Like time traveling mad-scientists, they have concocted outrageous creations from the future. They have seized upon tales of technology gone wrong and mandated that pulp fiction must finally grow up.In these wildly-speculative stories you will discover the company that controls the world from an alley in Greenwich Village. You’ll find nanotechnology that returns memories to the residents of a nursing home. You’ll rally an avian-like alien to become a mascot for a Major League Baseball team.The Invaders are here. But did science fiction colonize them first?

    It is a peaceful reign, held by compact and not by conquest. Again and again, when rebellion threatens the Terran Peace, the natives of the rebellious world have turned against their own people and sided with the men of Terra; not from fear, but from a sense of dedication. There has never been open war. The battle for these worlds is fought in the minds of a few men who stand between worlds; bound to one world by interest, loyalties and allegiance; bound to the other by love. Such a world is Wolf. Such a man was Race Cargill of the Terran Secret Service… At one time Race Cargill had been the best Terran Intelligence agent on the complex and mysterious planet of Wolf. He had repeatedly imperiled his life amongst the half-human and non-human creatures of the sullen world. And he had repeatedly accomplished the fantastic missions until his name was emblazoned with glory. But that had all seemingly ended. For six long years he'd sat behind a boring desk inside the fenced-in Terran Headquarters, cut off there ever since he and a rival had scarred and ripped each other in blood-feud. But when The Door Through Space swung suddenly open, the feud was on again—and with it a plot designed to check and destroy the Terran Empire.

    Underwood, L. E. Modesitt, Jr., Nathan Archer, Jody Lynn Nye and many others, including a new urban fantasy by Sharon Lee! So come along and meet an orphan with a dream, a dockworker who believes in freedom, a maintenance worker with feelings and visit a soup kitchen with a secret.Contents:Voyeur / Eric Witchey --Digger don't take no requests / John Teehan --The gate between hope and glory / Holly Phillips --Riis run / eluki bes shahar --Bidding the walrus / Lawrence M. Schoen --The gift / Laura J. Underwood --The dock to heaven / L.E. Modesitt, Jr. --Find a pin / Ru Emerson --Sailing to the temple / Alan Smale --The pilgrim trade / Mark W. Tiedemann --More to glory / Patrice Sarath --Gonna boogie with Granny Time / Sharon Lee --Angel's kitchen / Chris Szego --Lair of the lesbian love goddess / Edward McKeown --Contraband / Nathan Archer --Spinacre's war / Lee Martindale --Bottom of the food chain / Jody Lynn Nye --Zappa for bardog / Joe Murphy --The times she went away / Paul E. Martens --Scream angel / Douglas Smith.

     Even with our modern technology, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis cannot be treated or cured. I've been bed or chair bound since I was a kid. The advent of Virtual Reality technology has given me a chance for a new life. Or rather dozens of them. Heh. I'm an avid gamer, and I wouldn't have it any other way. In the games I could be what I wanted to be, who I wanted to be. A mighty warrior, a powerful spellcaster, the charming rogue. The crafter. The builder. All of those and more have helped to greatly alleviated my problems. But a new game is coming out; one with the power to change the world. It uses a brand new technology, based around the first ever deep immersion Dive Pod. With it there is no more game lag or graphical limits. It is being heralded as the greatest breakthrough in Virtual Reality technologies since its founding. And the first and only game for it: Universe Online. No longer will players be stuck on a single large world to explore. No longer will there a limit to what you can do, what you can be. Fly spaceships between the stars, conquer planets, create custom technology. Mine, Build, Destroy. Explore. Rule. This is my story, and my path in Universe Online.

    They say that vengeance is a dish best served cold, but to the men and woman who went with him over the border to deliver that vengeance, it was dish served hot, and out of the barrel of a gun and cannon, and from the air. Yet in victory came defeat as he found three hundred years later in the world he woke up in. One far different from the one he'd left behind when he went into cold sleep. Now he had to find a place in this strange new world, one without the means to wage war against an alien race raping the planet of its young people. First, he had to build an army, navy and air force from scratch while fending off attacks from the aliens and the secret government that wanted to put him and his men back into cold sleep or the grave.

    If only she could remember which is which . . .   In the stunning first volume of a two-book series, Emma wakes with her memory wiped clean. Her husband, Declan—a powerful and seductive man—narrates the story of her past, but Emma’s dreams contradict him. They show her war, a camp where girls are trained to be wives, and love for another man. Something inside warns her not to speak of these things, but the line between her dreams and reality is about to shatter forever.

    But when first mate Michelle Campion rouses, she discovers some of the sleepers will never wake.Answering Campion’s distress call, investigator Rasheed Fin is tasked with finding out who is responsible for these deaths. Soon a sinister mystery unfolds aboard the gigantic vessel, one that will have repercussions for the entire system—from the scheming politicians of Lagos station, to the colony planet Bloodroot, to other far-flung systems, and indeed to Earth itself.

    Everyone follows the Rule of One. But Ava Goodwin, daughter of the head of the Texas Family Planning Division, has a secret—one her mother died to keep and her father has helped to hide for her entire life.She has an identical twin sister, Mira.For eighteen years Ava and Mira have lived as one, trading places day after day, maintaining an interchangeable existence down to the most telling detail. But when their charade is exposed, their worst nightmare begins. Now they must leave behind the father they love and fight for their lives.Branded as traitors, hunted as fugitives, and pushed to discover just how far they’ll go in order to stay alive, Ava and Mira rush headlong into a terrifying unknown.

    Dropped in the void and left for dead, lost in survival sleep for centuries, she awakes to find her world has changed and hitches a ride on a decrepit freighter. Tamara and the crew work together to fix the dying ship, try to fight off pirates with a Republic Naval warship captain ruthlessly pursuing them, all while trying to turn a profit. The Argos Cluster is a dangerous place, but some of the worst threats are those left behind.

    When Torran offers her enough credits to not only keep her crew afloat but also hire someone to fix her ship, Tavi knows that she can’t refuse—no matter how much she’d like to.With so much money on the line, Torran and his crew insist on joining the hunt. Tavi reluctantly agrees because while the handsome, stoic leader pushes all of her buttons—for both anger and desire—she’s endured worse, and the massive bonus payment he’s promised for a completed job is reason enough to shut up and deal.But when they uncover a deeper plot that threatens the delicate peace between humans and Valoffs, Tavi suspects that Torran has been using her as the impetus for a new war. With the fate of her crew balanced on a knife’s edge, Tavi must decide where her loyalties lie—with the quiet Valoff who’s been lying to her, or with the human leaders who left her squad to die on the battlefield. And this time, she’s put her heart on the line.

    That had always been understood, so when Major Thomas Birch and his bedraggled crew limped back hundreds of years later it was clear that something had gone wrong. Stumbling from a failed past into an uncertain future the crew of the Hypnos III find that sometimes the only thing worse than what you run from is the thing you run to.

    A group of scruffy mercenaries, the Alien Hunters travel the galaxy in their starship, a mechanical dragon that spits out plasma like dragonfire. If an alien has invaded your space station, asteroid mine, or lunar colony, the Alien Hunters will remove the pest for you. Low rates. No questions asked. Raphael "Riff" Starfire, a guitarist-turned-gunslinger, and Nova, a warrior-princess with an electric whip and a bad attitude, lead the Alien Hunters. They’re the solar system’s best pest controllers. Yet now they face a threat all their guns and grit might be unable to stop. The skelkrins, a race of apex predators from deep space, are swarming across the galaxy. Planets burn in their wake. As the skelkrins draw closer to Earth, will Riff and Nova be the ones hunting aliens... or will aliens hunt them?

    You have one year. Exactly 365 days--to escape, or you die.Seventeen-year-old Charley doesn’t know the rules. She doesn’t even know where she is. The last thing she remembers is blacking out, and when she wakes up, she’s lying naked in an empty rock field.Lost and alone, Charley finds no sign of other people until she meets Thad, the gorgeous leader of a clan of teenage refugees. Soon Charley learns that leaving the island is harder than she thought . . . and so is falling in love. With Thad’s time running out, Charley realizes that to save their future, Charley must first save him. And on an island rife with dangers, their greatest threat is time.

    Under the leadership of Chancellor Lina Soh, the spirit of unity extends throughout the galaxy, with the Jedi and the newly established Starlight Beacon station at the vanguard.In celebration, the chancellor plans the Republic Fair, a showcase of the possibilities and the peace of the expanding Republic—a peace the Jedi hope to foster. Stellan Gios, Bell Zettifar, Elzar Mann, and others join the event as ambassadors of harmony. But as the eyes of the galaxy turn toward the fair, so too does the fury of the Nihil. Their leader, Marchion Ro, is intent on destroying this unity. His storm descends on the pageantry and celebration, sowing chaos and exacting revenge.As the Jedi struggle to curb the carnage of the rampaging Nihil, they come face-to-face with the true fear their enemy plans to unleash across the galaxy—the kind of fear from which even the Force cannot shield them.

    Confined to the ship for years, each of them holding their own secrets, they are about to learn there are threats beyond the reach of human ingenuity--and that the true nature of reality might be the universe's greatest mystery.In this near future, our world is at war with another, and humanity is haunted by its one catastrophic loss--a nightmarish engagement that left a handful of survivors drifting home through space, wracked with PTSD. Public support for the war plummeted, and the military-industrial complex set its sights on a new goal: zero-casualty warfare, made possible by gleaming new ships called Providences, powered by AI.But when the latest-launched Providence suffers a surprising attack and contact with home is severed, Gilly, Talia, Anders, and Jackson must confront the truth of the war they're fighting, the ship that brought them there, and the cosmos beyond.