Search Worlds Without End

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #1 October 2006. It can also be found in the anthology Realms: The First Year of Clarkesworld Magazine (2007), edited by Sean Wallace and Nick Mamatas.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

The Man in the High Castle for the 21st century, A Man Lies Dreaming is the award-winning novel by Lavie Tidhar, the next Philip K. Dick.

Deep in the heart of history's most infamous concentration camp, a man lies dreaming. His name is Shomer, and before the war he was a pulp fiction author. Now, to escape the brutal reality of life in Auschwitz, Shomer spends his nights imagining another world - a world where a disgraced former dictator now known only as Wolf ekes out a miserable existence as a low-rent PI in London's grimiest streets.

An extraordinary story of revenge and redemption, A Man Lies Dreaming is the unforgettable testament to the power of imagination.

The world of Heven was populated, centuries ago, by Melanesian settlers from distant Earth. It is a peaceful, quiet world—yet it harbours ancient secrets. Kal just wants to fly. But flying is the one thing forbidden on Heven—a world dominated by the mysterious, ever present clouds in the skies. What do they hide? For Kal, finding the answer might mean his death—but how far will you go to realise your dreams?

There are kin and there are -- kin. There are not many dragons, but there are many who think they are, or want to be, or claim to remember being.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

There is only one truth Gorel of Golirisgunslinger, addict, touched by the Black Kissis interested in: finding a way back home, to the great empire from which he had been stolen as a child and from which he had been flung, by sorcery, far across the World. It started out simple: get to Falang-Et, find the mirror, find what truth it may hold. But nothing is simple for Gorel of Goliris...When Gorel forms an uneasy allianceand ménage à troiswith an Avian spy and a half-Merlangai thief, things only start to get complicated. Add a murdered merchant, the deadly Mothers of the House of Jade, the rivalry of gods and the machinations of a rising Dark Lord bent on conquest, and things start to get out of hand. Only one things for sure: by the time this is over, there will be blood. Not to mention sex and drugs . . . or guns and sorcery.

Popular short fiction writer Lavie Tidhar gathers some of his best work in one collection. Stories that are infused with centuries of tradition and painted with Hebrew mythology. We meet the Tzaddik as he faces off against a vengeful angel intent on sending the Fallen to hell. The shapeshifting Rat fights lycanthropic Nazis. The Rabbi takes us on a thoughtful and amusing journey into the possibilities of a Jewish state in the heart of Africa. Finally, all three protagonists appear in an old-fashioned caper story that will leave you breathless.

Includes a special introduction from Hugo Award-nominated author Laura Anne Gilman.

Table of Contents:

• An Introduction: Why You Should Read This Collection. And Then Read It Again. - by Laura Anne Gilman
• The Heist - (2005)
• Transylvania Mission - (2004)
• Uganda
• The Dope Fiend - (2005)

Security through physicality. Security through redundancy. Security through obscurity.

How do immortal artificial intelligences defend themselves? With an air gap. With a security force that has no connection to anything that can harm them. With a young woman, trained to fight and to die who, along with her cohort, must keep them safe. But in Xanadu things don't always go as planned...

Read the full story for free at Tor Reactor

Three wise men came from the East for the infant Jesus in The New Testament. Three brave companions accompany the Buddha in the Chinese classic A Journey to the West.

Could they have been the same three?

Guided by a star, three strange companions arrive in the barbarous land of Judea to seek a newborn child--a possible messiah to some, and the reincarnation of the Budda to others. When the child's life is threatened, his family and new guardians escape to Egypt, returning years later, to a Jewish land on the cusp of annihilation by the Roman Empire.

Once a general in the Judean army, now a Roman agent, Josephus Flavius is sent by Caesar back to his home land to observe and report on the actions of the troubling young man now preaching sedition in the Galilee--a boy with the unsettling powers of kung-fu...

Their lives would collide in a cataclysmic confrontation between Romans and Jews, between empire and rebels--and change the world forever...

1941: an hour before the attack on Pearl Harbour, a man from the future materialises in President Roosevelt's office. His offer of military aid may cut the War and its pending atrocities short, and alter the course of the future...

The future: welcome to Mars, where the lives of three ordinary people become entwined in one dingy smokesbar the moment an assassin opens fire. The target: the mysterious Bill Glimmung. But is Glimmung even real? The truth might just be found in the remote FDR Mountains, an empty place, apparently of no significance, but where digital intelligences may be about to bring to fruition a long-held dream of the stars...

Mixing mystery and science fiction, the Holocaust and the Mars of both Edgar Rice Burroughs and Philip K. Dick, Martian Sands is a story of both the past and future, of hope, and love, and of finding meaning--no matter where--or when--you are.

Finalist for the Sturgeon Award for Best Short Science Fiction

When a mysterious message arrives from vanished New Atlantis, a restless Mai undertakes the perilous journey to its drowned isles. But the journey is long and hard: through the Blasted Plains and the ancient cities of Tyr and Suf, through shipwreck and wilderness.

For this is a world where ants develop inexplicable weapons, where a lonely robot lives surrounded by cats in the ruins of old Paris, and where floating coral islands host sleeping sentience. Mai's journey takes her by land, sea and air to the islands of New Atlantis, and to the nightmare prison buried underneath old London.

On her way she will find heartbreak and love - and a new life, awakening.

This story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June 2019.

Lavie Tidhar was in Dar-es-Salaam during the American embassy bombings in 1998, and stayed in the same hotel as the Al Qaeda operatives in Nairobi. Since then he and his now-wife have narrowly avoided both the 2005 King's Cross and 2004 Sinai attacks-experiences that led first to his memorable short story "My Travels with Al-Qaeda" and later to the creation of Osama.

In a world without global terrorism Joe, a private detective, is hired by a mysterious woman to find a man: the obscure author of pulp fiction novels featuring one Osama Bin Laden: Vigilante...

"Selfies", by Lavie Tidhar, is a creepy little horror tale about the fate of a young woman who makes the mistake of a lifetime when she buys a new phone in the local mall.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Terminal by Lavie Tidhar is an emotionally wrenching science fiction story about people, who, either having nothing to lose or having a deep desire to go into space, travel to Mars via cheap, one-person, one-way vehicles dubbed jalopies. During the trip, those in the swarm communicate with each other, their words relayed to those left behind.

This story is included in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume 11 (2017), edited by Jonathan Strahan, The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 2 (2017), edited by Neil Clarke, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Worlds Seen in Passing: Ten Years of Tor.com Short Fiction (2018), edited Irene Gallo.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Delia Welegtabit discovered two things during her childhood on a South Pacific island: her love for mathematics and a novel that isn't supposed to exist. But the elusive book proves unexpectedly dangerous. Oskar Lens, a science fiction-obsessed mobster in the midst of an existential crisis, will stop at nothing to find the novel. After Delia's husband Levi goes missing, she seeks help from Daniel Chase, a young, face-blind book dealer.

The infamous novel Lode Stars was written by the infamous Eugene Charles Hartley: legendary pulp science-fiction writer and founder of the Church of the All-Seeing Eyes. In Hartley's novel, a doppelganger of Delia searches for her missing father in a strange star system. But is any of Lode Stars real? Was Hartley a cynical conman on a quest for wealth and immortality, creating a religion he did not believe in? Or was he a visionary who truly discovered the secrets of the universe?

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, April 2009. It can also be found in the anthology Clarkesworld: Year Three (2013), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Into the reality called the Escapement rides the Stranger, a lone gunman on a quest to rescue his son from a parallel world. But it is too easy to get lost on a shifting landscape full of dangerous versions of his son's most beloved things: cowboys gone lawless, giants made of stone, downtrodden clowns, ancient battles, symbol storms and more shadowy forces at play.

But the flower the Stranger seeks still lies beyond the Mountains of Darkness. Time is running out, as he journeys deeper and deeper into the secret heart of an unforeseen world.

This short story originally appeared in Fantasy Magazine, July 2009. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Seventh Annual Collection (2010), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read the full story for free at Fantasy Magazine.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, February 2010. It can also be found in the anthology Clarkesworld: Year Four (2013), edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This short story originally appeared at Eclipse Online, December 24, 2012. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection (2013), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read the full story for free at Night Shade Books.

Sturgeon Award nominated short story. It originally appeared on Strange Horizons, 14 June 2010. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Five (2011), edited by Jonathan Strahan and The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection (2011), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read the full story for free at Strange Horizons.

A space opera adventure set in a universe controlled and run by Jewish religious authorities. An enforcer is sent to a distant planet where he discovers an android who changes his mind about what is right and wrong.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk and Eco-Speculation (2017), edited by Phoebe Wagner and Brontë Christopher Wieland. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection (2018), edited by Garnder Dozois.

This short story originally appeared in Fantasy Magazine, May 2010. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection (2011), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read the full story for free at Fantasy Magazine.

Into the city of Tel Aviv the whirlwinds come, and nothing will ever be the same.

Through a city torn apart by a violence they cannot comprehend, three disparate people -- a documentary film-maker, a yeshiva student, and a psychotic fireman -- must try to survive, and try to find meaning: even if it means being lost themselves. As Tel Aviv is consumed, a strange mountain rises at the heart of the city, and shows the outline of what may be another, alien world beyond. Can there be redemption there? Can the fevered rumours of a coming messiah be true?

A potent mixture of biblical allusions, Lovecraftian echoes, and contemporary culture, The Tel Aviv Dossier is part supernatural thriller, part meditation on the nature of belief -- an original and involving novel painted on a vast canvas in which, beneath the despair, humour is never absent.

Experience the last days of Tel Aviv.

This novella originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July-August 2016. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2017, edited by Rich Horton.

For seventy years they guarded the British Empire. Oblivion and Fogg inseparable friends bound together by a shared fate. Until one night in Berlin in the aftermath of the Second World War and a secret that tore them apart.

But there must always be an account... and the past has a habit of catching up to the present.

Now recalled to the Retirement Bureau from which no one can retire Fogg and Oblivion must face up to a past of terrible war and unacknowledged heroism - a life of dusty corridors and secret rooms of furtive meetings and blood-stained fields - to answer one last impossible question:

What makes a hero?

When pulp-fiction writer Lior Tirosh returns to his homeland in East Africa, much has changed. Palestina?a Jewish state established in the early 20th century?is constructing a massive border wall to keep out African refugees. Unrest in the capital, Ararat, is at fever pitch.

While searching for his missing niece, Tirosh begins to act as though he is a detective from one of his own novels. He is pursued by ruthless members of the state's security apparatus while unearthing deadly conspiracies and impossible realities. For if it is possible for more than one Palestina to exist, the barriers between the worlds are beginning to break.

Can dreams come true? They can if you win the lottery, which promises to provide what your heart desires. For a humble shopkeeper in Yiwu, it's a living, selling lottery tickets. Until a winning ticket opens up mysteries he'd never imagined.

The full story can be read for free at Tor.com.

A retelling of Arthurian myth...

Everyone thinks they know the story of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. The fact is they don't know sh*t.

Arthur? An over-promoted gangster.
Merlin? An eldritch parasite.
Excalibur? A shady deal with a watery arms dealer.
Britain? A clogged sewer that Rome abandoned just as soon as it could.

A savage and cutting epic fantasy, equally poetic and profane, By Force Alone is a magical adventure and a subversive masterwork.

Lavie Tidhar takes on the myth of Robin Hood and his merry men in a viscerally entertaining, ominously subversive and poetically profane remixing of the myths and legends that shaped a nation...

Things are definitely not right in Nottingham. Rebecca, daughter of a Jewish money-lender, has a sense for it.

A mad monk schemes to resurrect the Christ from body parts. A bone harpist murders creatures of legend for a price. A fae creature binds its wings and embraces a new God and his son.

And don't even mention the Hood. The Man in Green. The Prince of Thieves. The tick-tock taker of the ten-toll tax. What hope have the series of sheriffs sent to hold the peace?

It's the forest, you see. Sherwood. Ice Age ancient, impenetrable, hiding a dark and secret heart. But hearts, no matter how black, no matter how hidden, are not immune to change. The old world is dying... and a terrifying new one is waiting to take its place.

Rebecca senses an opportunity. But how far is she willing to go, and what price -- because there is always a price -- will she have to pay?

A worldwide diaspora has left a quarter of a million people at the foot of a space station. Cultures collide in real life and virtual reality. The city is a weed, its growth left unchecked. Life is cheap and data is cheaper.

When Boris Chong returns to Tel Aviv from Mars, much has changed. Boris's ex-lover Miriam is raising a strangely familiar child who can tap into the data stream of a mind with the touch of a finger. His cousin Isobel is infatuated with a robotnik--a cyborg ex-Israeli soldier who might well be begging for parts. Even his old flame Carmel--a hunted data-vampire--has followed him back to a planet where she is forbidden to return.

Rising above all is Central Station, the interplanetary hub between all things: the constantly shifting Tel Aviv; a powerful virtual arena, and the space colonies where humanity has gone to escape the ravages of poverty and war. Everything is connected by the Others, powerful entities who, through the Conversation--a shifting, flowing stream of consciousness--are just the beginning of irrevocable change.

The city known as Neom is many things to many beings, human or otherwise. It is a tech wonderland for the rich and beautiful; an urban sprawl along the Red Sea; and a port of call between Earth and the stars.

In the desert, young orphan Elias has joined a caravan, hoping to earn his passage off-world. But the desert is full of mechanical artefacts, some unexplained and some unexploded. Recently, a wry, unnamed robot has unearthed one of the region's biggest mysteries: the vestiges of a golden man.

In Neom, childhood affection is rekindling between loyal shurta-officer Nasir and hardworking flower-seller Mariam. But Nasu, a deadly terrorartist, has come to the city with missing memories and unfinished business. Just one robot can change a city's destiny with a single rose--especially when that robot is in search of lost love.

Lavie Tidhar's (Unholy Land, The Escapement) newest lushly immersive novel, Neom, which includes a guide to the Central Station-verse, is at turns gritty, comedic, transportive, and fascinatingly plausible.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology The Lowest Heaven (2013), edited by Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection (2014), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read or listen to the full story for free at Escapepod.

This short story originally appeared in Interzone, #244 January-February 2013, and was reprinted in Clarkesworld Magazine, #102 March 2015. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eight (2014), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection (2014), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This novelette originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, September 2013, and was reprinted in Clarkesworld, #130, July 2017. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014, edited by Rich Horton. The story was incorporated in the novel Central Station (2016).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #62 November 2011. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection (2012), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2012, edited by Rich Horton, and Clarkesworld: Year Six (2014), edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace. The story appears in slightly rewritten form in the novel Central Station (2016).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Robots: The Recent A. I. (2012), edited by Roich Horton and Sean Wallace, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, November 2016. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2013, edited by Rich Horton, and The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirtieth Annual Collection (2013), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is in a slightly edited form incorporated in the novel Central Station (2016).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, September 2014. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection (2015), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story was later incorporated in the fixup novel Central Station (2016).

No vampire is ever innocent

The wandering Judge Dee serves as judge, jury, and executioner for any vampire who breaks the laws designed to safeguard their kind's survival. This new case in particular puts his mandate to the test.

Originally published on 11 November 2020, read it for free at Tor.com

Judge Dee is back to solve a brand-new case involving the mysterious death of the vampire Count Werdenfels. The mystery? Who killed him. The twist? Three different people are proudly proclaiming to have committed the crime.

Originally published on 10 February 2021, read it for free at Tor.com

Judge Dee returns to solve a new case involving a Parisian party gone wrong. But this time? Everyone in attendance is a suspect, including the judge himself.

Originally published on 15 September 2021, read it for free at Tor.com

Paris is burning and Judge Dee and Jonathan are on the run. To guarantee their safety, they join a band of seven vampires escaping to England. The only problem? Someone in their midst is killing off members of their group one by one. It's of no matter to the Judge, provided they don't breach the Unalienable Obligations, but inevitably he's drawn into events.

Originally published on 16 February 2022, read it for free at Tor.com

Judge Dee must himself stand trial before his fellow vampires for the loss of a valuable manuscript, even as those vampires are murdered, one by one, by an unknown hand.

Originally published on 9 November 2022, read it for free at Tor.com

While visiting the mysterious castle of Maidstone for an investigation, Judge Dee and Jonathan discover the only thing more menacing than a vampire child is twin vampire children...

Originally published on 25 October 2023, read it for free at Tor.com

The world of speculative fiction is expansive; it covers more than one country, one continent, one culture. Collected here are sixteen stories penned by authors from Thailand, the Philippines, China, Israel, Pakistan, Serbia, Croatia, Malaysia, and other countries across the globe. Each one tells a tale breathtakingly vast and varied, whether caught in the ghosts of the past or entangled in a postmodern age.

Among the spirits, technology, and deep recesses of the human mind, stories abound. Kites sail to the stars, technology transcends physics, and wheels cry out in the night. Memories come and go like fading echoes and a train carries its passengers through more than simple space and time. Dark and bright, beautiful and haunting, the stories herein represent speculative fiction from a sampling of the finest authors from around the world.

Table of contents:

• S.P. Somtow (Thailand) - "The Bird Catcher"
• Jetse de Vries (Netherlands) - "Transcendence Express"
• Guy Hasson (Israel) - "The Levantine Experiments"
• Han Song (China) - "The Wheel of Samsara"
• Kaaron Warren (Australia/Fiji) - "Ghost Jail"
• Yang Ping (China) - "Wizard World"
• Dean Francis Alfar (Phillippines) - "L'Aquilone du Estrellas (The Kite of Stars)"
• Nir Yaniv (Israel) - "Cinderers"
• Jamil Nasir (Palenstine) - "The Allah Stairs"
• Tunku Halim (Malaysia) - "Biggest Baddest Bomoh"
• Aliette de Bodard (France) - "The Lost Xuyan Bride"
• Kristin Mandigma (Phillippines) - "Excerpt from a Letter by a Social-realist Aswang"
• Aleksandar Žiljak (Croatia) - "An Evening In The City Coffehouse, With Lydia On My Mind"
• Anil Menon (India) - "Into the Night"
• Mélanie Fazi (France, translated by Christopher Priest) - "Elegy"
• Zoran Živkovic (Serbia, translated by Alice Copple-Tošic) - "Compartments"

In The Apex Book of World SF 2, editor Lavie Tidhar collects short stories by science fiction and fantasy authors from Africa and Latin America.

An expedition to an alien planet; Lenin rising from the dead; a superhero so secret he does not exist. In The Apex Book of World SF 2, World Fantasy Award nominated editor Lavie Tidhar brings together a unique collection of stories from around the world. Quiet horror from Cuba and Australia; surrealist fantasy from Russia and epic fantasy from Poland; near-future tales from Mexico and Finland, as well as cyberpunk from South Africa. In this anthology one gets a glimpse of the complex and fascinating world of genre fiction--from all over our world.

Featuring work from noted international authors such as Will Elliot, Hannu Rajaniemi, Shweta Narayan, Lauren Beukes, Ekaterina Sedia, Nnedi Okorafor, and Andrzej Sapkowski.

Table of contents

• "Alternate Girl's Expatriate Life" by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
• "Mr. Goop" by Ivor W. Hartmann
• "Trees of Bone" by Daliso Chaponda
• "The First Peruvian in Space" by Daniel Salvo (translated by Jose B. Adolph)
• "Eyes in the Vastness of Forever" by Gustavo Bondoni
• "The Tomb" by Chen Qiufan (translated by the author)
• "The Sound of Breaking Glass" by Joyce Chng
• "A Single Year" by Csilla Kleinheincz (translated by the author)
• "The Secret Origin of Spin-Man" by Andrew Drilon
• "Borrowed Time" by Anabel Enríquez Piñeiro (translated by Daniel W. Koon)
• "Branded" by Lauren Beukes
• "December 8th" by Raúl Flores (translated by Daniel W. Koon)
• "Hungry Man" by Will Elliott
• "Nira and I" by Shweta Narayan
• "Nothing Happened in 1999" by Fábio Fernandes
• "Shadow" by Tade Thompson
• "Shibuya no Love" by Hannu Rajaniemi
• "Maquech" by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• "The Glory of the World" by Sergey Gerasimov
• "The New Neighbours" by Tim Jones
• "From the Lost Diary of TreeFrog7" by Nnedi Okorafor
• "The Slows" by Gail Hareven (translated by Yaacov Jeffrey Green)
• "Zombie Lenin" by Ekaterina Sedia
• "Electric Sonalika" by Samit Basu
• "The Malady" by Andrzej Sapkowski (translated by Wiesiek Powaga)
• "A Life Made Possible Behind The Barricades" by Jacques Barcia

These stories run the gamut from science fiction, to fantasy, to horror. Some are translations (from German, Chinese, French, Spanish, and Swedish), and some were written in English. The authors herein come from Asia and Europe, Africa and Latin America. Their stories are all wondrous and wonderful, and showcase the vitality and diversity that can be found in the field. They are a conversation, by voices that should be heart. And once again, editor Lavie Tidhar and Apex Publications are tremendously grateful for the opportunity to bring them to our readers.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - Lavie Tidhar
• Courtship in the Country of Machine-Gods - Benjanun Sriduangkaew (Thailand)
• A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight - Xia Jia (China)
• Act of Faith - Fadzilshah Johanabos (Malaysia)
• The Foreigner - Uko Bendi Udo (Nigeria)
• The City of Silence - Ma Boyong (China)
• Planetfall - Athena Andreadis (Greece)
• Jungle Fever - Zulaikha Nurain Mudzor (Malaysia)
• To Follow the Waves - Amal El-Mohtar (Lebanon/Canada)
• Ahuizotl - Nelly Geraldine García-Rosas (Mexico)
• The Rare Earth - Biram Mboob (Gambia)
• Spider's Nest - Myra Çakan (Germany)
• Waiting with Mortals - Crystal Koo (Philippines)
• Three Little Children - Ange (France)
• Brita's Holiday Village - Karin Tidbeck (Sweden)
• Regressions - Swapna Kishore (India)
• Dancing on the Red Planet - Berit Ellingsen (Korea/Norway)

Now firmly established as the benchmark anthology series of international speculative fiction, volume 4 of The Apex Book of World SF sees debut editor Mahvesh Murad bring fresh new eyes to her selection of stories.

From Spanish steampunk and Italian horror to Nigerian science fiction and subverted Japanese folktales, from love in the time of drones to teenagers at the end of the world, the stories in this volume showcase the best of contemporary speculative fiction, wherever it's written.

Featuring:

• Kuzhali Manickavel -- Six Thing We Found During The Autopsy
• Yukimi Ogawa -- In Her Head, In Her Eyes
• Rocío Rincón Fernández -- The Lady of the Soler Colony (Translated from Spanish by James & Marian Womack.)
• Chinelo Onwualu -- The Gift of Touch
• Deepak Unnikrishnan -- Sarama
• Elana Gomel -- The Farm
• Saad Z. Hossain -- Djinns Live by the Sea
• Haralambi Markov -- The Language of Knives
• Nene Ormes -- The Good Matter (Translated from Swedish by Lisa J Isaksson and Nene Ormes.)
• Samuel Marolla -- Black Tea (Translated from Italian by Andrew Tanzi.)
• Prathibha Nadeeshani Dissanayake -- Jinki & the Paradox
• Sese Yane -- The Corpse
• Dilman Dila -- How My Father a Became God
• Isabel Yap -- A Cup of Salt Tears
• Swabir Silayi -- Colour Me Grey
• Sabrina Huang -- Setting Up Home (Translated from Chinese by Jeremy Tiang.)
• Vajra Chandrasekera -- Pockets Full of Stones
• Zen Cho -- The Four Generations of Chang E
• Tang Fei -- Pepe (Translated from Chinese by John Chu.)
• Julie Novakova -- The Symphony of Ice and Dust
• JY Yang -- Tiger Baby (c) 2013. First published in In The Belly of the Cat
• Natalia Theodoridou -- The Eleven Holy Numbers of the Mechanical Soul
• Thomas Olde Heuvelt -- The Boy Who Cast No Shadow (Translated from Dutch by Laura Vroomen.)
• Shimon Adaf -- Like A Coin Entrusted in Faith (Translated from Hebrew by the Author.)
• Usman T. Malik -- The Vaporization Enthalpy of a Peculiar Pakistani Family
• Johann Thorsson -- First, Bite Just a Finger
• Bernardo Fernández -- The Last Hours of The Final Days (Translated from the Spanish by author.)
• Celeste Rita Baker -- Single Entry

The landmark anthology series of international speculative fiction returns with volume 5 of The Apex Book of World SF. Cris Jurado joins series editor Lavie Tidhar to highlight the best speculative fiction from around the world.

Cyberpunk from Spain, Singapore and Japan; mythology from Venezuela, Korea and First Nations; stories of the dead from Zimbabwe and Egypt, and space wonders from India, Germany and Bolivia. And much more. The fifth volume of the ground-breaking World SF anthology series reveals once more the uniquely international dimension of speculative fiction.

Table of Contents:

• Vina Jie-Min Prasad (Singapore) -- "A Series of Steaks"
• Daína Chaviano (Cuba, translated by Matthew D. Goodwin) -- "Accursed Lineage"
• Darcie Little Badger (USA/Lipan Apache) -- "Nkásht íí"
• T.L. Huchu (Zimbabwe) -- "Ghostalker"
• Taiyo Fujii (Japan, translated by Matthew D. Goodwin) -- "Violation of the TrueNet Security Act"
• Vandana Singh (India) -- "Ambiguity Machines: An Examination"
• Basma Abdel Aziz (Egypt, translated by Elisabeth Jaquette) -- "Scenes from the Life of an Autocrat"
• Liliana Colanzi (Bolivia, translated by Jessica Sequeira) -- "Our Dead World"
• Bo-young Kim (South Korea, translated by Jihyun Park & Gord Sellar) -- "An Evolutionary Myth"
• Israel Alonso (Spain, translated by Steve Redwood) -- "You Will See the Moon Rise"
• Sara Saab (Lebanon) -- "The Barrette Girls"
• Chi Hui (China, translated by John Chu) -- "The Calculations of Artificials"
• Ana Hurtado (Venezuela) -- "El Cóndor del Machángara"
• Karla Schmidt (Germany, translated by Lara M. Harmon) -- "Alone, on the Wind"
• Eliza Victoria (Philippines) -- "The Seventh"
• Tochi Onyebuchi (Nigeria/USA) -- "Screamers"
• R.S.A. Garcia (Trinidad and Tobago) -- "The Bois"
• Giovanni De Feo (Italy) -- "Ugo"

Twenty-six new short stories representing the state of the art in international science fiction.

The future is coming. It knows no bounds, and neither should science fiction.

They say the more things change the more they stay the same. But over the last hundred years, science fiction has changed. Vibrant new generations of writers have sprung up across the globe, proving the old adage false. From Ghana to India, from Mexico to France, from Singapore to Cuba, they draw on their unique backgrounds and culture, changing the face of the genre one story at a time.

Prepare yourself for a journey through the wildest reaches of the imagination, to visions of Earth as it might be and the far corners of the universe. Along the way, you will meet robots and monsters, adventurers and time travellers, rogues and royalty.

In The Best of World SF, award-winning author Lavie Tidhar acts as guide and companion to a world of stories, from never-before-seen originals to award winners, from twenty-three countries and seven languages. Because the future is coming and it belongs to us all.

Stories:

• 'Immersion' by Aliette de Bodard
• 'Debtless' by Chen Qiufan
• 'Fandom for Robots' by Vina Jie-Min Prasad
• 'Virtual Snapshots' by Tlotlo Tsamaase
• 'What The Dead Man Said' by Chinelo Onwualu
• 'Delhi' by Vandana Singh
• 'The Wheel of Samsara' by Han Song
• 'Xingzhou' by Yi-Sheng Ng
• 'Prayer' by Taiyo Fujii
• 'The Green Ship' by Francesco Verso
• 'Eyes of the Crocodile' by Malena Salazar Macia
• 'Bootblack' by Tade Thompson
• 'The Emptiness in the Heart of all Things' by Fabio Fernandes
• 'The Sun From Both Sides' by R.S.A. Garcia
• 'Dump' by Cristina Jurado
• 'Rue Chair' by Gerardo Horacio Porcayo
• 'His Master's Voice' by Hannu Rajaniemi
• 'Benjamin Schneider's Little Greys' by Nir Yaniv
• 'The Cryptid' by Emil H. Petersen
• 'The Bank of Burkina Faso' by Ekaterina Sedia
• 'An Incomplete Guide...' by Kuzhali Manickavel
• 'The Old Man with The Third Hand' by Kofi Nyameye
• 'The Green' by Lauren Beukes
• 'The Last Voyage of Skidbladnir' by Karin Tidbeck
• 'Prime Meridian' by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• 'If At First You Don't Succeed' by Zen Cho

Twenty-nine new short stories representing the state of the art in international science fiction.

The second annual installment to the 'rare and wonderful' (The Times) The Best of World SF Volume 1, this collection of twenty-nine stories, including eight original and exclusive additions, represents the state of the art in international science fiction.

Navigating around the globe, The Best of World SF Volume 2 features writers from Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Czech Republic, Greece, Grenada, India, Iraq, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, The Philippines, Poland, Russia, Singapore, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

Each story has been selected by World SF expert and award-winning author Lavie Tidhar. Taking us into space -- Mars at first, then the stars -- and then back to a strange, transformed Earth via AI, gods, aliens and the undead, the collection traces the ever-changing meaning of the genre from some of the most exciting voices writing today.

This is not a retrospective of what science fiction around the world used to look like. This is a snapshot of what some of it looks like now. And it's never been more exciting.

LATE EXTRA!
BOMB OUTRAGE IN LONDON!

A masked terrorist has brought London to its knees -- there are bombs inside books, and nobody knows which ones. On the day of the launch of the first expedition to Mars, by giant cannon, he outdoes himself with an audacious attack.

For young poet Orphan, trapped in the screaming audience, it seems his destiny is entwined with that of the shadowy terrorist, but how? His quest to uncover the truth takes him from the hidden catacombs of London on the brink of revolution, through pirate-infested seas, to the mysterious island that may hold the secret to the origin not only of the shadowy Bookman, but of Orphan himself...

Like a steam-powered take on V for Vendetta, rich with satire and slashed through with automatons, giant lizards, pirates, airships and wild adventure. The Bookman is the first of a series.

CAN'T FIND A RATIONAL EXPLANATION TO A MYSTERY? CALL IN THE QUIET COUNCIL. The mysterious and glamorous Lady De Winter is one of their most valuable agents. A despicable murder inside a locked and bolted room on the Rue Morgue in Paris is just the start. This whirlwind adventure will take Milady to the highest and lowest parts of that great city - and cause her to question the very nature of reality itself.

When Mycroft Holmes is murdered in London, it is up to retired shadow executive Smith to track down his killer - and stumble on the greatest conspiracy of his life. Strange forces are stirring into life around the globe, and in the shadow game of spies nothing is certain. Fresh from liberating a strange alien object in Abyssinia - which might just be the mythical Ark of the Covenant - young Lucy Westerna, Holmes' protégé, must follow her own path to the truth while, on the other side of the world, a young Harry Houdini must face his greatest feat of escape - death itself.

As their paths converge the body count mounts up, the entire world is under threat, and in a foreboding castle in the mountains of Transylvania a mysterious old man weaves a spider's web of secrets and lies.

Airship battles, Frankenstein monsters, alien tripods and death-defying acts: The Great Game is a cranked-up steampunk thriller in which nothing is certain - not even death.