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Lawrence M. Schoen's "Sweet Potato Pie" laughs at labels and caused me to reread several early sentences, just to make sure that psychedelic drugs weren't at work (on me, I'm sure Schoen's mind is in an alternate state of reality)... Here's a rural, fantasy, horror, maybe science fiction, cooking story. As chances are you've never read one of those, you should grab this one as quick as you can. It starts with Zachary gathering up some of the sweet potatoes that rained down from the sky, as they are like to do, in order to make a pie. Yes, he wants a pie, not a mess of zombies and... Perhaps I should stop right there. This is a tale that defies summarizing. It's weird and wonderful and will dig into you more with its strangeness than with its deep meaning. - Tangent Online

In "Fries with That," a fast-food restaurant manager explains the advantages of hiring zombies for the late-night shift. In "The Novice," a noncharismatic vampire discovers that he can attract unwitting blood donors at a role-playing-game convention. In "Thirst for Knowledge," a cultured vampire assumes the identity of a college professor and selects students for his private wine cellar. More impressive and entertaining are a couple of longer pieces: "The Sky's the Limit," a deft Damon Runyon pastiche, and "Golem Summer," whose animated characters will make readers smile. - Publishers Weekly

• Sweet Potato Pie - (2005)
• A Fool's Death - (2006)
• The Figurative Gryphon - (2002) Poetry
• The Amulet of Winter - (2008)
• Snowball - (1999) Poetry
• Candeloro's Magic - (1999)
• Cat Futures - (2006)
• Dragon Math - (2000) Poetry
• Chasing the Bear - (2002)
• Death and Loss - (2010)
• Just Add Water - (2010)
• Coyote Librarian - (2002) Poetry
• Schroedinger's Closet - (2010)
• Fries with That - (2010)
• The Epistemology of Bread - (2005)
• Fitzwell's Oracle - (2007)
• Every Janitor's a Goblin - (2000) Poetry
• In Case - (2010)
• The Novice - (1999)
• Choral Reef - (2000) Poetry
• Past Waves - (1990)
• The Sky's the Limit - (2004)
• Golem Summer - (2003)
• Brown Bagging - (1999) Poetry
• Solitaire - (2001)
• Thirst for Knowledge - (1999)
• The Grapes of Rathbone - (2010)
• The Gargoyle and the Bully - (2000) Poetry
• What Doesn't Stay in Vegas - (2007)
• The Vampire Jamboree - (2010) Poetry
• The Wrestler and the Spear Fisher - (2010)
• Historical Trolls - (2001) Poetry
• Names - (1998)
• The Game of Leaf and Smile - (2005)

Hugo-nominated Short Story

Over the course of millions of years, a wide range of alien intelligences visit the mark of a footprint on the moon, ponder its significance, getting it wrong until the very end.

This story originally appeared in the anthology Footprints (2009), edited by Jay Lake and Eric T. Reynolds.

Read this story for free on the author's website.

Listen to this story for free online at Escape Pod.

This Nebula Award nominated novelette originally appeared in Future Science Fiction Digest, Issue 1, December 2018.

Read the full story for free at Future Science Fiction Digest.

An historian who speaks with the dead is ensnared by the past. A child who feels no pain and who should not exist sees the future. Between them are truths that will shake worlds.

In a distant future, no remnants of human beings remain, but their successors thrive throughout the galaxy. These are the offspring of humanity's genius-animals uplifted into walking, talking, sentient beings. The Fant are one such species: anthropomorphic elephants ostracized by other races, and long ago exiled to the rainy ghetto world of Barsk. There, they develop medicines upon which all species now depend. The most coveted of these drugs is koph, which allows a small number of users to interact with the recently deceased and learn their secrets.

To break the Fant's control of koph, an offworld shadow group attempts to force the Fant to surrender their knowledge. Jorl, a Fant Speaker with the dead, is compelled to question his deceased best friend, who years ago mysteriously committed suicide. In so doing, Jorl unearths a secret the powers that be would prefer to keep buried forever. Meanwhile, his dead friend's son, a physically challenged young Fant named Pizlo, is driven by disturbing visions to take his first unsteady steps toward an uncertain future.

High-concept science fiction, deeply human characters, and a weirdly wonderful story drive this sequel to the award-winning Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard

Years after the events of Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard, the lonely young outcast and physically-challenged Fant, Pizlo, is now a teenager. He still believes he hears voices from the planet's moons, imparting secret knowledge to him alone. And so embarks on a dangerous voyage to learn the truth behind the messages. His quest will catapult him offworld for second time is his short life, and reveal things the galaxy isn't yet ready to know.

Elsewhere, Barsk's Senator Jorl, who can speak with the dead, navigates galactic politics as Barsk's unwelcome representative, and digs even deeper into the past than ever before to discover new truths of his own.

For years, Lawrence M. Schoen has been producing stories about the ever more popular Amazing Conroy and his companion, a buffalito named Reggie. Buffalitos are alien creatures that look like miniature bison and can consume anything. Their only waste product is oxygen... which makes for limitless possibilities. Here we present a collection of those stories, including Nebula-Award-nominated novella, "Barry's Tale," which adds to the adventures of the hypnotist-turned-business-owner as he and Reggie travel the known universe, as well as beyond Human Space.

• Buffalo Dogs - A poverty-stricken hypnotist trying to redeem his finances gains a buffalito companion, Reggie. - (2001)
• Buffalogenesis - Conroy founds his Buffalogic empire of buffalitos, gets very rich, and manages to not get his arms cut off. - (2006)
• Barry's Tale - Conroy and Reggie save the life of a very special little girl - while sampling spectacular intergalactic barbeque. - (2011) (nominee for 2012 Nebula Best Novella)
• A Buffalito of Mars - The red planet gets a terraformed atmosphere courtesy of the buffalitos - and Conroy has an alien encounter which he uses to enrich humankind. - (2007)
• Requiem - A young, impoverished Conroy becomes "The Amazing Conroy" - and helps an alien friend to acquire immortality. - (2005)
• Telepathic Intent - Conroy meets the love of his life, is charged with murder, and has to solve the mystery to save himself. - (2003)
• The Matter At Hand - Conroy enlists the assistance of a gambler extraordinaire to defeat a telepathic alien in an exceptionally high-stakes card game. - (2008)
• Yesterday's Taste - Conroy helps a friend recreate the recipe for a legendary dish with an hypnotic sleight-of-hand. - (2011) (nominee for the 2012 WSFS Small Press Award)

This is a collection of stories which sets up the Conroyverse, and is best read prior to the Buffalito Destiny and Buffalito Contingency novels.

Nebula-nominated Novella

Recipe for an entertaining and humorous SF novella:

Take one mesmerizing rogue and an adorable, flatulent pet.
Add a barbecue competition...
American bison and martian thoats...
A child with the power to destroy a world...
An old man with a secret that could rock humanity...
A woman from college who hasn't aged in fifteen years...
Alien beings with instantaneous, galaxy-wide teleportation...
And a plushie!

Read this story online for free at the author's website.

A former stage hypnotist, the Amazing Conroy really just wants to have a good meal. He's now the wealthy CEO of a company that leases buffalo dogs, alien creatures capable of biting into and devouring nearly anything. When he attempts to implement a solution for cleaning up massive industrial waste sites, Conroy becomes targeted by ecological terrorists who resent the use of alien technology (living or otherwise) to heal the Earth.

But kidnapping and the destruction of his corporate headquarters are the least of Conroy's problems. An unknown, telepathic intelligence has begun invading his dreams, warning of geological disasters that hinge on what Conroy does next. Further complicating his life are several groups of aliens, each believing that he has a special destiny to fulfill, though they don't necessarily agree what it is.

Accompanied by his pet buffalito, Reggie, Conroy must elude terrorists, confound alien zealots, withstand temporal distortions throughout the former state of Texas, and explore ancient Mayan ruins. His adventures will result in his reunion with a long dead relative, a chance to experience the world's greatest sandwiches, exposure to alien bliss, a battle with a megalomaniac on the slope of an active volcano, and a trip to the asteroid belt for a final face-to-face confrontation with the creature that had been invading his dreams. Somewhere in the midst of it all, he has to find his true destiny.

Nebula-nominated Novella

What would you do to save your best friend?

At the end of Buffalito Destiny, Conroy had lost his fortune and fled Earth. Reggie, his buffalito, had survived diving into a volcano, but slipped into a coma.

Now Reggie is dying and the buffalito's internal nuclear furnace is growing unstable. Conroy's only hope lies with the Arconi, the aliens he ripped off to create his empire. Their help comes with a price: he has to go on trial for his crimes, against people who can telepathically tell when he's lying. Conroy knows he's guilty, but Reggie must be saved!

The Amazing Conroy has left Earth far behind and taken his hypnosis act beyond Human Space. It should be show-business-as-usual, except for the energy being the size of a hundred suns that wants to study him, a plot to smuggle liquid gravity, a troupe of alien sex wrestlers, a hypnotized ghost, and Reggie his buffalito stuck in a saurian toilet...

Publishers Weekly says of this novel: "Fans of old-fashioned SF will love this fast-paced, chaotic, and good-natured adventure full of semi-farcical humor and pleasantly believable aliens."

Nebula-nominated Novella

In December of 2012, the Mayan calendar reached the end of its 13th baktun, completing the Long Count and signaling the end of the world... metaphorically. That was the day of Galactic First Contact, and the beginning of a new age for humans and aliens.

Eighty years later, Conroy, stage-hypnotist-turned-wealthy-CEO, attempts to slip away from the corporate grind just to enjoy a little downtime performing for conventioneers in the midwest.

But the alien Uary have come to Earth, and are intent on luring the Amazing Conroy down to Mexico with the promise of gourmet cuisine. They want to hypnotically regress the descendant of a Mayan priest and ask him a simple question about the end date of that ancient calendar: How did they know?

There's just one problem. Another alien, a Svenkali, has dedicated its life to purging the galaxy of the Uary. It's tracked them to Earth and while it bungled one assassination attempt, it managed to steal Reggie, Conroy's buffalito, in the process. What's a hypnotist to do?

Read this story online for free at Noble Fusion Press.

Nebula Award nominated novella.

Barry's Deal is the fourth novella-length adventure from multiple Hugo and Nebula nominee Lawrence M. Schoen and the next installment in the ongoing tales of galaxy-travelling stage hypnotist, the Amazing Conroy, and Reggie, his alien companion animal, a "buffalo dog" who can eat anything and farts oxygen.

In this sequel to BARRY'S TALE (2014 Nebula nominee) Conroy and his buffalito, Reggie are travelling to Triton, to a casino hotel with old friend LeftJohn Mocker, a professional gambler with a double Coltrane rating. Why Triton? Well, there's an illegal auction scheduled there where Conroy hopes to win a bottle of Stonefish liquer, and the Mocker was on his way there anyway at the request of the Probability Guild to investigate allegations of cheating. It looks like everyone will get what they want except... the cheater turns out to be none other than Angela Colson, an eleven-year old girl of incredible power. Conroy saved her life five years earlier with her plushie buffalito, Barry. Somehow she's back, somehow appears to be in her late teens, and somehow has taken the casino for over ten million bucks!

Throw in an evil psychometrist portmaster with a grudge against LeftJohn Mocker, a stinky alien with a secret, and a terrorist with a suitcase-sized nuke, and the state is set for hypnotic hijinks and some fine dining as only The Amazing Conroy can command.