2023 LOCUS AWARD WINNER, BEST COLLECTION In Nebula Award-winning author Sam J. Miller’s devastating debut short-fiction collection, featuring an introduction by Amal El-Mohtar, queer infatuation, inevitable heartbreak, and brutal revenge seamlessly intertwine. Whether innocent, guilty, or not even human, the boys, beasts, and men roaming through Miller’s gorgeously crafted worlds can destroy readers, yet leave them wanting more. “Miller’s sheer talent shines through in abundance . . . Boys, Beasts & Men is an outrageous journey which skillfully blends genres and will haunt you with its original, poetic voices as much as its victims, villains, and treasure trove of leading actors.” ― Grimdark Magazine Despite his ability to control the ambient digital cloud, a foster teen falls for a clever con-man. Luring bullies to a quarry, a boy takes clearly enumerated revenge through unnatural powers of suggestion. In the aftermath of a shapeshifting alien invasion, a survivor fears that he brought something out of the Arctic to infect the rest of the world. A rebellious group of queer artists create a new identity that transcends even the anonymity of death. Sam J. Miller ( Blackfish City , The Art of Starving ) shows his savage wit, unrelenting candor, and lush imagery in this essential career retrospective collection, taking his place alongside legends of the short-fiction form such as Carmen Maria Machado, Carson McCullers, and Jeff VanderMeer. 2022 World Fantasy Award Nominee 2022 Locus Award Finalist BookPage Most Anticipated Sci-Fi and Fantasy Tor.com Reviewer’s Choice: The Best Books of 2022 2022 Reads Rainbow Award Shortlist Literary Hub May’s Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books Buzzfeed Best Books Coming Out in Summer 2022 Gizmodo New Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Horror Books for Your Summer Reading Pleasure “Sam Miller is my hero: a fearless visionary whose stories are at once vivid, electrifying, brutal, and full of heart. Oh, the heat of them.” ―Sarah Pinsker, author of Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea [STARRED REVIEW] “Miller’s ( The Blade Between , 2020) debut story collection gathers together a large selection of his short fiction. Most stories use various fantastical devices to reflect on gay men, their families, or their lovers. Some stories are sf, like ‘We Are the Cloud,’ where a young gay Black man deals with the insecurity of newfound love as well as the dataport in his neck, or Miller’s rewriting of John Carpenter’s horror classic The Thing as a story of AIDS and the closet in ‘Things With Beards.’ Others are more fantastical or gothic such as ‘The Heat of Us: Notes Toward an Oral History,’ where the rage of the Stonewall Riots results in literal pyrokinesis or the fictional famous gay artist created by three men with AIDS (an echo of Miller’s last novel) in ‘Angel, Monster, Man.’ Even the stories that don’t feature gay relationships directly, such as the internal monologue of a Salvation Army chair in ‘Sun in an Empty Room,’ feature Miller’s frequent concerns of longing, heartbreak, and the deep desire for, but great difficulty of, love. Highly recommended for any reader interested in speculative fiction that concerns itself with queer themes, particularly messy or emotional ones.” ― Booklist [STARRED REVIEW] Finding danger and humanity in their characters, the short stories of Boys, Beasts & Men marry emotional epiphanies with violence, resulting in imaginative, stirring meditations on LGBTQ+ struggles and acceptance.” ― Foreword [STARRED REVIEW] “All 14 of these brilliant, character-driven short stories are perfectly crafted, subtly altering reality using SFF elements while managing to fully explore the repercussions of doing so with the conciseness that a short story requires.” ― Buzzfeed “This is the collection you are looking for. Explosive, careening, shape-shifting tales . . . haunting and defiantly tender.” ―Ben Loory, author of Tales of Falling and Flying “Even in the darkest of these perfectly crafted stories, Sam Miller’s tragic boys yearn to be good instead of bad, strong instead of weak, whole instead of broken. May your heart ache with love for every doomed one of them; I know mine did.” ―Andy Davidson, author of The Boatman’s Daughter “Sure to please fans of cli-fi, weird sea creatures, queer SFF and pretty much everyone who wants to read something brilliant, strange and new.” ―BookPage “The stories in this collection offer a nuanced and beautiful exploration of masculinity and the many faces of love, touching on romance, desire, family, and friendship, all presented through the lens of the fantastic―with literally mind-altering drugs, resurrected dinosaurs, near-future worlds in post environmental collapse, and of course, monsters.” ―A. C. Wise, author of The Kissing Booth Girl and Other Stories “Miller’s sheer talent shines through in abundance . . . Boys, Beasts & Men is an outrageous journey which skillfully ble