The highlight is the slightly absurdist "Shades of White and Road," which develops the whimsy of a magic kingdom and talking objects into something touching and beautiful. Other standouts include the melancholy, postapocalyptic "A Taste of Snow," the fun space frontier tale "The Clone Wrangler's Bride" and the clockwork-and-alchemy fantasy "The Butterfly Assassins," which deftly mixes a murder mystery, court intrigue and a stutterer's plight in a world where magic requires verbal incantations. "Paperheart," focusing on the last dragon, and "They Shall Be as They Know," an eschatological zombie story, nicely revisit familiar themes. The poems are not as strong as the fiction but they show decent range. Alexa's voice is a welcome new addition to genre fiction."A girl and her mandroid wander the Twelve Domed Cities of Mars, looking for a place to call home... A young man in the age of practical alchemy eschews incantations he can't utter for fantastic creatures built of cogs and springs... A prehistoric inventor living at the cusp of change finds an ancient winged carcass at the edge of a melting glacier, and has the inspiration of a lifetime... Over two dozen short speculative works from the pages of Fantasy Magazine, ChiZine, Abyss & Apex, Space & Time Magazine and more, including SpaceWesterns.com's most-read story of all time, "The Clone Wrangler's Bride" and its sequel, "Droidtown Blues." PLUS new stories never before published, collected here for the first time.Contents:Shades of White and Road • (2009)A Taste of Snow • (2009)The Clone Wrangler's Bride • (2009)The Butterfly Assassins • (2009)Paperheart • (2009)They Shall Be as They Know • (2009)The Italian • (2009)Plastic Personality Surgery • (2009)Cliffs of Cal'allat • (2009)Neither Wave Nor Wind • (2009)Poor Little Things • (2009)Kingdom at the Edge of Nowhere • (2009)Inclusions • (2007)The Beetle Eater's Dream • (2009)Baseball Trophies, Baby Teeth • (2009)I Consider My Cadaver • (2009)Flaming Marshmallow and Other Deaths • (2008)Weird Fruits • (2008)To Heroboy, from Tiffani • (2009)Droidtown Blues • (2009)Of Spice and Lime and Tea • (2009)Three Days Dead • (2009)Veilsight • (2008)Flying Solo • (2007)The Green Infinity • (2008)Virgin Soil • (2008)Observations of a Dimestore Figurine • (2009)The Pull of the World and the Push of the Sky • (2009)Milky Way Meat Market • (2009)Foreword (Push of the Sky) • essay by Jay Lake

    

    history. Designed by Professor Archibald Campion in 1893 as a prototype, for the self-proclaimed purpose of “preventing the deaths of men in the conflicts of nations,” Boilerplate charged into combat alongside such notables as Teddy Roosevelt and Lawrence of Arabia. Campion and his robot also circled the planet with the U.S. Navy, trekked to the South Pole, made silent movies, and hobnobbed with the likes of Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla. You say you’ve never heard of Boilerplate before? That’s because this book is the fanciful creation of a husbandand-wife team who have richly imagined these characters and inserted them into accurate retellings of history. This full-color chronicle is profusely illustrated with graphics mimicking period style, including photos, paintings, posters, cartoons, maps, and even stereoscope cards. Part Jules Verne and part Zelig, it’s a great volume for a broad range of fans of science fiction, history, and robots.

    Doctor Grordbort Presents: Victory - Scientific Adventure Violence for Young Men and Literate Women is the year's foremost journal of progressive armaments and weaponry! Behold the latest line of defense captured in action! Filled to the brim with firsthand tales of exploration and progress from the great heroes of our time, picture strips of unimaginable escapades on the frontier, never-seen-before portraits of dazzling damsels and monstrous villains, and laudable accounts of man and robot pitted against our greatest enemy (the uncivilized world), Victory is an onslaught of action-packed scientific adventure in full-spectrum color - containing facts that every boy and literate girl should know.

    Limited to 850 individually numbered copies, this book is a full-color, 9"x12", 48-page hardcover art book featuring contributions from artists at the 2009 Emerald City Comicon.Illustrated boards featuring the art of 46 illustrators.Cover by Frank Cho (colors by Nathan Fairbairn).Size: Folio - over 12" - 15" tall.

    From the all out war of dragon-riding sorcerers against an army of self-replicating, clockwork robots in Christopher M. Cevasco's "Gambit," to the discovery of an alien submersible by pirates in Christopher Heath's Azieran tale "Savior in a Flask," further still to Nicholas Ian Hawkins' collision of a wizardly scholar and the newly-invented printing press that will ruin his career in "Knowledge and Dust," you will certainly be amazed at the breathtaking imaginations of fifteen authors. Dragons, steam-powered tanks, Aztec warriors, angry gods, assassins both large and small...Magic & Mechanica is unlike any collection of fantasy you've ever seen.

    In seeking the Ascent of the Bone Ziggurat, Koark finds instead a strange being made of glass, and becomes involved in a secret conflict involving a centuries-old Machine Man, Black-bird warrior, and thousands of years of violent history.This book contains the first five chapters of the story as originally published online, and extra material.

    Together with their human friends, the Autobots have formed a top secret team bent on keeping the Earth safe. But they had better watch out—a Decepticon could be lurking where they least expect it! Book Details: Format: Paperback Publication Date: 5/12/2009 Pages: 24 Reading Level: Age 4 and Up

    It has everything you need to complete the fantasy--thorough step-by-step assembly instructions and illustrations are in the book, while the CD has 14 ready-to-print, customizable robot templates.Colors, designs, and size can be manipulated using any standard editing package so you can create over 250 variants for a full robot army. The models print out on letter-sized paper and are assembled using rubber bands or fishing line, it's that easy! There are even templates for a cityscape suitable for crushing or a Super Dimension- type fortress for a robot takeover.From shape-changing Transformer-types to chunky Gundam-esque mobile suits, there's mecha for makers of all skill levels. So if you're a first-time model maker or just a fan of robots, anime, and manga, there's bound to be the perfect project waiting for you in Build Your Own Paper Robot.