Here are twenty-three original tales—stories of the Old West infused with elements of the fantastic—produced specifically for this volume by many of today’s finest writers. Included are Orson Scott Card’s first “Alvin Maker” story in a decade, and an original adventure by Fred Van Lente, writer of Cowboys & Aliens. Other contributors include Tobias S. Buckell, David Farland, Alan Dean Foster, Jeffrey Ford, Laura Anne Gilman, Rajan Khanna, Mike Resnick, Beth Revis, Fred Van Lente, Walter Jon Williams, Ben H. Winters, Christie Yant, and Charles Yu, with an introduction by editor John Joseph Adams.CONTENTS:01 - Joe R. Lansdale, The Red-Headed Dead02 - Ben H. Winters, The Old Slow Man and his Gold Gun from Space03 - David Farland, Hellfire on the High Frontier04 - Mike Resnick, The Hell-Bound Stagecoach05 - Seanan McGuire, Stingers and Strangers06 - Charles Yu, Bookkeeper, Narrator, Gunslinger07 - Alan Dean Foster, Holy Jingle08 - Beth Revis, The Man With No Heart09 - Alastair Reynolds, Wrecking Party10 - Hugh Howey, Hell from the East11 - Rajan Khanna, Second Hand12 - Orson Scott Card, Alvin and the Apple Tree13 - Elizabeth Bear, Madam Damnable's Sewing Circle14 - Tad Williams, Strong Medicine15 - Jonathan Maberry, Red Dreams16 - Kelley Armstrong, Bamboozled17 - Tobias S. Buckell, Sundown18 - Jeffrey Ford, La Madre del Oro19 - Ken Liu, What I Assume You Shall Assume20 - Laura Anne Gilman, The Devil's Jack21 - Walter Jon Williams, The Golden Age22 - Fred Van Lente, Neversleeps23 - Christie Yant, Dead Man's Hand

    But not every citizen is content to play their mandated part, longing instead to discover who they are beneath their masks: sinner, gentleman, or beast. Winner of the 2009 Nebula Award for Best Novelette and nominated for the 2010 Hugo Award for Best Novelette, the 2010 WSFA Small Press Award, and the 2009 BSFA Award for Best Short Story.“…an elegantly strange slipstreamish fantasy”—Gardner Dozois, Locus“This far future science fiction tale is an exploration of self identity and the masks we all wear in public…a beautifully written and fast-paced tale”—Jason Sanford“…a classy fantasy, a strange society in which the wearing of masks in not only compulsory, but one in which the mask worn confers a different daily identity…The implications of this are subtly portrayed, as is the response to those who oppose this status quo.”—Mark Watson, Best SF Reviews“Foster has created a fascinating world here.”—Sam Tomaino, SFRevu.“Foster’s story might not take the reader where they expect to go, but it’s a heady journey nonetheless, encompassing sex and death, and it is told in an accomplished manner…powerful stuff.—Martin McGrath, The Fix“…a really engrossing otherworld fantasy”—Tansy Rayner Roberts“Foster delivers an ending that isn’t what you think it might be, and raises some unsettling questions about the connection between non-conformity and sociopathy.”—Black Gate“…a colourful story of a world in which characters wear different masks each day and enact different, stylized, roles—not a new idea, but handled newly, with a dark ending.”—Rich Horton“…yet another in a run of massively inventive, intelligent stories from Eugie.”—Alasdair Stuart“…a blast of sensory overload…Eugie Foster as usual doesn’t shy away from the darker and more unpleasant side of human nature…a wondrous, sickening, startling story that is sure to stick in the mind.”—Gareth D. Jones, SF Crowsnest

    L. Moore (Sep 1946):It's the most beautiful Spring the great metropolis has seen in modern memory. the sun-drenched air seems full of hope, of promise for a better tomorrow. But across the river, in the suburb on the ridge that overlooks the city, Oliver Wilson is perplexed. Who are those elegant, perfectly-poised, almost exotic people to whom he's rented his house? What impending event has drawn them here, to this sleepy suburb, as if it were the best seat in the house for the greatest show on Earth?In Another Country by Robert Silverberg:For time-traveling tourists, the rule about affairs with the locals is clear--look but don't touch. To flout that rule is to invite endless paradoxes and complications--as the well-meaning Thimiroi finds out to his dismay, in this all-new tale by SF master Robert Silverberg, written especially for the Tor Doubles as a companion to C.L. Moore's famous original.

    This collection of delightfully twisted, supernatural short stories will captivate your imagination and entertain your darker side. A monster with a love of bakery, an old woman living in fear with her ex-con nephew, a widow with only one chance left, and a demon with a dark and powerful heart, are some of the characters wrestling with their darker selves in this enjoyable collection.

    

    Kinney"A Collective Pseudonym and an Expanding Universe: A Conversation with James S.A. Corey" by Chris Urie"Another Word: Dystopias Are Not Enough" by Kelly Robson"Editor’s Desk: Stomp Stomp Stomp" by Neil Clarke

    We attach no manacles to the word truth to bind it to our visions. Instead we free it to find its own way through the minds of the two dozen writers who have shared their vision of the future in either sensitively written allegorical tales such as Relics by Louise Marley, a woman who grew up bucking hay in Montana and moved on to a talented musical performer and successful novelist; or the raw humor of Adam Troy-Castro in his Q & A, which takes on the verbal veracity of Donald J. Trump. Jim Wright (of Stonekettle Station) imagines Trump giving the Gettysburg Address. Blaze Ward, Daniel Kimmel, Janka Hobbs and I explore dystopias. Marleen Barr and Adam Troy-Castro envision humorous, kinky, and scatological endings. What can I say? It rocks.

    The story Pages from a Young Girl's Journal won Aickman the World Fantasy Award in 1975. It was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1973 before appearing in this collection.Cold Hand in Mine stands as one of Aickman's best collections and contains eight stories that show off his powers as a 'strange story' writer to the full, being more ambiguous than standard ghost stories. Throughout the stories the reader is introduced to a variety of characters, from a man who spends the night in a Hospice to a German aristocrat and a woman who sees an image of her own soul. There is also a nod to the conventional vampire story (Pages from a Young Girl's Journal) but all the stories remain unconventional and inconclusive, which perhaps makes them all the more startling and intriguing.• The Swords • The Real Road to the Church • Niemandswasser • Pages from a Young Girl's Journal• The Hospice • The Same Dog • Meeting Mr. Millar • The Clock Watcher

    Some of Samatar’s weird and tender fabulations spring from her life and her literary studies; some spring from the world, some from the void.

    Fighting alongside the Raven Guard Legion, Marcus Valerius of the Therion Cohort has long scorned those who seek to deify the Emperor, but a flash of inspiration leads him to question whether or not there are greater forces at work in the universe...

    An experimental medicine. A clinic full of feral patients.As a college freshman, I can’t wait for my first day of class. But when my routine health exam turns into a medical emergency, my dreams become a nightmare.And as my past tumbles back into the present, I’m horrified when patients devolve into animals and attack the medical staff. Desperate to find my way back to consciousness and safety, my anxiety holds tight and doesn’t go away.Will my life go back to normal, or are these terrors here forever?Strange Start is the short story prequel that portends the catastrophic zombie apocalypse to come in the Jane Zombie Chronicles. Reading this hair-raising, first-hand account of a brave survivor reveals the soul-stirring plight of those caught in the epicenter of the madness.Sink your teeth into Strange Start now!

    How could it be otherwise? For every Frodo, there is a Gandalf ... and a Saruman. For every Dorothy, a Glinda ... and a Wicked Witch of the West. What would Harry Potter be without Albus Dumbledore ... and Severus Snape? Figures of wisdom and power, possessing arcane, often forbidden knowledge, wizards and sorcerers are shaped — or misshaped — by the potent magic they seek to wield. Yet though their abilities may be godlike, these men and women remain human — some might say all too human. Such is their curse. And their glory.In these pages, seventeen of today's top fantasy writers — including award-winners Elizabeth Bear, John Crowley, Kate Elliott, K.J. Parker, Tim Powers, and Liz Williams — cast wondrous spells that thrillingly evoke the mysterious, awesome, and at times downright terrifying worlds where magic reigns supreme: worlds as far away as forever, and as near as next door.Contents:- The Return of the Pig by K.J. Parker- Community Service by Megan Lindholm- Flint and Mirror by John Crowley- The Friends of Masquelayne the Incomparable by Matthew Hughes- The Biography of a Bouncing Boy Terror, Chapter II: Jumping Jack in Love by Ysabeau S. Wilce- Song of Fire by Rachel Pollack- Loft the Sorcerer by Eleanor Arnason- The Governor by Tim Powers- Sungrazer by Liz Williams- The Staff in the Stone by Garth Nix- No Work of Mine by Elizabeth Bear- Widow Maker by Lavie Tidhar- The Wolf and the Manticore by Greg Van Eekhout- The Devil's Whatever by Andy Duncan- Bloom by Kate Elliott- The Fall and Rise of the House of the Wizard Malkuril by Scott Lynch

    "The Red Bow,"about a town consumed by pet-killing hysteria, won a 2004 National Magazine Award and "Bohemians," the story of two supposed Eastern European widows trying to fit in in suburban USA, is included in The Best American Short Stories 2005. His new book includes both unpublished work, and stories that first appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, and Esquire. The stories in this volume work together as a whole whose impact far exceeds the simple sum of its parts. Fans of Saunders know and love him for his sharp and hilarious satirical eye. But In Persuasion Nation also includes more personal and poignant pieces that reveal a new kind of emotional conviction in Saunders's writing.Saunders's work in the last six years has come to be recognized as one of the strongest-and most consoling-cries in the wilderness of the millennium's political and cultural malaise. In Persuasion Nation's sophistication and populism should establish Saunders once and for all as this generation's literary voice of wisdom and humor in a time when we need it most.

    Fairies (edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe, published by Saga Press, 2018).https://www.tor.com/2018/11/07/reprin...

    Dick Award finalist* Locus Recommended Reading Here are 33 weird, wonderful stories concerning men, women, teleportation, wind-up cats, and brown paper bags. By turns whimsical and unsettling—frequently managing to be both—these short fictions describe family relationships, bad breakups, and travel to outer space.    Vukcevich's loopy, fun-house mirror take on everyday life belongs to the same absurdist school of work as that of George Saunders, David Sedaris, Ken Kalfus, and Victor Pelevin, although there is no one quite like him. Try one of these stories, it won't take you long, but it will turn your head inside out.Contents:By the Time We Get to Uranus (1998)The Barber's Theme (1995)Beatnicks with Banjoes (2001)Finally Fruit (1997)Pretending (2001)Mom's Little Friends (1992)No Comet (1994)There Is Danger (1993)Pink Smoke (2001)Season Finale (1995)The Sweater (2001)Home Remedy (1996)A Breath-Holding Contest (1991)Fancy Pants (2000)In the Refrigerator (2001)The Perfect Gift (1994)Message in a Fish (2001)Catch (1996)The Finger (1995)Rejoice (1999)My Mustache (1993)We Kill a Bicycle (1995)A Holiday Junket (1998)Giant Step (1994)Quite Contrary (1994)Doing Time (1992)The Next Best Thing (1998)Beastly Heat (1999)Ceremony (1991)Poop (2000)White Guys in Space (1996)Whisper (2001)Meet Me in the Moon Room (1998)