Best of
Science-Fiction-Fantasy

1998

Anne McCaffrey Freedom Collection: Freedom's Landing, Freedom's Challenge, Freedom's Choice


Anne McCaffrey - 1998
    Thousands are herded onto slave ships headed for the intergalactic auction block.Kris Bjornsen is captured in Denver on her way to her college classes and wakes up on the primitive planet Barevi. Courageous and resourceful, she manages a single-woman escape from the Catteni and is living in the wilds of the planet when she comes to the aid of a Catteni soldier pursued by his own ranks. Recaptured together, they join forces with other slaves to outwit their captors and a hostile planetary environment.Freedom's Challenge - multi-voice narration, directed by Ruth BloomquistKris Bjornsen has come a long way since alien slave ships scooped her up in Denver with thousands of others. Dropped off on an apparently uninhabited world with the rest, she has fallen in love with Zainal, a renegade Catteni, and made a comfortable life for herself and her new family. But she feels a soldier's duty to escape Botany and rejoin the struggle for freedom.Freedom's Choice - multi-voice narration, directed by Ruth BloomquistThe shipments of Catteni slaves continue, but they find that they are enjoyably reinventing the creature comforts of home, and searching for the origin of the Farmers who were the original occupants of Botany, all under the keen eyes of two very different observers. When scouts for the Emassi come to retrieve Zainal, shanghaied in the original shipment of slaves, Botany changes irrevocably. Listeners will delight in this continued adventure of survival, romance, and ingenuity.

The Complete Fuzzy


H. Beam Piper - 1998
    Beam Piper's bestselling science fiction novel Little Fuzzy captivated readers everywhere. Now, all three of Piper's delightful books are available for the first time in one volume: Little Fuzzy, Fuzzy Sapiens and Fuzzies And Other People.

The Enemy Papers


Barry B. Longyear - 1998
    "The Enemy Papers" is the saga of how humans and their enemies used Talma to end war...".this was one of those rare times when a story was so good that even I could see "Hugo" written all over it."--Isaac Asimov on "Enemy Mine"

The Pit Dragon Chronicles, Volumes 1-3


Jane Yolen - 1998
    Revered by devoted fans for more than twenty years, these first three volumes of Jane Yolen's fierce and fiery dragon tales are published together for the first time--in a handsome boxed set that's sure to win over legions of new admirers.

Changer


Jane Lindskold - 1998
    Yet when a quest for vengeance forces him to shed animal form and seek out King Arthur, the Changer discovers that the darkest of dangers threaten the timeless realm. For Arthur's sworn enemies have risen once more to topple the king and spread chaos among humankind. The Changer himself will be the enemy's unwitting accomplice, unless he somehow stops the dreaded forces and diabolical powers threatening to destroy Arthur's kingdom--and all humanity.

The Engineer Reconditioned


Neal Asher - 1998
    Mysterious aliens, ruthless terrorists, androids with attitude, genetic manipulation, punch-ups with lasers and giant spaceships! What more do you want?Reprint of The Engineer with three additional stories.The EngineerSpatterjay The OwnerThe Tor-beast's Prison Tiger Tiger

Colours of Gold


Kaye Dobbie - 1998
    After being given a long-lost painting found in the basement of a condemned hotel, Annie becomes intrigued by the two girls who stare out at her from the ruined canvas. All she has are two names: Alice and Rosey...and a landscape from a century before.1867: Named by the wife of the paddle steamer captain who finds her half drowned in the Murray River, Alice has a gift — she can see an aura of colours around the people she meets, but sometimes the colours tell her of impending doom. Learning to survive in a world which misunderstands her, Alice eventually runs away to the goldfields with her friend Rosey and joins a troupe of entertainers. While her fame and fortunes increase as people pay to hear her predictions, Alice can never escape her past...along with the frightening man in the dark coat who follows her wherever she goes.Who were Alice and Rosey? And why does Annie find their lives so important? As Annie becomes caught up with seeking answers from the past, she finds herself seeing the same man in the dark coat who follows her wherever she goes. What is his connection to the painting?

The Decadent Reader: Fiction, Fantasy, and Perversion from Fin-de-Siècle France


Asti HustvedtJean Moréas - 1998
    The obsessions of our own culture as the twentieth century came to a close resonate strikingly with those of the last fin-de-siecle: crime, pollution, sexually transmitted diseases, gender confusion, moral depravity, alcoholism, and tobacco and drug use were topics of popular discussion then as now.The Decadent Reader is a collection of novels and stories from fin-de-siecle France that celebrate decline, aestheticize decay, and take pleasure in perversity. By embracing the marginal, the unhealthy, and the deviant, the decadent writers attacked bourgeois life, which they perceived to be the chief enemy of art. Barbey d'Aurevilly, Joris-Karl Huysmans, Jean Lorrain, Guy de Maupassant, Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, Catulle Mendes, Rachilde, Jean Moreas, Octave Mirbeau, Josephin Peladan, and Remy de Gourmont looted the riches of their culture for their own purposes. In an age of medicine, they borrowed its occult mysteries rather than its positivism. From its social Darwinism, they found their monsters: sadists, murderers, transvestites, fetishists, prostitutes, nymphomaniacs, and hysterics. And they reveled in them, completely upending the conventions of romance and sentimentality. The Decadent Reader, which includes critical essays on all of the authors, many novels and stories that have never before appeared in English, and familiar works set in a new context, offers a compelling portrait of fin-de-siecle France.

The Avram Davidson Treasury: A Tribute Collection


Avram Davidson - 1998
    He was erudite, cranky, Jewish, wildly creative, and sold most of his wonderful stories to pulp magazines. They are wonderful.Now his estate and his friends have brought together a definitive collection of his finest work, each story introduced by an SF luminary: writers like Ursula K. Le Guin, William Gibson, Poul Anderson, Gene Wolfe, Guy Davenport, Peter S. Beagle, Gregory Benford, Thomas M. Disch, and dozens of others. This is a volume every lover of fantasy will need to own.

The Dogs: A Modern Bestiary


Rebecca Brown - 1998
    The dogs, led by the cruel, charismatic bitch named Miss Dog, alternate between being brutal attack animals and loyal companions, being real and otherworldly. Some chapters draw upon the ecstatic and horrifying visions of Christian mystics; others take place in the landscapes of familiar fairytales; others in the banal settings of the late-night pick-up bars or suburban picnics. The narrator uneasily inhabits these worlds until the dogs force her to take irrevocable action."A snarling attack on the fairytale form. A good girl's fears of inadequacy materialize as a pack of vicious dogs."—Publishers Weekly"A strange and wonderful first-person voice emerges from the stories of Rebecca Brown, who strips her language of convention to lay bare the ferocious rituals of love and need."—The New York Times"Using unsentimental language that slices, pries and exposes layers of emotion and sexuality as a scalpel does a body, Brown veers into the uncharted territory."—The San Francisco Chronicle"I read everything Rebecca Brown writes, watch for her books and hunt down her short stories. She is simply one of the best contemporary lesbian writers around."—Dorothy Allison"A dry, witty, graceful—if savage—gift."—Mary GaitskillRebecca Brown is the author of other fictions, including The Terrible Girls, Annie Oakley’s Girl, and The Gifts of the Body. She is the winner of the 2003 Washington State Book Award, and was awarded a Genius Award and grant from Seattle's weekly magazine, The Stranger. She lives in Seattle.

Aquila


Andrew Norriss - 1998
    They have no idea where it came from or what it does. But Geoff's discovered that when you sit in it these little coloured lights come on, and if you push one of the big blue oneS . . . WHOOSH!

Nocturnals: Black Planet


Dan Brereton - 1998
    They have already ravaged his home planet, and now he has traveled to Earth to try and stop them once and for all. Once here, however, he finds that this world's inhabitants aren't all sweetness and light themselves. Some of them are busy creating freakish mutations out of their fellow man, and others are helping the invaders in their quest for domination. An outcast, Doc Horror is forced to live by the dark of night, and there he finds compatriots who must also shun the light of day. Polychrome, The Gunwitch, Starfish, Firelion, Komodo, and The Raccoon have all their share of knocks from humanity, but they want to save their homeworld anyway, and they don't care how many monsters stand in their way.

Icefire


Judith Reeves-Stevens - 1998
    This is a plan of calculated evil and when it begins, only two people will survive the initial destruction of the ice station.

Nimisha's Ship


Anne McCaffrey - 1998
    Precociously gifted, Nimisha becomes his secret assistant--and, in the aftermath of a shocking tragedy, his chosen successor at the helm of the Ship Yards.When Nimisha takes an experimental ship on a solo test flight, something goes horribly awry, marooning her light-years from home on a planet as deadly as it is beautiful. Now the ruthless members of a rival branch of the Rondymense family are given the chance they've been waiting for: to reclaim the Ship Yards by any means necessary.Only Nimisha's ingenious child, Cuiva, stands in their way. But for how long? For just when her daughter needs her most, Nimisha is in a precarious situation herself--and unable to help. But Nimisha has never given up in her life--and she's not about to start now . . .

Invasion America


Christie Golden - 1998
    Revealed to be of royal heritage as the son of an alien prince and a human woman, David is now destined to lead the defense of Earth against hostile conquerors from the distant planet of Tyrus. But this will prove to be no easy task, as the Tyrusians are already here--and have managed to infiltrate the highest echelons of power!

Widowmakers


Mike Resnick - 1998
    Nighthawk, the Widowmaker, has been frozen for over a century, awaiting the cure for a deadly disease.This is a compilation of three different books, The Widowmaker, The Widomaker Reborn, and the Widowmaker Unleashed. The first two follow the paths of his clones, struggling to survive, and the last explores the time when he is finally cured and reawakened.

Fathom: Collected Editions Volume 5


Michael Layne Turner - 1998
    Smith Witness the climatic finale of the first Fathom story line as Top Cow proudly re-presents issues 8 and 9 in this special collected edition. These two pulse pounding issues wrap up the year long story of Aspen's quest to find out the truth of her past and stop Killian's plan for world domination! Find out who lived and who wound up becoming part of the ocean, permanently! With an all new cover by series creator Michael Turner, here is your chance to relive the conclusion of one of the top running story lines of the year!Collects issue #8 & 9

If Wishes Were Horses


Anne McCaffrey - 1998
    Their mother -- the village healer -- enlists her children to assist her in caring for the many refugees left wounded and homeless by the conflict. Inspired by her mother, Tizra learns never to surrender hope even in a time of fear and uncertainty.