All My Sins Remembered


Joe Haldeman - 1977
    The only problem is that the Confederacion needs him as one of its twelve Prime Operators for its secret service, the TBII. The TBII wants him as a spy, thief & assassin. It's not, of course, a problem for the Confederacion, which simply uses immersion therapy & hypnotic personality overlay for Otto's training, then sends him out in deep cover, encased in plastiflesh, on a variety of dangerous missions on a number of bizarre worlds. But for him, it's a different matter: what he has to witness & what he's forced to do take a terrible toll. Always he returns to his original self--his conscience stabbed by the memory of all those he'd killed in the service of interstellar harmony.

Emperor Mollusk versus The Sinister Brain


A. Lee Martinez - 2012
    Destroyer of Worlds. Conqueror of Other Worlds. Mad Genius. Ex-Warlord of Earth.Not bad for a guy without a spine.But what's a villain to do after he's done . . . everything. With no new ambitions, he's happy to pitch in and solve the energy crisis or repel alien invaders should the need arise, but if he had his way, he'd prefer to be left alone to explore the boundaries of dangerous science. Just as a hobby, of course.Retirement isn't easy though. If the boredom doesn't get him, there's always the Venusians. Or the Saturnites. Or the Mercurials. Or . . . well, you get the idea. If that wasn't bad enough, there's also the assassins of a legendary death cult and an up-and-coming megalomaniac (as brilliant as he is bodiless) who have marked Emperor for their own nefarious purposes. But Mollusk isn't about to let the Earth slip out of his own tentacles and into the less capable clutches of another. So it's time to dust off the old death ray and come out of retirement. Except this time, he's not out to rule the world. He's out to save it from the peril of THE SINISTER BRAIN!

Miniatures: The Very Short Fiction of John Scalzi


John Scalzi - 2016
    A listing of alternate histories tells you all the various ways Hitler has died. A lawyer sues an interplanetary union for dangerous working conditions. And four artificial intelligences explain, in increasingly worrying detail, how they plan not to destroy humanity. Welcome to Miniatures: The Very Short Fiction of John Scalzi.These four stories, along with 14 other pieces, have one thing in common: They're short, sharp, and to the point - science fiction in miniature, with none of the stories longer than 2,300 words. But in that short space exist entire universes, absurd situations, and the sort of futuristic humor that propelled Scalzi to a Hugo with his novel Redshirts. Not to mention yogurt taking over the world (as it would).Spanning the years from 1991 to 2016, this collection is a quarter century of Scalzi at his briefest and best and features four never-before-published stories exclusive to this collection: "Morning Announcements at the Lucas Interspecies School for Troubled Youth", "Your Smart Appliances Talk About You Behind Your Back", "Important Holidays on Gronghu", and "The AI Are Absolutely Positively Without a Doubt Not Here to End Humanity, Honest".John Scalzi is the New York Times best-selling author of Old Man's War, Lock In, and Redshirts, among others. His work has won the Hugo and Locus Awards and been nominated for the Nebula and Campbell Awards. He lives in Ohio and online. He enjoys pie.Full cast of narrators includes Oliver Wyman, Dina Pearlman, and Allyson Johnson.

Phule's Company


Robert Lynn Asprin - 1990
    than most people do all day. Threatened by an alien enemy, Earth's military sends Phule and his soldiers to a distant planet. But now, the aliens have chosen a new target of war . . . Phule's Company.

Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers


Grant Naylor - 1989
    But Lister didn't have a choice. All he remembered was going on a birthday celebration pub crawl through London. When he came to his senses again, with nothing in his pockets but a passport in the name of Emily Berkenstein.So he did the only thing he could. Amazed to discover they would actually hire him, he joined the space corps----and found himself aboard Red Dwarf, a spaceship as big as a small city that, six or seven years from now, would get him back to Earth. What Lister couldn't forsee was that he'd inadvertently signed up for a one--way jaunt three million years into the future---a future which would see him the last living member of the human race, with only a hologram crew mate and a highly evolved cat for company. Of course, that was before the ship broke the light barrier and things began to get really weird...

Waldo and Magic, Inc


Robert A. Heinlein - 1942
    Their aircraft had begun to crash at an alarming rate, and no one could figure out what was going wrong. Desperate for an answer, they turned to Waldo, the crippled genius who lived in a zero-g home in orbit around Earth.But Waldo had little reason to want to help the rest of humanity — until he learned that the solution to their problems also held the key to his own...Magic, Inc.Under the guise of an agency for magicians, Magic, Inc. was systematically squeezing out the small independent magicians. Then one businessman stood firm. With the help of an Oxford-educated African shaman and a little old lady adept at black magic, he went straight to the demons of Hell to resolve the problem — once and for all!

Fire Watch


Connie Willis - 1982
    Her startling and powerful works have redefined the boundaries of contemporary science fiction. Here in one volume are twelve of her greatest stories, including double award-winner "Fire Watch," set in the universe of Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog, in which a time-traveling student learns one of history's hardest lessons. In "A Letter from the Clearys," a routine message from distant friends shatters the fragile world of a beleaguered family. In "The Sidon in the Mirror," a mutant with the unconscious urge to become other people finds himself becoming both killer and victim. Disturbing, revealing, and provocative, this remarkable collection of short fiction brings together some of the best work of an incomparable writer whose ability to amaze, confound, and enlighten never fails.Contents:Fire Watch (1982)Service for the Burial of the Dead (1982)Lost and Found (1982)All My Darling Daughters (1985)The Father of the Bride (1982)A Letter from the Clearys (1982)And Come from Miles Around (1979)The Sidon in the Mirror (1983)Daisy, in the Sun (1979)Mail-Order Clone (1982)Samaritan (1978)Blued Moon (1984)

Young Zaphod Plays It Safe


Douglas Adams - 1986
    It doesn't appear as a standalone work, but is included with several collections. The story is a prequel to the events in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy and has the young Zaphod Beeblebrox working as a salvage ship operator. He guides some bureaucrats to a crashed spaceship which may be leaking some hazardous materials. The bureaucrats are determined to "make it safe". The comic asides in the story include some of the time travel paradoxes which are a common running theme in Adams' SF work, and plenty of material about lobsters

The Portable Door


Tom Holt - 2003
    Wells he has no idea what trouble lies in store. Because he is about to discover that the apparently respectable establishment now paying his salary is in fact a front for a deeply sinister organization that has a mighty peculiar agenda. It seems that half the time his bosses are away with the fairies. But they're not, of course. They're away with the goblins. Tom Holt, Master of the Comic Fantasy Novel, cordially invites you to join him in his world of madness by reading his next hilarious masterpiece.

Schismatrix Plus


Bruce Sterling - 1996
    For the first time in one volume: every word Bruce Sterling has ever written on the Shapers-Mechanists Universe.In the last decade, Sterling has emerged a pioneer of crucial, cutting-edge science fiction. Now Ace Books is proud to offer Sterling's stunning world of the Schismatrix--where Shaper revolutionaries struggle against aristocratic Mechanists for ultimate control of man's destiny. This volume includes the classic full-length novel, Schismatrix, plus thousands of words of mind-bending short fiction.

Roman Holiday


Jodi Taylor - 2014
    Question: What sort of idiot installs his mistress in his wife's house? Especially when that mistress is Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator, Queen of Egypt and the most notorious woman of her time? Answer: Julius Caesar - poised to become King of Rome. Or as good as. Question: At this potentially sensitive point in your political manoeuvrings, who are the last people you'd want crashing through the door, observing, recording, documenting ...? I think we all know the answer to that one. Roman Holiday - an epic, stand alone tale set in Ancient Rome, 44 BC, featuring, in no particular order: an attempted murder, stampeding bullocks, Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile, a bowl of poisonous snakes, a smallish riot, Julius Caesar, and Mr Markham's wayward bosoms.

The Seeds of Time


John Wyndham - 1956
    For the ten short stories collected here, John Wyndham turns his imagination to, among other subjects, body-snatching, time-travel and mind-travel, and the the tricky business of interplanetary colonization.

The Nine Billion Names of God


Arthur C. Clarke - 1967
    CLARKE'S FAVORITE STORIESTHE NINE BILLION NAMES OF GOD -- A short-term course for computer the way to God.TROUBLE WITH TIME -- Martian time proves that crimes doesn't pay!NO MORNING AFTER -- Drink, drink and be merry, for tomorrow there will be no morning after...THE POSSESSED -- Or, why the lemmings drowned.ENCOUNTER AT DAWN -- The day the gods came to Earth.THE SENTINEL -- The story which inspired 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY; when man sets off the galactic burglar alarm, who will answer the call?

The Sheriff of Yrnameer


Michael Rubens - 2009
    His sidekick just stole his girlfriend. The galaxy's most hideous and feared bounty hunter wants to lay eggs in his brain. And the luxury space yacht Cole just hijacked turns out of be filled with interstellar do-gooders, one especially loathsome stowaway, and a cargo of freeze-dried orphans.Reluctantly compelled to deliver these defenseless, fluidless children to safety, Cole gathers a misfit crew for a desperate journey to the far reaches of the galaxy. Their destination: the mysterious world of Yrnameer, the very last of the your-name-heres—planets without corporate sponsors. But little does Cole know that this legendary utopia is home to a murderous band of outlaws bent on destroying the planet's tiny, peaceful community.Follow Cole's adventures through a delightfully absurd science-fiction universe, where the artificial intelligence is stupid, dust motes carry branding messages, and middle-management zombies have overrun a corporate training satellite. In the spirit of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, The Sheriff of Yrnameer is sci-fi comedy at its best—mordant, raucously funny, and a thrilling page-turner.

A Stainless Steel Rat is Born


Harry Harrison - 1985
    The book opens with Jim bungling a bank job so that he can be arrested and sent to prison, where he plans to learn the art of being a master criminal. Deciding that the Bishop should be his mentor, Jim sets about proving himself worthy of the master's attention. He eventually has to flee his home planet of Bit O' Heaven with the Bishop, but Garth, the Captain of the ship who promised them safe passage, sells them into slavery. The latter part of the book details Jim's adventures on the planet Spiovente, a semi-industrial world fighting feudal wars with weapons smuggled in (against League regulations) by Captain Garth.