Apex Magazine Issue 99


Jason Sizemore - 2017
    New issues are released the first Tuesday of every month.This month we celebrate Indigenous American fantasists with guest editor Amy H. Sturgis.

Warm Up


V.E. Schwab - 2013
    His wife moved out, taking his son with her, and a devastated David hasn’t left his house since, terrified of the mysterious new power that followed him home from the ill-fated expedition.After months in seclusion, David’s ready for a fresh start, and ventures out, determined to keep his power in check. But David’s power isn’t the one he needs to worry about.

Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories


Hugh Howey - 2017
    These stories explore everything from artificial intelligence to parallel universes to video games, and each story is accompanied by an author’s note exploring the background and genesis of each story.   Howey’s incisive mind makes Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories a compulsively readable and thought-provoking selection of short works—from a modern master at the top of his game.

Clarkesworld Magazine, Issue 160 (January 2020)


Neil Clarke - 2020
    This was published as a Clarkesworld audiobook podcast in 2020.

From the Editorial Page of the Falchester Weekly Review


Marie Brennan - 2016
    And yet, given the level of secret knowledge she now posses, she is reduced to waiting to reveal her new academic discovery until royal decrees can be lifted and a fraught political situation avoided. In her idle frustration, Isabella vents her spleen upon the shoddy research published by lesser men with swollen heads in local journals. Enjoy the following collection of letters, found in a trunk of mislaid scholarly documents left behind when she removed to Linshire for the season.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Sorry Please Thank You


Charles Yu - 2012
    . . 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."

Dauntless


Jack Campbell - 2006
    Now its fleet is crippled and stranded in enemy territory. Their only hope is a man who's emerged from a century-long hibernation to find he has been heroically idealized, beyond belief...Captain John "Black Jack" Geary's legendary exploits are known to every schoolchild. Revered for his heroic "last stand" in the early days of the war, he was presumed dead. But a century later, Geary miraculously returns from survival hibernation and reluctantly takes command of the Alliance fleet as it faces annihilation by the Syndics.Appalled by the hero-worship around him, Geary is nevertheless a man who will do his duty. And he knows that bringing the stolen Syndic hypernet key safely home is the Alliance's one chance to win the war. But to do that, Geary will have to live up to the impossibly heroic "Black Jack" legend...

Unexpected Stories


Octavia E. Butler - 2014
    The novella “A Necessary Being” showcases Octavia E. Butler’s ability to create alien yet fully believable “others.” Tahneh’s father was a Hao, one of a dwindling race whose leadership abilities render them so valuable that their members are captured and forced to govern. When her father dies, Tahneh steps into his place, both chief and prisoner, and for twenty years has ruled without ever meeting another of her kind. She bears her loneliness privately until the day that a Hao youth is spotted wandering into her territory. As her warriors sharpen their weapons, Tahneh must choose between imprisoning the newcomer—and living the rest of her life alone. The second story in this volume, “Childfinder,” was commissioned by Harlan Ellison for his legendary (and never-published) anthology The Last Dangerous Visions™. A disaffected telepath connects with a young girl in a desperate attempt to help her harness her growing powers. But in the richly evocative fiction of Octavia E. Butler, mentorship is a rocky path, and every lesson comes at a price. The award-winning author of science fiction classics Parable of the Sower and Kindred bestows these compelling, long lost gems “like the miraculous discovery that the beloved book you’ve read a dozen times has an extra chapter” (Los Angeles Review of Books). Harlan Ellison and Dangerous Visions are registered trademarks of the Kilimanjaro Corporation. All rights reserved.

The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth


Roger Zelazny - 1964
    In Doors of His Face, The Lamps of His Mouth, Zelazny's rare ability to mix the dream-like, disturbing imagery of fantasy with the real-life hardware of science fiction is on full display. His vivid imagination and fine prose made him one of the most highly acclaimed writers in his field.Contents:· The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth · nv F&SF Mar ’65 · The Keys to December · nv New Worlds Aug ’66 · Devil Car [Sam Nurdock] · ss Galaxy Jun ’65 · A Rose for Ecclesiastes · nv F&SF Nov ’63 · The Monster and the Maiden · vi Galaxy Dec ’64 · Collector’s Fever · vi Galaxy Jun ’64 · This Mortal Mountain · nv If Mar ’67 · This Moment of the Storm · nv F&SF Jun ’66 · The Great Slow Kings · ss Worlds of Tomorrow Dec ’63 · A Museum Piece · ss Fantastic Jun ’63 · Divine Madness · ss Magazine of Horror Sum ’66 · Corrida · ss Anubis v1 #3 ’68 · Love Is an Imaginary Number · ss New Worlds Jan ’66 · The Man Who Loved the Faioli · ss Galaxy Jun ’67 · Lucifer · ss Worlds of Tomorrow Jun ’64

The Wrong Stars


Tim Pratt - 2017
    or awaken an ancient evil and destroy all life in the galaxy.The shady crew of the White Raven run freight and salvage at the fringes of our solar system. They discover the wreck of a centuries-old exploration vessel floating light years away from its intended destination and revive its sole occupant, who wakes with news of First Alien Contact. When the crew break it to her that humanity has alien allies already, she reveals that these are very different extra-terrestrials... and the gifts they bestowed on her could kill all humanity, or take it out to the most distant stars. File Under: Science Fiction

I'm Waiting for You and Other Stories


Bo-Young Kim - 2021
    But small incidents wreak havoc on space and time, driving their wedding date further away. As centuries on Earth pass and the land and climate change, one thing is constant: the desire of the lovers to be together. In two separate yet linked stories, Kim Bo-Young cleverly demonstrate the idea love that is timeless and hope springs eternal, despite seemingly insurmountable challenges and the deepest despair.In “The Prophet of Corruption” and “That One Life,” humanity is viewed through the eyes of its creators: godlike beings for which everything on Earth—from the richest woman to a speck of dirt—is an extension of their will. When one of the creations questions the righteousness of this arrangement, it is deemed a perversion—a disease—that must be excised and cured. Yet the Prophet Naban, whose “child” is rebelling, isn’t sure the rebellion is bad. What if that which is considered criminal is instead the natural order—and those who condemn it corrupt? Exploring the dichotomy between the philosophical and the corporeal, Kim ponders the fate of free-will, as she considers the most basic of questions: who am I?

Mechanical Failure


Joe Zieja - 2016
    Mankind in the Galactic Age had finally conquered war, so what was left for the military to do but drink and barbecue? That’s the kind of military that Sergeant R. Wilson Rogers lived in before he left the fleet to become a smuggler. But it turns out that smuggling is hard. Like getting-arrested-for-dealing-with-pirates-and-forced-back-into-service kind of hard. It doesn’t seem so bad—the military was a perpetual tiki party anyway—but when Roger returns after only a year away, something has changed. These are soldiers—actual soldiers doing actual soldier things like preparing for a war that Rogers is sure doesn’t exist. Rogers vows to put a stop to all this nonsense—even if it means doing actual work. With an experienced ear for military double-speak, Zieja has created a remarkable and sarcastic adventure.

Cosmic Powers: The Saga Anthology of Far-Away Galaxies


John Joseph AdamsAlan Dean Foster - 2017
    Buckell“The Deckhand, the Nova Blade, and the Thrice-Sung Texts” © 2017 by Becky Chambers“The Sighted Watchmaker” © 2011 by Vylar Kaftan. Originally published in Lightspeed“Infinite Love Engine” © 2017 by Joseph Allen Hill. Originally published in Lightspeed“Unfamiliar Gods” © 2017 by Adam-Troy Castro & Judi B. Castro“Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World” © 2015 by Caroline M. Yoachim. Originally published in Lightspeed“Our Specialty Is Xenogeology” © 2017 by Alan Dean Foster“Golden Ring” © 2017 by Karl Schroeder“Tomorrow When We See the Sun” © 2015 by A. Merc Rustad. Originally published in Lightspeed“Bring the Kids and Revisit the Past at the Traveling Retro Funfair!” © 2017 by Seanan McGuire“The Dragon That Flew Out of the Sun” © 2017 by Aliette de Bodard.“Diamond and the World Breaker” © 2017 by Linda Nagata“The Chameleon’s Gloves” © 2017 by Yoon Ha Lee“The Universe, Sung in Stars” © 2015 by Kat Howard. Originally published in Lightspeed“Wakening Ouroboros” © 2017 by Jack Campbell“Warped Passages” © 2017 by Kameron Hurley“The Frost Giant’s Data” © 2017 by Dan Abnett.

The Tea Master and the Detective


Aliette de Bodard - 2018
    In this fluid society, human and mindship avatars mingle in corridors and in function rooms, and physical and virtual realities overlap, the appareance of environments easily modified and adapted to interlocutors or current mood. A transport ship discharged from military service after a traumatic injury, The Shadow's Child now ekes out a precarious living as a brewer of mind-altering drugs for the comfort of space-travellers. Meanwhile, abrasive and eccentric scholar Long Chau wants to find a corpse for a scientific study. When Long Chau walks into her office, The Shadow's Child expects an unpleasant but easy assignment. When the corpse turns out to have been murdered, Long Chau feels compelled to investigate, dragging The Shadow's Child with her. As they dig deep into the victim's past, The Shadow's Child realises that the investigation points to Long Chau's own murky past--and, ultimately, to the dark and unbearable void that lies between the stars...

Willful Child


Steven Erikson - 2014
    Willful Child. Its ongoing mission: to seek out strange new worlds on which to plant the Terran flag, to subjugate and if necessary obliterate new life life-forms, to boldly blow the...And so we join the not-terribly-bright but exceedingly cock-sure Captain Hadrian Sawback - a kind of James T Kirk crossed with 'American Dad' - and his motley crew on board the Starship Willful Child for a series of devil-may-care, near-calamitous and downright chaotic adventures through 'the infinite vastness of interstellar space'...The bestselling author of the acclaimed Malazan Book of the Fallen sequence has taken his life-long passion for 'Star Trek' and transformed it into a smart, inventive and hugely entertaining spoof on the whole mankind-exploring-space-for-the-good-of-all-species-but-trashing-stuff-with-a-lot-of-hi-tech-kit-along-the-way type over-blown adventure. The result is this smart. inventive, occasionally wildly OTT and often very funny novel that deftly parodies the genre while also paying fond homage to it.