But Commonwealth operative Simon Kovalic knows nothing ever goes to plan. So, when a duplicitous bounty hunter lives up to his reputation, Kovalic’s ready—just maybe not ready enough.Now he and his team must get offworld, before their enemies catch up with them…

    Not exploding, not dropping out of the sky, just disappearing. When the Hubble Space Telescope vanishes, reluctant hero Jake Corby is dispatched to figure out who or what is responsible. He's used to solving problems for the FBI, but hunting down missing satellites? That's a new one. The mysterious force next cripples the International Space Station and destroys the only spacecraft that could rescue the astronauts. The race is on to avert the final death blow to the ISS and execute a risky plan to get the astronauts back home. Before it's too late. This short prequel to Contact Us is filled with the quirky surprises and humor that Al Macy's readers have come to expect. The Antiterrorist is a standalone book, with no cliffhanger or "to be continued" at the end. It may be read before or after other books in the series.

    Digitized consciousnesses known as Shades prowl the streets in bodies that aren’t their own, carrying out clandestine operations ordered by the artificial intelligence created to shepherd humankind through the aftermath. Civilization clings to a tenuous thread.Cassidy is one of the most experienced Shades in the Initiative. An elite operative with an impeccable record, he’s dedicated his life to combating the rampant organized crime that threatens the new world order.But when a beautiful stranger shows Cassidy that his entire existence is a lie, everything he’s ever known begins unraveling around him. It isn’t long before his fight for justice becomes a fight for something much bigger…...and the stakes are higher than he ever imagined.Follow Cassidy through the rain-soaked streets of 24th century Manhattan as he fights like John Wick against a corrupt system of repression and control where the lines between ally and enemy are always blurred and trust is a dangerous gambit.

    V. Larson! This 60,000 word book is an Anthology of short stories. Most are Science Fiction mixed with Horror. Others might be called Dark Fantasy... Many have been published previously in various magazines.The Barrier – What does it take to go faster than light?Symptoms of Godhood – How far can you modify a body and still call the results human?Discharged – A long war and an even longer stay in an automated hospital.Teeth at Bedtime – Technology follows us everywhere.The Insect Requirement – Great sacrifices are required for Earth’s early colonists.Blind Eyes – If we can design our own children, how far will we go?TA96 – Do our genes belong to us?Zundra’s Movies – A future where video is created with the mind, and insanity is fun to watch.Pinball – A young man builds his own watchdog.Love Aboard the Kamadeva – A love triangle between two desperate souls and a digital mirage.Starplay – A window into the universe becomes a door.The One-Way Gang – Leaving Earth is easy, but you can never come back.Rusted Metal – What has spent the last century in the basement?Lunar Lotto – Death comes instantly to outlaws in vacuum.The Rollers – Crime has been mostly eliminated by removing all forms of cash... Mostly.

    From that moment onward every construct is different.They all have one thing in common, though; all constructs are bound by rules. They serve. They do not question their place. They do not betray.Each construct is different, but some are more different than others...A 4,000 word short story set in the Lacuna universe but suitable to read as a stand-alone story.

    She promised to love, honor and cherish her husband, but Thomas kept secrets. And now as Hannah wades through all of Thomas’s unpaid bills, baby mama drama and her inability to conceive… she must decide if love is enough to keep her at home when her heart and mind is in turmoil over something that only God can fix.This short story is loosely based on the Old Testament story of Hannah’s pleas for a child of her own (1 Samuel 1:1-2:26).

    Only one man could prevent the accident. An ex-NASA scientist reluctantly joins the crew of re-commissioned space shuttle Discovery on a daring rescue mission to recover the satellite. Orbiting Earth, they are about to experience something out of this world.

    When his old Army buddy, Sean asks him to defend his aunt in a murder case, David doesn’t think twice and leaves the sun and sand for Missouri’s ice and snow to help his old pal. Seems Aunt Sharon’s past time was killing husbands and getting rich off their insurance policies. Not even Sean’s generosity—a BMW 528i with chauffeur, 100 grand plus expenses and a luxury apartment--all at David’s disposal—can save Aunt Sharon from the needle! The more David investigates, the more accomplices keep coming out of the woodwork. When he’s shot, drugged and hit over the head, David takes it personally—but that’s only the tip of the proverbial iceberg! He faces a startling truth, which nearly destroys him and his faith in all he holds dear. But lady justice isn’t blind and unforgiving of those who shake her scales. As an instrument of law, David must once again become the hardened soldier honed on the battlefields of VietNam and stand toe to toe with unscrupulous prosecutors, and a judge wanting a quick trial. Buckle your safety belt…you are in for a wild ride.

    JTE is developing advanced animatronics editing techniques to create high-end movies indistinguishable from live-action. Long dead stars can now share the screen with today's A-list. But one night Joshua and Ana discover something lingering in the rendered footage…an entity that will lead them into a new age beyond the reality they have come to know.At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

    Imagine a drug that flips the valleys and makes them peaks, too. You react now to an event based not on the pleasure or pain that it brings, but solely on the intensity of the emotion created. Pain brings pleasure, grief gives joy, horror renders ecstasy.Now give this drug to a soldier. Tell them to kill. Not in the historically acceptable murder of war, but in a systematic corporate strategy--of xenocide.They will kill. And they will revel in it.Welcome to the world of Scream.Jason Trelayne is a Screamer, a soldier forced to take part in the destruction of entire races. But when Trelayne falls in love with a beautiful Scream Angel, an alien who produces the addictive drug, he sets off a chain of events that pits him and a small group of followers against an empire.An award winning novelette of rebellion, love, and an unlikely hero."A dark and powerful story with a first line that sets the tone for what is to come: 'They stopped beating Trelayne when they saw that he enjoyed it.' (A++)" --Fantasy Book Critic"A visceral work. A true pearl of the fantastic literature. Breath-taking." --Café de Ontem"...the book's most skillfully crafted story...quickly becomes one that holds the reader's attention until the very end." --SpecFicWorld"...remind me of the reasons I love the author's writing: his characterization, attention to detail and recurring themes of love, faith and redemption." --SF Crowsnest Reviews"The story has so many layers that I'm still sorting them out. And like an onion, I'm not sure if I'll ever find the final layer." --Tangent Online"One of those rare ideas that seems at once so perfect and so natural that someone must have come up with it before; but if someone has, I haven't heard about it, and regardless Smith exploits the potential of the idea extraordinarily well here." --Strange Horizons

     Author's note: This story was previously published as ENTER THE DEATH CIRCUS. EPISODE 1: When love is crime, who will save the guilty? After falling in love and fathering a child, a young criminal refuses to voluntarily throw himself into a lake of fire to gain his community's forgiveness. So he's sentenced to death and sold to the owner of a spaceship that buys criminals like him. But the ship and its crew are not quite what they appear to be.

    A chocoholic grizzly bear, a talking Christmas tree, mince pie overdoses and a very bloody murder. Will poor old Saint Nick make it out alive? Sad, strange, funny and gruesome, this overlapping, multi-genre collection of tales has a little something for every reader. Curl up with a mulled wine and some fictional festive misery, and discover what Father Christmas really likes to drink when he wriggles down your chimney. Spoiler: it isn’t milk.

    Heine does a great job of building a world replete with rules and history and uses both to construct a mystery with an awful lot of intrigue and surprise." - Nerds on EarthSamurai vs. robots. In 1901, the Meiji Restoration has abolished the old ways and ushered in a cybernetic revolution. Androids integrate into society at all levels, following their programming for the betterment of every citizen, as servants, bodyguards, and bureaucrats. Jinzou are the future. Japan is at the threshold of a new tomorrow!As a ronin steeped in the old ways, Itaru wants nothing more to do with the artificial creations posing as human. But when a jinzou is suspected of murder, he's pulled into a mystery that could tear the nation apart.​Malfunction or free will? When is a machine more than just a machine?IZANAMI'S CHOICE is an alternate history sci-fi novella set in Meiji Era Japan. It's samurai vs. robots as the author explores how Japan might grapple with the rise of artificial intelligence.

    The wind tries first, but however hard it blows it fails to make any progress because the traveller simply buttons his coat even tighter than before. Only when the sun shines brightly does he finally remove it, and the wind roars away in a bad temper.

    The companion volume to Seek!, Rucker's selected nonfiction, Gnarl! brings together three dozen of the writer's best science fiction short stories. His first major story collection in 17 years, the volume includes a number of previously unanthologized stories, including tales cowritten with Marc Laidlaw, Paul Di Filippo, and Bruce Sterling. Classics such as "The Fifty-Seventh Franz Kafka," a timely meditation on the paradoxes of cloning, are side by side with works of pseudomemoir like "The Indian Rope Trick Explained." The Rucker formula - cutting-edge physics, a wild but perversely logical imagination, and a decidedly punk attitude - illuminates this new collection.