Discover the Best Books Written by Martha Wells

Martha Wells has been an SF/F writer since her first fantasy novel was published in 1993. Her work includes The Books of the Raksura series, The Death of the Necromancer, the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy, The Murderbot Diaries series, media tie-in fiction for Star Wars, Stargate: Atlantis, and Magic: the Gathering, as well as short fiction, YA novels, and non-fiction. 

She has won Nebula Awards, Hugo Awards, and Locus Awards, and her work has appeared on the Philip K. Dick Award ballot, the BSFA Award ballot, the USA Today Bestseller List, and the New York Times Bestseller List. She is a member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame, and her books have been published in twenty-five languages.

Her first novel, The Element of Fire, was published by Tor Books in hardcover in July 1993 and was a finalist for the 1993 Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Award and a runner-up for the 1994 Crawford Award. The French edition, Le feu primordial, was a 2003 Imaginales Award nominee.

Her third novel, The Death of the Necromancer (Avon Eos), was a 1998 Nebula Award Finalist, and the French edition was a 2002 Imaginales Award nominee. Her novella All Systems Red: The Murderbot Diaries (Tor.com) was a 2017 Philip K. Dick Award finalist and won an ALA/YALSA Alex Award, a Hugo Award for Best Novella, a Nebula Award for Best Novella, and a Locus Award. The Books of the Raksura was a Hugo Finalist for Best Series in 2018. 

Artificial Condition: The Murderbot Diaries (Tor.com) was a Nebula Award finalist, a Locus Award winner, and a Hugo Award winner. Exit Strategy: The Murderbot Diaries (Tor.com) was a BSFA Finalist for Short Fiction. Network Effect (2020, Tor.com) was a New York Times Bestseller, a Nebula Award Winner for Best Novel, a Hugo Award Winner for Best Novel, and The Murderbot Diaries as a whole won a Hugo Award for Best Series. Fugitive Telemetry (2021, Tor.com) was also a New York Times Bestseller. She was made a member of the Texas Literary Hall of Fame on October 19, 2022.

The combined French edition of The Murderbot Diaries, translated by Mathilde Montier, won the Prix Bob Morane for Best Foreign Novel and the Prix Julia Verlanger. The Spanish edition of All Systems Red, translated by Carla Bataller Estruch, won the Ignotus Award for Short Story. The Murderbot Diaries, Books 1-4, and Network Effect, translated by Naoya Nakahara, were finalists for the Seiun Award in the international long-form category. 

The Murderbot Diaries omnibus was nominated for Best Foreign Novel published in German and for translator Frank Böhmert for Best Translation in the 2020 Kurd Laßwitz Preis. She has also published three media tie-in novels: Stargate Atlantis: Reliquary, released in March 2006, Stargate Atlantis: Entanglement in March 2007; and Star Wars: Razor's Edge in September 2013. She also wrote the Magic Story for the Dominaria expansion in 2018 for Magic: the Gathering. Her first young adult fantasy, Emilie and the Hollow World, was published in April 2013 by Strange Chemistry Books, and the sequel, Emilie and the Sky World, in March 2014.

She has had short stories published in Realms of Fantasy, Black Gate, Lone Star Stories, Stargate Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, Wired Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, Tor.com, and in the anthologies Elemental, Tales of the Emerald Serpent, The Other Half of the Sky, Tales of the Emerald Serpent II: A Knight in the Silk Purse, Mech: Age of Steel, The Gods of Lovecraft, Take Us to a Better Place, The Empire Strikes Back: From a Certain Point of View, The Nebula Awards Showcase 2019, The Nebula Awards Showcase 54 and The Long List Anthology #7. She has essays in the non-fiction anthologies Farscape Forever, Mapping the World of Harry Potter, Chicks Unravel Time, The Kobold Guide to Magic, and The Writer's Book of Doubt.