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The R.A. Lafferty Fantastic MEGAPACK® by R.A. Lafferty
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The Best of Michael Swanwick
Michael Swanwick - 2008
Covering over a quarter of a century, from his first two published stories both of them Nebula finalists to his most recent, these works bear witness to one of the most vivid and far-ranging imaginations in contemporary fiction. From the hardest of hard science fiction to the purest of core fantasy, from the heartwarming to the despairing, these are works incandescent with literary brilliance. In these pages, Janis Joplin is worshiped as a god, teenagers climb down the edge of the world, zombies are commodified, a vengeful man tracks a wizard across the surface of a planet-sized grasshopper, dinosaurs invade Vermont, a train leaves New York City bound for Hell, and those lovable Post-Utopian con men, Darger and Surplus, seek their fortunes in Buckingham Labyrinth.Michael Swanwick is one of the most acclaimed and prolific writers of his generation, as well as being the only person ever to win five Hugo Awards for fiction in the space of six years. All five of those stories are included here plus much, much more, all of it beautifully written, critically acclaimed, and deeply satisfying to read.Contents1 • Introduction (The Best of Michael Swanwick) • (2008) • essay by Michael Swanwick13 • The Feast of Saint Janis • (1980) • novelette by Michael Swanwick43 • Ginungagap • (1980) • novelette by Michael Swanwick75 • Trojan Horse • (1984) • novelette by Michael Swanwick111 • A Midwinter's Tale • (1988) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick125 • The Edge of the World • (1989) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick139 • Griffin's Egg • (1991) • novella by Michael Swanwick213 • The Changeling's Tale • (1994) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick229 • North of Diddy-Wah-Diddy • (1995) • novelette by Michael Swanwick249 • Radio Waves • (1995) • novelette by Michael Swanwick269 • The Dead • (1996) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick281 • Mother Grasshopper • (1997) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick297 • Radiant Doors • (1998) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick313 • The Very Pulse of the Machine • (1998) • novelette by Michael Swanwick333 • Wild Minds • (1998) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick343 • Scherzo with Tyrannosaur • (1999) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick355 • The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O • (2000) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick371 • The Dog Said Bow-Wow • [Darger and Surplus] • (2001) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick389 • Slow Life • (2002) • novelette by Michael Swanwick413 • Legions in Time • (2003) • novelette by Michael Swanwick437 • Triceratops Summer • (2005) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick449 • From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled • (2008) • shortstory by Michael Swanwick (variant of From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled ...)
Tomorrow Factory: Collected Fiction
Rich Larson - 2018
On your left, post-human hedonists on a distant space station bring diseases back in fashion, two scavengers find a super-powered parasite under the waves of Sunk Seattle, and a terminally-ill chemist orchestrates an asteroid prison break. On your right, an alien optometrist spins illusions for irradiated survivors of the apocalypse, a high-tech grifter meets his match in near-future Thailand, and two teens use a blackmarket personality mod to get into the year’s wickedest, wildest party. This collection of published and original fiction by award-winning writer Rich Larson will bring you from a Bujumbura cyberpunk junkyard to the icy depths of Europa, from the slick streets of future-noir Chicago to a tropical island of sapient robots. You'll explore a mysterious ghost ship in deep space, meet an android learning to dream, and fend off predatory alien fungi on a combat mission gone wrong. Twenty-three futures, ranging from grimy cyberpunk to far-flung space opera, are waiting to blow you away. So step inside the Tomorrow Factory, and mind your head.
Futureland
Walter Mosley - 2001
For all its denizens, from technocrats to terrorists, celebs to crooks, "Futureland" is an all-American nightmare just waiting to happen.
The Long List Anthology: More Stories From the Hugo Award Nomination List (The Long List Anthology Series Book 1)
David SteffenScott Lynch - 2015
Every year, supporting members of WorldCon nominate their favorite stories first published during the previous year to determine the top five in each category for the final Hugo Award ballot. Between the announcement of the ballot and the Hugo Award ceremony at WorldCon, these works often become the center of much attention (and contention) across fandom. But there are more stories loved by the Hugo voters, stories on the longer nomination list that WSFS publishes after the Hugo Award ceremony at WorldCon. The Long List Anthology collects 21 tales from that nomination list, totaling almost 500 pages of fiction by writers from all corners of the world. Within these pages you will find a mix of science fiction and fantasy, the dramatic and the lighthearted, from near future android stories to steampunk heists, too-plausible dystopias to contemporary vampire stories. There is something here for everyone.CONTENT"The Breath Of War" by Aliette De Bodard"When It Ends, He Catches Her" by Eugie Foster"Toad Words" by T. Kingfisher"Makeisha In Time" by Rachael K. Jones"Covenant" by Elizabeth Bear"The Truth About Owls" by Amal El-Mohtar"A Kiss With Teeth" by Max Gladstone"The Vaporization Enthalpy Of A Peculiar Pakistani Family" by Usman T. Malik"This Chance Planet" by Elizabeth Bear"Goodnight Stars" by Annie Bellet"We Are The Cloud" by Sam J. Miller"The Magician And Laplace’s Demon" by Tom Crosshill"Spring Festival: Happiness, Anger, Love, Sorrow, Joy" by Xia Jia"The Husband Stitch" by Carmen Maria Machado"The Bonedrake’s Penance" by Yoon Ha Lee"The Devil In America" by Kai Ashante Wilson"The Litany Of Earth" by Ruthanna Emrys"A Guide To The Fruits Of Hawai’i" by Alaya Dawn Johnson"A Year And A Day In Old Theradane" by Scott Lynch"The Regular" by Ken Liu"Grand Jeté (The Great Leap)" by Rachel Swirsky
Luminous
Greg Egan - 1995
Greg Egan's short fiction is at the cutting edge of the genre. His stories range from near future predictions to far future, far space improvisations. His grasp of the latest scientific breakthroughs is unparalleled in science fiction. The stories include 'Transition Dreams', 'Cocoon', 'Our Lady of Chernobyl', the title story 'Luminous' and 'The Planck Drive'. Egan's particular interests range from the farther shores of chaos theory and black hole science to bio-technology and cloning.Contents:Chaff (1993)Mitochondrial Eve (1995)Luminous (1995)Mister Volition (1995)Cocoon (1994)Transition Dreams (1993)Silver Fire (1995)Reasons to Be Cheerful (1997)Our Lady of Chernobyl (1994)The Planck Dive (1998)
On The Use Of Shape-Shifters In Warfare
Marko Kloos - 2019
Forbidden by international accords to engage in combat, the "dog soldiers" lend their skills to the regular Army units, sniffing out IEDs and guarding the troops against things that go bump in the night. Sergeant Decker and his 300th comrade, Sergeant Sobieski, are assigned to a Forward Operating Base deep in the mountains of Afghanistan when they have to face a local threat far more dangerous than roadside bombs or insurgent ambushes.
The Imago Sequence and Other Stories
Laird Barron - 2007
P. Lovecraft's "Pickman's model" - was nominated for a World Fantasy Award, while "Proboscis" was nominated for an International Horror Guild award and reprinted in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 19. In addition to his previously published work, this collection contains an original story.
Terminal Boredom: Stories
Izumi Suzuki - 2021
Concerns about society, gender and imperialism dovetail irresistibly with flights of speculative wonder. And with a kitchen sink in the corner of even her wildest stories, Suzuki reminds us that while society may be limitless, relationships remain impossible
The Mythic Dream
Dominik ParisienKat Howard - 2019
From Hades and Persephone to Kali, from Loki to Inanna, this anthology explores retellings of myths across cultures and civilizations. Featuring award-winning and critically acclaimed writers such as Seanan McGuire, Naomi Novik, Rebecca Roanhorse, JY Yang, Alyssa Wong, Indrapramit Das, Carlos Hernandez, Sarah Gailey, Ann Leckie, John Chu, Ursula Vernon, Carmen Maria Machado, Stephen Graham Jones, Arkady Martine, Amal El-Mohtar, Jeffrey Ford, and more, The Mythic Dream is sure to become a new classic.
Legends
Robert SilverbergOrson Scott Card - 1998
Each of the writers was asked to write a new story based on one of his or her most famous series. Stephen King tells a tale of Roland, the Gunslinger, in the world of The Dark Tower, in "The Little Sisters of Eluria."Terry Pratchett relates an amusing incident in Discworld, of a magical contest and the witch Granny Weatherwax, in "The Sea and Little Fishes"Terry Goodkind tells of the origin of the Border between realms in the world of The Sword of Truth, in "Debt of Bones."Orson Scott Card spins a yarn of Alvin and his apprentice from the Tales of Alvin Maker, in "Grinning Man."Robert Silverberg returns to Majipoor and to Lord Valentine's adventure in an ancient tomb, in "the Seventh Shrine."Ursual K. Le Guin adds a sequel to her famous books of Earthsea, portraying a woman who wants to learn magic, in "Dragonfly."Tad Williams tells a dark and enthralling story of a great and haunted castle in the age before Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, in "The Burning Man."George R.R. Martin sets his piece a generation before his epic, A Song of Ice and Fire, in the adventure of "The Hedge Knight."Ann McCaffrey, the poet of Pern, returns once again to her world of romance and adventure in "Runner of Pern."Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar Saga is the setting of the tale of "The Wood Boy."Robert Jordan, in "New Spring," tells of crucial events in the years leading up to The Wheel of Time, of the meeting of Lan and Moiraine and the beginning of the search for the child who must grow to lead in the Last Battle.
The Dark Tower: And Other Stories
C.S. Lewis - 1977
S. Lewis’s adult religious books, a repackaged edition of the revered author’s definitive collection of short fiction, which explores enduring spiritual and science fiction themes such as space, time, reality, fantasy, God, and the fate of humankind.From C.S. Lewis—the great British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many other beloved classics—comes a collection of his dazzling short fiction.This collection of futuristic fiction includes a breathtaking science fiction story written early in his career in which Cambridge intellectuals witness the breach of space-time through a chronoscope—a telescope that looks not just into another world, but into another time. As powerful, inventive, and profound as his theological and philosophical works, The Dark Tower reveals another side of Lewis’s creative mind and his longtime fascination with reality and spirituality. It is ideal reading for fans of J. R. R. Tolkien, Lewis’s longtime friend and colleague.
Aye, and Gomorrah
Samuel R. Delany - 2003
In Venice an architecture student commits a crime of passion. A white southern airport loader tries to do a favor for a black northern child. The ordinary stuff of ordinary fiction--but with a difference! These tales take place twenty-five, fifty, a hundred-fifty years from now, when men and women have been given gills to labor under the sea. Huge repair stations patrol the cables carrying power to the ends of the earth. Telepathic and precocious children so passionately yearn to visit distant galaxies that they'll kill to go. Brilliantly crafted, beautifully written, these are Samuel Delany's award-winning stories, like no others before or since.