Robots vs. Fairies is an anthology that pitches genre against genre, science fiction against fantasy, through an epic battle of two icons. On one side, robots continue to be the classic sci-fi phenomenon in literature and media, from Asimov to WALL-E, from Philip K. Dick to Terminator. On the other, fairies are the beloved icons and unquestionable rulers of fantastic fiction, from Tinkerbell to Tam Lin, from True Blood to Once Upon a Time. Both have proven to be infinitely fun, flexible, and challenging. But when you pit them against each other, which side will triumph as the greatest genre symbol of all time?There can only be one…or can there?

     These are some of the stories you will encounter in Chimerascope, the first full collection of short fiction from multi-award-winning Canadian author, Douglas Smith. Sixteen engaging stories of fantasy and science fiction that take you from love in fourteenth-century Japan to humanity's last stand, from virtual reality to the end of reality, from alien drug addictions to a dinner where a man loses everything.

    Whether through the falsified historical record of the uniquely weird Swedish creature known as the “Pyret” or the title story, “Jagannath,” about a biological ark in the far future, Tidbeck’s unique imagination will enthrall, amuse, and unsettle you. How else to describe a collection that includes “Cloudberry Jam,” a story that opens with the line “I made you in a tin can”? Marvels, quirky character studies, and outright surreal monstrosities await you in what is likely to be one of the most talked-about short story collections of the year.Tidbeck is a rising star in her native country, having published a collection there in Swedish, won a prestigious literary grant, and just sold her first novel to Sweden’s largest publisher. A graduate of the iconic Clarion Writer’s Workshop at the University of California, San Diego, in 2010, her publication history includes Weird Tales, Shimmer Magazine, Unstuck Annual and the anthology Odd.

    For all its denizens, from technocrats to terrorists, celebs to crooks, "Futureland" is an all-American nightmare just waiting to happen.

    Jude Altfall’s life, just beginning to coalesce after her divorce, is shattered afresh. Dazed with grief, she’s not sure if the weird things happening around her are hallucinations…or something more. And there’s the mark on her hip—a tattoo she can’t for the life of her remember getting. Preston Marlock left a shadowy government agency two years ago, to hunt a killer. Each time the bastard strikes the trail goes cold, and not even Marlock’s more-than-natural abilities are helping. Now the killer’s taken one of his very few friends, and there’s a surviving witness. The Altfall woman is now that most precious and fragile of targets, newly Marked. All Marlock has to do is dangle her like bait, and the killer will eventually show up. The Skinner knows some people are different. Special. He has a collection of stretched skin and pretty pictures, each harvested with care. The trick is to take them while the victim is still struggling, still alive, otherwise their power is lost. He is careful, methodical, and precise, but chance robs him of a prize. Once he realizes Jude Altfall has what he covets, and has possibly seen his face, her fate is sealed. And just to be cautious, the Skinner might swat at the annoying fly who has buzzed along his trail for two years...

    In this definitive collection, discover the incomparable stories of one of our most important contemporary writers.These exceptional stories range effortlessly from the genre tales that continue to define fantasy to the author’s critically acclaimed mainstream works. Classic offerings include the Nebula Award–winning novella “Behold the Man,” which introduces a time traveler and unlikely messiah that H.G. Wells never imagined; “The Visible Men,” a recent tale of the ambiguous and androgynous secret agent Jerry Cornelius; the trilogy “My Experiences in the Third World War,” where a Russian agent in an alternate Cambodia is powerless to prevent an inevitable march toward nuclear disaster; and “A Portrait in Ivory,” a Melibone story of troubled anti-hero Elric and his soul-stealing sword, Stormbringer. Newer work handpicked by an expert editing team includes one previously unpublished story and three uncollected stories.

    Whether set in terrestrial oceans or on far-off space stations, Cat Rambo’s masterfully told stories explore themes of gender, despair, tragedy, and the triumph of both human and non-human alike. Cats talk, fur wraps itself around you, aliens overstay their welcome, and superheroes deal with everyday problems.Contents:Near: Stories of the Near Future and the Far *Introduction (Near / Far) (2012) • essay by Cat Rambo *Near (2012) •• collection by Cat Rambo * The Mermaids Singing, Each to Each (2009) / short fiction by Cat Rambo * Peaches of Immortality (2011) / short fiction by Cat Rambo (variant of “The immortality Game” in Lightspeed) * Close Your Eyes (2011) / short story by Cat Rambo * Therapy Buddha (2010) / short fiction by Cat Rambo * Ms. Liberty Gets a Haircut (2009) / short story by Cat Rambo * Memories of Moments, Bright as Falling Stars (2006) / short story by Cat Rambo * 10 New Metaphors for Cyberspace (2007) / short fiction by Cat Rambo * RealFur (2008) / short story by Cat Rambo * Not Waving, but Drowning (2010) / short fiction by Cat Rambo * Vocobox (2012) / short fiction by Cat Rambo * Long Enough and Just So Long (2011) / short story by Cat Rambo * Legends of the Gone (2009) / short fiction by Cat RamboFar (2012) •• collection by Cat Rambo * Futures (2011) / short story by Cat Rambo * Kallakak's Cousins (2008) / short story by Cat Rambo * Amid the Words of War (2010) / short story by Cat Rambo * Timesnip (2011) / short fiction by Cat Rambo * Angry Rose's Lament (2008) / short story by Cat Rambo * Seeking Nothing (2010) / short story by Cat Rambo * A Querulous Flute of Bone (2011) / short fiction by Cat Rambo * Zeppelin Follies (2011) / short story by Cat Rambo * Space Elevator Music (2012) / short fiction by Cat Rambo * Surrogates (2010) / short fiction by Cat Rambo * Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain (2012) / short story by Cat Rambo * Bus Ride to Mars (2012) / short story by Cat Rambo.

    Exotic beasts and improbable travelers roam restlessly through these darkly diverting and finely honed tales.In “The Situation,” a beleaguered office worker creates a child-swallowing manta-ray to be used for educational purposes (once described as Dilbert meets Gormenghast). In “Three Days in a Border Town,” a sharpshooter seeks the truth about her husband in an elusive floating city beyond a far-future horizon; “Errata” follows an oddly familiar writer who has marshaled a penguin, a shaman, and two pearl-handled pistols with which to plot the end of the world. Also included are two stories original to this collection, including “The Quickening,” in which a lonely child is torn between familial obligation and loyalty to a maligned talking rabbit.Chimerical and hypnotic, VanderMeer leads readers through the postmodern into a new literature of the imagination.

    Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien inevitable.Now, in The Wind's Twelve Quarters, seventeen of her favorite stories reaffirm Ursula Le Guin as one of America's outstanding writers.CONTENTS:ForewordSemley's NecklaceApril in ParisThe MastersDarkness BoxThe Word of UnbindingThe Rule of NamesWinter's KingThe Good TripNine LivesThingsA Trip to the HeadVaster than Empires and More SlowThe Stars BelowThe Field of VisionDirection of the RoadThe Ones Who Walk Away from OmelasThe Day Before the Revolution

    It's a game where legends come to life, the lines between reality and fantasy become blurred, and the impossible becomes - probable?Unicorn Magic is the 1st story in the Celtic Fey series set in Anthea Sharp's Feyland universe (with her kind permission). A stand-alone short story with a full plot arc, Unicorn Magic was first published in the anthology Chronicle Worlds: Feyland.This is a clean urban fantasy which is set in Scotland (and the faerie realm) and uses British English spelling and grammar.

    This collection of stories is where robots stand in for us, where both we and they are disadvantaged, and where hope and optimism shines through.Contents:- Making the Other We Need by Jonathan Strahan- A Guide for Working Breeds by Vina Jie-Min Prasad- Test 4 Echo by Peter Watts- The Endless by Saad Z. Hossain- Brother Rifle by Daryl Gregory- The Hurt Pattern by Tochi Onyebuchi- Idols by Ken Liu- Bigger Fish by Sarah Pinsker- Sonnie's Union by Peter F. Hamilton- Dancing with Death by John Chu- Polished Performance by Alastair Reynolds- An Elephant Never Forgets by Rich Larson- The Translator by Annalee Newitz- Sin Eater by Ian R. MacLeod- Fairy Tales for Robots by Sofia Samatar- Chiaroscuro in Red by Suzanne Palmer- A Glossary of Radicalization by Brooke Bolander

    Social criticism, political parable, and environmental advocacy lie at the center of Paolo's work. Each of the stories herein is at once a warning, and a celebration of the tragic comedy of the human experience.The eleven stories in Pump Six represent the best Paolo's work, including the Hugo nominee "Yellow Card Man," the nebula and Hugo nominated story "The People of Sand and Slag," and the Sturgeon Award-winning story "The Calorie Man."

    Destroyed oil rigs, mysteriously reborn, clamber from the sea and onto the land, driven by an obscure but violent purpose. An anatomy student cuts open a cadaver to discover impossibly intricate designs carved into a corpse's bones—designs clearly present from birth, bearing mute testimony to . . . what?Of such concepts and unforgettable images are made the twenty-eight stories in this collection—many published here for the first time. By turns speculative, satirical, and heart-wrenching, fresh in form and language, and featuring a cast of damaged yet hopeful seekers who come face-to-face with the deep weirdness of the world—and at times the deeper weirdness of themselves—Three Moments of an Explosion is a fitting showcase for one of our most original voices.

    Collected here are sixteen stories penned by authors from Thailand, the Philippines, China, Israel, Pakistan, Serbia, Croatia, Malaysia, and other countries across the globe. Each one tells a tale breathtakingly vast and varied, whether caught in the ghosts of the past or entangled in a postmodern age. Among the spirits, technology, and deep recesses of the human mind, stories abound. Kites sail to the stars, technology transcends physics, and wheels cry out in the night. Memories come and go like fading echoes and a train carries its passengers through more than simple space and time. Dark and bright, beautiful and haunting, the stories herein represent speculative fiction from a sampling of the finest authors from around the world. Table of Contents S.P. Somtow(Thailand)-"The Bird Catcher" Jetse de Vries(Netherlands)-"Transcendence Express" Guy Hasson (Israel)-"The Levantine Experiments" Han Song (China)-"The Wheel of Samsara" Kaaron Warren (Australia/Fiji)-"Ghost Jail" Yang Ping (China)-"Wizard World" Dean Francis Alfar (Philippines)-"L'Aquilone du Estrellas (The Kite of Stars)" Nir Yaniv (Israel)-"Cinderers" Jamil Nasir (Palestine)-"The Allah Stairs" Tunku Halim (Malaysia)-"Biggest Baddest Bomoh" Aliette de Bodard (France)-"The Lost Xuyan Bride" Kristin Mandigma (Philippines)-"Excerpt from a Letter by a Social-realist Aswang" Aleksandar iljak (Croatia)-"An Evening In The City Coffehouse, With Lydia On My Mind" Anil Menon (India)-"Into the Night" Melanie Fazi (France, translated by Christopher Priest)-"Elegy" Zoran ivkovic (Serbia, translated by Alice Copple-To ic)-"Compartments""

    Gathered into one volume by intrepid chrononauts and world-renowned anthologists Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, this book compiles more than a century's worth of literary travels into the past and the future that will serve to reacquaint readers with beloved classics of the time travel genre and introduce them to thrilling contemporary innovations.This marvelous volume includes nearly seventy journeys through time from authors such as Douglas Adams, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, William Gibson, Ursula K. Le Guin, George R. R. Martin, Michael Moorcock, H. G. Wells, and Connie Willis, as well as helpful non-fiction articles original to this volume (such as Charles Yu's "Top Ten Tips For Time Travelers").In fact, this book is like a time machine of its very own, covering millions of years of Earth's history from the age of the dinosaurs through to strange and fascinating futures, spanning the ages from the beginning of time to its very end. The Time Traveler's Almanac is the ultimate anthology for the time traveler in your life.