The story of the last member of the aristocratic Azcoitia family, a monstrous mutation protected from the knowledge of his deformity by being surrounded with other freaks as companions, The Obscene Bird of Night is a triumph of imaginative, visionary writing. Its luxuriance, fecundity, horror, and energy will not soon fade from the reader’s mind.The story is like a great puzzle . . . invested with a vibrant, almost tangible reality.—The New York TimesAlthough many of the other “boom” writers may have received more attention—especially Fuentes and Vargas Llosa—Donoso and his masterpiece may be the most lasting, visionary, strangest of the books from this time period. Seriously, it’s a novel about the last member of an aristocratic family, a monstrous mutant, who is surrounded by other freaks so as to not feel out of place.—Publishers WeeklyNicola Barker has said: "I'm no expert on the topic of South American literature (in fact I'm a dunce), but I have reason to believe (after diligently scouring the internet) that Chile's Jose Donoso, while a very highly regarded author on home turf, is little known on this side of the Atlantic. His masterpiece is the fabulously entitled The Obscene Bird of Night. It would be a crass understatement to say that this book is a challenging read; it's totally and unapologetically psychotic. It's also insanely gothic, brilliantly engaging, exquisitely written, filthy, sick, terrifying, supremely perplexing, and somehow connives to make the brave reader feel like a tiny, sleeping gnat being sucked down a fabulously kaleidoscopic dream plughole."

    Enter a new world or return to see old friends in four Powder Mage Universe novellas featuring Erika, Tamas, Adamat, Taniel, Ka-poel, and Ben Styke.ForswornServant of the CrownMurder at the Kinnen HotelGhosts of the Tristan Basin.

    Other outlandish tales include John Wayne battling cancer using a highly alternative therapy, a gene for integrity being harvested from the brain of an unwilling donor, and the landing of Christopher Columbus in modern-day Manhattan. Included are the Locus and Nebula Award-nominated novelette Auspicious Eggs and several previously unpublished pieces.ContentsIntroduction by Michael Swanwick“Auspicious Eggs”“Come Back, Dr. Sarcophagus”“Director’s Cut”“Fucking Justice”“Isabella of Castile Answers Her Mail”“Martyrs of the Upshot Knothole”“The Cat’s Pajamas”“The Eye That Never Blinks”“The Fate of Nations”“The War of the Worldviews”“The Wisdom of the Skin”“The Zombies of Montrose”

    What those writers brought to English-language literature was a wide variety of new ideas, styles, and ways of seeing the world. Yet times have changed, and how much do we even know about the richly diverse literature being written in Europe today?Best European Fiction 2010 is the inaugural installment of what will become an annual anthology of stories from across Europe. Edited by acclaimed Bosnian novelist and MacArthur “Genius-Award” winner Aleksandar Hemon, and with dozens of editorial, media, and programming partners in the U.S., UK, and Europe, the Best European Fiction series will be a window onto what’s happening right now in literary scenes throughout Europe, where the next Kafka, Flaubert, or Mann is waiting to be discovered.List of contributorsPreface: Zadie SmithIntroduction: Aleksandar HemonOrnela Vorpsi (Albania): from The Country Where No One Ever DiesAntonio Fian (Austria): from While SleepingPeter Terrin (Belgium: Dutch): from "The Murderer"Jean-Philippe Toussaint (Belgium: French): "Zidane's Melancholy"Igor Stiks (Bosnia): "At the Sarajevo Market"Georgi Gospodinov (Bulgaria): "And All Turned Moon"Neven Usumovic (Croatia): "Veres"Naja Marie Aidt (Denmark): "Bulbjerg"Elo Viiding (Estonia): "Foreign Women"Juhani Brander (Finland): from ExtinctionChristine Montalbetti (France): "Hotel Komaba Eminence" (with Haruki Murakami)George Konrád (Hungary): "Jeremiah's Terrible Tale"Steinar Bragi (Iceland): "The Sky Over Thingvellir"Julian Gough (Ireland: English): "The Orphan and the Mob"Ornaní Choileáin (Ireland: Irish): "Camino"Giulio Mozzi (AKA Carlo Dalcielo) (Italy): "Carlo Doesn't Know How to Read"Inga Abele (Latvia): "Ants and Bumblebees"Mathias Ospelt (Liechtenstein): "Deep In the Snow"Giedra Radvilaviciute˙ (Lithuania): "The Allure of the Text"Goce Smilevski (Macedonia): "Fourteen Little Gustavs"Stephan Enter (Netherlands): "Resistance"Jon Fosse (Norway): "Waves of Stone"Michal Witkowski (Poland): "Didi"Valter Hugo Mãe (Portugal): "dona malva and senhor josé ferreiro"Cosmin Manolache (Romania): "Three Hundred Cups"Victor Pelevin (Russia): "Friedmann Space"David Albahari (Serbia): "The Basilica in Lyon"Peter Kristúfek (Slovakia): from The PrompterAndrej Blatnik (Slovenia): from You Do Understand?Julián Ríos (Spain: Castilian): "Revelation on the Boulevard of Crime"Josep Fonalleras (Spain: Catalan): "Noir in Five Parts and an Epilogue"Peter Stamm (Switzerland): "Ice Moon"Deborah Levy (United Kingdom: England): from Swimming HomeAlasdair Gray (United Kingdom: Scotland): "The Ballad of Ann Bonny"Penny Simpson (United Kingdom: Wales): "Indigo's Mermaid"

    The king's house had many other doors, but this was the door for petitions. Since the king spent all his time sitting at the door for favors (favors being offered to the king, you understand), whenever he heard someone knocking at the door for petitions, he would pretend not to hear . . ." Why the petitioner required a boat, where he was bound for, and who volunteered to crew for him, the reader will discover in this delightful fable, a philosophic love story worthy of Swift or Voltaire.

    The favour is returned when the scout is saved by the Cheyenne and given mercy, but when he falls in love with the girl he saved he knows that the tribe will never allow them to be together. They escape, but are forced to abandon their flight when they encounter an omen telling them that she is pledged to another. This frontier tale soon becomes a violent present day manhunt through the Wild West. Part of the Storycuts series, this short story was previously published in the collection The Veteran.

    At the same time, a mysterious plague wipes out all the chickens in the Soviet republics. The government expropriates Persikov's untested invention in order to rebuild the poultry industry, but a horrible mix-up quickly leads to a disaster that could threaten the entire world.This H. G. Wells-inspired novel by the legendary Mikhail Bulgakov is the only one of his larger works to have been published in its entirety during the author's lifetime. A poignant work of social science fiction and a brilliant satire on the Soviet revolution, it can now be enjoyed by English-speaking audiences through this accurate new translation.Includes annotations and afterword.

    In “Commuter Army” – a sly commentary on the ludicrousness of war – a weapons supplier whose rifles cease functioning after just one shot becomes an unwilling conscript in a war zone. “The World is Tilting” imagines a floating city that slowly begins to sink on one side, causing its citizens to reorient their daily lives to preserve a semblance of normality. In “Rumors About Me”, an ordinary office worker finds himself the subject of intense media scrutiny, his every action documented in the tabloids. And in the title story, we learn just how obscenely absurd the environment on Planet Porno can seem to a group of hapless research scientists.With a sharp eye towards the insanities of contemporary life, Yasutaka Tsutsui crafts in Salmonella Men on Planet Porno an irresistible mix of imagination, satiric fantasy, and truly madcap hilarity.Contents:- The Dabba Dabba Tree- Rumours About Me- Don't Laugh- Farmer Airlines- Bear's Wood Main Line- The Very Edge of Happiness- Commuter Army- Hello, Hello, Hello!- The World is Tilting- Bravo Herr Mozart!- The Last Smoker- Bad for the Heart- Salmonella Men on Planet Porno

    Le Guin is renowned for her spare, elegant prose, rich characterization, and diverse worlds. "Semley's Necklace" is a short story originally published in the collection The Wind's Twelve Quarters.

    It recounts the story of Sheikh Nuruddin, a dervish residing in an Islamic monastery in Sarajevo in the eighteenth century during the Ottoman Turk hegemony over the Balkans. When his brother is arrested, he must descend into the Kafkaesque world of the Ottoman authorities in his search to discover what happened to him. He narrates his story in the form of an elaborate suicide note, regularly misquoting the Koran. In time, he begins to question his relations with society as a whole and, eventually, his life choices in general. Hugely successful when published in the 1960s, Death and the Dervish is an enduring classic that was made into a feature length film in 1974.

    In the title tale, narrator James 14 returns home with Mama to 1898 village when his father Les, time-traveller Ambassador to aliens, vanishes from 1975 jet-pack city. When the "mothaship" takes the anointed few into the brave new world, those left behind are angry. "0wnz0red" asks - what happens when hackers hack the human body? 1 Craphound 2 A place so foreign 3 All day sucker 4 To market, to market 5 Return to Pleasure Island 6 Shadow of the mothaship 7 Home again, home again 8 The super man and the bugout 9 Ownz0red

    Some stories have won awards; some have been included in various 'Year's Best' anthologies; some have been well reviewed by critics and readers; and some are simply Ken's personal favorites. Many of the authors collected here (with the obvious exception of Liu Cixin) belong to the younger generation of 'rising stars'.In addition, three essays at the end of the book explore Chinese science fiction. Liu Cixin's essay, The Worst of All Possible Universes and The Best of All Possible Earths, gives a historical overview of SF in China and situates his own rise to prominence as the premier Chinese author within that context. Chen Qiufan's The Torn Generation gives the view of a younger generation of authors trying to come to terms with the tumultuous transformations around them. Finally, Xia Jia, who holds the first Ph.D. issued for the study of Chinese SF, asks What Makes Chinese Science Fiction Chinese?.

    The stories range from adventurous to introspective, humorous to suspenseful, but all share Beagle's gift for language and his ability to bring his characters to life.—Don D'Ammassa

    The writing, with its burlesque variations, accelerations, and ruptures, takes us into a frightening and jubilant delirium, where the message is in the medium and digression gets straight to the point. In an entirely original voice, Eric Chevillard asks looming and luminous questions about who we are, the paths we’ve been traveling, and where we might be going – or not.

    “Ethshar” is the invented world that has been the setting for almost a dozen novels from the pen of Lawrence Watt-Evans. Its inhabitants don’t call it that; they call it “the World.” For readers, though, that’s not specific enough. The dominant nation on the World is the Hegemony of the Three Ethshars, while the largest, richest city, where most of the stories are set, is Ethshar of the Spices, so “Ethshar” is close enough. The name itself comes from words meaning “safe harbor.” You don’t need to have read any of the novels to enjoy the stories herein; each one should stand alone. And if you've read the novels, you will enjoy this return to the world of Ethshar with 11 stories... This is the first time they have all been collected in one book!