A companion piece to the "Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens" character novels, Star Wars: Before the Awakening is an anthology book that focuses on the lives of Rey, Finn, and Poe before the events of the Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

     A short story in the Oddjobs universe that tries to answer the age-old question: what Christmas present do you get for the demon who has everything?

    When her sister Mari is kidnapped by The Fridge, a shadowy syndicate that holds people hostage in cryostasis, Eva must undergo a series of unpleasant, dangerous missions to pay the ransom.But Eva may lose her mind before she can raise the money. The ship’s hold is full of psychic cats, an amorous fish-faced emperor wants her dead after she rejects his advances, and her sweet engineer is giving her a pesky case of feelings. The worse things get, the more she lies, raising suspicions and testing her loyalty to her found family.To free her sister, Eva will risk everything: her crew, her ship, and the life she’s built on the ashes of her past misdeeds. But when the dominoes start to fall and she finds the real threat is greater than she imagined, she must decide whether to play it cool or burn it all down.

    Featuring new fiction by Isabel Yap, T. Kingfisher, Naomi Kritzer, Monica Valentinelli, and Cassandra Khaw. Reprinted fiction by Sofia Samatar, essays by Diana M. Pho, Steven H Silver, Sarah Goslee, and Nilah Magruder, poetry by Beth Cato, Hal Y. Zhang, Leah Bobet, and Sharon Hsu, and interviews with Isabel Yap and Monica Valentinelli by Caroline M. Yoachim, a cover by John Picacio, and an editorial by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas.

    A circle of fried doughy perfection. A source of comfort in trying times, perhaps. For Theo Bernstein, however, it is far, far more.Things have been going pretty badly for Theo Bernstein. An unfortunate accident at work has lost him his job (and his work involved a Very Very Large Hadron Collider, so he's unlikely to get it back). His wife has left him. And he doesn't have any money.Before Theo has time to fully appreciate the pointlessness of his own miserable existence, news arrives that his good friend Professor Pieter van Goyen, renowned physicist and Nobel laureate, has died.By leaving the apparently worthless contents of his safety deposit to Theo, however, the professor has set him on a quest of epic proportions. A journey that will rewrite the laws of physics. A battle to save humanity itself.This is the tale of a man who had nothing and gave it all up to find his destiny -- and a doughnut.

    John Mandel, Charlie Jane Anders, Paolo Bacigalupi, Madeline Ashby, Mark Oshiro, Meg Elison, Maureen McHugh, Deji Bryce Olukotun, Hannu Rajaniemi, Annalee Newitz, Lee Konstantinou, and Mark Stasenko—Future Tense Fiction points the way forward to the fiction of tomorrow. A disease surveillance robot whose social programming gets put to the test. A future in which everyone receives universal basic income—but it’s still not enough. A futuristic sport, in which all the athletes have been chemically and physically enhanced. An A.I. company that manufactures a neural bridge allowing ordinary people to share their memories. Brimming with excitement and exploring new ideas, the stories collected by the editors of Slate’s Future Tense are philosophically ambitious and haunting in their creativity. At times terrifying and heartwrenching, hilarious and optimistic, this is a collection that ushers in a new age for our world and for the short story. A partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University, Future Tense explores how emerging technologies will change the way we live, in reality and fiction.

     In the near future, humanity builds a colony on Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter. They tunnel into the ice to explore the dark oceans beneath the moon's surface, searching for signs of extraterrestrial life. What they find will change them forever, setting humanity on a path to the stars. But the old conflicts and hatreds of Earth are not so easily escaped. Will human colonists on distant planets and moons create a paradise or a horrifying dystopia?

    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.

    1 Brooklyn , NYLON, and Tor.com *In Metropolis, the gleaming city of tomorrow, the dream of the great American city has been achieved. But all that is about to change, unless a neurotic, rule-following bureaucrat and an irreverent, freewheeling artificial intelligence can save the city from a mysterious terrorist plot that threatens its very existence.Henry Thompson has dedicated his life to improving America's infrastructure as a proud employee of the United States Municipal Survey. So when the agency comes under attack, he dutifully accepts his unexpected mission to visit Metropolis looking for answers. But his plans to investigate quietly, quickly, and carefully are interrupted by his new partner: a day-drinking know-it-all named OWEN, who also turns out to be the projected embodiment of the agency's supercomputer. Soon, Henry and OWEN are fighting to save not only their own lives and those of the city's millions of inhabitants, but also the soul of Metropolis. The Municipalists is a thrilling, funny, and touching adventure story, a tour-de-force of imagination that trenchantly explores our relationships to the cities around us and the technologies guiding us into the future."A new and irreverent take on both real-world politics and sci-fi history."-The Wall Street Journal

    The teen detectives once known as the Blyton Summer Detective Club (of Blyton Hills, a small mining town in the Zoinx River Valley in Oregon) are all grown up and haven't seen each other since their fateful, final case in 1977. Andy, the tomboy, is twenty-five and on the run, wanted in at least two states. Kerri, one-time kid genius and budding biologist, is bartending in New York, working on a serious drinking problem. At least she's got Tim, an excitable Weimaraner descended from the original canine member of the team. Nate, the horror nerd, has spent the last thirteen years in and out of mental health institutions, and currently resides in an asylum in Arhkam, Massachusetts. The only friend he still sees is Peter, the handsome jock turned movie star. The problem is, Peter's been dead for years.The time has come to uncover the source of their nightmares and return to where it all began in 1977. This time, it better not be a man in a mask. The real monsters are waiting.

    She wakes to the sun breaking over Africa. She keeps watch over the experiments. She makes sure the station doesn't explode.And she's the only occupant of the space station when the world far below her comes apart in flame.

    But Flower is a sentient ship that's been traveling the galaxy for 20,000 years and has her own opinions about how her inhabitants should conduct themselves.I wrote Independent Living because readers of my EarthCent Ambassador series were always asking what happens in the galaxy where the Stryx aren't around to watch every second. The answer is, about what you'd expect. In terms of the EarthCent universe, Independent Living would be the seventeenth book in the sequence, but it can be read as a standalone.

    Some of these stories have been available elsewhere over the past few months, while others are new for this collection. The spectacular tales of space adventure you'll find within its pages are: "Dead Men Don't Get Paid" Undead detective, Dan Deadman, has a problem. He has a number of them, in fact. He's missing an arm. He needs money to repair his broken window. Someone has opened a portal to the hell-like Malwhere in a nightclub, filling the place with slavering flesh-eating monsters. Fortunately, Dan's diminutive house guest, Artur, has a plan to help him fix at least one of these problems, but like everything else in Dan's afterlife, nothing quite works out the way it should. A brand new Dan Deadman Space Detective adventure, set in the aftermath of "Dial D for Deadman". Space Team: The Holiday Special Die Hard meets The Nativity in Space! It's Space Christmas Eve, and all through the space station not a creature was stirring except a load of evil space pirates who're trying to kidnap a very special newborn baby so it can be eaten by their pirate king. They hadn't counted on Cal Carver and the Space Team, though, who happen to be on the station for some much needed R & R. Originally published in December 2016 as a standalone short story. The Last Bounty Once the baddest bounty hunter in the galaxy, all Konto Garr wants these days is a quiet family life with the woman he loves, and the respect of Deenia, the step-daughter who hates his guts. But when Deenia is taken hostage, Konto must employ all his skills to mount a death-defying rescue mission. With a terrorist-filled station between him and the hostages, and an infuriatingly upbeat boy from Deenia’s class for company, Konto's talents will be stretched to their limit as he goes after the most important bounty of his life—his daughter. Originally published as part of the comedy scifi anthology, "Pew Pew - Sex, Guns, Spaceships... Oh My!" Death Comes to Carverville - A Tobey Maguire Mystery Former Hollywood actor, Tobey Maguire, now spends his days as an imaginary construct inside the subconscious of Space Team's Cal Carver, only ever called upon when Cal is knocked unconscious. But when a murderer starts to stalk the corridors of Cal's mind, Tobey Maguire - accompanied by a wise-cracking racist squirrel only he can see or hear - must turn detective and unmask the killer before the imaginary inhabitants of Cal's head are picked off one by one, leaving Cal completely brain dead. The first ever solo Tobey Maguire adventure, written just for this collection. Nun Shall Pass Former Nun, Ronda Sallas, is on a mission to save her son, Narp, from himself. And also from some evil Xandrie gangsters who have tricked him into helping them steal a weapon of mass destruction. Mostly from them, actually. Fortunately, Ronda's time at the convent has left her more than capable to deal with a few dozen gangsters, but when an Anti-Nun strips her of her precognition powers, things suddenly become more difficult. First published in "The Expanding Universe - Volume 2" anthology. Splurt Home Alone An all-new short solo adventure starring everyone's favorite adorable green blob, Splurt.

    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.

    In The Other Half of the Sky, editor Athena Andreadis offers readers heroes who happen to be women, doing whatever they would do in universes where they’re fully human.