Errantry: Strange Stories


Elizabeth Hand - 2012
    From the summer isles to the mysterious people next door all the way to the odd guy one cubicle over, Hand teases apart the dark strangenesses of everyday life to show us the impossibilities, broken dreams, and improbable dreams that surely can never come true.“Ten evocative novellas and stories whisper of hidden mysteries carved on the bruised consciousness of victims and victimizers. Memories and love are as dangerous as the supernatural, and Hand often denies readers neat conclusions, preferring disturbing ambiguity. The Hugo-nominated “The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon” marries science fiction and magical realism as three men recreate a legendary aircraft’s doomed flight for a dying woman. A grieving widower in “Near Zennor” unearths a secret of spectral kidnapping in an ancient countryside. “Hungerford Bridge,” a lesser piece, shares a secret that can only be enjoyed twice in one’s life. Celtic myth and human frailty entangle in the darkly romantic “The Far Shore.” The vicious nature of romantic love is dissected with expressionistic abandon in the dreamlike “Summerteeth.” Hand’s outsiders haunt themselves, the forces of darkness answering to the calls of their battered souls. Yet strange hope clings to these surreal elegies, insisting on the power of human emotion even in the shadow of despair. Elegant nightmares, sensuously told.”—Publishers WeeklyTable of ContentsThe Maiden Flight of McCauley’s BellerophonNear Zennor (a Shirley Jackson Award winner)Hungerford BridgeThe Far ShoreWinter’s WifeCruel Up NorthSummerteethThe Return of the Fire WitchUncle LouErrantryElizabeth Hand's novels include Shirley Jackson Award–winner Generation Loss, Mortal Love, and Available Dark.

Scream Angel


Douglas Smith - 2011
    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

A Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences: Tales from the Archives, Collection 2


Tee Morris - 2011
    They explore events mentioned in the novels, characters seen and unseen and may include novel teasers of things to come. This volume includes:Darkest before Darkwater by Tee MorrisA group of survivors from the airship Guy Fawkes find themselves washed ashore on an uncharted island. In their search for survival they uncover one mystery after another.The Shadows of Calcutta by Phil RossiAgent Robert Smith, on return from a mission in Nepal, is diverted to India where he is charged to find a missing agent. Alex Tanner had been investigating a series of thefts and murders holding the Ministry’s attention, and now it falls on Agent Smith to find his missing comrade.Night's Plutonian Shore by Jack ManganIn 1849 when a poet is murdered in the streets of Baltimore. The man behind the seemingly random murder manages to elude the law until — in 1889 — Agents Bruce Campbell and Brandon Hill track him down. The assassin, Mikael Scharnusser, gives the slip to the agents on revealing his “talent” and the madman’s intentions to bring down the House of Usher.The Seven by P.C. HaringAgent Brandon Hill is on assignment in South America, enjoying the local culture and women, when a mystery that could lead to El Dorado falls into his lap. Before the intrepid agent knows it, he is the jungle uncovering a plot but the devilish Illuminati. He will need all his monkey knife fighting skills to survive this one.

Foundation


Ann Aguirre - 2012
    Family hides in underground. Boy narrator grows up, falls in love with another boy.

Liaden Unibus I


Sharon Lee - 2007
    Two Tales of Korval (chap book #1), Fellow Travelers (chap book #2), Duty Bound (chap book #3), Certain Symmetry (chap book #4), Trading In Futures (chap book #5), and Changeling (chap book #6).

Her Smoke Rose Up Forever


James Tiptree Jr. - 1990
    Revisions from the author's notes are included, allowing a deeper view into her world and a better understanding of her work. The Nebula Award–winning short story Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death, the Hugo Award–winning novella The Girl Who Was Plugged In, and the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning novella Houston, Houston, Do You Read? are included.The stories of Alice Sheldon, who wrote as James Tiptree Jr. ( Up the Walls of the World ) until her death in 1987, have been heretofore available mostly in out-of-print collections. Thus the 18 accomplished stories here will be welcomed by new readers and old fans. ''The Screwfly Solution'' describes a chilling, elegant answer to the population problem. In ''Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death,'' the title tells the tale--species survival insured by imprinted drives--but the story's force is in its exquisite, lyrical prose and its suggestion that personal uniqueness is possible even within biological imperatives. ''The Girl Who Was Plugged In'' is a future boy-meets-girl story with a twist unexpected by the players. ''The Women Men Don't See '' displays Tiptree's keen insight and ability to depict singularity within the ordinary. In Hugo and Nebula award-winning ''Houston, Houston, Do You Read?'' astronauts flying by the sun slip forward 500 years and encounter a culture that successfully questions gender roles in ours.ContentsIntroduction by Michael SwanwickThe Last Flight of Doctor Ain (1969)The Screwfly Solution (1977)And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side (1972)The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1973)The Man Who Walked Home (1972)And I Have Come Upon This Place by Lost Ways (1972)The Women Men Don’t See (1973)Your Faces, O My Sisters! Your Faces Filled of Light! (1976)Houston, Houston, Do You Read? (1976)With Delicate Mad Hands (1981)A Momentary Taste of Being (1975)We Who Stole the Dream (1978)Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1974)Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death (1973)On the Last Afternoon (1972)She Waits for All Men Born (1976)Slow Music (1980)And So On, and So On (1971)

Keep Out


Fredric Brown - 1954
    Humor and a somewhat postmodern outlook carried over into his novels as well. One of his stories, "Arena," is officially credited for an adaptation as an episode of the landmark television series, Star Trek. With no more room left on Earth, and with Mars hanging up there empty of life, somebody hit on the plan of starting a colony on the Red Planet. It meant changing the habits and physical structure of the immigrants, but that worked out fine. In fact, every possible factor was covered -- except one of the flaws of human nature. . . ."

The Thrilling Adventure Hour


Ben AckerLar Desouza - 2013
    Tompkins, Paget Brewster, Busy Philipps, Nathan Fillion, Linda Cardellini, Patton Oswalt, Neil Patrick Harris, and many, many more. And now those serialized characters will come to life on the pages of this hardcover anthology featuring all-new stories from the worlds of the TAH universe by top artists from the comics community! Each stand-alone tale celebrates and reinvigorates a new genre from the radio comedies of yesteryear, including science fiction, fantasy, westerns, superheroes, horror, war dramas, and many more. A unique, timey-wimey blend of silver age pulp and post-modern pop, this one-of-a-kind anthology promises something for everyone as this cult phenomenon jumps off the proscenium stage and onto the page for the first time in over eight years and 100+ consecutive shows around the globe!

Mimsy Were The Borogoves


Lewis Padgett - 1943
    When the box fails to return, he constructs another and tests it the same way, but it also fails to return. Believing the entire experiment to be a failure, he discontinues his efforts and gives up on time machines. The first box arrives in the middle of the twentieth century and the second in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Both have had their time-travel circuitry irreparably damaged by the journey.Originally published in the February 1943 issue of "Astounding Science Fiction Magazine.Novelette, Classic science fiction, the basis for the film "The Last Mimsy"

Looking for Jake


China MiévilleCristina Jurado - 2003
    Now from this brilliant young writer comes a groundbreaking collection of stories, many of them previously unavailable in the United States, and including four never-before-published tales–one set in Miéville’s signature fantasy world of New Crobuzon. Among the fourteen superb fictions are“Jack”–Following the events of his acclaimed novel Perdido Street Station, this tale of twisted attachment and horrific revenge traces the rise and fall of the Remade Robin Hood known as Jack Half-a-Prayer. “Familiar”–Spurned by its creator, a sorceress’s familiar embarks on a strange and unsettling odyssey of self-discovery in a coming-of-age story like no other.

Sapience: A Collection of Science Fiction Short Stories


Alexis Lantgen - 2019
     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?

Forest of Memory


Mary Robinette Kowal - 2016
    Her clients are rich and they demand items and experiences with only the finest verifiable provenance. Other people’s lives have value, after all.But when her A.I. suddenly stops whispering in her ear she finds herself cut off from the grid and loses communication with the rest of the world.The man who stepped out of the trees while hunting deer cut her off from the cloud, took her A.I., and made her his unwilling guest.There are no Authenticities or Captures to prove Katya’s story of what happened in the forest. You’ll just have to believe her.

Permafrost


Alastair Reynolds - 2019
    Save the present. Stop the future. Alastair Reynolds unfolds a time-traveling climate fiction adventure in Permafrost.2080: at a remote site on the edge of the Arctic Circle, a group of scientists, engineers and physicians gather to gamble humanity’s future on one last-ditch experiment. Their goal: to make a tiny alteration to the past, averting a global catastrophe while at the same time leaving recorded history intact. To make the experiment work, they just need one last recruit: an ageing schoolteacher whose late mother was the foremost expert on the mathematics of paradox.2028: a young woman goes into surgery for routine brain surgery. In the days following her operation, she begins to hear another voice in her head... an unwanted presence which seems to have a will, and a purpose, all of its own – one that will disrupt her life entirely. The only choice left to her is a simple one.Does she resist... or become a collaborator?

Tilted Axis


David Ryker - 2019
     To who, Michael 'Ward' Miller isn't exactly sure. Whoever killed his partner was a pro. She was shot at an impossible distance, by a weapon that isn't supposed to exist. But Sadler wasn't just his partner, she was the best person he knew. Now she's dead, and Ward won't rest until he finds out who was responsible. But on Mars, 2342 AD, anyone could be the killer. The Solar System is awash with spies, mercenaries and powerful, unaccountable corporations. After powerful aliens arrived a hundred years before, colonizing the red planet, our system was thrown into chaos. The Martians were stronger, more advanced, and remorseless. They could have wiped us out. Instead we struck a fragile, uneasy truce. And now someone wants to blow the whole thing up. And maybe, take humanity with it. Ward was supposed to be out of the espionage business. Now he has seven days to uncover the conspiracy that killed his partner. Or let the entire system go up in flames...

Curse 5.0


Liu Cixin - 2013
    Thanks to the efforts of a multitude of Internet users, however, this tiny curse evolved and is modified into several versions—each more advanced that the last. To what bizarre sort of end of days will Curse 5.0 lead us? The fabled apocalypse could come in many guises. Could one of them be an online butterfly effect, chocked full of the darkest humor imaginable?