Corey. Set two hundred years in the future, where man has colonized the outer asteroid belt, The Expanse follows the case of a missing girl that brings together a hardened detective and a rogue ship captain in a race across the solar system to expose the greatest conspiracy in human history. "Drive" highlights a key moment in The Expanse universe whose ramifications set the foundation for the show.The story is a prequel taking place approximately 150 years prior to the main series, concerning Solomon Epstein and his invention of the Epstein drive.

    Howard’s Conan the Barbarian, Michael Moorcock’s Elric of Melniboné, Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Classic characters like these made sword and sorcery a storytelling sensation, a cornerstone of fantasy fiction — and an inspiration for a new generation of writers, spinning their own outsize tales of magic and swashbuckling adventure. Now, in the Book of Swords, acclaimed editor and bestselling author Gardner Dozois presents an all-new anthology of original epic tales by a stellar cast of award-winning modern masters — many of them set in their authors’ best-loved worlds. Join today’s finest tellers of fantastic tales, including George R.R. Martin, K.J. Parker, Robin Hobb, Ken Liu, C.J. Cherryh, Daniel Abraham, Lavie Tidhar, Ellen Kushner, and more on action-packed journeys into the outer realms of dark enchantment and intrepid derring-do, featuring a stunning assortment of fearless swordsmen and warrior women who face down danger and death at every turn with courage, cunning, and cold steel.Contents:- The Best Man Wins by K.J. Parker- Her Father’s Sword by Robin Hobb- The Hidden Girl by Ken Liu- The Sword of Destiny by Matthew Hughes- "I Am a Handsome Man", Said Apollo Crow by Kate Elliott- The Triumph of Virtue by Walter Jon Williams- The Mocking Tower by Daniel Abraham- Hrunting by C.J. Cherryh- A Long, Cold Trail by Garth Nix- When I Was a Highwayman by Ellen Kushner- The Smoke of Gold Is Glory by Scott Lynch- The Colgrid Conundrum by Rich Larson- The King’s Evil by Elizabeth Bear- Waterfalling by Lavie Tidhar - The Sword Tyraste by Cecelia Holland- The Sons of the Dragon by George R.R. Martin

    But Ottokar Magnus is still baron, and his host of brothers include Anton, an ambitious young soldier, and Wulfgang, an amiable teenager. Unable to seek his fortune as a knight errant, Anton has enlisted with the royal Jorgarian hussars and taken Wulf along as his servant. There is magic in Jorgary, but it is regarded as Satanism, rituals performed by Speakers who are in contact with the Devil. The Speakers, though, believe that the Voices they hear belong to saints. Anton is not a Speaker...but Wulf is. Anxious to impress the court, Anton exhibits spectacular horsemanship at a royal hunt, with a little boost from Wulf. Two nights later he is dragged before Cardinal Zdenek, the king's chief minister. Zdenek offers him an earldom and anything else he could dream of if he will ride at once to a strategic fortress at Cardice and take command there. The count and his son have died, victims of both treason and witchcraft. The cardinal thinks that neighboring enemies are preparing to invade, using "modern" arms to capture the fort. Mortal resources alone will not suffice, but Zdenek knows that Anton's improbable jump at the hunt was aided by supernatural power. Anton wants nothing to do with this mission, but Wulf's Voices tell him that they should accept the charge. The result is a harrowing ride through limbo with astonishing results.

    But she has something other thieves don’t… tiny puppet-like friends: some made of wood, some of metal. They don’t entirely trust her, and she doesn’t entirely understand them, but their partnership mostly works.After a surprising discovery shakes their world to the core, Coppelia and her friends must reexamine everything they thought they knew about their world, while attempting to save their city from a seemingly impossible new threat.

    Ben's secret to his success: A muse, Hestia, who helps him, cares for him and in many ways is the love of his life, as muses so often are for those they inspire.Hestia is Ben's secret -- but Hestia has secrets of her own. As the two of them race toward the completion of their work, Ben discovers the price of having a muse, and learns that the world can change, in ways he does not expect.

    but it was more than half an hour distant--perhaps the limit of life itself! From the author of Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man. Originally published in the Fall 1946 issue of Planet Stories. It was later reprinted under the title Frost and Fire.

    

    Esladas is a member of the Patron ruling class and determined to prove himself in the army. His plans are disrupted by the outgoing and beautiful girl who sells him fruit in the market, though, despite the fact that neither of them speaks a word of the others language. Brief conversations and stolen moments together soon become something more, but when their divided cultures clash, Kiya and Esladas must decide if their blossoming love is worth becoming outsiders for the rest of their lives. Read the beginning of their legendary love story in this Court of Fives companion novella!

    'The two thieves had themselves been robbed by two youths, who eyed each other suspiciously over the sprawled, senseless bodies. Fafhrd said: 'Our motives for being here seem identical.' 'Surely, they must be!' the Mouser answered curtly, fiercely eyeing his huge, potential foe.Fafhrd glanced down at the belts and money-pouches of the fallen thieves. Then he looked up at the Mouser with an honest, open, ingenuous smile. 'Sixty-sixty?' he suggested. Thus was born the most improbable relationship in the whole history of swords and sorceries.Contains:7 • Induction • [Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser] • (1957) • shortstory by Fritz Leiber11 • The Snow Women • [Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser] • (1970) • novella by Fritz Leiber91 • The Unholy Grail • [Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser] • (1962) • novelette by Fritz Leiber123 • Ill Met in Lankhmar • [Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser] • (1970) • novella by Fritz Leiber

    J. Jemisin, Indrapramit Das, Scott Lynch, Alastair Reynolds, Charlie Jane Anders and Samuel R. Delany.

    So what does one do in the intervening centuries? Lythande has to earn a living, after all. Music and magic are saleable skills—sometimes both together. There's a magic lute....The allure of a mermaid's song...a temperamental music-loving dragon...magical artifacts that will allow no one to turn them from their appointed destinations...an unexpectedly dangerous small child—Lythande's life is full of challenges, of which the biggest is never allowing the Secret that preserves each Adept’s power to be revealed, on pain of total loss of magic... oh, and death.

    Anderson, and Rob Thurman—nothing is as simple as black and white, light and dark, good and evil..Unfortunately, that’s exactly what makes it so easy to cross the line.In #1 New York Times bestselling author Jim Butcher’s Cold Case, Molly Carpenter—Harry Dresden’s apprentice-turned-Winter Lady—must collect a tribute from a remote Fae colony and discovers that even if you’re a good girl, sometimes you have to be bad...New York Times bestselling author Seanan McGuire’s Sleepover finds half-succubus Elsie Harrington kidnapped by a group of desperate teenage boys. Not for anything “weird.” They just need her to rescue a little girl from the boogeyman. No biggie.In New York Times bestselling Kevin J. Anderson’s Eye of Newt, Zombie P.I. Dan Shamble’s latest client is a panicky lizard missing an eye who thinks someone wants him dead. But the truth is that someone only wants him for a very special dinner...And New York Times bestselling author Rob Thurman’s infernally heroic Caliban Leandros takes a trip down memory lane as he deals wih some overdue—and nightmarish—vengeance involving some quite nasty Impossible Monsters .ALSO INCLUDES STORIES BYTanya Huff * Kat Richardson * Jim C. Hines * Anton Strout * Lucy A. Snyder * Kristine Kathryn Rusch * Erik Scott de Bie *From the Trade Paperback edition.

    Now he offers us a superb quintet of novellas -- five dazzling masterworks of speculative fiction, including "Orphans of the Helix," his award-winning return to the Hyperion Universe -- that demonstrates the unique mastery, breathtaking invention, and flawless craftsmanship of one of contemporary fiction's true greats.Human colonists seeking something other than godhood encounter their long-lost "cousins"...and an ancient scourge.A devastated man in suicide's embrace is caught up in a bizarre cat-and-mouse game with a young woman possessing a world-ending power.The distant descendants of a once-oppressed people learn a chilling lesson about the persistence of the past.A terrifying ascent up the frigid, snow-swept slopes of K2 shatters preconceptions and reveals the true natures of four climbers, one of whom is not human.At the intersection of a grand past and a threadbare present, an aging American in Russia confronts his own mortality as he glimpses a wondrous future.

    Come live the adventure again.

    Written may 1948.First published in Saturn, October 1957 as The Elephant Circuit.First collected into The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag, 1959.