In her deft hands, “relationships and mundane activities take on mythic qualities” (The Wall Street Journal).In this collection, Bender’s unique talents sparkle brilliantly in stories about people searching for connection through love, sex, and family—while navigating the often painful realities of their lives. A traumatic event unfolds when a girl with flowing hair of golden wheat appears in an apple orchard, where a group of people await her. A woman plays out a prostitution fantasy with her husband and finds she cannot go back to her old sex life. An ugly woman marries an ogre and struggles to decide if she should stay with him after he mistakenly eats their children. Two sisters travel deep into Malaysia, where one learns the art of mending tigers who have been ripped to shreds.In these deeply resonant stories—evocative, funny, beautiful, and sad—we see ourselves reflected as if in a funhouse mirror. Aimee Bender has once again proven herself to be among the most imaginative, exciting, and intelligent writers of our time.

    Destroyed oil rigs, mysteriously reborn, clamber from the sea and onto the land, driven by an obscure but violent purpose. An anatomy student cuts open a cadaver to discover impossibly intricate designs carved into a corpse's bones—designs clearly present from birth, bearing mute testimony to . . . what?Of such concepts and unforgettable images are made the twenty-eight stories in this collection—many published here for the first time. By turns speculative, satirical, and heart-wrenching, fresh in form and language, and featuring a cast of damaged yet hopeful seekers who come face-to-face with the deep weirdness of the world—and at times the deeper weirdness of themselves—Three Moments of an Explosion is a fitting showcase for one of our most original voices.

    and anything is possible. In this, Gaiman's first book of short stories, his imagination and supreme artistry transform a mundane world into a place of terrible wonders -- a place where an old woman can purchase the Holy Grail at a thrift store, where assassins advertise their services in the Yellow Pages under "Pest Control," and where a frightened young boy must barter for his life with a mean-spirited troll living beneath a bridge by the railroad tracks. Explore a new reality -- obscured by smoke and darkness, yet brilliantly tangible -- in this extraordinary collection of short works by a master prestidigitator. It will dazzle your senses, touch your heart, and haunt your dreams.

    What if life was neverending? What if you could change your body to adapt to an alien ecology? What if the pope were a robot? Spanning galaxies and millennia, this must-have anthology showcases classic contributions from H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, Octavia E. Butler, and Kurt Vonnegut, alongside a century of the eccentrics, rebels, and visionaries who have inspired generations of readers. Within its pages, you'll find beloved worlds of space opera, hard SF, cyberpunk, the New Wave, and more. Learn about the secret history of science fiction, from titans of literature who also wrote SF to less well-known authors from more than twenty-five countries, some never before translated into English. In The Big Book of Science Fiction, literary power couple Ann and Jeff VanderMeer transport readers from Mars to Mechanopolis, planet Earth to parts unknown. Immerse yourself in the genre that predicted electric cars, space tourism, and smartphones. Sit back, buckle up, and dial in the coordinates, as this stellar anthology has got worlds within worlds. Including: . Legendary tales from Isaac Asimov and Ursula K. Le Guin. An unearthed sci-fi story from W. E. B. Du Bois. The first publication in twenty years of the work of cybernetic visionary David R. Bunch. A rare and brilliant novella by Chinese international sensation Cixin Liu Plus: . Aliens!. Space battles!. Robots!. Technology gone wrong!. Technology gone right!"

    Sister Lilith - Honoree Fanonne JeffersThe Comet - W.E.B. Du Bois Chicage 1927 - Jewelle GomezBlack No More (novel excerpt) - George S. Schuyler separation anxiety - Evie Shockley Tasting Songs - Leone RossCan You Wear My Eyes - Kalamu ya SalaamLike Daughter - Tananarive Due Greedy Choke Puppy - Nalo Hopkinson Rhythm Travel - Amiri Baraka Buddy Bolden - Kalamu ya SalaamAye, and Gomorrah... - Samuel R. Delany Ganger (Ball Lightning) - Nalo HopkinsonThe Becoming - Akua Lezli HopeThe Goophered Grapevine - Charles W. ChestnuttThe Evening and the Morning and the Night - Octavia E. Butler Twice, at Once, Separated - Linda Addison Gimmile's Songs - Charles R. Saunders At the Huts of Ajala - Nisi Shawl The Woman in the Wall - Steven Barnes Ark of Bones - Henry Dumas Butta's Backyard Barbecue - Tony Medina Future Christmas (novel excerpt) - Ishmael ReedAt Life's Limits - Kiini Ibura Salaam The African Origins of UFOs (novel excerpt) - Anthony JosephThe Astral Visitor Delta Blues - Robert Fleming The Space Traders - Derrick Bell The Pretended - Darryl A. Smith Hussy Strutt - Ama PattersonEssays. Racism and Science Fiction - Samuel R. DelanyWhy Blacks Should Read (and Write) Science Fiction - Charles R. Saunders Black to the Future - Walter MosleyYet Do I Wonder - Paul D. MillerThe Monophobic Response - Octavia E. Butler

    A Phoenix First Must Burn will take you on a journey from folktales retold to futuristic societies and everything in between. Filled with stories of love and betrayal, strength and resistance, this collection contains an array of complex and true-to-life characters in which you cannot help but see yourself reflected. Witches and scientists, sisters and lovers, priestesses and rebels: the heroines of A Phoenix First Must Burn shine brightly. You will never forget them.Authors include Elizabeth Acevedo, Amerie, Dhonielle Clayton, Jalissa Corrie, Somaiya Daud, Charlotte Davis, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Justina Ireland, Danny Lore, L.L. McKinney, Danielle Paige, Rebecca Roanhorse, Karen Strong, Ashley Woodfolk, and Ibi Zoboi.

    The collection contains some of Ellison's best stories from earlier collections and is judged by some to be his most consistently high quality collection of short fiction. The theme of the collection can be loosely defined as God, or Gods. Sometimes they're dead or dying, some of them are as brand-new as today's technology. Unlike some of Ellison's collections, the introductory notes to each story can be as short as a phrase and rarely run more than a sentence or two. One story took a Locus Poll Award, the two final ones both garnered Hugo Awards and Locus Poll awards, and the final one also received a Jupiter Award from the Instructors of Science Fiction in Higher Education (discontinued in 1979). When the collection was published in Britain, it won the 1979 British Science Fiction Award for Short Fiction.His stories will rivet you to the floor and change your heartbeat...as unforgettable a chamber of horror, fantasy and reality as you'll ever experience.-Gallery "Brutally and flamboyantly shocking, frequently brilliant, and always irresistibly mesmerizing."-Richmond Times-Dispatch

    A young girl, a slave in the South, is presented with a moment where she can grasp for freedom, for change, for life. She grabs it with both hands, fiercely and intensely, and the spirit world is shaken.A Tor.com Original

    In “Requiem”, a woman goes to Alaska to try and make sense of her aunt’s disappearance. An eleventh century poet wakes to find he is as an artificially intelligent companion on a starship. A woman of no account has the ability to look into the past.Singh's work dives into the vast strangeness of the universe without and within, and she unblinkingly explores the ways we move through space and time: together, yet always apart.Contents:- With Fate Conspire (2013)- A Handful of Rice (2012)- Peripeteia (2013)- Lifepod (2007)- Oblivion: A Journey (2008)- Somadeva: A Sky River Sutra (2010)- Are You Sannata3159? (2010)- Indra's Web (2011)- Ruminations in an Alien Tongue (2012)- Sailing the Antarsa (2013)- Cry of the Kharchal (2013)- Wake-Rider (2014)- Ambiguity Machines: An Examination (2015)- Requiem (2018)

    In "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom," the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will.Including stories being published for the first time as well as some of his rare and classic uncollected work, Exhalation is Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic—revelatory.

    Here begins the story of a small African nation, told by a swarm-like chorus that calls itself man’s greatest nemesis. In 1904, in a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles the fates of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. This sets off a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families (black, white, brown) as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond. As the generations pass, their lives – their triumphs, errors, losses and hopes – form a symphony about what it means to be human.From a woman covered with hair and another plagued with endless tears, to forbidden love affairs and fiery political ones, to homegrown technological marvels like Afronauts, microdrones and viral vaccines – this novel sweeps over the years and the globe.

    Whether he writes a gothic morality tale in which a male exotic dancer is haunted by his maiden aunt from beyond the grave, or about a self-help guru who tells his followers his mission is to discover who's been "crapping in your oatmeal," Saunders's stories are both indelibly strange and vividly real.

    In these stories of doubt, delusion, and paranoia, no belief, no claim to objectivity, is immune to the distortions of human perception. Here, self-deception is a means of justifying our most inhuman impulses--whether we know it or not.

    In her debut collection of short fiction, Due takes us to Gracetown, a small Florida town that has both literal and figurative ghost; into future scenarios that seem all too real; and provides empathetic portraits of those whose lives are touched by Otherness. Featuring an award-winning novella and fifteen stories—one of which has never been published before—Ghost Summer: Stories is sure to both haunt and delight.With an Introduction by Nalo Hopkinson and an Afterword by Steven Barnes.

    She was hoping the girl would not ask.Spells and stories, urban legends and immigrant tales: the magic in Isabel Yap’s debut collection jumps right off the page, from the joy in her new novella, 'A Spell for Foolish Hearts' to the terrifying tension of the urban legend 'Have You Heard the One About Anamaria Marquez'.