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AWAKE IN THE NIGHT is the first of John C. Wright's four brilliant forays into the dark fantasy world of William Hope Hodgson's 1912 novel, The Night Land.

This novella originally appeared in the anthology Eternal Love (2003), edited by Andy W. Robertson. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-First Annual Collection (2004), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Best Short Novels: 2004, edited by Jonathan Strahan. The story is included in the collection Awake in the Night Land (2014).

Awake in the Night Land is an epic collection of four of John C. Wright's brilliant forays into the dark fantasy world of William Hope Hodgson's 1912 novel, The Night Land. Part novel, part anthology, the book consists of four related novellas, "Awake in the Night", "The Cry of the Night-Hound", "Silence of the Night", and "The Last of All Suns", which collectively tell the haunting tale of the Last Redoubt of Man and the end of the human race. Widely considered to be the finest tribute to Hodgson ever written, the first novella, "Awake in the Night", was previously published in 2004 in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-First Annual Collection. Awake in the Night Land marks the first time all four novellas have been gathered into a single volume.

This novelette originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, July 1997. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 3 (1998), edited by David G. Hartwell.

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Federations (2009), edited by John Joseph Adams. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection (2010), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Ilya Muromets is a big, ugly, motherless boy who does not look like anyone else in his Oregon town. His father is often absent on mysterious Church missionary work that involves silver bullets, sacred lances, and black helicopters. Ilya works as a janitor for Professor Achitophel Dreadful of the Cryptozoological Museum of Scientific Curiosities, and he has a hopeless crush on the Professor's daughter, Penelope, who pays him little attention and appears to be under the impression that his name is Marmoset.

One night, when Professor Dreadful escapes from the asylum to which he has been temporarily committed, he sends a warning to Ilya that not only is his Many Worlds theory correct, but those many worlds are dominated by an unthinkably powerful enemy determined to destroy anyone who opens the Moebius Ring between the worlds. And, as it happens, prior to his involuntary absence, the Professor left his transdimensional equipment in the basement of the Museum plugged-in and running....

So it is that Ilya, as he has secretly dreamed, is called upon to save the mad scientist's beautiful daughter. With his squirrel gun, his grandfather's sword, and his father's crucifix, Ilya races to save the girl, and, incidentally, the world.

Young Galen Waylock is the last watchman of the dream-gate beyond which ancient evils wait, hungry for the human world. For a thousand years, Galen's family stood guard, scorned by a world which dismissed the danger as myth. Now, the minions of Darkness stir in the deep, and the long, long watch is over. Galen's patient loyalty seems vindicated.

That loyalty is misplaced. The so-called Power of Light is hostile to modern ideas of human dignity and liberty. No matter who wins the final war between darkness and light, mankind is doomed either to a benevolent dictatorship or a malevolent one. And so Galen makes a third choice: the sleeping Champions of Light are left to sleep. Galen and his companions take the forbidden fairy-weapons themselves. Treason, murder, and disaster follow. The mortals must face the rising Darkness alone.

Young Galen Waylock is the last watchman of the Dream Gate, beyond which the ancient evils wait, hungry for the human world. For a thousand years, Galen's family has stood guard, scorned by a world that dismissed the danger as myth. Even Galen's father deserted their post. Discarding his belief in the other world, he left Castle Everness and the lonely coast of Maine to travel the world as a soldier.

But the warning bell has sounded in the dream world, unheeded. Now, the minions of Darkness have stirred in the deep and the long watch is over. An army of mythic monsters has invaded our world, and Galen and his friends have begun to fight them. To join the battle with universal darkness, even his father returns. The forces of light have gathered in Castle Everness, which must stand, or all is lost.

Hundreds of years in the future, after the collapse of the Western world, young Menelaus Illation Montrose grows up in what was once Texas as a gunslinging duelist for hire. But Montrose is also a mathematical genius—and a romantic who dreams of a future in which humanity rises from the ashes to take its place among the stars.

The chance to help usher in that future comes when Montrose is recruited for a manned interstellar mission to investigate an artifact of alien origin. Known as the Monument, the artifact is inscribed with data so complex, only a posthuman mind can decipher it. So Montrose does the unthinkable: he injects himself with a dangerous biochemical drug designed to boost his already formidable intellect to superhuman intelligence. It drives him mad.

Nearly two centuries later, his sanity restored, Montrose is awakened from cryo-suspension with no memory of his posthuman actions, to find Earth transformed in strange and disturbing ways, and learns that the Monument still carries a secret he must decode—one that will define humanity’s true future in the universe.

Continuing from Count to a Trillion, Menelaus Illation Montrose - Texas gunslinger, idealist, and posthuman genius - has gone into cryo-suspension following the discovery that, in 8,000 years, a powerful alien intelligence will reach Earth to assess humanity's value as slaves. Montrose intends to be alive to meet that threat, but he is awakened repeatedly throughout the centuries to confront the woes of an ever-changing and violent world, witnessing millennia of change compressed into a few years of subjective time. The result is a breathtaking vision of future history like nothing before imagined: sweeping, tumultuous, and evermore alien, as Montrose's immortal enemies and former shipmates from the starship Hermetic harness the forces of evolution and social engineering to continuously reshape the Earth in their image, seeking to create a version of man the approaching slavers will find worthy.

The year is 10,515 AD. The Hyades Armada, traveling at near lightspeed, will reach Earth in just four centuries to assess humanity's value as slaves. For the last 8,000 years, two opposing factions have labored to meet the alien threat in very different ways.

One of them is Ximen del Azarchel, immortal leader of the mutineers from the starship Hermetic and self-appointed Master of the World, who has allowed his followers to tamper continuously with the evolutionary destiny of Man, creating one bizarre race after another in an apparent search for a species the Hyades will find worthy of conquest.

The other is Menelaus Montrose, the posthuman Judge of Ages, whose cryonic Tombs beneath the surface of Earth have preserved survivors from each epoch created by the Hermeticists. Montrose intends to thwart the alien invaders any way he can, and to remain alive long enough to be reunited with his bride Rania, who is on a seventy-millennia journey to confront the Hyades' masters, tens of thousands of light-years away.

Now, with the countdown to the Hyades' arrival nearing its end, del Azarchel and Montrose square off for what is to be their final showdown for the fate of Earth, a battle of gunfire and cliometric calculus; powered armor and posthuman intelligence.

Judge of Ages is the wildly inventive third volume in a series exploring future history and human evolution from John C. Wright.

The epic and mind-blowing finale to this visionary space opera series surpasses all expectation: Menelaus Montrose, having forged an uneasy alliance with his immortal adversary, Ximen del Azarchel, maps a future on a scale beyond anything previously imagined. No longer concerned with the course of history across mere millennia, Montrose and del Azarchel have become the architects of aeons, bringing forth minds the size of planets as they steer the bizarre intellectual descendants of an extinct humanity.

Ever driving their labors and their enmity is the hope of reunion with their shared lost love, the posthuman Rania, whose eventual return is by no means assured, but who may unravel everything these eternal rivals have sought to achieve.

John C. Wright's The Architect of Aeons is the latest in his millennia spanning space opera.

The Vindication of Man is the epic and mind-blowing continuation of John C. Wright's visionary space opera series surpasses all expectation.

Menelaus Montrose, having renewed his enmity with his immortal adversary, Ximen del Azarchel, awaits the return of the posthuman princess Rania, their shared lost love. Rania brings with her the judgment of the Dominions ruling the known cosmos, which will determine the fate of humanity, once and for all. Vindication or destruction? And if it is somehow both, what manner of future awaits them?

Count to Infinity is John C. Wright's spectacular conclusion to the thought-provoking hard science fiction Eschaton Sequence, exploring future history and human evolution.

An epic space opera finale worthy of the scope and wonder of The Eschaton Sequence: Menelaus Montrose is locked in a final battle of wits, bullets, and posthuman intelligence with Ximen del Azarchel for the fate of humanity in the far future.

The alien monstrosities of Ain at long last are revealed, their hidden past laid bare, along with the reason for their brutal treatment of Man and all the species seeded throughout the galaxy. And they have still one more secret that could upend everything Montrose has fought for and lived so long to achieve.

What if your teachers taught you everythingexcept who you really are?

For Amelia and her friends, the strict English boarding school she lives in is all she has ever known. The sprawling estate, bordered by unknown territory on all four sides, is both orphanage, academy, and prison. The school has a large staff, but only five students, none of whom know what their real names are, or even how old they are.

Precocious and rebellious, all five teenagers are more than just prodigies. Amelia can see in four dimensions. Victor can control the molecular arrangement of matter. Vanity can find secret passageways where none existed before. Colin is a psychic. Quentin is a warlock.

And, as time goes by, theyre starting to suspect that none of them are entirely human...

John C. Wright established himself at the forefront of contemporary fantasy with Orphans of Chaos, which launched a new epic adventure.

Wright's new fantasy, continuing in Fugitives of Chaos, is about five orphans raised in a strict British boarding school who begin to discover that they may not be human beings. The students at the school do not age, while the world around them does. The orphans have been kidnapped from their true parents, robbed of their powers, and raised in ignorance by super-beings: pagan gods, fairy-queens, Cyclopes, sea-monsters, witches, or things even stranger.

Amelia is apparently a fourth-dimensional being; Victor is a synthetic man who can control the molecular arrangement of matter around him; Vanity can find secret passageways through solid walls; Colin is psychic; Quentin is a warlock. Each power comes from a different paradigm or view of the inexplicable universe, and they should not be able to co-exist under the same laws of nature. They must learn to control their strange abilities in order to escape their captors. Something very important must be at stake in their imprisonment.

Titans of Chaos completes John Wright's The Chronicles of Chaos. Launched in Orphans of Chaos--a Nebula Award Nominee for best novel in 2006, and a Locus Year's Best Novel pick for 2005--and continued in Fugitives of Chaos, the trilogy is about five orphans raised in a strict British boarding school who discovered that they are not human.

The students have been kidnapped, robbed of their powers, and raised in ignorance by super-beings. The five have made incredible discoveries about themselves. Amelia is apparently a fourth-dimensional being; Victor is a synthetic man who can control the molecular arrangement of matter; Vanity can find secret passageways through solid walls; Colin is a psychic; Quentin is a warlock. Each power comes from a different paradigm or view of the universe. They have learned to control their strange abilities and have escaped into our world: now their true battle for survival begins.

The Golden Age is Grand Space Opera, a large-scale SF adventure novel in the tradition of A. E. Van vogt and Roger Zelazny, with perhaps a bit of Cordwainer Smith enriching the style. It is an astounding story of super science, a thrilling wonder story that recaptures the excitements of SF's golden age writers.

The Golden Age takes place 10,000 years in the future in our solar system, an interplanetary utopian society filled with immortal humans. Within the frame of a traditional tale-the one rebel who is unhappy in utopia-Wright spins an elaborate plot web filled with suspense and passion.

Phaethon, of Radamanthus House, is attending a glorious party at his family mansion to celebrate the thousand-year anniversary of the High Transcendence. There he meets first an old man who accuses him of being an impostor and then a being from Neptune who claims to be an old friend. The Neptunian tells him that essential parts of his memory were removed and stored by the very government that Phaethon believes to be wholly honorable. It shakes his faith. He is an exile from himself.

And so Phaethon embarks upon a quest across the transformed solar system--Jupiter is now a second sun, Mars and Venus terraformed, humanity immortal--among humans, intelligent machines, and bizarre life forms that are partly both, to recover his memory, and to learn what crime he planned that warranted such preemptive punishment. His quest is to regain his true identity.

The Golden Age is one of the major, ambitious SF novels of the year and the international launch of an important new writer in the genre.

The Phoenix Exultant is a continuation of the story begun in The Golden Age and like it, a grand space opera in the tradition of Jack Vance and Roger Zelazny (with a touch of Cordwainer Smith-style invention).

At the conclusion of the first book, Phaethon of Radamanthus House, was left an exile from his life of power and privilege. Now he embarks upon a quest across the transformed solar system--Jupiter is a second sun, Mars and Venus terraformed, humanity immortal--among humans, intelligent machines, and bizarre life forms, to recover his memory, to regain his place in society and to move that society away from stagnation and toward the stars. And most of all Phaethon's quest is to regain ownership of the magnificent starship, the Phoenix Exultant, the most wonderful ship ever built, and fly her to the stars.

The Phoenix Exultantis an astounding story of super science, a thrilling wonder story that recaptures the verve of SF's golden age writers It is a suitably grand and stirring fulfillment of the promise shown in The Golden Age and confirms John C. Wright as a major new talent in the field. He concludes the Golden Age trilogy in The Golden Transcendence.

Begun with The Golden Age, continued with The Phoenix Exultant, and now concluding in The Golden Transcendence, The Golden Age trilogy is Grand Space Opera, an SF adventure saga in the tradition of A. E. Van Gogt, Roger Zelazny and Cordwainer Smith. It is an astounding story of super-science, a thrilling wonder story that recaptures the elan of SF's golden age writers in the suspenseful and passionate tale of Phaeton, a lone rebel unhappy in utopia.

The end of the Millennium is imminent, when all minds, human, posthuman, cybernetic, sophotechnic, will be temporarily merged into one solar-system-spanning supermind called the Transcendence. This is not only the fulfillment of a thousand years of dreams, it is a day of doom, when the universal mind will pass judgment on the all the races of humanity and transhumanity.

The mighty ship Phoenix Exultant is at last in the hands of her master, Phaethon the Exile is at her helm and his dream of starflight in alive once more. He is being hunted by alien agents, the eerie and deadly Lords of the Silent Oecumene, who would steal the Phoenix Exultant and turn it into a weapon.

The all-encompassing Mind of the Golden Transcendence is waking. Will it endorse Phaeton's dream or face the first interstellar war?