. . A fighter leads his band of virtual warriors, thieves, and wizards across a deadly computer-generated landscape . . . A company outsources grief for profit, their tagline: "Don't feel like having a bad day? Let someone else have it for you."

    In "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom," the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will.Including stories being published for the first time as well as some of his rare and classic uncollected work, Exhalation is Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic—revelatory.

    It didn't give you the date and it didn't give you specifics. It just spat out a sliver of paper upon which were printed, in careful block letters, the words DROWNED or CANCER or OLD AGE or CHOKED ON A HANDFUL OF POPCORN. It let people know how they were going to die." Machine of Death tells thirty-four different stories about people who know how they will die. Prepare to have your tears jerked, your spine tingled, your funny bone tickled, your mind blown, your pulse quickened, or your heart warmed. Or better yet, simply prepare to be surprised. Because even when people do have perfect knowledge of the future, there's no telling exactly how things will turn out. Featuring stories by: * Randall Munroe* Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw* Tom Francis* Camille Alexa* Erin McKean* James L. Sutter* Douglas J. Lane* and many others.Featuring illustrations by: * Kate Beaton* Kazu Kibuishi* Aaron Diaz* Jeffrey Brown* Scott C.* Roger Langridge* Karl Kerschl* Cameron Stewart* and many others

    So how is it that, in competition with the worst villains the universe has to offer, he's become the proud owner of the last seedship of Earth's legendary Ecological Engineering Corps? Never mind, just be thankful that the most powerful weapon in human space is in good hands-hands which now control cellular material for thousands of outlandish creatures. With his unique equipment, Tuf is set to tackle the problems human settlers have created in colonizing far-flung worlds: hosts of hostile monsters, a population hooked on procreation, a dictator who unleashes plagues to get his own way...and in every case the only thing that stands between the colonists and disaster is Tuf's ingenuity - and his reputation as an honest dealer in a universe of rogues...Tuf Voyaging features interior illustrations by Janet Aulisio. Included in it will be her original eight illustrations, along with 28 newly commissioned ones.

    Contents:The Infinite Assassin (1991)The Hundred Light-Year Diary (1992)Eugene (1990)The Caress (1990)Blood Sisters (1991)Axiomatic (1990)The Safe-Deposit Box (1990)Seeing (1995)A Kidnapping (1995)Learning to Be Me (1990)The Moat (1991)The Walk (1992)The Cutie (1989)Into Darkness (1992)Appropriate Love (1991)The Moral Virologist (1990)Closer (1992)Unstable Orbits in the Space of Lies (1992)

    and anything is possible. In this, Gaiman's first book of short stories, his imagination and supreme artistry transform a mundane world into a place of terrible wonders -- a place where an old woman can purchase the Holy Grail at a thrift store, where assassins advertise their services in the Yellow Pages under "Pest Control," and where a frightened young boy must barter for his life with a mean-spirited troll living beneath a bridge by the railroad tracks. Explore a new reality -- obscured by smoke and darkness, yet brilliantly tangible -- in this extraordinary collection of short works by a master prestidigitator. It will dazzle your senses, touch your heart, and haunt your dreams.

    In six stories and the novella, Bounty, Saunders introduces readers to people struggling to survive in an increasingly haywire world.

    For the first time in one volume: every word Bruce Sterling has ever written on the Shapers-Mechanists Universe.In the last decade, Sterling has emerged a pioneer of crucial, cutting-edge science fiction. Now Ace Books is proud to offer Sterling's stunning world of the Schismatrix--where Shaper revolutionaries struggle against aristocratic Mechanists for ultimate control of man's destiny. This volume includes the classic full-length novel, Schismatrix, plus thousands of words of mind-bending short fiction.

    In this landmark volume, America's preeminent storyteller offers us one hundred treasures from a lifetime of words and ideas. The stories within these pages were chosen by Bradbury himself, and span a career that blossomed in the pulp magazines of the early 1940s and continues to flourish in the new millennium. Here are representatives of the legendary author's finest works of short fiction, including many that have not been republished for decades, all forever fresh and vital, evocative and immensely entertaining.

    Exploring natural phenomena and the origins of the universe, these beloved tales relate complex scientific concepts to our common sensory, emotional, human world.Now, The Complete Cosmicomics brings together all of the cosmicomic stories for the first time. Containing works previously published in Cosmicomics, t zero, and Numbers in the Dark, this single volume also includes seven previously uncollected stories, four of which have never been published in translation in the United States. This “complete and definitive collection” (Evening Standard) reconfirms the cosmicomics as a crowning literary achievement and makes them available to new generations of readers.

    Dick, Larry Niven, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, Damon Knight, J.G. Ballard, John Brunner, Frederik Pohl, Roger Zelazny and Samuel Delany.Contentsxi • Foreword: Year 2002 (Dangerous Visions 35th Anniversary Edition) • (2002) • essay by Michael Moorcockxiii • Introduction: Year 2002 (Dangerous Visions 35th Anniversary Edition • (2002) • essay by Harlan Ellisonxxiii • Foreword 1-The Second Revolution • (1967) • essay by Isaac Asimovxxxiii • Introduction: Thirty-Two Soothsayers • (1967) • essay by Harlan Ellison (variant of Thirty-Two Soothsayers)xxxix • Foreword 2-Harlan and I • (1967) • essay by Isaac Asimov1 • Evensong • (1967) • shortstory by Lester del Rey9 • Flies • (1967) • shortstory by Robert Silverberg21 • The Day After the Day the Martians Came • (1967) • shortstory by Frederik Pohl (variant of The Day the Martians Came)30 • Riders of the Purple Wage • (1967) • novella by Philip José Farmer105 • The Malley System • (1967) • shortstory by Miriam Allen deFord115 • A Toy for Juliette • (1967) • shortstory by Robert Bloch128 • The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World • (1967) • novelette by Harlan Ellison154 • The Night That All Time Broke Out • (1967) • shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss169 • The Man Who Went to the Moon - Twice • (1967) • shortstory by Howard Rodman181 • Faith of Our Fathers • (1967) • novelette by Philip K. Dick216 • The Jigsaw Man • [Known Space] • (1967) • shortstory by Larry Niven231 • Gonna Roll the Bones • (1967) • novelette by Fritz Leiber256 • Lord Randy, My Son • (1967) • shortstory by Joe L. Hensley272 • Eutopia • (1967) • novelette by Poul Anderson295 • Incident in Moderan • [Moderan] • (1967) • shortstory by David R. Bunch299 • The Escaping • (1967) • shortstory by David R. Bunch305 • The Doll-House • (1967) • shortstory by James Cross326 • Sex and/or Mr. Morrison • (1967) • shortstory by Carol Emshwiller338 • Shall the Dust Praise Thee? • (1967) • shortstory by Damon Knight344 • If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister? • (1967) • novella by Theodore Sturgeon390 • What Happened to Auguste Clarot? • (1967) • shortstory by Larry Eisenberg396 • Ersatz • (1967) • shortstory by Henry Slesar404 • Go, Go, Go, Said the Bird • (1967) • shortstory by Sonya Dorman412 • The Happy Breed • (1967) • shortstory by John Sladek [as by John T. Sladek ]433 • Encounter with a Hick • (1967) • shortstory by Jonathan Brand439 • From the Government Printing Office • (1967) • shortstory by Kris Neville447 • Land of the Great Horses • (1967) • shortstory by R. A. Lafferty458 • The Recognition • (1967) • shortstory by J. G. Ballard472 • Judas • (1967) • shortstory by John Brunner483 • Test to Destruction • (1967) • novelette by Keith Laumer510 • Carcinoma Angels • (1967) • shortstory by Norman Spinrad523 • Auto-da-Fé • (1967) • shortstory by Roger Zelazny532 • Aye, and Gomorrah . . . • (1967) • shortstory by Samuel R. Delany

    In his singular universe, televisions talk (and sometimes sing), animals live in small apartments where their nephews visit from the sea, and men and women and boys and girls fall down wells and fly through space and find love on Ferris wheels. In a voice full of fable, myth, and dream, Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day draws us into a world of delightfully wicked recognitions, and introduces us to a writer of uncommon talent and imagination.Contains 40 stories, including "The Duck," "The Man and the Moose," and "Death and the Fruits of the Tree," as heard on NPR's This American Life, "The Book," as heard on Selected Shorts, and "The TV," as found in The New Yorker.A selection of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program and the Starbucks Coffee Bookish Reading Club.Winner of the 2011 Nobbie Award for Best Book of the Year."This guy can write!" –Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451

    Ranging from the prophetic to the surreal, these stories demonstrate Stanislaw Lem's vast talent and remarkable ability to blend meaning and magic into a wholly entertaining and captivating work.

    Clarke is the most celebrated science fiction author alive. He is—with H. G. Wells, Isaac Asimov, and Robert A. Heinlein—one of the writers who define science fiction in our time. Now Clarke has cooperated in the preparation of a massive, definitive edition of his collected shorter works. From early work like "Rescue Party" and "The Lion of Comarre," through classics like "The Star," "Earthlight," "The Nine Billion Names of God," and "The Sentinel" (kernel of the later novel, and movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey), all the way to later work like "A Meeting with Medusa" and "The Hammer of God," this immense volume encapsulates one of the great SF careers of all time.

    In these previously unpublished gems, Vonnegut’s originality infuses a unique landscape of factories, trailers, and bars—and characters who pit their dreams and fears against a cruel and sometimes comically indifferent world.Here are stories of men and machines, art and artifice, and how ideals of fortune, fame, and love take curious twists in ordinary lives. An ambitious builder of roads, commanding an army of bulldozers, graders, and asphalt spreaders, fritters away his free time with miniature trains—until the women in his life crash his fantasy land. Trapped in a stenography pool, a young dreamer receives a call from a robber on the run, who presents her with a strange proposition. A crusty newspaperman is forced onto a committee to judge Christmas displays—a job that leads him to a suspiciously ostentatious ex-con and then a miracle. A hog farmer’s widow receives cryptic, unsolicited letters from a man in Schenectady about “the indefinable sweet aches of the spirit.” But what will she find when she goes to meet him in the flesh?These beautifully rendered works are a testament to Vonnegut’s unique blend of observation and imagination. Like a present left behind by a departed loved one, While Mortals Sleep bestows upon us a shimmering Kurt Vonnegut gift: a poignant reflection of our world as it is and as it could be.