Volume Six looks at sci-fi in a dozen foreign countries and offers a rich variety of stories from around the world.

    A new first officer reports, Wilson Cole, a man with a reputation for exceeding his orders (but getting results). He's been banished to the Teddy R. for his actions, but once there he again ignores his orders. ...This is the first of five novels about the starship Theodore Roosevelt. The next four will be, in order, Pirate, Mercenary, Rebel, and Flagship.

    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.

    The people of Enith are not. The two countries have been at war for decades, but now peace has fallen, and Calla of Enith seeks to renew an unlikely friendship with Gaantish officer Valk over an even more unlikely game of chess, in Carrie Vaughn's novella That Game We Played During The War.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    and his family is using an AI interface to pretend everything is normal.

    The Hugo-winning short story about diners, bored teenagers, and parallel worlds.

    But still, Tim is -- or was -- his brother, and Mike must do what he can.For Mike this is the beginning of an adventure beyond imagining, an adventure that will put him in constant peril of his life as he shuttles between past, present and future of an alternate reality, fighting beside the descendants of the Incas as they battle to erase Pizarro's bloody footprints from the New World, and secure the reality of their own existence.But is the "alternate reality" really an alternate, or is Mike actually struggling to erase the very future that gave him birth? The answer lies in the source of all his troubles and his only hope of survival: THE MASK OF THE SUN

    Against his better judgment, he accepts an assignment to crack the Marshall Titov, a top-secret orbital station operated by the European Space Agency. But what Matt will discover there will propel him on an extraordinary and quite unexpected journey.Gregor Cairns is an exobiology student and descendant of one of Terra Nova's first families. Hopelessly infatuated with a lovely young trader's daughter, he is unaware that his research partner, Elizabeth, has fallen in love with him. Together, Gregor and Elizabeth confront the great work his family began three centuries earlier-to rediscover the secret of interstellar travel.Ranging from a gritty near-future Earth to a distant alien world, Cosmonaut Keep is contemporary science fiction at its highest level, a visionary epic filled with daring individuals seeking a place for themselves in a vast, complex, and enigmatic universe. Cosmonaut Keep is a 2002 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel.

    “Astonishing is not too strong a word for these tales” (Wall Street Journal). Translated and with an Introduction by Michael Kandel.

    This collection, showcasing Bear’s unique imagination and singular voice, includes her Hugo- and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award-winning story “Tideline” and Hugo-winning novelette “Shoggoths in Bloom,” as well as an original, never-published story. Recipient of the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, the Locus Award, a World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Philip K. Dick nominee, Bear is one of speculative fiction’s most acclaimed, respected, and prolific authors.ContentTidelineSonny Liston Takes the FallSoundingThe Something-Dreaming GameThe Cold BlacksmithIn the House of Aryaman, a Lonely Signal BurnsOrm the BeautifulThe Inevitable Heat Death of the UniverseLove Among the TalusCryptic ColorationThe LadiesShoggoths in BloomThe Girl Who Sang Rose MadderDollyGods of the ForgeAnnie WebberThe Horrid Glory of Its WingsConfessorThe Leavings of the WolfThe Death of Terrestrial Radio

    Anti-Gerasone halts the aging process and prevents people from dying of old age as long as they keep taking it; as a result, America now suffers from severe overpopulation and shortages of food and resources. With the exception of the very wealthy, most of the population appears to survive on a diet of foods made from processed seaweed and sawdust. Gramps Ford, his chin resting on his hands, his hands on the crook of his cane, was staring irascibly at the five-foot television screen that dominated the room. On the screen, a news commentator was summarizing the day's happenings. Every thirty seconds or so, Gramps would jab the floor with his cane-tip and shout, "Hell, we did that a hundred years ago!" Emerald and Lou, coming in from the balcony, where they had been seeking that 2185 A.D. rarity--privacy--were obliged to take seats in the back row, behind about a dozen relatives with whom they shared the house. All save Gramps, who was somewhat withered and bent, seemed, by pre-anti-gerasone standards, to be about the same age--somewhere in their late twenties or early thirties. Gramps looked older because he had already reached 70 when anti-gerasone was invented. He had not aged in the 102 years since. "Next one shoots off his big bazoo while the TV's on is gonna find hisself cut off without a dollar--" his voice suddenly softened and sweetened--"when they wave that checkered flag at the Indianapolis Speedway, and old Gramps gets ready for the Big Trip Up Yonder." He sniffed sentimentally, while his heirs concentrated desperately on not making the slightest sound. For them, the poignancy of the prospective Big Trip had been dulled somewhat, through having been mentioned by Gramps about once a day for fifty years.

    Originally published as e-novellas, now, for the first time ever, they are together in one print volume.You already know the truth about the Garde and the Mogadorian invasion, yet there is still so much to learn. The stories in Secret Histories will help you get the answers you seek, but they will not help you stop the coming war. Only the Garde can save our planet.

    Tired of his decrepit house, he leaves his wife and mother behind and sets out for a night at The Boneyard. Joe has a knack for dice throwing and figures he can take on any opponent. But can he win when the stakes are raised, and it's his life he's gambling for?

    (1976)(92 pages)Houston, HoustonThe astronauts had the "right Stuff" to deal with . . . almost anything...Houston isn't there any moreLorimer comes through to the command module in time to hear a girl's voice over the speaker, "--Dinko trip. What did Lorna say? Gloria over!"He starts up the Lurp and begins scanning. No results this time. "They're either in line behind us or on the sunward quadrant," he tells Dave and Bud. "I can't isolate their position."Presently the speaker holds another thin thread of sound. A hard soprano says suddenly, "--should be outside your orbit. Try around Beta Aries."The first girl's voice comes back. "We see them, Margo! But they're so small, how can they live in there. Maybe they're tiny aliens. Over."Bud chuckles. "Dave, this is screwy, it's all in English. It has to be some UN thingie."Dave massages his elbows, flexes his fists; thinking. The three astronauts wait. In thirteen minutes the voice from Earth says, "Judy, call the others, will you? We're going to play you the conversation, we think you should all hear. Oh, while you're waiting, Zebra wants to tell Connie the baby is fine. And we have a new cow.""Code," says Dave.SoulsThe Vikings thought the pickings would be easy--but the Abbess was more than she seemed.The woman who had been Radegunde did not change; it was still Radegunde's gray hairs and wrinkled face and old body in the peasant woman's brown dress, and yet at the same time it was a stranger who stepped out of the Abbess Radegunde as out of a gown dropped to the floor. This stranger was without feeling, though Radegunde's tears still stood on her cheeks, and there was no kidness or joy in her. She said in a voice I had never heard before, one with no feeling in it, as if I did not concer her or Thorvald Einarsson either, as if neither of us were worth a second glance:"Thorvald, turn around.:Far up the hall something stirred."Now come back. This way."There were footsteps, coming closwer. Then the big Norseman walked clumsily into the room--jerk! jerk! jerk! at ever step as if he were being pulled by a rope. Sweat beaded his face. He said, "You--how?""By my nature," she said.(From the blurb in each novella)

    In a sleepy East Anglian town we meet Bruce Fox and Gregory Rolles - two young men who have sworn to Think Large in order to distinguish themselves from the masses of Cottersall. When a meteor lands in the pond of a local farm, Gregory seeks the advice of Mr Wells. Nine short stories complete the collection, including the highly autobiographical 'Girl and Robot With Flowers', which was taken up as a seminal story demarcating the new SF from the old.Contents:The saliva tree --Danger, religion! --The lonely habit --A pleasure shared --One role with relish --Legends of Smith's Burst --Day of the doomed king --Paternal care --The girl and the robot with flowers.