Instead, procedures to induce Acquired Savant Abilities (ASAs) are now purchased by the privileged. And Orpheus's father holds the copyright to the ASA procedure.Zimri Robinson, a natural musical prodigy, is a "plebe"--a worker at the enormous warehouse that supplies an on-line marketplace that has supplanted all commerce. Her grueling schedule and her grandmother's illness can't keep her from making music--even if it is illegal.Orpheus and Zimri are not supposed to meet. He is meant for greatness; she is not. But sometimes, rules are meant to be broken. Here is a thriller, love story, and social experiment that readers will find gripping--and terrifying.

    She graduated at the top of her class from the Naval Academy, had a successful career flying fighter jets, and has spent more than three hundred days in space. So when she refuses to leave her post aboard the International Space Station following an accident that forces her fellow astronauts to evacuate, her American and Russian colleagues are mystified. For Walli, the matter at hand feels all too clear and terrifying for her to be worried about ruining her career. She is stuck in a race against time to save a part of the world that seems to have been forgotten, and also the life of the person she loves the most. She will go to any length necessary, using the only tool she has, to accomplish what she knows is right.

    Welcome to Margaret Wappler's slightly altered alternative '90s. Everything's pretty much as you remember it, except for the aliens.When a flying saucer lands in the Allens' backyard, patriarch and environmental activist Ernest is up in arms. According to the company facilitating the visits, the spacecraft are 100 percent non-toxic, and the green sludge the spaceship occasionally dumps in their yard is harmless.As Ernest's panic increases so do his questions. While his family accepts and even begins to enjoy the giant flashing ship, Ernest's fears of exposure grow into paranoia.When Cynthia's cancer diagnosis sends the family into a tailspin, everyone must confront the elusive true causes for tragedy. And while Ernest's rage over the flying saucer continues to mount, the spacecraft itself starts exhibiting signs of distress.Set before the arrival of the Internet, Neon Green is a book about a family's relationship to the world, and what it means to be a part of it.

    In the 22nd century, a forbidden love between a man and a machine spins the Earth toward one final war.

    He's not the only one to suffer this fate--in fact, he's surrounded by an outrageous cast of characters, including Humphrey Bogart, William Shakespeare, and almost all of the popes and most of the U.S. presidents. The question may be not who is in Hell but who isn't. McCord is living with Anne Boleyn in the afterlife but their happiness is, of course, constantly derailed by her obsession with Henry VIII (and the removal of her head at rather inopportune moments). One day McCord meets Dante's Beatrice, who believes there is a way out of Hell, and the next morning, during an exclusive on-camera interview with Satan, McCord realizes that Satan's omniscience, which he has always credited for the perfection of Hell's torments, may be a mirage--and Butler is off on a madcap romp about good, evil, free will, and the possibility of escape. Butler's depiction of Hell is original, intelligent, and fiercely comic, a book Dante might have celebrated.

    For his part, Captain Spock must make the toughest decision of his Starfleet career.

    . . On the distant planet Dorvalla, precious ore is mined by two competing companies: InterGalactic Ore and Lommite Limited. Neither rival suspects that they are central to a sinister plot masterminded by Darth Sidious, Lord of the Sith, himself. Dispatched by Sidious on his very first solo mission, Darth Maul infiltrates Lommite Limited. There, his unique gifts of deception and subterfuge will set off an explosive chain of events that could destroy both companies, leaving them ripe for takeover by the Trade Federation. But a vengeful Lommite Limited Manager with his own thirst for retaliation against InterGal could blow Maul's cover--and all of Sidious's fiendishly layed plans . . .

    Included here are the works of masters of the form and of bright new talents, including:Stephen Baxter, M.Shayne Bell, Rick Cook, Albert E. Cowdrey, Tananarive Due, Greg Egan, Eliot Fintushel, Peter F. Hamilton, Earnest Hogan, John Kessel, Nancy Kress, Ursula K. Le Guin, Paul J. McAuley, Ian McDonald, Susan Palwick, Severna Park, Alastair Reynolds, Lucius Shepard, Brian Stableford, Charles Stross, Michael Swanwick, Steven Utley, Robert Charles WilsonSupplementing the stories is the editor's insightful summation of the year's events and lengthy list of honorable mentions, making this book a valuable resource in addition to serving as the single best place in the universe to find stories that stir the imagination and the heart.

    Now for the first time in English, all of Borges' dazzling fictions are gathered into a single volume, brilliantly translated by Andrew Hurley. From his 1935 debut with The Universal History of Iniquity, through his immensely influential collections Ficciones and The Aleph, these enigmatic, elaborate, imaginative inventions display Borges' talent for turning fiction on its head by playing with form and genre and toying with language. Together these incomparable works comprise the perfect one-volume compendium for all those who have long loved Borges, and a superb introduction to the master's work for those who have yet to discover this singular genius.

    Six months prior, a crop of strivers converge on the desert city, attempting to make a home amidst the dizzying lights: Ray, a mathematically-minded high stakes professional poker player; Mary Ann, a clinically depressed cocktail waitress; Tom, a tourist from the working class suburbs of Rome, Italy; and Lindsay, a Mormon journalist for the Las Vegas Sun who dreams of a literary career. By chance and by design, they find themselves caught up in backroom schemes for personal and political power, and are thrown into the deep end of an even bigger fight for the soul of the paradoxical town.A furiously rowdy and ricocheting saga about poker, happiness, class, and selflessness, Paradise, Nevada is a panoramic tour of America in miniature, a vertiginously beautiful systems novel where the bloody battles of neo-liberalism, immigration, labor, and family rage underneath Las Vegas’ beguiling and strangely benevolent light. This exuberant debut marks the beginning of a significant career.

    Written by well-known fantasy author Robert Holdstock it describes the quest of Alex Ryder, a newly-qualified pilot, to exact revenge for his father's death at the hands of a paid assassin. Along the way he is assisted by the enigmatic Rafe Zetter who links him up with a fugitive pilot who also wishes to eliminate the killer of Alex's father, but for her own reasons.All in all, a good story which, though spoiled by a few irritating character traits and a number of typographical errors, sets up the Elite universe in a cohesive manner.It also covers the combat and trading sides of Elite and the general nature of trading between different systems, buying what's cheap on one world and selling it wherever the demand is sufficient to keep the price high.Interestingly, the back of the BBC novella states that a sequel was planned for publication in 1985, but as far as I know this never came to fruition. Later editions of The Dark Wheel, included in the Sinclair Spectrum and Commodore 64 versions amongst others, sported new artwork

      There’s nothing more troubling than having your child break down on the side of the road, leaking oil, overheating, and asking tough questions like, “What is death?” and “Why did Mom leave?” But stay calm! Because How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive is not only a dizzyingly beautiful novel, it’s also a handy manual with useful chapters on “Tools and Spare Parts,” “Valve Adjustment,” “How To Read This Novel,” and, most important of all, “How Works a Heart.”   Welcome to Christopher Boucher’s zany literary universe, a place where metaphors shift beneath your feet, familiar words assume new meanings, objects talk, trees attack, and time actually is money. Modeled on the cult classic 1969 hippie handbook of the same name, How To Keep Your Volkswagen Alive is an astonishing tour-de-force that tackles some of life’s biggest questions: How do you cope with losing a parent? What’s the secret to raising a child? How do you keep love alive? How do you get your car to start?

    On the same day each year Josephine Luquet wakes naked, shivering and covered in blood that is not her own. Under the cold gaze of the blood moon she is someone else entirely, but when dawn breaks her memories vanish and she is left with only an icy horror, a burning fury. Amid a sea of 'drones', she alone hasn’t been cured. Then she meets Luke. He isn’t like the other drones. With secrets behind his eyes, he is the only one determined to help Josephine discover the truth before the next blood moon rises. But time is running out. Is Luke willing to risk his life to be near her? Does he truly understand what violence she is capable of? Raw and full of passion, Fury is a story of love in a dystopian world, and how much we are willing to forgive in the struggle to remember our humanity.

    After eighteen years of publishing anonymously and reading only to local crowds in the Pacific Northwest, he began to issue occasional limited-edition letterpress chapbooks with a small press, as well as occasional broadsides and, since 1987, a winter solstice poem or story, most given as gifts to friends. Rain on the River contains work collected here for the first time, as well as three dozen previously unpublished poems. Dodge's poems and short prose offer the same pleasures as his fiction -- a splendid ear for language, great emotional range and subtlety, a sharp eye for the illuminating detail, and a sensibility that encompasses outright hilarity, savage wit, and tender marvel, all made eminently accessible through writing of uncompromising clarity and grace. "Like being at a nonstop party in celebration of everything that matters." -- Thomas Pynchon "A rollicking, frequently surprising adventure-cum-fairy tale. It also has a sweetness about it and an indigenous American optimism." -- The New York Times Book Review "Diverse, savvy, passionate.... Poetry should be a pleasure, and Jim Dodge's work is just that." -- Gary Snyder

    Le Guin, Maureen F. McHugh, Mike Resnick, and others.Contents xi • Summation: 1992 • (1993) • essay by Gardner Dozois1 • Griffin's Egg • (1991) • novella by Michael Swanwick62 • Even the Queen • (1992) • shortstory by Connie Willis76 • The Round-Eyed Barbarians • (1992) • shortstory by L. Sprague de Camp87 • Dust • (1992) • novelette by Greg Egan113 • Two Guys from the Future • (1992) • shortstory by Terry Bisson123 • The Mountain to Mohammed • (1992) • shortstory by Nancy Kress137 • The Coming of Vertumnus • (1992) • novelette by Ian Watson175 • A Long Night's Vigil at the Temple • (1992) • novelette by Robert Silverberg195 • The Hammer of God • (1992) • shortstory by Arthur C. Clarke205 • Grownups • (1992) • novella by Ian R. MacLeod238 • Graves • (1992) • shortstory by Joe Haldeman245 • The Glowing Cloud • (1992) • novella by Steven Utley296 • Gravity's Angel • (1992) • shortstory by Tom Maddox312 • Protection • (1992) • novella by Maureen F. McHugh346 • The Last Cardinal Bird in Tennessee • (1990) • shortstory by Neal Barrett, Jr.357 • Birth Day • (1992) • shortstory by Robert Reed367 • Naming Names • (1992) • novelette by Pat Cadigan390 • The Elvis National Theater of Okinawa • (1992) • shortstory by Jonathan Lethem and Lukas Jaeger394 • The Territory • (1992) • novella by Bradley Denton432 • The Best and the Rest of James Joyce • (1992) • shortfiction by Ian McDonald448 • Naming the Flowers • (1992) • novella by Kate Wilhelm491 • Snodgrass • (1992) • novelette by Ian R. MacLeod511 • By the Mirror of My Youth • (1992) • shortstory by Kathe Koja519 • Outnumbering the Dead • (1990) • novella by Frederik Pohl583 • Honorable Mentions: 1992 • (1993) • essay by Gardner Dozois