by Cadwell Turnbull, author of The Lesson and No Gods, No Monsters, and Josh Eure, winner of Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net Award. The book features stories by Rebekah Bergman, M. Darusha Wehm, Craig Lincoln, K.C. Wise, alongside other fascinating voices in speculative fiction.

The Authors

Many Worlds features short fiction by Rebekah Bergman, Josh Eure, Justin C. Key, Darkly Lem, Craig Lincoln, Ted McCombs, Ben Murphy, Cadwell Turnbull, M. Darusha Wehm, Cliff Winnig, and K. C. Wise.

The Editors

Cadwell Turnbull is the author of The Lesson and No Gods, No Monsters. His short fiction has appeared in The Verge, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Asimov’s Science Fiction and several anthologies, including The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019. His novel The Lesson was the winner of the 2020 Neukom Institute Literary Award in the debut category. The novel was also shortlisted for the VCU Cabell Award and longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award. Turnbull lives in Raleigh and teaches at North Carolina State University. Photo by Anju Manandhar.

Josh Eure’s stories have won Asimov’s Dell Award and the Brenda L. Smart Prize and reached the finalist list in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers. He has also won Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net Award and has appeared in Oxford American, James Gunn’s Ad Astra, Surreal South, Southern Cultures, Raleigh Review, and Not One of Us, among others. He was a finalist for the Piedmont Laureate. He is currently shopping a novel. He lives outside of Raleigh, NC with his wife and three children.

ISBN: 978-1-7377184-3-7

Publication Date: June 13, 2023

Format: Paperback Book, approx. 180 pages, 8.125″ x 5.5″

“Taken as a whole, this exhibits the best of shared-world writing: diverse settings and distinctive voices grounded in a core worldbuilding concept that, in this case, provokes both paranoia and wonder. Readers will be wowed.”

—Publishers Weekly

“An intriguing, well-executed collection of SF and paranormal short stories, as varied as the multiverse they inhabit.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Many Worlds brings the kind of brilliant, surreal, and deeply thought-provoking speculative fiction that will creep into your brain and under your skin and make you see and think differently about the world and the nature of reality. Together, this collection of stories forms an intricate and compelling kaleidoscopic vision of the fundamentally strange universe(s) we find ourselves in.”

—Maria Haskins, Writer & Reviewer

“A choral achievement—paranoid, touching, profound.”

—Hugo Award Winning Author Max Gladstone

“An ambitious experiment in fiction and storytelling exploring the nature of reality, truth, and self.”

—A. C. Wise, The Kissing Booth Girl and Other Stories

“In this anthology of stories set in a shared multiverse, Cadwell Turnbull and a search party of contemporary authors set out to explore the edges of the fantastic, an unsettling territory that seems like our world but not quite. It feels just like home.”

—John Kessel, Good News From Outer Space

“A top-notch anthology with connected stories that span the multiverse in a way that totally makes sense yet also somehow leaves you never knowing what’s coming next.”

—John Joseph Adams, Bestselling editor of Wastelands and The Living Dead