T. K. Rex

@tkrex.bsky.social

1720 Followers 1169 Following

Author of The Wildcraft Drones (2026 @stelliform.press), The Cursed Blade of Wek (2027 @neonhemlock.bsky.social) and numerous science fiction and fantasy short stories, with more on the way. Newsletter, events & stuff: tkrex.wtf

A photo of a forest with some deer near the bottom. Above is text. Strikethrough words: “My favorite characters from The Wildcraft Drones paired with deer from my nature photography archive” Title text: “My Deers”
The three readers and host are sitting on chairs on a small stage. TK has the mic and is exchanging a laugh with Mukethe Kawinzi sitting next to them.
Strike through text: blurbs for The Wildcraft Drones paired with birds from my nature photography archive Title: Blirbs Background: twilight in the hills with a flock of birds scattered across the sky (mostly turkey vultures)
A colorful promotional poster for the event, titled “Apocalypse? No. Stories for a future” at Solar Punk Farms in Guerneville, California, July 19, 1pm, 15015 Armstrong Woods Road. $30 suggested donation, pay what you can. Includes readings, farm tour and local bites.
The cover of The Wildcraft Drones by T. K. Rex featuring a flying tentacle robot in a Miyazaki-inspired deep dark forest. The whole color scheme is pink purple and blue, matching the bisexual flag. The author had no say in this but is pleased
City apartment buildings in the middle of the night under an eerie glowing green fog
Cover of Wet Goddess: Recollections of a Dolphin Lover by Malcolm J. Brenner. There is a photo of a dolphin with a camera lens filter over her face like a hoop and the title is written on a strip of 35mm film.
A rock specimen on display at the Field Museum in Chicago. Irregular metallic black and red stripes of iron and chert, polished with an informational plaque. The rock formed between 3.5 and 2 billion years ago when oxygen released by photosynthetic bacteria caused iron in the oceans to oxidize. That’s what it says anyway. I found the current research to be much more complicated
Protoceratops skeleton. A sheep sized quadruped with a beak and frill on its head
It’s a chair
Promo flier for World Fantasy 2026 in Oakland California with tentacles coming out of Lake Merritt
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM, Panel 3-9 (O’Hare I) – Worldbuilding in General Short Fiction and Middle Grade Fiction: How Is It Different? With Michelle Knudsen, T.K. Rex, Rosemary Claire Smith, Gabrielle K. Byrne, Jaye Viner, and P.A. Cornell. Writing SFF in abbreviated forms – short fiction and middle grade fiction – requires a different approach from writing a novel. Nebula Finalists Michelle Knudsen (Into the Wild Magic) and P.A. Cornell (Through the Machine”) are part of an all-star panel discussing writing short form spec fic – how to wring the most worldbuilding out of limited words.
3:00 PM – 4:00 PM, Panel 1-5 (O’Hare II) – Building Emotional Resonance with Hard Science and Facts With William Ledbetter, T.K. Rex, Alexis Westmore, and Alex Kingsley. For many spec fic writers, connecting with readers on an emotional level is a challenge. We’re caught up in the whiz-bang story lines of our fiction, and often don’t give enough thought to the emotional resonance our work could have with our readers. But what if you could use hard science and facts to create that connection with your readers? Our panel of experienced SFF authors explores how.
It’s a card I drew on that says Happy Pride! From The Wildcraft Drones & T. K. Rex and there’s a bunch of the little tentacle drones on it colored in different pride colors. One of them is bisexual and holding up a sign that says Protect Trans Kids and another one has a banner that says Love is Love. Two trans drones are getting their tentacles tangled and the lesbian ones are chasing each other flirtatiously. There’s also a pansexual one holding a pride flag and a non-binary one carrying a nest of birds. An ally (possibly closeted) is recharging on a branch. There are also some mushrooms and ferns and a little jumping spider. Nature is queer
Promo graphic for the event. It’s called Post-Disaster Futures: Sci-Fi Visions of survival and Renewal. The address is 2121 Allston Way, in downtown Berkeley. And it’s today, May 31st, at 4pm. Notably, Chuck Tingle is wearing a pink bag over his head with words “Love is Real” written on it. Everybody has their little books next to them, mine being The Wildcraft Drones, Susanna’s is Awake in the Floating City, Chuck’s is Lucky Day (although his new book coming out is Beach Bodies) and Lara’s is Ruiner.
Five framed prints of black and white line art on an eclectic cafe wall over a bookshelf, plus one green and yellow risograph poster
Promo graphic for the info in the post. May 26, 7pm, theme is “The New Era”
Black and white line drawing of two tentacled robots touching up a sign that says “Danger - abandoned uranium mine” in both English and Navajo. One drone says, “I wish we could go back in time. Remediate this stuff before they ever had a chance to use it.” The other says, “me too”
Promo graphic for The Racket reading series, Tuesday May 26, 7pm at The Sycamore in San Francisco. The lineup includes Lauren C. Johnson, Kristina Ten, Preeti Vangani, Leigh Lucas, Syr Hayati Beker, T. K. Rex, Vincent Chu, and Kimberly Gomes.
Promo graphic for the long running reading series SF in SF (Science Fiction in San Francisco), featuring T. K. Rex, Madeleine E. Robins and Pam Troy. May 17, 2026 from 3 to 5 pm at San Francisco Public Library main branch, 100 Larkin Street, Chinese Center Exhibit Space 3rd floor
Screenshot. “May 21 The Wildcraft Drones — T.K. Rex (Stelliform Press) An AI breakthrough connects a team of scientists with a wild dolphin, but progress is neck-and-neck with climate breakdown. Class differences are only the first challenge when romance blooms between college girls at a soil remediation site. A forlorn drone seeks reassignment after his human companion dies—but a reckless band of rebels has other plans. T.K. Rex’s debut collection explores a turbulent timeline where the role of intelligent machines changes alongside nature and humanity, in fourteen tales from the climtae crisis and beyond. This is the world of The Wildcraft Drones.”
It’s David Lynch with the caption “What a great time to be alive if you love the theater of the absurd”
The books in a box. They are all very blue pink and purple. The title is The Wildcraft Drones by T. K. Rex. There is flying tentacle robot in a deep dark forest. My hand is pulling away the inner plastic packaging in a slightly suggestive manner
It’s a hand drawn event calendar for The Wildcraft Drones for May. I drew one of the tentacle drones on it. Go to the link for the events
Stacks of The Wildcraft Drones, a book by T. K. Rex, on the back table at Dog Eared Books in San Francisco
Screenshot of a sci.news headline “early sauropodomorph dinosaur unearthed in China” and accompanying illustration of a gentle looking bipedal (facultatively quadrupedal?) dinosaur with short front legs and a long tail and a goofy face. It looks like you could ride it and also it might nuzzle you like a horse, or possibly bite off your fingers because it thought they were leaves, unclear which
He wrote “ Happy hatching day” on the envelope he put my birthday card in
A tyrannosaurus looking dinosaur made of hundreds of small flying tentacle robots, white line drawing on black. Fancy print with torn edges
the above text with headshots of the authors. All three are fair-skinned and female presenting, although Rex is actually nonbinary. Robins has a big smile, curly brown hair and glasses. Troy has silver hair pinned back, and red lipstick with a curious expression. Rex has dark hair with a sly smile, and a city park behind them.
Photo of my laptop screen showing the Wikipedia article on the Chicxulub Crater, with the following text highlighted: “Penfield also recalled that part of the motivation for the name was ‘to give the academics and NASA naysayers a challenging time pronouncing it’ after years of dismissing its existence.”
A vintage mass market paperback called “Ferns and Fern Allies of California” with a picture of a fern on it. (There is no author photo) (only Fern)
Risograph prints at Dog Eared Books, stacked up on the magazine rack. The art is of a dinosaur made of tentacle drones, teal line work on white
It’s the flyer for the launch of The Wildcraft Drones by T. K. Rex, happening May 21, 2026 from 4 to 7 p.m. at Cafe Suspiro, 1246 Folsom Street, San Francisco. There will be a reading, coffee, book signing, and music. The accompanying illustration is a tentacle robot resembling an ammonite and holding a coffee cup in one tentacle. The whole thing is hand-illustrated in black pen and ink with a green and orange watercolor background reminiscent of the colors of California poppies.
It’s the flyer for the launch of The Wildcraft Drones by T. K. Rex, happening May 21, 2026 from 4 to 7 p.m. at Cafe Suspiro, 1246 Folsom Street, San Francisco. There will be a reading, coffee, book signing, and music. The accompanying illustration is a tentacle robot resembling an ammonite and holding a coffee cup in one tentacle. The whole thing is hand-illustrated in black pen and ink with a green and orange watercolor background reminiscent of the colors of California poppies.
Top down view of a work table where a picture is being mounted on matte board. The picture is an inverted (white lines on black) pen and ink drawing of a swarm of small tentacled robots converging into the shape of a tyrannosaurus . It is from The Wildcraft Drones by T. K. Rex (also the artist) which is a collection of linked science fiction stories coming out May 21, 2026.
Me holding up the promo flyer for the above info in front of the bookshelf at Cafe Suspiro
Author’s Note on Techno-optimism I came up with the premise for this world before I knew what techno-optimism was, before I would have known to have opinions about it. I wanted to imagine how drones, which were primarily tools of war back then, could be used for something good. I largely bought into the idea that humanity could innovate our way out of the climate crisis with new advancements in technology — the core assumption of techno-optimism. Through my research as I built this world further, I came to understand that we already have all the technology we need to manage climate change justly, for everyone, while preserving the biodiversity that remains. The innovations of this book that can actually get us there, right now, are not the eponymous drones, but universal housing, indigenous land management, and food forests — simple, proven concepts that have been with us for thousands of years.
Promo collage for the Happy Endings reading series. There’s a potato sprouting, someone dancing in ragged clothes, the rear end of a dog, some glitchy textures, a moist mushroom, a child crawling around, and the cutout block text “Happy Endings”. Oh and bones. And fur. It’s all faded together so it has a unified atmospheric look.
A green eyed cat flopped over some paperwork, looking coyly up at the camera. She’s back and white with little black nose and multicolored toe beans
A big fluffy tuxedo cat with green eyes
The geologic time scale, copied from the Geological Society of America. It’s like a really colorful spreadsheet of all of Earth’s history, with the dates and names of all the ages and epochs and eons and everything. It’s one of the most beautiful diagrams ever made. In my opinion.
A screenshot from the Wikipedia entry for Czechoslovakian Wolfdog, with a photo of the proud canine standing in a sunlit field of flowers in the mountains. The text reads: “In 1955, Karel Hartl began to consider crossing a Carpathian grey wolf with a German Shepherd (German: Deutscher Schäferhund, Czech: německý ovčák, Slovak: nemecký ovčiak) as a scientific experiment in the military kennels in Czechoslovakia. The first hybrids of a female wolf named Brita and a male sable German Shepherd named Cézar z Březového háje were born on 26 May 1958 in Libějovice, Czechoslovakia (modern-day Czech Republic).”
Holding the paperback edition of the 2024 novel The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed. The cover is red with white handwritten title font in all caps, and an illustrated portrait of a man with a starling’s head wearing a green blazer. The photo was taken at a picnic table outside Kula Yoga & Coffee in Port Charlotte, Florida. You can’t really tell from the picture but they were nice and they only opened five weeks ago so I wanted to give them a little shout out.
A small brown gecko on concrete, next to a rainbow of light reflected from something shiny somewhere