Search Worlds Without End

This short story originally appeared in Subterranean Online, Winter 2011. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection (2012), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Best of Subterranean (2017), edited by William Schafer.

Read the full story for free at Subterranean.

A tale of magic, revenge, and bitter death--on the rain-spattered streets of the great city. This is epic fantasy not "in the tradition of Tolkien," but, instead, sensual, ominous, shot through with the sweat of fear and the intoxication of power.

One of the most prolific new writers of the decade, Lake won 2004's John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His novels include Mainspring, Escapement, Pinion, and Green. The world of Green is also the setting for "A Water Matter."

Read the story for free at Tor.com.

An affectionate homage to the pulp past, this anthology contains a wealth of original stories with air ships.

Table of Contents:

• Voice of the Hurricane - shortstory by Paul Berger
• The Last of the Zeppelins - novelette by Jed Hartman
• The Eckener Alternative - shortstory by James L. Cambias
• Instead of a Loving Heart - shortstory by Jeremiah Tolbert
• This Is the Highest Step in the World - shortstory by Carrie Vaughn
• The Sky's the Limit - shortstory by Lawrence M. Schoen
• A Perilous Warm Embrace - shortstory by Michael Manis
• Sky Light - novelette by David Brin
• Negation Elimination - shortstory by Robert Burke Richardson
• Why a Duck - shortstory by Leslie What
• Matriarch - shortstory by Forrest Aguirre
• Aerophilia - shortstory by Tobias S. Buckell
• The Jewels of Lemuria - novelette by Richard A. Lupoff
• Counting Zeppelins - shortstory by Eric T. Marin
• Love in the Balance - shortstory by David D. Levine
• Where and When - shortstory by James Van Pelt
• Seven Dragons Mountains - shortstory by Elizabeth Bear
• Silk - shortstory by Lee Battersby
• Biographical Notes to "A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes" by Benjamin Rosenbaum - novelette by Benjamin Rosenbaum
• You *Could* Go Home Again - (1993) - novella by Howard Waldrop

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #5 February 2007. It can also be found in the anthology Realms: The First Year of Clarkesworld Magazine (2007), edited by Sean Wallace and Nick Mamatas.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

In a distant future in which the empire of humanity has spread throughout the stars, the Xenic Bureau of the Grand Ekumenical Security Directorate investigates any hint of aliens, strange disappearances, or other anomalous events. When rumors spread of the mysterious reappearance of a long-lost battleship, a priest, an alien-killer, and a cashiered starship engineer find themselves caught up in a chase across the empire and into secrets better left forgotten.

Dogs in the Moonlight_ showcases yet another of the powerful voices of one of speculative fiction's hottest new writers. Less than three years after his first publication, Jay Lake has already been nominated for the John W. Campbell Award, the Hugo Award and the World Fantasy Award. His stories, appearing in dozens of markets worldwide, have been translated into five languages. This collection of mixed reprints and new work focuses on Lake's Texas roots. He covers old myths and new from the Lone Star state, with tales of ghosts, angels, gods and aliens. Visit the past, present and future, and learn the truth about flying saucers from the writer that Locus magazine has called "one of SF's fastest rising talents."

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (2004) - essay by Ray Vukcevich
• Dogs in the Moonlight - (2003)
• Arrange the Bones - (2002)
• The Oxygen Man - (2003)
• Like Cherries in the Dark - (2003)
• Shattering Angels - (2004)
• Mr. Heaven - (2004)
• The Goat Cutter - (2003)
• Christmas Season - (2002)
• Twilight of the Odd - (2004)
• Nameless and Homeless on Golgotha - (2002)
• Ancient Wine - (2004)
• Sparrows, Two for a Penny - (2004)
• Mama She Truck - (2004)
• Pax Agricola - (2004)
• Gratitude - (2004)
• Hitching to Aurora - (2004)

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, December 2015.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: A Liebowitz Awaits - (2003) - essay by Andy Duncan
• One Thousand Words About Frank Wu - (2003) - essay by Lori Ann White
• The Courtesy of Guests - (2001) - short story
• The Trick of Disaster - (2002) - short story
• Eglantine's Time - (2002) - short story
• The Scent of Rotting Roses - (2002) - novelette
• G.O.D. - (2003) - short story
• The Angle of My Dreams - (2002) - short story
• Tall Spirits, Blocking the Night - (2002) - short story
• Who Sing But Do Not Speak - (2003) - short story
• Glass: A Love Story - (2003) - novelette
• The Murasaki Doctrine - (2003) - novella
• The Goat Cutter - (2003) - short story
• Jack's House - (2002) - short story
• The Passing of Guests - (2002) - short story

This short story originally appeared in the anthology The New and Perfect Man (2011), edited by Peter Crowther and Nick Gevers, and was reprinted in Uncanny Magazine, Issue One, November-December 2014. It is included in the collection Last Plane to Heaven: The Final Collection (2014).

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

Hugo Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume XIX (2003), edited by Algis Budrys. The story can also be found in the POD collection American Sorrows (2004).

Last Plane to Heaven is the final and definitive short story collection of award-winning SF author Jay Lake, author of Green, Endurance, and Kalimpura.

Long before he was a novelist, SF writer Jay Lake, was an acclaimed writer of short stories. In Last Plane to Heaven, Lake has assembled thirty-two of the best of them. Aliens and angels fill these pages, from the title story, a hard-edged and breathtaking look at how a real alien visitor might be received, to the savage truth of "The Cancer Catechisms." Here are more than thirty short stories written by a master of the form, science fiction and fantasy both.

This collection features an original introduction by Gene Wolfe.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - essay by Gene Wolfe
• Last Plane to Heaven: A Love Story - (2008) - novelette by Jay Lake
• The Houses of the Favored - (2010) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• The Starship Mechanic - (2010) - shortstory by Jay Lake and Ken Scholes
• Permanent Fatal Errors - (2010) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• "Hello," Said the Gun - (2011) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• The Speed of Time - (2010) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• West to East - (2014) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• The Woman Who Ate Stone Squid - (2010) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• Looking for Truth in a Wild Blue Yonder - (2010) - shortstory by Ken Scholes and Jay Lake
• Scent of the Green Cathedral - (2010) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• Spendthrift - (2013) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• Jefferson's West - (2011) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• They Are Forgotten Until They Come Again - (2011) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• The Woman Who Shattered the Moon - (2012) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• The Blade of His Plow - (2011) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• Grindstone - (2013) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• The Temptation of Eustace Prudence McAllen - (2012) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• That Which Rises Ever Upward - (2011) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• A Feast of Angels - (2010) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• Promises: A Tale of the City Imperishable - (2008) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• Testaments - (2010) - novelette by Jay Lake
• The Fall of the Moon - (2010) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• A Critical Examination of Stigmata's Print Taking the Rats to Riga - (2011) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• From the Countries of Her Dreams - (2010) - shortstory by Jay Lake and Shannon Page
• Unchambered Heart - (2011) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• Novus Ordo Angelorum - (2010) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• The Tentacled Sky - (2010) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• Such Bright and Risen Madness in Our Names - (2010) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• Her Fingers Like Whips, Her Eyes Like Razors - (2011) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• Mother Urban's Booke of Dayes - (2010) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• Going Bad - (2010) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• The Cancer Catechism - (2012) - shortstory by Jay Lake
• Afterword - essay by Jay Lake

This story is available in the collections Two Stories (2011) by Jay Lake and Ken Scholes as well as the collection The Last Plain to Heaven (2015).

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Markus Selvage has been bent by life, ground up and spit out again. In San Francisco's darkest sexual underground, he is a perpetual innocent, looking within bodies--his own and others'--for the lost secrets of satisfaction. But extreme body modification is only the beginning of where he will go before he's finished...

This short story originally appeared in Lone Star Stories, #31 (2009). It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2010, edited by Rich Horton, and The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection (2010), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection The Sky That Wraps (2010).

Read the full story for free here.

Eleven original stories about the different paths our world might've taken...

Alternate history explores the many possible directions our world could follow if certain key events didn't occur at all or were changed in some crucial way. Is our Earth the only Earth, our reality the only one that exists? Or are there many parallel worlds and societies, some very similar to ours, some barely recognizable?

What if...
Lincoln had never become president, and the Civil War had never taken place?
Columbus never discovered America, and the Inca developed a massive, technologically advanced empire?
Magic was real and a half-faery queen ruled England?
Hitler and Germany won the war because America never got involved?
Many of the world's religions were totally commercialized, their temples run like casinos, religions deisgned purely for profit?
An author discovered a book written by an alternate version of himself?

These are just some of the possible pathways that you can take to explore the Other Earths that may be waiting just one event away...

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Nick Gevers and Jay Lake
• This Peaceable Land; or, The Unbearable Vision of Harriet Beecher Stowe - novelette by Robert Charles Wilson
• The Goat Variations - short story by Jeff VanderMeer
• The Unblinking Eye - short story by Stephen Baxter
• Csilla's Story - novelette by Theodora Goss
• Winterborn - short story by Liz Williams
• Donovan Sent Us - short story by Gene Wolfe
• The Holy City and Em's Reptile Farm - short story by Greg van Eekhout
• The Receivers - novelette by Alastair Reynolds
• A Family History - short story by Paul Park
• Dog-Eared Paperback of My Life - novella by Lucius Shepard
• Nine Alternate Alternate Histories - short story by Benjamin Rosenbaum

In ROCKET SCIENCE, Jay Lake's first novel, Vernon Dunham's friend Floyd Bellamy has returned to Augusta, Kansas after serving in World War II, but he hasn't come back empty-handed: he's stolen a super-secret aircraft right from under the Germans. Vernon doesn't think it's your ordinary run-of-the-mill aircraft. For one thing, it's been buried under the Arctic ice for hundreds of years. When it actually starts talking to him, he realizes it doesn't belong in Kansas-or anywhere on Earth. The problem is, a lot of folks know about the ship and are out to get it, including the Nazis, the U.S. Army-and that's just for starters. Vernon has to figure out how to communicate with the ship and unravel its secrets before everyone catches up with him. If he ends up dead, and the ship falls into the wrong hands, it won't take a rocket scientist to predict the fate of humanity.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, April 2009. It can also be found in the anthologies Clarkesworld: Year Three (2013), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke, and The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk (2015), edited by Sean Wallace.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This short story originally appeared in Interzone, #203 April 2006. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume One (2007), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18 (2007), edited by Stephen Jones. The story is included in the collection The Sky That Wraps (2010).

"Within our tale, gentle reader, you will see writ before you a palimpsest of low living and high misdemeanor, and the curious redresses that are visited as a result thereof..."

In The Baby Killers, Jay Lake restages mankind's Fall from Grace as an alternate-history steampunk fable. Written in a style of rambunctious Victoriana-that-never-was, this novella is set in Philadelphia in 1907, when that city serves as the seat of the British Dominion of Americas, and as a Pandora's Box of sin and vice. The Governor-General has a taste for violating innocents, while the good Dr. Scholes uses them to fashion his mechanized agents of Justice. The Gollinoster, a feminine incarnation of angry retribution, wanders beneath the city streets--and an undying creature of ancient destruction is rushing to meet her. Villians and heroes (categories that overlap significantly) battle in a story of debauchery, degradation, radical experimentation, mad metaphysics... and a farting Frenchman.

This short story originally appeared in Jim Baen's Universe, December 2006. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fourth Annual Collection (2007), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection Almost All the Way Home from the Stars (2013).

This short story originally appeared on Sci Fiction, September 28, 2005. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection (2006), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collections From Earth to Mars and Beyond: Ten Science Fiction Short Stories (Nestvold, 2013) and Almost All the Way Home from the Stars (Nestvold and Lake, 2013).

This collection of short fiction from award winning-author Jay Lake represents his favorites of his own work, both current and classic. With an emphasis on recent publications since his last short fiction collection in 2007, The Sky That Wraps showcases his reach in fantasy, science fiction, and the ambiguous territory in between. This volume includes two all-new stories, 'Coming for Green' and 'To Their Late Escape', as well as previously uncollected fan favorites 'The American Dead' and 'The Sky That Wraps The World Round, Past the Blue and Into the Black.' Twenty other stories round out this wide-ranging survey of Lake's work.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #18 March 2008. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Sixth Annual Collection (2009), edited by Gardner Dozoiz, and Realms 2: The Second Year of Clarkesworld Magazine (2010), edited by Nick Mamatas and Sean Wallace. It is included in the collection The Sky That Wraps (2010).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Strange things are happening in deep space, and then closer to home, and then closer; someone has pulled the plug on the universe.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Hugo- and Nebula-nominated Novella

Jay Lake's critically acclaimed novella takes a new look at a classic theme. A world strictly governed by religious dogma is challenged by a scientist who has discovered a key piece of information challenging long-held beliefs. An intricately created alternate world provides a fascinating backdrop and a new twist to this classic dilemma.

This story is available in the collections Two Stories (2011) by Jay Lake and Ken Scholes as well as the collection The Last Plain to Heaven (2015). It was anthologized in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection (2011), edited by Garnder Dozois

Read the fulll story for free at Tor.com.

Charlie is dealing with complicated grief, and even his therabot is out of ideas. But the back-alley grief counsellors might have something to help: it looks like blue asparagus, and it's called Wild Blue Yonder.

Contains the short stories The Starship Mechanic and Looking for the Truth in a Wild Blue Yonder. They can be read for free at Tor.com here and here.

This short story originally appeared in Subterranean, Summer 2014. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection (2015), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection Last Plane to Heaven: The Final Collection (2014).

Read the full story for free at Subterranean.

Sian Katte is a successful middle-aged businesswoman in the tropical island nation of Alizar. Her life seems comfortable and well-arranged... until a violent encounter one evening leaves her with an unwanted magical power.

Arian des Chances is the wife of Alizar's ruler, with vast wealth and political influence. Yet for all her resources, she can only watch helplessly as her son draws nearer to death.

When crisis thrusts these two women together, they learn some surprising truths: about themselves, their loved ones, and Alizar itself. Because beneath a seemingly calm facade, Alizar's people -- and a dead god -- are stirring...

She was born in poverty, in a dusty village under the equatorial sun. She does not remember her mother, she does not remember her own name-her earliest clear memory is of the day her father sold her to the tall pale man. In the Court of the Pomegranate Tree, where she was taught the ways of a courtesan... and the skills of an assassin... she was named Emerald, the precious jewel of the Undying Duke's collection of beauties.

She calls herself Green.

The world she inhabits is one of political power and magic, where Gods meddle in the affairs of mortals. At the center of it is the immortal Duke's city of Copper Downs, which controls all the trade on the Storm Sea. Green has made many enemies, and some secret friends, and she has become a very dangerous woman indeed.

Acclaimed author Jay Lake has created a remarkable character in Green, and evokes a remarkable world in this novel. Green and her struggle to survive and find her own past will live in the reader's mind for a long time after closing the book.

Green is back in Copper Downs. Purchased from her father in sunny Selistan when she was four years old, she was harshly raised to be a courtesan, companion, and bedmate of the Immortal Duke of Copper Downs. But Green rebelled. Green killed the Duke, and many others, and won her freedom. Yet she is still claimed by the gods and goddesses of her world, and they still require her service. Their demands are greater than any duke's could have been.

Godslayers have come to the Stone Coast, magicians whose cult is dedicated to destroying the many gods of Green's world. In the turmoil following the Immortal Duke's murder, Green made a God out of her power and her memories. Now the gods turn to her to protect them from the Slayers.

Jay Lake brings us an epic fantasy not "in the tradition of Tolkien," but, instead, sensual, ominous, shot through with the sweat of fear and the intoxication of power.

This sequel to Green and Endurance takes Green back to the city of Kalimpura and the service of the Lily Goddess.

Green is hounded by the gods of Copper Down, and the gods of Kalimpura, who have laid claim to her and her children. She never wanted to be a conduit for the supernatural, but when she killed the Immortal Duke and created the Ox god with the power, she released she came to their notice.

Now she has sworn to retrieve the two girls taken hostage by the Bittern Court, one of Kalimpura's rival guilds. But the Temple of the Lily Goddess is playing politics with her life.

Jay Lake's first trade novel is an astounding creation. Lake has envisioned a clockwork solar system, where the planets move in a vast system of gears around the lamp of the Sun. It is a universe where the hand of the Creator is visible to anyone who simply looks up into the sky, and sees the track of the heavens, the wheels of the Moon, and the great Equatorial gears of the Earth itself.

Mainspring is the story of a young clockmaker's apprentice, who is visited by the Archangel Gabriel. He is told that he must take the Key Perilous and rewind the Mainspring of the Earth. It is running down, and disaster will ensue if it's not rewound. From innocence and ignorance to power and self-knowledge, the young man will make the long and perilous journey to the South Polar Axis, to fulfill the commandment of his God.

In his novel Mainspring, Lake created an enormous canvas for storytelling with his hundred mile high Equatorial Wall that holds up the great Gears of the Earth. Now in Escapement, he explores more of that territory.

Paolina Barthes is a young woman of remarkable intellectual ability – a genius on the level of Isaac Newton. But she has grown up in isolation, in a small village of shipwreck survivors, on the Wall in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. She knows little of the world, but she knows that England rules it, and must be the home of people who possess the learning that she so desperately wants. And so she sets off to make her way off the Wall, not knowing that she will bring her astounding, unschooled talent for sorcery to the attention of those deadly factions who would use or kill her for it.

Rejoin the Librarian and the Chinese submarine captain, the British sailor, the clockwork man, and the young sorceress who has gone south of the great equatorial wall. This adventure in Lake’s Clockwork Earth continues the tale begun in Escapement.

This novella originally appeared in audio format in the anthology METAtropolis: Green Space (2013), edited by Jay Lake and Ken Scholes. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection (2014).

Polyphony is a new biannual anthology of original short fiction. Featuring a mix of established and new writers, Polyphony Volume 1 offers a dozen stories that skate gracefully across the boundaries of science fiction, fantasy, magic realism, and literary fiction.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - essay by Deborah Layne and Jay Lake
• The Holy Bright Number - short story by Andy Duncan
• How Lonesome Heartbreak Changed His Life - novelette by Lucius Shepard
• Blind Date with the Invisible Man - short story by Leslie What
• Love Story - short story by Ray Vukcevich
• Anthropology - short story by Victoria Elisabeth Garcia
• The Heroic Death of Lieutenant Michkov - short story by Carrie Vaughn
• The Doctor - short story by Carol Emshwiller
• The Sea Monkey Conspiracy - novelette by Douglas Lain
• The Room on the Roof - (2002) - novelette by Vandana Singh
• Do Good - short story by James Van Pelt
• Laika Comes Back Safe - short story by Maureen F. McHugh
• The Main Design That Shines Through Sky and Earth - novelette by Bruce Holland Rogers

This is a new biannual anthology of original short fiction featuring a mix ofestablished and new writers.

Table of Contents:

• The Same Old Story - novelette by Lucius Shepard
• The Hanging - short story by Jack Dann
• Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold - (2003) - short story by Theodora Goss
• Animal Attributes - novelette by Honna Swenson
• The Uterus Garden - novelette by Alex Irvine
• Coo People - short story by Carol Emshwiller
• Chrysalide - short story by Beth Bernobich
• The Arts of Malediction - short story by Lisa Goldstein
• Into the Jungle - short story by Kit Reed
• Theo's Girl - novelette by David Moles
• Andalusian Triptych, 1962 - non-genre - short story by Michael Bishop
• Dead White Guys - short story by Bruce Holland Rogers
• Burning in the Montage - (1993) - short story by Timalyne Frazier
• Carlos Manson Lives - short story by Sally Carteret
• Dreaming for Hire, By Appointment Only - novelette by Dianna Rodgers
• Last Man on Earth - short story by Brendan Day

This is the latest volume in the critically acclaimed Polyphony anthology series. Featuring a mix of established and new authors, this edition offers 21 original works of short fiction.

Table of Contents:

• Don Ysidro - short story by Bruce Holland Rogers
• Rings Around the Moon - novella by Jack Dann
• The Road Leads Back - short story by Michael Bishop
• The Snow Queen's Risk Assessment - short story by Chris Clarke
• Doc Hawthorne's Beautiful Daughter - short story by Don Webb
• A Short History of the Roosterville Poetry Massacre - short story by Jesse Walker
• The Mystery of Our Baraboo Lands - short story by Barth Anderson
• No Two Alike - short story by Kit Reed
• Heart of Glass - short story by Lori Ann White
• The Men's Support Group - short story by Barry N. Malzberg
• Handsome, Winsome Johnny - novelette by Sally Carteret
• The Wife - short story by Vandana Singh
• Wild Talents - novelette by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
• The Krebs Cycle as Interpretive Dance - short story by Kathy Oltion
• Wounds - short story by Celia Marsh
• Restoration - short story by Heather Shaw
• Valley of the Falling Clouds - short story by Robert Freeman Wexler
• A Grand Unified Theory of Mind - novelette by Leon J. West
• Our Byzantium - short story by Alan DeNiro
• Coffins on the River - novelette by Jeffrey Ford
• Morning Meditation - short story by Ray Vukcevich

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Jay Lake and Deborah Layne
• The Girl with the Sun in Her Head - short story by Jeremiah Tolbert
• Down in the Fog-Shrouded City - (2002) - novelette by Alex Irvine
• Black Dog at Work - short story by Steven Mohan, Jr.
• The Blackpool Ascensions - novella by Lucius Shepard
• The Mud Fork Cottonmouth Expedition - short story by Eric M. Witchey
• When They Came - short story by Don Webb
• Over Alsace - (2004) - short story by Forrest Aguirre
• State Change - short story by Ken Liu
• High Rise High - novelette by Kit Reed
• The Storyteller's Story - short story by Gavin J. Grant
• Memree - short story by Jenn Reese
• The Eye - short story by Eliot Fintushel
• The Train There's No Getting Off - novelette by Bruce Holland Rogers and Ray Vukcevich and Holly Arrow
• Baby Love - short story by Michael Bishop
• Psyche and Eros - short story by Diana Sherman
• Hart and Boot - short story by Tim Pratt
• Life in the Movies - short story by Mikal Trimm
• Bagging the Peak - short story by Jerry Oltion
• The Journal of Philip Schuyler - novelette by Robert Freeman Wexler
• Ataxia, The Wooden Continent - short story by Stepan Chapman
• Tales from the City of Seams - short story by Greg van Eekhout
• The Wings of Meister Wilhelm - novelette by Theodora Goss
• Crazy Rain - short story by Piper Selden
• Three Days in a Border Town - novelette by Jeff VanderMeer

Table of Contents:

• Single White Farmhouse - (2005) - short story by Heather Shaw
• The Beauty of the World Has Two Edges - (2005) - short story by Iain Rowan
• Story Stories: A Suite of Seven Narratives - (2005) - short story by Bruce Holland Rogers
• Gillian Underground - (2005) - short story by Michael Jasper and Tim Pratt and Greg van Eekhout
• Habe Ich Meinen Eigenen Tod Geseh'n - (2005) - short story by Paul O. Miles
• After The Sky Fell - (2005) - short story by Rob Vagle
• Redundant Sue and the Billy Goat Blue - (2005) - short story by Blake Hutchins
• The Happy Jumping Woman - (2005) - short story by Robin Catesby
• The Farmer's Cat - (2005) - short story by Jeff VanderMeer
• Dusty Wings - (2005) - short story by Nancy Jane Moore
• Femina Obscura - (2005) - short story by Joy Marchand
• The Green Wall - (2005) - short story by Robert Freeman Wexler
• Among The Ruins - (2005) - short story by Forrest Aguirre
• The Bone Ship - (2005) - short story by Scott Thomas
• Crystal Vision - (2005) - short story by Eric Schaller
• Nine Electric Flowers - (2005) - short story by Sally Carteret
• To-Do List - (2005) - short story by Nick Mamatas
• The Woman in the Numbers - (2005) - short story by M. K. Hobson
• The Tongue - (2005) - short story by Brendan Connell
• The Hottest Night of the Summer - (2005) - short story by Rick Waldholm
• Dog on a Loose Chain - (2005) - short story by Sarah Totton
• Dwelling - (2005) - short story by John Aegard
• Vaudeville's Puppet - (2005) - short story by Aynjel Kaye
• How Eddie Changed the World - (2005) - short story by Bob Urell
• The Woman Who Spoke in Parables - (2005) - short story by Brian Richard Wade
• Tongues - (2005) - short story by Ray Vukcevich
• Death Comes for Ervina - (2005) - short story by Theodora Goss
• Ithrulene - (2005) - short story by Alex Lamb
• Fugue - (2005) - short story by Jay Caselberg
• Nature Mort - (2005) - short story by Leslie What
• A Love for All Time - (2005) - short story by D. G. K. Goldberg

Table of Contents:

• The Library of Pi - short story by Ray Vukcevich
• Chasing America - novelette by Josh Rountree
• Faulkner's Seesaw - short story by Barry N. Malzberg and Jack Dann
• Willa - short story by Robert Reed
• The Adventures of Philip Schuyler and the Dapper Marrionette in the City of the Limbless Octopi - short story by Robert Freeman Wexler
• Keys I Don't Remember - short story by Forrest Aguirre
• The Syncopation Streak - short story by Anna Tambour
• Manifest Destiny - short story by David J. Schwartz
• For The Sky is Made of Glass - short story by Hannah Wolf Bowen
• Crab - short story by Steven Utley and Howard Waldrop
• God Juice - novelette by M. K. Hobson
• Fire Rising in the Moon - short story by Laura Anne Gilman
• The Crawlspace of the World - short story by Tim Pratt
• The Heresy Box - short story by Darin Bradley
• theleeharveyoswaldband - short story by Ben Peek
• Wanderers - short story by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
• The Uncanny Valley - short story by Nick Mamatas
• Soon We Shall All Be Saunders - short story by Ken Scholes
• The Last Drinkin' Man's Blues - short story by Mikal Trimm
• And I Ask Myself the Same Question - short story by Haddayr Copley-Woods
• Winter In Aso - novelette by Paul M. Berger
• Orange Groves Out To The Horizon - short story by Richard Wadholm
• The Drowned Father - novelette by Pamela Sargent
• Missy Victoria - short story by Bruce Holland Rogers
• An Autumn Butterfly - short story by Esther M. Friesner

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Is Anybody Out There? (2010) edited by Nick Gevers and Marty Halpern, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, July 2018. The story is included in the collection Last Plane to Heaven: The Final Collection (2014).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Sturgeon Award nominated novella. It origianlly appeared in Subterranean, Spring 2012. The story can also be found in the antholgy The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2013, edited by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Subterranean Online.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, February 2010. It can also be found in the anthology Clarkesworld: Year Four (2013), edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

The City Imperishable's secret master and heir to the long-vacant throne has vanished from a locked room, as politics have turned deadly in a bid to revive the city's long-vanished empire. The city's dwarfs, stunted from spending their childhoods in confining boxes, are restive. Bijaz the Dwarf, leader of the Sewn faction among the dwarfs, fights their persecution. Jason the Factor, friend and apprentice to the missing master, works to maintain stability in the absence of a guiding hand. Imago of Lockwood struggles to revive the office of Lord Mayor in a bid to turn the City Imperishable away from the path of destruction. These three must contend with one another as they race to resolve the threats to the city.

The battle has been fought and won, and all have been transformed by the struggle. Imago of Lockwood has become Lord Mayor of the City Imperishable, though at a price beyond his wildest imagination. Bijaz the Dwarf has been imbued with a godlike power and a responsibility he scarcely understands. And Jason the Factor, resurrected from death at the hands of his sister, the Tokhari sandwalker Kalliope, has become the sula ma-jieni na-dia, the fabled Dead Man of Winter.

When a beautiful mountebank arrives in the City Imperishable, offering to lead an expedition to uncover the lost tomb of the Imperator Terminus, she stirs up the mob with promises of treasure and imperial power... but what will her quest unleash? Political intrigue, adventure, and all-out war await the principles and inhabitants of the City Imperishable. Through it all, the City may endure, but none will remain untouched by the Madness of Flowers...