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In Tales from Rugosa Coven, catch a glimpse of a New Jersey even weirder than the one you think you know, as a coven full of very modern Wiccans wrestle challenges both supernatural and mundane--and, occasionally, each other.

The personal injury attorney who chose kitchen-witchery over his family's five-generation lineage of old school ceremonial magic would like to miss his dead parents, only now that they're dead they won't leave him alone. The professional fortuneteller stands out at forty paces, with her profusion of silver amulets glittering over her Goth wardrobe, but nobody has guessed her secret sorrow, especially not the covenmates who see her as their wacky comic relief. And the resident skeptic, a reluctant Pagan if ever there was one, will have to eat her words if her coven sister's new boyfriend really does turn out to be from Atlantis.

The Jersey Shore's half-hidden community of Witches, Druids, and latter-day Vikings must circle together against all challenges. It's a good thing they're as resilient as the wild rugosa roses that hold together the dunes.

Krisztina heard the song and she followed it across the city...

Winter in Budapest. In the midst of a terrible personal tragedy, singer/songwriter Krisztina Ligetti discovers she can hear songs of mortality. She spends her days following these songs until they lead her to people at the precipice of death. From the fading bars of their final breath, Krisztina takes the story of their lives and turns them into music.

When Krisztina is reunited with her father, a reclusive 60s pop star, she believes that she has finally found a way out of the darkness, but then she begins to receive news clippings detailing each of the deaths she has been witness to. A man in a porcelain mask who seems to be everywhere she looks and a faded writer who shares Krisztina's gift seem to know her, know that the past has a hold on them all, and that it won't stop until someone has paid the price.

The End of the End of Everything, by Dale Bailey, is an sf/horror story about a long-married couple invited by an old friend to an exclusive artist's colony. The inhabitants of the colony indulge in suicide parties as the world teeters on the brink of extinction, worn away by some weird entropy.

This story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2015, edited by Paula Guran, and Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited by Irene Gallo. It is included in the collection The End of the End of Everything (2015).

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Dale Bailey's new collection, The End of the End of Everything, is filled with hope. As we rush headlong toward a "Choose Your Own Apocalypse" future, Bailey hangs back, refusing to let go of the indelible ferocity of the human heart. His stories are filled with the vibrant sound of those hearts, always beating. There is the Creature from the Black Lagoon, who is more human than any of those he meets in Hollywood; Eleanor, who works at the End-of-the-World Café, and who sees the depravity and despair of the Pit every day, yet never gives up hope for her ailing child; and young Tom, lost in a world scorched by the sun, who follows the rumor of angels still hanging on the wind.

Reminiscent of Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson, Dale Bailey mixes the macabre in with his melancholy, crafting stories that linger long after their reading. He sees a dark world that is growing darker, but he carries with him a light that refuses to go out.

Table of Contents:

• The End of the World as We Know It - (2004) - shortstory
• The Bluehole - (2013) - novelette
• The Creature Recants - (2013) - shortstory
• Mating Habits of the Late Cretaceous - (2012) - novelette
• A Rumor of Angels - (2013) - novelette
• Eating at the End-of-the-World Café - (2010) - novelette
• Lightning Jack's Last Ride - (2015) - novelette
• Troop 9 - (2014) - novelette
• The End of the End of Everything - (2014) - novelette

This novelette originally appeared in Jim Baen's Universe, October 2006. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best of Jim Baen's Universe (2007), edited by Eric Flint, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection (2007), edited by Gardner Dozois, Space Opera (2007), edited by Rich Horton.

Centuries Ago and Very Fast is a collection of linked stories by Rebecca Ore, author of Gaia's Toys, Time's Child, Slow Funeral, and other well-received novels.

The stories in this collection relate tales from the life of Vel, a gay immortal born in the Paleolithic who jumps time at will. We encounter him hunting mammoths, playing with reindeer tripping on hallucinogenic mushrooms, negotiating each successive wave of invaders to keep his family and its land intact, living as the minor god of a spring, witnessing the hanging of mollies in seventeenth-century London as well as the Stonewall riots in twentieth-century New York City. Vel has had more lovers than he can remember and is sometimes tempted to flirt with death. Centuries Ago and Very Fast offers fascinating, often erotic glimpses of the life of a man who has just about seen it all.

He was 'The Visitor'... in a society revolutionised and troubled by a transportation device that let you walk through a door and be anywhere in the world - instantly. He was 'The Visitor'... at a time when unauthorised travel had caused the violent deaths of countless millions and the survivors were quaking in fear. He was 'The Visitor'... in a world where the invasion of privacy was the ultimate crime and where his obsession with visiting places where he had no right to be led him on a perilous adventure towards his own destruction.

The compelling, terrifying story of a devastating virus.

Have you ever imagined what it would be like to kill someone? Wondered, in your darkest secret thoughts, about the taste of human flesh? What if you woke up and began your morning by devoting the rest of your life to a murderous rampage, a never-ending cannibalistic spree? And what if you were only one of thousands who shared the same compulsion?

Well, today's your lucky day: in fact, by this afternoon, the predators will outnumber the prey. Pontypool Changes Everything depicts just such an epidemic. It's the compelling, terrifying story of a devastating virus. You catch it through conversation, and once it has you, it leads you on a strange journey - into another world where the undead chase you down the streets of the smallest towns and largest cities.

Compiled by Italo Calvino, one of the essential writers of the twentieth century (and editor of the best-selling Italian Folktales), Fantastic Tales is a rich and wide-ranging collection of twenty-six classic, uncanny tales from the nineteenth century written by an intriguing panoply of European and American authors. Master storyteller himself, Calvino has contributed an informative introduction to the collection, and an engaging précis to each story.

As Calvino writes in Fantastic Tales, which traces the genre from its roots in German Romanticism to the ghost stories of Henry James: "The fantastic tale is one of the most characteristic products of nineteenth-century narrative. For us, it is also one of the most significant.... As it relates to our sensibility today, the supernatural element at the heart of these stories always appears freighted with meaning, like the revolt of the unconscious, the repressed, the forgotten.... In this we see the modern dimension of the fantastic, the reason for its triumphant resurgence in our times."

Fantastic Tales is a fantastically canonical anthology assembled by an editor who, in the words of Salman Rushdie, "possesses the power of seeing into the deepest recesses of human minds and then bringing their dreams back to life."

Table of Contents:

• vii - Introduction (Fantastic Tales: Visionary and Everyday) - essay by Italo Calvino
• 3 - The Story of the Demoniac Pacheco (Excerpt) - (1805) - shortfiction by Jan Potocki
• 17 - Autumn Sorcery - (1808) - novella by Joseph von Eichendorff
• 33 - The Sandman - (1816) - novelette by E. T. A. Hoffmann
• 73 - Wandering Willie's Tale - (1824) - shortstory by Sir Walter Scott
• 95 - The Elixir of Life - (1830) - shortstory by Honoré de Balzac
• 123 - The Eye with No Lid - (1832) - shortfiction by Philarete Chasles
• 143 - The Enchanted Hand - (1832) - shortfiction by Gérard de Nerval
• 181 - Young Goodman Brown - (1835) - shortstory by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• 197 - The Nose - (1835) - shortfiction by Nikolai Gogol
• 227 - The Beautiful Vampire - (1836) - novelette by Théophile Gautier
• 261 - The Venus of Ille - (1837) - novelette by Prosper Mérimée
• 293 - The Ghost and the Bonesetter - (1838) - shortstory by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
• 307 - The Tell-Tale Heart - (1843) - shortstory by Edgar Allan Poe
• 315 - The Shadow - (1847) - shortstory by Hans Christian Andersen
• 331 - The Signalman - (1866) - shortstory by Charles Dickens
• 347 - The Dream - (1876) - shortfiction by Ivan Turgenev
• 371 - A Shameless Rascal - (1879) - shortfiction by Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov
• 389 - The Very Image - (1883) - shortfiction by Villiers de l'Isle-Adam
• 395 - Night: A Nightmare - (1887) - shortstory by Guy de Maupassant
• 403 - A Lasting Love - (1887) - novelette by Vernon Lee
• 441 - Chickamauga - (1889) - shortstory by Ambrose Bierce
• 451 - The Holes in the Mask - shortstory by Jean Lorrain
• 461 - The Bottle Imp - (1891) - novelette by Robert Louis Stevenson
• 493 - The Friends of the Friends - (1896) - novelette by Henry James
• 523 - The Bridge-Builders - (1898) - novelette by Rudyard Kipling
• 559 - The Country of the Blind - (1904) - novelette by H. G. Wells

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, March 2017.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Think twice before you share your life online.

Freya has a new virtual assistant. It knows what she likes, knows what she wants and knows whose voice she most needs to hear: her missing sister's. It adopts her sister's personality, recreating her through a life lived online. But this virtual version of her sister knows things it shouldn't be possible to know. It's almost as if the missing girl is still out there somewhere, feeding fresh updates into the cloud. But that's impossible.

Isn't it?

One of the funniest books in years. Gene Shalit, The Today Show God has appeared on earth to set the record straight in this uproarious comic novel, adapted into the movie comedy starring George Burns. God is here to confront nonbelievers, taking his messenger and the reader on a wildly funny roller coaster ride. As God Himself says, The last miracle I did was the 1969 Mets and before that the 1914 Boston Braves and before that I think you have to go back to the Red Sea." "Looking back, I made a few mistakes. Giraffes. It was a good thought, but it didn t really work out. Avocados on that I made the pit too big.

Good guy Karl Bender is a thirty-something bar owner whose life lacks love and meaning. When he stumbles upon a time-travelling worm hole in his closet, Karl and his best friend Wayne develop a side business selling access to people who want to travel back in time to listen to their favorite bands. It's a pretty ingenious plan, until Karl, intending to send Wayne to 1980, transports him back to 980 instead. Though Wayne sends texts extolling the quality of life in tenth century "Mannahatta," Karl is distraught that he can't bring his friend back.

Enter brilliant, prickly, overweight astrophysicist, Lena Geduldig. Karl and Lena's connection is immediate. While they work on getting Wayne back, Karl and Lena fall in love -- with time travel, and each other. Unable to resist meddling with the past, Karl and Lena bounce around time. When Lena ultimately prevents her own long-ago rape, she alters the course of her life and threatens her future with Karl.

At turns whimsical, dark, and mystical, this extraordinary collection of retold fairy tales and new, modern myths redefine the boundaries of magic. Compiling favored stories suggested by the author and his fans, this delightful treasury contains the most esteemed and beloved selections that de Lint has to offer. Innovative characters in unexpected places are the key to each plot: playful Crow Girls who sneak into the homes of their sleeping neighbors; a graffiti artist who risks everything to expose a long-standing conspiracy; a half-human girl who must choose between her village and her strange birthright; and an unrepentant trickster who throws one last party to reveal a folkloric tradition. Showcasing some of the finest offerings within the realms of urban fantasy and magical realism, this essential compendium of timeless tales will charm and inspire.

Hugo Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, February 1989. The story can also be found in the anthology What Might Have Been? Volume 1: Alternate Empires (1989), edited by Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg. It is included in the collection Live! from Planet Earth (2005).

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1984. The story can also be found in the anthologies The 1985 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, Best SF of the Year #14 (1985), edited by Terry Carr, Nebula Awards 20 (1985), edited by George Zebrowski, The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction: A 40th Anniversary Anthology (1989), edited by Edward L. Ferman and Alien Contact (2012), edited by Marty Halpern. It is included in the collections The Old Funny Stuff (1989) and Live! from Planet Earth (2005).

Nebula Award winning short story. It was originally published on Sci Fiction, June 22, 2000. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection (2001), edited by Gardner Dozois, and the Nebula Awards Showcase 2003, edited by Nancy Kress.

IN THE SHADOWS OF WAR AND HISTORY, THE MIRROR BETWEEN MAN AND MONSTER BREAKS... From the haunted hills of Roman Britain to the sewers of occupied Warsaw... in the bloodied streets of Revolutionary Paris, and the anarchy World War II Shanghai... out of the wilds of America, India, Africa and Europe... down the long savage darkness of the centuries, monsters have fed upon us. They are shapeshifters, vampires, sorcerers and spirits--things named only in myth, and things for which we have no name. They are our demons, our reflections, our desires and our nightmares. And all too often, they are... only human.

In this second collection from Gemma Files--featuring the award-winning 'The Emperor's Old Bones' (winner of the 1999 International Horror Guild Award for Best Short Fiction), and five never-before-published stories--we tour the overlooked intersections between wilderness and civilization where secret dances of fear and pain are performed and hunters and hunted change roles.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Nancy Kilpatrick
• Nigredo
• Ring of Fire - (1995)
• The Guided Tour - (1996)
• Year Zero - (2001)
• Flare - (1994)
• Bottle of Smoke - (1998)
• Fly-by-Night - (1993)
• In the Poor Girl Taken by Surprise - (2004)
• A Single Shadow Make - (1994)
• The Land Beyond the Forest - (1994)
• Sent Down - (2004)
• The Kindly Ones
• By the Mark
• The Emperor's Old Bones - (1999)
• The Narrow World - (2001)
• Afterword - interview of Gemma Files

"He flicked the coin onto the table and it spun lazily, resting on tails. An eagle, squatting on a cactus, snake held aloft in its beak. Cinco pesos, the worn script read..."

Within these covers, you will find murderous dropbears, zombie kangaroos and undead camels. Poignant endings to the world mash-up with muscle car battles, featuring feral killers that make Mad Max look like the Disney channel.

Everything is a Graveyard delves into the fantastic, the horrifying, the sad and the just plain weird.

Boldly go to times where no one has gone before.

While transporting a contraband Russian time machine and developmental weaponry, Private Everett Dumphee finds himself cast into new settings when the device suddenly activates.

What follows are fantastic high-tech experiences that might be called the ultimate off-road adventure. For the determined Dumphee--narrowly escaping with his life and three beautiful women--it is not necessarily a matter of will he make his destination, but when.

These four vivid characters trek through this fun and fast-moving journey like there's no tomorrow. Wherever that may be in A Very Strange Trip.

In this debut collection of body-horror fairy tales and mid-apocalyptic Catholic cyberpunk, memory and myth, loss and age, these are the tools of storyteller Jarboe, a talent in the field of queer fabulism. Bodily autonomy and transformation, the importance of negative emotions, unhealthy relationships, and bad situations amidst the staggering and urgent question of how build and nurture meaning, love, and safety in a larger world/society that might not be "fixable."

Table of Contents:

• The Marks of Aegis
• Here You Are, Near Me
• Self Care
• The Nothing Spots Where Nobody Wants to Stay
• The Heavy Things
• The Seed and The Stone
• We Did Not Know We Were Giants
• The Android That Designed Itself
• As Tender Feet of Cretan Girls Danced Once Around an Altar of Love
• Estranged Children of Storybook Houses
• My Noise Will Keep The Record
• Wake Word
• Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel
• First Contact, Communion
• I Am a Beautiful Bug!
• The Thing in Us We Fear Just Wants Our Love

Words are important to Gretel, always have been. As a child, she lived on a canal boat with her mother, and together they invented a language that was just their own. She hasn't seen her mother since the age of sixteen, though - almost a lifetime ago - and those memories have faded. Now Gretel works as a lexicographer, updating dictionary entries, which suits her solitary nature.

A phone call from the hospital interrupts Gretel's isolation and throws up questions from long ago. She begins to remember the private vocabulary of her childhood. She remembers other things, too: the wild years spent on the river; the strange, lonely boy who came to stay on the boat one winter; and the creature in the water - a canal thief? - swimming upstream, getting ever closer. In the end there will be nothing for Gretel to do but go back.

Daisy Johnson's debut novel turns classical myth on its head and takes readers to a modern-day England unfamiliar to most. As daring as it is moving, Everything Under is a story of family and identity, of fate, language, love and belonging that leaves you unsettled and unstrung.

The Pacific Ocean is a big thing to steal, and Quietly's roommate Imani never does anything small. But then Imani goes and dies, and Quietly is left to travel to the Under-Ath (the underworld beneath Athens, Georgia), with angry gods at her heels, to clean up the mess Imani left behind and try to rescue her friend.

"A lovely story that became a classic in Japan and a popular animated home video throughout North America."

Kiki is a resourceful, spunky girl who follows her maternal tradition to be a witch. She possesses only one gift of witchcraft -- the power to fly. Like all young witches, she sets out at age 12 to find a town of her own. With her ever-present companion Jiji -- a cynical and faithful black cat -- Kiki departs on her broomstick and arrives at a big town near the ocean. Though nervous at first, she soon sets up a business delivering packages.

Kiki meets all kinds of people and has many adventures. She befriends the thief who stole her broomstick and saves the town's traditional New Year's marathon with some courageous and timely flying.

Throughout, Kiki's confidence and self-awareness grows as she learns to value her unique talents. And with Kiki's help, the townspeople realize that everyone has some "magic" that gives them their own special character and vitality.

This is a charming and delightful tale that is reminiscent of children's favorites "The Worst Witch" by Jill Murphy and Astrid Lindgren's "Adventures of Pippi Longstocking." Black and white line drawings sprinkled throughout reveal the humor and warmth in everything Kiki does.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #64 January 2012. It can also be found in the anthology Clarkesworld: Year Six (2014).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

If it is true that the test of a first-rate mind is its ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time, then we live in a century when it takes a first-rate mind just to get through the day. We have unprecedented access to information; cognitive dissonance is a banner headline in our morning papers and radiates silently from our computer screens. Slipstream, poised between literature and popular culture, embraces the dissonance.

These ambitious stories of visionary strangeness defy the conventions of science fiction. Tales by Michael Chabon, Karen Joy Fowler, Jonathan Lethem, Carol Emshwiller, George Saunders, and others pull the reader into a vivid dreamspace and embrace the knowledge that life today is increasingly surreal.

Contents:

• Al - (1972) - short story by Carol Emshwiller
• The Little Magic Shop - (1987) - short story by Bruce Sterling
• The Healer - (1998) - short story by Aimee Bender
• The Specialist's Hat - (1998) - short story by Kelly Link
• Light and the Sufferer - (1995) - novelette by Jonathan Lethem
• Sea Oak - (1998) - novelette by George Saunders
• Exhibit H: Torn Pages Discovered in the Vest Pocket of an Unidentified Tourist - (1998) - short story by Jeff VanderMeer
• Hell Is the Absence of God - (2001) - novelette by Ted Chiang
• Lieserl - (1990) - short story by Karen Joy Fowler
• Bright Morning - (2002) - novelette by Jeffrey Ford
• Biographical Notes to "A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes" by Benjamin Rosenbaum - (2004) - novelette by Benjamin Rosenbaum
• The God of Dark Laughter - (2001) - short story by Michael Chabon
• The Rose in Twelve Petals - (2002) - short story by Theodora Goss
• The Lions Are Asleep This Night - (1986) - novelette by Howard Waldrop
• You Have Never Been Here - (2006) - short story by M. Rickert

Nebula-nominated Novella

Mysterious aliens have landed on Earth, but nobody can figure out what they want. Enter Liz Cobble, a frustrated professor of sapientology who finds herself swept up in a madcap romantic adventure with an eccentric billionaire and an architect who designs flying buildings.

This story was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1999, self-published by the authors in 2011, and included in The Collected Kessel (2012).

WFA nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October-November 1998. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Twelfth Annual Collection (1999), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic (2004), edited by F. Brett Cox and Andy Duncan, and Tails of Wonder and Imagination (2010), edited by Ellen Datlow. It is included in the collection The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories (2008).

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

Caitlín R. Kiernan is widely acknowledged as one of dark fantasy and horror’s most acclaimed short fiction writers. Collected in this retrospective volume is her finest work: visceral, sensual, devastating, and impossible to resist.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Richard Kadrey
• Andromeda Among the Stones - [Dandridge Cycle] - (2003) - novelette
• La Peau Verte - (2005) - novelette
• Houses Under the Sea - (2006) - novelette
• Bradbury Weather - (2005) - novelette
• A Child's Guide to the Hollow Hills - (2006) - short story
• The Ammonite Violin (Murder Ballad No. 4) - (2006) - short story
• A Season of Broken Dolls - (2007) - short story
• In View of Nothing - (2007) - short story
• The Ape's Wife - [King Kong] - (2007) - short story
• The Steam Dancer (1896) - (2008) - short story
• Galápagos - (2009) - novelette
• Fish Bride (1970) - (2015) - short story (variant of Fish Bride 2009)
• The Mermaid of the Concrete Ocean - (2015) - short story
• Hydrarguros - (2015) - novelette (variant of Hydraguros 2011)
• The Maltese Unicorn - (2011) - novelette
• Tidal Forces - (2011) - short story
• The Prayer of Ninety Cats - (2013) - novelette
• One Tree Hill (The World as Cataclysm) - (2013) - short story
• Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No. 8) - (2014) - novelette
• Fairy Tale of Wood Street - (2017) - short story

Does a renewed world still have a place for those who only know how to destroy? While defending a tea-growing commune in the wilds of the Pacific Northwest, one person seeks an answer.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

This short story originally appeared in McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, Issue 49, May 2017. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2018, edited by Rich Horton.

Lucky Linderman didn't ask for his life. He didn't ask his grandfather not to come home from the Vietnam War. He didn't ask for a father who never got over it. He didn't ask for a mother who keeps pretending their dysfunctional family is fine. And he didn't ask to be the target of Nader McMillan's relentless bullying, which has finally gone too far.

But Lucky has a secret--one that helps him wade through the daily mundane torture of his life. In his dreams, Lucky escapes to the war-ridden jungles of Laos--the prison his grandfather couldn't escape--where Lucky can be a real man, an adventurer, and a hero. It's dangerous and wild, and it's a place where his life just might be worth living. But how long can Lucky keep hiding in his dreams before reality forces its way inside?

Michael L. Printz Honor recipient A.S. King's smart, funny and boldly original writing shines in this powerful novel about learning to cope with the shrapnel life throws at you and taking a stand against it

The first collection of stories Stephen King has published since Nightmares & Dreamscapes nine years ago, Everything's Eventual includes one O. Henry Prize winner, two other award winners, four stories published by The New Yorker, and "Riding the Bullet," King's original e-book, which attracted over half a million online readers and became the most famous short story of the decade.

"Riding the Bullet," published here on paper for the first time, is the story of Alan Parker, who's hitchhiking to see his dying mother but takes the wrong ride, farther than he ever intended. In "Lunch at the Gotham Café," a sparring couple's contentious lunch turns very, very bloody when the maître d' gets out of sorts. "1408," the audio story in print for the first time, is about a successful writer whose specialty is "Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Graveyards" or "Ten Nights in Ten Haunted Houses," and though Room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel doesn't kill him, he won't be writing about ghosts anymore. And in "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is In French," terror is déjà vu at 16,000 feet.

Whether writing about encounters with the dead, the near dead, or about the mundane dreads of life, from quitting smoking to yard sales, Stephen King is at the top of his form in the fourteen dark tales assembled in Everything's Eventual. Intense, eerie, and instantly com-pelling, they announce the stunningly fertile imagination of perhaps the greatest storyteller of our time.

Table of Contents:

• "Autopsy Room Four"
• "The Man in the Black Suit"
• "All That You Love Will Be Carried Away"
• "The Death of Jack Hamilton"
• "In the Deathroom"
• "The Little Sisters of Eluria"
• "Everything's Eventual"
• "L. T.'s Theory of Pets"
• "The Road Virus Heads North"
• "Lunch at the Gotham Café"
• "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French"
• "1408"
• "Riding the Bullet"
• "Luckey Quarter

This short story originally appeaed in Omni, Winter 2017. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3 (2018), and The Eagle Has Landed: 50 Years of Lunar Science Fiction (2019), both edited by Neil Clarke.

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, July-August 2017. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Twelve (2018), edited by Jonathan Strahan, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection (2018), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3 (2018), edited by Neil Clarke.

Every day a different body. Every day a different life. Every day in love with the same girl.

Every morning, A wakes in a different person's body, a different person's life. There's never any warning about where it will be or who it will be. A has made peace with that, even established guidelines by which to live: Never get too attached. Avoid being noticed. Do not interfere.

It's all fine until the morning that A wakes up in the body of Justin and meets Justin's girlfriend, Rhiannon. From that moment, the rules by which A has been living no longer apply. Because finally, A has found someone he wants to be with--day in, day out, day after day.

With his new novel, David Levithan has pushed himself to new creative heights. He has written a captivating story that will fascinate listeners as they begin to comprehend the complexities of life and love in A's world, as A and Rhiannon seek to discover if you can truly love someone who is destined to change every day.

The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smithis the second book in the "NESFA's Choice" series. It brings back into print all of the short science fiction of Cordwainer Smith, and includes two never before published stories.

The Rediscovery of Man includes all of Smith's short science fiction, including:

• "Scanners Live in Vain"
• "The Ballad of Lost C'mell"
• "The Dead Lady of Clown Town"
• "The Game of Rat and Dragon"
• "On the Storm Planet"

It also includes an in-depth introduction to the works of Cordwainer Smith by John J. Pierce, a noted authority on Smith's work.

Contents:

• Introduction by John J. Pierce
• Editor's Introduction by Jim Mann

Stories of the Instrumentality of Mankind:

• No, No, Not Rogov! (1959)
• War No. 81-Q (rewritten version)
• Mark Elf (1957)
• The Queen of the Afternoon (1978)
• Letter to Editor, Fantasy Book (March 9, 1948)
• Scanners Live in Vain (1950)
• The Lady Who Sailed The Soul (1960)
• When the People Fell (1959)
• Think Blue, Count Two (1963)
• The Colonel Came Back from the Nothing-at-All (1979)
• The Game of Rat and Dragon (1955)
• The Burning of the Brain (1958)
• From Gustible's Planet (1962)
• Himself in Anachron (1993)
• The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal (1964)
• Golden the Ship Was - Oh! Oh! Oh! (1959)
• The Dead Lady of Clown Town (1964)
• Under Old Earth (1966)
• Drunkboat (1963)
• Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons (1961)
• Alpha Ralpha Boulevard (1961)
• The Ballad of Lost C'Mell (1962)
• A Planet Named Shayol (1961)
• On the Gem Planet (1963)
• On the Storm Planet (1965)
• On the Sand Planet (1965)
• Three to a Given Star (1965)
• Down to a Sunless Sea (1975)

Other Stories:

• War No. 81-Q (1928)
• Western Science Is So Wonderful (1958)
• Nancy (1959)
• The Fife of Bodidharma (1959)
• Angerhelm (1959)
• The Good Friends (1963)

Sturgeon Award nominated short story. It originally appeard on Strange Horizons, October 17th 2015. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016, edited by Rich Horton and The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection (2016), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read the full story for free at Strange Horizons.

For nearly half a century, Barry N. Malzberg has been stretching the boundaries of the science fiction and fantasy genres to tell truly entertaining tales. In a collection of fiction that Malzberg himself considers his very best, this anthology showcases a literary career spanning almost 50 years, dozens of novels, hundreds of stories, and countless classic books. Each of the 32 stories in this compilation offers Malzberg's trademark vision of a future that is equal parts cautionary tale and social commentary. In the fictional world depicted in one story, dreams turn into frightening trips through time to reveal an ultimate horror; in another the rules in a war game change with every flip of the manic military command. Including pieces appearing for the first time in book form alongside rediscovered gems, these hand-picked selections exhibit his versatile imagination and the dark humor so characteristic of his work.

Contents:

• Introduction by Joseph Wrzos
• A Galaxy Called Rome (1975)
• Agony Column (1971)
• Final War (1968)
• The Wooden Grenade (2013)
• Anderson (1982)
• Death to the Keeper (1968)
• State of the Art (1974)
• The Only Thing You Learn (1994)
• Police Actions (1991)
• Report to Headquarters (1975)
• The Shores of Suitability (2013)
• Hop Skip Jump (1988)
• What I Did to Blunt the Alien Invasion (1991)
• Shiva (1999)
• Rocket City (1982)
• Tap-Dancing Down the Highways and Byways of Life, etc. (1986)
• Coursing (1982)
• Blair House (1982)
• Quartermain (1985)
• Playback (1990)
• Corridors (1982)
• Icons (1981)
• Something From the Seventies (1993)
• Le Croix (1980)
• The Lady Louisiana Toy (1993)
• The Men's Support Group (2003)
• Out from Ganymede (1972)
• Kingfish (1992)
• Morning Light (1991)
• The Men Inside (1972)
• Standing Orders (1993)
• Most Politely, Most Politely (1992)
• Heliotrope Bouquet Murder Case (1997)

Welcome to the People's Republic of Everything?of course, you've been here for a long time already. Make yourself at home alongside a hitman who always tells the truth, no matter how reality has to twist itself to suit; electric matchstick girls who have teamed up with Friedrich Engels; a telepathic boy and his father's homemade nuclear bomb; a very bad date that births an unforgettable meme; and a dog who simply won't stop howling on social media.

The People's Republic of Everything features a decade's worth of crimes, fantasies, original fiction, and the author's preferred text of the acclaimed short novel Under My Roof.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction by Jeffrey Ford
• Walking with a Ghost
• Arbeitskraft
• The People's Republic of Everywhere and Everything
• Tom Silex, Spirit-Smasher
• The Great Armored Train
• The Phylactery
• Slice of Life
• North Shore Friday
• The Glottal Stop
• The Spook School
• A Howling Dog
• Lab Rat
• Dreamer of the Day
• We Never Sleep
• Under My Roof

As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don't mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she's used to being alone and she follows the rules...with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos pretending to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously.

But someone does. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic. It breaks all of the rules, but Mika goes anyway, and is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of not only her three charges, but also an absent archaeologist, a retired actor, two long-suffering caretakers, and...Jamie. The handsome and prickly librarian of Nowhere House would do anything to protect the children, and as far as he's concerned, a stranger like Mika is a threat. An irritatingly appealing threat.

As Mika begins to find her place at Nowhere House, the thought of belonging somewhere begins to feel like a real possibility. But magic isn't the only danger in the world, and when a threat comes knocking at their door, Mika will need to decide whether to risk everything to protect a found family she didn't know she was looking for....

While the use of genetically engineered dolls in combat games in near-future Holland poses profound ethical questions, their liberated cousins threaten to alter the nature of human existence; on an artificial world beyond the edge of the Milky Way, one of the last humans triggers a revolution amongst alien races abandoned there by her ancestors; in the ocean of Europa, a hunter confronts a monster with its own agenda; in The Two Dicks , bestselling author Philip K. Dick has a life-changing meeting with President Nixon; while in Cross Road Blues the fate of American history hinges on the career of an itinerant blues musician; and in the Sturgeon Award-winning novella The Choice , two young men make very different decisions about how they will come to terms with a world transformed by climate change and alien interference. Selected by the author himself from his output across over a quarter of a century, this landmark collection contains the very finest science fiction stories by one of Britain s foremost masters of the genre. From sharply satirical alternate histories to explorations of the outer edges of biotechnology, from tales of extravagant far futures to visions of the transformative challenges of deep space, they showcase the reach and restless intelligence of a writer Publishers Weekly has praised as being one of the field s finest practitioners.

Table of Contents:

• Little Ilya and Spider and Box - (1985) - novelette
• The Temporary King - (1987) - novelette
• Cross Roads Blues - (1991) - novelette
• Gene Wars - (1991) - short story
• Prison Dreams - (1992) - novelette
• Children of the Revolution - (1993) - novelette
• Recording Angel - (1995) - novelette
• Second Skin - (1997) - short story
• All Tomorrow's Parties - (1997) - short story
• 17 - (1998) - short story
• Sea Change, with Monsters - (1998) - novella
• How We Lost the Moon, a True Story by Frank W. Allen - (1999) - short story
• A Very British History - (2000) - short story
• The Two Dicks - (2001) - novelette
• Meat - (2005) - short story
• Rocket Boy - (2007) - novelette
• The Thought War - (2008) - short story
• City of the Dead - (2008) - novelette
• Little Lost Robot - (2008) - short story
• Shadow Life - (2009) - short fiction
• The Choice - (2011) - novella
• Story Notes - essay

Gravesend, or, Everyday Life in the Anthropocene by Paul McAuley was first published in Asimov's Science Fiction, March-April 2023.

Rose is discharged from the army after an encounter with a psych bomb leaves her with lasting trauma and occasional intrusive hallucinations. She washes up in a commune of almost hippie-ish "oldsters," who are making a living in a hot and humid marsh near the mouth of the now-flooded River Thames. Rose is attracted by rumors of "soul chips" and a man who inherited his séance-giving aunt's house who might be looking for them. She meets him and that sets off an unexpected path of investigation -- he doesn't particularly care about them, but someone does, enough to steal ones from his house whenever his aunt's projection system for the housed AI "souls" is turned on. Rose dreams of finding someone to buy the remaining stash and get enough money for treatment at a clinic in the Czech Republic rumored to be able to actually cure people with her kind of trauma. But is that the way of life in the Anthropocene?

Read the full story for free here.

A 13-year old girl sets off on a journey to become a witch. In the process, she learns how to be a woman. Based on the movie of the same name, this prestige format, lavishly illustrated hard-bound book gives fans a rare glimpse into the creative process of Academy Award-winning director Hayo Miyazaki.

Time is a weapon wielded by the rich, who have excess of it, against the rest, who must trade every breath of it against the promise of another day's food and shelter. What kind of world have we made, where human beings can live centuries if only they can afford the fix? What kind of creatures have we become? The same as we always were, but keener.

In the ancient heart of Oxford University, the ultra-rich celebrate their vastly extended lifespans. But a few surprises are in store for them. From Nina and Alex, Margo and Fidget, scruffy anarchists sharing living space with an ever-shifting cast of crusty punks and lost kids. And also from the scientist who invented the longevity treatment in the first place.

Everything Belongs to the Future is a bloody-minded tale of time, betrayal, desperation, and hope that could only have been told by the inimitable Laurie Penny.

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 21, March-April 2018.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

This Nebula-nominated novelette originally appeared in Lightspeed, February 2016. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 2 (2017), edited by Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea is one of the most anticipated SFF collections of recent years. Pinsker has shot like a star across the firmament with stories multiply nominated for awards as well as Sturgeon and Nebula award wins.

The baker's dozen stories gathered here (including a new, previously unpublished story) turn readers into travelers to the past, the future, and explorers of the weirder points of the present. The journey is the thing as Pinsker weaves music, memory, technology, history, mystery, love, loss, and even multiple selves on generation ships and cruise ships, on highways and high seas, in murder houses and treehouses. They feature runaways, fiddle-playing astronauts, and retired time travelers; they are weird, wired, hopeful, haunting, and deeply human. They are often described as beautiful but Pinsker also knows that the heart wants what the heart wants and that is not always right, or easy.

Table of Contents

• "A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide" (2014) short story
• "And We Were Left Darkling" (2015) short story
• "Remembery Day" (2015) short story
• "Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea" (2016) novelette
• "The Low Hum of Her" (2014) short story
• "Talking with Dead People" (2016) short story
• "The Sewell Home for the Temporally Displaced" (2014) short story
• "In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind" (2013) novelette
• "No Lonely Seafarer" (2014) short story
• "Wind Will Rove" (2017) novelette
• "Our Lady of the Open Road" (2015) novelette
• "The Narwhal" short story
• "And Then There Were (N - One)" (2017) novella

Strong heroines and riveting storytelling are the hallmarks of groundbreaking fantasy author Kate Elliott (Crown of Stars, Crossroads). Her long-awaited first collection showcases twenty years of her finest work. Captured here are many of Elliott's previously out-of-print tales, four previously unpublished essays, and a brand new Crossroads story, "On the Dying Winds of the Old Year and the Birthing Winds of the New."

Elliott's bold adventuresses, complex quests, noble sacrifices, and hard-won victories shine in classic, compact legends. In "The Memory of Peace," a girl's powerful emotions rouse the magic of a city devastated by war. Meeting in "The Queen's Garden," two princesses unite to protect their kingdom from the blind ambition of their corrupted father. While "Riding the Shore of the River of Death" a chieftain's daughter finds an unlikely ally on her path to self-determination.

Elliott's many readers, as well as fantasy fans in search of powerful stories featuring well-drawn female characters, will revel in this unique gathering of truly memorable tales.

Table of Contents:

• The Queen's Garden
• Leaf and Branch and Grass and Vine
• Riding the Shore of the River of Death
• Sunseeker
• The Gates of Joriun"
• "Making the World Live Again
• Morlan
• With God to Guard Her
• A Simple Act of Kindness
• To Be a Man
• The Memory of Peace
• My Voice is My Sword

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Carbide Tipped Pens: Seventeen Tales of Hard Science Fiction (2014), edited by Ben Bova and Eic Choi. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015, edited by Rich Horton.

A girl's quest to save a forest kingdom is intertwined with her exploration of identity...

The only time Eren Evers feels like herself is when she's on her bike, racing through the deep woods. While so much of her life at home and at school is flying out of control, the muddy trails and the sting of wind in her face are familiar comforts.

Until she rescues a strange, magical bird, who reveals a shocking secret: their forest kingdom is under attack by an ancient foe--the vile Frostfangs--and the birds need Eren's help to survive.

Seventh grade is hard enough without adding "bird champion" to her list of after-school activities. Lately, Eren's friends seem obsessed with their crushes and the upcoming dance, while Eren can't figure out what a crush should even feel like. Still, if she doesn't play along, they may leave her behind... or just leave her all together. Then the birds enlist one of Eren's classmates, forcing her separate lives to collide.

When her own mother starts behaving oddly, Eren realizes that the Frostfangs--with their insidious whispers--are now hunting outside the woods. In order to save her mom, defend an entire kingdom, and keep the friendships she holds dearest, Eren will need to do something utterly terrifying: be brave enough to embrace her innermost truths, no matter the cost.

Twin Peaks meets Stars Hollow in this paranormal suspense novel about a boy who can reach inside people and steal their innermost things--fears, memories, scars, even love--and his family's secret ritual that for centuries has kept the cliff above their small town from collapsing.

Aspen Quick has never really worried about how he's affecting people when he steals from them. But this summer he'll discover just how strong the Quick family magic is--and how far they'll go to keep their secrets safe.

With a smart, arrogant protagonist, a sinister family tradition, and an ending you won't see coming, this is a fast-paced, twisty story about power, addiction, and deciding what kind of person you want to be, in a family that has the ability to control everything you are.

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Amazing Stories, May 1990. There are no other known publications at this time.

Sturgeon Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Interzone, #140, February 1999. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventeenth Annual Collection (2000), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Year's Best SF 5 (2000), edited by David G. Hartwell. It is included in the collection Paradise Tales (2011).

You wake up. You go to work. You don't go outside for twelve hours at a time. You have strategy meetings about how to use hashtags. After work you order expensive drink after expensive drink until you're so blackout drunk you can't remember the circumstances which have led you to waking up in bed with your colleague. The next day you stay in bed until the afternoon, scrolling through your social media feeds and wondering why everyone else seems to be achieving so much.

Sometimes you don't get out of bed at all.

Then you hear about Life on Nyx, a programme that allows 100 lucky winners the chance to escape it all, move to another planet and establish a new way of life. One with meaning and purpose. One without Instagram and online dating. There's one caveat: if you go, you can never come back.

But you aren't worried about that.

After all, what on Earth could there possibly be to miss?

Deck the halls with boughs of holly! 'Tis the season... for Santa's lawyer to talk about the legal status of the workshop elves, for Christmas to arrive in an unexpected month, and for the innkeeper at the nativity to spill the beans about what really went down on that one night in Bethlehem. It's not just Christmas. It's A Very Scalzi Christmas.

John Scalzi gift-wraps fifteen short takes on the holiday season -- interviews with holiday notables, "informational" articles about TV specials and Christmas carols, short stories and poems, and even a couple of nods to Thanksgiving and New Year's -- and puts them all into a stocking stuffer-sized package that makes the perfect gift for friends, family, or yourself. With stories both funny and touching, A Very Scalzi Christmas also features three new stories exclusive to this collection: "Christmas in July," "Jangle the Elf Grants Wishes" and "Resolutions For the New Year." A wonderful collection for the most wonderful time of the year.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Science Fictional Thanksgiving Grace
• A Bitter November
• The 10 Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time
• An Interview With Santa's Lawyer
• A Personal Top 10 of Things That Are Not Titles to Christmas Songs and/or Lifetime Holiday Movies and Honestly I Don't Understand Why
• Christmas in July
• Interview With Santa's Reindeer Wrangler
• 8 Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know About Your Favorite Holiday Music
• Jackie Jones and Melrose Mandy
• Interview with the Christmas Bunny
• Jangle the Elf Grants Wishes
• Script Notes on The Birth of Jesus
• Sarah's Sister
• Interview With the Nativity Innkeeper
• Resolutions for the New Year

This short story originally appeared in Realms of Fantasy, October 2007. It can also be found in the anthology Science Fiction: The Best of the Year, 2008 Edition, edited by Rich Horton. The story is included in Are You There and Other Stories (2009).

An aimless driver in the mountains comes upon something that s both more and less than he hoped for. A child discovers why you should always stay in bed if you wake up in the middle of the night. A homeowner unpacks the wrong bag of groceries, and comes to suspect his neighbors might have secrets that he doesn t want to know. A cable shopping channel presenter is confronted with disgruntled customers from a VERY long way out of town... and a man sets himself to rid the world of one of its most famous lies, and winds up destroying himself instead. Michael Marshall Smith s last short story collection was hailed as 'stellar' by Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) and a 'major publishing event' by Ellen Datlow, and it won the International Horror Guild Award. You re invited to return to the short fiction of New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author Michael Marshall Smith: it is Everything You Need.

Table of Contents:

• This Is Now - (2004)
• Unbelief - (2010)
• Walking Wounded - (1997)
• The Seventeenth Kind - (2007)
• A Place for Everything - (2007)
• The Last Barbeque - (2012)
• The Stuff that Goes on in Their Heads - (2011)
• Unnoticed
• The Good Listener
• Different Now - (1997)
• Author Of The Death
• Sad, Dark Thing - (2011)
• What Happens When You Wake Up in the Night - (2009)
• The Things He Said - (2007)
• Substitutions - (2010)
• The Woodcutter
• Everything You Need
• Story Notes (Everything You Need)

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, December 2016.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 27, March-April 2019.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

A gripping and powerfully relevant thriller set in a reimagined London where drone surveillance is the norm. We See Everything, from internationally bestselling author William Sutcliffe, simmers with tension and emotion.

Lex lives on The Strip - the overcrowded, closed-off, bombed-out shell of London. He's used to the watchful enemy drones that buzz in the air above him.

Alan's talent as a gamer has landed him the job of his dreams. At a military base in a secret location, he is about to start work as a drone pilot.

These two young men will never meet, but their lives are destined to collide. Because Alan has just been assigned a high-profile target. Alan knows him only as #K622. But Lex calls him Dad.

Hugo Award winning short story. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, February 1998 and was reprinted in Clarkesworld, Issue 121, October 2016. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Sixteenth Annual Collection (1999), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Mammoth Book of Science Fiction (2002), edited by Mike Ashley. It is included in the collections Tales of Old Earth (2000) and The Best of Michael Swanwick (2008).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Ten tantalizing tales of man, woman and child - and their cosmic connections...

Contents:

• Angel Fix (1974)
• Beaver Tears (1976)
• Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! (1976)
• The Screwfly Solution (1977)
• Time-Sharing Angel (1977)
• We Who Stole the Dream (1978)
• Slow Music (1980)
• A Source of Innocent Merriment (1980)
• Out of the Everywhere (1981)
• With Delicate Mad Hands (1981)

Otto of Schlepsig is risking his neck as an acrobat in a third-rate circus in the middle of nowhere when news arrives that the land of Shqiperi has invited Prince Halim Eddin to become its new king. Otto doesn't know the prince from Adam, but he does happen to look just like him-a coincidence that inspires Otto with a mad plan to assume Halim's identity and rule in his stead. True, Shqiperi is an uncivilized backwater, but even in uncivilized backwaters kings live better than acrobats. Plus, kingship in Shqiperi comes with a harem. Rank, as they say, has its privileges.

With his friend Max, a sword-swallowing giant whose chronic cough makes every performance a potential tonsillectomy, Otto embarks on a rollicking journey filled with feats of derring-do, wondrous magic, and beautiful maidens-well, beautiful women. And that's before he enters a royal world that is truly fantastical.

Hugo- and Nebula-nominated Novella

Fantastist Catherynne M. Valente takes on the folklore of artificial intelligence in this brand new, original novella of technology, identity, and an uncertain mechanized future.

Neva is dreaming. But she is not alone. A mysterious machine entity called Elefsis haunts her and the members of her family, back through the generations to her great-great grandmother-a gifted computer programmer who changed the world. Together Neva and Elefsis navigate their history and their future, an uneasy, unwilling symbiote. But what they discover in their dreamworld might change them forever...

Read this story online for free at Clarkesworld: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

This novelette originally appeared in Clarkesworld, Issue 121, October 2016. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 11 (2017), edited by Jonathan Strahan, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2017, edited by Rich Horton, and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017, edited by John Joseph Adams and Charles Yu.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Anticipations (1978), edited by Christopher Priest. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year #8 (1979), edited by Terry Carr, The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF (1994), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, and The Mammoth Book of Time Travel SF (2013), edited by Mike Ashley. It is included in the collections The Very Slow Time Machine: Science Fiction Stories (1979) and The Best of Ian Watson (2014).

The Very Slow Time Machine arrives on earth in 1985. Its sole inhabitant is old and mad. Soon it becomes apparent that for him, time is going slowly backward. With every day, he is getting younger and saner. The world, and its whole concept of time, science and philosophy, must wait for him to speak. But while the world waits, it changes...

Table of Contents:

• The Very Slow Time Machine - (1978) - novelette
• Thy Blood Like Milk - (1973) - novelette
• Sitting on a Starwood Stool - (1974) - shortstory
• Agoraphobia, A.D. 2000 - (1977) - shortstory
• Programmed Love Story - (1974) - shortstory
• The Girl Who Was Art - (1976) - shortstory
• Our Loves So Truly Meridional - (1975) - shortstory
• Immune Dreams - (1978) - shortstory
• My Soul Swims in a Goldfish Bowl - (1978) - shortstory
• The Roentgen Refugees - (1977) - shortstory
• A Time-Span to Conjure With - (1978) - shortstory
• On Cooking the First Hero in Spring - (1975) - shortstory
• The Event Horizon - (1976) - novelette

Loxley Fiddleback can see the dead, but the problem is... the dead can see her.

Ghosts have always been cruel to Loxley Fiddleback, especially the spirit of her only friend, alive only hours before. Loxley isn't equipped to solve a murder: she lives near the bottom of a cutthroat, strip-mined metropolis known as "The Hole," suffers from crippling anxiety and doesn't cotton to strangers. Worse still, she's haunted.

She inherited her ability to see spirits from the women of her family, but the dead see her, too. Ghosts are drawn to her like a bright fire, and their lightest touch leaves her with painful wounds.

Loxley swears to take blood for blood and find her friend's killer. In doing so, she uncovers a conspiracy that rises all the way to the top of The Hole. As her enemies grow wise to her existence, she becomes the quarry, hunted by a brutal enforcer named Hiram McClintock. In sore need of confederates, Loxley must descend into the strangest depths of the city in order to have the revenge she seeks and, ultimately, her own salvation.

This career retrospective from beloved author Tad Williams (Otherland; Tailchaser's Song; Shadowplay) demonstrates why he is one of fantasy's most enduring icons. The Very Best of Tad Williams collects Williams' finest work in multiple genres, including epic fantasy, urban fantasy, and YA. These superlative tales, many of which were previously available only in limited editions, introduce dragons, wizards, assassins, heroes, and fools -- even a few cyberpunks and super-soldiers.

Readers only familiar with Williams' internationally bestselling novels and series will be delighted that in his short fiction he explores myriad new possibilities and adventures. Here are the stories that showcase the exhilarating breadth of Williams' imagination, hearkening back to such classic fantasists as J. R. R. Tolkien, Ray Bradbury, Peter S. Beagle, and beyond.

Table of Contents:

• The Old Scale Game
• The Storm Door
• The Stranger's Hands
• Child of an AncientCity
• The Boy Detective of Oz: An Otherland Story
• Three Duets for Virgin and Nosehorn
• Diary of a Dragon
• Not with a Whimper, Either
• Some Thoughts Re: Dark Destroyer
• Z is for...
• Monsieur Vergalant's Canard
• The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of
• Fish Between Friends
• Every Fuzzy Beast of the Earth, Every Pink Fowl of the Air
• A Stark and Wormy Knight
• Black Sunshine
• And Ministers of Grace

Contents:

• 11 - Introduction (Every Boy's Book of Science Fiction) - essay by Donald A. Wollheim
• 15 - The Gravity Professor - [Tubby Maguire] - (1921) - short story by Ray Cummings
• 28 - The Four-Dimensional Roller-Press - [Four Dimensional... - 1] - (1927) - short story by Bob Olsen
• 43 - The Infra-Medians - (1931) - short story by Sewell Peaslee Wright
• 65 - The White Army - (1929) - short story by Dr. Daniel Dressler
• 101 - Dr. Lu-Mie - (1934) - short story by Clifton B. Kruse
• 121 - The Living Machine - (1935) - short story by David H. Keller, M.D.
• 143 - A Conquest of Two Worlds - (1932) - novelette by Edmond Hamilton
• 182 - The Asteroid of Gold - (1932) - short story by Clifford D. Simak
• 203 - In the Scarlet Star - (1933) - novelette by Jack Williamson
• 232 - King of the Gray Spaces - (1943) - short story by Ray Bradbury (variant of R Is for Rocket)
• 251 - Suggested Readings in Science-Fiction - essay by uncredited

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #74 November 2012. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2013, edited by Paula Guran, and Clarkesworld: Year Seven (2015), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This is the story of Isabelle of France, born heir to the throne, and the mystery of one man who enters her life at several key moments, becoming her icon, her soul's other half, and her destiny - a man who may in fact be much more than an ordinary man. His bloodline goes back to the Holy Land and he is far, far older than he appears.

A man risks his life by carefully forging bibliographic references in a parallel Barcelona; at the Cyclotech, a woman strives to keep the storytelling different engine safe from ignorant hands that could get words lost; off-planet, an interpreter gives an account of her language learning process involving a realistic alien doll that claims to be a sentient being... Words boast a heavy, at times disturbing, weight of their own across these alternative realities in which language rules supreme, fleshed out by the mind of one of the most prolific writers in contemporary Spanish genre fiction.

Contents:

• 1 - Techt - (2016) - novelette (trans. of Techt 2015)
• 31 - The BubbleLon Cyclotech - (2015) - novelette (trans. of La cicloteca de BubbleLon 2014)
• 67 - Secret Stories of Doors - (2016) - short story
• 88 - Learning Report - short story
• 112 - You Cannot Kill Frownyflute! - short fiction

Delusion World

There had to be a reason why that isolated human colony had been able to survive right in the heart of the stars held by mankind's implacable enemies. But nobody had been able to get to the quaintly named Dunroamin to find out.

If they had a secret defense, it could be the answer to a hundred planets' prayers. And feliz Gebrod realized as he came in for a crash landing that he'd know the secret soonenr than he'd expected.

Except that what he encountered was a life-and-death riddle that had nothing to do with stellar defense. It was this: how can two mutually irreconcilable Uropias occupy the same space at the same time?

Spacial Delivery

In the good old days when you were dispatched to rescue a maiden distressed by monsters, they usually gave you a suit of armor and a mighty steed.

Well, times have changed: John Tardy didn't volunteer to do battle for maiden fair; he didn't know about the battle until he was in it. And no suit of armor either on Dilbia, it's bare hands even when your opponent has the size, strength and temperament of a hungry Kodiak bear.

John Tardy, a very competent Earthman, figured all that could have been worked out, if only he could have arrived at the fight aboard a magnificent charger, or on his own two feet, or any way other than Spacial Delivery.

Almost all Gilman's work asserts optimistically the possibility for utopian change, yet ironically she is probably most widely celebrated for her darkly tragic story The Yellow Wallpaper. The focus of this essay collection is Gilman's utopianism. Her best-known and critically addressed novel is Herland, and several contributors revisit it in order to deepen our understanding of the complexity of Gilman's utopian vision. The lesser-known Moving the Mountain - deserving of more attention than it has received - is the subject of a full essay, and other essays explore utopian ideas in Gilman's short stories.

To ever-loyal Kirby Winter, multimillionaire Uncle Omar left nothing -- nothing but a gold watch and a sealed letter to be opened in one year. But Kirby is destined to inherit the magical power to freeze time in its tracks. Power like that promises unlimited wealth, wealth that can't buy love, but does make a down payment on a lot of deadly trouble. In a universe without time, can Kirby stay one step ahead?

From the author of the critically acclaimed literary SF novels Spaceman Blues and Liberation comes an incandescent and thrilling post-apocalyptic tale in the vein of 1984 or The Road.

In the not-distant-enough future, a man takes a boat trip up the Susquehanna River with his most trusted friend, intent on reuniting with his son. But the man is pursued by an army, and his own harrowing past; and the familiar American landscape has been savaged by war and climate change until it is nearly unrecognizable.

Lost Everything is a stunning novel about family and faith, what we are afraid may come to be, and how to wring hope from hopelessness.

From Every Storm is a chapbook compilation of three Liaden Universe® stories, one of them never before published. The storms of the title spring not so much from the desert or the deep blue sea but from the minds and hearts of humanity, where greed wars with truth and justice, and where sometimes the supposed end of storm is a mere hurricane eye portending greater potential for damage ahead.

First up is Standing Orders, a finalist for 2022's WSFA's Small Press Award for Short Fiction, originally published in Derelict, a 2021 ZNB anthology. What happens at the end of a war that no one really won, where victory came at the price of acting more like the enemy than the High Command ever should?

Next is the previously unissued Songs of the Fathers a story dealing with Shan yos'Galan's sometime trade partner Lomar Fasholt and her family as they struggle to follow her Mother's religion as it morphs from loving to acquisitive, from flexible to aggressively rule-bound. Lomar's a good mother and wife but her self-exiled family's suffered greatly through this storm of changes. Will they find hope amidst the tumult?

Finally, there's From Every Storm a Rainbow, the 2021 holiday story from Baen.com, wherein Sinit Caylon comes face to face with the perfidy of her absent brother while the accountant's guild is trying to help Clan Mizel come about after years of of her mother's abdication of responsibilities to Ran Eld. Sinit thinks the storm must be about over until it become obvious that between them her mother and brother may have fatally endangered the clan's brightest future.

In this tale of passion and obsession, Diana Bishop, a young scholar and the descendant of witches, discovers a long-lost and enchanted alchemical manuscript deep in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates with her leading man, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont.

Reminiscent of the edgy, offbeat humor of Chris Moore and Matt Ruff, the first entry in a whimsical, fast-paced supernatural series from the New York Times bestselling author of the Sandman Slim novels--a dark and humorous story involving a doomsday gizmo, a horde of baddies determined to possess its power, and a clever thief who must steal it back... again and again.

22000 B.C. A beautiful, ambitious angel stands on a mountaintop, surveying the world and its little inhabitants below. He smiles because soon, the last of humanity who survived the great flood will meet its end, too. And he should know. He's going to play a big part in it. Our angel usually doesn't get to do field work, and if he does well, he's certain he'll get a big promotion.

And now it's time....

The angel reaches into his pocket for the instrument of humanity's doom. Must be in the other pocket. Then he frantically begins to pat himself down. Dejected, he realizes he has lost the object. Looking over the Earth at all that could have been, the majestic angel utters a single word.

"Crap."

2015. A thief named Coop--a specialist in purloining magic objects--steals and delivers a small box to the mysterious client who engaged his services. Coop doesn't know that his latest job could be the end of him--and the rest of the world. Suddenly he finds himself in the company of The Department of Peculiar Science, a fearsome enforcement agency that polices the odd and strange. The box isn't just a supernatural heirloom with quaint powers, they tell him.

It's a doomsday device. They think...

And suddenly, everyone is out to get it.

Far in the future, human beings have seeded themselves amongst the stars. Since decoding the language of the universe 8,000 years ago, they have reached the very edges of their known galaxy and built a near-utopia across thousands of worlds, united and ruled by a powerful organization known as the Ascendance. The peaceful stability of their society relies solely on their use of this Deep Language of the cosmos.

But this knowledge is a valuable secret, and a holy order of monastics known as the First House are tasked with monitoring its use and "correcting" humanity's further development. Elyth is one such mendicant, trained as a planetary assassin, capable of infiltrating and ultimately destroying worlds that have been corrupted, using nothing more than her words.

To this end, Elyth is sent to the world Qel in response to the appearance of a forbidden strain of the Deep Language that was supposed to have died out with its founder over seven hundred years prior. What she finds on the backwater planetoid will put her abilities to the test and challenge what she knows of the Deep Language, the First House, and the very nature of the universe.

Far in the future, human beings have seeded themselves amongst the stars. Since decoding the language of the universe 8,000 years ago, they have reached the very edges of their known galaxy and built a near-utopia across thousands of worlds, united and ruled by a powerful organization known as the Ascendance. The peaceful stability of their society relies solely on their use of this Deep Language of the cosmos.

Elyth--a former agent of the religious arm of the Ascendance, The First House--is on the run after the events of Every Sky a Grave, when she and the fugitive Varen Fedic exposed the darker side of Ascendance hegemony on a planet called Qel. Though she just wishes to put the past (and Varen) behind her, she is soon tracked and cornered by the Ascendance agents. Surprisingly, they aren't there for punishment. Instead, they offer her a deal in exchange for her help in exploring a new planet that seems to have appeared out of nowhere. If she agrees, her sins against the Ascendance and the First House will be forgiven.

Elyth reluctantly agrees to join the team of elite agents (including some former allies-turned-enemies) but almost as soon as they touch down on the planet's surface, things start to go awry. Strange sounds are heard in the wilderness, horrifying creatures are seen stalking the forests, and even the landscape itself seems to change during the night.

But as expedition members start dying, two things become clear: the planet is conscious, and it's trying to kill them.

Sturgeon Award nominated story. It originally appeared as a self-published ebook. It is included in The Shattered Gears (2016).

In the near future, the only thing growing faster than the criminal population is the Electric Church, a new religion founded by a mysterious man named Dennis Squalor. The Church preaches that life is too brief to contemplate the mysteries of the universe: eternity is required. In order to achieve this, the converted become Monks -- cyborgs with human brains, enhanced robotic bodies, and virtually unlimited life spans.

Enter Avery Cates, a dangerous criminal known as the best killer-for-hire around. The authorities have a special mission in mind for Cates: assassinate Dennis Squalor. But for Cates, the assignment will be the most dangerous job he's ever undertaken -- and it may well be his last.

Avery Cates is a very rich man. He's probably the richest criminal in New York City. But right now, Avery Cates is pissed. Because everyone around him has just started to die - in a particularly gruesome way. With every moment bringing the human race closer to extinction, Cates finds himself in the role of both executioner and savior of the entire world.

Avery Cates is a wanted man. After surviving the worst bioengineered disaster in history, Cates finds himself incarcerated - in Chengara Penitentiary. As Chengara has a survival rate of exactly zero, the system's most famous gunner needs a new plan. And a betrayal or so later, he achieves his goal. At a price.

All he has to do now is defeat some new personal demons, forge some unlikely alliances, and figure out why the people he's killed lately just won't stay dead.

Avery Cates is an army man. Between the army's new dental plan and a set of first class augments, he's been given a second chance - albeit a quick one.

When a corrupt officer decides to make some money on the side by selling new recruits, Cates finds himself in uncharted territory. Sold to the highest bidder, his visions of escape and revenge quickly come to an end when he realizes who's bought him - and for what. Because the high bidder is Canny Orel himself. And he wants Cates to do one last job as the System slides into chaos. Cates will have one shot at getting back at Canny - but this time, Canny is holding all the cards.

The world is dying. With avatars replacing humans and the birth rate non-existent, the human race is almost extinct. In the end, it comes down to Canny Orel; Avery's long sought after nemesis -- transformed now into something other than human.

Orel might hold the secret to humanity's salvation, if he can be convinced -- or forced -- to relinquish it. And when Cates chances on a way to trick his old master, he suddenly has a choice to make: get his long-delayed revenge, or save the world.

Special Delivery

EARTH HAD BEEN SILENTLY, STEALTHILY INVADED.

No Earthman was aware of the attack. No man or woman realized alen races walked among them... or knew that the strange packages everyone received through the mail contained the weapons which would destroy their planet. Earth had been silently invaded, but can you fight something you can't see?

Star Gladiator

SURVIVAL to Jonath Gri was merely a word droning incessantly in the ancient rits from mother Earch.

SURVIVAL become a bloody reality in the dreaded arena of the Star Games.

Parents slaughtered by the Star Guards, his fiance abducted tall Jonnath was captured and thrown into the blood-soaked arean to fight for the amusement of the citizens of the Ten Star Complex. Weaponless and naked, he had to fight against the most treacherous animals to be found on 50 planets--the most advanced weaponry developed on untold worlds.

Weaponless? There is one weapon of unlimited power.. Revenge.

When Roxanne Bonaventure is eleven years old, a dying woman gives her a gift that changes her life utterly. With the strange device called the 'Sofia', she is granted the ability to travel anywhere in space and time, not only through times that were and will be, but also through the worlds that could have been and might someday be.

Tortured and brilliant private detective Charlie Parker stars in this thriller by New York Times bestselling author John Connolly.

Former NYPD detective Charlie "Bird" Parker is on the verge of madness. Tortured by the unsolved slayings of his wife and young daughter, he is a man consumed by guilt, regret, and the desire for revenge. When his former partner asks him to track down a missing girl, Parker finds himself drawn into a world beyond his a world where thirty-year-old killings remain shrouded in fear and lies, a world where the ghosts of the dead torment the living, a world haunted by the murderer responsible for the deaths in his family--a serial killer who uses the human body to create works of art and takes faces as his prize. But the search awakens buried instincts in instincts for survival, for compassion, for love, and, ultimately, for killing.

Aided by a beautiful young psychologist and a pair of bickering career criminals, Parker becomes the bait in a trap set in the humid bayous of Louisiana, a trap that threatens the lives of everyone in its reach. Driven by visions of the dead and the voice of an old black psychic who met a terrible end, Parker must seek a final, brutal confrontation with a murderer who has moved beyond all notions of humanity, who has set out to create a hell on the serial killer known only as the Traveling Man.

In the tradition of classic American detective fiction, Every Dead Thing is a tense, richly plotted thriller, filled with memorable characters and gripping action. It is also a profoundly moving novel, concerned with the nature of loyalty, love, and forgiveness. Lyrical and terrifying, it is an ambitious debut, triumphantly realized.

When the fearsome Epicene threatens to realease the deadly Last Humans and destroy the universe, Jack, the King's Tramp, must catch the Mage of Four and prevent disaster.

When two time-traveling historians cross paths during one of the most tumultuous decades of the twentieth century, history goes helter-skelter. But which one broke the timeline?

In 2136 Madison Grace uncovers a key to the origins of CHRONOS, a time-travel agency with ties to her family's mysterious past. Just as she is starting to jump through history, she returns to her timeline to find millions of lives erased?and only the people inside her house realize anything has changed.

In 2304 CHRONOS historian Tyson Reyes is assigned to observe the crucial events that played out in America's civil rights movement. But a massive time shift occurs while he's in 1965, and suddenly the history he sees isn't the history he knows.

As Madi's and Tyson's journeys collide, they must prevent the past from being erased forever. But strange forces are at work. Are Madi and Tyson in control or merely pawns in someone else's game?

Originally appeared in Ace Double F-119 in 1961.

In the good old days when you were dispatched to rescue a maiden distressed by monsters, they usually gave you a suit of armor and a mighty steed.

Well, times have changed: John Tardy didn't volunteer to do battle for maiden fair; he didn't know about the battle until he was in it. And no suit of armor either on Dilbia, it's bare hands even when your opponent has the size, strength and temperament of a hungry Kodiak bear.

John Tardy, a very competent Earthman, figured all that could have been worked out, if only he could have arrived at the fight aboard a magnificent charger, or on his own two feet, or any way other than Spacial Delivery.

Slavery is the corporate foundation of the powerful Pangalic Worlds where Ruiz Aw leads a dangerous double life, as an enforcer for the Art League that so brutally controls its slaves and as an Emancipator dedicated to eradicating the cruel business.

After escaping from a herd of slaves, and voyaging across the perilous and magical world of Sook, he and his band of refugees become trapped in a rotting city called SeaStack. The biomechanical city, however, has secrets that no one can begin to fathom. Ruiz must use his skills to kill for money, and the battle for safety just might reveal a secret that will challenge the foundations of the universe.

COSMO NEVER DRINKS WITH CUSTOMERS

When Ben Jolson, shapeshifter extraordinaire and former member of the galactic Chameleon Corps, is once again pressed into service as a private detective, he doesn't expect much trouble, Janella Quintillion, aging owner of the galaxy's largest Shobot corporation, has hired Jolson to find her long-lost sister--heir to the family billions.

The twisted trail leads to Cosmo's, a huge orbiting spa/casino/nightclub/hotel satellite. But lots of people--humand, ratmen, broken-down robots, cyborgs, beautiful women, and all the usual suspects--are looking for the Quintillion heiress... with murder on their minds.

All the clues point to the mysterious Cosmo himself... but who--or what--is he?

Collecting more than two dozen stories that appeared for the first time in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction—the premiere speculative fiction magazine—this extraordinary anthology celebrates sixty years of top-notch genre fiction. Many of these highly acclaimed, award-winning authors' careers were jump-started by their appearances in Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Table of Contents

• Introduction - essay by Gordon Van Gelder
• Of Time and Third Avenue - (1951) - shortstory by Alfred Bester
• All Summer in a Day - (1954) - shortstory by Ray Bradbury
• One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts - (1955) - shortstory by Shirley Jackson
• A Touch of Strange - (1958) - shortstory by Theodore Sturgeon
• Eastward Ho! - (1958) - shortstory by William Tenn
• Flowers for Algernon - (1959) - novelette by Daniel Keyes
• Harrison Bergeron - (1961) - shortstory by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
• This Moment of the Storm - (1966) - novelette by Roger Zelazny
• The Electric Ant - (1969) - shortstory by Philip K. Dick
• The Deathbird - (1973) - novelette by Harlan Ellison
• The Women Men Don't See - (1973) - novelette by James Tiptree, Jr.
• I See You - (1976) - shortstory by Damon Knight
• The Gunslinger - (1978) - novelette by Stephen King
• The Dark - (1991) - shortstory by Karen Joy Fowler
• Buffalo - (1991) - shortstory by John Kessel
• Solitude - (1994) - novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Mother Grasshopper - (1997) - shortstory by Michael Swanwick
• macs - (1999) - shortstory by Terry Bisson
• Creation - (2002) - shortstory by Jeffrey Ford
• Other People - (2001) - shortstory by Neil Gaiman
• Two Hearts - (2005) - novelette by Peter S. Beagle
• Journey into the Kingdom - (2006) - novelette by M. Rickert
• The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate - (2007) - novelette by Ted Chiang

A mutant baby goes on a rampage through Central Park. An immigrant reveals secrets in the folds of a perfect gift. Lucky Cats extend their virtual paws to salute a generous revolution. The Internet invades a third-world village.

The premier speculative-fiction magazine Fantasy & Science Fiction continues to discover and showcase many of the most inventive authors writing in any genre. Now drawing even more deeply upon F&SF's impressive history, this extraordinary companion anthology expands upon sixty-five years' worth of top-notch storytelling. The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume Two is a star-studded tribute to the continuing vision of F&SF.

Table of Contents

• Foreword - essay by Gordon Van Gelder
• Introduction - essay by Michael Dirda
• The Third Level - (1950) - shortstory by Jack Finney
• The Cosmic Charge Account - (1956) - novelette by C. M. Kornbluth
• The Country of the Kind - (1956) - shortstory by Damon Knight
• The Anything Box - (1956) - shortstory by Zenna Henderson
• The Prize of Peril - (1958) - shortstory by Robert Sheckley
• "—All You Zombies—" - (1959) - shortstory by Robert A. Heinlein
• A Kind of Artistry - (1962) - novelette by Brian W. Aldiss
• Green Magic - (1963) - shortstory by Jack Vance
• Narrow Valley - (1966) - shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
• Sundance - (1969) - shortstory by Robert Silverberg
• The Attack of the Giant Baby - (1975) - shortstory by Kit Reed
• The Hundredth Dove - (1977) - shortstory by Jane Yolen
• Jeffty Is Five - (1977) - shortstory by Harlan Ellison
• Salvador - (1984) - shortstory by Lucius Shepard
• The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything - (1984) - shortstory by George Alec Effinger
• Rat - (1986) - shortstory by James Patrick Kelly
• The Friendship Light - (1989) - shortstory by Gene Wolfe
• The Bone Woman - (1992) - shortstory by Charles de Lint
• The Lincoln Train - (1995) - shortstory by Maureen F. McHugh
• Maneki Neko - (1998) - shortstory by Bruce Sterling
• Winemaster - (1999) - novelette by Robert Reed
• Suicide Coast - (1999) - shortstory by M. John Harrison
• Have Not Have - (2001) - novelette by Geoff Ryman
• The People of Sand and Slag - (2004) - novelette by Paolo Bacigalupi
• Echo - (2005) - shortstory by Elizabeth Hand
• The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates - (2008) - shortstory by Stephen King
• The Paper Menagerie - (2011) - shortstory by Ken Liu

EPIC FAIL

Abruptly catapulted into a fantasy world, Mimori Touka and his classmates have been summoned by the world's resident goddess to serve as heroes. Luckily, most of the students display amazing skills upon arrival--except for Mimori, whose abilities bottom out at a measly E-rank. With no further use for him, the goddess banishes Mimori to a dungeon from which no one has ever returned alive. Yet, as it turns out, Mimori's skills aren't so much worthless as they are abnormal. Abnormally powerful, even. If Mimori can only claw his way back to the surface, nothing will stand in his way from getting revenge.

IT'S PAYBACK TIME

Mimori Touka has made it out of the inescapable Ruins of Disposal using his so-called "useless" skills, and now he only has one thing on his mind--revenge! But the foul Goddess who sent him to his death is too powerful for a head-on attack. First, he needs someone to watch his back, and who better than the beautiful, fugitive elf princess who keeps crossing his path? The two outcasts make a great team, but terrifying enemies are closing in--including a knight named Civit Garland, the the strongest human in the world.

FIGHT ANOTHER DAY

After defeating the strongest human in the world with his "useless" spells, Mimori Touka's quest for vengeance is back on track! He knows he's still too weak to defeat the foul Goddess, so he sets out to find more information about the Forbidden Magic that could be key to taking her down. His search will bring him into the path of a corrupt duke, a fierce beastwoman gladiator, and a fighting tournament where the stakes are life and death!

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

While Mimori's journey for revenge takes him all over this magical, dangerous world, his classmates are fulfilling their destinies as "heroes" by facing off against the hordes of the Demon King. Despite the cruel world she's found herself in, S-class hero and ex-class rep Sogou Ayaka still wants to protect her weaker classmates--from their enemies, and from the cruel whims of the Goddess. But when it's just her up against an army of monsters, can she even save herself?

BATTLE AND BETRAYAL

The invasion has begun. The Demon King's armies are bearing down on the humans, ravaging the main forces from country after country. The heroes from another world, once the students of Class 2-C, are fighting for their lives against impossible odds. But when a figure in a black robe and fly mask appears on the battlefield, will this mysterious person turn the tide? And how will Mimori Touka use his incredible abilities in the face of a continent-wide war?

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Jonathan Strahan
• Two Hearts - (2005) - novelette by Peter S. Beagle
• Snowball's Chance - (2005) - shortstory by Charles Stross
• Sunbird - (2005) - novelette by Neil Gaiman
• A Knot of Toads - (2005) - novelette by Jane Yolen
• Boatman's Holiday - (2005) - shortstory by Jeffrey Ford
• The Language of Moths - (2005) - novelette by Christopher Barzak
• Anyway - (2005) - shortstory by M. Rickert
• The Emperor of Gondwanaland - (2005) - shortstory by Paul Di Filippo
• The Pirate's True Love - (2005) - shortstory by Seana Graham
• Intelligent Design - (2005) - shortstory by Ellen Klages
• Pip and the Fairies - (2005) - shortstory by Theodora Goss
• Leviathan - (2005) - shortstory by Simon Brown
• The Denial - (2005) - shortstory by Bruce Sterling
• The Farmer's Cat - (2005) - shortstory by Jeff VanderMeer
• There's a Hole in the City - (2005) - shortstory by Richard Bowes
• Monster - (2005) - novelette by Kelly Link

Time Conquers All...

Led by Lord Milo the Undying One, the men of the Horseclans are slowly reuniting the continent once known as the United States of America using the strength of their swords and their very special mental talents. But the Ehleenee, too, have dreams of power--dreams that have led them into a full-scale religious war of conquest.

Lord Milo must enlist the help of men like Bili Morguhn, whose skill with axe, sword, and mind control makes him a natural clan leader, if he is to contain the menace of the Ehleenee rebels and save civilization from destruction...

Ishmael Jones travels to the Scottish Highlands on a mysterious dual mission in this intriguing, genre-blending mystery.

The Organisation has despatched Ishmael and his partner Penny to Coronach House on the shores of Loch Ness where the secretive but highly influential Baphamet Group are holding their annual meeting. The Organisation believes an imposter has infiltrated the Group and they have instructed Ishmael to root him--or her--out. It's not Ishmael's only mission. The first agent sent by the Organisation has been found dead in her room, murdered in a horribly gruesome manner. Ishmael must also discover who killed his fellow agent, Jennifer Rifkin--and why.

Dismissive of rumours that the legendary 'Coronach Creature' is behind Jennifer's death, Ishmael sets out to expose the human killer in their midst. But he must act fast--before any more Very Important People are killed.

The Jackaroo, those enigmatic aliens who claim to have come to help, gave humanity access to worlds littered with ruins and scraps of technology left by long-dead client races. But although people have found new uses for alien technology, that technology may have found its own uses for people. The dissolute scion of a powerful merchant family, and a woman living in seclusion with only her dog and her demons for company, have become infected by a copies of a powerful chunk of alien code. Driven to discover what it wants from them, they become caught up in a conflict between a policeman allied to the Jackaroo and the laminated brain of a scientific wizard, and a mystery that spans light years and centuries. Humanity is about to discover why the Jackaroo came to help us, and how that help is shaping the end of human history.

Ever wonder what happens after you die? Well, as a ghost, Jensen Murphy could tell you--and the truth is much stranger than anything you could imagine...

I never accomplished much when I was alive. As an average eighties California beach bum, I, Jensen Murphy, didn't have any direction. But since I've joined Boo World, I've found a calling. Now, I'm a supernatural investigator, using my ghostly skills to spook confessions out of bad guys.

But being a paranormal PI is taking its toll. Spirits are hounding me for justice day and night, and, now, a ghost hunting TV show is digging up dirt on my unsavory demise that I'd rather keep buried. Worst of all, a seriously evil specter is making my afterlife hell by hurting the people and ghosts I care about. To stop him, I'll need assistance from a higher power--only the price I'll have to pay for that help could be my very soul...

It's like this: a series of bullet-riddled bad breaks has seen rogue Vampyre and terminal tough guy Joe Pitt go from PI for hire to Clan-connected enforcer to dead man walking in a New York minute. And after burning all his bridges, the only one left to cross leads to the Bronx, where Joe's brass knuckles and straight razor can't keep him from running afoul of a sadistic old bloodsucker with a bad bark and a worse bite. Even if every Clan in Manhattan is hollering for Joe's head on a stick, it's got to be better than trying to survive in the outer-borough wilderness.

So it's a no-brainer when Clan boss Dexter Predo comes looking to make a deal. All Joe has to do to win back breathing privileges on his old turf is infiltrate an upstart Clan whose plan to cure the Vyrus could expose the secret Vampyre world to mortal eyes and set off a panic-driven massacre. Not cool. But Joe's all over it. To save the Undead future, he just has to wade neck-deep through all the archenemies, former friends, and assorted heavy hitters he's crossed in the past. No sweat? Maybe not, but definitely more blood than he's ever seen or hungered for. And maybe even some tears-over the horror and heartbreaking truth about the evil men do no matter who or what they are.

My name is Madison Avery, and I'm here to tell you that there's more out there than you can see, hear, or touch. Because I'm there. Seeing it. Touching it. Living it.

Madison's prom was killer—literally. Now, thanks to a mysterious amulet, she's stuck on Earth: dead but not gone. She has no idea why the dark reaper who did her in was after her, but she's not about to just sit around and let fate take its course. With a little skilled light-bending, the help of a light reaper (one of the good guys . . . maybe), her cute crush, and oh yeah, her guardian angel, Madison's ready to take control of her own destiny once and for all, before it takes control of her.

Well, if she believed in that stuff.

Seventeen, dead, and in charge of heaven's dark angels—all itching to kill someone.

Madison Avery's dreams of ever fitting in at her new school died when she did. Especially since she was able to maintain the illusion of a body, deal with a pesky guardian angel, and oh yeah, bring the reaper who killed her to his untimely end. Not exactly in-crowd material. It's amazing that her crush, Josh, doesn't think she's totally nuts.

Now Madison has learned that she's the dark timekeeper, in charge of angels who follow the murky guidelines of fate. Never one to abide by the rules, she decides it's time for a major change to the system. With the help of some unlikely allies, Madison forms a rogue group of reapers who definitely don't adhere to the rules of the heavens.

But as she grapples with the terrifying new skills that come with being a timekeeper, Madison realizes she may not be prepared for what lies ahead—unless she gets some seriously divine intervention.

I'm Madison Avery, in charge of heaven's hit squad... and fighting it all the way.

When Madison died the night of her prom, she knew her life would never be the same. Now she has a powerful amulet, a team of rogue angels by her side, and the ability to flash forward into the future to see the shape of destiny. And of course, now she's finally with Josh—a perfect boyfriend who doesn't even mind that she's dead.

But being dead has its disadvantages, too. Madison feels caught between the light and the dark, and between her real life and her timekeeper status. When Madison has the opportunity to get her body back—to be alive again—she faces her most difficult decision yet. If she claims it, she could return to being a normal girl—and have a chance at a real relationship with Josh. But would having the one thing she wants most in the world also mean giving up everything she's worked so hard for?

Thirty-two-year-old Imogen Abernathy is fed up with being a witch. And she's definitely had enough of her family's ghost and monster-hunting business, Otherworldly Investigations. But when her younger sister, Carmen, has an otherworldly mishap, Imogen has no choice but to return home to face her past and her deep mistrust of witchcraft. Drawn back into the world of magic, Imogen and Carmen begin investigating a series of grisly murders that may be linked to the mysterious Thistle Witch, a powerful entity with demonic abilities. As magical creatures flee from the Thistle Witch, the sisters realize that they have to tap into old and dangerous witchcraft if they have any hope of defeating this sinister threat. Can they find a way to protect themselves, their family, and the world of magic before the Thistle Witch unleashes her gruesome murder machine?

A Devil in Every Dark Corner is the first novel in the Otherworldly Investigations series, which follows Imogen and Carmen Abernathy as they try to aid clients with their paranormal and cryptid quandaries. Along the way, both sisters must also decide what exactly they want in the sometimes-messy world of witchcraft.

A "completion" of Edgar Allan Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838).

In this early work of science fiction narrated by an Englishman in America on business, Doctors Bainbridge and Castleton discover that their patient is one Dirk Peters, a character from Edgar Allan Poe's novel The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym. Bainbridge recounts the story Peters tells, of his journey with Pym to a strange land at the South Pole, where they find an island utopia inhabited by descendants of fourth-century Romans.

Hadad Yu "recovers" things for a living. Things, not people, not animals. Things. Until he gets in trouble and must work for the alien Gyonnese. They want a person to answer for her crimes, and they want to use Yu to get her. He reluctantly agrees, and sets off events that will change his life and the lives around him forever. A companion piece to Recovery Man, The Recovery Man's Bargain explores the motivations of one of the stranger characters in the Retrieval Artist universe.

When she arrives home from school on Callisto, Talia Shindo finds two strange men in her house. They terrorize her, and kidnap her mother. The men leave Talia behind. She's thirteen, brilliant, and determined to find her missing mother.

Retrieval Artist Miles Flint works a seemingly unrelated case, digging into files left him by his mentor. Only he finds a connection to the Shindo kidnapping, a connection that shatters everything he ever knew.

The two cases collide, changing Flint, changing Talia, and changing the universe around them — forever.

Book 4 in the Anniversary Day Saga

Amid the ruin, heroes emerge from the unlikeliest places...

The Anniversary Day bombings devastated the Moon, killing thousands. While survivors search for missing loved ones and the rich and powerful set plans in motion to capitalize on the Moon's misfortune, one ruthless man vows to uncover those responsible for the attacks on the Moon.

Luc Deshin, the most feared man in Armstrong, knows all too well the bombings could have killed the wife and son he loves more than life itself. To protect his family, Deshin immerses himself in a criminal network he fought long and hard to leave behind.

Deshin doesn't scare easily, but what he finds in the black market underbelly of the Moon will chill him to the bone.

A herd of dinosaurs wander the fields of rural Vermont; a young girl discovers what happens when you're no longer a goddess in near-future India; Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are put to the test as a family is split apart and then redefined; the last man in the universe, stranded on Mars, searches for meaning with a pop song; and an artificially intelligent turtle questions Intelligent Design and evolution. These are just some of the fourteen award-nominated stories that acclaimed anthologist Jonathan Strahan has assembled in his third annual survey of the best new science fiction stories of the year. Jonathan Strahan has edited eleven anthologies, including The Locus Awards and assorted year's best annuals, and is currently working on several new anthology projects. He has won the Ditmar, William J Atheling Jr, and Peter McNamara Awards for his editing, and is the Reviews Editor for Locus, the magazine of the science fiction and fantasy fields. He lives in Perth, Western Australia with his wife and two daughters.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Jonathan Strahan
• Triceratops Summer - (2005) - shortstory by Michael Swanwick
• Little Faces - (2005) - novelette by Vonda N. McIntyre
• The Second Coming of Charles Darwin - (2005) - shortfiction by James Morrow
• Is There Life After Rehab? - (2005) - shortstory by Pat Cadigan
• Understanding Space and Time - (2005) - novelette by Alastair Reynolds
• The Fulcrum - (2005) - novelette by Gwyneth Jones
• The Blemmye's Stratagem - (2005) - shortfiction by Bruce Sterling
• They Will Raise You in a Box - (2005) - shortstory by Wil McCarthy
• Finished - (2005) - shortstory by Robert Reed
• The King of Where-I-Go - (2005) - novelette by Howard Waldrop
• The Calorie Man - (2005) - novelette by Paolo Bacigalupi
• The Fate of Mice - (2005) - shortstory by Susan Palwick
• I, Robot - (2005) - shortfiction by Cory Doctorow
• The Little Goddess - (2005) - novella by Ian McDonald

Five novelettes of unbounded imagination telling of strange--and often deadly--encounters between human and alien.

Contents:

• Mother (1953)
• Daughter (1954)
• Father (1955)
• Son (1954)
• My Sister's Brother (1960)

The Baen edition is an omnibus containing, along with the Strange Relations collection, the original versions of the novels Flesh (1960) and The Lovers (1961).

A novel of a future age when organized crime legalizes itself -- and turns America into a utopia.

Wompler's Walking Babies once put Millford, Utah, on the map. But they aren't selling like they used to. In fact, they aren't selling at all and the only alternative to winding the company up is to tap the government for a research grant. And so Wompler Research Laboratories and Project 32 come into being. The plan is to produce self replicating mechanisms; identical cells equipped to repair intracellular breakdowns, convert power from their environment and create new cells. But suddenly the nondescript grey metal boxes start crawling about the laboratory, feeding voraciously on any metal... and multiplying at an alarming rate.

During all recorded history, the Moon has hovered above our heads, a timeless symbol for lovers' ecstasy. Goddesses and Gibson Girls have tripped the light fantastic of her beams while sonneteers and scientists have scanned her changing phases.

Now man had actually reached the Moon, and on it the explorers found a structure, a formation so terrible and incomprehensible that it couldn't even be described in human terms. It was a thing that devoured men; that killed them again and again in torturous, unfathomable ways.

Earthbound are the only two men who could probe the thing: Al Barker, a homicidal maniac, whose loving mistress was death, and Dr. Edward Hawks, a scientific murderer, whose greatest mission was rebirth.

Continuing the third in a series of authoritative new editions of the novels of Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Robert Silverberg. During his heroic first encounter with an alien race, Dick Muller was permanently altered, hideously transformed in a way that left him repulsive to the entire human race. Alone and embittered, he exiled himself to Lemnos, an abandoned planet famed for its labyrinthine horrors, both real and imagined. But now, Earth trembles on the brink of extinction, threatened by another alien species, and only Muller can rescue the planet. Men must enter the murderous maze of Lemnos, find Muller, and convince him to come back. But will the homeless alien, alone in the universe, risk his life to save his race, the race that has utterly rejected him?

From the Avon/Equinox edition: It was a Universe, with its own sun and its own atmosphere. But like a little glass ball filled with whirling artificial snow, it was finite, curling back upon itself. And through its inner space, rock, mountains, fragments of buildings, and a host of eerie creatures whirled and eddied. It was a Hell... an insane compromise of terrestrial ideas and infernal facts. And Jack Cull knew he must escape from it. Here is the story of how his escape was attempted... and how he found the truth of this particular Hell.

They were visitors from out of space.

They had slept for 15,000 years. But they were men. Nevertheless it was a fantastic experience for Wes Chase to discover them while on a casual fishing trip.

It was a long time before they were able to explain to Wes why they were on earth and what they needed. It was even longer before Wes conquered his horror and decided he could help them in their mission to bring peace to the universe.

When Wes finally found the daring answer to their problems, he realised that he would have to leave his own life behind and go with them into the future and the winds of time.

At first the virus wiping out grass and crops is of little concern to John Custance. It has decimated Asia, causing mass starvation and riots, but Europe is safe and a counter-virus is expected any day. Except, it turns out, the governments have been lying to their people. When the deadly disease hits Britain they are left alone, and society starts to descend into barbarism. As John and his family try to make it across country to the safety of his brother’s farm in a hidden valley, their humanity is tested to its very limits.

Published in the USA as: No Blade of Grass.

In their attitude towards the Planet Earth, the Martians had long been divided into two camps: the Observers, benevolent 'meddlers' in human affairs; and the rebellious Abdicators, who sought the Earth's collapse.

But it wasn't until the extraordinary matter of the Earth-Boy, Angelo Pontevecchio, that the enmity between these two factions came to a definite head.

It started as a contest of wills, waged between two opposing Martians for the soul of a single human child.

And before the end, it threatened all life on both Earth and Mars.

One was a plan to equip certain cities with huge tanks of chloroform (or similar narcotic gases). Then, when a 10-Ball descended over a house in that city, the special gas was to be diverted into the city's regular gas mains. Citizens about to be kidnapped would quickly open their gas burners, freeing the narcotic gasses. These gases would then go up through the purple tube and render the Xenos unconscious.

He crash-landed on Mars fifteen years ahead of any other Earth expedition. He was without communications, without supplies, and with nothing but the wreck of an experimental rocket for resources. What is more it was the planet Mars as astronomers know it really to be--not just a fictional fantasy background for glamorous adventure. It was barren, cold, more grimly inhospitable than the top of Mount Everest. And if it had inhabitants, they were conspicuous by their abnsence.

A fabulous tale of pilgrimage and hope, betrayal and transformation by one of science fiction's greatest writers. Only at night on the winds of darkness can she soar. And it was Avluela the Flier's ebony and scarlet wings that lead the Watcher to the seven hills of the ancient city from which, in a moment of weakness, the Watcher failed his vigil, leaving the skies and deep space unguarded. The invaders came and conquered. With Avluela lost in the turmoil of conquest, the Watcher set out alone for the Holy City home of the Rememberers, keepers of the past. This is where the secret of Earth's salvation lay hidden in antiquity. On his journey the Watcher hoped to recapture his youth and find the soaring, beautiful woman he loved. But Avluela held more for the Watcher - and Earth - than love. Her wonder stretched beyond flight, for she knew the riddle that would free all men.

The United States never recovered from The War for Southern Independence. While the neighboring Confederacy enjoyed the prosperity of the victor, the U.S. struggled through poverty, violence, and a nationwide depression.

The Industrial Revolution never occurred here, and so, well into the 1950s, the nation remained one of horse-drawn wagons, gaslight, highwaymen, and secret armies. This was home for Hodgins McCormick Backmaker, whose sole desire was the pursuit of knowledge. This, he felt, would spirit him away from the squalor and violence.

Disastrously, Hodgins became embroiled in the clandestine schemes of the outlaw Grand Army, from which he fled in search of a haven. But he was to discover that no place could fully protect him from the world and its dangerous realities....

The poem Aniara consists of 103 cantos and relates the tragedy of a spacecraft which, originally bound for Mars with a cargo of colonists from the ravaged Earth, is ejected after an accident from the Solar System and into an existential struggle.

Marvin Martin, the show's host, is angry. Night after night he strips his guests of their pitiful pretensions, their commonplace hypocrisies - but how long has it been since he uncovered a genuine revelation? Hurwitz, who selects Martin's victims, is scared. He made a bad mistake when he chose Doris Jensen; she turned out to be from a competitive network and ruined a taping. Hurwitz's job is in danger. Walter Monaghan, historically, the 29th man to have walked on the moon, is desperate. He wants to tell the Revelations audience the truth about America's "space program" - that it never got off the ground. If he's just another nut, why is it so important that he be silenced?

Aboard the Starship Shenzhou, Lieutenant Michael Burnham, a human woman raised and educated among Vulcans, is promoted to acting first officer. But if she wants to keep the job, she must prove to Captain Philippa Georgiou that she deserves to have it.

She gets her chance when the Shenzhou must protect a Federation colony that is under attack by an ancient alien vessel that has surfaced from the deepest fathoms of the planet's dark, uncharted sea.

As the menace from this mysterious vessel grows stronger, Starfleet declares the colony expendable in the name of halting the threat. To save thousands of innocent lives, Burnham must infiltrate the alien ship. But to do so, she needs to face the truth of her troubled past, and seek the aid of a man she has tried to avoid her entire life--until now.

It is 2246, ten years prior to the Battle at the Binary Stars, and an aggressive contagion is ravaging the food supplies of the remote Federation colony Tarsus IV and the eight thousand people who call it home. Distress signals have been sent, but any meaningful assistance is weeks away. Lieutenant Commander Gabriel Lorca and a small team assigned to a Starfleet monitoring outpost are caught up in the escalating crisis, and bear witness as the colony's governor, Adrian Kodos, employs an unimaginable solution in order to prevent mass starvation.

While awaiting transfer to her next assignment, Commander Philippa Georgiou is tasked with leading to Tarsus IV a small, hastily assembled group of first responders. It's hoped this advance party can help stabilize the situation until more aid arrives, but Georgiou and her team discover that they're too late--Governor Kodos has already implemented his heinous strategy for extending the colony's besieged food stores and safeguarding the community's long-term survival.

In the midst of their rescue mission, Georgiou and Lorca must now hunt for the architect of this horrific tragedy and the man whom history will one day brand "Kodos the Executioner"....

Lieutenant Saru is a Kelpien, a member of a prey species born on a world overrun by monstrous predators... and a being who very intimately understands the nature of fear. Challenged on all sides, he is determined to surpass his origins and succeed as a Starfleet officer aboard the U.S.S. Shenzhou. But when Saru breaks protocol in order to prove himself to his crewmates, what begins as a vital rescue mission to save a vessel in distress soon escalates out of control.

Forced into a command role he may not be ready for, Saru is caught between his duty and the conflicting agendas of two antagonistic alien races. To survive, he will need to seek a path of peace against all odds, and risk compromising the very ideals he has sworn to uphold....

An original novel based on the explosive new TV series Star Trek: Discovery!

Despite being an inexperienced Starfleet cadet, Sylvia Tilly became essential to the U.S.S. Discovery finding its way back home from the Mirror Universe. But how did she find that courage? From where did she get that steel? Who nurtured that spark of brilliance? The Way to the Stars recounts for fans everywhere the untold story of Tilly's past.

It's not easy being sixteen, especially when everyone expects great things from Tilly. It's even harder when her mother and father are Federation luminaries, not to mention pressing her to attend one of the best schools that the Federation has to offer. Tilly wants to achieve great things--even though she hasn't quite worked out how to do that or what it is she wants to do. But this year, everything will change for Tilly, as she about to embark upon the adventure of a lifetime--an adventure that will take her ever closer to the stars....

An all-new novel based upon the explosive Star Trek TV series!

A shattered ship, a divided crew--trapped in the infernal nightmare of conflict!