Search Worlds Without End

Nebula Award winning and Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1982. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 9 (1983) edited by Arthur W. Saha, and The Nebula Awards #18 (1983), edited by Robert Silverberg. It is included in the collections Meeting in Infinity: Allegories & Extrapolations (1992) and The Collected Kessel (2012).

Locus and Sturgeon Award winning and Hugo and Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 1991. It can also be found in Nebula Awards 27 (1993), edited by James Morrow and The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction: 60th Anniversary Anthology (2009), edited by Gordon Van Gelder.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Twelve Tomorrows (2015), edited by Bruce Sterling. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection (2016), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 (2016).

August Faison and his gorgeous young daughter Genevieve are rogues of the first water--seasoned swindlers who rove across time in search of new victims to fleece. Now the most precious pigeon of the all has fallen into their laps, in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus.

Dr. Owen Vannice is far too unworldly and far too rich for his own good. A fabulously wealthy paleontologist who has just spent the last year, not to mention billions of the family fortune, doing research in the Cretaceous period, he now finds himself stranded in the Holy City with a rapidly growing baby dinosaur in tow.

Simon is a disillusioned disciple whose master has been kidnapped uptime by colonists from the future. Now he works for the exploitative crosstime corporation which has turned his timeline into a tourist trap, complete with luxury hotels and junkets to countless versions of the Crucifixion.

When a desperate act of sabotage brings them all together, their lives are drastically transformed, for Genevieve is falling in love with "Dr. Nice" against her better judgment, and is even willing to double-cross her father to protect him. But even that isn't enough, for Dr. Nice is losing his innocence, while Simon and his revolutionary zealots seek to drive out the invaders from the future.

Skillfully interweaving screwball comedy with the paradoxes of time travel and satirical social commentary, Corrupting Dr. Nice is, in the tradition of its Hollywood forbears, a love story, one that is at the same time serious and funny, sweet-natured and cynical--sophisticated speculative fiction by an award-winning modern master.

When the Singularity arrives and computers possess superhuman intelligence, will there be an ecstatic merging of machine and mind--or an instantaneous techno-apocalypse? Will there be the enslavement of humanity or "the Rapture of the Nerds"? The post-human future is here in its wildest science-fictional imaginings and intriguing scientific speculations.

This far-reaching anthology traces the path of the Singularity, an era when advances in technology will totally transform human reality. It travels to the alien far-future of H. G. Wells (Mind at the End of Its Tether), to the almost human near-future of Ray Kurzweil (The Singularity Is Near), from Elizabeth Bear's fusion of woman, machine, God, and shark ("The Inevitable Heat Death of the Universe"), to Isaac Asimov's evolution of ineffable logic ("The Last Question"). As intelligence both figuratively (and possibly literally) explodes, science-fiction authors and futurists have dared to peek over the edge of the event horizon. Join them there.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Digital Rapture - essay by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel
• The Last Question - [Multivac] (1956) - short story by Isaac Asimov
• The Flesh (1929) - essay by J. D. Bernal
• Day Million (1966) - short story by Frederik Pohl
• Thought and Action (1935) - short fiction by Olaf Stapledon
• The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era (1993) - essay by Vernor Vinge
• Hive Mind Man (2012) - novelette by Eileen Gunn and Rudy Rucker
• Sunken Gardens - [Shaper/Mechanist] (1984) - short story by Bruce Sterling
• The Six Epochs (2005) - essay by Ray Kurzweil
• Crystal Nights (2008) - novelette by Greg Egan
• Firewall (2008) - novelette by David D. Levine
• The Cookie Monster (2003) - novella by Vernor Vinge
• Cracklegrackle - [Natural History] (2009) - novelette by Justina Robson
• Nightfall - [Macx Family] (2003) - novelette by Charles Stross
• Coelacanths (2002) - novelette by Robert Reed
• The Great Awakening - [Thought Experiments] (2008) - essay by Rudy Rucker
• True Names (2008) - novella by Cory Doctorow and Benjamin Rosenbaum
• The Server and the Dragon (2010) - short story by Hannu Rajaniemi
• The Inevitable Heat Death of the Universe (2006) - short story by Elizabeth Bear

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology The New Space Opera 2 (2009), edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan and was reprinted in Clarkesworld, #124, January 2017. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection (2010), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2010, edited by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

WFA nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October-November 1998. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Twelfth Annual Collection (1999), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic (2004), edited by F. Brett Cox and Andy Duncan, and Tails of Wonder and Imagination (2010), edited by Ellen Datlow. It is included in the collection The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories (2008).

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

If it is true that the test of a first-rate mind is its ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time, then we live in a century when it takes a first-rate mind just to get through the day. We have unprecedented access to information; cognitive dissonance is a banner headline in our morning papers and radiates silently from our computer screens. Slipstream, poised between literature and popular culture, embraces the dissonance.

These ambitious stories of visionary strangeness defy the conventions of science fiction. Tales by Michael Chabon, Karen Joy Fowler, Jonathan Lethem, Carol Emshwiller, George Saunders, and others pull the reader into a vivid dreamspace and embrace the knowledge that life today is increasingly surreal.

Contents:

• Al - (1972) - short story by Carol Emshwiller
• The Little Magic Shop - (1987) - short story by Bruce Sterling
• The Healer - (1998) - short story by Aimee Bender
• The Specialist's Hat - (1998) - short story by Kelly Link
• Light and the Sufferer - (1995) - novelette by Jonathan Lethem
• Sea Oak - (1998) - novelette by George Saunders
• Exhibit H: Torn Pages Discovered in the Vest Pocket of an Unidentified Tourist - (1998) - short story by Jeff VanderMeer
• Hell Is the Absence of God - (2001) - novelette by Ted Chiang
• Lieserl - (1990) - short story by Karen Joy Fowler
• Bright Morning - (2002) - novelette by Jeffrey Ford
• Biographical Notes to "A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Air-Planes" by Benjamin Rosenbaum - (2004) - novelette by Benjamin Rosenbaum
• The God of Dark Laughter - (2001) - short story by Michael Chabon
• The Rose in Twelve Petals - (2002) - short story by Theodora Goss
• The Lions Are Asleep This Night - (1986) - novelette by Howard Waldrop
• You Have Never Been Here - (2006) - short story by M. Rickert

It was real... It was a dream.

Freedom Beach was a tropical paradise of games, drugs and decadence... Freedom Beach was a surreal gulag ruthlessly guarded by sinister living statues.

The guests included Faust, the Marx Brothers, Aristophanes, Raymond Chandler and the Brontes... The prisoners were all strangers from Shaun Reed's past.

Shaun was a deluded amnesiac who had been voluntarily committed... Shaun was a brainwashed dissident genius being tortured by the Dreamers.

The Dreamers were benevolent aliens who wanted to heal... The Dreamers were evil conquerors and would destroy anyone who learned the truth... Lies... Truth... Lies... Truth of the dream...

Or the lies of Freedom Beach.

This novelette originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 1984. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Second Annual Collection (1985).

The year is 1999. The millennium is approaching fast, and America is ready to believe that the World is indeed about to End. The economy is a disaster, despite a complete restructuring of the money supply. Nuclear war in the middle east has created a new, permanent gasoline shortage. Gene-splicing technology has given terrorists almost undetectable weapons. Poverty, drugs, disease are rampant in the cities, while the new Christian Fundamentalism has taken almost total control of the countryside. The Church is even running the prison system. The most popular on-line news service in America is the Hemisphere Confidential Report, a computer network descendant of today's supermarket tabloids.

George Eberhart is HCR's top reporter and writer--once a legitmate newsman, the crumbling economy has forced him into writing "news" that is little more than fiction. But now George is onto something, something real. He has perceived a pattern in the sensationalist stories he reports, a pattern that has led him to believe that the stories of alien invasion may be something more than hysteria.

The Reverend Jimmy-Don Gilray is a TV evangelist, whose Zion Tribulation Hour brings in millions of dollars and converts every day. His message is simple: on the stroke of midnight, December 31, 1999, God will send his messengers to Earth in a spaceship, and the Day of Judgement will dawn. There is nothing that The Rev wants less than some reporter proving that the Aliens are already here.

And meanwhile, all over America, strange beings who look human are doing totally inexplicable things--committing acts which seem like meaningless cruelty or kindness to their victims.

This novelette originally appeared in the collection The Pure Product (1997). It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection (1998), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Eleventh Annual Collection (1998), edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.

Read the full story for free at the Baenn website.

This novelette originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, October 1983. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: First Annual Collection (1984), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collections Meeting in Infinity: Allegories & Extrapolations (1992), The Pure Product (1997), and The Collected Kessel (2012).

A collection of superb science fiction stories offers works by the writers who were invited in 1994 to attend the prestigious Sycamore Hills Writers' Conference, including Robert Frazier, Carol Emshwiller, Gregory Frost, and Bruce Sterling, among others.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Fun in the Burn Ward - essay by John Kessel and Mark L. Van Name and Richard Butner
• Bicycle Repairman - novelette by Bruce Sterling
• The Marianas Islands - shortstory by Karen Joy Fowler
• Sex Education - shortfiction by Nancy Kress
• The Hardened Criminals - novelette by Jonathan Lethem
• The Escape Artist - shortstory by Michaela Roessner
• Body & Soul - shortstory by Robert Frazier
• The Fury at Colonus - novelette by Alexander Jablokov
• Homesick - shortstory by Maureen F. McHugh
• Ledoyt (excerpt) - shortfiction by Carol Emshwiller
• The Miracle of Ivar Avenue - (1996) - novelette by John Kessel
• Missing Connections - novelette by Mark L. Van Name
• That Blissful Height - novelette by Gregory Frost
• Horses Blow Up Dog City - shortstory by Richard Butner
• The First Law of Thermodynamics - (1996) - shortstory by James Patrick Kelly
• The Turkey City Lexicon: A Primer for SF Workshops - essay by Lewis Shiner

This novelette originally appreared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1990. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighth Annual Collection (1991), edited by Gardner Dozois, Future Earths: Under South American Skies (1993), edited by Mike Resnick and Gardner Dozois, and The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990 (1993), edited by Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery. The story is included in the collections Meeting in Infinity: Allegories & Extrapolations (1992), The Pure Product (1997) and The Collected Kessel (2012).

This short story originally appeared on Strange Horizons, 13 September 2010. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Five (2011), edited by Jonathan Strahan. The story is included in the collection The Collected Kessel (2012).

Read the full story for free at Strange Horizons.

Sturgeon Award nomintated novelette. It originally appeared on Sci Fiction, November 5, 2003. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-First Annual Collection (2004), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collections The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories (2008) and The Collected Kessel (2012).

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

The tourist shops of Prague sell dozens of items commemorating Franz Kafka. You can drink a latte in the Café Kafka, add sugar to it from a packet with Kafka's face on it, and then light your cigarette from a box of Kafka matches.

Franz Kafka died in obscurity in 1924, publishing only a handful of bizarre stories in little-known literary magazines. Yet today he persists in our collective imaginations. Even those who have never read any of Kafka's fiction describe their tribulations with the Department of Motor Vehicles as being Kafkaesque.

Kafkaesque explores the fiction of generations of authors inspired by Kafka's work. These dystopic, comedic, and ironic tales include T. C. Boyle's roadside garage that is a never-ending trial, Philip Roth's alternate history in which Kafka immigrates to America to date his aunt, Jorge Luis Borges's labyrinthine public lottery that redefines reality, Carol Emshwiller's testimony by the first female to earn the right to call herself a "man," and Paul Di Filippo's unfamiliar Kafka -- journalist by day, costumed crime-fighter by night.

Also included is Kafka's classic story "The Hunger Artist," appearing both in a brand-new translation and in an illustrated version by legendary cartoonist R. Crumb (Fritz the Cat). Additionally, each author discusses Kafka's writing, its relevance, its personal influence, and Kafka's enduring legacy.

Table of Contents

• Kafkaesque: Stories Inspired by Franz Kafka - interior artwork by John Coulthart
• Stories After Kafka - essay by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel
• Kafka Chronology - essay
• A Hunger Artist - short story by Franz Kafka (trans. of Ein Hungerkünstler 1924)
• On the Translation of 'A Hunger Artist' - essay by John Kessel
• Introduction to The Drowned Giant - essay by J. G. Ballard
• The Drowned Giant (1964) - short story by J. G. Ballard
• Introduction to The Cockroach Hat - essay by Terry Bisson
• The Cockroach Hat (2010) - short story by Terry Bisson
• Introduction to Hymenoptera - essay by Michael Blumlein
• Hymenoptera (1993) - short story by Michael Blumlein
• Introduction to The Lottery in Babylon - essay by Jorge Luis Borges
• The Lottery in Babylon (1998) - short story by Jorge Luis Borges (trans. of La lotería en Babilonia 1941)
• Introduction to The Big Garage - (2005) - essay by T. Coraghessan Boyle
• The Big Garage (1981) - short story by T. Coraghessan Boyle
• Introduction to The Jackdaw's Last Case - essay by Paul Di Filippo
• The Jackdaw's Last Case (1997) - short story by Paul Di Filippo
• Introduction to Report to the Men's Club - essay by Carol Emshwiller
• Report to the Men's Club (2002) - short story by Carol Emshwiller
• Introduction to Bright Morning - essay by Jeffrey Ford
• Bright Morning (2002) - novelette by Jeffrey Ford
• Introduction to The Rapid Advance of Sorrow - essay by Theodora Goss
• The Rapid Advance of Sorrow (2002) - short story by Theodora Goss
• Introduction to Stable Strategies for Middle Management - essay by Eileen Gunn
• Stable Strategies for Middle Management (1988) - short story by Eileen Gunn
• Introduction to The Handler - (1976) - essay by Damon Knight
• The Handler (1960) - short story by Damon Knight
• Introduction to Receding Horizon - essay by Jonathan Lethem
• Receding Horizon (1995) - short story by Jonathan Lethem and Carter Scholz
• Introduction to A Hunger Artist - essay by David Mairowitz
• A Hunger Artist - short story by Robert Crumb and David Mairowitz
• Introduction to "I Always Wanted You to Admire My Fasting"; or, Looking at Kafka - essay by Philip Roth
• "I Always Wanted You to Admire My Fasting"; or, Looking at Kafka (1969) - short story by Philip Roth
• Introduction to The 57th Franz Kafka - essay by Rudy Rucker
• The 57th Franz Kafka (1982) - short story by Rudy Rucker
• Introduction to The Amount to Carry - essay by Carter Scholz
• The Amount to Carry (1998) - novelette by Carter Scholz
• Introduction to Kafka in Brontëland - essay by Tamar Yellin
• Kafka in Brontëland (2002) - short story by Tamar Yellin

After receiving the Nebula Award in 1983 for his stunning nouvelle "Another Orphan, " John Kessel has written a group of stories that for sheer imaginative audacity defy conventional classification. In "The Pure Product" an amoral time-traveler embarks upon a harrowing joyride through the Midwest; "The Big Dream" is a 1920s hardboiled detective thriller in the Los Angeles of Raymond Chandler; while Faustfeathers" involves a head-on collision between Christopher Marlowe and the Marx Brothers. Dark visions both satiric and tragic, from the author of Good News from Outer Space.

Table of Contents:

• Meeting in Infinity - essay
• The Pure Product - (1986) - novelette
• Mrs. Shummel Exits a Winner - (1988) - shortstory
• The Big Dream - (1984) - novelette
• The Lecturer - (1984) - shortstory
• Hearts Do Not in Eyes Shine - (1983) - novelette
• Faustfeathers - novelette
• A Clean Escape - (1985) - shortstory
• Not Responsible! Park and Lock It! - (1981) - novelette
• Man - (1992) - novelette
• Invaders - (1990) - novelette
• Judgment Call - (1987) - novelette
• Buddha Nostril Bird - (1990) - novelette
• Another Orphan - (1982) - novelette
• Buffalo - (1991) - shortstory

Nebula and Sturgeon Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, June 1988. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Sixth Annual Collection (1989), edited by Gardner Dozois and the collection Meeting in Infinity: Allegories & Extrapolations (1992).

Nebula-nominated Novella

Mysterious aliens have landed on Earth, but nobody can figure out what they want. Enter Liz Cobble, a frustrated professor of sapientology who finds herself swept up in a madcap romantic adventure with an eccentric billionaire and an architect who designs flying buildings.

This story was originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1999, self-published by the authors in 2011, and included in The Collected Kessel (2012).

Winner of the Nebula, nominated for the Tiptree and Hugo Awards. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in January 2008. Later collected in The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories (2008) and anthologized in Jonathan Strahan's The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Three (2009), Mary Robiniette Kowal's The Hugo Award Showcase: 2010 Volume and Brockmeier and Cheney's Real Unreal: Best American Fantasy Volume III (2010).

Read this story online for free at Baen.

Pride and Prejudice meets Frankenstein as Mary Bennet falls for the enigmatic Victor Frankenstein and befriends his monstrous Creature in this clever fusion of two popular classics.

Threatened with destruction unless he fashions a wife for his Creature, Victor Frankenstein travels to England where he meets Mary and Kitty Bennet, the remaining unmarried sisters of the Bennet family from Pride and Prejudice. As Mary and Victor become increasingly attracted to each other, the Creature looks on impatiently, waiting for his bride. But where will Victor find a female body from which to create the monster's mate?

Meanwhile, the awkward Mary hopes that Victor will save her from approaching spinsterhood while wondering what dark secret he is keeping from her.

Pride and Prometheus fuses the gothic horror of Mary Shelley with the Regency romance of Jane Austen in an exciting novel that combines two age-old stories in a fresh and startling way.

Cyberpunk is dead. The revolution has been co-opted by half-assed heroes, overclocked CGI, and tricked-out shades. Once radical, cyberpunk is now nothing more than a brand.

Time to stop flipping the channel.

These sixteen extreme stories reveal a government ninja routed by a bicycle repairman, the inventor of digitized paper hijacked by his college crush, a dead boy trapped in a warped storybook paradise, and the queen of England attacked with the deadliest of forbidden technology: a working modem. You'll meet Manfred Macx, renegade meme-broker, Red Sonja, virtual reality sex-goddess, and Felix, humble sys-admin and post-apocalyptic hero.

Editors James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel (Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology) have united cyberpunk visionaries William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Pat Cadigan with the new post-cyberpunk vanguard, including Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross, and Jonathan Lethem. Including a canon-establishing introduction and excerpts from a hotly contested online debate, Rewired is the first anthology to define and capture the crackling excitement of the post-cyberpunks.

From the grittiness of Mirrorshades to the Singularity and beyond, it's time to revive the revolution.

Table of Contents:

• Hacking Cyberpunk - essay by John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly
• Kessel-Sterling Correspondence - essay by John Kessel and Bruce Sterling
• Bicycle Repairman - (1996) - novelette by Bruce Sterling
• Red Sonja and Lessingham in Dreamland - (1996) - shortstory by Gwyneth Jones
• How We Got In Town and Out Again - (1996) - novelette by Jonathan Lethem
• Yeyuka - (1997) - shortstory by Greg Egan
• The Final Remake of The Return of Little Latin Larry - (1997) - novella by Pat Cadigan
• Thirteen Views of a Cardboard City - (1997) - shortstory by William Gibson
• The Wedding Album - (1999) - novella by David Marusek
• Daddy's World - (1999) - novelette by Walter Jon Williams
• The Dog Said Bow-Wow - (2001) - shortstory by Michael Swanwick
• Lobsters - (2001) - novelette by Charles Stross
• What's Up, Tiger Lily? - (2003) - novelette by Paul Di Filippo
• The Voluntary State - (2004) - novelette by Christopher Rowe
• Two Dreams on Trains - (2005) - shortstory by Elizabeth Bear
• The Calorie Man - (2005) - novelette by Paolo Bacigalupi
• Search Engine - (2005) - novelette by Mary Rosenblum
• When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth - (2006) - novelette by Cory Doctorow

This short story originally appeared in Omni, Fall 1995. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirteenth Annual Collection (1996), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collections The Pure Product (1997) and The Collected Kessel (2012).

Tiptree winning and Nebula nominated story. Originally published in Asimov's October-November 2002. Later anthologized in Gardner Dozois's The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twentieth Annual Collection (2003) and The Eagle Has Landed: 50 Years of Lunar Science Fiction, (2019), edited by Neil Clarke, and collected in The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories (2008)

Sturgeon Award nominated short story. It originally appeared on Sci Fiction, March 24, 2004. The story can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best Fantasy 5 (2005), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, and The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Eighteenth Annual Collection (2005), edited by Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant. It is included in the collections The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories (2008) and The Collected Kessel (2012).

A long-awaited collection of fourteen stories that intersect imaginatively with Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, The Wizard of Oz, and Flannery O'Connor. Kessel, whose story "A Clean Escape" was filmed as part of ABC's Masters of Science Fiction, ranges through genres with a lean, graceful style that incorporates everything from future autobiography, alternate history, phone sex, perpetual motion, and his modern classic sequence of four stories about life on the moon.

Table of Contents:

• The Baum Plan for Financial Independence - (2004)
• Every Angel Is Terrifying - (1998)
• The Red Phone - (2005)
• The Invisible Empire - (2002)
• The Juniper Tree - (2000)
• Stories for Men - (2002)
• Under the Lunchbox Tree - (2003)
• Sunlight or Rock - (2006)
• The Snake Girl - (2006)
• It's All True - (2003)
• The Last American - (2007)
• Downtown - (2007)
• Powerless - (2008)
• Pride and Prometheus - (2008)

The Dark Ride collects John Kessel's best short fiction, beginning with 1981's "Not Responsible! Park and Lock It!" and ending with 2021's "The Dark Ride." The stories range from flash pieces to novellas, from comedy to existential horror, from far future SF to Kafkaesque fantasy, including 40,000 words of never-before-collected fiction and extensive author's notes.

All his best are here, among them Nebula Award winners "Another Orphan" and "Pride and Prometheus," by the writer Sci-Fi Weekly called "quite possibly the best short story writer working in science fiction today."

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Not Responsible! Park and Lock It! - (1981) - novelette
• Events Preceding the Helvetican Renaissance - (2009) - novelette
• Pride and Prometheus - (2008) - novelette
• The Motorman's Coat - (2009) - short story
• The Closet - (2010) - short story
• Some Like It Cold - [Moment Universes] - (1995) - short story
• The Miracle of Ivar Avenue - [Moment Universes] - (1996) - novelette
• Spirit Level - (2020) - novelette
• Stories for Men - (2002) - novella
• The Pure Product - (1986) - novelette
• Gulliver at Home - (1997) - novelette
• Buddha Nostril Bird - (1990) - novelette
• Invaders - (1990) - novelette
• The Lecturer - (1984) - short story
• Buffalo - (1991) - short story
• Clean - (2011) - novelette
• Another Orphan - (1982) - novelette
• Consolation - (2015) - short story
• The Baum Plan for Financial Independence - (2004) - short story
• The Dark Ride - (2021) - novella
• Story Notes - essay by John Kessel

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, August 1993. The story can aslo be found in the anthology Nebula Awards 29 (1995), edited by Pamela Sargent and the collections The Pure Product (1997) and The Collected Kessel (2012).

Sturgeon Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Science Fiction Age, January 2000. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighteenth Annual Collection (2001), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collections The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories (2008) and The Collected Kessel (2012).

Sturgeon Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Foundation, #100 Summer 2007 and was reprinted in Asimov's Science Fiction, February 2008. The story can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 13 (2008), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. It is included in the collections The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories (2008) and The Collected Kessel (2012).

Sidewise and Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Intersections: The Sycamore Hill Anthology (1996), edited by John Kessel, Mark L. Van Name and Richard Butner. It was reprinted in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 1996. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection (1997), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in the collections The Pure Product and The Collected Kessel (2012).

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

John Kessel, one of the most visionary writers in the field, has created a rich matriarchal utopia, set in the near future on the moon, a society that is flawed by love and sex, and on the brink of a destructive civil war.

In the middle of the twenty-second century, over three million people live in underground cities below the moon's surface. One city-state, the Society of Cousins, is a matriarchy, where men are supported in any career choice, but no right to vote--and tensions are beginning to flare as outside political intrigues increase.

After participating in a rebellion that caused his mother's death, Erno has been exiled from the Society of Cousins. Now, he is living in the Society's rival colony, Persepolis, when he meets Amestris, the defiant daughter of the richest man on the moon.

Mira, a rebellious loner in the Society, creates graffiti videos that challenge the Society's political domination. She is hopelessly in love with Carey, the exemplar of male privilege. An Olympic champion in low-gravity martial arts and known as the most popular bedmate in the Society, Carey's more suited to being a boyfriend than a parent, even as he tries to gain custody of his teenage son.

When the Organization of Lunar States sends a team to investigate the condition of men in the Society, Erno sees an opportunity to get rich, Amestris senses an opportunity to escape from her family, Mira has a chance for social change, and Carey can finally become independent of the matriarchy that considers him a perpetual adolescent. But when Society secrets are revealed, the first moon war erupts, and everyone must decide what is truly worth fighting for.

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June-July 2009. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Four (2010), edited by Jonathan Strahan. The story is included in the collection The Collected Kessel (2012).

This novelette originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, March 1986, and was reprinted in Clarkesworld Magazine, #87 December 2013. The story has been reprinted many times. It can be found in the anthologies:

• The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection (1987), edited by Gardner Dozois
• Modern Classics of Science Fiction (1991), edited by Gardner Dozois
• Future on Ice (1998), edited by Orson Scott Card
• The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century (2004), edited by Harry Turtledove and Martin H. Greenberg
• Best of the Best: 20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction (2005), edited by Gardner Dozois

It is included in the collections:

• Meeting in Infinity: Allegories & Extrapolations (1992)
• The Pure Product (1997)
• The Collected Kessel (2012)

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

The Pure Product brings together for the first time in one volume Kessel's finest short fiction from the past decade. This exceptional collection contains nineteen astonishing voyages into worlds of wonder and mystery, complete with omnipotent beings, time travel, alternate histories, and playful takes on popular literature. The collection also includes three companion pieces to his most recent novel, Corrupting Dr. Nice. Here are the meditations of an exceptional writer who understands that darkness and tragedy can turn in one breathless heartbeat to moments of absurdity, empathy, passion, or joy.

Table of Contents:

• Some Like It Cold - (1995)
• Herman Melville: Space Opera Virtuoso - (1980)
• Buddha Nostril Bird - (1990)
• A Clean Escape - (1985)
• Invaders - (1990)
• Reading Lesson - (1990)
• The Lecturer - (1984)
• The Einstein Express - (1993)
• Faustfeathers: A Comedy - (1997)
• Animals - (1980)
• The Franchise - (1993)
• The Pure Product - (1986)
• Man - (1992)
• Mr. Hyde Visits the Home of Dr. Jekyll - (1989)
• Hearts Do Not in Eyes Shine - (1983)
• Buffalo - (1991)
• Not Responsible! Park and Lock It! - (1981)
• Gulliver at Home - (1997)
• The Miracle of Ivar Avenue - (1996)
• Author's Note - essay by John Kessel

Exploring an alternate history of science fiction, this ingenious anthology showcases eighteen brilliant authors leading the way to a new literature of the future. These award-winning stories defy trends, cross genres, and prove that great fiction cannot be categorized.

Two strangely detached astronauts orbit Earth while a third world war rages on. A primatologist's lover suspects her of obsession with one of her simian charges. The horrors of trench warfare dovetail with the theoretical workings of black holes. A dissolving marriage and bitter custody dispute are overshadowed by the arrival of time travelers. An astonishing invention that records the sense of touch is far too dangerous for Thomas Edison to reveal.

Contents:

• Angouleme - (1971) - short story by Thomas M. Disch
• The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - (1973) - short story by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Ladies and Gentlemen, This Is Your Crisis - (1976) - short story by Kate Wilhelm
• Descent of Man - (1977) - short story by T. C. Boyle
• Human Moments in World War III - (1983) - short story by Don DeLillo
• Homelanding - (1989) - short story by Margaret Atwood
• The Nine Billion Names of God - (1984) - short story by Carter Scholz
• Interlocking Pieces - (1984) - short story by Molly Gloss
• Salvador - (1984) - short story by Lucius Shepard
• Schwarzschild Radius - (1987) - short story by Connie Willis
• Buddha Nostril Bird - (1990) - novelette by John Kessel
• The Ziggurat - (1995) - novella by Gene Wolfe
• The Hardened Criminals - (1996) - novelette by Jonathan Lethem
• Standing Room Only - (1997) - short story by Karen Joy Fowler
• 10¹⁶ to 1 - (1999) - novelette by James Patrick Kelly
• 93990 - (2000) - short story by George Saunders
• The Martian Agent, A Planetary Romance - (2003) - novelette by Michael Chabon
• Frankenstein's Daughter - (2003) - short story by Maureen F. McHugh
• The Wizard of West Orange - (2007) - novelette by Steven Millhauser

The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Selected by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America®. The Nebula Awards Showcase volumes have been published annually since 1966, reprinting the winning and nominated stories in the Nebula Awards, voted on by the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The editors selected by SFWA's anthology committee (chaired by Mike Resnick) are John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly, both highly acclaimed not only for their own award-winning fiction but also as coeditors of three anthologies: Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, and The Secret History of Science Fiction. Stories and excerpts by Harlan Ellison™, Kij Johnson, Chris Barzak, Eric James Stone, Rachel Swirsky, Geoff Landis, Shweta Narayan, Adam Troy-Castro, James Tiptree Jr., Aliette de Bodard, Amal El-Mohtar, Kendall Evans and Samantha Henderson, Howard Hendrix, Ann K. Schwader, Connie Willis, Terry Pratchett, and more.

Table of Contents:

• In Which Your Editors Consider the Nebula Awards of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow - essay by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel
• Ponies - (2010) - shortstory by Kij Johnson
• The Sultan of the Clouds - shortfiction by Geoffrey A. Landis
• Map of Seventeen - (2010) - novelette by Christopher Barzak
• And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side - (1972) - shortstory by James Tiptree, Jr.
• In the Astronaut Asylum - (2009) - poem by Samantha Henderson and Kendall Evans
• Pishaach - (2010) - shortfiction by Shweta Narayan
• Excerpt from Blackout/All Clear - [Blackout (Connie Willis)] - shortfiction by Connie Willis
• Bumbershoot - poem by Howard V. Hendrix
• Arvies - shortfiction by Adam-Troy Castro
• How Interesting: a Tiny Man - (2010) - shortfiction by Harlan Ellison
• The Jaguar House, in Shadow - (2010) - novelette by Aliette de Bodard
• The Green Book - (2010) - shortstory by Amal El-Mohtar
• That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made - (2010) - novelette by Eric James Stone
• Excerpt From I Shall Wear Midnight - shortfiction by Terry Pratchett
• To Theia - (2009) - poem by Ann K. Schwader
• The Lady Who Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen's Window - (2010) - novella by Rachel Swirsky
• 2011 Nebula Awards Nominees and Honorees - essay by uncredited
• Past Nebula Winners - essay by uncredited
• About the Cover (Nebula Awards Showcase 2012) - essay by uncredited
• About the Editors (Nebula Awards Showcase 2012) - essay by uncredited

Enemy Mine

Hugo- and Nebula-winning Novella which inspired the 20th Century Fox motion picture starring Dennis Quaid and Lou Gossett, Jr.

This is the story of a man, incomplete in himself, taught to be a human by his sworn enemy, an alien being who leaves with the human its most important possession: its future.

The time is the future and a savage war rages between Earth and the planet Dracon, which is inhabited by intelligent, lizard-like creatures. An earth pilot and a Dracon creature both crash-land on the fiery, barren planet Fyrine IV. The two sworn enemies can think only of destroying each other, until they come to realize the only way either will survive is for both to overcome their undying hatred.

Another Orphan

Hugo-nominated and Nebula-winning Novella

Patrick Fallon is an analyst working on the Chicago stock exchange. An ex 'longhair', the man found himself in need of real employment as the exigencies of life made their demands and the counter-culture movement drew to a close. Starting as a runner, Fallon worked his way up to stock analyst in a few years, and at the opening of the story is leading a standard yuppie life in the metro area with a girlfriend he's unsure he loves. Mundane to the max, Fallon feels little motivation or excitement in life, and moreover, is unaware of the lack.

Waking up on a whaling ship at sea in the opening pages, however, existence takes on a whole new dynamic - one he quickly realizes is a manifestation of Herman Melville's Moby Dick. The novel coming alive around him, life at sea in contrast to life in Chicago, and the questions which arise as a result, provide a context to existence Fallon never had. (synopsis by Speculiction)

Another Orphan can be read online for free here.