Wang's Carpets


Greg Egan - 1995
    One of the copies of Cater-Zimmermann, Paolo Venetti, arrives at Orpheus; a water-world inhabited by floating mats that perform as a Turing machine.

Prime Meridian


Silvia Moreno-Garcia - 2017
    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. It awaits her.Note: official publication date is December 2017 but only for IndieGoGo backers. Wide release for everyone else on July 2018.

Chicken Little


Cory Doctorow - 2011
    Doctorow’s updated high-tech take on Pohl’s take on Jonathan Swift’s 'struldbrugs,' creatures who have immortality but not eternal youth, continuing to age through their extended lives, is particularly ingenious. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this one show up on an award ballot next year."Gardner Dozois, Locus MagazineA story with a product designer, jetpacks and an immortal quadrillionaire living in a vat."Chicken Little" also appears in the collection "With a Little Help".ABOUT THE AUTHORCory Doctorow is a science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger -- the co-editor of Boing Boing and the author of Tor Teens/HarperCollins UK novels like "For The Win" and the bestselling "Little Brother". He is the former European director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and co-founded the UK Open Rights Group. Born in Toronto, Canada, he now lives in London.Franco Brambilla is an award-winning Italian illustrator devoted to sci-fi.

The Pale Dreamer


Samantha Shannon - 2016
    Here, the clairvoyant underworld plays by its own rules, and rival gangs will stop at nothing to win such a magnificent prize.Sixteen-year-old Paige Mahoney is working for Jaxon Hall, the most notorious mime-lord in the city. He thinks she is hiding a powerful gift, but it refuses to surface. Maybe this is the opportunity she needs to secure her position in his gang, the Seven Seals…

We Never Talk about My Brother


Peter S. Beagle - 2009
    Each short story cultivates a whimsical sense of imagination and reveals a mature, darker voice than previously experienced from this legendary author. In one tale the Angel of Death enjoys newfound celebrity while moonlighting as an anchorman on the network news, while in another the shortsighted ruler of a gentle realm betrays himself in dreaming of a "manageable war." Further storylines include an American librarian who discovers that, much to his surprise and sadness, he is the last living Frenchman, and rivals in a supernatural battle who decide to forgo pistols at dawn, choosing instead to duel with dramatic recitations of terrible poetry. Featuring several previously unpublished stories alongside a bevy of recently released works, this haunting compilation is appealing to both genre readers and mainstream literature lovers.Includes "By Moonlight," Locus Award-winner for Best Novelette.

Stonefather


Orson Scott Card - 2008
    Seeking his fortune, he stumbles into a centuries-old feud when he travels to Mitherhome, the city of the water mages. He accepts a servant's position in the household of the sole stone mage permitted within the city walls, and there his untapped magical talents and his fascination with his master's abilities are a predictably dangerous combination. Soon, without meaning to, he complicates and endangers the lives of everyone he has come to know and care about, for when it comes to magic, there are rules and laws, and the untrained mage-to-be must be careful not to tap into deep forces and ancient enmities. Otherwise, other people might end up paying the price for his mistakes.

I'm Starved for You


Margaret Atwood - 2012
    Outside the walls of Consilience, half the country is out of work, gangs of the drug-addicted and disaffected menace the streets, warlords disrupt the food supply, and overcrowded correctional facilities churn out offenders to make room for more.The Consilience prison, Positron, is something else altogether. The very heart of the community and its economic engine, it’s a bold experiment in voluntary incarceration. In exchange for a house, food, and what the online brochure hails as “A Meaningful Life,” residents agree to spend one month as inmates, the next as civilians, working as guards or whatever’s required.Stan and Charmaine have no complaints—until the day Stan discovers an erotic note under the fridge of the house he and Charmaine must share with another couple while they’re back inside Positron. It’s a missive of erotic longing, pressed with a vivid lipstick kiss: “I’m starved for you!” it breathes. If Stan rarely thought about the house’s other residents before—they’ve never met them and don’t know their names; it’s not allowed—now he can’t stop thinking about them, especially the note’s sex-addled author, a woman apparently named Jasmine, so unlike his girlish wife, Charmaine. He HAS to meet her, but in this highly ordered and increasingly surveilled world, disorderly thoughts are a risk, and breaking the rules has dire consequences.

The Inheritance


Robin Hobb - 2011
    "Robin Hobb" and "Megan Lindholm" are both pseudonyms used by California-born Margaret Ogden, who from 1983 to 1992, published exclusively as Lindholm. This generous, 400-page hardcover original brings together short stories and novellas penned under both authorial bylines. As Hobb herself notes, "their" writing and styles differ in significant ways. (P.S. This collection includes stories previously unpublished in the United States.)

Junkyard Cats


Faith Hunter - 2020
    But Shining is now something more than human. And the scrapyard is no longer just a scrapyard, but a place full of secrets that she has guarded for years.This life she has built, while empty, is predictable and safe. Until the only friend left from her previous life shows up, dead, in the back of a scrapped Tesla warplane, a note to her clutched in his fingers - a note warning her of a coming attack.Someone knows who she is. Someone knows what she is guarding. Will she be able to protect the scrapyard? Will she even survive? Or will she have to destroy everything she loves to keep her secrets out of the wrong hands?

Timecaster


J.A. Konrath - 2014
    With crime at an all-time low, Talon has little to do except give lectures to schoolkids--and obsess on his wife's profession as a licensed sex partner. Then one of her clients asks Talon to investigate a possible murder. When Talon uses the TEV to view the crime, the identity of the killer is unmistakable--it's him, Talon Avalon. Someone is taking timecasting to a whole new level and using it to frame Talon. And the only way he can prove his innocence is to go off the grid--which in 2064 is a very dangerous thing to do. Time is not on his side.

None So Blind


Joe Haldeman - 1994
    But Haldeman, like Einstein, proves that clerks can have enough vision to rock the cosmos. This book includes 11 stories and four story poems, ranging in length from two pages to just over 100. Together they have earned two Nebula, two Hugo and one World Fantasy awards. Each one showcases the author's grasp of what it means to be alive and human (or inhuman), written with a powerful clarity and a subtle imagination. Publishers Weekly called this one "a stunner."Contents:Feedback (1993)Passages (1990)Job Security (1992)The Hemingway Hoax (1990)Images (1991)Beachhead (1991)The Monster (1986)If I Had the Wings of an Angel (1991)The Cure (1994)Graves (1992)None So Blind (1994)The Homecoming (1990) poemFire, Ice (1994) poemTime Lapse (1989) poemDX (1987) poem

Chicks Kick Butt


Rachel CaineElizabeth Vaughan - 2011
    These days, women are quite capable of solving their own problems and slaying their own dragons (or demons, as the case may be).In this all-new anthology, Kerrie L. Hughes and New York Times bestselling author Rachel Caine have collected original stories from thirteen of today’s most exciting urban fantasy and paranormal authors. Each story features a strong heroine who kicks butt and takes names in a dangerous world and makes that world a better place for everyone in it—except the bad guys, of course. And if she finds a bit of romance along the way, well, a little heat warms the heart and sharpens the mind…just as long as the man can keep up. Includes: Shiny by Rachel CaineIn Venito Veras by Karen ChanceHunt by Rachel VincentMonsters by Lilith SaintcrowVampires Prefer Blondes by P.N. ElrodNine-Tenths of the Law by Jenna BlackDouble Dead by Cheyenne McCrayA Rose by Any Other Name Would Still be Red by Elizabeth A. VaughnSuperman by Jeanne C. SteinMonster Mash by Carole Nelson DouglasWanted: Dead or Alive by L.A. BanksMist by Susan KrinardBeyond the Pale by Nancy Holden

To the Galactic Rim: The John Grimes Saga


A. Bertram Chandler - 2011
                John Grimes will one day command his own starship, and change the course of Galactic history, but right now he’s a wet-behind-the-ears junior officer who finds that he keeps running into problems which were never covered in his courses at the Academy.  The Road to the Rim—meet Lieutenant John Grimes of the Federation Survey Service; fresh out of the Academy—and as green as they come. To Prime the Pump—El Dorado is a planet with a pressing problem: the men are infertile, cause unknown, and the women want someone to Do Something! Not quite the problem young John Grimes expected to deal with . . .The Hard Way Up—a collection of seven tales of John Grime’s adventures, meeting danger and winning glory out at the rim of the Galaxy.The Broken Cycle—John Grimes never intended to get lost in space, let alone being lost with a very attractive policewoman who’s all business. And he really never expected to run into an entity who claims to be a god and has a garden of Eden ready and waiting for the pair.              Three novels and a story collection, all in one attractively-priced volume of space adventure.

What We Pretend to Be


Shaun David Hutchinson - 2016
    Then the aliens give him an ultimatum: The world will end in 144 days, and all Henry has to do to stop it is push a big red button. Now, in Shaun David Hutchinson’s new short story, What We Pretend to Be, fans can glimpse some of the impossible decisions other characters have faced at the hands of the aliens, and even see Henry’s very first abduction . . .

San Diego 2014: The Last Stand of the California Browncoats


Mira Grant - 2012
    Fans from all over the world gathered in San Diego, California for the annual comic book and media convention, planning to forget about the troubling rumors of new diseases and walking dead by immersing themselves in a familiar environment. Over the course of five grueling days and nights, it became clear that the news was very close to home…and that most of the people who picked up their badges would never make it out alive.