Space opera with a bang, as a young castout is caught up in an interstellar war.DISOWNED IN A HARSH GALAXYCast out by his family and exiled from the Rimward Commonwealth, Simon Forrester must make a new life for himself as an apprentice to the powerful Commerce Guild. But others aboard the merchant vessel Stacked Deck have a hidden agenda that might lead directly to interstellar war. Now with rising tensions between the Commonwealth and the neighboring League of Democracies threatening to erupt into open war, Simon finds himself forced to choose between old and new loyalties, with the fate of an empire at stake!

    We staff your stores, cross your streets, and study in your schools, invisible among you. We are your outcasts and underdogs, and often, your unsung heroes.Nineteen science fiction and fantasy authors tackle the division between mental health and mental illness; how the interplay between our minds' quirks and the diverse societies and cultures we live in can set us apart, or must be concealed, or become unlikely strengths.We find troubles with Irish fay, a North Korean cosmonaut's fear of flying, an aging maid dealing with politics of revenge, a mute boy and an army of darkness, a sister reaching out at the edge of a black hole, the dog and the sleepwalker, and many more.After all, what harm can be done…AUTHORS: Kelley Armstrong, Suzanne Church, A.M. Dellamonica, Gemma Files, James Alan Gardner, Bev Geddes, Erika Holt, Tyler Keevil, Rich Larson, Derwin Mak, Mahtab Narsimhan, Sherry Peters, Ursula Pflug, Robert Runté, Lorina Stephens, Amanda Sun, Hayden Trenholm, Edward Willett, A.C. WiseIntroduction by Julie E. CzernedaForeword by Lucas K. LawAfterword by Susan ForestEdited by Susan Forest and Lucas K. LawPraise for Strangers Among Us"Strangers Among Us . . . is important, shining a much-needed spotlight on issues that get far too little attention. A wonderful anthology, one of the major SF&F books of the year. Bravo!"-- Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of Quantum Night

    3 • A Circus of Hells • (1970) • novel by Poul Anderson p. 211 • The Rebel Worlds • (1969) • novel by Poul Anderson

    But no agent could be sent to investigate and report back. All trips to the Warden worlds were one-way. There, a microscopic symbiont invaded all life forms, after which life became impossible outside the Warden system. The same organism destroyed any form of machinery, so no message could be beamed back by normal means.That called for extraordinary means, of course. One agent was chosen, then four men were stripped of their own minds and personalities, and his was imposed upon them. Hooked up properly, he could then receive their reports, without ever leaving safe territory.Each man was assigned one world to conquer. His mission was first to find the Overlord of that world and kill him, then to take over his link with the aliens. Of course all this must be done with no help beyond his own naked ability...This first book of Jack Chalker's epic tetralogy deals with Cal Tremon, who was sent to Lilith, a planet that was a paradise - but a paradise designed in hell!-from the back cover

    She's out to make a name for herself and her line of intoxicating human snacks. Not easy in A-Ki s tightly controlled society. Her task gets even more delicate when she rushes to the aid of a dying alien and finds herself the unwilling guardian of a shunned alien ghost named Kenjan. And the new owner of his slave.The danger mounts when Kenjan's grieving lover, the powerful leader of the Kishocha, offers her a dream and a nightmare rolled into one: a new store all her own with a strange double purpose: half snack bar, half shrine. The catch? She must spend the rest of her life there, tending Kenjan the Heretic's ghost. Or the entire station will be destroyed.There's only one way to gain both her freedom and justice for Kenjan: teach both the powerful government elite and the Kishocha theocracy a lesson in "uncivil disobedience".

    But Geoffrey's family, the vast Akinya business empire, has other plans. After the death of Eunice, Geoffrey's grandmother, erstwhile space explorer and entrepreneur, something awkward has come to light on the Moon, and Geoffrey is tasked - well, blackmailed, really - to go up there and make sure the family's name stays suitably unblemished. But little does Geoffrey realise - or anyone else in the family, for that matter - what he's about to unravel.Eunice's ashes have already have been scattered in sight of Kilimanjaro. But the secrets she died with are about to come back out into the open, and they could change everything.Or shatter this near-utopia into shards...

    And with The Road to Mars he reaffirms this with a raucously sidesplitting vengence.Muscroft and Ashby are a comedy team on "The Road to Mars," an interplanetary vaudeville circuit of the future. Accompanied by Carlton, a robot incapable of understanding irony but driven to learn the essence of humor, Alex and Lewis bumble their way into an intergalactic terrorist plot. Supported by a delicious cast, including a micropaleontologist narrator (he studies the evolutionary impact of the last ten minutes) and the ultra-diva Brenda Woolley, The Road to Mars is a fabulous trip through Eric Idle's inimitable world, a "universe expanding at the speed of laughter."

    The citizens are organized. Everyone's been notified and assigned a duty. The problem is . . . no one knows for sure how it will end.Energy-hungry Mages are the most likely culprit. They travel toward a single location from every corner of the continent. Fueled by the two suns, each Mage holds the power of an element: air, earth, fire, metal, water, or ether. They harness their powers to draw energy from the most readily available resource: humans.Ashara has been assigned to the Ethereal task force, made up of human ether manipulators and directed by Loken, a young man with whom she has a complicated past. Loken and Ashara bond over a common goal: to stop the Mages from occupying their home and gaining more energy than they can contain. But soon, they begin to suspect that the future of the world may depend on Ashara's death.

    People Magizine said there was no one like him, then cursed him for preventing easy sleep. But in these stories Harlan Ellison outdoes himself, rampaging like a mad thing through love ("Cold Friend", "Kiss of Fire", "Paulie Charmed the Sleeping Woman"), hate ("Knox", "Silent in Gehenna"), sex ("Catman", "Erotophobia"), lost childhood ("One Life, Furnished in Early Poverty") and into such bizarre subjects as the problems of blue-skinned, eleven-armed Yiddish aliens, what it's like to witness the end of the world and what happens on the day the planet Earth swallows Barbra Streisand. Oh yeah, this one's a doozy!

    Jude Altfall’s life, just beginning to coalesce after her divorce, is shattered afresh. Dazed with grief, she’s not sure if the weird things happening around her are hallucinations…or something more. And there’s the mark on her hip—a tattoo she can’t for the life of her remember getting. Preston Marlock left a shadowy government agency two years ago, to hunt a killer. Each time the bastard strikes the trail goes cold, and not even Marlock’s more-than-natural abilities are helping. Now the killer’s taken one of his very few friends, and there’s a surviving witness. The Altfall woman is now that most precious and fragile of targets, newly Marked. All Marlock has to do is dangle her like bait, and the killer will eventually show up. The Skinner knows some people are different. Special. He has a collection of stretched skin and pretty pictures, each harvested with care. The trick is to take them while the victim is still struggling, still alive, otherwise their power is lost. He is careful, methodical, and precise, but chance robs him of a prize. Once he realizes Jude Altfall has what he covets, and has possibly seen his face, her fate is sealed. And just to be cautious, the Skinner might swat at the annoying fly who has buzzed along his trail for two years...

    . . and it promises to be a publication to remember.An ex-corporate enforcer, Hakan Veil, is forced to bodyguard Madison Madekwe, part of a colonial audit team investigating a disappeared lottery winner on Mars. But when Madekwe is abducted, and Hakan nearly killed, the investigation takes him farther and deeper than he had ever expected. And soon Hakan discovers the heavy price he may have to pay to learn the truth.

    This is the first unitary edition."... into the chaotic Galactic political scene, the CDT emerged to carry forward the ancient diplomatic tradition ... Corps diplomats displayed an encyclopedic grasp of the nuances of Extra-Terrestrial mores as set against the labyrinthine socio-politico-economic Galactic context..."-- Official History of the Corps Diplomatique, AD 2940NOT! What they really had was Retief! Ignore the official version--in these pages is the real story of how Retief tied the bad guys' eye-stalks in knots, and made the Galaxy safe for humanity.Contents:* Diplomat-at-Arms* Protocol* The Brass God* Sealed Orders* Palace Revolution* Cultural Exchange* Saline Solution* Native Intelligence* Policy* Ultimatum* The Prince and the Pirate* The Castle of Light* Retief's War* Wicker Wonderland* Courier* Protest Note* Aide Memoire

    Our stories take place under the sun: bright, clear, unafraid.This is not a book of those stories.These are the stories of people who live at night; under neon and starlight, and never the light of day.These are the stories of poets and police; writers and waiters; gamers and goddesses; tourists and traders; the hidden and the forbidden; the lonely and the lovers.These are their lives. These are their stories. And this is their time:The Outcast Hours.Including stories by Marina Warner, China Miéville, Frances Hardinge, Will Hill, Sally Partridge, Jesse Bullington, Jeffrey Alan Love, Kuzhali Manickavel, Amira Salah-Ahmed, Cecilia Ekbäck, Celeste Baker, Karen Onojaife, Daniel Polansky, Genevieve Valentine, Indrapramit Das, Leah Moore, Sam Beckbessinger, Sami Shah, Lauren Beukes, Dale Halvorsen, Yukimi Ogawa, Lavie Tidhar, Silvia Moreno Garcia, Genevieve Valentine, Maha Khan Phillips, William Boyle, S.L. Grey, M. Suddain, and Omar Robert Hamilton..

    Spock, and Dr. McCoy struggle to establish new lives apart from each other and the starship. The newly-promoted Admiral Kirk is placed in charge of a specially-created Starfleet division and attempts to defuse a critical hostage situation; Mr. Spock, who, in the midst of a teaching assignment on Vulcan, finds the one thing he least expected; and Dr. McCoy, whose unerring instinct for trouble lands him smack in the middle of an incident that could trigger an interstellar bloodbath.

    Men have sought for it across many continents for centuries, but in vain. When trainee sorceress Aimee de Laurent's first ever portal-casting goes awry, she and her mentor are thrown into the race to find the gem, on the skyship Elysium. Opposing them are the infamous magic-wielding knights of the Eternal Order and their ruthless commander, Lord Azrael, who will destroy everything in their path...File Under: Fantasy