Droids & Dragons Author, Subham Rai

Subham Rai

Pub 518 Welcomes Subham Rai. He is based in India and been a serious writer for about a year and a half.

"I started with articles but soon realized they weren’t the right fit for me. I shifted to poetry and received my first acceptance with “Two Truths and a Lie” in Memezine Lit."

After many rejections, Subham's poetry also found a home in Strange Horizons.

"For a while I saw myself only as a poet. In early 2025, I began researching fiction markets, wrote my first short stories, and started submitting every single day. The rejections were numerous, but each one taught me something and made me better. Some pieces found homes, others didn’t, but the persistence kept me going. And now I’m here, happy to be part of this anthology."

Subham is a published author. His fiction and poetry have appeared in venues such as Strange Horizons, Macabre Literary Journal, Cohesion Press, Zoetic Press, Bindweed Magazine, Graveside Press, Horror Tree, Plott Hound Magazine, Hollow Oak Press, and Consequence Forum, among others, with more forthcoming.

He draws heavily from the gritty, lived-in futures of William Gibson and the emotional precision of Ted Chiang. "Gibson’s ability to make broken technology feel deeply human, combined with Chiang’s thoughtful exploration of consciousness, has shaped how I write characters who exist between machine and living being."

The title of Subham's short story in Droids & Dragons is “Rust & Scales”. The inspiration came directly from the anthology theme — the collision of cyberpunk decay and mythic creatures. "I wondered what a “dragon” would actually look like in a rotting undercity: not majestic, but obsolete, rusting, and desperate — just like the failing maintenance droids sent to deal with it. The emotional core grew from two broken beings realizing they understand each other better than the corporations that created and abandoned them."

Here is an excerpt from Subham Rai's short story, "Rust & Scales". It's the moment that captures the shift from survival to reluctant recognition between two discarded creations.

“You’re dying slower than me. Makes us temporary allies.”

 Forty-Seven looked at the dragon hard. Under the arrogance and rust, he saw the same slow rot he felt in his own joints.

The same quiet terror of just ending. Of disappearing and nobody caring.

Subham's favorite book is William Gibson’s Neuromancer. "It’s the book that showed me the power of broken futures and characters who keep moving even when everything is falling apart."

Subham's superpower is turning the quiet desperation of things that are not supposed to feel, such as aging machines, obsolete creatures, and failing systems, into something deeply human and relatable.

To find out more about Subham Rai, consider checking out his websites.

Websites:

http://linktr.ee/subhamraiauthor

http://amazon.com/author/subhamrai 

Droids & Dragons is available for preorder. The drop date is 9/25/2026.