Search Worlds Without End

Nebula nominated novelette. Originally pulished in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October-November 2004. It can also be found in the anthology The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories (2012) Jeff and Ann VanderMeer and the collection Leviathan Wept and Other Stories (2010).

Running from poverty and hopelessness, Ramón Espejo boarded one of the great starships of the mysterious, repulsive Enye. But the new life he found on the far-off planet of São Paulo was no better than the one he abandoned. Then one night his rage and too much alcohol get the better of him. Deadly violence ensues, forcing Ramón to flee into the wilderness.

Mercifully, almost happily alone—far from the loud, bustling hive of humanity that he detests with sociopathic fervor—the luckless prospector is finally free to search for the one rich strike that could make him wealthy. But what he stumbles upon instead is an advanced alien race in hiding: desperate fugitives, like him, on a world not their own. Suddenly in possession of a powerful, dangerous secret and caught up in an extraordinary manhunt on a hostile, unpredictable planet, Ramón must first escape . . . and then, somehow, survive.

And his deadliest enemy is himself.

This short story originally appeared on Sci Fiction, July 7, 2004. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Second Annual Collection (2005), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Telling Tales: The Clarion West 30th Anniversary Anthology (2013), edited by Ellen Datlow. The story is included in the collection Leviathan Wept and Other Stories (2010).

What if you had a holocaust and nobody came?

Imagine a father who has sent his child's soul voyaging and seen it go astray. Or a backyard tale from the 1001 American Nights. Macbeth re-imagined as a screwball comedy. Three extraordinary economic tasks performed by a small expert in currency exchange that risk first career and then life and then soul.

From the disturbing beauty of 'Flat Diane' (Nebula-nominee, International Horror Guild award-winner) to the idiosyncratic vision of 'The Cambist and Lord Iron' (Hugo- and World Fantasy-nominee), Daniel Abraham has been writing some of the most enjoyable and widely admired short fiction in the genre for over a decade.

Ranging from high fantasy to hard science fiction, screwball comedy to gut-punching tragedy, Daniel Abraham's stories never fail to be intelligent, compassionate, thoughtful, and humane. Leviathan Wept and Other Stories is the first collection of his short works, including selections from both the well-known and the rare.

Table of Contents:

• A Hunter in Arin-Qin - (2010) - shortfiction by Daniel Abraham
• As Sweet - (2001) - shortfiction by Daniel Abraham
• Exclusion - (2001) - shortstory by Daniel Abraham
• Flat Diane - (2004) - novelette by Daniel Abraham
• Leviathan Wept - (2004) - shortstory by Daniel Abraham
• The Best Monkey - (2009) - novelette by Daniel Abraham
• The Cambist and Lord Iron - (2007) - shortfiction by Daniel Abraham
• The Curandero and the Swede - shortfiction by Daniel Abraham
• The Support Technician Tango - (2007) - novelette by Daniel Abraham

Shadow Twin is a 120 page novella by Gardner Dozois, George R.R. Martin, and Daniel Abraham. Gardner began the novella in the 1970s, handed it off to George in the 1980s, who, in turn, called upon Daniel Abraham to add the finishing touches.

This novella has been expanded into the novel Hunter's Run.

Hugo and WFA nominated novelette. It was first published in Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories, edited by John Klima (2007). It can also be found in the anthologies Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2008 Edition, edited by Rich Horton, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Two (2008), edited by Jonathan Strahan and The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror 2008: Twenty-First Annual Collection (2008), edited by Kelly Link, Gavin J. Grant and Ellen Datlow. I is also included in the collection Leviathan Wept and Other Stories (2010).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed Magazine.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology The Book of Swords (2017), edited by Gardner Dozois. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Twelve (2018), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Novelette originally published in the Fall 2007 issue of Subterranean Magazine. It can also be found in the collection Leviathan Wept and Other Stories (2010).

Read the full story for free at Subterranean Magazine.

Armor up for a metal-pounding explosion of action, adventure and amazing speculation by topnotch writers--including Nebula-award winner Jack McDevitt, Sean Williams, Dan Abnett, Simon Green, and Jack Campbell--on a future warrior that might very well be just around the corner. Science fiction readers and gamers have long been fascinated by the idea of going to battle in suits of powered combat armor or at the interior controls of giant mechs.

It's an armor-plated clip of hard-hitting tales featuring exoskeleton adventure with fascinating takes on possible future armors ranging from the style of personal power suits seen in Starship Troopers and Halo to the servo-controlled bipedal beast-mech style encountered in Mechwarrior and Battletech.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword (Armored) - essay by Orson Scott Card
• Introduction (Armored) - essay by John Joseph Adams
• The Johnson Maneuver - short story by William H. Keith, Jr.
• Hel's Half-Acre - short story by John G. Hemry
• Jungle Walkers - novelette by David Klecha and Tobias S. Buckell
• The Last Run of the Coppelia - novelette by Genevieve Valentine
• Death Reported of Last Surviving Veteran of Great War - short story by Dan Abnett
• The Cat's Pajamas - novelette by Jack McDevitt
• Find Heaven and Hell in the Smallest Things - novelette by Simon R. Green
• Power Armor: A Love Story - short story by David Barr Kirtley
• The Last Days of the Kelly Gang - short story by David D. Levine
• Field Test - short story by Michael A. Stackpole
• Trauma Pod - short story by Alastair Reynolds
• Contained Vacuum - short story by David Sherman
• You Do What You Do - short story by Tanya Huff
• Nomad - novelette by Karin Lowachee
• Human Error - short story by John Jackson Miller
• Transfer of Ownership - short story by Christie Yant
• Heuristic Algorithm and Reasoning Response Engine - novelette by Ethan Skarstedt and Brandon Sanderson
• Don Quixote - short story by Carrie Vaughn
• The Poacher - short story by Wendy N. Wagner and Jak Wagner
• The Green - short story by Lauren Beukes
• Sticks and Stones - short story by Robert Buettner
• Helmet - short story by Daniel H. Wilson
• The N-Body Solution - novelette by Sean Williams

A castaway government official is stranded on an island of man-made monsters in this bold reimagining of the H. G. Wells science fiction classic

War is hell, and the conflict tearing the world apart may be humankind's last. Set adrift on a makeshift raft in the middle of the South Pacific, the sole survivor of a sabotaged space-shuttle flight, undersecretary of state Calvert Roberts is certain his life is coming to an end. But fate intervenes, depositing him dehydrated and half starved on the beach of an uncharted island with a giant M etched into a cliff wall. At first it appears to be paradise, but Eden has a dark side: Here, Dr. Mortimer Dart is playing God. A genius geneticist who is certifiably mad, he is called Master by the unspeakable creations of his predecessor--monstrous creatures, neither human nor animal but some nightmarish hybrid. Yet as horrible as the stranded government official finds these abominations, it is the truth behind Dart's experiments that chill Roberts's blood--for it will open wide a window onto an inescapable future of emptiness, ashes, and death.

One of twentieth-century science fiction's brightest luminaries, Grand Master Brian W. Aldiss pays homage to one of the genre's most beloved progenitors, the great H. G. Wells, author of The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, and other science fiction classics. An Island Called Moreau is a gripping near-future tale of inhuman experimentation, dystopia, morality, war, and mad science that honors and ingeniously updates Wells's brilliant, dark masterwork, The Island of Doctor Moreau.

All over the world corrupt distatorships and fascist regimes have seized power - except in the Scandinavian countries. Here, in obscurity, an enclave of freedom still survives. But which Scandinavia are we talking about, and in which world?

In TheYear Before Yesterday, Brian Aldiss playfully takes the predictive visions of yesterday and transplants them into a disturbingly realistic global future. Alternate worlds are woven into the everyday life of a man faced with a personal crisis, and as fiction and reality intersect, nothing is exactly as it seems.

In his acclaimed collection Tales Before Tolkien, Douglas A. Anderson illuminated the sources, inspirations, and influences that fired J.R.R. Tolkien's genius. Now Anderson turns his attention to Tolkien's colleague and friend C. S. Lewis, whose influence on modern fantasy, through his beloved Narnia books, is second only to Tolkien's own.

In many ways, Lewis's influence has been even wider than Tolkien's. For in addition to the Narnia series, Lewis wrote groundbreaking works of science fiction, urban fantasy, and religious allegory, and he came to be regarded as among the most important Christian writers of the twentieth century. It will come as no surprise, then, that such a wide-ranging talent drew inspiration from a variety of sources. Here are twenty of the tributaries that fed Lewis's unique talent, among them:

"The Wood That Time Forgot: The Enchanted Wood," taken from a never-before-published fantasy by Lewis's biographer and friend, Roger Lancelyn Green, that directly inspired The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe; E. Nesbit's charming "The Aunt and Amabel," in which a young girl enters another world by means of a wardrobe; "The Snow Queen," by Hans Christian Andersen, featuring the abduction of a young boy by a woman as cruel as she is beautiful; and many more, including works by Charles Dickens, Kenneth Grahame, G. K. Chesterton, and George MacDonald, of whom Lewis would write, "I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master."

Full of fascinating insights into Lewis's life and fiction, Tales Before Narnia is the kind of book that will be treasured by children and adults alike and passed down lovingly from generation to generation.

Contents:

• ix - Introduction (Tales Before Narnia: The Roots of Modern Fantasy and Science Fiction) - essay by Douglas A. Anderson
• 3 - Tegner's Drapa - (1849) - poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• 7 - The Aunt and Amabel - (1909) - shortfiction by E. Nesbit
• 17 - The Snow Queen - (1844) - novelette by Hans Christian Andersen (trans. of Snedronningen 1845)
• 45 - The Magic Mirror - (1858) - shortstory by George MacDonald
• 63 - Undine - (1818) - novella by Baron Friedrich de La Motte Fouqué (trans. of Undine: Eine Erzählung 1811) [as by Friedrich De La Motte Fouque ]
• 129 - Letters from Hell: Letter III - (1887) - shortstory by Valdemar Thisted
• 135 - Fastosus and Avaro - (1863) - shortstory by John Macgowan
• 147 - The Tapestried Chamber; or, The Lady in the Sacque - (1910) - shortstory by Sir Walter Scott (variant of The Tapestried Chamber 1828)
• 161 - The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton - (1836) - shortstory by Charles Dickens
• 173 - The Child and the Giant - (1988) - shortstory by Owen Barfield
• 183 - A King's Lesson - (1886) - shortstory by William Morris
• 191 - The Waif Woman - (1914) - shortstory by Robert Louis Stevenson
• 207 - First Whisper of The Wind in the Willows (excerpt) - (1908) - shortfiction by Kenneth Grahame
• 239 - The Wish House - (1924) - shortstory by Rudyard Kipling
• 257 - Et in Sempiternum Pereant - (1935) - shortstory by Charles Williams
• 269 - The Dragon's Visit - (1937) - poem by J. R. R. Tolkien
• 275 - The Coloured Lands - (1925) - shortstory by G. K. Chesterton
• 283 - The Man Who Lived Backwards - (1938) - shortstory by Charles F. Hall
• 301 - The Wood That Time Forgot: The Enchanted Wood - (2008) - shortstory by Roger Lancelyn Green
• 313 - The Dream Dust Factory - (1947) - shortstory by William Lindsay Gresham

Terry Brooks. David Eddings. George R. R. Martin. Robin Hobb. The top names in modern fantasy all acknowledge J. R. R. Tolkien as their role model, the author whose work inspired them to create their own epics. But what writers influenced Tolkien himself? Here, internationally recognized Tolkien expert Douglas A. Anderson has gathered the fiction of authors who sparked Tolkien's imagination in a collection destined to become a classic in its own right.

Andrew Lang's romantic swashbuckler, "The Story of Sigurd," features magic rings, an enchanted sword, and a brave hero loved by two beautiful women-- and cursed by a ferocious dragon. Tolkien read E. A. Wyke-Smith's "The Marvelous Land of Snergs" to his children, delighting in these charming tales of a pixieish people "only slightly taller than the average table." Also appearing in this collection is a never-before-published gem by David Lindsay, author of Voyage to Arcturus, a novel which Tolkien praised highly both as a thriller and as a work of philosophy, religion, and morals.

In stories packed with magical journeys, conflicted heroes, and terrible beasts, this extraordinary volume is one that no fan of fantasy or Tolkien should be without. These tales just might inspire a new generation of creative writers.

Contents:

• 1 - Introduction (Tales Before Tolkien: The Roots of Modern Fantasy) - essay by Douglas A. Anderson
• 4 - The Elves - (1827) - novelette by Ludwig Tieck (trans. of Die Elfen 1812)
• 21 - The Golden Key - (1867) - novelette by George MacDonald
• 46 - Puss-Cat Mew - (1869) - novelette by Lord Brabourne [as by E. H. Knatchbull-Hugessen]
• 87 - The Griffin and the Minor Canon - (1885) - shortstory by Frank R. Stockton
• 101 - The Demon Pope - (1888) - shortstory by Richard Garnett
• 111 - The Story of Sigurd - (1890) - shortstory by Andrew Lang
• 120 - The Folk of the Mountain Door - (1914) - shortstory by William Morris
• 133 - Black Heart and White Heart: A Zulu Idyll - (1886) - novella by H. Rider Haggard (variant of Black Heart and White Heart 1896)
• 182 - The Dragon Tamers - [Seven Dragons] - (1899) - shortstory by E. Nesbit
• 195 - The Far Islands - (1899) - novelette by John Buchan
• 213 - The Drawn Arrow - (1923) - shortstory by Clemence Housman
• 224 - The Enchanted Buffalo - (1905) - shortstory by L. Frank Baum
• 232 - Chu-Bu and Sheemish - (1911) - shortstory by Lord Dunsany
• 237 - The Baumoff Explosive - (1919) - shortstory by William Hope Hodgson
• 253 - The Regent of the North - (1915) - shortstory by Kenneth Morris
• 264 - The Coming of the Terror - (1917) - shortstory by Arthur Machen
• 302 - The Elf-Trap - (1919) - shortstory by Francis Stevens
• 325 - The Thin Queen Of Elfhame - [Biography of the Life of Manuel] - (1922) - shortstory by James Branch Cabell
• 333 - The Woman of the Wood - (1926) - novelette by A. Merritt
• 359 - Golithos the Ogre (excerpt) - (1927) - shortfiction by E. A. Wyke-Smith
• 371 - The Story of Alwina - [Islandia] - (2003) - novelette by Austin Tappan Wright (variant of An Islandian Tale: The Story of Alwina 1981)
• 391 - A Christmas Play - (2003) - shortfiction by David Lindsay
• 427 - Author Notes and Recommended Reading - essay by uncredited

Agata Rosso, a once-mighty yet now prematurely aged European witch, believes that the special gifts in a young girl named Lía Munro can restore youth and vitality both to herself and her bedridden husband. She sets a deadly plan in motion to capture and use Lía--but will the girl have enough power to protect herself, plus the father she loves so much?

Nowatari Rui has long been the subject of her husband's novels, depicted as a pure woman who takes great pleasure in sex. With her privacy and identity continually stripped away, she has come to be seen by society first and foremost as the inspiration for her husband's art. When a decade's worth of frustrations reaches its boiling point, Rui consumes a bowl of seeds, and buds and roots begin to sprout all over her body. Instead of taking her to a hospital, her husband keeps her in an aquaterrarium, set to compose a new novel based on this unsettling experience. But Rui breaks away from her husband by growing into a forest--and in time, she takes over the entire city.

As fantasy and reality bleed together, The Forest Brims Over challenges unconscious gender biases and explores the boundaries between art and exploitation--muse abuse--in the literary world.

When Mr. Sorensen - a drab, cipher of a man - passes away, his lovely widow falls in love with a most unsuitable mate. Enraged and scandalized (and armed with hot-dish and gossip and seven-layer bars), the Parish Council turns to the old priest to fix the situation - to convince Mrs. Sorensen to reject the green world and live as a widow ought. But the pretty widow has plans of her own, in Kelly Barnhill's Mrs. Sorenson and the Sasquatch.

This novelette is included in the anthology Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited by Irene Gallo. It is included in the collection Dreadful Young Ladies and Other Stories (2018).

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Sturgeon and Stoker Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in the anthology Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural (2007), edited by Ellen Datlow. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Twenty-First Annual Collection (2008), edited by Kelly Link, Gavin J. Grant and Ellen Datlow, Year's Best Fantasy 8 (2008), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Kramer, and The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories (2011), edited by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer. It is included in the collection Occultation and Other Stories (2010).

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

Discover the haunting stories of Crawford Award-winning author Christopher Barzak in his new collection Before and Afterlives. These are tales of relationships with unearthly domesticity and eeriness: a woman falls in love with a haunted house; a beached mermaid is substituted for a disappeared daughter; the imaginary friend of a murdered young woman stalks the streets of her small town; a mother's teenage son is afflicted with a disease that causes him to vanish; a father exploits his daughter's talent for calling ghosts to her; and a wife leaves her husband and children to fulfill her obligations in the world from which she escaped.

Table of Contents:

• What We Know About the Lost Families of -- -- House - (2007)
• The Drowned Mermaid - (2003)
• Dead Boy Found - (2003)
• A Mad Tea Party - (1999)
• Born on the Edge of an Adjective - (2002)
• The Other Angelas - (2004)
• A Resurrection Artist - (2004)
• The Boy Who Was Born Wrapped in Barbed Wire - (2005)
• Map of Seventeen - (2010)
• Dead Letters - (2006)
• Plenty - (2001)
• The Ghost Hunter's Beautiful Daughter - (2009)
• Caryatids - (2001)
• A Beginner's Guide to Survival Before, During, and After the Apocalypse - (2013)
• Smoke City - (2011)
• Vanishing Point - (2003)
• The Language of Moths - (2005)

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Fast Forward 1 (2007), edited by Lou Anders. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 13 (2008), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. The story is included in the collection Last and First Contacts (2012).

Life was not possible on that watery world except on the Hundred Islands. The Empire of Arelia ruled them all - all except one. Peldain was entirely covered with a forest so impenetrable and so deadly that all attempts to explore it were disastrous. Then a man came out of that jungle - a human - who told the Arelians that at the center of the island a secret kingdom flourished.

There was nothing for it but to organise an expedition. However deadly the alien forest might be, if one man could get out, an army could get in. So Lord Vorduthe landed and began the assault on the great green enemy.

Nobody could have foreseen the horrors with which the forest defended itself. Nobody could have foreseen the price that would be paid by Vorduthe's men. And only Vorduthe himself would learn the incredible secret of the island...if his mind could stand it.

A quest, a war, a ring that would be grounds for calling any wedding off, a king without a kingdom, and a little, furry "hero" named Frito, ready - or maybe just forced by the wizard of Goodgulf - to undertake the one mission which can save Lower Middle Earth from enslavement by the evil Sorhed... Luscious Elfmaidens, a roller-skating dragon, ugly plants that can soul-kiss the unwary to death - these are just some of the ingredients in the wildest, wackiest, most irreverent excursion into fantasy realms that anyone has ever dared to undertake.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Twelve Tomorrows (2015), edited by Bruce Sterling. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection (2016), edited by Gardner Dozois.

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1971. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction of the Year #1 (1972), edited by Terry Carr.

Children can have a cruel, absolute sense of justice. Children can kill a monster and feel quite proud of themselves. A girl can look at her brother and believe they're destined to be a knight and a bard who battle evil. She can believe she's found the thing she's been made for.

Hazel lives with her brother, Ben, in the strange town of Fairfold where humans and fae exist side by side. The faeries' seemingly harmless magic attracts tourists, but Hazel knows how dangerous they can be, and she knows how to stop them. Or she did, once.

At the center of it all, there is a glass coffin in the woods. It rests right on the ground and in it sleeps a boy with horns on his head and ears as pointy as knives. Hazel and Ben were both in love with him as children. The boy has slept there for generations, never waking.

Until one day, he does...

As the world turns upside down and a hero is needed to save them all, Hazel tries to remember her years spent pretending to be a knight. But swept up in new love, shifting loyalties, and the fresh sting of betrayal, will it be enough?

Sunday's a thug, an enforcer, a leg-breaker for hire. When his boss sends him to kill a mysterious new business partner, his target strikes back in ways Sunday could never have imagined. Murdered, brought back to a twisted half-life, Sunday finds himself stuck in the middle of a race to find an ancient stone with the power to grant immortality. With it, he might live forever. Without it, he's just another rotting extra in a George Romero flick.

Everyone's got a stake, from a psycho Nazi wizard and a razor-toothed midget, to a nympho-demon bartender, a too-powerful witch who just wants to help her homeless vampires, and the one woman who might have all the answers -- if only Sunday can figure out what her angle is.

Before the week is out he's going to find out just what lengths people will go to for immortality. And just how long somebody can hold a grudge.

Every seven years, the Agon begins. As punishment for a past rebellion, nine Greek gods are forced to walk the earth as mortals, hunted by the descendants of ancient bloodlines, all eager to kill a god and seize their divine power and immortality.

Long ago, Lore Perseous fled that brutal world in the wake of her family's sadistic murder by a rival line, turning her back on the hunt's promises of eternal glory. For years she's pushed away any thought of revenge against the man--now a god--responsible for their deaths.

Yet as the next hunt dawns over New York City, two participants seek out her help: Castor, a childhood friend of Lore believed long dead, and a gravely wounded Athena, among the last of the original gods.

The goddess offers an alliance against their mutual enemy and, at last, a way for Lore to leave the Agon behind forever. But Lore's decision to bind her fate to Athena's and rejoin the hunt will come at a deadly cost--and still may not be enough to stop the rise of a new god with the power to bring humanity to its knees.

Two dazzling new novellas from the celebrated author of Fahrenheit 451. Two previously unpublished novellas comprise this astonishing new volume from one of science fiction's greatest living writers.

In the first, 'Somewhere a Band is Playing', newsman James Cardiff is lured through poetry and his fascination with a beautiful and enigmatic young woman to Summerton, Arizona. The small town's childless population hold an extraordinary secret which has been passed on for thousands of years unbeknownst to the rest of human civilization.

In the second novella, 'Leviathan '99', the classic tale of Herman Melville's 'Moby Dick' is reborn as an interstellar adventure. It recounts the exploits of the mad Captain Ahab, who, blinded by his first encounter with a gigantic comet called 'Leviathan', pursues his lunatic vendetta across the universe. Born in space and seeking adventure in the skies, astronaut Ishmael Jones joins the crew aboard the Cetus 7 and quickly finds his fate in the hands of an indefatigable captain.

Published together for the first time in one volume, these two stories twinkle with Bradbury's characteristically intricate metaphors and lyrical phrases. Both are a lasting testament to an older generation of writers that, much like the Leviathan itself, are on the threshold of passing on into the realm of legend.

America has no finer teller of tales than Ray Bradbury. For more than fifty years he has regaled us with wonders, enchanted us with memories, and startled us with simple truths, enabling us to view from fresh perspectives the world we inhabit, and see others we never dreamed existed.

Now the master treats us to another round -- eighteen brand -- new stories and seven previously published but never before collected-proof positive that his magic is as potent as ever. Here is a rich elixir distilled from the pungent fruit of experience and imagination, expertly prepared by a superior mixologist whose hand is sure and whose eyes and ears have long taken in the shouting, weeping, carping, reveling life all around him.

Sip the sweet innocence of youth, and the wisdom and folly -- of age. Taste the warm mysteries of summer and the bitterness of betrayed loves and abandoned places. This glass overflows with a heady brew that will set your mind spinning and carry you to remarkable locales: a house where time has no boundaries; a movie theater where deconstructed schlock is drunkenly reassembled into art; a faraway planet plagued by an epidemic of sorrow; a wheat field that hides a strangely welcome enemy. The comforts of arguments eternal; the addictive terror of a predawn phone call; the ghosts of dear friends, of errant sons and lost fathers, and of lovers both joyously remembered and never-to-be, are but a few of the ingredients that have gone into Bradbury's savory cocktail. And every satisfying swallow brings new surprises and revelations.

One More for the Road is superb refreshment served with wit, heart, and flair by the incomparable Bradbury. This one's on Ray.

Drink up!

Table of Contents:

• First Day - (2002) - shortstory
• Heart Transplant - (1981) - shortstory
• Quid Pro Quo - (2000) - shortstory
• After the Ball - (2002) - novelette
• In Memoriam - (2002) - shortstory
• Tête-à-Tête - (2002) - shortstory
• The Dragon Danced at Midnight - (1966) - shortstory
• The Nineteenth - (2002) - shortstory
• Beasts - (2002) - shortstory
• Autumn Afternoon - (2002) - shortstory
• Where All Is Emptiness There Is Room to Move - (2002) - shortstory
• One-Woman Show - (2002) - shortstory
• The Laurel and Hardy Alpha Centauri Farewell Tour - (2000) - shortstory
• Leftovers - (2002) - shortstory
• One More for the Road - (2002) - shortstory
• Tangerine - (2002) - shortstory y
• With Smiles as Wide as Summer - (1961) - shortstory
• Time Intervening - (1947) - shortstory
• The Enemy in the Wheat - (1994) - shortstory
• Fore! - (2001) - shortstory
• My Son, Max - (1993) - shortstory
• The F. Scott/Tolstoy/Ahab Accumulator - (2002) - shortstory
• Well, What Do You Have to Say for Yourself? - (2002) - shortstory
• Diane de Forêt - (2002) - shortstory
• The Cricket on the Hearth - (2002) - shortstory
• Afterword: Metaphors, the Breakfast of Champions - (2002) - essay by Ray Bradbury

Contains:

• The Day it Rained Forever
• Fever Dream
• Icarus Montgolfier Wright
• In a Season of Calm Weather
• A Scent of Sasparilla
• The Strawberry Window
• The Town Where Nobody Got Off
• Here There Be Tygers
• The Dragon
• The Gift
• The Smile
• The Marriage Mender
• The Headpiece
• The Time of Going Awat
• The Wonderful Ice-Cream Suit
• The Little Mice
• Dark They Were and Golden Eyed
• The End of the Beginning
• The Rock Cried Out
• Almost the End of the World
• The Sunset Harp
• Perchance to Dream
• The Referent

The world is about to end. Again.

Ever since the first Storm wreaked havoc on civilization as we know it, seventeen-year-old Liz Flannery has been holed up in an abandoned bookstore in suburban New Jersey where she used to work, trading books for supplies with the few remaining survivors. It's the one place left that feels safe to her.

Until she learns that another earth-shattering Storm is coming... and everything changes.

Enter Maeve, a prickly and potentially dangerous out-of-towner who breaks into the bookstore looking for shelter one night. Though the two girls are immediately at odds, Maeve has what Liz needs--the skills to repair the dilapidated store before the next climate disaster strikes--and Liz reluctantly agrees to let her stay.

As the girls grow closer and undeniable feelings spring up between them, they realize that they face greater threats than the impending Storm. And when Maeve's secrets and Liz's inner demons come back to haunt them both, they find themselves fighting for their lives as their world crumbles around them.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #14 November 2007. It can also be found in the anthologies Wilde Stories 2008: The Best of the Year's Gay Speculative Fiction, edited by Steve Berman, and Realms 2: The Second Year of Clarkesworld Magazine (2010), edited by Sean Wallace and Nick Mamatas.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

In these stories Rebecca Ore explores the question of what it means to be alien: the unknown equation, the mysterious that can never be taken for granted, never be seen as "ordinary." She confronts us with visions of what it might mean to be the alien--the alien from outside and the alien within. The journey takes the reader to the heart of our oldest fears: from the terror of first contact to the power of the unknown, the very nature of intelligence to the exploration of what it means to be alive. And what we think of as most human might be the most alien of all.

Table of Contents:

• Alien Bootlegger - (1993) - novella
• The Tyrant That I Serve - (1986) - novelette
• Ice-Gouged Lakes, Glacier-Bound Times - (1988) - novelette
• Giant Flesh Holograms Keep My Baby's Eyes Warm - novelette
• Farming in Virginia - (1993) - shortstory
• Projectile Weapons - (1986) - novelette
• Aliens and the Artificial Other - (1993) - essay

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.

A tale of eco-terrorism set in a dystopian near future of gene-manipulation, medical nanotechnology, and environmental damage; an examination of the risks of overpopulation and uncontrolled technological expansion. This action adventure story is filled with theoretical political ideas. The main characters are a collection of misfits whose lives are linked together through a scientist's experiments in ecological reconstruction: a species of giant mantises that treat their anxiety stressed human companions with tranquilizing pheromones; and bioengineered wasps drawn to human anger and conflict in order to sting the offenders into a sleep state. Humans manipulate earth's creatures as if they were toys while the bio-altered creatures transform us.

In as gray, industro-technical future of protective shackles and slowed ideas, Jayne wants to be respectable and conform. But conformity means accepting a limited destiny and the hollow entertainments that are brutally enforced as "news". And to be respectable, she must gain back her virginity and give up an eye. Jayne's life is out of control-her reality has teeth and educational drugs and binding tools- and the only cures for her growing dissatisfaction with a bleak, repressive status quo seem to be madness or legal suicide. Or rebellion. Jayne cannot, will not, be rehabilitated. So instead, she will live her life between lines, illegally encouraging the otherness of the lowly, the renegades, the crazies, the virtual whores, as she dedicates herself to the dangerous cause of outlaw education. There are many pitfalls built into the road Jayne has chosen to walk: failure, betrayal, terror, arrest, cyberia. But her courage and determination could be the catalyst for a new future.

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, June 1997, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, October 2014.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Bracken County, nestled in the Blue Ridge region of the American South, is like no other place on Earth. Behind its facade of small-town southern life, magic works and corrupts all it touches. Maude Fuller has been running from her witch destiny for a long time. Now Maude's grandmother is dying and she must go home--and she'll try anything to save granny's soul.

In the not-too-distant future, 2067, human cloning is a part of everyday life. But it is a bizarre form of cloning; not actually the direct copying of a humans, but rather the construction of custom-made reproductions of humans using animal DNA. The CIA uses these so-called "chimeras" for various undercover operations, and one of their technicians, Simon Boyle, has a sideline making illegal copies: chimeras based on famous criminals, for rent. His Billy the Kid, a creation unable to comprehend or sometimes even recognize the sorts of things that didn't exist before the 1880s, is quite popular for a night of historically convincing passion with rich women, particularly the part where Boyle (as sheriff Pat Garrett) guns him down. As the story progresses, Billy the Kid starts remembering things from his previous lives. One of Boyle's clients sets Billy loose into the mean streets of the 21st century, where he struggles to seize control of the myths in his ROM.

Time and Robbery features the protagonist of Ore's Centuries Ago and Very Fast, Vel, a gay immortal born in Paleolithic who jumps time at will. Unless Vel can help out his younger self, Vel's tribe's descendants--a big chunk of the 21st-century British population--will be eliminated from the timeline. Present-day Vel, though, has problems of his own, so he takes a chance and outs himself (and his talented teen-aged daughter Quince) to Joe Tavistock, a subcontractor on the weak end of the plausible deniability chain dangling off British intelligence, making it Joe's problem. Joe's superiors are dubious, and Joe doesn't know who to trust. The stakes are high not just for Vel, but for everyone involved.

Earth, 2308. Multiple pandemic plagues have ravaged the earth beyond recognition. Working desperately, the Philadelphia National Archives uses a mysterious time machine to bring key members of the past into the future, to save humanity from destroying itself.

Pulled from Renaissance Italy, former peasant Benedetta brings a friendship with master artist Leonardo da Vinci... and an unprecedented ability to change destiny, aided by her new partner, the Viking Ivar. But it is not easy to reconcile the past and the present, and the time refugees have their own plans for their new world.

Weaving together time travel, quantum mechanics, Templars, and outlaws, acclaimed author Rebecca Ore delivers a powerful tale of intrigue and possibility, and the fight to be free.

A revised version of THE ASTRONAUTS MUST NOT LAND (1963, published in Ace Double F-227). It isn't every day that the impossible happens. But when it does, and you're a witness, you have to start looking for answers. The authorities won't talk. So you decide to find out for yourself. That's what Drummond did. And when he found out. it changed the universe!

Contains:

• Prerogative
• Fair Warning
• The Warp and the Woof-Woof
• Single Minded
• A Better Mousetrap
• Coincidence Day
• Seizure
• Treason is a Two Edged Sword
• Eye of the Beholder
• Round Trip

Five people have been chosen.

They have heard the voice in their heads. A voice calling for help. A voice that must be answered...or the entire world will die.

But to answer it, they must find it.

Unfortunately, the voice is not of this earth...

A professor in pandemic isolation rescues books from the flooded and collapsing McPherson Library. A man plants fireweed on the hillside of his depopulated Vancouver Island suburb. An aspiring luthier poaches the last ancient Sitka spruce to make a violin for a child prodigy. Campbell's astonishing vision pulls the echoing effects of small acts and intimate moments through this multi-generational and interconnected story of how a West coast community survives the ravages of climate change.

From the winner of the 2023 Ursula K Le Guin Prize for Fiction comes a short story collection that radiates from the dark forests of the Pacific northwest.

In ten tales, Rebecca Campbell's exquisite prose channels ancient forest spirits, the lost ghosts of unknown fates, biological and technological transformations, and challenges the ways that colonization and extraction have shaped not only landscapes but how we imagine the future. Campbell zeros in on horrors and hopes, readying readers for the world to come.

The Other Shore delves deep into what transformations we need to survive and thrive.

Jorge Luis Borges declared The Invention of Morel a masterpiece of plotting, comparable to The Turn of the Screw and Journey to the Center of the Earth. Set on a mysterious island, Bioy's novella is a story of suspense and exploration, as well as a wonderfully unlikely romance, in which every detail is at once crystal clear and deeply mysterious.

Inspired by Bioy Casares's fascination with the movie star Louise Brooks, The Invention of Morel has gone on to live a secret life of its own. Greatly admired by Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, and Octavio Paz, the novella helped to usher in Latin American fiction's now famous postwar boom. As the model for Alain Resnais and Alain Robbe-Grillet's Last Year in Marienbad, it also changed the history of film.

Jane has lived a mostly ordinary life, raised by her recently deceased aunt Magnolia, whom she counted on to turn life into an adventure. Without Aunt Magnolia, Jane is lost. So she's easily swept away when a glamorous, capricious, and wealthy acquaintance from years ago asks Jane to accompany her to a gala at the extravagant island mansion called Tu Reviens.

Jane remembers her aunt telling her: "If anyone ever invites to you to Tu Reviens, promise me that you'll go." What Jane doesn't know is that the house will offer her five choices that could ultimately determine the course of her life.

One choice leads Jane into a heist mystery. Another takes her into a spy thriller. She finds herself in a gothic horror story, a space opera, and an extraordinary fantasy realm. She might fall in love, she might lose her life, she might come face-to-face with herself. Every choice comes with a price. But together, all the choices will lead her to the truth.

One house. Five choices. Limitless possibilities.

This novelette originally appeared on Sci Fiction, January 10, 2001, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, January 2015. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Nineteenth Annual Collection (2002), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Beyond Flesh (2002), edited by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This novella was first published in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, September/October 2021.

Read the full story for free at Analog.

London 1888. His Majesty's airships troll the sky powered by antigrav liftwood as a cabal of Iron Lords tightens its hold on a Britain choked by the fumes of industry. Mars has been colonized, and clockwork assassins stalk the European corridors of power. And somewhere far to the east, the Old Man of the Mountains plots the end of the world with his Forever Engine.

Enter Jack Fargo. Scholar. Former special forces operator in Afghanistan. A man from our own near future thrust back in time--or to wherever it is that this Brave Victorian World actually exists. Aided only by an elderly Scottish physicist, a young British officer of questionable courage, and a beautiful but mysterious spy for the French Commune, Fargo is a man on a mission: save the future from irrevocable destruction when the Forever Engine is brought to full power and blows this universe, and our own, to smithereens.

A hard-living reporter long past his Pulitzer Prize-winning prime, Chuck Vallone is about to meet a renowned geneticist who needs to clear his conscience. But when Vallone arrives at their rendezvous, he finds the D.C. hotel swarming with government agents. The scientist's room is now a grisly slaughterhouse splattered with blood - but no sign of a body.

Vallone knows he has the story of the century, especially when he receives a mysterious package filled with a computer disk and strange samples of DNA. Now he's determined to uncover the truth. But it's no brave new world Vallone will be exploring; rather, a deadly depraved one ruled by preeminent scientists. And this powerful cadre intends to make Vallone both eyewitness and executor of their final ferocious plan....

In a near-future London, Millie Dack places her hand on her belly to feel her baby kick, resolute in her decision to be a single parent. Across town, her closest friend--a hungover Toni Munroe--steps into the shower and places her hand on a medic console. The diagnosis is devastating.

In this stunning, bittersweet family saga, Millie and Toni experience the aftershocks of human progress as their children and grandchildren embrace new ways of making babies. When infertility is a thing of the past, a man can create a child without a woman, a woman can create a child without a man, and artificial wombs eliminate the struggles of pregnancy. But what does it mean to be a parent? A child? A family?

Through a series of interconnected vignettes that spans five generations and three continents, this emotionally taut story explores the anxieties that arise when the science of fertility claims to deliver all the answers.

The mind-boggling epic adventure of a time-traveler torn between two nightmare worlds.

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue Four, May-June 2015.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

The final work from the brightest star in science fiction's galaxy. Arthur C Clarke, who predicted the advent of communication satellites and author of 2001: A Space Odyssey completes a lifetime career in science fiction with a masterwork.

30 light years away, a race known simply as the One Point Fives are plotting a dangerous invasion plan, one that will wipe humankind off the face of the Earth...

Meanwhile, in Sri Lanka, a young astronomy student, Ranjit Subramanian, becomes obsessed with a three-hundred-year-old theorem that promises to unlock the secrets of the universe. While Ranjit studies the problem, tensions grow between the nations of the world and a UN taskforce headed up by China, America and Russia code-named Silent Thunder begins bombing volatile regimes into submission.

On the eve of the invasion of Earth a space elevator is completed, helped in part by Ranjit, which will herald a new type of Olympics to be held on the Moon. But when alien forces arrive Ranjit is forced to question his own actions, in a bid to save the lives of not just his own family but of all of humankind.

Co-written with fellow grand master Frederik Pohl, The Last Theorem not only provides a fitting end to the career one of the most famous names in science fiction but also sets a new benchmark in contemporary prescient science fiction. It tackles with ease epic themes as diverse as third world poverty, the atrocities of modern warfare in a post-nuclear age, space elevators, pure mathematics and mankind's first contact with extra-terrestrials.

The idea of creating an artificial human is an old one. One of the earliest science-fictional novels, Frankenstein, concerned itself primarily with the hubris of creation, and one's relationship to one's creator. Later versions of this "artificial human" story (and indeed later adaptations of Frankenstein) changed the focus to more modernist questions... What is the nature of humanity? What does it mean to be human?

These stories continued through the golden age of science fiction with Isaac Asimov's I Robot story cycle, and then through post-modern iterations from new wave writers like Philip K. Dick. Today, this compelling science fiction trope persists in mass media narratives like Westworld and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, as well as twenty-first century science fiction novels like Charles Stross's Saturn's Children and Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl.

The short stories in More Human than Human demonstrate the depth and breadth of artificial humanity in contemporary science fiction. Issues of passing... of what it is to be human... of autonomy and slavery and oppression, and yes, the hubris of creation; these ideas have fascinated us for at least two hundred years, and this selection of stories demonstrates why it is such an alluring and recurring conceit.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Dolly -- Elizabeth Bear
• A Good Home -- Karin Lowachee
• The Djinn's Wife -- Ian McDonald
• And The Ends of The Earth For Thy Possession -- Robert B. Finegold
• Patterns of a Murmuration, in Billions of Data Points -- JY Yang
• The Birds and the Bees and the Gasoline Trees -- John Barnes
• Fixing Hanover -- Jeff VanderMeer
• Grand Jeté (The Great Leap) -- Rachel Swirsky
• Brisk Money -- Adam Christopher
• Act of Faith -- Fadzlishah Johanabas
• The Caretaker -- Ken Liu
• Seven Sexy Cowboy Robots -- Sandra McDonald
• We, Robots -- Sue Lange
• The Education of Junior Number 12 -- Madeline Ashby
• A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight -- Xia Jia
• The Man -- Paul McAuley
• The Robot's Girl -- Brenda Cooper
• .identity -- E. Catherine Tobler
• American Cheetah -- Robert Reed
• Artifice -- Naomi Kritzer
• Small Medicine -- Genevieve Valentine
• Silently and Very Fast -- Catherynne M. Valente
• I, Robot -- Cory Doctorow
• Bit Rot -- Charles Stross
• Angels of Ashes -- Alastair Reynolds
• The Old Dispensation -- Lavie Tidhar
• Today I am Paul -- Martin L. Shoemaker

For nearly 40 years John Clute has been reviewing science fiction and fantasy. As Scores demonstrates, his devotion to the task of understanding the central literatures of our era has not slackened. There are jokes in Scores, and curses, and tirades, and apologies, and riffs; but every word of every review, in the end, is about how we understand the stories we tell about the world.

Following on from his two previous books of collected reviews (Strokes and Look at the Evidence) this book collects reviews from a wide variety of sources, but mostly from Interzone, the New York Review of Science Fiction, and Science Fiction Weekly. Where it has seemed possible to do so without distorting contemporary responses to books, these reviews have been revised, sometimes extensively.

125 review articles, over 200 books reviewed in more than 214,000 words.

The Specter General is a novella by Theodore Cogswell. It originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, June 1952.

Collects ten previously published science fiction stories. Introductions by Anthony Boucher and Frederik Pohl.

Table of Contents:

• 7 - Introduction: Fantasy and/or Science Fiction (The Wall Around the World) - (1962) - essay by Anthony Boucher
• 9 - Introduction: Fantasy in Science Fiction - No (The Wall Around the World) - (1962) - essay by Frederik Pohl
• 11 - The Masters - (1954) - short story
• 18 - The Specter General - (1952) - novella
• 72 - Wolfie - (1954) - short story
• 80 - Emergency Rations - (1953) - short story
• 85 - The Burning - (1960) - short story
• 89 - Thimgs - (1958) - short story
• 101 - Test Area - (1955) - short story
• 108 - Prisoner of Love - (1962) - short story
• 121 - Invasion Report - (1954) - novelette
• 135 - The Wall Around the World - (1953) - novelette

When the Devil arrives in fin de siècle London in the form of the handsome and charming Prince Lucio Rimânez, his work promises to be easy. After all, in a world where science and materialism have replaced a belief in God, who will suspect Lucio of being Satan in disguise? Lucio sets his sights on Geoffrey Tempest, a starving novelist who has just inherited a fortune, and promises to guide him to power and fame. As the tragic story of Geoffrey's meteoric rise and fall unfolds, Marie Corelli lays bare the hypocrisy, immorality, and irreligiousness of modern life, satire which is as fresh and relevant today as ever.

The Sorrows of Satan (1895) is Corelli's masterpiece and the novel where her views on religion and society find their clearest and fullest expression. And on another level it is a savage and bitter riposte to her critics, who had vilified her previous novel, Barabbas(1893).

Marie Corelli (1855-1924) was one of the most popular and best-selling novelists of the late Victorian period, her books selling in the millions of copies worldwide. Although she saw herself as a female Shakespeare, critics have tended largely to dismiss her as a popular hack. This new edition of her most powerful novel allows twenty-first century readers to rediscover and reevaluate this fascinating writer. The Valancourt Books edition of The Sorrows of Satan includes the unabridged text of the first edition as well as a new introduction and notes by Julia Kuehn and an appendix containing rare contemporary reviews of Corelli's works.

Behind her hypnotic dance burns the wrath of an ancient Egyptian goddess...

"But towards midnight a Voice suddenly arose as it were like a wind in the desert, crying aloud: "Araxes! Araxes!" and wailing past, sank with a profound echo into the deep recesses of the vast Egyptian tomb."

In the shadowy corners of Cairo's high society, a mysterious woman named Princess Ziska appears, enchanting all who meet her. As the dashing Armand Gervase falls under her spell, dark secrets of an ancient Egyptian goddess emerge, weaving a tale of passionate revenge, supernatural forces, and gothic fantasy that spans millennia. Ancient curses awaken, and past lives collide with deadly consequences.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Meeting Infinity (2015), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, January 2017. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story orginally appeared in Wired, January 2017. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection (2018), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read this story for free at Wired Magazine.

Faeries disappeared over one hundred years ago, as suddenly as slipping through a doorway. It was only the very foolish, or the very determined, who held out hope for their return.

Welcome to Thistlemarsh - a ramshackle estate where an impoverished orphan and a beguiling Faerie collide in an enchanting novel of love, revenge, and ruin.

In the wake of The Great War, the world is a decidedly unmagical place for Mouse Dunne. She once dreamed of becoming a Faerie anthropologist, but with one telegram, her world shattered. At the Battle of the Somme, her cousin's body disappeared into the mud, and her brother was left with debilitating shell shock. It was time, she knew, to put aside childish dreams.

When Mouse receives news that her uncle has left her the Faerie-blessed Thistlemarsh Hall, a dilapidated manor in the English countryside, she must leave her brother's side and return to her childhood home to claim her birthright. But there is a catch in her uncle's offer: If Mouse does not rehabilitate the crumbling house in one month's time, she will forfeit her inheritance and any hope of caring for her brother.

It quickly becomes clear it's impossible to repair the manor in the allotted time, until a mysterious Faerie appears with a proposition. He offers to restore Thistlemarsh... for a price. Mouse knows better than to trust a Faerie - especially one so insufferably handsome and arrogant - but she is out of options. There are dark and magical forces at work in the house, and Mouse must confront the ghosts of her past and the secrets of her heart or lose Thistlemarsh, and herself, in the process.

The back-streets of Pakistan are no place for an Australian girl to be roving unaccompanied, let alone when she is wanted by both mafia and monsters alike. Desperate and afraid, Jasmine entrusts her survival to a community of creatures - the mysterious chuwa - whose intentions might be less than honourable. Marked by monsters, hunted through the labyrinth lanes of Lahore's Old City, Jasmine must face the ultimate sacrifice if she is to make it out alive.

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 2006. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 12 (2007), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

Fifteen original stories about our fear of and fascination with artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence has captured the imaginations of writers, readers, and scientists alike, from Karl Capek's R.U.R. to Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, from Robby the Robot to The Terminator and The Bicentennial Man, and, of course, Arthur C. Clarke's Hal 9000.

Now some of the most innovative thinkers in science fiction offer an intriguing variety of tales featuring the many forms of AI, from frightening to funny. These authors confront one of contemporary mankind's deepest concerns, what do we do when the machines we created evolve beyond us?

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Paul J. McAuley
• Tempest 43 - novelette by Stephen Baxter
• The Highway Code - novelette by Brian Stableford
• Salvage Rites - short story by Eric Brown
• The Kamikaze Code - short story by James Lovegrove
• Adam Robots - short story by Adam Roberts
• Seeds - novelette by Tony Ballantyne
• Lost Places of the Earth - short story by Steven Utley
• The Chinese Room - short story by Marly Youmans
• Three Princesses - short story by Robert Reed
• The New Cyberiad - novelette by Paul Di Filippo
• That Laugh - short story by Patrick O'Leary
• Alles In Ordnung - short story by Garry Kilworth
• Sweats - novelette by Keith Brooke
• Some Fast Thinking Needed - short story by Ian Watson
• Dragon King of the Eastern Sea - novelette by Chris Roberson
• About the Authors - essay by uncredited

When a whale beaches itself on the shore of the remote coastal town of Paradise Deep, the last thing any of the townspeople expect to find inside it is a man, silent and reeking of fish, but remarkably alive. The discovery of this mysterious person, soon christened Judah, sets the town scrambling for answers as its most prominent citizens weigh in on whether he is man or beast, blessing or curse, miracle or demon.

Though Judah is a shocking addition, the town of Paradise Deep is already full of unusual characters. King-me Sellers, self-appointed patriarch, has it in for an inscrutable woman known only as Devine's Widow, with whom he has a decades-old feud. Her granddaughter, Mary Tryphena, is just a child when Judah washes ashore, but finds herself tied to him all her life in ways she never expects. Galore is the story of the saga that develops between these families, full of bitterness and love, spanning two centuries.

Maybe there is no hope... or is there? Through an instrument called the myrdoscope, Brett Gryce sees a girl in a distant world, menaced by a giant. Her world is so vast that a second of Time there takes whole years of Earthly measure. During three years he catches glimpses of the girl and her peril, the giant about to bring down a huge tree on her head, and the girt awakening to a sense of terror, but all this has taken but a second of Time on that vaster world.

Brett and Martt Gryce set out to rescue the girl. In a space-ship invented by their father, Dr. Gryce, which can change its position in Time and Space. They increase their size to fifty million times what it was on Earth, and penetrate beyond our universe faster than the speed of light, until they are lost in the black immensity of Space.

Once More Into The Abyss by Dennis Danvers is the last of three novelettes about Stan, whose parents claimed to be aliens and either perished or went home via an abyss in the middle of New Mexico. Stan is drawn back to the Abyss when his wife is offered a job there studying alien artifacts. So Stan and his family (wife, son, brother and three dogs) take a road trip.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

A collection of some of the best short story work from the Hugo and World Fantasy Award winning author.

Table of Contents

• Preface - essay
• Introduction: Night Travel on the Orient Express Destination: Avram - essay by Ray Bradbury
• Sacheverell - (1964) - shortstory
• Take Wooden Indians - (1959) - novelette
• The Vat - (1961) - shortstory
• The Tail-Tied Kings - (1962) - shortstory
• Paramount Ulj - (1958) - shortstory
• A Bottle Full of Kismet - (1966) - shortstory
• The Goobers - (1965) - shortstory
• Dr. Morris Goldpepper Returns - (1962) - shortstory
• The Certificate - (1959) - shortstory
• Ogre in the Vly - (1959) - shortstory
• Après Nous - (1960) - shortstory
• Climacteric - (1960) - shortstory
• Yo-Ho, and Up - (1960) - shortstory
• The Sixty-Third Street Station - (1962) - shortstory
• The House the Blakeneys Built - (1965) - shortstory
• The Power of Every Root - (1967) - novelette
• The Sources of the Nile - (1961) - novelette

Readers are well aware that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein: few know how many other tales of terror she created. In addition to Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote some surprisingly effective horror stories. The year after Little Women appeared, Louisa May Alcott published one of the first mummy tales. These ladies weren't alone. From the earliest days of Gothic and horror fiction, women were exploring the frontiers of fear, dreaming dark dreams that will still keep you up at night.

More Deadly than the Male includes unexpected horror tales by Louisa May Alcott and Harriet Beecher Stowe, and forgotten writers like Mary Cholmondely and Charlotte Riddell, whose work deserves a modern audience. Readers will be drawn in by the familiar names and intrigued by their rare stories.

In The Beckside Boggle, Alice Rea brings a common piece of English folklore to hair-raising life, while Helene Blavatsky, best known as the founder of the spiritualist Theosophical Society, conjures up a solid and satisfying ghost story in The Cave of the Echoes. Edith Wharton's great novel The Age of Innocence won her the Pulitzer prize, yet her horror stories are known only to a comparative few.

Table of Contents:

• The Transformation - short story by Mary Shelley
• The Dark Lady - (1850) - short fiction by Mrs. S. C. Hall
• Morton Hall - (1853) - short fiction by Mrs. Gaskell [as by Elizabeth Gaskell]
• A Ghost Story - (1858) - short story by Ada Trevanion
• An Engineer's Story - (1866) - novelette by Amelia B. Edwards
• Lost in a Pyramid, or the Mummy's Curse - (1869) - short story by Louisa May Alcott
• Tom Toothacre's Ghost Story - (1871) - short story by Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Kentucky's Ghost - (1868) - short story by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
• At Chrighton Abbey - (1871) - novelette by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
• The Fate of Madame Cabanel - (1880) - short story by Eliza Lynn Linton
• Forewarned, Forearmed - (1874) - short story by Mrs. J. H. Riddell
• The Portrait - (1885) - novelette by Margaret Oliphant
• The Shrine Of Death - (1886) - short story by Lady Dilke
• The Beckside Boggle - (1886) - short story by Alice Rea
• The Hidden Door - (1886) - novelette by Vernon Lee
• Unexplained - (1888) - short fiction by Mary Louisa Molesworth
• Let Loose - (1890) - short story by Mary Cholmondeley
• The Cave of the Echoes - short story by Helena P. Blavatsky
• The Yellow Wall Paper - (1937) - short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (variant of The Yellow Wall-Paper 1892)
• The Mass for the Dead - short story by E. Nesbit
• The Tyburn Ghost - (1896) - short story by The Countess of Munster
• The Duchess at Prayer - (1900) - novelette by Edith Wharton
• The Vacant Lot - (1902) - short story by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
• An Unscientific Story - (1903) - short story by Louise J. Strong
• A Dissatisfied Soul - (1904) - short fiction by Annie Trumbull Slosson
• The Readjustment - (1908) - short fiction by Mary Austin

She's soaked, her hair is matted, her skin is red, her eyes are closed and her arms are by her side. From her bare feet small roots have formed and reach into the ground, anchoring her. If we tried to pick her up now, we'd need a saw. It would hurt. It might kill her.

Bren works for an obscure company with colleagues he's never met, and who might not be real. His partner, Caelyn, is looking for something more but isn't sure what. The only thing she knows for certain is that humans are breaking the world and she's powerless to do anything about it.

One day Caelyn finds a group in a forest who believe that if they stand still for long enough they will become trees. And then she discovers another... The idea is spreading. Soon, people go missing and trees appear in unlikely places. Is it really possible?

As cities decay and the world becomes greener, Caelyn sees nothing to fear. Bren is not so sure. Finally, they must ask themselves what they're prepared to give up - and if they are ready to stand still.

Arborescenceis a compelling, deeply moving novel about connection and disconnection, ambition and apathy, loss and hope, and how we don't always know what we have until the damage is done.

The future is curious.

STRONGER

Today our bodies define us. We color our hair; tattoo our skin; pierce our ears, brows, noses. We lift weights, run miles, break records. We are flesh and blood and bone.

FASTER

Tomorrow has different rules. The future is no longer about who we are--it's about who we want to be. If you can dream it, you can be it. Science will make us smarter, healthier, flawless in every way. Our future is boundless.

MORE BEAUTIFUL

This is a story that begins tomorrow. It's a story about us. It's a story about who comes after us. And it's a story about perfection. Because perfection has a way of getting ugly.

Spanning nine decades and branded by the most trusted authority on film, Turner Classic Movies: Must-See Sci-Fi showcases 50 of the most shocking, weird, wonderful, and mind-bending movies ever made.

From A Trip to the Moon (1902)to Arrival (2016), science fiction cinema has produced a body of classics with a broader range of styles, stories, and subject matter than perhaps any other film genre. They are movies that embed themselves in the depths of the mind, coloring our view of day-to-day reality and probably fueling a few dreams (and nightmares) along the way.

In Turner Classic Movies: Must-See Sci-Fi, fifty unforgettable films are profiled, including beloved favorites like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Fantastic Voyage (1966), groundbreaking shockers like Planet of the Apes (1968) and Alien (1979), and lesser-known landmarks like Things to Come (1936) and Solaris (1972). Illustrated by astounding color and black-and-white images, the book presents the best of this mind-bending genre, detailing through insightful commentary and behind-the-scenes stories why each film remains essential viewing. A perfect gift for any film buff or sci-fi fanatic!

In this whimsical, original folktale, written and illustrated throughout in vibrant full color by two celebrated masters of modern fantasy, a young girl's journey becomes an enchanting coming-of-age story about magic, friendship, and the courage to shape one's own destiny.

Lillian Kindred spends her days exploring the Tanglewood Forest, a magical, rolling wilderness that she imagines to be full of fairies. The trouble is, Lillian has never seen a wisp of magic in her hills--until the day the cats of the forest save her life by transforming her into a kitten. Now she must set out on a perilous adventure that will lead her through untamed lands of fabled creates--from Old Mother Possum to the fearsome Bear People--to find a way to make things right.

Co-winner of the 2022 Novel Prize, this incredible life-after-death novel asks us to consider how much of our memory, of our bodies, of the world as we know it ? how much of what we love can we lose before we are lost? And then what happens? This third perspective on myself is disconcerting. The heroine of the spare and haunting It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over is voraciously alive in the afterlife. Adrift yet keenly aware, she notes every bizarre detail of her new reality. And even if she has forgotten her name and much of what connects her to her humanity, she remembers with an implacable and nearly unbearable longing the place where she knew herself and was known?where she loved and was loved. Traveling across the landscapes of time and of space, heading always west, and carrying a dead but laconically opinionated crow in her chest, our undead narrator encounters and loses parts of her body and her self in one terrifying, hilarious, and heartbreaking situation after another. A bracing writer of great nerve and verve, Anne de Marcken bends reality (and the reader's mind) with throwaway assurance. It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over plumbs mortality and how it changes everything, except possibly love. Delivering a near-Beckettian whopping to the reader's imagination, this is one of the sharpest and funniest novels of recent years, a tale for our dispossessed times.

When Mike Galloway, a regular sort of guy for San Francisco, 2014, descends into the nightmare world of poverty and joblessness, he finds he must face more than starvation and homelessness. He's now at the mercy of a deadly world of political intrigue...from the future. He awakens to find his mind has been slipped into the body of a homeless woman, his body taken over by a man from the future, and nothing can ever be the same.

Now, to survive, he must combat neo-Nazi forces from the future who are desperate to mold the world to fit their own twisted vision. Galloway might not have thought the world perfect as it was, but these men will stop at nothing to make it a living hell for everyone but their chosen few.

What if you are forced to be more than you ever dreamed? And there's a cosmic gun pointed at your head to make sure you'll do it. Murderer or creator? That's Evet's choice in the 23rd Century...

Evet is a boundary-testing writer in the future who is attacked from the past. Accused of murder, she races to escape an alluring police torturer and her own crisscrossing identities that everyone seems to know better than she does. In a lonely cosmos with the latest drugs, she rebels in the oldest way: she fights against getting caught.

But when she's forced to know other lives, the wind of eternity stops her. She learns the terror that an ultimate power may be hers: control over life and death.

I remember the first time I began to understand that things might not be the same again.

What's a girl to do when her world is invaded by warriors from the ancient world? That's the problem faced by sixteen-year-old Macy, who sees her quiet, normal life in suburban Minnesota turned upside down when things that should never be possible begin to transform the landscape all around her. The cable stops working, the phone lines die – and then the horsemen come to town. It's not the same America that she last went to sleep in.

Ticketed to a refugee camp by the marauding Scythian armies, Macy and her family come to believe that heading down the Mississippi by boat is their one escape from the encroaching madness. But as they make their way downriver, Macy's world just keeps getting stranger, and the wooden submarines, wasp-borne plagues, and talking dogs are the least of her problems: For in this upside-down world, old identities warp and family bonds are sorely tested.

Science fiction fans have voted for the Hugo Awards for best science fiction almost every year since 1953. Science fiction professionals have presented the Nebula Awards to their peers since 1965. In all this time, lists of winners have been widely available, but the losers have usually been ignored. In 1970 long-time fan Howard DeVore started publishing a complete listing of Hugo and Nebula awards, including the stories that were nominated but did not win. The fact that stories were nominated implied that they had considerable merit. Mr. DeVore felt that a complete listing would let fans compare them.

The International Fantasy Awards may have inspired the Hugos, so he added them. DeVore brought out new editions year by year, publishing and distributing them himself with the aid of a number of devoted science fiction fans. By 1998 the task had grown to the point where Mr. DeVore happily relinquished the job to Advent. This edition includes introductory and historical essays explaining how each award got started and how nominees and winners are chosen, plus commentary in the yearly listings.

The ancient starship La Chasse Gallerie is found drifting perilously in space. Despite heavy damage from alien Laagi warships, incredibly the ship is till intact and the voice of its pilot, Raoul Penard, comes through loud and clear.

But Petard died over one hundred years ago.

On Earth, frantic investigation reveals that Petard may be dead but his mind is very much alive, merged with the ship itself. The staggering potential of this evolutionary breakthrough compels the scientists to embark on a technological journey of astonishing discovery.

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Orbit 6 (1970), edited by Damon Knight. The story can also be found in the anthologies Best SF: 1970 (1971), edited by Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss, The Dark Descent: The Evolution of Horror (1987), edited by David G. Hartwell. and A Fabulous Formless Darkness (1991), edited by David G. Hartwell. It is included in the collections The Shores Beneath (1971), Getting Into Death (1974) and Fundamental Disch (1980).

Rehya is a hunter with forbidden magic in Mennama Valley, where magic has long been outlawed. Each winter, on the night of the Blood Moon, young women are forced into marriage for the valley's supposed prosperity. But when Governor Kyra decrees that girls as young as fifteen must become Blood Moon Brides, Rehya's fate is sealed.

After her father's death, she loses her chance to escape and is paraded before suitors on Show Day. When she lashes out, she's punished and sent to the Nest--a brutal place where she must choose between submission and rebellion, between survival and justice.

A powerful, richly imagined story of defiance and hope, Blood Moon Bride is a testament to courage, freedom, and the fire that burns in those who refuse to be silenced.

Considered one of the most promising science fiction writers, Cory Doctorow's name is already mentioned with such SF greats as J.G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, William Gibson and Bruce Sterling. He was awarded the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Science Fiction Writer at the 2000 Hugo Awards. Cory's singular tales push the boundaries of the genre, exploring pop culture, trash, nerd pride, and the nexus of technology and social change. His work is a roadmap to the possible futures that may arise in our lifetimes.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: The Kingdom of Magic Junk - (2003) - essay by Bruce Sterling
• Craphound - (1998) - short story
• A Place So Foreign - (2000) - novella
• All Day Sucker - short story
• To Market, To Market: The Re-Branding of Billy Bailey - (2000) - short story
• Return to Pleasure Island - (2000) - novelette
• Shadow of the Mothaship - (2000) - short story
• Home Again, Home Again - (1999) - novelette
• The Super Man and the Bugout - (2001) - short story
• 0wnz0red - (2002) - novelette

The Bronze Age. The era of Troy, of Gilgamesh, of the dawning of human mastery over the earth. For decades, fantasists have set tales of heroism and adventure in imagined worlds based on the real Bronze Age, from the "Hyborean Age" of the Conan stories to the Third Age of Middle-earth.

Now bestselling science fiction and fantasy author Harry Turtledove, a noted expert on the ancient world, teams up with author and Egyptologist Noreen Doyle to present fourteen new tales of the real Bronze Age from some of the best writers in science fiction.

In The First Heroes: here is Gene Wolfe's mock-journal of a man from the future who travels with figures out of history and mythology; Judith Tarr's tale of a a town that sends its resident goddess to try to learn the secrets of the morose God of Chariots; Harry Turtledove's story about mythological beings witnessing the devastating effect of the first humans on the Earth's natural order; and a poignant new story from the late Poul Anderson, in which a modern scholar is sent to the late Bronze Age to witness the end of an era, emerging with memories from the past as vibrant and intact as those from his accustomed life.

Table of Contents:

• Definition - essay
• Introduction - essay by Harry Turtledove and Noreen Doyle
• The Lost Pilgrim - (2004) - novelette by Gene Wolfe
• How the Bells Came from Yang to Hubei - shortstory by B. W. Clough
• The Gods of Chariots - novelette by Judith Tarr
• The Horse of Bronze - novella by Harry Turtledove
• A Hero for the Gods - shortstory by Josepha Sherman
• Blood Wolf - novelette by S. M. Stirling
• Ankhtifi the Brave is dying - novelette by Noreen Doyle
• The God Voice - shortstory by Katharine Kerr and Debra Doyle
• Orqo Afloat on the Willkamayu - novelette by Karen Jordan Allen
• The Myrmidons - shortstory by Larry Hammer
• Giliad - novella by Gregory Feeley
• The Sea Mother's Gift - shortstory by Laura Frankos
• The Matter of the Ahhiyans - shortstory by Lois Tilton
• The Bog Sword - novelette by Poul Anderson

This short story originally appeared in Realms of Fantasy, April 2007. It can also be found in the anthology Fantasy: The Best of the Year, 2008 Edition, edited by Rich Horton.

Distant planets, galaxies, alien races--the universe is vast and filled with an almost unimaginable range of possibilities. But imagine it we can. Here are more than twenty stories from the most inventive writers in the field, including:

Poul Anderson * Stephen Baxter * Greg Bear * Gregory Benford * Arthur C. Clarke * Hal Clement * Greg Egan * H. B. Fyfe * R. A. Lafferty * Geoffrey A. Landis * Ursula K. Le Guin * Jack McDevitt * Larry Niven * G. David Nordley * Edgar Pangborn * Kim Stanley Robinson * James H. Schmitz * Cordwainer Smith * Michael Swanwick * James Tiptree, Jr. * John Varley * Vernor Vinge

Table of Contents:

• Preface - essay by Gardner Dozois
• The Sentinel - (1951) - short story by Arthur C. Clarke
• Moonwalk - (1952) - novelette by H. B. Fyfe
• Grandpa - (1955) - novelette by James H. Schmitz
• The Red Hills of Summer - (1959) - novelette by Edgar Pangborn
• The Longest Voyage - (1960) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• Hot Planet - (1963) - short story by Hal Clement
• Drunkboat - (1963) - novelette by Cordwainer Smith
• Becalmed in Hell - (1965) - short story by Larry Niven
• Nine Hundred Grandmothers - (1966) - short story by R. A. Lafferty
• The Keys to December - (1966) - novelette by Roger Zelazny
• Vaster Than Empires and More Slow - (1971) - novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
• A Meeting With Medusa - (1971) - novelette by Arthur C. Clarke
• The Man Who Walked Home - (1972) - short story by James Tiptree, Jr.
• Long Shot - (1972) - short story by Vernor Vinge
• In the Hall of the Martian Kings - (1976) - novella by John Varley
• Ginungagap - (1980) - novelette by Michael Swanwick
• Exploring Fossil Canyon - (1982) - novelette by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Promises to Keep - (1984) - novelette by Jack McDevitt
• Lieserl - (1993) - short story by Stephen Baxter
• Crossing Chao Meng Fu - (1997) - novelette by G. David Nordley
• Wang's Carpets - (1995) - novelette by Greg Egan
• A Dance to Strange Musics - (1998) - novelette by Gregory Benford
• Approaching Perimelasma - (1998) - novelette by Geoffrey A. Landis

Once upon a time, Andrew had cut out his heart and given it to this boy, and he was very sure Thomas had no idea that Andrew would do anything for him. Protect him. Lie for him. Kill for him.

High school senior Andrew Perrault finds refuge in the twisted fairytales that he writes for the only person who can ground him to reality--Thomas Rye, the boy with perpetually ink-stained hands and hair like autumn leaves. And with his twin sister, Dove, inexplicably keeping him at a cold distance upon their return to Wickwood Academy, Andrew finds himself leaning on his friend even more.

But something strange is going on with Thomas. His abusive parents have mysteriously vanished, and he arrives at school with blood on his sleeve. Thomas won't say a word about it, and shuts down whenever Andrew tries to ask him questions. Stranger still, Thomas is haunted by something, and he seems to have lost interest in his artwork - whimsically macabre sketches of the monsters from Andrew's wicked stories.

Desperate to figure out what's wrong with his friend, Andrew follows Thomas into the off-limits forest one night and catches him fighting a nightmarish monster - Thomas's drawings have come to life and are killing anyone close to him. To make sure no one else dies, the boys battle the monsters every night. But as their obsession with each other grows stronger, so do the monsters, and Andrew begins to fear that the only way to stop the creatures might be to destroy their creator...

The macabre but beautiful work, Les Chants de Maldoror, has achieved a considerable reputation as one of the earliest and most extraordinary examples of Surrealist writing. It is a long narrative prose poem which celebrates the principle of Evil in an elaborate style and with a passion akin to religious fanaticism.

Insolent and defiant, the Chants de Maldoror, by the self-styled Comte de Lautréamont (1846-70), depicts a sinister and sadistic world of unrestrained savagery and brutality. One of the earliest and most astonishing examples of surrealist writing, it follows the experiences of Maldoror, a master of disguises pursued by the police as the incarnation of evil, as he makes his way through a nightmarish realm of angels and gravediggers, hermaphrodites and prostitutes, lunatics and strange children. Delirious, erotic, blasphemous and grandiose by turns, this hallucinatory novel captured the imagination of artists and writers as diverse as Modigliani, Verlaine, André Gide and André Breton; it was hailed by the twentieth-century Surrealist movement as a formative and revelatory masterpiece.

WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the collection Beluthahatchie and Other Stories (2000), and was reprinted in Asimov's Science Fiction, October-November 2001.

Utopia 3 is a movement spreading through the world, a project designed to mold everyone into people devoted to brotherhood and peace. A large portion of Europe is set aside for members of the pilot program. Each member is permitted to travel anywhere in the project, do anything, take anything without limit. Each person undergoes an indoctrination designed to prevent destructive or harmful acts. This is the meaning and hope of Utopia 3.

This story focuses on three people: Eileen Brant, a weary young woman escaping the dead-end life she was leading; Justin Benareck, a man who tries either too hard or not at all; and Bo Staefler, who, accompanied by a silent Arab boy, accidentally joins Utopia 3 by standing too near the genuine members at the wrong moment. These three people are caught up in a growing scheme, a deadly and evil plan that threatens to destroy the project and, ultimately, the entire world. A conflict greater than any war in history is about to be unleashed and only Brant, Benareck and Staefler can hope to prevent it.

Welcome to Tvibura and Tviburi, the richly imagined twin planets that stand at the center of Greg Egan's extraordinary new novella, Phoresis.

These two planets--one inhabited, one not--exist in extreme proximity to one another. As the narrative begins, Tvibura, the inhabited planet, faces a grave and imminent threat: the food supply is dwindling, and the conditions necessary for sustaining life are growing more and more erratic. Faced with the prospect of eventual catastrophe, the remarkable women of Tvibura launch a pair of ambitious, long-term initiatives. The first involves an attempt to reanimate the planet's increasingly dormant ecosphere. The second concerns the building of a literal "bridge between worlds" that will connect Tvibura to its (hopefully) habitable sibling.

These initiatives form the core of the narrative, which is divided into three sections and takes place over many generations. The resulting triptych is at once an epic in miniature, a work of hard SF filled with humanist touches, and a compressed, meticulously detailed example of original world building. Most centrally, it is a portrait of people struggling--and sometimes risking everything--to preserve a future they will not live to see. Erudite and entertaining, Phoresis shows us Egan at his formidable best, offering the sort of intense, visionary pleasures only science fiction can provide.

Alexandria, Egypt -- 1919

The exorcism was almost complete. The priests had overcome the old man's fierce resistance, and as if lancing a boil, had drawn the evil power from his body. But before they could finish the ceremony of purification, something happened -- something that would change the world.

New York City -- Today

The Forrester family was rich, powerful and nasty -- the kind of people who would steal the pennies from a dead man's eyes. Arrogant and contemptuous, they ruined lives as easily as they bought and sold companies. Yet they were suddenly faced with a problem: Tony Filestra. Although he was merely a pawn in their corporate empire, Filestra had an ally more ruthless than even the Forresters -- an aged grandmother with a thirst for revenge and the incredible power of the... the Evil Eye.

Steve Harrison's strange visions in an Egyptian tomb return to haunt him, and his now deteriorating body and diseased mind can only be restored through a confrontation with evil forces.

Accepting a job playing a "channeller" at a Hollywood party, would-be actor Adriean Finesse finds the role easier than he would have thought when something or someone actually tries to take over his mind.

A group of workmen unwittingly disturb an ancient Indian burial ground and unleash the Ancient One, a creature with a taste for evil that can only be stopped by one person.

Nebula Awardd nominated short story. It first appeared in The 1991 World Fantasy Convention and was reprinted in Omni, July 1992. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Sixth Annual Collection (1993), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling and Nebula Awards 29 (1995), edited by Pamela Sargent. It is included in the collections Slippage: Precariously Poised, Previously Uncollected Stories (1997) and The Top of the Volcano: The Award-Winning Stories of Harlan Ellison (2015).

The werewolf is one of the great iconic figures of horror in folklore, legend, film, and literature. And connoisseurs of horror fiction know that The Werewolf of Paris is a cornerstone work, a masterpiece of the genre that deservedly ranks with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Endore's classic novel has not only withstood the test of time since it was first published in 1933, but it boldly used and portrayed elements of sexual compulsion in ways that had never been seen before, at least not in horror literature.

In this gripping work of historical fiction, Endore's werewolf, an outcast named Bertrand Caillet, travels across pre-Revolutionary France seeking to calm the beast within. Stunning in its sexual frankness and eerie, fog-enshrouded visions, this novel was decidedly influential for the generations of horror and science fiction authors who came afterward.

"His total conviction in multiple existences within our physical world is as much an inspiration to some of the most brilliant fiction in Yoruba writing as it is a deeply felt urge to 'justify the ways of God to man.'"--Wole Soyinka, translator and Nobel Laureate

A classic work of African literature, Forest of a Thousand Daemons is the first novel to be written in the Yoruba language. First published in Nigeria in 1939, it is one of that country's most revered and widely read works, and its influence on Nigerian literature is profound, most notably in the works of Amos Tutuola.

A triumph of the mythic imagination, the narrative unfolds in a landscape where, true to Yoruba cosmology, human, natural, and supernatural beings are compellingly and wonderfully alive at once: a world of warriors, sages and kings; magical trees and snake people; spirits, Ghommids, and bog-trolls. Here are the adventures of Akara-ogun--son of a brave warrior and wicked witch--as he journeys into the forest, encountering and dealing with all-too-real unforeseen forces, engaging in dynamic spiritual and moral relationships with personifications of his fate, projections of the terrors that haunt man.

Distinguished Nobel Prize-winning author Wole Soyinka offers a supple and elegant translation and provides an essay on the special challenges of translating Fagunwa from the Yoruba into English, along with a glossary of Yoruba and unfamiliar words.

With illustrations by acclaimed Nigerian printmaker Bruce Onobrakpeya.

Fifteen billion years from now, Earth is a dying planet, its skies darkened by the ashes of burned-out galaxies, its molten core long cooled. The sunless planet is nearing the day of final gravitational collapse in the surrounding galaxy. Mutations and evolution have led to a great disparity of life-forms, while civilization has resorted to the primitive.

Young Deyv of the Turtle Tribe knew nothing of his world's history or its fate. He lived only to track down the wretched Yawtl who had stolen his precious Soul Egg. Joined by other victims of the same thief - the feisty Vana and the plant-man Sloosh - the group sets off across a nightmare landscape of monster-haunted jungle and wetland. Their search leads them ultimately to the jeweled wasteland of the Shemibob, an ageless being from another star who knows Earth's end is near and holds the only key to escape.

Contents:

• Down in the Black Gang (1969)
• The Shadow of Space (1967)
• A Bowl Bigger Than Earth (1967)
• Riverworld (1966)
• A Few Miles (1960)
• Prometheus (1961)
• The Blasphemers (1964)
• How Deep the Grooves (1963)

The forces of Evil are on the March again. All our Heroes of Yesteryear are gone. Only one Man can save us now. Greatheart Silver.

A collection of three Greatheart Silver novellas:

"Greatheart Silver in Showdown at Shootout" (1975)

"The Return of Greatheart Silver, or The Secret Life of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" (1975)

"Greatheart Silver in The First Command, or Inglories Galore" (1977)

As billions of people around the globe sit glued to their television sets in the year 2015, Richard Orme, captain of the first expedition to land on Mars, takes another giant step for mankind. His first words, as he steps of the landing craft onto the red planet, are transmitted to Earth minutes later: "Christopher Columbus, you should be here." Perhaps he was. Someone has been here. A spaceship sits half-buried under the red dust and heavy boulders. Nearby, there's a tunnel door. Richard Orme and his crew, dragged into the tunnel by Martians, enter a strange subterranean world, a world where Martians pay homage to a sunlike globe - floating high above their cities of the interior. Orme thought they were sun worshippers. But there is a man who dwells within the flaming orb. And these people call him "Jesus." And the man they called "Jesus" would go back to Earth. He would be labeled "the Anti-Christ". And Richard Orme asked himself, Would history repeat itself... once more?

Hugo Award nominated story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1960. The story is included in the collections Strange Relations (1960), The Book of Philip José Farmer (1973) and The Best of Philip Jose Farmer (2006).

Table of Contents:

• One Down, One to Go - (1990) - shortstory
• UFO Versus IRS - shortstory
• The Making of Revelation, Part I - (1980) - novelette
• The Long Wet Purple Dream of Rip van Winkle - (1981) - novelette
• Osiris on Crutches - (1976) - shortstory
• St. Francis Kisses His Ass Goodbye - (1989) - novelette
• The Oögenesis of Bird City - (1970) - shortstory
• Riders of the Purple Wage - (1967) - novella

Hugo Award winning and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in the anthology Dangerous Visions (1967), edited by Harlan Ellison. The story can also be found in the anthology The Hugo Winners, Volume 2: (1963-70) (1971), edited by Isaac Asimov. It is included in the collections The Purple Book (1982), The Classic Philip José Farmer, 1964-1973 (1984), Riders of the Purple Wage and The Best of Philip Jose Farmer (2006).

River of Eternity was written some thirty years ago. This is the first publication anywhere.

In 1952 Philip José Farmer made the decision to enter the Shasta Science-Fiction Prize Novel Contest. He won that contest and River of Eternity was to be published the following year. The fact that it has never seen print until this edition makes its history one of the most interesting in the publishing industry.

River of Eternity is the revised version of the original Riverworld novel which formed the basis for the five novels in Farmer's highly acclaimed Riverworld series. It differs in many respects from the later novels in the series but is filled with all the adventure and sense of wonder which has made Philip José Farmer one of the most widely read and important science fiction writers for more than three decades.

His journey began with the blast of a shotgun aimed at a gleaming nimbus of light. The tightening of his finger on the trigger was almost accidental; his punishment was almost merciful. But his journey has just begun, and when it is over Paul Eyre will no longer be human....

A collection of connected stories:

"The Two-Edged Gift" (1974)

"The Star-Touched" (1974)

"The Evolution of Paul Eyre" (1974)

"Passing On" (1975)

"Osiris on Crutches" (1976)

A collection of three novellas by Philip José Farmer

Table of Contents:

• The Alley Man
• The Captain's Daughter
• The God Business

Hugo Award nominated story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1959. The story can also be found in the anthologies Baker's Dozen: 13 Short Science Fiction Novels (1985) edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh, and The Great SF Stories 21 (1959) (1990), edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg. It is included in the collections The Alley God (1962), The Book of Philip José Farmer (1973) and The Best of Philip Jose Farmer (2006).

A selection of stories from throughout Farmer's career through the early seventies.

Contents:

• Foreword by Philip José Farmer
• My Sister's Brother (1960)
• Skinburn (1972)
• The Alley Man (1959)
• Father's in the Basement (1972)
• oward the Beloved City (1972)
• Polytropical Paramyths [essay]
• Totem and Taboo (1954)
• Don't Wash the Carats (1968)
• The Sumerian Oath (1972)
• The Voice of the Sonar in My Vermiform Appendix (1971)
• Brass and Gold (or Horse and Zeppelin in Beverly Hills) (1971)
• Only Who Can Make a Tree? (1971)
• An Exclusive Interview with Lord Greystoke (1972)
• Sexual Implications of the Charge of the Light Brigade (1967)
• The Obscure Life and Hard Times of Kilgore Trout: A Skirmish in Biography (1971)
• Thanks for the Feast [essay]
• Notes on Philip José Farmer (1972) [essay by Leslie A. Fiedler]

Contents:

• 7 - The Long Warpath - (1962) - novel (variant of Cache from Outer Space)
• 191 - Rastignac the Devil - [The Sturch] - (1954) - novella
• 267 - They Twinkled Like Jewels - (1954) - short story

Jack, a struggling art student, is hired to drive a mute, crippled girl across the country. Tappy Concord can barely communicate, but something about her touches Jack, so much so that he follows her into the mountains - and through the gateway to another world.

There he finds himself surrounded by strange, alien creatures, and pursued by the relentless agents of the Gaol, an all-powerful galactic empire. Only one force in all the cosmos can hope to overcome the tyranny of the Gaol: The Imago, an immortal spirit capable of evolving into a being of immense power. The Imago can be anywhere or anyone... maybe even a crippled human girl.

The Caterpillar's Question is a world-spanning science fiction odyssey - as only Piers Anthony and Philip José Farmer could tell it.

Contents:

• The Oogenesis of Bird City
• Riders of the Purple Wage
• Spiders of the Purple Mage
• The Making of Revelation, Part 1
• The Long Wet Purple Dream of Rip Van Winkle

Ulysses Singing Bear had no idea that his scientific work would result in a twenty-million-year journey to a world peopled by the descendants of present-day animals. It was the world of Awina, the cat-woman with an impossible love for Ulysses. It was the planet of a mammoth continent-spanning intelligence –The Tree– who knew that Ulysses, the newly-awakened Stone God, could destroy his reign.

To enable his species to survive, Ulysses had to find a human mate. To do so, and to fulfill the single condition set by his worshippers, he had to confront The Tree. It would have been an easy task for a god, but he was only a man—and the only man at that.

Philip José Farmer, the wildly creative author of the bestselling Riverworld series, here delights his wide readership with a compelling new novel. All the skills and the soaring imagination which have won Farmer over a million dedicated fans are abundant in this highly charged, far-future, space adventure story.

The Unreasoning Mask is the story of Ramstan, captain of al-Buraq, a rare model starship. It is capable of alaraf drive: instantaneous travel between two points of space. Three of these special ships were built to explore and make contact with the many sentient races inhabiting the universe. Suddenly, one of the ships mysteriously disappears. And then it is discovered that an unidentifiable "creature" is marauding through the universe, totally annihilating intelligent life on planet after planet.

Ranstan, a thoughtful and moral man, becomes a fascinated yet reluctant pawn in the hands of the strange forces which arise to fight the deadly destroyer. Ultimately, he is the one man who, in a fearful race against time, can stop the destruction. But what price must he pay for becoming the savior of intelligent-kind?

The Unreasoning Mask is Farmer at his best--fast-paced, complex, slightly mystical, high-action adventure.

Ishmael, lone survivor of the doomed whaling ship Pequod, falls through a rift in time and space to a future Earth - an Earth of blood-sucking vegetation and a blood-red sun, of barren canyons where once the Pacific Ocean roared. Here too there are whales to hunt - but whales that soar through a dark blue sky....

Hugo Award-winner Philip José Farmer spins a fascinating tale of whaling ships and sailors of the sky in a bizarre future world where there are no seas to sail and no safe harbor to call home....

From the Jove edition:

Man had colonized the planets, and lost his birthright. Civilization was a lonely chain of space stations linked by terror.

The Empire kept the pioneers enslaved with a weapon that shattered any protest into screaming insanity.

All they had left was the dream of someday returning home. Until their dream exploded in the holocaust that destroyed the Earth.

But the embers of their dead planet sparked a brain-blasting revolution that swept the galaxy. A revolution of exiles in an alien universe - with nothing left to lose...

from the Ace edition: Roger Two Hawks thought he'd probably bought it when he bailed out of his flaming bomber. His plane had made an eerie shudder just before he jumped, but nothing could have prepared him for what he found on the ground: Men dressed in skins, fighting with knives and arrows, speaking no language he'd ever heard. The War - and with it all the rest of the world he knew - had vanished, and been replaced by a savage struggle for control of a primitive parallel Earth. Two Hawks' technological know-how makes him a valuable prize for his captors - too valuable to be set free ... and too dangerous for the other side to leave alive.

From the MonkeyBrain edition: In this classic of alternate history by grand master Philip Jose Farmer, Native American bomber pilot Roger Two Hawks bails out over enemy territory in WWII, only to find himself on another Earth—one in which the American continents never rose from the waters, and the ancestors of the American Indians remained in Asia and Europe—an Earth embroiled in a world war of its own, with Two Hawks caught in the middle.

originally published as The Gate of Time (Belmont, 1966), the novel was revised, expanded and retitled Two Hawks from Earth (Farmer's preferred title) for the 1979 Ace edition.

Up from the Bottomless Pit and Other Stories is the ultimate collection for Philip José Farmer fans, including 140,000 words (over 375 pages) of very obscure, never-before-collected short stories, a novel beginning, non-fiction, and a complete novel as well.

All of these pieces have only seen publication in Farmerphile, a fanzine with a regular circulation well under two hundred copies per issue. Subterranean Press is proud to give these newly discovered gems a more permanent home, in an edition specifically geared toward Phil's most ardent fans. In addition to the rarities, there are copious introductions and numerous black and white illustrations.

Philip José Farmer: maker of universes and chronicler of fantastic adventures, legendary Hugo Award winner and Nebula Grand Master... Today few realize that Farmer was writing literary fiction long before he set the science fiction world afire with his groundbreaking "The Lovers." Up from the Bottomless Pit and Other Stories collects these little known treasures, along with other fantastical tales--all making their first appearance here in book form.

Sure to excite readers of science fiction everywhere is the inclusion of Farmer's "lost" novel of the ultimate ecological nightmare. Set in an alternate past circa the 1970s, Up from the Bottomless Pit tells of a world so ravenous in its desire for oil that it has thrown caution to the wind. Using an experimental laser drill, human-kind burns a hole through the ocean floor only to unleash a deadly torrent that threatens to wipe out all life on the planet.

With its first-time collection of a lost novel, ultra-rare works, tales of science fiction and fantasy, Up from the Bottomless Pit and Other Stories presents a compelling new look at one of speculative fiction's most beloved literary giants.

Along with Up from the Bottomless Pit, a novel originally serialized in 2005, the collection includes:

• Philip José Farmer: On the Road to the Emerald City - essay by Christopher Paul Carey
• That Great Spanish Author, Ernesto - (2006)
• The Essence of the Poison - (2006)
• Keep Your Mouth Shut - (2006)
• The Face That Launched a Thousand Eggs - (2005)
• The Doll Game - (2006)
• Introduction to The Rebels Unthawed - essay by Win Scott Eckert
• The Rebels Unthawed
• The Frames - (2007)
• The Light-Hog Incident - (2007)
• The Unnaturals - (2005)
• A Spy in the U.S. of Gonococcia - (2007)
• A Peoria Night
• I Still Live! - (2006)
• Hayy ibn Yaqzam by Abu ibn Tufayl: An Arab Mowgli - (1991) - essay
• Why Do I Write? - (2006) - essay

This first posthumous collection of the short fiction of Philip Jose Farmer is a celebration of the impressive variety of his prodigious output, from the space adventures he published in the science fiction magazines of the 1950s through the 1970s, to his acerbic satires of religion and medicine, to his fictional biographies and memoirs, to his beloved Riverworld.

Appearing for the first time in a Philip Jose Farmer collection are his last three 'Riverworld' stories--featuring characters from his own family history--as well as the 'memoir' of Lord Greystoke which he claimed to have merely edited. Other highlights include 'Attitudes,' the first of the Father Carmody stories; 'The Two-Edged Gift,' which introduces the fictional science fiction writer Leo Queequeg Tincrowdor; 'Toward the Beloved City' (about which its original editor said he had never before really understood the Book of Revelations); and 'Father's in the Basement,' a little-known Gothic horror tale which is also a satire of the writing profession.

Farmer created some of the most famous worlds in science fiction, but he also wrote in many worlds, and readers familiar only with his best-known classics may find a few surprises among these tales.

Simon Wagstaff narrowly escapes the Deluge that destroys Earth when he happens upon an abandoned spaceship. A man without a planet, he gains immortality from an elixir drunk during an interlude with a cat-like alien queen. Now Simon must chart a 3,000-year course to the most distant corners of the multiverse, to seek out the answers to the questions no one can seem to answer.

Originally published under the pseudonym Kilgore Trout, the fictional SF author created by Kurt Vonnegut.

The Thing on the Shore takes place in a call-centre in Whitehaven, just a short hop from Sellafield along Cumbria's grim western coastline. When Artemis Black is assigned to manage the centre on behalf of a mysterious multinational corporation called Interext, the isolation and remoteness of the place encourage him to implement a decidedly unhinged personal project, installing what purports to be cutting-edge AI technology, with a real, 'human' voice, on the automated answering systems. As a result of Artemis' actions, one of his employees, Arthur, becomes aware of an intangible landscape inside the labyrinthine systems of the call-centre - a landscape in which he can feel some kind of otherworldly consciousness stirring and in which, perhaps as a result of his father's increasingly alarming eccentricities, he feels that he could find his recently deceased mother. Arthur takes refuge in this belief as his father, his job, and his house slowly deteriorate around him. He begins to conflate the mysterious, interstitial region that exists down the phonelines with the sea, as that was where his mother drowned. In a way he is right - Artemis' meddlings have attracted something, it is just not as benevolent as he thinks…

Two women fight to save their dystopian border town - and literature - in this gonzo near-future adventure.

The year is 2038, and the formerly bustling town of Three Rivers, Texas, is a surreal wasteland. Under the authoritarian thumb of its tech industrialist mayor, Pablo Henry Crick, the town has outlawed reading and forced most of the town's mothers to work as indentured laborers at the Big Tex Fish Cannery, which poisons the atmosphere and lines Crick's pockets.

Scraping by in this godforsaken landscape are best friends Prosperina and Neftalí - the latter of whom, one of the town's last literate citizens, hides and reads the books of the mysterious renegade author Jazzmin Monelle Rivas, whose last novel, Brother Brontë, is finally in Neftalí's possession. But after a series of increasingly violent atrocities committed by Crick's forces, Neftalí and Prosperina, with the help of a wounded bengal tigress, three scheming triplets, and an underground network of rebel tías, rise up to reclaim their city - and in the process, unlock Rivas's connection to Three Rivers itself.

Near future. South Texas. Narcotics are legal and there's a new contraband on the market: ancient Olmec artifacts, shrunken indigenous heads, and filtered animals--species of animals brought back from extinction to clothe, feed, and generally amuse the very wealthy. Esteban Bellacosa has lived in the border town of MacArthur long enough to know to keep quiet and avoid the dangerous syndicates who make their money through trafficking.

But his simple life starts to get complicated when the swashbuckling investigative journalist Paco Herbert invites him to come to an illegal underground dinner serving filtered animals. Bellacosa soon finds himself in the middle of an increasingly perilous, surreal, psychedelic journey, where he encounters legends of the long-disappeared Aranaña Indian tribe and their object of worship: the mysterious Trufflepig, said to possess strange powers.

Ava and Kaye used to be best friends. Until one night two years ago, vampires broke through the magical barrier protecting their town, and in the ensuing attack, Kaye's mother was killed, and Ava was turned into a vampire. Since then, Ava has been trapped in her house. Her mother Eugenia needs her: Ava still has her witch powers, and Eugenia must take them in order to hide that she's a vampire as well. Desperate to escape her confinement and stop her mother's plans to destroy the town, Ava must break out, flee to the forest, and seek help from the vampires who live there. When there is another attack, she sees her opportunity and escapes.

Kaye, now at the end of her training as a Flame witch, is ready to fulfill her duty of killing any vampires that threaten the town, including Ava. On the night that Ava escapes, Kaye follows her and convinces her to travel together into the forest, while secretly planning to turn her in. Ava agrees, hoping to rekindle their old friendship, and the romantic feelings she'd started to have for Kaye before that terrible night.

But with monstrous trees that devour humans whole, vampires who attack from above, and Ava's stepfather tracking her, the woods are full of danger. As they travel deeper into the forest, Kaye questions everything she thought she knew. The two are each other's greatest threat?and also their only hope, if they want to make it through the forest unscathed.

Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, June 1987. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifth Annual Collection (1988), edtied by Gardner Dozois and Roads Not Taken: Tales of Alternate History (1998), edted by Gardner Dozois and Stanley Schmidt. It is included in the collection The Forest of Time and Other Stories (1997).

Before he wrote the critically acclaimed "Firestar, " the first volume of a contemporary future history, Michael Flynn was one of the most popular regular contributors to Analog. Collected here are the stories that first won Michael Flynn recognition and acclaim, with comments by Flynn on the background and the writing of each piece in prefaces that are intelligent, insightful, and humorous.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Michael F. Flynn
• The Forest of Time - (1987) - novella
• Great, Sweet Mother - (1993) - shortfiction
• On the High Frontier - (1982) - shortfiction
• The Common Goal of Nature - (1990) - novelette
• Grave Reservations - (1988) - shortfiction
• Mammy Morgan Played the Organ; Her Daddy Beat the Drum - (1990) - shortfiction
• Spark of Genius - (1991) - shortfiction
• On the Wings of a Butterfly - (1989) - shortfiction
• The Feeders - (1990) - shortfiction
• Melodies of the Heart - (1994) - novella

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #19 April 2008. It can also be found in the anthologies Realms 2: The Second Year of Clarkesworld Magazine (2010), edited by Nick Mamatas and Sean Wallace, and Creatures: Thirty Years of Monsters (2011), edited by Paul Tremblay and John Langan. The story is included in the collection Crackpot Palace (2012).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

In a world where humankind and technology have taken direct control of the environment, Dorella, the last of the gods, sorcerers, and witches of old is called across time and dimensions to begin a quest.

Long before "going green" was mainstream, Dr. Seuss's Lorax spoke for the trees and warned of the dangers of disrespecting the environment. In this cautionary rhyming tale we learn of the Once-ler, who came across a valley of Truffula Trees and Brown Bar-ba-loots, and how his harvesting of the tufted trees changed the landscape forever. With the release of the blockbuster film version, the Lorax and his classic tale have educated a new generation of young readers not only about the importance of seeing the beauty in the world around us, but also about our responsibility to protect it.

This short story originally appeared in Chinese translation in 2019. The first English publication can be found in Lightspeed, Issue 106, March 2019.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

It is the summer of 1921, and a group of Bolsheviks have taken over Irina and Lili Goliteva's ancestral home in Moscow, a stately mansion falling into disrepair and decay. The remaining members of their family are ordered to move into the cramped attic, while the officials take over an entire wing of grand rooms downstairs. The sisters understand it is the way of things and know they must forget their noble upbringing to make their way in this new Soviet Russia. But the house begins to whisper of a traumatic past not as dead as they thought.

Eager to escape it and their unwelcome new landlords, Irina and Lili find jobs with the recently arrived American Relief Administration, meant to ease the post-revolutionary famine in Russia. For the sisters, the ARA provides much-needed food and employment, as well as a chance for sensible Irina to help those less fortunate and artistic Lili to express herself for a good cause. It might just lead them to love, too.

But at home, the spirits of their deceased family awaken, desperate to impart what really happened to them during the Revolution. Soon one of the officials living in the house is found dead. Was his death caused by something supernatural, or by someone all too human? And are Irina and Lili and their family next? Only unearthing the frightening secrets of Moscow House will reveal all. But this means the sisters must dig deep into a past no one in Russia except the dead are allowed to remember.

As a half-goddess possessing magic, Yaga is used to living on her own, her prior entanglements with mortals having led to heartbreak. She mostly keeps to her hut in the woods, where those in need of healing seek her out, even as they spread rumors about her supposed cruelty and wicked spells. But when her old friend Anastasia - now the wife of the tsar, and suffering from a mysterious illness - arrives in her forest desperate for her protection, Yaga realises the fate of all of Russia is tied to Anastasia's. Yaga must step out of the shadows to protect the land she loves.

As she travels to Moscow, Yaga witnesses a sixteenth century Russia on the brink of chaos. Tsar Ivan - soon to become Ivan the Terrible - grows more volatile and tyrannical by the day, and Yaga believes the tsaritsa is being poisoned by an unknown enemy. But what Yaga cannot know is that Ivan is being manipulated by powers far older and more fearsome than anyone can imagine.

A wildly successful innovator to rival Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, Vivian Liao is prone to radical thinking, quick decision-making, and reckless action. On the eve of her greatest achievement, she tries to outrun people who are trying to steal her success.

In the chilly darkness of a Boston server farm, Viv sets her ultimate plan into motion. A terrifying instant later, Vivian Liao is catapulted through space and time to a far future where she confronts a destiny stranger and more deadly than she could ever imagine.

The end of time is ruled by an ancient, powerful Empress who blesses or blasts entire planets with a single thought. Rebellion is literally impossible to consider--until Vivian Liao arrives. Trapped between the Pride--a ravening horde of sentient machines--and a fanatical sect of warrior monks who call themselves the Mirrorfaith, Viv must rally a strange group of allies to confront the Empress and find a way back to the world and life she left behind.

Award-winning and critically acclaimed author Molly Gloss's career retrospective collection, Unforseen, includes sixteen celebrated short stories that have never be published together before and two new stories.

Table of Contents:

• "Interlocking Pieces"
• "Joining"
• "Seaborne"
• "Wenonah's Gift"
• "Personal Silence"
• "Lambing Season"
• "Downstream"
• "The Visited Man"
• "Unforeseen"
• "The Grinnell Method"
• "The Presley Brothers"
• "Dead Men Rise Up Never"
• "Eating Ashes"
• "Personal Silence"
• "A Story"
• "Little Hills"
• "The Everlasting Humming of the Earth"

From celebrated comic artist Mike Mignola and award-winning novelist Christopher Golden comes a work of gothic storytelling like no other. Reminiscent of the illustrated tales of old, here is a lyrical, atmospheric novel of the paranormal-and a chilling allegory for the nature of war.

"Why do dead men rise up to torment the living?" Captain Henry Baltimore asks the malevolent winged creature. The vampire shakes its head. "It was you called us. All of you, with your war. The roar of your cannons shook us from our quiet graves.... You killers. You berserkers.... You will never be rid of us now."

When Lord Henry Baltimore awakens the wrath of a vampire on the hellish battlefields of World War I, the world is forever changed. For a virulent plague has been unleashed-a plague that even death cannot end.

Now the lone soldier in an eternal struggle against darkness, Baltimore summons three old friends to a lonely inn-men whose travels and fantastical experiences incline them to fully believe in the evil that is devouring the soul of mankind.

As the men await their old friend, they share their tales of terror and misadventure, and contemplate what part they will play in Baltimore's timeless battle. Before the night is through, they will learn what is required to banish the plague-and the creature who named Baltimore his nemesis-once and for all.

Having barely survived a brain aneurysm two years earlier, fifteen-year-old Adrien, working at her Aunt Erin's summer camp, is caught between the land of the living and the spirit world, unsure where she belongs. As she struggles to understand the message delivered by the spirits of the five young women that only she sees, she learns of the tragic consequences of their connection to her aunt. Faced with the knowledge that another aneurysm could strike her at any time and mostly shunned by the other staff because she is the boss's niece, Adrien finds a soulmate in Paul, the camp handyman, who is convinced that he has seen his own death foretold.

This non-fiction volume collects the following 14 essays by scientists about the future of science and technology:

The conquest of senescence, by R. W. Prehoda.

People freezing: the establishment thaws, by R. C. W. Ettinger.

What are tachyons, and what could we do with them? By G. Feinberg.

Inside-out worlds, by D. M. Cole and D. W. Cox.

Requirements for communications to a naive recipient, by A. G. Wilson and T. J. Gordon.

Search for artificial stellar sources of infrared radiation, by F. J. Dyson.

Psychology in the year 2000, by G. Murphy.

Do plants feel emotions? by T. Bacon and R. Kirkpatrick.

Anomalous prediction of quantum processes by some human subjects, by H. Schmidt.

Long delayed echoes of radio transmissions, by O. G. Villard, Jr., C. R. Graf, and J. M. Lomasney.

The life and death of Project Camelot, by I. L. Horowitz.

The jousting at Camelot -- or social technology encounters the shield of the social structure, by T. R. Vallance.

Ovshinsky: promoter or persecuted genius? By P. M. Boffey.

The strange case of polywater, by M. Sinclair.

The master creator of finely crosshatched illustrations and sinisterly amusing tales, Edward Gorey (American, 1925-2000) got his start in publishing by designing book covers for such New York houses as Doubleday, Grosset & Dunlap, Vintage Books, and later Random House. Today, his prodigious output of hundreds of dust jackets and paperback covers evidences his distinctive flair for design and his extraordinary ability to portray the essence of the books that came his way. Edward Gorey: His Book Cover Art & Design features a broad selection of his work, created from 1953 to 2000.

In his essay, Steven Heller offers an insightful overview of Gorey's book cover art and design. He writes, "Successful cover design requires the expertise of an artist, typographer, poster designer, and logo maker. Many book design specialists were incapable of designing a cover or jacket with the same Gorey aplomb, even if they tried."

The Haunted Looking Glass is the late Edward Gorey's selection of his favorite tales of ghosts, ghouls, and grisly goings-on. It includes stories by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, M. R. James, W. W. Jacobs, and L. P. Hartley, among other masters of the fine art of making the flesh creep, all accompanied by Gorey's inimitable illustrations.

Table of Contents:

• The Empty House - (1906) - shortstory by Algernon Blackwood
• August Heat - (1910) - shortstory by William Fryer Harvey
• The Signalman - (1866) - shortstory by Charles Dickens
• A Visitor from Down Under - (1926) - shortstory by L. P. Hartley
• The Thirteenth Tree - (1943) - shortstory by R. H. Malden
• The Body Snatcher - (1884) - shortstory by Robert Louis Stevenson
• Man-Size in Marble - (1887) - shortstory by E. Nesbit
• The Judge's House - (1891) - shortstory by Bram Stoker
• The Shadow of a Shade - (1869) - novelette by Tom Hood
• The Monkey's Paw - (1902) - shortstory by W. W. Jacobs
• The Dream Woman - (1930) - novelette by Wilkie Collins
• Casting the Runes - (1911) - novelette by M. R. James

In the Forest of Forgetting showcases such stories as "The Rose in Twelve Petals," "The Rapid Advance of Sorrow," "Lily, With Clouds," "In the Forest of Forgetting," "Sleeping With Bears" and many more, with an introduction by Terri Windling and cover by Virginia Lee.

During the last desperate days of the Vietnam War, American soldier Israel Broussard is assigned to a secret CIA PSYOP far behind enemy lines meant to drive terror into the heart of the North Vietnamese and end an unwinnable war. When the mission goes sideways, Broussard is plunged into a nightmare that he soon finds he is unable to escape, dragging a remnant of that night in the Laotian wilderness with him no matter how far he runs.

A fever dream with a Benzedrine chaser, I Am The River provides a daring, often surreal examination of the Vietnam War and the days after it, burrowing down past the bullets and battlefields to discover the lingering horror of warfare, the human consequences of organized violence, and the lasting effects of trauma on the psyche, and the soul.

A collection of fantasy tales set in mysterious and bewitching forests includes the adventures of a woodcutter's daughter-turned-private detective, a young tribesman who is torn from his forest home, and a woodsman's unexpected encounter with a witch.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1995) - essay by Katharine Kerr
• The Forest's Not for Burning - (1995) - shortstory by Katherine Lawrence
• "I'll Give You Three Wishes...." - (1995) - shortstory by Kevin Andrew Murphy
• The Triple Death - (1995) - shortstory by Ken St. Andre
• Out of the Woods - (1995) - shortstory by Lawrence Watt-Evans
• Viridescence - (1995) - shortstory by Connie Hirsch
• Fiat Silva - (1995) - shortstory by Jack Oakley
• Weeds - (1995) - shortstory by Julia H. West and Brook West
• Benbow - (1995) - shortstory by Nancy Etchemendy
• The Prism of Memory - (1995) - shortstory by Jo Clayton
• The Force That Through the Green Fuse - (1995) - shortstory by Mark Kreighbaum
• My Soul Into the Boughs - (1995) - shortstory by Teresa Edgerton
• These Shoes Strangers Have Died Of - (1995) - shortstory by Bruce Holland Rogers
• The Clearing - (1995) - shortstory by Lois Tilton
• How the Ant Made a Bargain - (1995) - shortstory by Karawynn Long
• In Fear of Little Nell - (1995) - shortstory by Gregory Feeley
• Wood Song - (1995) - shortstory by Kate Daniel
• Virginia Woods - (1995) - shortstory by Janni Lee Simner
• Ties of Love - (1995) - shortfiction by Lawrence Schimel
• The Heart of the Forest - (1995) - shortstory by Dave Smeds
• Holy Ground - (1995) - shortstory by Thomas S. Roche
• Ghostwood - (1995) - novelette by Michelle West
• The Monsters of Mill Creek Park - (1995) - novelette by Susan Shwartz
• The Memory of Peace - (1995) - novelette by Kate Elliott
• Everything Has a Place - (1995) - shortstory by Barbara A. Denz
• Trees Perpetual of Sleep - (1995) - shortstory by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

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

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

It's 2001, and the WyldBoyZ are the world's hottest boy band, and definitely the world's only genetically engineered human-animal hybrid vocal group. When their producer, Dr. M, is found murdered in his hotel room, the "boyz" become the prime suspects. Was it Bobby the ocelot ("the cute one"), Matt the megabat ("the funny one"), Tim the Pangolin ("the shy one"), Devin the bonobo ("the romantic one"), or Tusk the elephant ("the smart one")?

Las Vegas Detective Luce Delgado has only twenty-four hours to solve a case that goes all the way back to the secret science barge where the WyldBoyZ' journey first began - a place they used to call home.

Mark Craig was adrift in a terrifying time warp. He had become a nonperson in places that never existed. Constantly pursued by figments, tumbling in and out of time, Craig had no choice but to try to discover the cause of his desperate cosmic predicament.

What was the connection of the people who swirled around him: Alexis Rike, the Inquisition victim; R-Meerlue, the robot-Golem, the beautiful, golden-haired Nona Evers. Were they alien invaders, or were they along with Craig, condemned to fight against the invaders by taking an eternal journey on the Nightmare Express.

Cramer knew there would always be times when he would kill, brutally and senselessly. He was a Starky, enslaved by a war-ravaged mind.

Cramer knew that when the murdering rages passed, again he would be a loving, reasoning man.

Cramer knew a deadly danger shadowed Earth. He had detected--and experienced--it himself. But Cramer was a Starky. He would have to fight alone.

THE WILK ARE THE WORST

The lulls can control your mind... the hunters can turn peaceful Beings into a mob howling for your blood... but the Wilk are worse - devious, wily, and deadly (and perfectly terrible-looking).

When a transmitter malfunction landed Leonard, the galactic sociologist, on a strange planet, it sent with him a nill, a hunter, and ten Wilk... and it was up to Leonard (with some backseat driving from Marvin and Professor Hodgkins back home) to stop them from taking over the strange world.

The world was a kaleidoscope of warring factions - even the colored towers of the magnificent city reflected the internecine warfare - League Gold, Federation Blue, Alliance Green, Coalition Brown, Corporation Silver, and a dozen more.

In his sane moments James N. Norton knew he was an ex-Professor of League History and had long since given up all affiliations. This made him a Heretic. Which meant that everybody felt free to hate him. Even to hunt him...

Yet he knew that he had a mission, and in this world, and that he couldn't quit. No more could he sort out who, or really what, he might be. Or when.

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Playboy, May 1985. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection (1986), edited by Gardner Dozoiz, Nebula Awards 21 (1986), edited by George Zebrowski and Lightspeed: Year One (2011), edited by John Joseph Adams. It is included in the collections Dealing in Futures (1985) and The Best of Joe Haldeman (2012).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1977) - essay by Joe Haldeman
• Basilisk - (1972) - shortstory by Harlan Ellison
• The Dueling Machine - (1963) - novella by Ben Bova and Myron R. Lewis
• A Man to My Wounding - (1959) - shortstory by Poul Anderson
• Commando Raid - (1970) - shortstory by Harry Harrison
• Curtains - (1974) - shortstory by George Alec Effinger
• Mercenary - (1962) - novella by Mack Reynolds
• Rule Golden - (1954) - novella by Damon Knight
• The State of Ultimate Peace - (1974) - shortstory by William Nabors
• By the Numbers - (1973) - essay by Isaac Asimov
• To Howard Hughes: A Modest Proposal - (1974) - shortstory by Joe Haldeman

This short story originally appeared in Nature, July 28, 2005. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 11 (2006), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. The story is included in the collection Manhattan in Reverse (2011).

Read the full story for free at Nature.

1891. In a crumbling New England mansion, 12-year-old orphan Florence and her younger brother Giles are neglected by their guardian uncle. Banned from reading, Florence devours books in secret, and twists words and phrases into a language uniquely her own.

After the violent death of the children's first governess, a second arrives. Florence becomes convinced she is vengeful and malevolent spirit who means to do Giles harm. Against a powerful enemy, with no adult to turn for help, Florence will need all her intelligence and ingenuity to save Giles and preserve her private world.

With this wonderfully irreverent comic novel, Harington leaves off chronicling the human inhabitants of the Arkansas Ozark town of Stay More and turns his attention to its insect world. In depicting the cockroach community, who perambulate on gitalongs, apprehend their environment through sniff whips and commit unwitting malapropisms about the mysterious world of Man (and Woman), Harington unleashes a sprightly, antic imagination.

Long fingers from the past reach out to Tyler Norton, crossing boundaries of logic and time.

In China, he finds reality and illusion are difficult to separate. "Just like last night, after the dreams, I feel disturbed, guilty. And something else. Scared. I look down into the stagnant canal water and see reflections. People are walking behind me... I turn quickly... but there's no one on the bridge but me."

Abduction by pirates, a desperate bid for freedom, and an irresistible obsession: He wouldn't like to bet on their chances of getting out of this alive.

The Ultimate List of Must-Read Horror! Curious readers and fans of monsters and the macabre, get ready to bulk up your TBR piles! Sadie "Mother Horror" Hartmann has curated the best selection of modern horror books, including plenty of deep cuts. Indulge your heart's darkest desires to be terrified, unsettled, disgusted, and heartbroken with stories that span everything from paranormal hauntings and creepy death cults to small-town terrors and apocalyptic disasters. Each recommendation includes a full synopsis as well as a quick overview of the book's themes, style, and tone so you can narrow down your next read at a glance.

Featuring a foreword by New York Times bestselling author Josh Malerman and five brand-new essays from rising voices in the genre, this illustrated reader's guide is perfect for anyone who dares to delve into the dark.

Over 30 miles from the nearest town, and several miles away from their nearest neighbor, Nell and Eva struggle to survive as society begins to decay and collapse around them. No single event precedes society's fall. There is talk of a war overseas and upheaval in Congress, but it still comes as a shock when the electricity runs out and gas is nowhere to be found. The sisters consume the resources left in the house, waiting for the power to return. Their arrival into adulthood, however, forces them to reexamine their place in the world and their relationship to the land and each other.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #15 December 2007. It can also be found in the anthology Realms 2: The Second Year of Clarkesworld Magazine (2010), edited by Nick Mamatas and Sean Wallace.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

When three delinquents hole up in an abandoned general store after their most recent robbery, to their great surprise, a letter drops through the mail slot in the store's shutter. This seemingly simple request for advice sets the trio on a journey of discovery as, over the course of a single night, they step into the role of the kindhearted former shopkeeper who devoted his waning years to offering thoughtful counsel to his correspondents. Through the lens of time, they share insight with those seeking guidance, and by morning, none of their lives will ever be the same.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, April 2015.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

A contemporary fantasy about a love story to raise the dead...

At Demdike College of Witchcraft, Orlando is an outcast. Not just for being the only shapeshifter in a college of witches. Not just for being a really bad shapeshifter, with no control over their magic or when their body switches between male and female forms. But because their girlfriend Elizabeth died--and it was Lando's fault.

Then charming new boy Bastian arrives with a proposition: he knows a spell that can raise Elizabeth from the dead. It's dangerous but Lando will try anything. But as Lando's attraction to Bastian grows, questions start to arise. Who is Bastian? What does he really want? And who will survive the resurrection spell?

Kelli Reynolds loves creating stories more than anything in the world. But on Callisto, a generative AI company called Inspiration owns everything, including all the media, and only Inspiration determines which stories can be told.

Kelli has a rare and coveted job where her autism is to her advantage: She precisely edits AI output into "appropriate" stories for Inspiration's massive TV audience. Her proudest creation is the pirate Orlando - a dashing do-gooder based on stories she used to tell friends.

Reenter Kelli's ex-boyfriend Rowan, the person Kelli based Orlando on. Back when they were teenagers, their relationship was a secret. Kelli had thought that Rowan, a trans man, was her schoolmate Am, a girl.

Rowan is tangled up in the black market after he needed to get money for gender affirming surgery. He needs Kelli's help with something... illegal. So, now Kelli has to decide: Will she risk the safe, tidy story of her life now for the world she once wished for? What would Orlando do?

Wondrous beings inhabit these woods - creatures born of mythic fable and the mortal subconscious: a snow woman beckons; a scientist succumbs to an age-old madness, tale-tellers weave extraordinary yarns of terrifying primal power. Explore a dark and secret place where daemons roam, where conjurers work their awesome pagan magic in eight stunning short stories of exhilarating imagination by the acclaimed author of Lavondyss and the World Fantasy Award-winning classic Mythago Wood.

Table of Contents

• The Bone Forest - novella
• Thorn - (1984) - short story
• The Shapechanger - (1989) - novelette
• The Boy Who Jumped the Rapids - (1984) - novelette
• Time of the Tree - (1988) - short story
• Magic Man - (1976) - short story
• Scarrowfell - (1987) - novelette
• The Time Beyond Age - (1976) - novelette

When her siblings start to go missing, a girl must confront the dark thing that lives in the forest--and the growing darkness in herself--in this debut YA contemporary fantasy for fans of Wilder Girls.

Derry and her eight siblings live in an isolated house by the lake, separated from the rest of the world by an eerie and menacing forest. Frank, the man who raised them after their families abandoned them, says it's for their own good. After all, the world isn't safe for people with magic. And Derry feels safe--most of the time.

Until the night her eldest sister disappears. Jane and Derry swore to each other that they'd never go into the forest, not after their last trip ended in blood, but Derry is sure she saw Jane walk into the trees. When another sibling goes missing and Frank's true colors start to show, feeling safe is no longer an option. Derry will risk anything to protect the family she has left. Even if that means returning to the forest that has started calling to Derry in her missing siblings' voices.

As Derry spends more time amidst the trees, her magic grows more powerful... and so does the darkness inside her, the viciousness she wants to pretend doesn't exist. But saving her siblings from the forest and from Frank might mean embracing the darkness. And that just might be the most dangerous thing of all.

In Darkwater, being female doesn't amount to much. But Chelsea's luckier than most. She's the young lover of the town's feared leader, which she keeps telling herself is a good thing, what with food getting scarce and the wells drying up. She's secure and safe and can almost believe she's happy.

But when a stranger rides into town, gun on one hip, whip on the other, Chelsea can't look away. Especially when it turns out this stranger is a woman.

Nobody can say what the stranger is there for. But she brings talk of an outside perhaps no longer so chaotic, no longer something to hide away from - and she knows far too much about dark choices made in the town when the world outside was falling apart.

As the rumours fly about Darkwater's bloodied past and the murder of a woman twenty years earlier, Chelsea finds herself being drawn into someone else's terrifying quest for justice. Or is it merely deadly revenge?

In a place ruled by fear, Chelsea's going to have to decide whose side she's really on, and how far she's prepared to go to uncover the town's dirty secrets before more blood soaks the ground of Darkwater - this time, perhaps her own.

A woman losing her sight turns to small family magics to save the lives of those she loves the most.

Read the full story for free at Tor Reactor.

In the twenty-sixth century, a new world, devoid of technology, is born after the apocalyptic Storm Times, and, from the ashes, arises a historical document that questions the heroic efforts of Isaac Prophet Fitzpatrick--the Consul and Supreme Commander of the Yukon Confederacy in the twenty-fifth century.

For 18 centuries after his death, Maternus has waited for the bureaucracy of Hell to find his records. Now, in a bid to claim his soul, an angel and a demon argue over the fate of the Roman soldier.

The decision is made to bring the warrior back to life, not in Ancient Rome, but in modern day Colorado. There he must complete three seemingly impossible challenges laid out before him, under the ever watchful eyes of the celestial duo.

Without a sword and shield to protect him, the soldier must rely on his wits coupled with a bit of divine inspiration (found in the strangest places) as he faces unfamiliar customs in this strange new life. Fortunately, the warrior is blessed with a weapon he did not have in his previous life -- the ability to read!

With books in hand, the ancient Roman soldier begins his quest for a second chance!

Welcome to the End of Empire.

Set over two hundred years from now, in a world very much like Imperial Rome, this is the story of General Peter Black, the last decent man, as told through the eyes of his devoted (and illegitimate) daughter, Justa.

Raised on battlefields, more comfortable in the company of hard men of war than with women or other children, Justa must keep the truth of her birth hidden. Her father regards her as an embarrassment, a reminder of his one and only indiscretion. Yet she is a remarkable woman, one whose keen mind wins her an education at the feet of Emperor Mathias the Glistening himself.

All his life, General Black served the noble emperor, and, out of loyalty to the father, continues to serve his son after Mathias's death, even as the son's reign degenerates into an insane tyranny worthy of Nero or Caligula. As the rule of the empire passes from father to son with disastrous results, a strange metal plague begins slowly destroying the empire's technology, plunging the realm into chaos and the world into war. Amid the destruction and upheaval, General Black must decide whether to turn his back on the men and institutions who never loved him nearly as much as he did them, or whether to save his most trusted ally and adviser, his best friend and only real family.

The Martian General's Daughter is a gripping tale of a world at war; of cunning strategies and vile politics; of bravery, foolishness, and excess. It is at once a stirring military adventure, a cautionary tale of repeating history, a cutting satire, and a heartbreaking examination of the joys and pain inherent in the love between a father and child. Judson's previous novel was selected in multiple best-of-the-year lists. With The Martian General's Daughter, he offers another must-read epic destined to take its place in the canon of science fiction, and sure to appeal to readers of everything from Orson Scott Card to Walter M. Miller, Jr.

Sturgeon Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, May 1998. There are no other known publications available at this time.

An elite crew of astronauts is sent to an unknown planet. Their mission? To wire the planet within the all-encompassing and all-knowing system of artificial intelligence, known as "The Goo."

It's hard to remember a time before The Goo... and even harder to imagine a future without it. The advanced AI system anticipates humanity's wants, needs, and desires, and seems to have an unfailing omniscience. But when Rowe, the leader of the crew, discovers mysterious secrets buried beneath the surface of this unknown planet, his faith in AI begins to wane.

One unsettling twist after another turns Rowe's mission into a quest for answers and a terrifying fight for survival.

The Hellebore Technical Institute for the Gifted is the premier academy for the dangerously powerful: the Anti-Christs and Ragnaroks, the world-eaters and apocalypse-makers.

Hellebore promises redemption, acceptance, and a normal life after graduation. At least, that's what Alessa Li is told after she's kidnapped and forcibly enrolled.

But the Institute is more than just a haven for monsters. On graduation day, the faculty embark on a ravenous rampage, feasting on their students. Trapped in the school's cavernous library, Alessa and her surviving classmates must do something they were never taught: work together.

If they don't, this school will eat them alive...

Dolores Claiborne has a story to tell.

But not quite what the police had expected.

Dolores Claiborne has a confession to make...

She will take her time. Won't be hurried. Will do it her way, sparing neither details nor feelings. Hers or anyone else's.

This is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Truth that takes you to the edge of darkness.

Dolores Claiborne has a story to tell and you'd better pay attention--or else.

Recruited by the mysterious Project Kairos to change history and save the future from ecological disaster, Echo and Hazel are transported through time to opposite worlds. Echo works as a healer's assistant in Ancient Athens, embroiled in dangerous politics and wild philosophy. Hazel is the last human alive, in a laboratory on a polluted island with nothing but tiny robots and an untrustworthy AI for company.

Both women suffer from amnesia, but when they fall asleep, their consciousnesses transcend time and they meet in their dreams. Together, they start to uncover their past -- but soon discover the past threatens humanity's survival.

If Echo and Hazel have a chance of changing the future, they must remember to forget...

The Federation considered itself a technological Utopia - and the innumerable planets under its sway were guaranteed stability by virtue of the time-change teams. For whenever a planetary historian located evidence in the past of any newly found world that it might evolve into a possible menace, a team of seven would be sent to tamper with that world's history. But the seven men that went to Ygone encountered a fate no theorist had projected. They met with immediate ambush, they met with a strangely peaceful culture that could not be fathomed, and they finally were confronted with all the contradictions and temporal knots that the whole system of time-change had to imply.

WFA nominated novella. It originally appeared in the anthology Dark Forces (1980), edited by Kirby McCauley. The story can also be found in the anthology Baker's Dozen: 13 Short Horror Novels (1987), edited by Charles G. Waugh and Martin H. Greenberg. It is included in the collection Dark Gods (1985).

Table of Contents:

• Children of the Kingdom - (1980) - novella
• Petey - (1979) - novella
• Black Man with a Horn - (1980) - novelette
• Nadelman's God - (1985) - novella

WFA winning novella. It originally appeared in the collection Dark Gods (1985). The story can also be found in the anthology The Mammoth Book of Short Horror Novels (1988), edited by Mike Ashley.

WFA nominated novella. It originally appeared in the anthology Shadows 2 (1979), edited by Charles L. Grant. The story can also be found in the anthology The Dodd, Mead Gallery of Horror (1983) edited by Charles L. Grant. It is included in the collection Dark Gods (1985).

Graduate student Jeremy Freirs and aspiring dancer Carol Conklin, summering in the New Jersey village of Gilead, are trapped in a nightmare of terror, with an evil force emanating from a place once called Maquineanok, the Place of Burning.

WFA nominated novelette.

The Events at Poroth Farm is a horror novella written by T.E.D Klein, in which Jeremy, a college lecturer, takes a summer vacation in Gilead, New Jersey, to prepare for a course on Gothic literature he'll be teaching in the upcoming semester. He rents an outbuilding from Mennonite couple Sarr and Deborah Poroth, and at first his holiday is happy and productive, but then odd things begin to happen...

It originally appeared in From Beyond the Dark Gateway, December 1972. The story can also be found in the anthologie:

• The Year's Best Horror Stories No. 3 (1973), edited by Richard Davis
• The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series II (1974), edited by Richard Davis
• First World Fantasy Awards (1977), edited by Gahan Wilson
• Return to Lovecraft Country (1997), edited by Scott David Aniolowski
• Eternal Lovecraft: The Persistence of H. P. Lovecraft in Popular Culture (1998), edited by Jim Turner
• American Supernatural Tales (2007), edited by S. T. Joshi
• American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940's to Now (2009), edited by Peter Straub

The story was expanded to the full novel The Ceremonies (1984). A version of the story can be found in the collection Reassuring Tales (2006).

Kenzi Brooks watched The Scribble Man collect her brother's soul after a hit and run when she was seven. He gave her a present that day - a lucky rabbit's foot. Sixteen years later, she no longer believes in The Scribble Man, she believes in survival and does what she has to in the slums of Detroit. When thugs kill her mother and beat Kenzi to near death, she accidentally releases Lilith from her prison within the time-worn keychain.

And Hell hath no fury...

Lilith is out for revenge. Revenge against God, Sariel (Angel of Death and Kenzi's Scribble Man), and all of mankind for relegating her to nothing more than a demoness for refusing to submit to her husband. She's put together an apocalyptic plan to destroy everyone who has forsaken her. Forget the Four Horsemen, Lilith is assembling the Four Whores.

Will Kenzi rise against her to save the world and The Scribble Man or will she become The Fourth Whore?

Raised in the wilderness by her late great-uncle, Vida is a young woman with an almost preternatural affinity for nature, especially for the wolves that also call the forested mountains home. Formed by hard experience, by love and loss, and by the prophecies of a fortune teller, Vida just wants peace. If only nearby Kettleton County didn't cast such a dark shadow.

It's where Jose Nochelobo, the love of Vida's life and a cherished local hero, died in a tragic accident. That's the official story, but Vida has reasons to doubt it. The truth can't be contained for long. Nor can the hungry men of power in Kettleton who want something too: that Vida, like Jose, disappear forever. One by one they come for her, prepared to do anything to see their plans through to their evil end. Vida is no less prepared for them.

Vida, the forest, and its formidable wonders are waiting. She will not rest until goodness and order have been restored.

Wizard Seeks Witch. Tired of slaving over a hot cauldron all alone? Let's make beautiful magic together. Herbs/healing potions OK.

Lad Seeks Lassie. SWM, outdoorsy, faithful, wants to share moonlit strolls, and the occasional walk on the wild side. Put an end to my solitary days and lone wolf nights. No smokers, drug users, or vegans, please.

Single White Vampire Seeks Same is a wickedly wonderful new collection of original stories devoted to that most frightening of romantic pursuits: the personal ads. From modern-day Cupids to mismatched monsters, these thirteen twisted tales offer their own "personal" take on the personals-where even the most diabolical of demons can dig up a date...

Includes new, original stories by Mickey Zucker Reichert, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Peter Crowther, Esther Friesner, Michelle Sagara, Charles de Lint, and others.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Brittiany A. Koren
• Personals Wishes - shortstory by Mickey Zucker Reichert
• Folk Lure - novelette by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• A Kiss at Midnight - novelette by Russell Davis
• Starless and Bible Black - novelette by Gary A. Braunbeck
• Fireflies - shortstory by Bradley H. Sinor
• Bernard Boyce Bennington and the American Dream - novelette by Peter Crowther
• Werotica - novelette by Esther M. Friesner
• Someone to Share the Night - shortstory by Tanya Huff
• Fixer-Upper - shortstory by Tim Waggoner
• Secret Identities - novelette by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
• Déjà Vu - novelette by Michelle West
• Trading Hearts at the Half Kaffe Café - (2001) - novelette by Charles de Lint

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Mars-Tube - (1941)
• Trouble in Time - (1940)
• Vacant World - (1940)
• Best Friend - (1941)
• Before the Universe - (1940)
• Nova Midplane - (1940)
• The Extrapolated Dimwit - (1942)
• Afterword

This novelette originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 2007. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection (2008), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Two (2008), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and Twenty-First Century Science Fiction (2013), edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden and David G. Hartwell.

Katya deals in Authenticities and Captures, trading on nostalgia for a past long gone. Her clients are rich and they demand items and experiences with only the finest verifiable provenance. Other people's lives have value, after all.

But when her A.I. suddenly stops whispering in her ear she finds herself cut off from the grid and loses communication with the rest of the world.

The man who stepped out of the trees while hunting deer cut her off from the cloud, took her A.I. and made her his unwilling guest.

There are no Authenticities or Captures to prove Katya's story of what happened in the forest. You'll just have to believe her.

Guy Shadowfade is dead, and Violet Thistlethwaite is out of a job. After a lifetime as the dark sorcerer's right-hand witch, she's ready to turn over a new leaf. And this time, she wants to sprout peonies instead of poison.

The quiet town of Dragon's Rest seems like the perfect place to start over. Violet opens a flower shop, swears off dark magic, and does her best to be... good. Even if her reputation - and her mildly homicidal, sentient houseplant - make that tricky.

Her vibrant bouquets soon charm the locals, but nothing she does seems to impress the grumpy (and infuriatingly gorgeous) Nathaniel Marsh, the alchemist she's forced to share a greenhouse with.

But when a strange blight begins to rot the roots of Dragon's Rest, Violet and Nathaniel must work together - through their fears, pasts, and growing feelings - to save the town.

And as old secrets start to surface, Violet can't help but does a former villain like her truly deserve a happily-ever-after?

Hugo-nominated and Nebula-winning Novella

The year is 2035. After ecological disasters nearly destroyed the Earth, 26 survivors-the last of humanity-are trapped by an alien race in a sterile enclosure known as the Shell. Fifteen-year-old Pete is one of the Six-children who were born deformed or sterile and raised in the Shell. As, one by one, the survivors grow sick and die, Pete and the Six struggle to put aside their anger at the alien Tesslies in order to find the means to rebuild the earth together. Their only hope lies within brief time-portals into the recent past, where they bring back children to replenish their disappearing gene pool.

Meanwhile, in 2013, brilliant mathematician Julie Kahn works with the FBI to solve a series of inexplicable kidnappings. Suddenly her predictive algorithms begin to reveal more than just criminal activity. As she begins to realize her role in the impending catastrophe, simultaneously affecting the Earth and the Shell, Julie closes in on the truth. She and Pete are converging in time upon the future of humanity-a future which might never unfold. Weaving three consecutive time lines to unravel both the mystery of the Earth's destruction and the key to its salvation, this taut adventure offers a topical message with a satisfying twist.

A debut novel from one of Australia's most internationally celebrated playwrights, The End and Everything Before It is a kaleidoscopic story about the way love and loss shape a community.

Emma watched her mother's kayak disappear among icebergs in the Arctic Sea. Six years later, her brother, who had not spoken since their mother was lost, warns Emma of the curse of death that she brought to anyone who looked on her face-before tragedy befalls him too.

Emma consigns herself to a solitary life at sea, where she can do no more harm. After years alone, she is mysteriously drawn to land. And she docks at an island, afraid of what her arrival might mean for the welcoming man and his daughter waving from the jetty.

But who knows where our stories begin and end or how they are entwined? Who knows whether now, on the island, she begins a new tale-or takes a role in a story that began generations ago with a feast in the forest, or a chest of gold coins plunged into the sea, or an orphan in a bookshop beguiled by an elusive and troubled woman?

Finegan Kruckemeyer's astonishing debut, The End and Everything Before It, is a sweeping, joyous novel about love, loss and the power of stories-an uplifting journey into our deepest humanity.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: The Cowpunk Anthology - (1989) - essay by Joe R. Lansdale and Pat LoBrutto
• Black Boots - (1989) - short story by Robert R. McCammon
• Thirteen Days of Glory - (1989) - short story by Scott A. Cupp
• Gold - (1989) - novelette by Lewis Shiner
• The Tenth Toe - (1989) - short story by F. Paul Wilson
• Sedalia - (1989) - novelette by David J. Schow
• Trapline - (1989) - short story by Ardath Mayhar
• Trail of the Chromium Bandits - (1989) - short story by Al Sarrantonio
• Dinker's Pond - (1989) - short story by Richard Laymon
• Stampede - (1989) - short story by Melissa Mia Hall
• Razored Saddles - (1989) - short story by Robert Petitt
• Empty Places - (1989) - short story by Gary L. Raisor
• Tony Red Dog - (1989) - novelette by Neal Barrett, Jr.
• The Passing of the Western - (1989) - short story by Howard Waldrop
• Eldon's Penitente - (1989) - short story by Lenore Carroll
• The Job - (1989) - short story by Joe R. Lansdale
• I'm Always Here - (1989) - short story by Richard Christian Matheson
• "Yore Skin's Jes's Soft 'N Purty..." He Said. (Page 243) - (1989) - short story by Chet Williamson

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1967. The story can also be found in the collections The Day Before Forever and Thunderhead (1968) and Future Imperfect (2003).

Table of Contents:

• The Day Before Forever - (1967) - novella
• Thunderhead - (1967) - novelette

This short story originally appeared in Interzone, #133 July 1998. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 4 (1999), edited by David G. Hartwell. It is included in the collection Ebb Tides and Other Tales (2002).

The world called Indigo turned upside down for Magdala Cled one unexpected morning. From being that world's only genetic misfit, the shunned outcast of an otherwise ideal society, she became the focus of attention for mighty forces. Once they had installed her in the midst of the Electric Forest, with its weird trees and its super-luxurious private home, Magdala awoke to the potentials which were opening up all about her. And to realize also the peril that now seemed poised above Indigo...which only she, the hated one, could possible circumvent.

This novelette originally appeared in the collection Tamastara or The Indian Nights (1984). It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Second Annual Collection (1985), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collection Dreams of Dark and Light: The Great Short Fiction of Tanith Lee (1986).

The 20 short stories in this collection explore the forests of the imagination and the creatures that dwell there - the wolves and vampires; tigers and unicorns; dwarves, demons and enchanters.

Table of Contents:

• Blood-Mantle - (1985) - short story
• The Gorgon - (1982) - novelette
• The Tree: A Winter's Tale - (1984) - novelette
• I Was Guillotined Here - (1989) - short story
• Crying in the Rain - (1987) - short story
• Elle Est Trois, (La Mort) - (1983) - novelette
• Nicholas - (1989) - short story
• The Hunting of Death: The Unicorn - (1984) - novella
• A Madonna of the Machine - (1988) - novelette
• Red as Blood - (1979) - short story
• The Rakshasa - (1989) - short story
• Bite Me Not or Fleur de Fur - (1984) - novelette
• By Crystal Light Beneath One Star - (1987) - novelette
• La Reine Blanche - (1983) - short story
• Sweet Grapes - (1989) - short story
• The Tenebris Malgraph - (1989) - novelette
• Black as a Rose - (1987) - novelette
• Rachel - (1989) - short story
• Down Below - (1989) - short story
• White as Sin, Now - (1989) - novelette

Bob Jones is ordinary, from his appearance right down to his very name. No one seems to take notice of him, not his co-workers, his girlfriend, or even his own parents. But Bob learns he's not alone when he's taken in by a band of people that suffer similarly.

Calling themselves "The Ignored", the deadly vengeance they intend to wreak is sure to make them more than just memorable...

Juniper, Arizona, is an off-the-map desert town the retail giant called The Store has chosen for its new location. Now everything you could possibly want is under one roof, at unbelievable prices. But you'd better be careful what you wish for. This place demands something of its customers that goes beyond brand loyalty. At The Store, one-stop shopping has become last-stop shopping.

Bill Davis is the only one in town who senses the evil lurking within The Store. But he can't stop his two teenage daughters from taking jobs there and falling under the frightening influence of its sadistic manager. When Bill finally takes a stand, he will get much more than he bargained for...

In this terrifying, tender, and bitingly hilarious supernatural horror about a boy who must save his best friend from a demon that wants to steal his heart--literally...

Ren says he's in love, but Colin knows better.

Sure, he can't remember much about how it all began. But he remembers dancing at a club he and Ren were too young to dance in. He remembers the boys who harassed them on their way home. He remembers a ghost emerging from the trees, and a white hand reaching for Ren through a thick fog. What Colin can't remember is what happened next. Only two things are clear to him: Ren is different now, and the new guy vying for his heart is not who he claims to be.

With the help of two unlikely allies and a cranky old medium, Colin must learn to conquer his self-doubt and save his best friend from a love that could cost him his life.

KALIAN PENDEK SHALL NEVER DIE!

Hunters Associated was the simple name of the organization. Who was behind it, what its ultimate purpose was, was never told to its agents. All they needed to know was that they covered the galaxy, that their real identities had been buried, that once in Hunters they could be anybody.

He was Seven. That was all. Identity Seven. He had a new assignment. Identity Six had just been slain - lasered down on a far world by enemies unknown. But the death had been kept secret long enough for Seven to be sent to take his place.

To take his place, to take his features, to take his task - and to be a target to slay once again. If he failed, there would be an Identity Eight to step into his burned-out shoes... and a Nine and a Ten.

But Seven was determined to see that the progression stopped with him - even if he had to go to the bottom of an alien sea and hobnob with horror.

For Aufcash III, High Hodgepoker of Balik Trovo, the magical Etrax of Overnon is a must-have. Thus, for Hamper, official However to the throne, the legendary jewel becomes a must-get--or become food for three deadly, fanged fliers whose mission is to keep him on a straight path. But the path is less than straight. Testing his wits are home-grown assassins, mountain bandits with marriage ambitions (for him), won't-hear-no naval recruiters, a ravenous dragon, cannibalistic pirates, a spiteful sorceress and a treacherous genie (lamp included). And that's all before reaching Overnon, where awaiting him are the Four Perils and, worse, the Hag Who Rules. Wish him luck.

It wasn't easy for Hari Denver to be an agent for the United States of America - that is, the states that remained in 1989. Even if he could change his appearance at will to nearly any human form. the country was at the lowest point in its history: New York and Washington were almost complete ruins, petty gangs and warlords controlled large areas of New Jersey and Connecticut, the west was know as "The Wasteland," the south was separated into White and Black Dixie... and 13 golden bracelets (slavegirls attached) were stolen from the visiting Mudir of Chad.

The Adventures of Pinocchio is a novel for children by Italian author Carlo Collodi, written in Florence. The first half was originally a serial in 1881 and 1882, and then later completed as a book for children in February 1883. It is about the mischievous adventures of an animated marionette named Pinocchio and his father, a poor woodcarver named Geppetto. It is considered a canonical piece of children's literature and has inspired hundreds of new editions, stage plays, merchandising and movies, such as Walt Disney's iconic animated version and commonplace ideas such as a liar's long nose. According to extensive research done by the Fondazione Nazionale Carlo Collodi in late 1990s and based on UNESCO sources, it has been adapted in over 240 languages worldwide. That makes it among the most translated and widely read books ever written.

The Adventures of Pinocchio is a story about an animated puppet, boys who turn into donkeys and other fairy tale devices. The setting of the story is the Tuscan area of Italy. It was a unique literary marriage of genres for its time. The story's Italian language is peppered with Florentine dialect features, such as the protagonist's Florentine name.

In the 1850s, Collodi began to have a variety of both fiction and non-fiction books published. Once, he translated some French fairy-tales so well that he was asked whether he would like to write some of his own. In 1881, he sent a short episode in the life of a wooden puppet to a friend who edited a newspaper in Rome, wondering whether the editor would be interested in publishing this "bit of foolishness" in his children's section. The editor did, and the children loved it. The Adventures of Pinocchio were serialized in the paper in 1881–2, and then published in 1883 with huge success.

In the original, serialized version, Pinocchio dies a gruesome death: hanged for his innumerable faults, at the end of Chapter 15. At the request of his editor, Collodi added chapters 16–36, in which the Fairy with Turquoise Hair (or "Blue Fairy", as the Disney version names her) rescues Pinocchio and eventually transforms him into a real boy, when he acquires a deeper understanding of himself, making the story more suitable for children. In the second half of the book, the maternal figure of the Blue-haired Fairy is the dominant character, versus the paternal figure of Geppetto in the first part.

Children's literature was a new idea in Collodi's time, an innovation in the 19th century. Thus in content and style it was new and modern, opening the way to many writers of the following century.

Although one of the best-known books in the world, Pinocchio at the same time remains unknown--linked in many minds to the Walt Disney movie that bears little relation to Carlo Collodi's splendid original. That story is of course about a puppet who, after many trials, succeeds in becoming a "real boy." Yet it is hardly a sentimental or morally improving tale. To the contrary, Pinocchio is one of the great subversives of the written page, a madcap genius hurtled along at the pleasure and mercy of his desires, a renegade who in many ways resembles his near contemporary Huck Finn.

Pinocchio the novel, no less than Pinocchio the character, is one of the great inventions of modern literature. A sublime anomaly, the book merges the traditions of the picaresque, of street theater, and of folk and fairy tales into a work that is at once adventure, satire, and a powerful enchantment that anticipates surrealism and magical realism. Thronged with memorable characters and composed with the fluid but inevitable logic of a dream, Pinocchio is an endlessly fascinating work that is essential equipment for life.

There are innumerable editions of Pinocchio, but the 2008 NYRB unabridged edition, newly translated by Geoffrey Brock and containing a forward by Umberto Eco and an afterward by Rebecca West might perhaps be considered a definitive edition.

Before 12:01 and After is a collection of science fiction, fantasy, mystery and horror stories by Richard A. Lupoff, collecting the best of his short fiction from his long writing career. It contains the following stories:

• "Mr. Greene and the Monster"
• "BOOM!"
• "Incident in the 14th St. BMT"
• "After the Dreamtime"
• "12:01 P.M."
• "Venus-Ah, Venus!"
• "With the Evening News"
• "Saltzman's Madness"
• "God of the Naked Unicorn"
• "Nebogipfel at the End of Time"
• "Mort in Bed"
• "Stroka Prospekt"
• "Two Sort-Of Adventures"
• "Blinky Henderson Again"
• "The Digital Wristwatch of Philip K. Dick"
• "Snow Ghosts"
• "Triptych"
• "The House on Rue Chartres"
• "The Doom That Came to Dunwich"
• "The Woodstock West Killer"
• "Easy Living"
• "Dogwalker"
• "A Funny Thing Happened..."

Meet Phil Snyder: new father, nursing assistant at a cutting-edge biotech facility on Staten Island, and all-around decent guy. Trouble is, his life is falling apart. His wife has betrayed him, his job involves experimental surgeries with strange side effects, and his father is hiding early onset dementia. Phil also has a special talent he doesn't want to publicize - he's a mind reader and moonlights as Brainstorm, a costumed superhero.

But when Phil wakes up from a blackout drunk and is confronted with photos that seem to show him assaulting an unknown woman, even superpowers won't help him. Try as he might, Phil can't remember that night, and so, haunted by the need to know, he mind reads his way through the lab techs at work, adoring fans at Toy Polloi, and anyone else who gets in his way, in an attempt to determine whether he's capable of such violence.

A Little More Human, rife with layers of paranoia and conspiracy, questions how well we really know ourselves, showcasing Fiona Maazel at her tragicomic, freewheeling best.

War engulfs the kingdoms of Tir. Invading armies are marching north, and it seems that all is lost...

Until a new peril looms; a far more deadly menace that threatens the entire human race. Out of this chaos emerges a stranger, a supernatural knight whose shadow-torn hair falls like the evening wind.

When Asrathiel saw him she gasped, for he was so beautiful it was like pain to look at him...

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Dying for It: More Erotic Tales of Unearthly Love (1997), edited by Gardner Dozois, and was reprinted in Asimov's Science Fiction, July 1998, and in Clarkesworld Magazine, #95 August 2014. It can also be found in the anthologies:

• The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection (1998), edited by Gardner Dozois
• Supermen: Tales of the Posthuman Future (2002), also edited by Dozois
• Beyond Flesh (2002), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois

The story is included in the collections Past Magic (2006) and Snodgrass and Other Illusions: The Best Short Stories of Ian R. MacLeod (2013).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, January 2011. It can also be found in the anthology Lightspeed: Year One (2011), edited by John Joseph Adams.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

"The Oregon Trail Diary of Willa Porter" is a collection of diary entries from Willa Porter's journey west with her family, into territory which gets stranger and stranger.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Miss Harriet Brandt, daughter of a mad scientist and a voodoo priestess, comes of age and leaves her home in Jamaica for the first time, travelling to Europe. Beautiful and talented, Harriet will gain the affections of many of the men and women she meets and a bright future seems assured for her.

But there is something strange about Harriet. Everyone she gets close to seems to sicken or die. Doctor Phillips has a theory: the blood of the vampire flows through Harriet's veins, and she is draining the life out of those she loves. Are the misfortunes that seem to follow Harriet merely coincidence? Or is she really afflicted with the curse of the vampire?

One of the strangest novels by the prolific Florence Marryat (1837-1899), The Blood of the Vampire was the "other vampire novel" of 1897, appearing the same year as Dracula. Marryat's novel is fascinating not only for its sensational plot and bizarre characters, but also because of its engagement with many of the issues that haunted the late Victorian imagination, such as race, heredity, women's roles, Spiritualism, and the occult. This edition includes the unabridged text of the exceedingly rare 1897 first edition and a new introduction by Brenda Hammack.

Modern-day America. Fifteen Boy Scouts and their seven adult leaders are found to have committed suicide in the forest of a scout reservation. One of the dead boys is a friend of Sparky Wallace, whose father Jack runs a Polish restaurant in Chicago. Drawn into investigating the suicides, Jack discovers a connection with his own grandfather, who killed himself in the Kampinos Forest in Poland when he was fighting the Nazis in World War II.

Together, Jack and Sparky travel to Poland to unlock the terrifying mystery of what really makes people panic in the forest. But before they can do so, they have to experience panic for themselves, and reach the very brink of madness.

Thirteen extraordinary stories that explore the slippery edge of madness--and beyond--into a chilling nightmare of bizarre and unexplainable occurrences... into a world where unspeakable horror becomes normal--where murky darkness from spaceworks on the minds of men--in a time when creatures of dreadful, unearthly powers can control human beings... and human beings create beings beyond their control. Weird fantasy and eerie imagination inspire stories of unforgettable force and unpredicatable conclusions!

Contents:

• 1 - Being
• 33 - Pattern for Survival
• 36 - Steel
• 60 - The Test
• 78 - Clothes Make the Man
• 82 - Blood Son
• 90 - Trespass
• 128 - When Day Is Dun
• 132 - The Curious Child
• 141 - The Funeral
• 149 - The Last Day
• 165 - Little Girl Lost
• 177 - The Doll That Does Everything

She was a restoree, kidnapped. Torn from Earth by a bizarre and nameless black force, Sara had no idea where she was or why she was in a beautiful new body. Controlled by brutal guards and tamed by terror, she could not comprehend her role as a nurse for a man who appeared to be an idiot.

But once she discovered that the planet she had been brought to was Lothar and that the man she was caring for was its regent, Sara knew the restorees had to escape--and fast. And when they did, they became fugitives on a world of multiple evils--bound together on a daring adventure that would either join them for all time... or separate them forever.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 102, November 2018.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon.

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world's largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore.

Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, it begins to feel like she might just be what they need. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting herself, starts imagining a future where she could belong to someone again.

But Rowan isn't telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, they all must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it's too late?and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.

A novel of breathtaking twists, dizzying beauty, and ferocious love, Wild Dark Shore is about the impossible choices we make to protect the people we love, even as the world around us disappears.

Bestselling author Patricia A. McKillip (The Riddle-Master of Hed) is one of the most lyrical writers gracing the fantasy genre. With the debut of three brand-new stories, Dreams of Distant Shores is a true ode to her many talents.

Within these pages you will find a youthful artist possessed by both his painting and his muse and seductive travelers from the sea enrapturing distant lovers. The statue of a mermaid comes suddenly to life and two friends are transfixed by a haunted estate.

Fans of McKillip's ethereal fiction will delight in these previously-uncollected tales; those new to her work will find much to enchant them.

In the tales of World Fantasy Award-winning author Patricia McKillip, nothing is ever as it seems. A mirror is never just a mirror; a forest is never just a forest. Here, it is a place where a witch can hide in her house of bones and a prince can bargain with his heart...where good and evil entwine and wear each others' faces... and where a bird with feathers of fire can quench the fiercest longing...

Set in the future when teenagers are monitored via camera and their recorded actions and confessions plugged into a computer program that determines their ability to succeed. All kids given a "score" that determines their future potential. This score has the ability to get kids into colleges, grant scholarships, or destroy all hope for the above. Scored's reluctant heroine is Imani, a girl whose high score is brought down when her best friend's score plummets. Where do you draw the line between doing what feels morally right and what can mean your future? Friendship, romance, loyalty, family, human connection and human value: all are questioned in this fresh and compelling dystopian novel set in the scarily forseeable future.

A collection of affectionate parodies and spoofs of Lovecraft's work that play off of his literary excesses and add plenty of modern obsessions to the mix.

Table of Contents:

• The Book That Dare Not Speak Its Name: An Introduction - essay by Simon Clark
• Shoggoth Cacciatore - (2001) - short story
• Squidd, Inc. - (1999) - short story
• The Slithering Quiver of the River - (2001) - short story
• Spawn of the Rancid Deepnesses - (1994) - short story
• Anecdote Overheard at the Last Cocktail Party Ever - (1994) - short story
• Finesse - (1999) - short story
• The End of the World Is Brought to You by-- - (2001) - short story
• She's Got the Look - (2001) - short story
• Super Digital Nekronomi Pals Are Zing! - (2001) - short story
• The Brouhaha of Cat-Hula - (2001) - short story

The biggest lie of all is the story you think you already know.

The del Cisne girls have never just been sisters; they're also rivals, Blanca is as obedient and graceful as Roja is vicious and manipulative. They know that, because of a generations-old spell, their family is bound to a bevy of swans deep in the woods. They know that, one day, the swans will pull them into a dangerous game that will leave one of them a girl, and trap the other in the body of a swan.

But when two local boys become drawn into the game, the swans' spell intertwines with the strange and unpredictable magic lacing the woods, and all four of their fates depend on facing truths that could either save or destroy them.

Summer, 1518. A strange sickness sweeps through Strasbourg: women dance in the streets, some until they fall down dead. As rumors of witchcraft spread, suspicion turns toward Lavinia and her family, and Lavinia may have to do the unimaginable to save herself and everyone she loves.

Five centuries later, a pair of red shoes seal to Rosella Oliva's feet, making her dance uncontrollably. They draw her toward a boy who knows the dancing fever's history better than anyone: Emil, whose family was blamed for the fever five hundred years ago. But there's more to what happened in 1518 than even Emil knows, and discovering the truth may decide whether Rosella survives the red shoes.

With McLemore's signature lush prose, Dark and Deepest Red pairs the forbidding magic of a fairy tale with a modern story of passion and betrayal.

Two non-binary teens are pulled into a magical world under a lake - but can they keep their worlds above water intact?

Everyone who lives near the lake knows the stories about the world underneath it, an ethereal landscape rumored to be half-air, half-water. But Bastián Silvano and Lore Garcia are the only ones who've been there. Bastián grew up both above the lake and in the otherworldly space beneath it. Lore's only seen the world under the lake once, but that one encounter changed their life and their fate.

Then the lines between air and water begin to blur. The world under the lake drifts above the surface. If Bastián and Lore don't want it bringing their secrets to the surface with it, they have to stop it, and to do that, they have to work together. There's just one problem: Bastián and Lore haven't spoken in seven years, and working together means trusting each other with the very things they're trying to hide.

For twenty years, the Palomas and the Corbeaus have been rivals and enemies, locked in an escalating feud for over a generation. Both families make their living as traveling performers in competing shows-the Palomas swimming in mermaid exhibitions, the Corbeaus, former tightrope walkers, performing in the tallest trees they can find.

Lace Paloma may be new to her family's show, but she knows as well as anyone that the Corbeaus are pure magia negra, black magic from the devil himself. Simply touching one could mean death, and she's been taught from birth to keep away. But when disaster strikes the small town where both families are performing, it's a Corbeau boy, Cluck, who saves Lace's life. And his touch immerses her in the world of the Corbeaus, where falling for him could turn his own family against him, and one misstep can be just as dangerous on the ground as it is in the trees.

To everyone who knows them, best friends Miel and Sam are as strange as they are inseparable. Roses grow out of Miel's wrist, and rumors say that she spilled out of a water tower when she was five. Sam is known for the moons he paints and hangs in the trees and for how little anyone knows about his life before he and his mother moved to town. But as odd as everyone considers Miel and Sam, even they stay away from the Bonner girls, four beautiful sisters rumored to be witches. Now they want the roses that grow from Miel's skin, convinced that their scent can make anyone fall in love. And they're willing to use every secret Miel has fought to protect to make sure she gives them up.

Love grows such strange things...

For nearly a century, the Nomeolvides women have tended the grounds of La Pradera, the lush estate gardens that enchant guests from around the world. They've also hidden a tragic legacy: if they fall in love too deeply, their lovers vanish. But then, after generations of vanishings, a strange boy appears in the gardens.

The boy is a mystery to Estrella, the Nomeolvides girl who finds him, and to her family, but he's even more a mystery to himself; he knows nothing more about who he is or where he came from than his first name. As Estrella tries to help Fel piece together his unknown past, La Pradera leads them to secrets as dangerous as they are magical in this stunning exploration of love, loss, and family.

Young Jane Silverlake lives with her father in a crumbling family estate on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Jane has a secret--an unexplainable gift that allows her to see the souls of man-made objects--and this talent isolates her from the outside world. Her greatest joy is wandering the wild heath with her neighbors, Madeline and Nathan.

But as the friends come of age, their idyll is shattered by the feelings both girls develop for Nathan, and by Nathan's interest in a cult led by Ariston Day, a charismatic mystic popular with London's elite. Day encourages his followers to explore dream manipulation with the goal of discovering a strange hidden world, a place he calls the Empyrean.

A year later, Nathan has vanished, and the famed Inspector Vidocq arrives in London to untangle the events that led up to Nathan's disappearance. As a sinister truth emerges, Jane realizes she must discover the origins of her talent, and use it to find Nathan herself, before it's too late.

Kenji Miyazawa is one of modern Japan's most beloved writers, a great poet and a strange and marvelous spinner of tales, whose sly, humorous, enchanting, and enigmatic stories bear a certain resemblance to those of his contemporary Robert Walser. John Bester's selection and expert translation of Miyazawa's short fiction reflects its full range from the joyful, innocent "Wildcat and the Acorns," to the cautionary tale "The Restaurant of Many Orders," to "The Earthgod and the Fox," which starts out whimsically before taking a tragic turn. Miyazawa also had a deep connection to Japanese folklore and an intense love of the natural world. In "The Wild Pear," what seem to be two slight nature sketches succeed in encapsulating some of the cruelty and compensations of life itself.

At the northern edge of a valley conquered by a merciless foreign tyrant lies a wild forest ruled by dangerous magic. The local people know never to enter--for no one who strays into the north woods is ever seen again. No one, that is, except Veris Thorn.

When the children of the Tyrant vanish into the woods, Veris is summoned to rescue them. Veris knows she has only one day before the creatures in the wood claim the children for their own. If she fails, the Tyrant will destroy everything she loves.

If she is to succeed, Veris must evade traps and trickery, ancient monsters and false friends, and the haunting memory of her last journey into the woods.

Time is running short. One misstep will cost everything.

It's New Year's Eve 1982, and Oona Lockhart has her whole life before her. At the stroke of midnight she will turn nineteen, and the year ahead promises to be one of consequence. Should she go to London to study economics, or remain at home in Brooklyn to pursue her passion for music and be with her boyfriend? As the countdown to the New Year begins, Oona faints and awakens thirty-two years in the future in her fifty-one-year-old body. Greeted by a friendly stranger in a beautiful house she's told is her own, Oona learns that with each passing year she will leap to another age at random. And so begins Oona Out of Order...

Hopping through decades, pop culture fads, and much-needed stock tips, Oona is still a young woman on the inside but ever changing on the outside. Who will she be next year? Philanthropist? Club Kid? World traveler? Wife to a man she's never met?

In the far future, Earth's rotation has been halted by powerful aliens searching for the end of the universe. Happening upon Earth, the aliens took from it what they needed and moved on. The human race is now divided; some living on the cold night side, some the sweltering day side, yet others in the thin twilight between the two regions.

Living a life of pleasure and decadence in the twilight region, Valta Becker impregnates his daughter who dies shortly after giving birth to Clovis, last of the twilight children.

Neglected by his father, Clovis leaves home for the more technologically and philosophically sophisticated daylight region, where lifespans stretch to hundreds of years and the marvels of future science still flourish. He makes a name for himself in politics, rising to almost god-like stature. When catastrophe strikes, rendering the daylight people sterile due to an after-effect of the aliens' strange energies used in halting the planet's rotation, Clovis Becker must find an answer or the human race will perish.

Thus begins a taut adventure filled with warring political ideologies, End of the World parties, flower forests and floating carriages, shadowy figures attempting to shape mankind's destiny for their own ends, colorful descriptions worthy of Jack Vance and Mervyn Peake--and a love story for the ages as Clovis and Fastina Cahmin--the last born of the daylight people--seek immortality... but at what cost?

alternate title: The Twilight Man

FROM HELL is the story of Jack the Ripper, perhaps the most infamous man in the annals of murder. Detailing the events leading up to the Whitechapel killings and the cover-up that followed, FROM HELL is a meditation on the mind of a madman whose savagery and violence gave birth to the 20th century. The serialized story, presented in its entirety in this volume, has garnered widespread attention from critics and scholars. Often regarded as one of the most significant graphic novels ever published, FROM HELL combines meticulous research with educated speculation, resulting in a masterpiece of historical fiction both compelling and terrifying.

In his first-ever short story collection, which spans forty years of work, Alan Moore presents a series of wildly different and equally unforgettable characters who discover--and in some cases even make and unmake--the various uncharted parts of existence.

In "A Hypothetical Lizard," two concubines in a brothel of fantastical specialists fall in love with tragic ramifications. In "Not Even Legend," a paranormal study group is infiltrated by one of the otherworldly beings they seek to investigate. In "Illuminations," a nostalgic older man decides to visit a seaside resort from his youth and finds the past all too close at hand. And in the monumental novella "What We Can Know About Thunderman," which charts the surreal and Kafkaesque history of the comics industry's major players over the last seventy-five years, Moore reveals the dark, beating heart of the superhero business.

From ghosts and otherworldly creatures to theoretical Boltzmann brains fashioning the universe at the big bang, Illuminations is exactly that--a series of bright, startling tales from a contemporary legend that reveal the full power of imagination and magic.

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Hypothetical Lizard - [Liavek] - novelette (variant of A Hypothetical Lizard 1987)
• 47 - Not Even Legend - short story
• 63 - Location, Location, Location - novelette
• 99 - Cold Reading - short story
• 117 - The Improbably Complex High-Energy State - (2022) - novelette
• 155 - Illuminations - short story
• 173 - What We Can Know About Thunderman - novel
• 415 - American Light: An Appreciation - novelette
• 441 - And, at the Last, Just to Be Done with Silence - short story

Fierce in its imagining and stupefying in its scope, Jerusalem is the tale of everything, told from a vanished gutter.

In the epic novel Jerusalem, Alan Moore channels both the ecstatic visions of William Blake and the theoretical physics of Albert Einstein through the hardscrabble streets and alleys of his hometown of Northampton, UK. In the half a square mile of decay and demolition that was England's Saxon capital, eternity is loitering between the firetrap housing projects. Embedded in the grubby amber of the district's narrative among its saints, kings, prostitutes, and derelicts, a different kind of human time is happening, a soiled simultaneity that does not differentiate between the petrol-colored puddles and the fractured dreams of those who navigate them.

Employing, a kaleidoscope of literary forms and styles that ranges from brutal social realism to extravagant children's fantasy, from the modern stage drama to the extremes of science fiction, Jerusalem's dizzyingly rich cast of characters includes the living, the dead, the celestial, and the infernal in an intricately woven tapestry that presents a vision of an absolute and timeless human reality in all of its exquisite, comical, and heartbreaking splendor.

In these pages lurk demons from the second-century Book of Tobit and angels with golden blood who reduce fate to a snooker tournament. Vagrants, prostitutes, and ghosts rub shoulders with Oliver Cromwell, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce's tragic daughter Lucia, and Buffalo Bill, among many others. There is a conversation in the thunderstruck dome of St. Paul's Cathedral, childbirth on the cobblestones of Lambeth Walk, an estranged couple sitting all night on the cold steps of a Gothic church front, and an infant choking on a cough drop for eleven chapters. An art exhibition is in preparation, and above the world a naked old man and a beautiful dead baby race along the Attics of the Breath toward the heat death of the universe.

An opulent mythology for those without a pot to piss in, through the labyrinthine streets and pages of Jerusalem tread ghosts that sing of wealth, poverty, and our threadbare millennium. They discuss English as a visionary language from John Bunyan to James Joyce, hold forth on the illusion of mortality post-Einstein, and insist upon the meanest slum as Blake's eternal holy city.

The sexual adventures of Alice Fairchild (from Alice in Wonderland), Dorothy Gale (from The Wizard of Oz) and Wendy Darling (from Peter Pan and married to a much older man called Harold Potter).

A powerful story about loss of freedom and individuality, V FOR VENDETTA takes place in a totalitarian England following a devastating war that changed the face of the planet.

In a world without political freedom, personal freedom and precious little faith in anything comes a mysterious man in a white porcelain mask who fights political oppressors through terrorism and seemingly absurd acts. It's a gripping tale of the blurred lines between ideological good and evil.

In a story full of lust, madness, and ecstasy, we meet twelve distinctive characters that lived in the same region of central England over the span of six thousand years. Their narratives are woven together in patterns of recurring events, strange traditions, and uncanny visions. First, a cave-boy loses his mother, falls in love, and learns a deadly lesson. He is followed by an extraordinary cast of characters: a murderess who impersonates her victim, a fisherman who believes he has become a different species, a Roman emissary who realizes the bitter truth about the Empire, a crippled nun who is healed miraculously by a disturbing apparition, an old crusader whose faith is destroyed by witnessing the ultimate relic, two witches, lovers, who burn at the stake. Each interconnected tale traces a path in a journey of discovery of the secrets of the land. In the tradition of Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill, Schwob's Imaginary Lives, and Borges' A Universal History of Infamy, Alan Moore (Watchmen, From Hell, Lost Girls) travels through history blending truth and conjecture, in a novel that is dazzling, moving, sometimes tragic, but always mesmerizing.

It all begins with the paranoid delusions of a half-insane hero called Rorschach. But is Rorschach really insane or has he in fact uncovered a plot to murder super-heroes and, even worse, millions of innocent civilians? On the run from the law, Rorschach reunites with his former teammates in a desperate attempt to save the world and their lives, but what they uncover will shock them to their very core and change the face of the planet! Following two generations of masked superheroes from the close of World War II to the icy shadow of the Cold War comes this groundbreaking comic story - the story of The Watchmen.

In Rome, surrendering to secular pressures, the Fourth Vatican Council is stirring a revolution with their official denial of the church's core doctrines. They've abolished clerical dress and private confession; the Eucharist is recognized only as an outdated symbol; and they're merging with the tenets of Buddhism. They're also unsettled by the blind faith of devout pilgrims from around the world congregating on a remote island monastery in Ireland--the last spot on earth where Catholic traditions are defiantly alive. At the behest of the Vatican, Father James Kinsella has been dispatched to Muck Abbey with an ultimatum: Adhere to the new church or suffer the consequences.

But in Abbot Tomás O'Malley, Kinsella finds less an adversary than a man of bewildering contradictions--unyieldingly bound to his vows, yet long-questioning his devotion to God. Now, between Kinsella and O'Malley comes an unexpected challenge that will reveal their truths, their purpose, their faith, and their doubt.

On a weeked visit to Carmel, California, Anthony had an extraordinary dream that was to overturn his entire life. He dreamt that a collection of priceless Victoriana appeared on a previously empty parking-lot outside his window of his hotel. This novel won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Jirel of Joiry, the first of the great female warriors, the beautiful commander of the strongest fortress in the kingdom, would face any danger to defend her beloved country. She wielded her bright sword against mighty armies, the sinister magic of evil sorcerers and fearsome castles guarded by the dead, even daring to descend into Hell itself...

Northwest Smith, the scarred and weathered outlaw, the legendary hero of the spaceways, forced to confront the terrible mysteries, the terrifying, mythic monsters of the universe...

Jirel of Joiry and Northwest Smith are C.L. Moore's greatest creations and she used them not only to spin spellbinding tales but also to explore the mysteries of the human psyche.

This is the omnibus edition of the collections Jirel of Joiry (aka Black Gods) and Scarlet Dream (aka Northwest Smith).

Comus, the communications network/police force, has spread its web of power all across an America paralyzes by the after-effects of limited nuclear war. But in California, resistance is building against the dictatorship of Comus and Andrew Raleigh, president for life. For now Raleigh is dying and the powers of Comus are fading. It's the perfect time for the Californian revolutionaries to activate the secret weapon that alone can destroy America's totalitarian system and re-establish democracy. Yet Comus too has powers at its disposal, chief among them Howard Rohan. A washed-up actor until Comus offers him a second chance, Rohan will head a troupe of players touring in the heart of rebel territory. Howard Rohan, double agent, caught between the orders of Comus and rebels demands Which side will he choose? Who will he play false - himself or the entire country?

During World War II, four bitter enemies are pulled forward a billion years in time by a master being from an alien galaxy. They arrive on a dying Earth--to Carcasilla, Earth's last citadel--where the mutated remnants of humanity are making their final stand against the monstrous creations of a fading world.

Thrust in the middle of this desperate struggle for survival, the last humans must put aside their differences and stop the looming Armageddon.

This novelette originally appeared in the collection No Boundaries (1955). It can also be found in the anthologies S-F: The Year's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy (1956), edited by Judith Merril, and Asleep in Armageddon (1962), edited by Michael Sissons.

The fierce, proud, and relentless commander of warriors, standing tall above her enemies and simmering with rage, Jirel bids farewell to the world of treacherous men and walks through a forbidden door into Hell itself in pursuit of freedom, justice, and revenge.

Table of Contents:

• Jirel Meets Magic (1935) - novelette
• Black God's Kiss (1934) - novelette
• Black God's Shadow (1934) - novelette
• The Dark Land (1936) - novelette
• Hellsgarde (1939) - novelette

The original book publication of Judgement Night was issued by Gnome Press, which included four shorter works in addition to the novel. Subsequent publications of Judgement Night did not always include these shorter works.

Table of Contents:

• Judgment Night - (1952) - novel
• Paradise Street - (1950) - novella
• Promised Land - (1950) - novelette
• The Code - (1945) - novelette
• Heir Apparent - (1950) - novelette

Here is an anthology that explores the furthest reaches of imagination and the closest areas of emotion with power and with humour and with a sense of human purpose. This is Kuttner and Moore at their best.

Table of Contents:

• Vintage Season - (1946) - novelette
• The Devil We Know - (1941) - novelette
• Home There's No Returning - novelette
• Exit the Professor - (1947) - short story
• Two-Handed Engine - (1955) - novelette
• About the Authors - essay by uncredited

From on high of Mount Olympus comes an adventure in mythology, penned by a Hugo-nominated master of the genre.

Jay Seward remembered a former life in a land of magic, gods, and goddesses--a time when he was Jason of Iolcus, sailing in the enchanted ship Argo to steal the Golden Fleece from the serpent-temples of Apollo. But one night the memories became startlingly real, as the Argo itself sailed out of the spectral mists and a hauntingly beautiful voice called: "Jason... come to me!" And suddenly he was on the deck of the Argo, sailing into danger and magic.

Two-Handed Engine is the largest collection of science fiction and fantasy by Henry Kuttner & C.L. Moore ever published. It features a frontispiece by Richard Powers, and an introduction by the book's editor, David Curtis.

The stories, ranging from across their entire career, include: Shambleau, The Graveyard Rats, Mimsy Were the Borogoves, Vintage Season, Private Eye, and more.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Two-Handed Engine) - (2005) - essay by David Curtis
• Shambleau - (1933) - novelette by C. L. Moore
• The Graveyard Rats - (1936) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner
• A Gnome There Was - (1941) - novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Henry Kuttner]
• The Twonky - (1942) - novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett]
• Compliments of the Author - (1942) - novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett]
• Mimsy Were the Borogoves - (1943) - novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett]
• Shock - (1943) - novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett]
• Reader, I Hate You! - (1943) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner
• The World Is Mine - (1943) - novelette by Henry Kuttner [as by Lewis Padgett]
• When the Bough Breaks - (1944) - novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett]
• The Cure - (1946) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett]
• The Code - (1945) - novelette by C. L. Moore [as by Lawrence O'Donnell]
• Line to Tomorrow - (1945) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett]
• Clash by Night - (1943) - novella by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lawrence O'Donnell]
• Ghost - (1943) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner
• The Proud Robot - (1943) - novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett]
• Nothing But Gingerbread Left - (1943) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Henry Kuttner]
• No Woman Born - (1944) - novelette by C. L. Moore
• Housing Problem - (1944) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Henry Kuttner]
• What You Need - (1945) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett]
• Absalom - (1946) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Henry Kuttner]
• Call Him Demon - (1946) - novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Keith Hammond]
• Daemon - (1946) - shortstory by C. L. Moore
• Vintage Season - (1946) - novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lawrence O'Donnell]
• Dark Angel - (1946) - novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore (variant of The Dark Angel) [as by Henry Kuttner]
• Before I Wake - (1945) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner (variant of Before I Wake...)
• Exit the Professor - [Hogben - 2] - (1947) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Henry Kuttner]
• The Big Night - (1947) - novelette by Henry Kuttner [as by Hudson Hastings]
• A Wild Surmise - (1953) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
• Don't Look Now - (1948) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner
• Private Eye - (1949) - novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett]
• By These Presents - (1953) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner
• Home Is the Hunter - (1953) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
• Or Else - (1953) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Henry Kuttner]
• Year Day - (1953) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner
• A Cross of Centuries - (1958) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner
• Two-Handed Engine - (1955) - novelette by C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner

Vienna, 1911. Gustav Klimt, the most famous painter in the Austrian Empire, the darling of Viennese society, spots a woman's nude body in the Danube canal. He knows he should summon a policeman, but he can't resist stopping to make a sketch first. And as he draws, the woman coughs. She's alive!

Back at his studio, Klimt and his model-turned-muse Wally tend to the formerly-drowned girl. She's nearly feral and doesn't remember who she is, or how she came to be floating in the canal. Klimt names her Judith, after one of his most famous paintings, and resolves to help her find her memory.

With a little help from Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, Judith recalls being stranded in the arctic one hundred years ago, locked in a crate by a man named Victor Frankenstein, and visiting the Underworld.

So how did she get here? And why are so many people chasing her, including Geoff, the giant croissant-eating devil dog of the North?

From master of subversive humor Christopher Moore comes a quirky, irreverent novel of love, myth, metaphysics, outlaw biking, angst, and outrageous redemption.

As a boy, he was Samson Hunts Alone -- until a deadly misunderstanding with the law forced him to flee the Crow reservation at age fifteen. Today he is Samuel Hunter, a successful Santa Barbara insurance salesman with a Mercedes, a condo, and a hollow, invented life. Then one day, destiny offers him the dangerous gift of love -- in the exquisite form of Calliope Kincaid -- and a curse in the unheralded appearance of an ancient god by the name of Coyote. Coyote, the trickster, has arrived to reawaken the mystical storyteller within Sam... and to seriously screw up his existence in the process.

Just why do humpback whales sing? That's the question that has marine behavioral biologist Nate Quinn and his crew poking, charting, recording, and photographing very big, wet, gray marine mammals. Until the extraordinary day when a whale lifts its tail into the air to display a cryptic message spelled out in foot-high letters: Bite me.

Trouble is, Nate's beginning to wonder if he hasn't spent just a little too much time in the sun. 'Cause no one else on his team saw a thing -- not his longtime partner, Clay Demodocus; not their saucy young research assistant; not even the spliff-puffing white-boy Rastaman Kona (né Preston Applebaum). But later, when a roll of film returns from the lab missing the crucial tail shot -- and his research facility is trashed -- Nate realizes something very fishy indeed is going on.

By turns witty, irreverent, fascinating, puzzling, and surprising, Fluke is Christopher Moore at his outrageous best.

Take a wonderfully crazed excursion into the demented heart of a tropical paradise--a world of cargo cults, cannibals, mad scientists, ninjas, and talking fruit bats. Our bumbling hero is Tucker Case, a hopeless geek trapped in a cool guy's body, who makes a living as a pilot for the Mary Jean Cosmetics Corporation. But when he demolishes his boss's pink plane during a drunken airborne liaison, Tuck must run for his life from Mary Jean's goons. Now there's only one employment opportunity left for him: piloting shady secret missions for an unscrupulous medical missionary and a sexy blond high priestess on the remotest of Micronesian hells. Here is a brazen, ingenious, irreverent, and wickedly funny novel from a modern master of the outrageous.

The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years -- except Biff, the Messiah's best bud, who has been resurrected to tell the story in the divinely hilarious yet heartfelt work "reminiscent of Vonnegut and Douglas Adams" (Philadelphia Inquirer).

Verily, the story Biff has to tell is a miraculous one, filled with remarkable journeys, magic, healings, kung fu, corpse reanimations, demons, and hot babes. Even the considerable wiles and devotion of the Savior's pal may not be enough to divert Joshua from his tragic destiny. But there's no one who loves Josh more -- except maybe "Maggie," Mary of Magdala -- and Biff isn't about to let his extraordinary pal suffer and ascend without a fight.

Now, in his latest masterpiece, Sacré Bleu, the immortal Moore takes on the Great French Masters. A magnificent "Comedy d'Art", Moore's Sacré Bleu is part mystery, part history (sort of), part love story, and wholly hilarious as it follows a young baker-painter as he joins the dapper Henri Toulouse-Lautrec on a quest to unravel the mystery behind the supposed "suicide" of Vincent van Gogh.

A new anthology bringing together five great new and established writers to explore the world of Mary Shelley's all-time classic, Frankenstein

"My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell."

Victor Frankenstein was the first to unlock the key to life, but he would not be the last. Through two centuries of scientific enquiry and relentless advancement, five more minds found the secret, and five more creatures were made. Five more stories ended in tragedy.

From the 1840s to the modern day, from the race to publish the first anatomy to the desperate search for weapons to win the Second World War, telling the stories of the creatures that never were.

Mischief, Magic, Love and War.

It is the Year of Our Lord 1601. The Tuscan War rages across the world, and every lord from Navarre to Illyria is embroiled in the fray. Cannon roar, pikemen clash, and witches stalk the night; even the fairy courts stand on the verge of chaos.

Five stories come together at the end of the war: that of bold Miranda and sly Puck; of wise Pomona and her prisoner Vertumnus; of gentle Lucia and the shade of Prospero; of noble Don Pedro and powerful Helena; and of Anne, a glovemaker's wife. On these lovers and heroes the world itself may depend.

These are the stories Shakespeare never told. Five of the most exciting names in genre fiction today delve into the world the poet created to weave together a story of courage, transformation and magic.

Including an afterword by Dr. John Lavagnino, The London Shakespeare Centre, King's College London.

Table of Contents:

• Monstrous Little Voices - interior artwork by Sam Gretton
• Note from the Editor - essay by David Thomas Moore
• Prologue - short story by uncredited
• Coral Bones - novelette by Foz Meadows
• The Course of True Love - novelette by Kate Heartfield
• The Unkindest Cut - novelette by Emma Newman
• Even in the Cannon's Mouth - novelette by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• On the Twelfth Night - novelette by Jonathan Barnes
• Afterword - essay by Dr. John Lavagnino

Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories was one of the first true children's books in the English language, a timeless classic that continues to delight readers to this day. Beautiful, evocative and playful, the stories of How the Whale Got His Throat or How the First Letter Was Written paint a world of magic and wonder.

It's also deeply rooted in British colonialism. Kipling saw the Empire as a benign, civilising force, in a way that's troubling to modern readers. Not So Stories attempts to redress the balance, bringing together new and established writers of colour from around the world to take the Just So Stories back, to interrogate, challenge and celebrate their legacy.

Including stories by Adiwijaya Iskandar, Joseph E. Cole, Raymond Gates, Stewart Hotston, Zina Hutton, Georgina Kamsika, Cassandra Khaw, Paul Krueger, Tauriq Moosa, Jeannette Ng, Ali Nouraei, Wayne Santos and Zedeck Siew, illustrations by Woodrow Phoenix and an introduction by Nikesh Shukla.

Table of Contents:

• 7 - Foreword (Not So Stories) - essay by Nikesh Shukla
• 13 - How the Spider Got Her Legs - short story by Cassandra Khaw
• 27 - This is Man, bound and buried in silk, ... - interior artwork by Woodrow Phoenix
• 29 - Queen - novelette by Joseph E. Cole
• 55 - The young, inquisitive child ... - interior artwork by Woodrow Phoenix
• 57 - Best Beloved - novelette by Wayne Santos
• 75 - The Man Who Played with the Crab - short story by Adiwijaya Iskandar
• 83 - This is a picture of the Stranger ... - interior artwork by Woodrow Phoenix
• 93 - Sa?sara?
• - short story by Georgina Kamsika
• 109 - Serpent, Crocodile, Tiger - novelette by Zedeck Siew
• 135 - Here is the Tiger, preening in front of a mirror-- - interior artwork by Woodrow Phoenix
• 139 - How the Tree of Wishes Gained Its Carapace of Plastic - short story by Jeannette Ng
• 147 - How the Ants Got Their Queen - short story by Stewart Hotston
• 163 - How the Snake Lost Its Spine - short story by Tauriq Moosa
• 177 - Witness the Great Snake! - interior artwork by Woodrow Phoenix
• 183 - The Cat Who Walked by Herself - short story by Achala Upendran
• 193 - Woman sat in the middle of her circle, ... - interior artwork by Woodrow Phoenix
• 199 - Strays Like Us - short story by Zina Hutton
• 211 - How the Simurgh Won Her Tail - short story by Ali Nouraei
• 233 - There Is Such Thing as a Whizzy-Gang - short story by Raymond Gates
• 245 - How the Camel Got Her Paid Time Off - short story by Paul Krueger
• 251 - Here we see the Camel, attempting to explain ... - interior artwork by Woodrow Phoenix

A SAFARI INTO DANGER!

There are remote corners of the British Empire where the supernatural lurks and the shadows linger, where few dare go and fewer return.

A TIME FOR HEROES!

This is the world of the little-known Department of Antiquities--the so-called "Strange Brigade"--tasked with confronting ancient and terrible evils that threaten us all. But who are these mysterious adventurers?

EIGHT RIP-ROARING NEW ADVENTURES!

Join rising stars Cassandra Khaw, Gaie Sebold, Tauriq Moosa, Guy Adams, Jonathan L. Howard, Mimi Mondal, Patrick Lofgren and Joseph Guthrie as they delve into the hidden origins of some of the Brigade's finest, and marvel at these never-before-seen tales of our fearless and unflinching heroes...

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (The True History of the Strange Brigade) - essay by David Thomas Moore
• And Was Jerusalem Builded Here? - short fiction by Cassandra Khaw
• Ripples in a Polluted Pool - short fiction by Jonathan L. Howard
• The Professor's Dilemma - short fiction by Tauriq Moosa
• Nalangu's Trials - short fiction by Gaie Sebold
• Where You Buy Things - short fiction by Guy Adams
• Peccavi, or If Thy Father - short fiction by Mimi Mondal
• The Island of Nightmares - short fiction by Patrick Lafgren
• Jessie's Song - short fiction by Joseph Guthrie

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets) - (2014) - essay by David Thomas Moore
• A Scandal in Hobohemia - [alt.sherlock.holmes] - (2014) - short fiction by Jamie Wyman
• Black Alice - (2014) - short fiction by Kelly Hale
• The Adventure of the Speckled Bandana - (2014) - short fiction by J. E. Cohen
• The Rich Man's Hand - (2014) - short fiction by Joan De La Haye
• The Lantern Men - (2014) - short fiction by Kaaron Warren
• A Woman's Place - (2014) - short fiction by Emma Newman
• A Study in Scarborough - (2014) - short fiction by Guy Adams
• The Small World of 221b - (2014) - short fiction by Ian Edginton
• The Final Conjuration - (2014) - short fiction by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• The Innocent Icarus - (2014) - short fiction by James Lovegrove
• Half There/All There - [alt.sherlock.holmes (Glen Mehn)] - (2014) - short fiction by Glen Mehn
• All the Single Ladies - non-genre - [Sherlock Holmes (Gini Koch)] - (2014) - short fiction by Jeanne Cook [as by Gini Koch]
• The Patchwork Killer - (2014) - short fiction by Kasey Lansdale
• Parallels - (2014) - short fiction by Jenni Hill

From its first appearance in 1978 to its final episode in 1981, Blake's 7 was a series which pushed back the boundaries of what was possible in TV science fiction. Despite the attempts made by critics over the years to deride it for its low-budget special effects, sometimes-dubious costume design and overly middle-class casting, Blake's 7 continues to remain popular and to gain new audiences, due to its intelligent treatment of powerful themes of human evil, rebellion, love and death. In this book, Alan Stevens and Fiona Moore go beyond the stereotypes and look at the background to and the writing of the stories. Including technical details, overviews of the production of the series and in-depth analyses of every episode, together with a number of previously-unpublished photographs, this book is the ideal companion for anyone interested in the development of TV science fiction during the late seventies. "...a wealth of detail about the early development of the series." From the foreword by series producer David Maloney.

Ken Usagi, a daring young journalist from the icy wilderness of Nunavut, is thrust into a perilous journey through the war-ravaged remnants of the former United States. Haunted by a chilling encounter with a mysterious biotechnical machine-a relic from his troubled childhood-he becomes convinced it holds the key to ending the devastating conflict tearing the world apart.

Far to the south, Totchli, a brilliant young biotechnician from a Mesoamerican society pummeled by catastrophic climate change, receives a desperate order. He must venture north to uncover the fate of a critical colonial expedition, a mission that once carried the last hopes of his people's survival. Communication channels with the expedition have fallen eerily silent.

As Ken and Totchli embark on their separate quests, the very fabric of reality begins to unravel. Their paths converge, leading to a fateful encounter where the boundaries of their worlds blur and shatter.

Investigative reporter Nora Hesper spends her nights cloaked in shadows. As Indigo, she's become an urban myth, a brutal vigilante who can forge darkness into weapons and travel across the city by slipping from one patch of shadow to another. Her primary focus both as Nora and as Indigo has become a murderous criminal cult called the Children of Phonos. Children are being murdered in New York, and Nora is determined to make it stop, even if that means Indigo must eliminate every member. But in the aftermath of a bloody battle, a dying cultist makes claims that cause Indigo to question her own origin and memories.

Nora's parents were killed when she was nineteen years old. She took the life insurance money and went off to explore the world, leading to her becoming a student of meditation and strange magic in a mountaintop monastery in Nepal...a history that many would realize sounds suspiciously like the origins of several comic book characters. As Nora starts to pick apart her memory, it begins to unravel. Her parents are dead, but the rest is a series of lies. Where did she get the power inside her?

In a brilliant collaboration by New York Times and critically acclaimed coauthors Charlaine Harris, Christopher Golden, Kelley Armstrong, Jonathan Maberry, Kat Richardson, Seanan McGuire, Tim Lebbon, Cherie Priest, James A. Moore, and Mark Morris join forces to bring you a crime-solving novel like you've never read before.

Noel Burun has synesthesia and hypermnesia: he sees words in vibrant explosions of colors and shapes, which collide and commingle to form a memory so bitingly perfect that he can remember everything, from the 1001 stories of The Arabian Nights to the color of his bib as a toddler. But for all his mnemonic abilities, he is confronted every day with a reality that is as sad as it is ironic: his beloved mother, Stella, is stricken with Alzheimer's disease, her memory slowly slipping into the quicksands of oblivion.

A killer far worse than insane.

Chris Wilcox has been searching for years, so he knows a few things about his wife's killer. Cheryl Wilcox wasn't the first. All the victims were redheads. All eaten alive and left within a mile of the ocean. The trail of death crosses the globe and spans decades.

The cold trail catches fire when Chris and two other survivors find a trace of the killer's DNA. By hiring a cutting-edge lab to sequence it, they make a terrifying discovery. The killer is far more dangerous than they ever guessed. And now they're being hunted by their own prey.

It's late Thursday night, and Inspector Ross Carver is at a crime scene in one of the city's last luxury homes. The dead man on the floor is covered by an unknown substance that's eating through his skin. Before Carver can identify it, six FBI agents burst in and remove him from the premises. He's pushed into a disinfectant trailer, forced to drink a liquid that sends him into seizures, and then is shocked unconscious.

On Sunday he wakes in his bed to find his neighbor, Mia--who he's barely ever spoken to--reading aloud to him. He can't remember the crime scene or how he got home; he has no idea two days have passed. Mia says she saw him being carried into their building by plainclothes police officers, who told her he'd been poisoned. Carver doesn't really know this woman and has no way of disproving her, but his gut says to keep her close.

A mind-bending, masterfully plotted thriller that will captivate fans of Blake Crouch, China Miéville, and Lauren Beukes, The Night Market follows Carver as he works to find out what happened, soon realizing he's entangled in a web of conspiracy that spans the nation. And that Mia may know a lot more than she lets on.

Tiptree nominated short story. Originally appeared in Wired Hard II, edited by Cecilia Tan.

The moving story of a daughter's quest to discover the truth about her beloved father's hidden past.

Ada Sibelius is raised by David, her brilliant, eccentric, socially inept single father, who directs a computer science lab in 1980s-era Boston. Home-schooled, Ada accompanies David to work every day; by twelve, she is a painfully shy prodigy. The lab begins to gain acclaim at the same time that David's mysterious history comes into question. When his mind begins to falter, leaving Ada virtually an orphan, she is taken in by one of David's colleagues. Soon she embarks on a mission to uncover her father's secrets: a process that carries her from childhood to adulthood. What Ada discovers on her journey into a virtual universe will keep the reader riveted until The Unseen World's heart-stopping, fascinating conclusion.

The Weave tells a first-contact story in which humans, seeking to exploit the much-needed resources of a system inhabited by creatures they assume are "primitive" and defenceless, discover their mistake the hard way. Human Caty Sanjuro, a seasoned marine and dedicated xenologist, and native Sundown, a determined astronomer, struggle to establish communication across the many barriers that divide their species, at first because they share a passionate interest in alien species, but finally because they know that only they can bridge the differences across species threatening catastrophe for both sides.

Isobel is the Queen of the medieval rave-themed VR game Sparkle Dungeon. Her prowess in the game makes her an ideal candidate to learn the secrets of "power morphemes"?unnaturally dense units of meaning that warp perception when skilfully pronounced.

But Isobel's reputation makes her the target of a strange resistance movement led by spellcasting anarchists, who may be the only thing stopping the cabal from toppling California over the edge of a terrible transformation, with forty million lives at stake.

Time is short for Isobel to level up and choose a side?because the cabal has attracted much bigger and weirder enemies than the anarchist resistance, emerging from dark and vicious dimensions of reality and heading straight for planet Earth!

Welcome to the Building, an infinitely tall skyscraper in the center of the multiverse, where any floor could contain a sprawling desert oasis, a cyanide rain forest, or an entire world.

Carissa loves her elevator. Up and down she goes, content with the sometimes chewy food her reality fabricator spits out, as long as it means she doesn't have to speak to another living person.

But when a mysterious shapeshifter from an ambiguous world lands on top of her elevator, intent on stopping a plot to annihilate hundreds of floors, Carissa finds herself stepping out of her comfort zone. She is forced to flee into the Wild Massive network of theme parks in the Building, where technology, sorcery, and elaborate media tie-ins combine to form impossible ride experiences, where every guest is a VIP, the roller coasters are frequently safe, and if you don't have a valid day pass, the automated defense lasers will escort you from being alive.

Wild Massive: The #1 destination for interdimensional war.

Rate us on VacationAdvisor™!

I was home alone on a Saturday night when I experienced the most beautiful piece of music I had ever heard in my life.

Beautiful Remorse is the hot new band on the scene, releasing one track a day for ten days straight. Each track has a mysterious name and a strangely powerful effect on the band's fans.

A curious music blogger decides to investigate the phenomenon up close by following Beautiful Remorse on tour across Texas and Kansas, realizing along the way that the band’s lead singer, is hiding an incredible, impossible secret.

Rogrig Wishard is a killer, a liar and a thief.

Rogrig is the last person the fey would turn to for help. But they know something he doesn't.

In a world without government or law, where a man's loyalty is to his family and faerie tales are strictly for children, Rogrig is not happy to discover that he's carrying faerie blood. Especially when he starts to see them wherever he goes.

To get his life back, he's going to have to journey further from home than he's ever been before and find out what the fey could possibly want from him. But that's easier said than done when the punishment for abandoning your family is death.

War hero Basuin doesn't know what to believe in anymore. All Basuin knows is life as an army captain and the pain, loss, and disgrace it has brought him. Demoted and humiliated by his legion commander, he is led into the forest for one more mission: capture a god.

But when his commander uses innocent wolf pups as bait, Basuin dies saving them. The Wolf God, impressed by his sacrifice, deifies Basuin to protect the forest and its beautiful, sharp-tongued god from the legion's deforestation.

To the Forest God, Basuin is nothing more than one of the men sent to burn her forest down. Betrayed by humans too many times, she rejects him, working alone to protect the spirits of the forest as her home disappears around her. To save the god he is growing to love, Basuin must untangle the feelings between them.

Otherwise, they'll burn together.

Four friends, May, Piper, Ailey, and Elizabeth, go on a camping trip. Things slowly begin to go wrong. It was just the four of them, four girls alone in the forest.

Read the full story for free at Tor Reactor.

"The Path Through Time" is Jules's favorite part of the museum, a marvelous exhibit that brings the past to life, from the present all the way back to the prehistoric. Tonight at his aunt's wedding reception as Jules walks along the path, it comes alive like never before.

Read the full story for free at Tor Reactor.

This story is told from the viewpoint of an enhanced-intelligence trained K9 Search-and-Rescue dog which has been enabled with the ability to communicate with her trainer more fully than normal dogs. The trainer is uncomfortable with her new, highly-sentient partner, and the dog describes her efforts to win over the affections of her trainer, while also relating the details of their search missions.

This novella was a Finalist for the Asimov’s Readers’ Awards and was first published in Asimov's Science Fiction in July/August 2019.

Read this story for free at Asimov's.

Who is Joyleg? What is he?

There are governments that want to know his secret. There is evidence that his more than 200 years old. And indeed he does have a secret -- one that will cause the history of the world to be rewritten!

Joyleg is a jouous prophetic novel, one of the first great science fiction collaborations and a recognized classic of the field.

A novel of exhilarating range, magical realism, and history--a dazzling retelling of Liberia's formation.

Wayétu Moore's powerful debut novel, She Would Be King, reimagines the dramatic story of Liberia's early years through three unforgettable characters who share an uncommon bond. Gbessa, exiled from the West African village of Lai, is starved, bitten by a viper, and left for dead, but still she survives. June Dey, raised on a plantation in Virginia, hides his unusual strength until a confrontation with the overseer forces him to flee. Norman Aragon, the child of a white British colonizer and a Maroon slave from Jamaica, can fade from sight when the earth calls him. When the three meet in the settlement of Monrovia, their gifts help them salvage the tense relationship between the African American settlers and the indigenous tribes, as a new nation forms around them.

Moore's intermingling of history and magical realism finds voice not just in these three characters but also in the fleeting spirit of the wind, who embodies an ancient wisdom. "If she was not a woman," the wind says of Gbessa, "she would be king." In this vibrant story of the African diaspora, Moore, a talented storyteller and a daring writer, illuminates with radiant and exacting prose the tumultuous roots of a country inextricably bound to the United States. She Would Be King is a novel of profound depth set against a vast canvas and a transcendent debut from a major new author.

Even though Thom Creed's a basketball star, his high school classmates keep their distance. They've picked up on something different about Thom. Plus, his father, Hal Creed, was one of the greatest and most beloved superheroes of his time until a catastrophic event left him disfigured and an outcast. The last thing in the world Thom wants is to add to his father's pain, so he keeps secrets. Like that he has special powers. And he's been asked to join the League -- the very organization of superheroes that disowned Hal. But joining the League opens up a new world to Thom. There, he connects with a misfit group of aspiring heroes:

* Scarlett, who can control fire but not her anger
* Typhoid Larry, who can make anyone sick with his touch
* Ruth, a wise old woman who can see the future

Together these unlikely heroes become friends and begin to uncover a plot to kill the superheroes.

This groundbreaking and widely acclaimed novel tells an unforgettable story about love, loss, and redemption.

This story can be found in Whispers from the Cotton Tree Root.

In his most famous and controversial book, Utopia, Thomas More imagines a perfect island nation where thousands live in peace and harmony, men and women are both educated, and all property is communal. Through dialogue and correspondence between the protagonist Raphael Hythloday and his friends and contemporaries, More explores the theories behind war, political disagreements, social quarrels, and wealth distribution and imagines the day-to-day lives of those citizens enjoying freedom from fear, oppression, violence, and suffering.

Originally written in Latin, this vision of an ideal world is also a scathing satire of Europe in the sixteenth century and has been hugely influential since publication, shaping utopian fiction even today.

Say hello to Mike Lucifer, Spiritual Consultant. He's back in town to take care of business. Unfortunately, when business is good, things must be very, very bad.

After two years trying to run away from his past, Mike Lucifer's back in his office less than ten minutes when a persistent young woman shows up asking for help: her boyfriend's been possessed by a demon.

That's exactly the kind of mess that drove him from his hometown of Boston to a sunny beach--and the bottom of a bottle--in the first place. But there are some problems that even booze can't drown, and while Lucifer may be no hero, his dwindling bank account provides a thousand reasons to take the case.

No sooner is he back in the game then the complications and corpses start to add up. The boyfriend's not possessed--he's dead. The tech company where he worked is looking shadier by the second. And Lucifer's client definitely knows more than she should... about everything. The deeper Lucifer digs, the more he wonders if whatever sinister entity lurks behind this case wants him to be the last to die...

It was Vera's idea to buy the Itza. The "world's most advanced smart speaker!" didn't interest Thiago, but Vera thought it would be a bit of fun for them amidst all the strange occurrences happening in the condo. It made things worse. The cold spots and scratching in the walls were weird enough, but peculiar packages started showing up at the house--who ordered industrial lye? Then there was the eerie music at odd hours, Thiago waking up to Itza projecting light shows in an empty room.

It was funny and strange right up until Vera was killed, and Thiago's world became unbearable. Pundits and politicians all looking to turn his wife's death into a symbol for their own agendas. A barrage of texts from her well-meaning friends about letting go and moving on. Waking to the sound of Itza talking softly to someone in the living room...

The only thing left to do was get far away from Chicago. Away from everything and everyone. A secluded cabin in Colorado seemed like the perfect place to hole up with his crushing grief. But soon Thiago realizes there is no escape--not from his guilt, not from his simmering rage, and not from the evil hunting him, feeding on his grief, determined to make its way into this world.

A bold, original horror novel about grief, loneliness and the oppressive intimacy of technology, This Thing Between Us marks the arrival of a spectacular new talent.

Gothic fiction is neither dead nor musty. Twenty-seven poems and stories bring fresh blood to the sub-genre while drawing from old tropes. Welcome to our little house of horrors where a movie crew searches for a legendary missing film, a woman seeks to reunite with her dead lover, a lodger discovers something peculiar about the landlady, a Tarot deck brings death and ghosts may be cruel or benevolent. The power has gone out and all that remains is the glow of a flickering candle. Come up into the attic and uncover some secrets.

Table of Contents:

• 9 - Introduction: An Open Door - essay by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles
• 13 - A Fixer-Upper - poem by Amanda C. Davis
• 15 - The Seventh Picture - short story by Orrin Grey
• 27 - Housebound - short story by Don D'Ammassa
• 39 - Stone Dogs - short story by Paul Jessup
• 59 - The City of Melted Iron - short story by Bobby Cranestone
• 67 - The Shredded Tapestry - short story by Ryan Harvey
• 89 - Obsessions (or Biting off More than One Can Chew) - poem by Colleen Anderson
• 93 - Desideratum - short story by Gina Flores
• 105 - Victorians - short story by James S. Dorr
• 115 - New Archangel - short story by Desmond Warzel
• 129 - The Snow Man - short story by E. Catherine Tobler
• 143 - In His Arms in the Attic - short story by Alexis Brooks de Vita
• 159 - The Ba-Curse - poem by Ann K. Schwader
• 161 - Hitomi - short story by Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas
• 165 - I Tarocchi dei d'Este - short story by Martha Hubbard
• 181 - Elizabeth on the Island - short story by Josh Reynolds
• 189 - Dark Epistle - short story by James Steimle
• 207 - Broken Notes - poem by Maria Mitchell
• 211 - The Malcontents - poem by Mary E. Choo
• 213 - Liminal Medicine - short story by Jesse Bullington
• 231 - At the Doorstep - short story by Leanna Renee Hieber
• 239 - Frozen Souls - short story by Sarah Hans
• 253 - The Forgotten Ones - poem by Mary Cook
• 255 - Nine Nights - short story by T. S. Bazelli
• 267 - Vodka Attack! - short story by Meddy Ligner
• 277 - The Ascent - short story by Berit Ellingsen
• 283 - Nightmare - poem by Wenona Napolitano
• 287 - About the Anthologists (Candle in the Attic Window)

Welcome to Mexico City... An Oasis In A Sea Of Vampires...

Domingo, a lonely garbage-collecting street kid, is busy eeking out a living when a jaded vampire on the run swoops into his life.

Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood drinkers, must feast on the young to survive and Domingo looks especially tasty. Smart, beautiful, and dangerous, Atl needs to escape to South America, far from the rival narco-vampire clan pursuing her. Domingo is smitten.

Her plan doesn't include developing any real attachment to Domingo. Hell, the only living creature she loves is her trusty Doberman. Little by little, Atl finds herself warming up to the scrappy young man and his effervescent charm.

And then there's Ana, a cop who suddenly finds herself following a trail of corpses and winds up smack in the middle of vampire gang rivalries.

Vampires, humans, cops, and gangsters collide in the dark streets of Mexico City. Do Atl and Domingo even stand a chance of making it out alive?

We like to imagine the end. How we might survive. How we might live after the fateful moment that changes everything. That moment has arrived--welcome to Canada, after the apocalypse!

Fractured is a collection of stories by more than 20 writers who imagine life after the end of days. The waters have risen around Vancouver, nuclear disasters have devastated the Prairies, a strange sickness has relocated the capital of the nation to Yellowknife, aliens have invaded Manitoba, and even ghosts have returned to exterminate the living. Across this vast nation, a country fractured and rent asunder by disasters both natural and unnatural, come the stories of survivors, of the brave and the wicked, the kind and the hostile. These are tales that reveal the secrets at this critical point for humanity, exploring a diversity of scenarios and settings from small rural communities to large cities and protagonists from all walks of life.

Postapocalyptic literature finds its stories in each generation that has something new to reflect upon: Mary Shelley's 1826 novel The Last Man is considered the first work of modern apocalyptic fiction, and many have followed in her footsteps in both print, with The Hunger Games, I Am Legend, The Road, and OryxandCrake, and film, with Mad Max, Waterworld, The Book of Eli, and others. Contributors to this volume include T. S. Bazelli, David Huebert, Hilary Janzen, Arun Jiwa, Claude Lalumière, Michael Pack, Morgan M. Page, Miriam Oudin, Frank Westcott, A. C. Wise, and more.

Table of Contents:

• Kalopsia - short story by E. Catherine Tobler
• Jenny of the Long Gauge - short story by Michael Matheson
• Snow Angel - short story by A. M. Dellamonica
• Persistence of Vision - short story by Orrin Grey
• Keeper of the Oasis - short story by Steve Stanton
• Maxim Fujiyama and Other Persons - short story by Claude Lalumière?
• Saying Goodbye - short story by Michael Pack
• Of the Dying Light - short story by Arun Jiwa
• Edited Hansard 116 - short story by Miriam Oudin
• @shalestate - short story by David Huebert
• The Body Politic - short story by John Jantunen
• Brown Wave - short story by Christine Ottoni
• Dog for Dinner - short story by dvsduncan
• Manitou-Wapow - short story by GMB Chomichuk and Curtis Janzen and Thomas Turner
• D-Day - short story by T. S. Bazelli
• Ruptures - short story by Jamie Mason
• City Noise - short story by Morgan M. Page
• River Road - short story by Amanda M. Taylor
• Matthew, Waiting - short story by A. C. Wise
• The Dome of St. Macaire - short story by Jean-Louis Trudel
• No Man Is a Promontory - short story by Hilary Janzen
• White Noise - short story by Geoff Gander
• Last Man Standing - short story by Frank Westcott

SPECIAL EDITION HARDCOVER: Contains three stories and 10 illustrations not included in paperback or e-book edition. A collection of fungal wonders... and terrors. In this new anthology, writers reach into the rich territory first explored by William Hope Hodgson a century ago: the land of the fungi. Stories range from noir to dark fantasy, from steampunk to body horror. Join authors such as Jeff VanderMeer, Laird Barron, Nick Mamatas, W.H. Pugmire, Lavie Tidhar, Ann K.Schwader, Jesse Bullington, Molly Tanzer and Simon Strantzas through a dizzying journey of fungal tales. Feast upon Fungi.

Contents:

• Cordyceps zombii - poem by Ann K. Schwader
• Where Dead Men Go to Dream - short story by A. C. Wise
• Last Bloom on the Sage - short fiction by Andrew Penn Romine
• His Sweet Truffle of a Girl - short fiction by Camille Alexa
• First They Came for the Pigs - short story by Chadwick Ginther
• Dust from a Dark Flower - short fiction by Daniel Mills
• Out of the Blue - [The Black Lands] - short fiction by Ian Rogers
• Wild Mushrooms - short fiction by Jane Hertenstein
• Corpse Mouth and Spore Nose - (2004) - short story by Jeff VanderMeer
• Hyphae - short fiction by John Langan
• A Monster in the Midst - short fiction by Julio Toro San Martin
• The Pilgrims of Parthen - short fiction by Kristopher Reisz [as by Kris Reisz]
• Gamma - short story by Laird Barron
• The White Hands - short fiction by Lavie Tidhar
• The Pearl in the Oyster and the Oyster Under Glass - short story by Lisa M. Bradley
• Tubby McMungus, Fat from Fungus - short fiction by Jesse Bullington and Molly Tanzer
• The Shaft Through the Middle of It All - short fiction by Nick Mamatas
• Our Stories Will Live Forever - short fiction by Paul Tremblay
• Letters to a Fungus - short fiction by Polenth Blake
• Goatsbride - short story by Richard Gavin
• Go Home Again - short story by Simon Strantzas
• Kum, Raúl (The Unknown Terror) - b. 1925, d. 1957 - short fiction by Steve Berman
• Midnight Mushrumps - short fiction by W. H. Pugmire
• New Feet Within My Garden Go - short fiction by E. Catherine Tobler
• The Flaming Exodus of the Greifswald Grimoire - short fiction by J. T. Glover
• Big Guy and Little Guy's Survivalist Adventure - short fiction by Claude Lalumière
•  Fungi - interior artwork by Bernie Gonzalez

The Jazz Age is in full swing, but Casiopea Tun is too busy cleaning the floors of her wealthy grandfather's house to listen to any fast tunes. Nevertheless, she dreams of a life far from her dusty small town in southern Mexico. A life she can call her own.

Yet this new life seems as distant as the stars, until the day she finds a curious wooden box in her grandfather's room. She opens it--and accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan god of death, who requests her help in recovering his throne from his treacherous brother. Failure will mean Casiopea's demise, but success could make her dreams come true.

In the company of the strangely alluring god and armed with her wits, Casiopea begins an adventure that will take her on a cross-country odyssey from the jungles of Yucatán to the bright lights of Mexico City--and deep into the darkness of the Mayan underworld.

This short story originally appeared in AE - The Canadian Science Fiction Review, January 28th 2018, and was reprinted in Lightspeed Magazine, October 2018.

Read the full story for free at AE or Lightspeed.

He is trying to poison me. You must come for me, Noemí. You have to save me.

After receiving a frantic letter from her newly-wed cousin begging for someone to save her from a mysterious doom, Noemí Taboada heads to High Place, a distant house in the Mexican countryside. She's not sure what she will find - her cousin's husband, a handsome Englishman, is a stranger, and Noemí knows little about the region.

Noemí is also an unlikely rescuer: She's a glamorous debutante, and her chic gowns and perfect red lipstick are more suited for cocktail parties than amateur sleuthing. But she's also tough and smart, with an indomitable will, and she is not afraid: Not of her cousin's new husband, who is both menacing and alluring; not of his father, the ancient patriarch who seems to be fascinated by Noemí; and not even of the house itself, which begins to invade Noemi's dreams with visions of blood and doom.

Her only ally in this inhospitable abode is the family's youngest son. Shy and gentle, he seems to want to help Noemí, but might also be hiding dark knowledge of his family's past. For there are many secrets behind the walls of High Place. The family's once colossal wealth and faded mining empire kept them from prying eyes, but as Noemí digs deeper she unearths stories of violence and madness.

And Noemí, mesmerized by the terrifying yet seductive world of High Place, may soon find it impossible to ever leave this enigmatic house behind.

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

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

Amelia dreams of Mars. The Mars of the movies and the imagination, an endless bastion of opportunities for a colonist with some guts. But she's trapped in Mexico City, enduring the drudgery of an unkind metropolis, working as a rent-a-friend, selling her blood to old folks with money who hope to rejuvenate themselves with it, enacting a fractured love story.

And yet there's Mars, at the edge of the silver screen, of life.

This novella can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection (2018), edited by Gardner Dozois.

They emerge from the shadows, to claim the night.... Women from around the world delve into Lovecraftian depths, penning and illustrating a variety of Weird horrors. The pale and secretive Lavinia wanders through the woods, Asenath is a precocious teenager with an attitude, and the Ancient Egyptian pharaoh Nitocris has found a new body in distant America. And do you have time to hear a word from our beloved mother Shub-Niggurath? Defiant, destructive, terrifying, and harrowing, the women in She Walks in Shadows are monsters and mothers, heroes and devourers. Observe them in all their glory. Iä! Iä!

Table of Contents:

• "Bitter Perfume" by Laura Blackwell
• "Violet is the Color of Your Energy" by Nadia Bulkin
• "Body to Body to Body" by Selena Chambers
• "Magna Mater" by Arinn Dembo
• "De Deabus Minoribus Exterioris Theomagicae" by Jilly Dreadful
• "Hairwork" by Gemma Files
• "The Head of T'la-yub" by Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas (translated by Silvia Moreno-Garcia)
• "Bring the Moon to Me" by Amelia Gorman
• "Chosen" by Lyndsey Holder
• "Eight Seconds" by Pandora Hope
• "Cthulhu of the Dead Sea" by Inkeri Kontro
• "Turn out the Light" by Penelope Love
• "The Adventurer's Wife" by Premee Mohamed
• "Notes Found in a Decommissioned Asylum, December 1961" by Sharon Mock
• "The Eye of Juno" by Eugenie Mora
• "Ammutseba Rising" by Ann K. Schwader
• "Cypress God" by Rodopi Sisamis
• "Lavinia's Wood" by Angela Slatter
• "The Opera Singer" by Priya Sridhar
• "Provenance" by Benjanun Sriduangkaew
• "The Thing in The Cheerleading Squad" by Molly Tanzer
• "Lockbox" by E. Catherine Tobler
• "When She Quickens" by Mary Turzillo
• "Shub-Niggurath's Witnesses" by Valerie Valdes
• "Queen of a New America" by Wendy N. Wagner

Mexico City, 1988. Long before iTunes or MP3s, you said "I love you" with a mix tape.

Meche, awkward and fifteen, has two equally unhip friends - Sebastian and Daniela - and a whole lot of vinyl records to keep her company. When she discovers how to cast spells using music, the future looks brighter for the trio. The three friends will piece together their broken families, change their status as non-entities, and maybe even find love...

Mexico City, 2009: Two decades after abandoning the metropolis, Meche returns alone for her estranged father's funeral.

It's hard enough to cope with her family, but then she runs into Sebastian, reviving memories from a childhood she thought she buried a long time ago. What really happened back then? What precipitated the bitter falling out with her father? Is there any magic left?

Montserrat has always been overlooked. She's a talented sound editor, but she's left out of the boys' club running the film industry in '90s Mexico City. And she's all-but-invisible to her best friend Tristán, a charming if faded soap opera star, even though she's been in love with him since childhood.

Then Tristán discovers his new neighbour is the cult horror director Abel Urueta, and the legendary auteur claims he has a way to change their lives - even if his tales of a Nazi occultist imbuing magic into highly volatile silver nitrate stock sounds like sheer fantasy. The magic film was never finished, which is why, Urueta swears, his career vanished overnight. He is cursed.

Now the director wants Montserrat and Tristán to help him shoot the missing scene and lift the curse...but Montserrat soon notices a dark presence following her, and Tristán begins seeing the ghost of his ex-girlfriend...

As they work together to unravel the mystery of the film and the obscure occultist who once roamed their city, Montserrat and Tristan might find out that sorcerers and magic are not only the stuff of movies...

Antonina Beaulieu is in the glittering city of Loisail for her first Grand Season, where she will attend balls and mingle among high society. Under the tutelage of the beautiful but cold Valerie Beaulieu she hopes to find a suitable husband. However, the haphazard manifestations of Nina's telekinetic powers make her the subject of malicious gossip.

Yet dazzling telekinetic performer and outsider Hector Auvray sees Nina's powers as a gift, and he teaches her how to hone and control them. As they spend more and more time together, Nina falls in love and believes she's found the great romance that she's always dreamt of. But Hector's courtship of Nina is deceptive.

"Back then, when I was a young woman, there were still witches." That was how Nana Alba always began the stories she told her great-granddaughter Minerva--stories that have stayed with Minerva all her life. Perhaps that's why Minerva has become a graduate student focused on the history of horror literature and is researching the life of Beatrice Tremblay, an obscure author of macabre tales.

In the course of assembling her thesis, Minerva uncovers information that reveals that Tremblay's most famous novel, The Vanishing, was inspired by a true story: Decades earlier, during the Great Depression, Tremblay attended the same university where Minerva is now studying and became obsessed with her beautiful and otherworldly roommate, who then disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

As Minerva descends ever deeper into Tremblay's manuscript, she begins to sense that the malign force that stalked Tremblay and the missing girl might still walk the halls of the campus. These disturbing events also echo the stories Nana Alba told about her girlhood in 1900s Mexico, where she had a terrifying encounter with a witch.

Minerva suspects that the same shadow that darkened the lives of her great-grandmother and Beatrice Tremblay is now threatening her own in 1990s Massachusetts. An academic career can be a punishing pursuit, but it might turn outright deadly when witchcraft is involved.

Carlota Moreau: A young woman growing up on a distant and luxuriant estate, safe from the conflict and strife of the Yucatán peninsula. The only daughter of a researcher who is either a genius or a madman.

Montgomery Laughton: A melancholic overseer with a tragic past and a propensity for alcohol. An outcast who assists Dr. Moreau with his experiments, which are financed by the Lizaldes, owners of magnificent haciendas and plentiful coffers.

The hybrids: The fruits of the doctor's labor, destined to blindly obey their creator and remain in the shadows. A motley group of part human, part animal monstrosities.

All of them live in a perfectly balanced and static world, which is jolted by the abrupt arrival of Eduardo Lizalde, the charming and careless son of Dr. Moreau's patron, who will unwittingly begin a dangerous chain reaction.

For Moreau keeps secrets, Carlota has questions, and, in the sweltering heat of the jungle, passions may ignite.

Locus Award nominated novella.

Yalxi, the deposed Supreme Mistress of the Guild of Sorcerers, is on a desperate mission. Her lover and confidant seized her throne and stole the precious diamond heart, the jewel that is the engine of her power. Yalxi sets out to regain her magic and find a weapon capable of destroying the usurper. But this will mean turning to unlikely allies and opening herself up to unpleasant memories that have been suppressed for many years. For Yalxi is no great hero, but a cunning sorceress who once forged her path in blood--and must reckon with the consequences.

Spanning a variety of genres -- fantasy, science fiction, horror -- and time periods, Silvia Moreno-Garcia's exceptional debut collection features short stories infused with Mexican folklore yet firmly rooted in a reality that transforms as the fantastic erodes the rational. This speculative fiction compilation, lyrical and tender, quirky and cutting, weaves the fantastic and the horrific alongside the touchingly human.

Perplexing and absorbing, the stories lift the veil of reality to expose the realms of what lies beyond with creatures that shed their skin and roam the night, vampires in Mexico City that struggle with disenchantment, an apocalypse with giant penguins, legends of magic scorpions, and tales of a ceiba tree surrounded by human skulls.

This short story originally appeared in the collection Love & Other Poisons (2014), and was reprinted in Lightspeed, August 2015.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

In the grand traditions of Brian Aldiss, Alan Garner and Ray Bradbury, Skaldenland is the story of Chad and Brun, who find the Symphonion, an ancient music box which plays even without song disks. The Song of the Symphonion turns summer into winter, calls giants from the stars, wakes gods and monsters from the Earth. Now brother and sister find themselves living out a terrifying war between Freya, leader of the Valkyries and Hel, Goddess of the Underworld for the soul of Baldur, a warrior-god condemned to hell by the woman he loved. But as icebergs fill the bay and an army of the dead invade the land of the living, is it the gods or the teenagers who will die?

The Symphonion must be silenced before the world is destroyed - but how?

Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami gives us a novel every bit as ambitious and expansive as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here and around the world for its uncommon ambition and achievement, and whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read and admired for decades to come.

This magnificent new novel has a similarly extraordinary scope and the same capacity to amaze, entertain, and bewitch the reader. A tour de force of metaphysical reality, it is powered by two remarkable characters: a teenage boy, Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home either to escape a gruesome oedipal prophecy or to search for his long-missing mother and sister; and an aging simpleton called Nakata, who never recovered from a wartime affliction and now is drawn toward Kafka for reasons that, like the most basic activities of daily life, he cannot fathom. Their odyssey, as mysterious to them as it is to us, is enriched throughout by vivid accomplices and mesmerizing events. Cats and people carry on conversations, a ghostlike pimp employs a Hegel-quoting prostitute, a forest harbors soldiers apparently unaged since World War II, and rainstorms of fish (and worse) fall from the sky. There is a brutal murder, with the identity of both victim and perpetrator a riddle--yet this, along with everything else, is eventually answered, just as the entwined destinies of Kafka and Nakata are gradually revealed, with one escaping his fate entirely and the other given a fresh start on his own.

Extravagant in its accomplishment, Kafka on the Shore displays one of the world's truly great storytellers at the height of his powers.

In Killing Commendatore, a thirty-something portrait painter in Tokyo is abandoned by his wife and finds himself holed up in the mountain home of a famous artist, Tomohiko Amada. When he discovers a previously unseen painting in the attic, he unintentionally opens a circle of mysterious circumstances. To close it, he must complete a journey that involves a mysterious ringing bell, a two-foot-high physical manifestation of an Idea, a dapper businessman who lives across the valley, a precocious thirteen-year-old girl, a Nazi assassination attempt during World War II in Vienna, a pit in the woods behind the artist's home, and an underworld haunted by Double Metaphors.

A tour de force of love and loneliness, war and art--as well as a loving homage to The Great Gatsby--Killing Commendatore is a stunning work of imagination from one of our greatest writers.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, August 2012.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

From two-time Carnegie Medal winner Patrick Ness comes an enthralling and provocative new novel chronicling the life — or perhaps afterlife — of a teen trapped in a crumbling, abandoned world. A boy named Seth drowns, desperate and alone in his final moments, losing his life as the pounding sea claims him. But then he wakes. He is naked, thirsty, starving. But alive. How is that possible? He remembers dying, his bones breaking, his skull dashed upon the rocks. So how is he here? And where is this place? It looks like the suburban English town where he lived as a child, before an unthinkable tragedy happened and his family moved to America. But the neighborhood around his old house is overgrown, covered in dust, and completely abandoned. What's going on? And why is it that whenever he closes his eyes, he falls prey to vivid, agonizing memories that seem more real than the world around him? Seth begins a search for answers, hoping that he might not be alone, that this might not be the hell he fears it to be, that there might be more than just this....

Generations ago, a single turun explorer discovered a long-abandoned and dwindling population of humans, a devastated colony nearing extinction on a dangerous, hostile world.

Now entirely blended into turun society, uman people have become full citizens of the far-flung Ka' Taand, a civilization that depends on the social instincts of both uman and turun. But the Ka' Taand is now threatened by a vicious enemy from beyond familiar space, an enemy neither species understands.

When small half-fighter tradeship Nkaastu unexpectedly encounters a formation of enemy fighters during a routine trading mission, uman battlecommander Daamon sees no choice but to tackle suicidal odds in the hope of giving the worlds of the Ka' Taand time to prepare for renewed attack. Neither Daamon nor his turun captain expect to survive long enough to know whether the sacrifice of their ship has been in vain...

...until an unknown and much more powerful ship appears, slashing effortlessly through the enemy fighters and saving Nkaastu. But who are these newcomers? And will they prove the allies the Ka' Taand needs... or a new and deadlier enemy?

When Moremi connects her brain to the Panopticon, a network which allows you to see inside the minds and dreams of others, she believes that itwill save her from depression, loneliness and, eventually, death. That is until she meets Orpheus.

Orpheus was brought up in isolation by a Neo-luddite father. He was raised to question everything, including the government who plan to make the connection procedure compulsory.

They promise that connecting everyone to the Panopticon will end human suffering and usher in a more perfect world. But when Orpheus and Moremi uncover the dark side of the technology, they find themselves on opposite sides of a radical divide, between those who believe that the Panopticon will save humanity, and those who will stop at nothing to destroy it.

Table of Contents:

• Shadows in the Sun
• The Shores of Another Sea
• Unearthly Neighbors

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 16, May-June 2017.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny Magazine.

Nebula Award nominated short fiction story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, April 1965. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: 15th Series (1966), edited by Edward L. Ferman and 11th Annual Edition: The Year's Best S-F (1966), edited by Judith Merril. It is incleded in the collections Nightfall and Other Stories (1969), Nightfall Two (1971), Robot Dreams (1986), The Asimov Chronicles: Fifty Years of Isaac Asimov (1989), and The Complete Stories, Volume 1 (1990).

The beginnings of a tentative friendship between two roboticists is complicated over career envy, female beauty, and a stolen robot designed to resemble a famous Korean actor.

Read the full story for free at Tor Reactor.

The jungle watches. The dead remember.

The virgin rainforest seems a paradise to Englishman Simon Corbett. A last chance to salvage his career. A final refuge from a terrible secret.

But the jungle is no Eden. It hides secrets of its own. It does not forgive.

As Simon is drawn deeper into its haunted shadows, he learns to his horror that the past will not stay buried. For there are places in the forest where the line between the living and the dead is thinner than the skin of water.

This is how magic left the Kingdom and made room for democracy.

Three supernatural beings created by an Omnipotent Mushroom God travel the multiverse until they are abandoned on a planet of stunning ecological diversity. They use their magic to rule over humans, but as their powers wane and a climate disaster looms, a young illiterate man is able to take the throne.

Originally published on 6 April 2022, read it for free at Tor.com

Sturgeon Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, October-November 2009 and was reprinted in Clarkesworld, Issue 113, February 2016. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection (2010), edited by Gardner Dozios.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

First we live. Then we die. And then... we get another try?

Ten thousand tries, to be exact. Ten thousand lives to "get it right." Answer all the Big Questions. Achieve Wisdom. And Become One with Everything.

Milo has had 9,995 chances so far and has just five more lives to earn a place in the cosmic soul. If he doesn't make the cut, oblivion awaits. But all Milo really wants is to fall forever into the arms of Death. Or Suzie, as he calls her.

More than just Milo's lover throughout his countless layovers in the Afterlife, Suzie is literally his reason for living--as he dives into one new existence after another, praying for the day he'll never have to leave her side again.

But Reincarnation Blues is more than a great love story: Every journey from cradle to grave offers Milo more pieces of the great cosmic puzzle--if only he can piece them together in time to finally understand what it means to be part of something bigger than infinity. As darkly enchanting as the works of Neil Gaiman and as wisely hilarious as Kurt Vonnegut's, Michael Poore's Reincarnation Blues is the story of everything that makes life profound, beautiful, absurd, and heartbreaking.

Because it's more than Milo and Suzie's story. It's your story, too.

We all know what happens when the hero saves the day, but what about their sidekicks?

Too often the hero is held high and celebrated whilst their sidekicks and comrades are brushed to the side; their own battles forgotten, and their actions airbrushed to nothingness from the tales of victory.

These are the stories of the ones who aren't remembered; the ones who helped save the day, and got cast aside; the ones who don't want the applause, and the ones who deserved the applause and never received it.

These stories didn't make the headlines - but they happened, and they're glorious.

Featuring stories by Courtney M Privett, Desmond Warzel, Donald Jacob Uitvlugt, Allen Stroud, Su Haddrell, Chrissey Harrison, John Houlihan, Ian Hunter, Jim Horlock

A trio of academics have just entered a deserted California cemetery late at night, bringing with them a number of arcane devices aimed at achieving an equally arcane purpose. These three men, professors in the "Consciousness Research" department at Cal Tech University, have come together to perform a seemingly impossible task. Their goal: to open a door between the world of the living and the world of the dead, and to capture the ghost of the recently deceased scientist Armand Vitrielli. For their own desperate reasons, they hope to avail themselves of the secrets Vitrielli left behind at the time of his death.

Their experiment, naturally, fails to come off exactly as planned. A door between the worlds does, in fact, open, letting in something -- someone -- completely unexpected, and setting in motion a chain of events that will reverberate throughout the world.

Among the residents of a small Dorset town called Folly Down, an unlikely struggle between the forces of good and evil is taking place. For a single winter's evening, Time stands still and the bitter-sweet gift of awareness descends upon the people. Because Mr Weston the wine merchant has come to town and the advert atop his Ford van lights up the sky above the village. Whether the villagers choose to buy Mr Weston's light or dark wine is up to them.

Once More* With Footnotes is a book by Terry Pratchett, published by NESFA Press in 2004 when he was the Guest of Honor for Noreascon Four, the 62nd World Science Fiction Convention. It contains a mixture of short stories, articles, introductions to other books, and speeches, including his first published short story, "The Hades Business". The initial run is a limited edition hardback, consisting of 2,500 copies. The title is a reference to the phrase "once more, with feeling" and to Pratchett's frequent use of footnotes in his Discworld series, along with the brief author commentary at the start of each piece; the book itself actually contains very few footnotes. One of NESFA's working titles for the book was "Oh Bugger, by Wossname".

Table of Contents:

• Terry Pratchett: The Man, The Myth, The Legend, The Beverage - essay by Esther M. Friesner
• Apology
• Hollywood Chickens - (1990)
• Doctor Who?
• The Hades Business - (1963)
• The Big Store
• Twenty Pence with Envelope and Seasonal Greeting - (1987)
• Paperback Writer
• Incubust - (1988)
• Final Reward - (1988)
• And Mind the Monoliths - (1978)
• FTB - (1996)
• Theatre of Cruelty - (1993)
• Introduction: The Unseen University Challenge - (1996)
• 2001: The Vision and the Reality
• High Tech, Why Tech?
• Roots of Fantasy
• Introduction: The Wyrdest Link - (2002)
• Thought Progress
• The Sea and Little Fishes - [Discworld] - (1998)
• Introduction: The Leaky Establishment - (2003)
• Let There be Dragons
• # ifdefDEBUG + "world/enough" + "time" - (1990)
• Foreword: Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
• Thud -- A Historical Perspective
• Death and What Comes Next
• Neil Gaiman: Amazing Master Conjurer
• Introduction: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Fantasy
• Elves Were Bastards
• Medical Notes - [Discworld] - (2002)
• Sheer Delight
• The Orangutans are Dying
• The Ankh-Morpork National Anthem - (1999)
• Alien Christmas
• Turntables of the Night - (1989)
• Cult Classic - (2001)
• The Choice Word
• Whose Fantasy Are You?
• No Worries
• Troll Bridge - [Discworld] - (1992)
• Faces of Fantasy/On Writing
• Imaginary Worlds, Real Stories
• The Secret Book of the Dead - (1991)
• Magic Kingdoms
• Once and Future - (1995)
• A Word About Hats
• The Titles That Got Away

As the entire world falls prey to a deadly magnetic pole shift and the evil intentions of those who would use technology for power, all eyes turn to Leidy Hudder, whose plan to explore the earth's center may provide their only hope.

The 2003 movie The Core was loosely based on this novel.

Awards: nominated for Hugo Award - Best non-fiction, 1994

An enquiry into the facts behind the non-appearance of a science fiction anthology called The Last Dangerous Visions, a project that was originally announced in 1971 but which was never in fact completed or delivered to the publisher, let alone published. Constantly hyped and boasted about by its editor, Harlan Ellison, and frequently promised for imminent completion, the incontinently overlength book has been subjected to years of editorial procrastination. As contributors began to ask when their work would be appearing, Mr Ellison announced false publication dates at regular intervals, and produced untrue testimony from hapless acquaintances saying (apparently under duress) that they had personally seen the completed manuscript. None of this was true and could not be, and none of it would in fact matter but for two things.

Firstly, a lot of writers have seen their stories held in limbo for several years (and in most cases for decades). Secondly, many writers who tried to recover their work to have it properly published have been treated abusively by Mr Ellison. Examples of his bullying tactics abound, and many are reported by the victims in the pages of this book. For this latter reason, and the understandable wish to enjoy a quiet life, most of the contributors have preferred to abandon their stories. To this day the manuscripts (most of them produced on typewriters!) remain somewhere in the depths of Mr Ellison's house. Of course, in the forty years (plus) that this storm in a teacup has been continuing, some of the writers have given up writing altogether and a large number of them have died without seeing their work in print.

Christopher Priest's short book on the subject was written more than twenty years ago in the spirit of investigative journalism, and treated the matter as one of professional concern. Even as long ago as that, Mr Ellison's unfinished project had become scandalous. Priest contacted many of the victims direct and assembled a collection of letters, reports, personal accounts and experiences, and from these mounted a dispassionate account of the rudeness, inefficiency and waste of time that have characterized dealings with Mr Ellison. This book is the only published critical account of the saga of incompetence and untruths. On publication, an attempt at a lawsuit of course followed. Mr Ellison is someone who never misses a chance to proclaim his commitment to free speech, except when the freedom is exercised about him.

In spite of Mr Ellison's attempts to persuade people that The Book on the Edge of Forever has vanished without trace, it remains available.

Amazon publishes a number of notably partisan reviews, both pro and con the book, and extracts can be read in the reviews section of this website. One of these (headlined Meanspirited Jealousy) takes partisanship to a new high, or low: signed only as being written by "A reader", it bears all the hallmarks of Mr Ellison's own unmistakable writing style: florid overstatement and a fog of half-truths intended to cloud the issue. Well worth a visit to witness the great man in action, a rare sight. (The whole thing can be read on the reviews page for this title; see link above.)

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 2013. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014, edited by Rich Horton.

Everyone in Edgewood believes their annual tithes at the fall festival are what purchase Edgewood's safety, but as Faye and her husband prepare to take over as town stewards--a long tradition carried out by her family for generations--they learn the terrible truth: in order to guarantee the town's safety, the forest demands an unthinkable sacrifice.

In the midst of everything, Faye is secretly battling debilitating postpartum anxiety that makes her all the more terrified to leave the safe cocoon of her enchanted town.

When everyone turns against her--including her own husband--Faye is forced to flee with her infant son into the forest. She must face whatever lurks there and, perhaps most frightening of all, the dark torments of her own mind.

The Forest is an adult folk horror novel appealing to fans of 'The Lottery' by Shirley Jackson and Bird Box by Josh Malerman, with a hint of The Changeling by Victor LaValle. It is Quigley's debut novel.

Set in a Roman Catholic Europe of violent passions and extreme oppression, the novel follows the fate of its heroine Adeline, who is mysteriously placed under the protection of a family fleeing Paris for debt. They take refuge in a ruined abbey in south-eastern France, where sinister relics of the past - a skeleton, a manuscript, and a rusty dagger - are discovered in concealed rooms. Adeline finds herself at the mercy of the abbey's proprietor, a libidinous Marquis whose attentions finally force her to contemplate escape to distant regions.

Rich in allusions to aesthetic theory and to travel literature, The Romance of the Forest is also concerned with current philosophical debate and examines systems of thought central to the intellectual life of late eighteenth-century Europe.

All that is left of humanity is on a thousand-year journey to a new planet aboard one ship, the Noah, which is also carrying a dangerous serial killer...

As a city planner on the Noah, Hana Dempsey is a gifted psychic, economist, hacker, and bureaucrat, and is considered "mission critical". She is nonreplaceable, important, essential - but after serving her mandatory Breeding Duty, the impregnation and birthing that all women are obligated to undergo - her life loses purpose, as she privately mourns the child she will never be permitted to know.

When policeman Leonard Barrens enlists her and her hacking skills in the unofficial investigation of this mentor's death, Dempsey finds herself increasingly captivated by both the case and Barrens himself. According to Information Security, the missing man has simply "retired" - nothing unusual is cited, such as the mutilated remains Barrens found in the old man's apartment. Unraveling this cover-up reveals a growing list of mutilated victims and suspicious deaths - evidence to suggest a serial killer is operating onboard the ship. As Barrens and Dempsey delve through lost dataspaces and plunge deep into the uninhabited regions of the ship, they discover that the answer could be far worse.

What they do with that answer will determine the fate of all humanity in this thrilling page-turner.

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, October-November 2009. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection (2010), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Four (2010), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Inspired by Hemingway's Islands in the Stream, but wholly original in conception, The Leeshore takes as its setting a bizarre planet covered almost entirely in water, the surface of which is cloaked perpetually in darkness. Miles above the planet's surface a jungle of free-floating plants forms an almost seamless carpet, blocking the light from the sun and forcing organisms below to function through biological luminescence.

Into this windswept, Hades-like shadow world converge two warring parties: one a battle-hardened crew of avenging Earthmen, the other a cult of computer worshippers known as Alteretics. The Alteretics have failed in their bid to conquer Earth with a God of their own design - the most sophisticated computer ever constructed. Now they are being hunted down by the people they had tried to subjugate.

Recruited by the Earthmen to guide them across the planet's Stygian terrain are two young people: the only inhabitants of Leeshore to have survived the attack of the Alteretics. As the search for the murderous sect escalates, brother and sister find themselves questioning not only their allegiance to their newfound conrades, but also the odd quirk of fate that has bestowed on them the power to determine who shall live and who shall die.

In the Pacific Northwest of the near future, the golden age has ended in apocalypse. Nuclear war has unleased firestorms and the killing cold of nuclear winter. Earthquakes and tidal waves have ravaged the West Coast of America. Desperate violent looters comb the devastated land. And a horrifying pandemic lays waste to the remaining human population.

But one of the few survivors, Mary Hope, is determined to see that some spark of culture survives. Together with her beloved friend Rachel, she sets out to preserve the precious knowledge of the past by saving every book she can in what may very well be the last library - the only record of a world that has perished.

But Mary and Rachel are not alone. They are forced to share their small subsistence farm, Amarna, with the Flock, a small band of survivors with fanatical beliefs. And one of those beliefs is that books are blasphemous and should be destroyed...

Electrifying and provocative, visceral and profound, a powerful literary debut novel about a young woman whose compulsion to eat earth gives her visions of murdered and missing people--an imaginative synthesis of mystery and magical realism that explores the dark tragedies of ordinary lives.

Set in an unnamed slum in contemporary Argentina, Earth-eater is the story of a young woman who finds herself drawn to eating the earth--a compulsion that gives her visions of broken and lost lives. With her first taste of dirt, she learns the horrifying truth of her mother's death. Disturbed by what she witnesses, the woman keeps her visions to herself. But when Earth-eater begins an unlikely relationship with a withdrawn police officer, word of her ability begins to spread, and soon desperate members of her community beg for her help, anxious to uncover the truth about their own loved ones.

Surreal and haunting, spare yet complex, Earth-eater is a dark, emotionally resonant tale told from a feminist perspective that brilliantly explores the stories of those left behind--the women enduring the pain of uncertainty, whose lives have been shaped by violence and loss.

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, March 1979. The story can also be found in the anthology The 1980 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha.

Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, January 1979. The story can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction Novellas of the Year #2 (1980), edited by Terry Carr.

In the thirty-third century, war, starvation, and disease once again plague Earth, and a spacecraft is launched into the heavens to do battle with a devastating and unknown evil force.

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Interzone, #27 January-February 1989 and a bit later in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, April 1990. The story can be found in the anthology The Big Book of Science Fiction (2016), edited by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer, and the collections Down and Out in the Year 2000 (1990), Remaking History and Other Stories (1994) and The Best of Kim Stanley Robinson (2010).

Read the full story for free at Baen.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, Issue 106, March 2019.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

The Moon Room was first published in the Spring 2020 issue of Kaleidotrope.

Read the story for free on Kaleidotrope.

From the golden age of art movies and underground cinema to X-rated porn, splatter films, and midnight movies, this breathtaking thriller is a tour de force of cinematic fact and fantasy, full of metaphysical mysteries that will haunt the dreams of every moviegoer. Jonathan Gates could not have anticipated that his student studies would lead him to uncover the secret history of the movies—a tale of intrigue, deception, and death that stretches back to the 14th century. But he succumbs to what will be a lifelong obsession with the mysterious Max Castle, a nearly forgotten genius of the silent screen who later became the greatest director of horror films, only to vanish in the 1940s, at the height of his talent. Now, 20 years later, as Jonathan seeks the truth behind Castle's disappearance, the innocent entertainments of his youth—the sexy sirens, the screwball comedies, the high romance—take on a sinister appearance. His tortured quest takes him from Hollywood's Poverty Row into the shadowy lore of ancient religious heresies. He encounters a cast of exotic characters, including Orson Welles and John Huston, who teach him that there's more to film than meets the eye, and journeys through the dark side of nostalgia, where the Three Stooges and Shirley Temple join company with an alien god whose purposes are anything but entertainment.

The Enchantress of Florence is the story of a mysterious woman, a great beauty believed to possess the powers of enchantment and sorcery, attempting to command her own destiny in a man's world. It is the story of two cities at the height of their powers -- the hedonistic Mughal capital, in which the brilliant emperor Akbar the Great wrestles daily with questions of belief, desire, and the treachery of his sons, and the equally sensual city of Florence during the High Renaissance, where Niccolò Machiavelli takes a starring role as he learns, the hard way, about the true brutality of power.

Profoundly moving and completely absorbing, The Enchantress of Florence is a dazzling book full of wonders by one of the world's most important living writers.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, March 2014. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015, edited by Rich Horton, and The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, edited by Joe Hill and John Joseph Adams. The story is included in the collection Tender: Stories (2017).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Sturgeon Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 1999. The story is included in the collection East of the Sun and West of Fort Smith (2008).

Spanning the genres of fantasy and science fiction, Tailored Realities includes ten works of short fiction from the ingenious mind of one of the genre's most beloved bestselling authors.

From futuristic detective thrillers to inventive space opera, superhero action, high-tech fantasy, and beyond, these gripping standalone reads have never before been gathered into one volume, with many available here in print for the first time.

Along with the thrilling new science fiction novella "Moment Zero," this collection includes:

• "Snapshot"
• "Perfect State"
• "Defending Elysium" (from the world of Skyward)
• "Firstborn"
• "Mitosis" (from the world of the Reckoners)
• and four other stories

Also including author's notes and stunning interior illustrations for each story, this visionary collection is a must-read whether you're new to Sanderson or a longtime fan.

This short story originally appeared in Shimmer, November 2014. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, edited by Joe Hill and John Joseph Adams, and The New Voices of Fantasy (2017), edited by Jacob Weisman and Peter S. Beagle.

Read the full story for free at Shimmer.

Juno Dawson's Her Majesty's Royal Coven meets a Jim Jarmusch movie. A directionless college-dropout deals with sexuality, minimum-wage jobs, lunar cycles, toxic masculinity and the everyday perils of life as a modern werewolf.

Brian, an aimless slacker, works doubles at his shift job, forgets to clean his room and lays about with his friends Nik and Darby. He's been struggling to manage his transition to adulthood almost as much as his monthly transitions to a werewolf. Really, he is not great at the whole werewolf thing, and his recent murderous slip-ups have caught the attention of Tyler, a Millennial were-mentor determined to take the mythological world by storm.

Tyler has got a plan, and weirdly his self-help punditry actually encourages Brian to shape up and to stop accidentally marking out guys who ghosted him on Grindr as potential monthly victims. But as Brian gets closer to Tyler's pack, and alienated from Nik and Darby, he realizes that Tyler's expansion plans are much more nefarious than a little lupine enlightenment...

Big-hearted, goofy, anarchic and funny, Bored Gay Werewolf is a smart take on the doomsday logic of late capitalism and the complicated meeting point of masculinity and sexuality. More than that, though, and like Scooby Doo with Grindr or Stranger Things with sex and ennui, it's a buddy novel about finding your pack, the power of friendship, and learning how to be comfortable in your own, shaggy werewolf pelt.

Brian, Nik, and Darby--three friends well-versed in battling supernatural crime (when Brian isn't busy committing it once a month as a werewolf)--are dispatched to London to track down a missing colleague. But prowling the city leads them straight into a clairvoyancy smuggling ring.

Who is kidnapping all the fortune tellers in Soho, and why? And is it a coincidence, fate, or something far more sinister that Maeve--a timid trans woman searching for her birth mother--arrives on their doorstep with the uncanny ability to predict what's coming next?

Women rule the world in this suspenseful love story set in a postnuclear future. Having expelled men from their vast walled cities to a lower-class wilderness, the women in this futuristic universe dictate policy and chart the future through control of scientific and technological advances. Among their laws are the rules for reproductive engagement, an act now viewed as a means of procreation rather than an act of love. In this rigidly defined environment, a chance meeting between a woman exiled from the female world and a wilderness man triggers a series of feelings, actions, and events that ultimately threaten the fabric of the women's constricted society. Trying to evade the ever-threatening female forces and the savage wilderness men, the two lovers struggle to find a safe haven and reconcile the teachings of their upbringings with their newly awakened feelings.

This Sturgeon Award nominated short story originally appeared in Apex Magazine, December 2018.

Read the full story for free at Apex Magazine.

Something More and More is published in conjunction with the appearance of Nisi Shawl as the Guest of Honor at WisCon 3r, May 26-30, 2011 Madison, WI

He manifested relatively whole, unrotted. Post one of his many surgeries, with makeup evening out the white patches on his poor skin. But beautiful. His song shimmered in the blackness, sweet and silver, ice and snow. About mirrors. Rianne reached out with insubstantial arms and held the mojo toward his chopped up face...
--from "Pataki"

Something More and More collects stories about hoodoo women and musicians, and essays about reading, crowns, and the work of Octavia E. Butler. It also includes a new interview of Nisi by Eileen Gunn, in which she talks about editing, being edited, and the competing charms of writing and making music.

...Music is essential and powerful in my life, and, I believe, in the world as well. At one point I had to choose which to concentrate on: music or writing. This was in my mid-thirties. I thought I was a bit long in the tooth for a music career, plus bands are so bumpy and full of egos. Writing you can do more or less on your own--you don't have to, but you can. Music is so seductive, though--the payoff is more immediate, feeling the resonance of a guitar next to your heart, being inside the sound at the same time the sound is inside you...
--from Eileen Gunn's "Interview with Nisi Shawl"

Table of Contents:

• 3 - Pataki - (2011) - novelette
• 31 - Something More - novelette
• 77 - Written on the Water - essay
• 87 - Because We Are All So Royal - essay
• 93 - How to Save the World, One Story at a Time - essay
• 99 - Interview with Nisi Shawl - (2011) - interview of Nisi Shawl - interview by Eileen Gunn

Sheckley's fifth story collection, including:

• "The Prize of Peril" (1958)
• "The Humours" (1958)
• "Triplication" (1959)
• "The Minimum Man" (1958)
• "If the Red Slayer" (1959)
• "The Store of the Worlds" (1959)
• "The Gun Without a Bang" (1958)
• "The Deaths of Ben Baxter" (1957)

Robert Sheckley was science fiction's in-house reply to the black humorists of the 1950s and 60s: Bruce Jay Friedman, Terry Southern, and the young Thomas Pynchon were his none-too-distant relatives; Mort Sahl's comedy, Charles Schultz's cartoons, and Tom Lehrer's songs all mined similar veins. Sheckley targeted the conformity and consumerism of our mid century technotopia while it was still under construction.

His new worlds, alternate universes, and future dystopias have only become more present with the passing years, even as his career, played out both in the pulp magazines and in front-line venues like Playboy and Omni, is a glimpse of a time when "science fiction writer" could be a kind of hipster credential. Mordant, absurdist, and deadpan, the best of Sheckley's dissident farces represent science fiction's high-water mark as an allegorical clearinghouse for twenty-century angst.

One woman. Endless options. Every choice has consequences.

Meek, play-it-safe Marsh has just turned forty-five, and her life is in shambles. Her career is stagnant, her marriage has imploded, and her teenage daughter grows more distant by the day. Marsh is convinced she's missed her chance at everything - romance, professional fulfillment, and adventure -- and is desperate for a do-over.

She can't believe her luck when she's selected to be the star of the global sensation All This and More, a show that uses quantum technology to allow contestants the chance to revise their pasts and change their present lives. It's Marsh's only shot to seize her dreams, and she's determined to get it right this time.

But even as she rises to become a famous lawyer, gets back together with her high school sweetheart, and travels the world, she begins to worry that All This and More's promises might be too good to be true. Because while the technology is amazing, something seems a bit off....

Can Marsh really make her life everything she wants it to be? And is it worth it?

Deep below a desolate Utah mountain lies the largest platinum deposit ever discovered. A billion-dollar find, it waits for any company that can drill a world's record, three-mile-deep mine shaft. EarthCore is the company with the technology, the resources and the guts to go after the mother lode. Young executive Connell Kirkland is the company's driving force, pushing himself and those around him to uncover the massive treasure.

But at three miles below the surface, where the rocks are so hot they burn bare skin, something has been waiting for centuries. Waiting... and guarding. Kirkland and EarthCore are about to find out first-hand why this treasure has never been unearthed.

Deep below a desolate Utah mountain lies the largest platinum deposit ever discovered. A billion-dollar find, it waits for any company that can drill a world's record, three-mile-deep mine shaft.

EarthCore is the company with the technology, the resources and the guts to go after the mother lode. Young executive Connell Kirkland is the company's driving force, pushing himself and those around him to uncover the massive treasure. But at three miles below the surface, where the rocks are so hot they burn bare skin, something has been waiting for centuries. Waiting ... and guarding. Kirkland and EarthCore are about to find out first-hand why this treasure has never been unearthed.

GOING UP?

A dinner party is held in the penthouse of a multimillion-pound development. All the guests are strangers - even to their host, the billionaire owner of the building.

None of them know why they were selected to receive his invitation. Whether privileged or deprived, they share only one thing in common - they've all experienced a shocking disturbance within the building's walls.

By the end of the night, their host is dead, and none of the guests will say what happened. His death has remained one of the biggest unsolved mysteries - until now.

But are you ready for their stories?

Mikael, a young gay photographer, finds in the courtyard of his apartment block a small, man-like creature. It is a young troll, known from mythology as a wild beast, now considered extinct. Mikael takes the troll, whom he has named Pessi, back to his apartment. But Mikael does not discover that trolls exude pheromones that smell like a Calvin Klein aftershave and that this has a profound aphrodisiac effect on all those around him. Shooting an assignment for the ultra-hip Stalker jeans, Mikael finds himself fast-tracked into a dangerous liaison with Martes, the art director of the advertising agency, while a couple of his friends in turn fall in love with him because he carries the troll's scent. What Mikael fails above all to learn, with tragic consequences, is that Pessi the troll is the interpreter of man's darkest, most forbidden feelings.

From the author of the Finlandia Award-winning novel Troll: A Love Story, The Core of the Sun further cements Johanna Sinisalo's reputation as a master of literary speculative fiction and of her country's unique take on it, dubbed "Finnish weird." Set in an alternative historical present, in a "eusistocracy"--an extreme welfare state--that holds public health and social stability above all else, it follows a young woman whose growing addiction to illegal chili peppers leads her on an adventure into a world where love, sex, and free will are all controlled by the state.

The Eusistocratic Republic of Finland has bred a new human sub-species of receptive, submissive women, called eloi, for sex and procreation, while intelligent, independent women are relegated to menial labor and sterilized so that they do not carry on their "defective" line. Vanna, raised as an eloi but secretly intelligent, needs money to help her doll-like sister, who has disappeared. Vanna forms a friendship with a man named Jare, and they become involved in buying and selling a stimulant known to the Health Authority to be extremely dangerous: chili peppers. Then Jare comes across a strange religious cult in possession of the Core of the Sun, a chili so hot that it is rumored to cause hallucinations. Does this chili have effects that justify its prohibition? How did Finland turn into the North Korea of Europe? And will Vanna succeed in her quest to find her sister, or will her growing need to satisfy her chili addiction destroy her?

Johanna Sinisalo's tautly told story of fight and flight is also a feisty, between-the-lines social polemic--a witty, inventive, and fiendishly engaging read.

When a string of decapitated murder victims is discovered, vampire detective Nick Knight suspects a recently released former inmate who had killed his wife the same way, but he wonders if one of his own kind is really responsible.

Original work; TV tie-in.

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1961. It has been anthologized several times.

It was the basis for episode 136 (1964) of The Twilight Zone.

BFA winning and WFA nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Dark Terrors: The Gollancz Book of Horror (1995) edited by David Sutton and Stephen Jones. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Ninth Annual Collection (1996), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 7 (1996), edited by Stephen Jones. The story is included in the collections What You Make It (1999) and More Tomorrow & Other Stories (2003).

Going well beyond the scope of his UK collection from several years ago, this is the definitive collection of Smith's shorter fiction, as well as his long overdue first US collection. More Tomorrow & Other Stories features 30 of the author's best stories, plus an introduction by award-winning editor Stephen Jones and an afterword by Michael Marshall Smith. A massive book, at almost 500 pages! There are no UK or US trade paperback, trade hardcover, or any other edition currently planned, so once these are gone, they're gone! Wraparound cover art by John Picacio.

Contents:

• Introduction: Alias Smith & Jones, by Stephen Jones
• More Tomorrow
• Being Right
• Hell Hath Enlarged Herself
• Save As...
• The Handover
• What You Make It
• Maybe Next Time
• The Book of Irrational Numbers
• When God Lived in Kentish Town
• The Man Who Drew Cats
• A Place To Stay
• The Dark Land
• To See The Sea
• Two Shot
• Last Glance Back
• They Also Serve
• Dear Alison
• To Receive Is Better
• The Munchies
• Always
• Not Waving
• Everybody Goes
• Dying
• Charms
• Open Doors
• Later
• More Bitter Than Death
• A Long Walk, For The Last Time
• The Vaccinator
• Enough Pizza
• On Not Writing (An Afterword), by M. M. Smith

For almost seventy years, people the world over have fallen in love with Frank Capra's classic Christmas movie It's a Wonderful Life. But few of those fans know that Capra's film was based on a short story by author Philip Van Doren Stern, which came to Stern in a dream one night.

Unable at first to find a publisher for his evocative tale about a man named George Pratt who ponders suicide until he receives an opportunity to see what the world would be like without him, Stern ultimately published the story in a small pamphlet and sent it out as his 1943 Christmas card. One of those 200 cards found its way into the hands of Frank Capra, who shared it with Jimmy Stewart, and the film that resulted became the holiday tradition we cherish today.

This short story has subsequently been anthologized several times.

The First-In team had promised New Lebanon's loggers that the planet's tigerlike predators were gone. But it was a tiger that stood over Hashti in the woods, pawing her and uttering an eerie, songlike cry. Panicked, the horse trainer hit her assailant. He snorted in surprise--and fled. The tiger's call haunted Hashti. The First-Inners heard mystery in the alien song. The loggers heard danger. Hashti's lover heard profit--and the loggers agreed. The unusual feathered tiger pelts represented a way to buy themselves out of lifelong debt to Oldearth Company.

But Hashti and the First-Inners had begun to believe that the tigers might be intelligent beings. Someone had to learn the truth before the colonists' terror led to wide-scale massacre. So Hashti set out into the forest alone to learn the ways of the tigers...

Nominated for the BSFA Awards 2017!

"One day I will be too old for the shadows. What kind of monster will I be then?"

One minute Andrew Pryde is in a library, reading; the next, he's staring at the body of a young girl lying between the bookshelves, with a policewoman standing over him. In the blink of an eye, his world has unravelled.

In his desperate quest to clear his name, he'll have to suspend all disbelief. And who exactly is Ronald Gibbs, the nerdy youth with a dark twist, who seems to hold so many answers to the mystery? Could this strange man, who spends his days on Internet chatrooms trying to prove the existence of magic and other worlds, somehow be involved in the girl's death?

All the while, Andrew is plagued by disturbing visions and nightmares. As the police close in, the two men are forced to band together to seek the truth about strange disappearances, portals, and the occult. Can they find the murderer and rescue a girl who's already dead?

Table of Contents:

• ...And My Fear Is Great... - (1953) - novella
• Baby Is Three - (1952) - novella

Contains:

• A Pod in the Barrier
• A Crime for Llewellyn
• The Touch of Your Hand
• Affair with a Green Monkey
• Mr. Costello, Hero
• The Girl Had Guts
• The Other Celia
• It Opens the Sky
• A Touch of Strange

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1987) - essay by David Pringle
• Killdozer! - (1944) - novella
• The Sex Opposite - (1952) - novelette
• Mr. Costello, Hero - (1953) - novelette
• The Golden Helix - (1954) - novella
• When You're Smiling - (1955) - novelette
• And Now the News ... - (1956) - novelette
• The Other Celia - (1957) - short story
• Slow Sculpture - (1970) - novelette
• List of Sources - (1987) - essay

Baby Is Three is a novella by Theodore Sturgeon. It originally appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1952.

This collection, including the famous "Abreaction" and "Like Young", shows Sturgeon at the peak of his mastery of mind and heart expanding story telling.

Table of Contents:

• Need - (1960)
• Abreaction - (1948)
• Nightmare Island - (1941)
• Largo - (1947)
• The Bones - (1943)
• Like Young - (1960)

Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Galaxy Magazine, January-February 1973. The story can also be found in the collcetions Case and the Dreamer and Other Stories (1974) and Case and the Dreamer: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Vol. 13 (2010).

Contents:

• Case and the Dreamer (1973)
• If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister? (1967)
• When You Care, When You Love (1962)

Contains:

• Bright Segment
• Microcosmic God
• Ghost of a Chance
• Prodigy
• Medusa
• Blabbermouth
• Shadow, Shadow on the Wall
• Twink

Short story collection:

• "Essay on Sturgeon" by Groff Conklin
• "The Silken-Swift"
• "The Professor's Teddy-Bear"
• "Bianca's Hands"
• "Saucer of Loneliness"
• "The World Well Lost"
• "It Wasn't Syzygy"
• "The Music"
• "Scars"
• "Fluffy"
• "The Sex Opposite"
• "Die, Maestro, Die!"
• "Cellmate"
• "A Way of Thinking"

A charismatic, Christ-like figure--Godbody--appears in the midst of a small American town and transforms the lives of a select few.

Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in the anthology Dangerous Visions (1967), edited by Harlan Ellison. It is included in the collections Case and the Dreamer and Other Stories (1974) and The Nail and the Oracle (2007).

"It" is a horror short story by American writer Theodore Sturgeon, first published in Unknown of August 1940. The story deals with a plant monster that is ultimately revealed to have formed around a human skeleton, specifically that of Roger Kirk, in a swamp. P. Schuyler Miller described "It" as "probably the most unforgettable story ever published in Unknown."

Nominated in 2016 for the 1941 Retro Hugo Award. It originally appeared in Unknown, August 1940. It has been reprinted many times and can be found in the anthologies:

• Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me (1967), edited by Alfred Hitchcock
• The Great Science Fiction Stories Volume 2, 1940 (1979), edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg
• The Horror Hall of Fame (1991), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Robert Silverberg
• Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead (2009), edited by John Skipp
• Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! (2011), edited by Otto Penzler

The story is included in the collections:

• Alien Cargo (1984)
• The Ultimate Egoist (1995)
• Selected Stories (2000)

Hugo Award nominated story. It originally appeared in the collection Beyond (1960). It is also included in the anthology The Best of All Possible Worlds (1980), edited by Spider Robinson, and collection The Man Who Lost the Sea (2005).

This novelette originally appeared in If, July-August 1971. It can also be found in the anthologies:

• The 1972 Annual World's Best SF (1972), edtied by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha
• The Best Science Fiction of the Year #1 (1972), edited by Terry Carr
• Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year (1972), edited by Lester del Rey
• Dream's Edge (1980) edited by Terry Carr
• Worlds of If: A Retrospective Anthology (1986), edited by Joseph D. Olander, Martin Harry Greenberg and Frederik Pohl
• The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF (1994), edtied by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer

The story is included in the collections Xanadu (1973), The Stars Are the Styx (1979) and Slow Sculpture (2009).

Thirteen ingenious stories—at once breathtaking, wondrous, horrifying, and achingly human—from one of science fiction and fantasy's most influential writers

One of science fiction's most beloved trailblazers, Theodore Sturgeon wrote novels and short fiction that inspired and amazed readers and critics alike.

In Selected Stories, thirteen of Sturgeon's very best tales have been gathered into one collection: Here are stories of love and darkness, transcendence and obsession, alien contact and human interaction. In the devastating wake of a nuclear holocaust, an actress performs her swan song before a small audience of survivors. A machine is possessed and intent upon destruction. Humankind's place in the vast cosmos is explored, as is the strange humanity of evil. In the author's acclaimed story "The Man Who Lost the Sea," a life is reconstructed in bizarre shattered fragments. And in "Slow Sculpture," Sturgeon's award-winning classic, a breast cancer patient surrenders to a healer's most unorthodox methods. Lyrical, often witty, frequently provocative, and always surprising, Selected Stories covers a wide range of human and inhuman emotion and experience, deftly traversing the borders between science fiction, dark fantasy, and horror.

This ebook features an illustrated biography of Theodore Sturgeon including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the University of Kansas's Kenneth Spencer Research Library and the author's estate, among other sources.

Contents:

• A Way of Thinking (1953)
• Bianca's Hands (1947)
• Bright Segment (1955)
• It (1940)
• Killdozer! [revised] (1959)
• Mr. Costello, Hero (1953)
• Slow Sculpture (1970)
• The Golden Helix (1954)
• The Man Who Lost the Sea (1959)
• The Sex Opposite (1952)
• The Skills of Xanadu (1956)
• The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff (1955)
• Thunder and Roses (1947)

Hugo Award winner (best short story) and the Nebula Award (novelette). It originally appeared in Galaxy Magazine, February 1970. The story can also be found in the anthologies:

• World's Best Science Fiction: 1971, edited by Terry Carr and Donald A. Wollheim
• Nebula Award Stories Six (1971), edited by Clifford D. Simak
• The Hugo Winners, Volume 3 (1977), edited by Isaac Asimov
• Galaxy: Thirty Years of Innovative Science Fiction (1980), edtied by Frederik Pohl, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander
• The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume IV (1986), edited by Terrt Carr
• The Best of the Nebulas (1989), edited by Ben Bova

It is included in the collections:

• Sturgeon Is Alive and Well... (1971)
• A Touch of Sturgeon (1987)
• Selected Stories (2000)
• Slow Sculpture: The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, Vol. 12 (2009)

Starshine -- the eerie, unmistakable fire of Ted Sturgeon's genius -- lights up unforgettably these stories of now and tomorrow...tales of aliens from far planets, men of the spaceways and creatures of darkness. From the daring of "The World Well Lost" to the tense adventure of "The Pod and the Barrier" and the brisk fantastic humor of "Derm Fool," these are Sturgeon classics -- stories you can't forget and shouldn't miss.

Table of Contents:

• "Derm Fool" - (1940)
• The Haunt - (1941)
• Artnan Process - (1941)
• The World Well Lost - (1953)
• The Pod and the Barrier - (1957)
• How to Kill Aunty - (1961)

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - (1971) - essay by Theodore Sturgeon
• To Here and the Easel - (1954)
• Slow Sculpture - (1970)
• It's You! - (1970)
• Take Care of Joey - (1971)
• Crate - (1970)
• The Girl Who Knew What They Meant - (1970)
• Jorry's Gap - (1968)
• It Was Nothing--Really! - (1969)
• Brownshoes - (1969)
• Uncle Fremmis - (1970)
• The Patterns of Dorne - (1970)
• Suicide - (1970)

Contains:

• To Marry Medusa
• The Comedian's Children
• The [Widget], the [Wadget] and Boff