When famous adventurer Sir Richard Francis Burton dies, the last thing he expects to do is awaken naked on a foreign planet along the shores of a seemingly endless river. But that's where Burton and billions of other humans (plus a few nonhumans) find themselves as the epic Riverworld saga begins. It seems that all of Earthly humanity has been resurrected on the planet, each with an indestructible container that provides three meals a day, cigarettes, alcoholic beverages, a lighter, and the odd tube of lipstick. But why? And by whom? That's what Burton and a handful of fellow adventurers are determined to discover as they construct a boat and set out in search of the river's source, thought to be millions of miles away. Although there are many hardships during the journey--including an encounter with the infamous Hermann Goring--Burton's resolve to complete his quest is strengthened by a visit from the Mysterious Stranger, a being who claims to be a renegade within the very group that created the Riverworld. The stranger tells Burton that he must make it to the river's headwaters, along with a dozen others the Stranger has selected, to help stop an evil experiment at the end of which humanity will simply be allowed to die. --Craig E. Engler

    LeGuin's The Dispossessed, Arslan is a book that others are now measured against. "It's about fathers and sons, about power, about a genuinely ruthless (but not unfeeling) mind in pursuit of a practical solution to the world's problems." So M. J. Engh describes Arslan. This is a novel of power and depth that is unforgettable.

    A Shaper. In a warm womb of metal, his patients dream their neuroses, while Render, intricately connected to their brains, dreams with them, makes delicate adjustments, and ultimately explains and heals. Her name is Eileen Shallot, a resident in psychiatry. She wants desperately to become a Shaper, though she has been blind from birth. Together, they will explore the depths of the human mind -- and the terrors that lurk therein

    He's got plenty of work. In this version of America, slavery continues in four states called "the Hard Four." On the trail of a runaway known as Jackdaw, Victor arrives in Indianapolis knowing that something isn't right--with the case file, with his work, and with the country itself. As he works to infiltrate the local cell of a abolitionist movement called the Underground Airlines, tracking Jackdaw through the back rooms of churches, empty parking garages, hotels, and medical offices, Victor believes he's hot on the trail. But his strange, increasingly uncanny pursuit is complicated by a boss who won't reveal the extraordinary stakes of Jackdaw's case, as well as by a heartbreaking young woman and her child--who may be Victor's salvation. Victor believes himself to be a good man doing bad work, unwilling to give up the freedom he has worked so hard to earn. But in pursuing Jackdaw, Victor discovers secrets at the core of the country's arrangement with the Hard Four, secrets the government will preserve at any cost.Underground Airlines is a ground-breaking novel, a wickedly imaginative thriller, and a story of an America that is more like our own than we'd like to believe.

    Dick, Larry Niven, Fritz Leiber, Poul Anderson, Damon Knight, J.G. Ballard, John Brunner, Frederik Pohl, Roger Zelazny and Samuel Delany.Contentsxi • Foreword: Year 2002 (Dangerous Visions 35th Anniversary Edition) • (2002) • essay by Michael Moorcockxiii • Introduction: Year 2002 (Dangerous Visions 35th Anniversary Edition • (2002) • essay by Harlan Ellisonxxiii • Foreword 1-The Second Revolution • (1967) • essay by Isaac Asimovxxxiii • Introduction: Thirty-Two Soothsayers • (1967) • essay by Harlan Ellison (variant of Thirty-Two Soothsayers)xxxix • Foreword 2-Harlan and I • (1967) • essay by Isaac Asimov1 • Evensong • (1967) • shortstory by Lester del Rey9 • Flies • (1967) • shortstory by Robert Silverberg21 • The Day After the Day the Martians Came • (1967) • shortstory by Frederik Pohl (variant of The Day the Martians Came)30 • Riders of the Purple Wage • (1967) • novella by Philip José Farmer105 • The Malley System • (1967) • shortstory by Miriam Allen deFord115 • A Toy for Juliette • (1967) • shortstory by Robert Bloch128 • The Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World • (1967) • novelette by Harlan Ellison154 • The Night That All Time Broke Out • (1967) • shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss169 • The Man Who Went to the Moon - Twice • (1967) • shortstory by Howard Rodman181 • Faith of Our Fathers • (1967) • novelette by Philip K. Dick216 • The Jigsaw Man • [Known Space] • (1967) • shortstory by Larry Niven231 • Gonna Roll the Bones • (1967) • novelette by Fritz Leiber256 • Lord Randy, My Son • (1967) • shortstory by Joe L. Hensley272 • Eutopia • (1967) • novelette by Poul Anderson295 • Incident in Moderan • [Moderan] • (1967) • shortstory by David R. Bunch299 • The Escaping • (1967) • shortstory by David R. Bunch305 • The Doll-House • (1967) • shortstory by James Cross326 • Sex and/or Mr. Morrison • (1967) • shortstory by Carol Emshwiller338 • Shall the Dust Praise Thee? • (1967) • shortstory by Damon Knight344 • If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister? • (1967) • novella by Theodore Sturgeon390 • What Happened to Auguste Clarot? • (1967) • shortstory by Larry Eisenberg396 • Ersatz • (1967) • shortstory by Henry Slesar404 • Go, Go, Go, Said the Bird • (1967) • shortstory by Sonya Dorman412 • The Happy Breed • (1967) • shortstory by John Sladek [as by John T. Sladek ]433 • Encounter with a Hick • (1967) • shortstory by Jonathan Brand439 • From the Government Printing Office • (1967) • shortstory by Kris Neville447 • Land of the Great Horses • (1967) • shortstory by R. A. Lafferty458 • The Recognition • (1967) • shortstory by J. G. Ballard472 • Judas • (1967) • shortstory by John Brunner483 • Test to Destruction • (1967) • novelette by Keith Laumer510 • Carcinoma Angels • (1967) • shortstory by Norman Spinrad523 • Auto-da-Fé • (1967) • shortstory by Roger Zelazny532 • Aye, and Gomorrah . . . • (1967) • shortstory by Samuel R. Delany

    And so is Aj--the waif, the mind reader, the prophet--when she one day finds a man who wants to stay hidden. In the next few weeks, they will all be swept together to decide the fate of the nation. River of Gods teems with the life of a country choked with peoples and cultures--one and a half billion people, twelve semi-independent nations, nine million gods. Ian McDonald has written the great Indian novel of the new millennium, in which a war is fought, a love betrayed, a message from a different world decoded, as the great river Ganges flows on.

    NASA, NATO, and the UN sent explorers to the asteroid's surface...and discovered marvels and mysteries to drive researchers mad.For the Stone was from space--but perhaps not our space; it came from the future-but perhaps not our future; and within the hollowed asteroid was Thistledown. The remains of a vanished civilization. A human--English, Russian, and Chinese-speaking--civilization. Seven vast chambers containing forests, lakes, rivers, hanging cities...And museums describing the Death; the catastrophic war that was about to occur; the horror and the long winter that would follow. But while scientists and politicians bickered about how to use the information to stop the Death, the Stone yielded a secret that made even Earth's survival pale into insignificance.

    They fly two into the Tigris & Euphrates World Trade Towers in Baghdad, and a third into the Arab Defense Ministry in Riyadh. The fourth plane, believed to be bound for Mecca, is brought down by its passengers.The United Arab States declares a War on Terror. Arabian and Persian troops invade the Eastern Seaboard and establish a Green Zone in Washington, D.C. . . .Summer, 2009: Arab Homeland Security agent Mustafa al Baghdadi interrogates a captured suicide bomber. The prisoner claims that the world they are living in is a mirage--in the real world, America is a superpower, and the Arab states are just a collection of "backward third-world countries." A search of the bomber's apartment turns up a copy of "The New York Times," dated September 12, 2001, that appears to support his claim. Other captured terrorists have been telling the same story. The president wants answers, but Mustafa soon discovers he's not the only interested party.The gangster Saddam Hussein is conducting his own investigation. And the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee--a war hero named Osama bin Laden--will stop at nothing to hide the truth. As Mustafa and his colleagues venture deeper into the unsettling world of terrorism, politics, and espionage, they are confronted with questions without any rational answers, and the terrifying possibility that their world is not what it seems.Acclaimed novelist Matt Ruff has created a shadow world that is eerily recognizable but, at the same time, almost unimaginable. Gripping, subversive, and unexpectedly moving, "The Mirage" probes our deepest convictions and most arresting fears.

    Stephen the Third, the king of England, has just died, and Mass (Mozart’s second requiem) is about to be sung to lay him to rest. In the choir is our hero, Hubert Anvil, an extremely ordinary ten-year-old boy with a faultless voice. In the audience is a select group of experts whose job is to determine whether that faultless voice should be preserved by performing a certain operation. Art, after all, is worth any sacrifice.How Hubert realizes what lies in store for him and how he deals with the whirlpool of piety, menace, terror, and passion that he soon finds himself in are the subject of a classic piece of counterfactual fiction equal to Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle.The Alteration won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science-fiction novel in 1976.

    Giant chickens, rats, and insects run amok, and children given the food stuffs experience incredible growth--and serious illnesses. Over the years, people who have eaten these specially treated foods find themselves unable to fit into a society where ignorance and hypocrisy rule. These "giants," with their extraordinary mental powers, find themselves shut away from an older, more traditional society. Intolerance and hatred increase as the line of distinction between ordinary people and giants is drawn across communities and families. One of H. G. Wells' lesser-known works, The Food of the Gods has been retold many times in many forms since it was first published in 1904. The gripping, newly relevant tale combines fast-paced entertainment with social commentary as it considers the ethics involved in genetic engineering.

    Fifty-two years later, this horrifying story is a science fiction classic, touted by The Times (London) as having “all the reality of a vividly realized nightmare.”Bill Masen, bandages over his wounded eyes, misses the most spectacular meteorite shower England has ever seen. Removing his bandages the next morning, he finds masses of sightless people wandering the city. He soon meets Josella, another lucky person who has retained her sight, and together they leave the city, aware that the safe, familiar world they knew a mere twenty-four hours before is gone forever.But to survive in this post-apocalyptic world, one must survive the Triffids, strange plants that years before began appearing all over the world. The Triffids can grow to over seven feet tall, pull their roots from the ground to walk, and kill a man with one quick lash of their poisonous stingers. With society in shambles, they are now poised to prey on humankind. Wyndham chillingly anticipates bio-warfare and mass destruction, fifty years before their realization, in this prescient account of Cold War paranoia.

    But Worlorn isn’t the world Dirk imagined, and Gwen Delvano is no longer the woman he once knew. She is bound to another man, and to a dying planet that is trapped in twilight. Gwen needs Dirk’s protection, and he will do anything to keep her safe, even if it means challenging the barbaric man who has claimed her. But an impenetrable veil of secrecy surrounds them all, and it’s becoming impossible for Dirk to distinguish between his allies and his enemies. In this dangerous triangle, one is hurtling toward escape, another toward revenge, and the last toward a brutal, untimely demise.

    In 1940 Charles A. Lindbergh, heroic aviator and rabid isolationist, is elected President. Shortly thereafter, he negotiates a cordial "understanding" with Adolf Hitler, while the new government embarks on a program of folksy anti-Semitism.For one boy growing up in Newark, Lindbergh's election is the first in a series of ruptures that threatens to destroy his small, safe corner of America - and with it, his mother, his father, and his older brother.(back cover)

    A bright young star in a multinational conglomerate, she's living well in a post-millennial age of peace, prosperity, and profit.In an age of advanced technology, information is the world's most precious commodity. Information is power. Data is locked in computers and carefully rationed through a global communications network. Full access is a privilege held by few.Now, Laura Webster is about to be plunged into a netherworld of black-market data pirates, new-age mercenaries, high-tech voodoo... and murder.

    Fans and critics call their world cyberpunk. Here is the definitive "cyberpunk" short fiction collection.Contents:The Gernsback Continuum (1981) by William GibsonSnake-Eyes (1986) by Tom MaddoxRock On (1984) by Pat CadiganTales of Houdini (1981) by Rudy Rucker400 Boys (1983) by Marc LaidlawSolstice (1985) by James Patrick KellyPetra (1982) by Greg BearTill Human Voices Wake Us (1984) by Lewis ShinerFreezone (1985) by John ShirleyStone Lives (1985) by Paul Di FilippoRed Star, Winter Orbit (1983) by William Gibson and Bruce SterlingMozart in Mirrorshades (1984) by Bruce Sterling and Lewis Shiner