Authors Announced for Tesseracts 18: Wrestling with Gods

You can't ignore religion in history. God may not be real, but religion certainly is and it has impacted our history in some way or another. Even speculative fiction, which includes alternate history, has to take it into account. Tesseracts 18: Wrestling with Gods, however looks to be making the subject its primary focus.

Tesseracts 18 is being published by EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing, a Canadian science-fiction and fantasy publishing house who is also responsible for Clockwork Lies a book featured in a recent New Releases. This latest volume of the Tesseracts series contains stories and poems that draw from Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Agnosticism, Atheism, Humanism and the beliefs of Indigenous Canadians, (as well as faiths and religions of other worlds).

“Any anthology that starts with a story called ‘Mecha-Jesus’ is clearly not a traditional look at religion” says EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publisher, Brian Hades. “This robotic savior is joined by the Hindu god Ganesh trying to break into Bollywood, the Sun God Ra discovering Coronation Street, a priest on Mars, a vampire in residential schools, and a woman with a secret under her hijab. Tesseracts 18: Wrestling with Gods definitely contains many surprises!”

As in past versions of the Tesseract series, the editors are handpicked by the publisher. Tesseracts 18: Wrestling with Gods is edited by Jerome Stueart and Liana "Liana K" Kerzner. Authors include Robert J. Sawyer, Matthew Hughes, Alyxandra Harvey, Halli Lilburn, Derwin Mak, J.M. Frey, Steve Stanton, Megan Fennell, Jen Laface and Andrew Czarnietzki, S.L. Nickerson, John Park, Janet K. Nicolson, Suzanne M. McNabb, Allan Weiss, Savithri Machiraju, Carla Richards, Mary-Jean Harris, James Bambury, Mary Pletsch, David Jón Fuller, Jennifer Rahn, Erling Friis-Baastad, David Fraser, John Bell, David Clink and Tony Pi.

Tesseracts 18: Wrestling with Gods is expected to be released in April 2015. In the meantime, how do you work religion into your alternate worlds? Have you ever created your own religion when crafting a timeline? Let us know in the comments.

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Matt Mitrovich is the founder and editor of Alternate History Weekly Update and a blogger on Amazing Stories. Check out his short fiction. When not writing he works as an attorney, enjoys life with his beautiful wife Alana and prepares for the inevitable zombie apocalypse. You can follow him on Facebook or Twitter.