And, as Arts Commissioner, he's been given a job he'd rather not do. Escorting an alien grandee on a guided tour of the shattered remains of Earth is not something he relishes- especially when it is apparent that this places him at the center high-level intrigue that has some bearing on the future of Earth itself.

    Think you know the story of the O.K. Corral? Think again, as five-time Hugo winner Mike Resnick takes on his first steampunk western tale, and the West will never be the same.

    One of the most startlingly original and entertaining SF anthology concepts in years, perfectly preserving the spirit of H. G. Wells's classic. H. G. Wells's immortal novel The War of the Worlds describes an invasion from Mars through the fictional dispatches of a London newspaper reporter. Yet we have been able to see only one segment of the global catastrophe - until now. Here is the Martian invasion that might have been, from the Earthlings best prepared to tell the tale. Besides the struggle in England, the reporter mentions similar battles taking place all over the planet. From Teddy Roosevelt in Cuba to the Dowager Empress in China, we see our fellow humans encounter the Martian menace through the eyes of science fiction luminaries: --In Providence, Rhode Island, an eight-year-old H. P. Lovecraft bravely seeks communion with an alien intelligence - and a return to his long-lost home; --In Russia, a letter by Count Leo Tolstoy describes the coming of the ultimate revolution; --In a dark woods outside of Zurich, a heroic Albert Einstein finds himself trapped inside a Martian craft, where survival itself is relative; --In Amherst, Massachussetts, Emily Dickinson leaves poetic evidence that she encountered the Martians eleven years after her death; --In Paris, a young artist named Pablo Picasso is inspired by the Martian carnage to create his most shocking and disturbing masterpiece.Contents:**(H. G. Wells): Foreword (War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches) • essay by H. G. Wells*(Teddy Roosevelt): The Roosevelt Dispatches [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Mike Resnick*(Percival Lowell): Canals in the Sand [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Kevin J. Anderson*(Dowager Empress of China): Foreign Devils [War of the Worlds] (1996) / novelette by Walter Jon Williams*(Pablo Picasso): Blue Period [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Daniel Marcus*(Henry James): The Martian Invasion Journals of Henry James [War of the Worlds] (1996) / novelette by Robert Silverberg*(Winston Churchill and H. Rider Haggard): The True Tale of the Final Battle of Umslopogaas the Zulu [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Janet Berliner*(Texas Rangers): Night of the Cooters [War of the Worlds] (1987) / shortstory by Howard Waldrop*(Albert Einstein): Determinism and the Martian War, with Relativistic Corrections [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Doug Beason*(Rudyard Kipling): Soldier of the Queen [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Barbara Hambly*(Edgar Rice Burroughs): Mars: The Home Front [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by George Alec Effinger*(Joseph Pulitzer): A Letter from St. Louis [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Allen Steele*(Leo Tolstoy): Resurrection [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Mark W. Tiedemann*(Jules Verne): Paris Conquers All [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Gregory Benford and David Brin*(H. P. Lovecraft): To Mars and Providence [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Don Webb*(Mark Twain): Roughing It During the Martian Invasion [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Daniel Keys Moran and Jodi Moran*(Joseph Conrad): To See the World End [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by M. Shayne Bell*(Jack London): After a Lean Winter [War of the Worlds] (1996) / novelette by Dave Wolverton*(Emily Dickinson): The Soul Selects Her Own Society: Invasion and Repulsion: A Chronological Reinterpretation of Two of Emily Dickinson's Poems: A Wellsian Perspective [War of the Worlds] (1996) / shortstory by Connie Willis**(Jules Verne): Afterword: Retrospective (War of the Worlds: Global Dispatches) (1996) • essay by Gregory Benford and David Brin..

    When he and his crew stumble upon a derelict ship, the Scopuli, they find themselves in possession of a secret they never wanted. A secret that someone is willing to kill for—and kill on a scale unfathomable to Jim and his crew. War is brewing in the system unless he can find out who left the ship and why.Detective Miller is looking for a girl. One girl in a system of billions, but her parents have money and money talks. When the trail leads him to the Scopuli and rebel sympathizer Holden, he realizes that this girl may be the key to everything.Holden and Miller must thread the needle between the Earth government, the Outer Planet revolutionaries, and secretive corporations—and the odds are against them. But out in the Belt, the rules are different, and one small ship can change the fate of the universe.

    Reeling from a recent asteroid impact, tortured with horrific storms, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, and churning volcanic eruptions, the planet is a dumping ground for undesirables, misfits, and charlatans…but also a haven for dreamers and independent pioneers.Against all odds, an exiled general named Adolphus has turned Hellhole into a place of real opportunity for the desperate colonists who call the planet their home. While the colonists are hard at work developing the planet, General Adolphus secretly builds alliances with the leaders of the other Deep Zone worlds, forming a clandestine coalition against the tyrannical, fossilized government responsible for their exile.What no one knows is this: the planet Hellhole, though damaged and volatile, hides an amazing secret. Deep beneath its surface lies the remnants of an obliterated alien civilization and the buried memories of its unrecorded past that, when unearthed, could tear the galaxy apart.

    Years before they enter orbit, their approach will be announced by the flare of a thousand flames in the sky, their ships’ huge engines burning hard to slow them from the vast speeds needed to cross interstellar space. These foreboding lights will shine in our night sky like new stars, getting ever brighter until they outshine even the sun, casting ominous shadows and banishing the night until they suddenly blink out. Their technology is vastly superior to ours, and they know they cannot possibly lose the coming conflict. But they, like us, have found no answer to the destructive force of the atom, and they have no intention of facing the onslaught of our primitive nuclear arsenal, or the devastation it would wreak on the planet they crave. So they have flung out an advanced party in front of them, hidden within one of the countless asteroids randomly roaming the void. They do not want us, they want our planet. Their Agents are arriving.

    Assigned the task of blazing man's first trail into that great unknown, Captain Eric Weston and the crew of the NAC Odyssey launch on a mission destined to make history.Past the bounds of comfort, they encounter horrors and wonders beyond their imagining, with people and monsters beyond reckoning.Odyssey One is the first voyage of the NAC Odyssey and its crew, and the beginnings of a Military Science Fiction Epic that combines both old school space opera, and modern storytelling in one great, exhilarating adventure.Odyssey One is a 150,000 word novel.

    But it all becomes horrifyingly real when a murder in the past destroys the foundation of Kate’s present-day life. Suddenly, that medallion is the only thing protecting Kate from blinking out of existence.Kate learns that the 1893 killing is part of something much more sinister, and Kate’s genetic ability to time-travel makes her the only one who can stop him. Risking everything, she travels to the Chicago World’s Fair to try to prevent the killing and the chain of events that follows.Changing the timeline comes with a personal cost, however—if Kate succeeds, the boy she loves will have no memory of her existence. And regardless of her motives, does she have the right to manipulate the fate of the entire world?

    After all, no one ever proved the rumors about her father’s gruesome experiments. But when she learns he is alive and continuing his work on a remote tropical island, she is determined to find out if the accusations are true.Accompanied by her father’s handsome young assistant, Montgomery, and an enigmatic castaway, Edward — both of whom she is deeply drawn to—Juliet travels to the island, only to discover the depths of her father’s madness: He has experimented on animals so that they resemble, speak, and behave as humans. And worse, one of the creatures has turned violent and is killing the island’s inhabitants. Torn between horror and scientific curiosity, Juliet knows she must end her father's dangerous experiments and escape her jungle prison before it's too late. Yet as the island falls into chaos, she discovers the extent of her father’s genius—and madness—in her own blood.Inspired by H. G. Wells’s classic The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Madman’s Daughter is a dark and breathless Gothic thriller about the secrets we’ll do anything to know and the truths we’ll go to any lengths to protect.

    He finds an unlikely confidante in Rosie, an inquisitive young neighbor who, while chasing after Lytten's cat one day, stumbles through a doorway in his cellar and into a stunning and unfamiliar bucolic landscape—remarkably like the fantasy world Lytten is writing about. There she meets a young boy named Jay who is about to embark on a journey that will change both their lives. Elsewhere, in a distopian society where progress is controlled by a corrupt ruling elite, the brilliant scientist Angela Meerson has discovered the potential of a powerful new machine. When the authorities come knocking, she will make an important decision—one that will reverberate through all these different lives and worlds.

    But now he needs help from the Doctor, Romana and K-9. When he left Gallifrey he took with him a few little souvenirs—most of them are harmless. But one of them is extremely dangerous.The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey isn’t a book for Time Tots. It is one of the Artifacts, dating from the dark days of Rassilon. It must not be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. The sinister Skagra most definitely has the wrong hands. He wants the book. He wants to discover the truth behind Shada. And he wants the Doctor’s mind...Based on the scripts for the original television series by the legendary Douglas Adams, Shada retells an adventure that never made it to the screen.

    He prefers the term finder.His latest job should be simple. Find the spacecraft Venetia's Sword and steal it back from Arum Gilger, ex-nobleman turned power-hungry trade boss. He'll slip in, decode the ship's compromised AI security, and get out of town, Sword in hand.Fergus locates both Gilger and the ship in the farthest corner of human-inhabited space, a gas-giant-harvesting colony called Cernee. But Fergus' arrival at the colony is anything but simple. A cable car explosion launches Cernee into civil war, and Fergus must ally with Gilger's enemies to navigate a field of space mines and a small army of hostile mercenaries. What was supposed to be a routine job evolves into negotiating a power struggle between factions. Even worse, Fergus has become increasingly--and inconveniently--invested in the lives of the locals.It doesn't help that a dangerous alien species thought mythical prove unsettlingly real, and their ominous triangle ships keep following Fergus around.Foolhardy. Eccentric. Reckless. Whatever he's called, Fergus will need all the help he can get to take back the Sword and maybe save Cernee from destruction in the process.

    Our rocket ship gets shot out of a cannon? To the moon? Goodness! But in other ways it's full of eerie bits of business that turned out to be very near reality: he had the cost, when you adjust for inflation, almost exactly right. There are other similarities, too. Verne's cannon was named the Columbiad; the Apollo 11 command module was named Columbia. Apollo 11 had a three-person crew, just as Verne's did; and both blasted off from the American state of Florida. Even the return to earth happened in more-or-less the same place. Coincidence -- or fact!? We say you'll have to read this story yourself to judge.

    Gunrunner. Fugitive.Quick, sarcastic, and lethal, Hailimi Bristol doesn't suffer fools gladly. She has made a name for herself in the galaxy for everything except what she was born to do: rule the Indranan Empire. That is, until two Trackers drag her back to her home planet to take her rightful place as the only remaining heir.But trading her ship for a palace has more dangers than Hail could have anticipated. Caught in a web of plots and assassination attempts, Hail can't do the one thing she did twenty years ago: run away. She'll have to figure out who murdered her sisters if she wants to survive.A gun smuggler inherits the throne in this Star Wars-style science fiction adventure from debut author K. B. Wagers. Full of action-packed space opera exploits and courtly conspiracy - not to mention an all-out galactic war - Behind the Throne will please fans of James S. A Corey, Becky Chambers and Lois McMaster Bujold, or anyone who wonders what would happen if a rogue like Han Solo were handed the keys to an empire . . .