With the exception of a few human ‘Author’ titles printed in the small basement and back room Libraries, all stories are created by the Artificial Intelligence of the Archive. Most believe the ‘Authors’ are only brands to lure people into spending their credits on print. One woman believes that one of them, author Hugh Howey, is real, and still alive. Her Librarian feeds her belief that Hugh Howey is still sailing around the world, uploading his work to the Archive. Convinced she has found clues in his stories as to where he now resides, she and her girlfriend sail to an island, where she believes Hugh Howey lives.* * * * *

    Le Guin has, in each story and novel, created a provocative, ever-evolving universe filled with diverse worlds and rich characters reminiscent of our earthly selves. Now, in The Birthday of the World, this gifted artist returns to these worlds in eight brilliant short works, including a never-before-published novella, each of which probes the essence of humanity.

    The companion volume to Seek!, Rucker's selected nonfiction, Gnarl! brings together three dozen of the writer's best science fiction short stories. His first major story collection in 17 years, the volume includes a number of previously unanthologized stories, including tales cowritten with Marc Laidlaw, Paul Di Filippo, and Bruce Sterling. Classics such as "The Fifty-Seventh Franz Kafka," a timely meditation on the paradoxes of cloning, are side by side with works of pseudomemoir like "The Indian Rope Trick Explained." The Rucker formula - cutting-edge physics, a wild but perversely logical imagination, and a decidedly punk attitude - illuminates this new collection.

    The longest, loneliest railroad on Earth. A North Korean nuke hitting Tokyo, a hollow asteroid full of automated rice paddies, and a specialist in breaking up “virtual” marriages. And yes, giant robots. These thirteen stories from and about the Land of the Rising Sun run the gamut from fantasy to cyberpunk, and will leave you knowing that the future is Japanese! Contributors:-Pat Cadigan-Toh EnJoe-Project Itoh-Hideyuki Kikuchi-Ken Liu-David Moles-Issui Ogawa-Felicity Savage-Ekaterina Sedia-Bruce Sterling-Rachel Swirsky-TOBI Hirotaka-Catherynne M. Valente

    McHugh examines the impacts of social and technological shifts on families. Using deceptively simple prose, she illuminates the relationship between parents and children and the expected and unexpected chasms that open between generations.Contents:Ancestor Money (2003)In the Air (1995)The Cost to Be Wise (1996)The Lincoln Train (1995)Interview: On Any Given Day (2001)Oversite (2004)Wicked (2005)Laika Comes Back Safe (2002)Presence (2002)Eight-Legged Story (2003)The Beast (1992)Nekropolis (1994)Frankenstein's Daughter (2003)

    

    "Engines are out. Our course is whatever it was when we were hit, but I can't figure it out because the computer and the instruments are smashed. We have enough power and control to keep a minimal shield up and keep the lights on in here. Most of the lifts are out because there has been too much structural twisting. I will leave weapons to Fire Control." "None worth mentioning," Ruoni put in. "What do you want to do, Command?" It reminded me of the line I would hear on third and thirty-four when the coach asked me what I wanted to call. This is the story of Danny Troy, a has-been pro quarterback in desperate need of a fresh start. So, when he gets a bizarre job offer to be a space pirate, he takes it. A chance brawl on the ship leads him to a damsel in distress. He rescues her only to find she is a lot more than he bargained for. Danny’s idea is to see her safely home and collect a (big) reward. However, the damsel, Jaenna by name, has other ideas. The pair careen across the spiral arm from one adventure to the next, while Danny’s “career” grows to pirate captain and finally to a warlord who holds the fate of galactic civilization in his hands. What decision is Danny going to make? And what is he going to do about the girl? This is an action-packed, space opera, with a dash of American football added to the mix.

    Written in Soviet Moscow in the 1920s—but considered too subversive even to show to a publisher—the seven tales included here attest to Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky’s boundless imagination, black humor, and breathtaking irony: a man loses his way in the vast black waste of his own small room; the Eiffel Tower runs amok; a kind soul dreams of selling “everything you need for suicide”; an absentminded passenger boards the wrong train, winding up in a place where night is day, nightmares are the reality, and the backs of all facts have been broken; a man out looking for work comes across a line for logic but doesn’t join it as there’s no guarantee the logic will last; a sociable corpse misses his own funeral; an inventor gets a glimpse of the far-from-radiant communist future.

    In "Stone Animals," a house's haunting takes the unusual form of hordes of rabbits that camp out nightly on the front lawn. This proves just one of several benign but inexplicable phenomena that begin to pull apart the family newly moved into the house as surely as a more sinister supernatural influence might. The title story beautifully captures the unpredictable potential of teenage lives through its account of a group of adolescent schoolfriends whose experiences subtly parallel events in a surreal TV fantasy series. Zombies serve as the focus for a young man's anxieties about his future in "Some Zombie Contingency Plans" and offer suggestive counterpoint to the lives of two convenience store clerks who serve them in "The Hortlak." Not only does Link find fresh perspectives from which to explore familiar premises, she also forges ingenious connections between disparate images and narrative approaches to suggest a convincing alternate logic that shapes the worlds of her highly original fantasies.Contents:The Faery Handbag (2004)The Hortlak (2003)The Cannon (2003)Stone Animals (2004)Catskin (2003)Some Zombie Contingency Plans (2005)The Great Divorce (2005)Magic for Beginners (2005)Lull (2002)

    But when a child's doll appears in the middle of the road, the vacation comes to an abrupt end and Nightingale finds himself fighting for his life. The Doll is a fast-paced supernatural story about 10,000 words long.

    Honario Harpplayer, R.N.3) Rescue Operation4) At Last, the True Story of Frankenstein5) I Always Do What Teddy Says6) Portrait of the Artist7) Not Me, Not Amos Cabot!8) Mute Milton9) A Criminal Act10) Waiting Place11) If12) I Have My Vigil13) From Fanaticism, or For Reward14) By the Falls15) The Ever-Branching Tree16) Brave Newer World17) Roommates18) The Mothballed Spaceship19) An Honest Days Work20) Space Rats of the C.C.C.

    Here are 25 stories (plus a bonus interview with best-selling author George R.R. Martin) by some of the field's greatest authors. Included are:THE TRUE DARKNESS, by Pamela SargentPERMANENT FATAL ERRORS, by Jay LakeADJUSTMENT TEAM, by Philip K. DickROBOTS DON’T CRY, by Mike ResnickNO GREAT MAGIC, by Fritz LeiberESCAPE HATCH, by Brenda W. CloughBACKLASH, by Winston K. MarksTHE PICK-UP, by Lawrence Watt-EvansPOPULATION IMPLOSION, by Andrew J. OffuttWAY DOWN EAST, by Tim SullivanTHROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH FERDINAND FEGHOOT: 28, by Grendel BriartonTO INVADE NEW YORK, by Irwin LewisTHEY WERE THE WIND, by C.J. HendersonSTOPOVER, by William GerkenCONSEQUENCES OF STEAM, by Michael HemmingsonOUTSIDE LOOKING IN, by Mark E. BurgessDEAD WORLD, by Jack DouglasNEFERTITI'S TENTH LIFE, by Mary A. TurzilloQUICKSILVER, by Lonni LeesAFTER ALL, by Robert ReginaldTHE BARBARIANS, by Algis BudrysEX MACHINA, by Cynthia WardMONKEY ON HIS BACK, by Charles V. De VetTHE SURVIVORS, by Tom GodwinTHROUGH TIME AND SPACE WITH FERDINAND FEGHOOT: 99, by Grendel BriartonSPEAKING WITH GEORGE R.R. MARTIN: Interview conducted by Darrell SchweitzerAnd don't forget to search this ebook store for "Wildside Megapack" to see more entries in this series, covering classic authors and subjects like mysteries, science fiction, westerns, ghost stories -- and much, much more!

    They have been the subject of films, radio dramatizations and have even been presented on ice Read the originals now and one of the world's greatest ever story tellers will give you hours of pleasure and enjoyment.Stories included are: "Around the World in 80 Days, The Clipper of the Clouds, Journey to the Centre of the Earth, From the Earth to the Moon" and "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea."

    In the award-winning title story, the narrator recounts the events of an expedition to the Belgian Congo in 1928 to collects gorillas for the Louisville Museum of Natural History. A mother invents a fairy-tale world for her son in 'Halfway People'. Twin sisters backpacking through Europe receive a mysterious invitation. A rebellious teenager is sent to a brutal reform school hidden away in paradise. A young woman inherits the family submarine. In 'The Dark', a researcher tracking plague outbreaks finds himself in the Viet Cong tunnels of Vietnam. A mystery writer visits an archaeological dig in Egypt and sets a curse in motion. In two stories, 'Booth's Ghost' and 'Standing Room Only', Fowler explores the circumstances of Lincoln's assassination from the perspectives of John Wilkes Booth's family and friends.Fowler, perhaps best known for her novels, is a master of the short story form: the secret history, the account of first contact, the murderous, ordinary tensions of family life. She draws on fairy tales, historical narratives, and war reportage, measuring the human capacities for hope and despair, brutality and kindness in the fantastic tradition of writers such as Shirley Jackson, T.H. White, Karen Russell, and Ursula K. Le Guin.

    Unabashedly classic in the great tradition of Asimov and Clarke, Liu Cixin's science-fiction is firmly rooted in the cosmic. “[most] literature has always left me with the impression of indulging an intense anthropocentric narcissism. […] In the world of literature, the Sun exists for no other reason than to illuminate the pure, unadulterated countryside, the Moon has no other reason to shine than to cast the shadows of the seaside lovers, [but] if the universe is the Sahara, then all that makes the Earth a grain of gold within it, is that a particular bacteria called humanity clinging to its surface.” Liu Cixin uses the unique perspective of science-fiction to take us on a journey into this majestic, desolate cosmos. He gives us the chance to reacquaint ourselves with the fundamental truth that in the face of a vast universe we are no more than a speck of dust; That the Earth is just another celestial body – And an extremely vulnerable one at that. The flash of a gamma-ray burst or the blast of a nearby supernova could, at any moment, reduce our cherished home to nothing but ashes.It can be terrifying to contemplate the end of our world and stories that describe such destruction can be disturbing. At the same time however, they can leave us feeling not only entertained, but exhilarated and inspired. Maybe, they can even give us a chance to renew our love of life. Most stories found in the “The Wandering Earth” collection take us to a sci-fi vision of Earth's end. But here, there are no Hollywood aliens, descending from the depths of space to blow up our cities. In these futures, the dangers humanity faces are much stranger and whimsical than that. The unexpected calamities that befall his richly detailed worlds are only eclipsed by humanity's epic, but always plausible, attempts to escape destruction.In all this peril and doom, Liu Cixin always feels for humanity. His stories are full of a deep love for all of Earth's peoples. But even this love does not escape reflection and even ridicule when viewed through his unrelenting cosmic lens. No matter how dearly one loves the Earth, humanity and all its cultures, there is no avoiding the cold, hard truth that they mean absolutely nothing when viewed against the vastness of the universe. But even an infinite universe could not change the simple fact that we are worthy of love, that we need love. It is this twist that lies at the very heart of the stories in this collection.Table of Contents 1 The Wandering Earth 2 Mountain 3 Of Ants and Dinosaurs 4 Sun of China 5 The Wages of Humanity 6 Curse 5.0 7 The Micro-Age 8 Devourer 9 Taking Care of Gods 10 With Her Eyes 11 The Longest Fall