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It seemed like a good idea; even a noble experiment. But the outcome was sheer hell.

When the Balduin brothers escaped from the tedium of the human hive of Atlanta, Georgia, they had a mission. They were to voyage to the planet Trope. Contact a tribe there known as the Ouemartsee. And transport it to Glaparca for a useful purpose.

But suddenly the Balduin brothers discovered that they were in the slavetrade, and that the Ouemartsee had made one of them a God...

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, September 1985. The story can aslo be found in the anthologies Best SF of the Year #15 (1986), edited by Terry Carr, and Future on Fire (1991), edited by Orson Scott Card. It is included in the collections Close Encounters with the Deity (1986) and The Door Gunner and Other Perilous Flights of Fancy (2012).

A man from the species Homo habilis is found wandering a Georgia pecan orchard, is taken in by a woman named Ruth-Claire, who names him Adam. They marry, and Adam begins to experience the full spectrum of modern American life, including the Klan, art critics, evangelists, and punk clubs.

A harsh Apartheid-ridden South Africa is the background for "Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana." Opening with a strange accident involving an imported Cadillac, a disappearing elephant and a mysterious black man with the name Mordecai Thubana, the story is a realistic examination of the biases people live with and what happens when they begin to question their own prejudices. Gerrit Myburgh, the white South African who was involved in the accident, doesn't think of himself as a racist, but his rescue by a "kaffir bus" makes him question some of the foundations upon which the Apartheid system was run.

A collection of 15 short stories ranging from science fiction to fantasy to contemporary fiction with a fantastic edge.

Table of Contents:

• Beginnings - (1993) - shortstory
• 000-00-0000 - (1986) - shortstory
• Snapshots from the Butterfly Plague - (1990) - shortstory
• Among the Handlers or, The Mark 16 Hands On Assembly of Jesus Risen, Formerly Snake-o-rama - (1996) - novelette
• At the City Limits of Fate - (1982) - novelette
• Epistrophy - (1995) - shortstory
• For Thus Do I Remember Carthage - (1987) - shortstory
• Allegra's Hand - (1996) - novelette
• God's Hour - (1987) - shortstory
• In the Memory Room - (1987) - shortstory
• Life Regarded as a Jigsaw Puzzle of Highly Lustrous Cats - (1991) - shortstory
• Reading the Silks - (1989) - shortstory
• Icicle Music - (1989) - shortstory
• The Ommatidium Miniatures - (1989) - shortstory
• I, Iscariot - (1995) - novelette

In the future, on the island of Ongladred, mankind has survived two enigmatic, civilization-destroying setbacks. Now a third holocaust is anticipated. The people fear destruction from invading barbarians, the reappearance of a semi-mythical sea creature, and the devious intervention of the neo-human Parfects.

This imminent disaster is very much the concern of Ingram Marley, a government spy sent to keep surveillance over Stonelore, a secluded haven and the center of free thought on Ongladred, and Gabriel Elk, Stonelore's resident genius.

While panic and fear rage outside, deep inside Stonelore the mysteries of life are pursued - reanimation of the dead, the invention of powerful laser weapons, and the secrets of "old earth" knowledge. Amidst harrowing dangers of sea battles and land invasions, Michael Bishop explores the transformation of Ingram Marley, a man caught in the middle.

Contents:

• 7 - The White Otters of Childhood - (1973) - novella
• 85 - Beneath the Shattered Moons - (1976) - novel (variant of And Strange at Ecbatan the Trees)

Table of Contents:

• Preface - (1982) - essay
• Among the Hominids at Olduvai - (1978) - poem
• Blooded on Arachne - (1975) - novelette
• Cathadonian Odyssey - (1974) - shortstory
• Effigies - (1978) - novelette
• The House of Compassionate Sharers - (1977) - novelette
• In Chinistrex Fortronza the People Are Machines or, Hoom and the Homunculus - (1976) - shortstory
• Leaps of Faith - (1977) - shortstory
• On the Street of the Serpents or, The Assassination of Chairman Mao, as Effected by the Author in Seville, Spain, in the Spring of 1992, a Year of No Certain Historicity - (1974) - novelette
• Piñon Fall - (1970) - shortstory
• Rogue Tomato - (1975) - shortstory
• Spacemen and Gypsies - (1971) - shortstory
• The White Otters of Childhood - (1973) - novella
• For the Lady of a Physicist - (1978) - poem

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Epoch (1975), edited by Roger Elwood and Robert Silverberg. It is included in the collections Blooded on Arachne (1982) and The Door Gunner and Other Perilous Flights of Fancy: A Michael Bishop Retrospective (2012).

World Fantasy Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in the collection Blue Kansas Sky: Four Short Novels of Memory, Magic, Surmise & Estrangement (2000).

Blue Kansas Sky spans the past and future with a collection of the author's four short novels, including a coming-of-age tale set in Kansas in the late 1950s, an apartheid story from 1980s South Africa, and a twenty-first century spaceship adventure.

Table of Contents:

• "Such Guileless Beauty in Debris": The Moral Universe of Michael Bishop - essay by James Morrow
• Blue Kansas Sky - novella
• Author's Note on Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana - essay
• Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana - (1989) - novella
• Cri de Coeur - (1994) - novella
• Death and Designation Among the Asadi - (1973) - novella

Seventeen of writer Michael Bishop's favourite stories were handpicked from his previously uncollected works to create this compelling collection, providing an excellent overview of a career that includes award-winning science fiction, horror, fantasy, satire, space opera, and mystery.

In A Tapestry of Little Murders, a murderer attempts to escape along a literal road to self-destruction.

A medical missionary, tortured by government thugs, reveals her dying wish in With a Little Help from Her Friends.

In The Procedure, an operation to remove a tumourous growth will hopefully excise from the patient's mind and body all tendencies toward faith and superstition.

From futuristic mystery and Vietnam-era dark fantasy to theological speculation on Christ's death, a variety of lyrical voices speak through these haunting stories.

An essay by the author divulges the genesis of each story.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Lucius Shepard
• Thirteen Lies About Hummingbirds - (1991) - short story
• The Unexpected Visit of a Reanimated Englishwoman - (1996) - essay
• Chihuahua Flats - (1995) - short story
• With a Little Help from Her Friends - (1984) - novelette
• "We're All in This Alone" - (2002) - short story with Paul Di Filippo
• Sequel on Skorpiós - (1998) - short story
• Murder on Lupozny Station - (1981) - novelette with Gerald W. Page
• A Tapestry of Little Murders - (1971) - short story
• O Happy Day - (1981) - short story
• Herding with the Hadrosaurs - (1992) - short story
• The Tigers of Hysteria Feed Only on Themselves - (1974) - short story
• Tithes of Mint and Rue - (1999) - novelette
• Of Crystalline Labyrinths and the New Creation - (1980) - novelette
• Simply Indispensable - (1995) - novelette
• Last Night Out - short story
• The Procedure - (1996) - short story
• Help Me, Rondo - (2002) - short story
• A Lingering Incandescence: Notes About the Stories - (2003) - essay

In 1943, with the country at war, seventeen-year-old shortstop Danny Boles joins a Class C baseball farm club and sets out on an odyssey into strange relationships, dramatic escapades, and lessons about life, dreams, desire, and growing up.

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1974. The story can also be found in the anthology The 1975 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha. It is included in the collections Blooded on Arachne (1982) and The Door Gunner and Other Perilous Flights of Fancy: A Michael Bishop Retrospective (2012).

Through the means of what he calls "speculative fiction", Michael Bishop examines the various links between man and the supernatural by exploring the relationships and conflicts between mortals and deities of other worlds, in other times and within other cultures. His scope isn't limited to alien environments, however. Bishop's talent for transforming the commonplace into the fantastic often reaches into our own backyards, and the results are astounding:

• A father's love for his son and the influence of the evangelist's strange teachings prompt a desperate and violent act.
• In a surreal world of unceasing movies where the inhabitants serve constantly as an audience, one man seeks to confront he ultimate power which controls their lives.
• A young boy's talent for ventriloquism results in an irresistible summons from an all-powerful source.
• A Midwestern farmer's compelling visions draw him to the oceanic god of an unusual cult.
• Mysterious airborne hieroglyphics become a young scientist's obsession.

With these and other stories, Michael Bishop weaves a colourful tapestry of character, theme and circumstance which attests to his position as on of the best in the field.

Table of Contents:

• Religion and Science Fiction - (1984) - essay by Isaac Asimov
• Close Encounter With the Deity - (1986) - shortstory
• Voices - (1986) - novelette
• A Spy in the Domain of Arnheim - (1981) - novelette
• Love's Heresy - (1979) - shortstory
• Storming the Bijou, Mon Amour - (1979) - shortstory
• Dogs' Lives - (1984) - novelette
• A Gift from the GrayLanders - (1985) - novelette
• A Short History of the Bicycle: 401 B.C. to 2677 A.D. - (1980) - shortstory
• Diary of a Dead Man - shortstory
• Scrimptalon's Test - (1984) - shortstory by Michael Bishop and Gerald W. Page
• The Bob Dylan Tambourine Software & Satori Support Services Consortium, Ltd. - (1985) - shortstory
• Alien Graffiti (A Personal History of Vagrant Intrusions) - (1986) - shortstory
• And the Marlin Spoke - (1983) - novelette
• The Gospel According to Gamaliel Crucis (or, the Astrogator's Testimony) - (1983) - novella

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Rooms of Paradise (1978), edited by Lee Harding. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series VII (1979), edited by Gerald W. Page, and Fantasy Annual III (1979), edited by Terry Carr. the story is included in the collection One Winter in Eden (1984).

Xavier Thaxton is the arts editor of a great metropolitan newspaper, and is a man whose aesthetic values are of only the highest calibre. But after an accidental dip in a radioactive swimming hole, Xavier finds his life changing as he is forced, step by step, despite all he can do, to assume the mantle and manner of a comic book superhero, and to be a living icon of the pop culture he has spent his life detesting.

Hugo and Sturgeon Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 1994. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twelth Annual Collection (1995), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collection Blue Kansas Sky (2000).

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Worlds of If, January-February 1973. The story can aslo be found in the anthology The 1974 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha. It is included in the collection Blue Kansas Sky: Four Short Novels of Memory, Magic, Surmise & Estrangement (2000).

This is a complete rewrite of Bishop's 1975 novel A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire.

On a secret mission of surveillance and experimentation the ship Dharmakaya had come. What its travelers found was a ruling race of humanoids, the Tropiards, their feelings reflected in their hard, glowing eyes of crystal.

But there were beings below these leaders, beings who threatened even as they enticed, a mysterious, mystical subculture known as the Sh'gaidu. To win them as immigrants to a new world was the goal -- but the ruling race had other goals, other motives hidden behind the crystal stare of their eyes of fire.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology The Universe (1987), edited by Byron Preiss. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection (1988), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection At the City Limits of Fate (1996).

Locus Award winning and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in the anthology Universe 13 (1983), edited by Terry Carr. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year #13 (1984), also edited by Carr.

Sturgeon Award nominted novelette. It originally appeared in Crank!, Summer 1995. The story can also be found in the anthology The Best of Crank! (1998) edited by Bryan Cholfin. It is included in the collection At the City Limits of Fate (1996).

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Omni, September 1991. The story can also be found in the anthologies Magicats II (1991), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois, Nebula Awards 28 (1994), edited by James Morrow and Tails of Wonder and Imagination (2010), edited by Ellen Datlow. The story is collected in At the City Limits of Fate (1996) and The Door Gunner and Other Perilous Flights of Fancy: A Michael Bishop Retrospective (2012).

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Michael Bishop
• You and Me and the Continuum - (1966) - shortstory by J. G. Ballard
• The Map - shortstory by Gene Wolfe
• Halfjack - (1979) - shortstory by Roger Zelazny
• Doing Lennon - (1975) - shortstory by Gregory Benford
• Strangeness, Charm and Spin - shortstory by Kate Wilhelm
• Brown Robert - (1962) - shortstory by Terry Carr
• The Bloomsday Revolution - shortstory by Ian Watson
• The Dybbuk Dolls - (1975) - novelette by Jack Dann
• Dancing Chickens - shortstory by Edward Bryant
• When the Music's Over... - shortstory by Michael Swanwick
• Terrific Park - (1981) - novelette by George Alec Effinger
• The Tale of the (Man) Who (Met) (God) - shortstory by Norman Spinrad
• The Starry Message to Galileo Galilei - (1982) - poem by Robert Frazier
• The Supremacy of Bacteria - (1983) - poem by Robert Frazier
• Cetacean Dreams - poem by Robert Frazier
• "We cannot escape humility." - (1983) - poem by Robert Frazier
• Summer's Lease - (1974) - shortstory by Joe Haldeman
• The Nine Billion Names of God - shortstory by Carter Scholz
• Nor Limestone Islands - (1971) - shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
• Fears - shortstory by Pamela Sargent
• SQ - (1978) - shortstory by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Scrimptalon's Test - shortstory by Michael Bishop and Gerald W. Page
• An Infinite Summer - (1976) - novelette by Christopher Priest
• The Man Who Was Pregnant - (1977) - shortstory by Elizabeth A. Lynn
• Corridors - (1982) - shortstory by Barry N. Malzberg
• Limits - (1981) - shortstory by Larry Niven
• Crossing into Cambodia - (1979) - shortstory by Michael Moorcock
• The Lecturer - shortstory by John Kessel
• Under the Hollywood Sign - (1975) - novelette by Tom Reamy
• The Lords of Misrule - (1984) - shortstory by M. John Harrison
• Ralph 4F... - Hugo Gernsback (Hugogre N. Backs) - (1973) - shortstory by John Sladek
• Solar Shoe-Salesman... - Philip K. D*ck (Chipdip K. Kill) - (1973) - shortstory by John Sladek
• The Sublimation World... - J.G. Ballard - (1968) - shortstory by John Sladek
• School Days - shortstory by Suzette Haden Elgin
• The Wanda Lake Number - (1979) - shortstory by Robert Thurston
• Chambers of Memory - shortstory by Gordon Eklund
• Painwise in Yucatan - (1976) - essay by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Dinner Party - shortstory by Gardner Dozois
• The Cure - shortstory by Lisa Tuttle
• Paradise Beach - (1976) - novelette by Richard Cowper
• Getting Away - (1976) - shortstory by Steven Utley
• The Cabinet of Edgar Allan Poe - (1982) - shortstory by Angela Carter
• Dead in Irons - (1976) - novelette by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
• Rock On - shortstory by Pat Cadigan
• The Death of Socrates - (1972) - novelette by Thomas M. Disch
• Helpless, Helpless - shortstory by Howard Waldrop
• Dogs' Lives - (1984) - novelette by Michael Bishop
• The Eichmann Variations - shortstory by George Zebrowski

Joshua Kampa, the illegitimate son of a mute Spanish whore and a black serviceman, has always dreamed of Africa. But his dreams are of an Africa far in the past and are so vivid and in such hallucinatory detail that he is able to question the understanding of eminent palaeontologists. As a result, Joshua is invited to join a most unusual time travel project and is transported millions of years into the past of his dreams.

In early Pleistocene Africa, living among the prehuman species Homo habilis, experiencing the same hardships and the same intense pleasures, Joshua finds, for the first time in his troubled life, not only contentment but real love - a love that transcends almost everything. Intelligent, thoughtful and deeply moving, No Enemy But Time brilliantly evokes the remote past and, at the same time, presents a powerful and convincing portrayal of a relationship surmounting even the most daunting barriers. It is a challenging and highly original novel exploring the nature and origins of humankind.

One Winter in Eden is a collection of science fiction and fantasy stories by author Michael Bishop.

Table of Contents:

• Introductions - essay by Thomas M. Disch
• One Winter in Eden - (1980) - novelette
• Seasons of Belief - (1979) - shortstory
• Cold War Orphans - (1980) - novelette
• The Yukio Mishima Cultural Association of Kudzu Valley, Georgia - (1980) - shortstory
• Out of the Mouths of Olympus - (1981) - novelette
• Patriots - (1982) - shortstory
• Collaborating - (1978) - shortstory
• Within the Walls of Tyre - (1978) - novelette
• The Monkey's Bride - (1983) - novelette
• Vernalfest Morning - (1978) - shortstory
• Saving Face - (1980) - novelette
• The Quickening - (1981) - novelette

This collection gathers together Michael Bishop's mainstream stories set in Georgia or featuring characters from Georgia. The collection represents the culmination of a career-long project that Bishop did not fully realize he had embarked upon, but that he did always have in the back of his mind. It opens with a hommage, both poignant and funny, to Flannery O'Connor, and closes with his daringly satirical Nebula Award-nominated novelette "Rattlesnakes and Men."

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

• "The Road Leads Back"
• "Unfit for Eden"
• "Andalusian Triptych, 1962"
• "Unlikely Friends"
• "Crazy about Each Other"
• "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever"
• "Other Arms Reach Out to Me"
• "How Beautiful with Banners"
• "The Russian Agent"
• "Doggedly Wooing Madonna"
• "Baby Love"
• "Change of Life"
• "No Picnic"
• "Free"
• "Rattlesnakes and Men"

It is 1982. The United States has a permanent Moonbase. Richard M. Nixon is in the fourth term of the "imperial presidency." And an eccentric novelist named Philip K. Dick has just died in California.

Or has he? Psychiatrist Lia Pickford, M.D., is nonplussed when Dick walks into her office in small-town Georgia, with a cab idling outside, to ask for help. And Cal Pickford, a longtime Dick fan stunned by the news of his hero's death, is electrified when his wife tells him of the visit.

So begins a sequence of events involving Cal in the repressive Nixon regime, the affairs of an aging movie queen, a hip but frightened Vietnamese immigrant and an old black man who works as a groom--all leading up to a fateful confrontation between Dick, Cal, and Nixon himself on the moon.

Nebula-nominated Novelette

In the near future, home-protection systems are genemodded rattlesnakes, which are programmed to recognize the DNA of the occupants and react only against intruders.

Originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction, February 2015. The story is included in the collection Other Arms Reach Out to Me: Georgia Stories (2017).

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology New Dimensions Science Fiction Number 5 (1975), edited by Robert Silverberg. The story can also be found in the anthology The Road to Science Fiction 4: From Here to Forever (1982), edited by James E. Gunn. It is included in the collection Blooded on Arachne (1982).

Muphormosy, a disease not unlike leprosy, has ravaged the first settlers on the planet Tezcatl. Generations later, their similarly emaciated descendants live in a compound where they are isolated from the planet's normal inhabitants. The new kommissar of the compound, Lucian Yeardance, cares for his charges and alleviates their suffering with the narcotic heartsease. despite the open revulsion the normal inhabitants show for the maimed men and women, Luican determines to find out what the dread disease really is. Still, he is unprepared for the appalling discovery he makes: except for the open lesions and missing limbs and digits, not one of the muphormers shows a sign of any disease.

Between the incessant music of the stars and the spectre of a giant squid caught inside a locket ball, it is difficult for Don Horacio to maintain a restful mind.

This story is included in the collection The Door Gunner and Other Perilous Flights of Fancy: A Michael Bishop Retrospective (2012).

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

In the course of a distinguished career now entering its fifth decade, Michael Bishop has amassed a large body of fiction notable for its intellectual range, narrative sophistication, and sheer stylistic elegance. This massive new retrospective, The Door Gunner (and Other Perilous Flights of Fancy), amply celebrates that career, offering one example after another of Bishop's unique - and characteristic - virtuosity.

This generous volume contains a preface by Bishop scholar Michael H. Hutchins, a shrewd and sympathetic introduction by Jack McDevitt, detailed - and highly readable - story notes, and twenty-five stories and novellas, many never before collected, all of them newly revised for this definitive collection. The contents proceed in chronological order, beginning with Bishop's first professional story sale, 'Piñon Fall,'; and ending with 'The City Quiet as Death,' a recent collaboration with Steven Utley. Along the way, readers will rediscover a number of bona fide Bishop classics ('Blooded on Arachne,' the Nebula Award-winning 'The Quickening'), together with a varied assortment of equally memorable tales. These include the wonderfully titled - and mordantly funny - 'The Yukio Mishima Cultural Association of Kudzu Valley, Georgia,' 'Help Me, Rondo,' a moving account of the last days of disfigured character actor Rondo Hatton, 'The Angst, I Kid You Not, of God,' a whimsically serious reflection on violence and the sense of 'divine dread' that permeates the universe, and 'Miriam,' a beautifully concise re-imagining of the central spiritual drama of Western Civilization.

Not one of these stories fails to delight, illuminate, educate, and amuse. Together, they constitute a landmark volume that readers will return to again and again, finding something new to appreciate every time out. The Door Gunner (and Other Perilous Flights of Fancy) is that rarest of accomplishments: a book that matters, that speaks clearly and from the heart about significant things. It deserves - and will doubtless achieve - a place on the permanent shelf.

Table of Contents:

• Preface - (2012) - essay by Michael H. Hutchins
• Introduction - (2012) - essay by Jack McDevitt
• Piñon Fall - (1970) - shortstory
• Cathadonian Odyssey - (1974) - shortstory
• Blooded on Arachne - (1975) - novelette
• The Samurai and the Willows - (1976) - novella
• The House of Compassionate Sharers - (1977) - novelette
• Within the Walls of Tyre - (1978) - novelette
• Storming the Bijou, Mon Amour - (1979) - shortstory
• The Yukio Mishima Cultural Association of Kudzu Valley, Georgia - (1980) - shortstory
• The Quickening - (1981) - novelette
• Dogs' Lives - (1984) - novelette
• A Gift from the GrayLanders - (1985) - novelette
• Taccati's Tomorrow - non-genre - (1986) - shortstory
• Alien Graffiti (A Personal History of Vagrant Intrusions) - (1986) - shortstory
• Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana - (1989) - novella
• Life Regarded as a Jigsaw Puzzle of Highly Lustrous Cats - (1991) - shortstory
• Tithes of Mint and Rue - (1999) - novelette
• Help Me, Rondo - (2002) - shortstory
• The Door Gunner - (2003) - novelette
• The Road Leads Back - (2003) - shortstory
• The Angst, I Kid You Not, of God - (2004) - shortstory
• Bears Discover Smut - (2005) - shortstory
• Miriam - (2007) - shortstory
• The Pile - (2008) - shortstory
• Vinegar Peace; or, The Wrong-Way, Used-Adult Orphanage - (2008) - novelette
• The City Quiet as Death - (2009) - shortstory by Michael Bishop and Steven Utley
• Story Notes - (2012) - essay

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, November 1983. The story can also be found in the collection Close Encounters with the Deity (1986).

This novelette Cosmos Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine, May 1977. It can also be found in the anthologies:

• The 1978 Annual World's Best SF (1978), edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha
• The Best Science Fiction of the Year #7 (1978), edited by Terry Carr
• Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Seventh Annual Collection (1978), edited by Gardner Dozois
• Strange Dreams (1993), editied by by Stephen R. Donaldson
• The Big Book of Science Fiction (2016), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

The story is included in the collections Blooded on Arachne (1982) and The Door Gunner and Other Perilous Flights of Fancy: A Michael Bishop Retrospective (2012).

WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Heroic Visions (1983), edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. The story is included in the collection One Winter in Eden (1984).

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology The Microverse (1989) edited by Byron Preiss. The story can also be found in the anthology Nebula Awards 25 (1991), edited by Michael Bishop and the collection At the City Limits of Fate (1996).

Nebula Award winning and Hugo Award nominated novelette.

Imagine waking up in the morning to discover that every human being on Earth has been randomly relocated somewhere else: When Lawson wakes up in Seville, Spain instead of his home town of Lynchburg, Tennessee, he realizes that the chaos of mob rioting has brought modern civilization to its knees--and the same thing must be happening in every other city in the world. He wonders if he will seehis wife and daughters... or the world he once knew... ever again.

The story wat originally published in the anthology Universe 11 (1981), edited by Terry Carr. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 8 (1982) edited by Arthur W. Saha, Fantasy Annual V (1982), edited by Terry Carr and Nebula Award Stories Seventeen (1983), edited by Joe Haldeman. It is included in the collections One Winter in Eden (1984) and The Door Gunner and Other Perilous Flights of Fancy: A Michael Bishop Retrospective (2012).

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1973. The story can also be found in the collections Beneath the Shattered Moons (1978) and Blooded on Arachne (1982).

Egan Chaney disappeared while studying the Asadi and now his daughter, Elegy, has come to BoskVeld determined to uncover the truth of her father's disappearance. She brings with her a sad and wonderful creature, a baboon which has been genetically altered to look like an Asadi and have a high level of intelligence. He is to be her bait.

Together they are led into the Asadi rituals an finally they find the hidden temple that Chaney wrote of in his notes... and in the temple is revealed to them the probable truth of the Asadi past and the horrible fate of Egan Chaney.

This novella originally appeared in the anthology Going Interstellar (2012), edited by Les Johnson and Jack McDevitt, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, December 2016. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection (2013), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Final Frontier (2018), edited by Neil Clarke.

A multinational expedition has landed on the planet Onogoro, a cold and dour world circling one star of a binary pair. Their objective is to investigate a strange alien race, known to the human visitors as the Kybers. These aliens, dwelling in a great network of ruined palaces, are partly biological creatures and partly machines, with the ability to switch themselves off at will. Expedition scientists discover that the Kyber's sun is soon to blaze up in a nova, yet the Kybers are not alarmed.

Unicorns roam the uplands of Libby Quarrels' mountain ranch. When Libby takes the AIDS-afflicted Bo Gavin out of exile in Atlanta to live with her in Colorado, she sees no connection between his disease and the fantastic secret she guards. But it so happens the unicorns suffer from an ugly, implacable plague of their own, and the parallel world that touches the high country has unleashed magic sinister as well as marvelous. While Libby's Indian ranch hand Sam is stalked by his wife's headless ghost, his estranged daughter has visions that propel her toward the grueling Sun Dance ritual, where an encounter with the spirit world may decide the fate of both the unicorns and the people whose lives they've touched.

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Chrysalis 3 (1978), edited by Roy Torgeson. The story can also be found in the anthology Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Ninth Annual Collection (1980), edited by Gardner Dozois and the collection One Winter in Eden (1984).

Nebula Award nominated novelette. The story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, July 2008. The story can also be found in the anthologies StarShipSofa Stories: Volume 1 (2009), edited by Tony C. Smith and Nebula Awards Showcase 2011, edited by Kevin J. Anderson. It is included in the collection The Door Gunner and Other Perilous Flights of Fancy: A Michael Bishop Retrospective (2012).

In this unforgettable tale of a young woman harassed by demons from hell, Michael Bishop has created a masterpiece of occult fiction- a bloodcurdling novel of satanism, illicit lust, and supernatural horror.

WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Weirdbook 13 (1978). The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series VI (1978), edited by Gerald W. Page, The Year's Finest Fantasy - Volume 2 (1979), edited by Terry Carr, A Treasury of Modern Fantasy (1981), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Terry Carr, The Dark Descent: The Evolution of Horror (1987), edited by David G. Hartwell, and The Century's Best Horror Fiction 1951-2000 (2012), edited by John Pelan. It is included in the collections One Winter in Eden (1984) and The Door Gunner and Other Perilous Flights of Fancy: A Michael Bishop Retrospective (2012).

Table of Contents:

• Emphatically Not SF, Almost (frontispiece) - interior artwork by George Barr
• 1 - Introduction (Emphatically Not SF, Almost) - essay
• 9 - Unlikely Friends - non-genre - [Georgia Stories] - (1982) - short story
• 27 - Wished-For Belongings - non-genre - (1982) - short story
• 37 - Dear Bill - (1986) - short story
• 41 - A Father's Secret - non-genre - (1984) - short story
• 49 - Give a Little Whistle - (1983) - short story
• 55 - The Egret - (1987) - short story
• 61 - Tears - non-genre - (1987) - short story
• 69 - Patriots - (1982) - short story
• 85 - Taccati's Tomorrow - non-genre - (1986) - short story

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Nebula Awards 23) - essay by Michael Bishop
• The World Renews Itself: A View on the SF and Fantasy of 1987 - essay by Ian Watson
• In Memoriam: Alfred Bester 1913 1987 - essay by Isaac Asimov
• Forever Yours, Anna - (1987) - shortstory by Kate Wilhelm
• Flowers of Edo - (1987) - novelette by Bruce Sterling
• Schwarzschild Radius - (1987) - shortstory by Connie Willis
• Witness - (1986) - novelette by Walter Jon Williams
• Judgment Call - (1987) - novelette by John Kessel
• The Glassblower's Dragon - (1987) - shortstory by Lucius Shepard
• Rachel in Love - (1987) - novelette by Pat Murphy
• Rhysling Poetry Award Winners (1987) - essay by Michael Bishop
• Before the Big Bang: News from the Hubble Large Space Telescope - (1986) - poem by Jonathan V. Post
• A Dream of Heredity - (1986) - poem by John Calvin Rezmerski
• Daedalus - (1986) - poem by W. Gregory Stewart
• Angel - (1987) - shortstory by Pat Cadigan
• Freezeframe - (1986) - shortstory by Gregory Benford
• The Blind Geometer - (1986) - novella by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Spelling God with the Wrong Blocks - (1987) - shortstory by James Morrow
• DX - (1987) - poem by Joe Haldeman
• Science Fiction Movies of 1987 - essay by Bill Warren
• About the Nebula Award - essay by Michael Bishop
• Past Nebula Award Winners - essay by uncredited

As the most respected anthology of the year in science fiction, Nebula Awards 24 gives what science fiction writers themselves regard as the best of the best.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Nebula Awards 24) - essay by Michael Bishop
• Themes and Variations: A View on the SF and Fantasy of 1988 - essay by Ian Watson
• Free Associating About Falling Free - essay by Lois McMaster Bujold
• Ray Bradbury: Ambassador to the Future - essay by Greg Bear
• The Collector Speaks - (1984) - poem by Ray Bradbury
• More Than One Way to Burn a Book - essay by Ray Bradbury
• Bible Stories for Adults, No. 17: The Deluge - (1988) - shortstory by James Morrow
• The Devil's Arithmetic (Excerpt) - shortfiction by Jane Yolen
• Rhysling Award Winners (1988) - essay by Michael Bishop
• The Nightmare Collector - (1987) - poem by Bruce Boston
• Rocky Road to Hoe - (1987) - poem by Suzette Haden Elgin
• White Trains - (1987) - poem by Lucius Shepard
• Schrödinger's Kitten - (1988) - novelette by George Alec Effinger
• The Fort Moxie Branch - (1988) - shortstory by Jack McDevitt
• In Memoriam - essay by Michael Bishop
• In Memoriam: Clifford D. Simak - essay by Gordon R. Dickson
• In Memoriam: Robert A. Heinlein - essay by Frank M. Robinson
• Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus - (1988) - novelette by Neal Barrett, Jr.
• The Other Dead Man - (1988) - shortstory by Gene Wolfe
• The Daily Chernobyl - (1988) - poem by Robert Frazier
• The Last of the Winnebagos - (1988) - novella by Connie Willis
• My Alphabet Starts Where Your Alphabet Ends - essay by Paul Di Filippo
• The Year of the Pratfall: SF Movies of 1988 - essay by Bill Warren
• About the Nebulas - essay by uncredited

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Nebula Awards 25) - essay by Michael Bishop
• What Is Science Fiction? - (1977) - essay by Damon Knight
• Ripples in the Dirac Sea - (1988) - shortstory by Geoffrey A. Landis
• The Avalanche: A View on the SF and Fantasy Novels of 1989 - essay by Ian Watson
• "Snake Charm": The Healer's War, Chapter 16 - shortfiction by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
• Some Reflections on The Healer's War - essay by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
• Solace - (1989) - shortstory by Gardner Dozois
• The Mountains of Mourning - (1989) - novella by Lois McMaster Bujold
• Rhysling Award Winners (1989) - essay by Michael Bishop
• Salinity - (1988) - poem by Robert Frazier
• In the Darkened Hours - (1988) - poem by Bruce Boston
• Winter Solstice, Camelot Station - (1988) - poem by John M. Ford
• For I Have Touched the Sky - (1989) - novelette by Mike Resnick
• Vulgar Art - (1990) - essay by Orson Scott Card
• The Ommatidium Miniatures - (1989) - shortstory by Michael Bishop
• The Great Nebula Sweep - essay by Paul Di Filippo
• At the Rialto - (1989) - novelette by Connie Willis
• The Exile's Paradigm - (1990) - essay by Richard Grant
• In Blue - (1989) - novella by John Crowley
• Year of the Bat: Science Fiction Movies of 1989 - essay by Bill Warren
• About the Nebula Awards - essay by uncredited
• Past Nebula Award Winners - essay by uncredited

The Color of Neanderthal Eyes:

A space explorer finds a race of aquatic creatures that have no concept of war or fighting. He falls in love with one of their females. All is wonderful, until another species on the world begins attacking the peaceful creatures. The explorer has to teach them how to fight and how to wage a war, violating all his first-contact rules.

And Strange At Ecbatan the Trees:

A melancholic and allegorically inclined parable about a coming cataclysm that threatens a rigorously programmed (accomplished via genetic modification) and hierarchically rigid society.

In the domed city of Atlanta, after the breakup of the United States, a young writer named Julian Cawthorn is in trouble. Because he insulted the daughter of a public official, Cawthorn is out of work, and virtually unemployable. He begs a temporary job on the city newspaper and finds himself assigned to cover the first public appearance of the aliens Cygnusians, travelers from outer space who have been living in seclusion in Atlanta while visiting Earth.

A Christian revivalist dictatorship rules Atlanta; church services are as much social as they are religious events. When one of the aliens chooses to appear at a church service, Julian watches as the first alien from space stands up and is "saved". The alien's voluntary salvation is taken as a sign that the state religion is indeed the one true religion, and minority groups, previously tolerated, are attacked by gangs, leaving Atlanta in turmoil.

The service is a turning point in Julian's life. He is hired by Fiona Bitler, hostess to and protector of the aliens; at her invitation he goes to work in the secret alien enclave. In this environment Julian comes to know the fascinating aliens. He is mystified by the aliens' interest in his personal life and cannot understand how they have acquired so many oddly human characteristics in their brief period on Earth.

The second book in the Urban Nucleus series, containing the following:

• Prelude: The Domes (1978)
• If a Flower Could Eclipse (1970)
• Interlude: The Testimony of Leland Turner (1979)
• Old Folks at Home (1978)
• Interlude: The City Takes Care of Its Own (1979)
• The Windows in Dante's Hell (1973)
• Interlude: Volplaning Heroes (1979)
• The Samurai and the Willows (1976)
• Interlude: First Councilor Lesser (1979)
• Allegiances (1975)
• Interlude: The Cradle Begins to Rock (1979)
• At the Dixie-Apple with the Shoofly-Pie Kid (1977)
• Interlude: The Fall of Saganella Lesser (1979)
• Death Rehearsals (1979)

This novella originally appeared in the anthology Universe 8 (1978), edited by Terry Carr. It can also be found in the anthologies Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Eighth Annual Collection (1979), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Best Science Fiction Novellas of the Year #1 (1979), edited by Terry Carr. The story is included in the collection Catacomb Years (1979).

Locus Award winning and Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1976. The story can also be found the anthology Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Sixth Annual Collection (1977), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collections Catacomb Years (1979) and The Door Gunner and Other Perilous Flights of Fancy: A Michael Bishop Retrospective (2012).