Search Worlds Without End

Why pay for costumes, scenery, props or actors when the most brilliant drama of all time is unfolding before your very eyes, in vivid color--in 1050 A.D.?

Join the film crew of that stupendous motion picture saga VIKING COLUMBUS as they journey back in time to capture history in the making.

Friday

Friday is her name... She is as thoroughly resourceful as she is strikingly beautiful. She is one of the best interplanetary agents in the business. And she is an Artificial Person... the ultimate glory of genetic engineering.

Friday... not since Valentine Michael Smith, hero of the bestselling Stranger in a Strange Land, has Robert Heinlein created a more captivating protagonist... in a novel every bit as entertaining and exciting as this Grand Master of science fiction, now in his seventy-fifth year, has given us over his four-decade career.

Friday is a secret courier. She is employed by a man known to her only as "Boss." Operating from and over a near-future Earth, in which North America has become Balkanized into dozens of independent states, where culture has become bizarrely vulgarized and chaos is the happy norm, she finds herself on shuttlecock assignment at Boss's seemingly whimsical behest. From New Zealand to Canada, from one to another of the new states of America's disunion, she keeps her balance nimbly with quick, expeditious solutions to one calamity and scrape after another. Desperate for human identity and relationships, she is never sure whether she is one step ahead of, or one step behind, the ultimate fate of the human race.

Job: A Comedy of Justice

The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

After he firewalked in Polynesia, the world wasn't the same for Alexander Hergensheimer, now called Alec Graham. As natural accidents occurred without cease, Alex knew Armageddon and the Day of Judgement were near. Somehow he had to bring his beloved heathen, Margrethe, to a state of grace, and, while he was at it, save the rest of the world....

In The Cat Who Walked through Walls, Heinlein creates his most compelling character ever: Dr. Richard Ames, ex-military man, sometime writer, and unfortunate victim of mistaken identity.

When a stranger attempting to deliver a cryptic message is shot dead at his dinner table, this precipitates his marriage to Gwen Novak and sends the newlyweds scurrying to the Moon and then to the planet Tertius, headquarters of the Time Corps.

Ames is thrown headfirst into danger, intrigue, and other dimensions where Lazarus Long still thrives, where Jubal Harshaw lives surrounded by beautiful women, and where a daring plot to rescue the sentient computer called Mike can change the direction of all human history. A physical description follows...

The Number of the Beast

When two male and two female supremely sensual, unspeakably cerebral humans find themselves under attack from aliens who want their awesome quantum breakthrough, they take to the skies—and zoom into the cosmos on a rocket roller coaster ride of adventure and danger, ecstasy and peril.

Time Enough for Love

Transcript of Interaction Between Astronaut Mike Scudderman and the OnStar Hands-Free A.I. Crash Adv

Time Enough for Love follows Lazarus Long through a vast and magnificent timescape of centuries and worlds. Heinlein's longest and most ambitious work, it is the story of a man so in love with Life that he refused to stop living it; and so in love with Time that he became his own ancestor.

Grady Hendrix

Transcript of Interaction Between Astronaut Mike Scudderman and the OnStar Hands-Free A.I. Crash Advisor originally appeared in Lightspeed, June 2011.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Man of Two Worlds

Brian Herbert
Frank Herbert

Frank Herbert's last published novel, a charming and witty science fiction adventure coauthored with his son Brian. What if the entire universe were the creation of alien minds? After an unfortunate spaceship accident, the hedonistic and ambitious human Lutt Hansen, Jr., finds himself sharing his body and mind with a naive alien dreamer. The two have to survive numerous dangers, schemes and assassination attempts... but can they survive each other?

Planets for Sale

A. E. Van Vogt
E. Mayne Hull

Planets for sale!

They said that Artur Blord was ruthless, a heartless manipulator whose blind lust for power would ruin the Ridge Stars.

They said he had to be eliminated because he was too much of a threat to their secret.

But just who were they, the accusers of Artur Bloyd?

And what was the secret which Artur Bloyd threatened?

Beyond the answers to these two questions lay a tortured path along which Artur Bloyd compelled himself to travel. Menaced by a terrifying array of lethal forces, Blord risked his life against alien aggressors as well as more human adversaries.

Never knowing at what moment death might overtake him, he fought to fulfill a dream; that he might one day claim the title that riches couldn't buy: Master of the Ridge Stars!

The Pirates of Zan

Murray Leinster

Because Bran Hoddan was a serious electronice engineer, he didn't want any part of his planet's heritage. For he was from Zan -- and Zan's only occupation was spaceship piracy!

Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic

Terry Jones

Arguably the greatest collaboration in the whole history of comedy!

Bestselling author Douglas Adams wrote the storyline based on his CD-ROM game of the same name (as this novel, not as him, obviously).

Terry Jones of Monty Python wrote the book. In the nude! Parents be warned! Most of the words in this book were written by a naked man!

So. You want to argue with that? All right, we give in.

Starship Titanic is the greatest, most fabulous, most technologically advanced interstellar cruise line ever built. It is like a cross between the Queen Mary, the Chrysler Building, Tutankhamen's tomb, and Venice. Furthermore, it cannot possibly go wrong....

Sadly, however, seconds after its launch it undergoes SMEF, or Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure. And disappears.

Except, everything's got to be somewhere.

Coming home that night, on a little known planet called Earth, Dan and Lucy Gibson find something very large and very, very shiny sticking into their house...

Several People are Typing

Calvin Kasulke

Gerald, a mid-level employee of a New York--based public relations firm has been uploaded into the company's internal Slack channels--at least his consciousness has. His colleagues assume it's an elaborate gag to exploit the new work-from home policy, but now that Gerald's productivity is through the roof, his bosses are only too happy to let him work from... wherever he says he is.

Faced with the looming abyss of a disembodied life online, Gerald enlists his co-worker Pradeep to help him escape, and to find out what happened to his body. But the longer Gerald stays in the void, the more alluring and absurd his reality becomes.

Meanwhile, Gerald's colleagues have PR catastrophes of their own to handle in the real world. Their biggest client, a high-end dog food company, is in the midst of recalling a bad batch of food that's allegedly poisoning Pomeranians nationwide. And their CEO suspects someone is sabotaging his office furniture. And if Gerald gets to work from home all the time, why can't everyone? Is true love possible between two people, when one is just a line of text in an app? And what in the hell does the :dusty-stick: emoji mean?

In a time when office paranoia and politics have followed us home, Calvin Kasulke is here to capture the surprising, absurd, and fully-relatable factors attacking our collective sanity... and give us hope that we can still find a human connection.

HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!!

Keffy R. M. Kehrli

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, October 2013. It can also be found in the anthology Help Fund My Robot Army!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects (2014), edited by John Joseph Adams.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

The Human Angle

Originally published in 1956, this collection of early gems won acclaim from reviewers all over the country, richly deserving a place as one of six simultaneously published volumes celebrating William Tenn. The Human Angle contains the following: "Project Hush", "The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway", "Wednesday's Child, Party of the Two Parts", "The Flat-Eyed Monster", "The Human Angle" and "A Man of Family".

Table of Contents:

Project Hush - (1954)
The Discovery of Morniel Mathaway - (1955)
Wednesday's Child - (1956)
The Servant Problem - (1955)
Party of the Two Parts - (1954)
The Flat-Eyed Monster - (1955)
The Human Angle - (1948)
A Man of Family

The Seven Sexes

The Seven Sexes is almost entirely dedicated to the cynicism of nature's prime conman, homo sapiens, in such a variety of stories that it is difficult to believe they all derive from the same source, capped by a hilarious piece of nonsense in which a has-been producer cons the seven variable sexes of Venus into starring in a "typical" Hollywood love epic - with results that defy description.

Contents:

Child's Play - (1947)
The Malted Milk Monster - (1959)
Errand Boy - (1947)
The House Dutiful - (1948)
Mistress Sary - (1947)
Sanctuary - (1957)
Venus and the Seven Sexes - (1949)
Bernie the Faust - (1963)

The Square Root of Man

This William Tenn collection includes:

Alexander the Bait - (1946)
The Last Bounce - (1950)
She Only Goes Out at Night... - (1956)
My Mother Was a Witch - (1966)
The Jester - (1951)
Confusion Cargo - (1948)
Venus Is a Man's World - (1951)
Consulate - (1948)
The Lemon-Green Spaghetti-Loud Dynamite-Dribble Day - (1967)

The Wooden Star

Frederik Pohl
C. M. Kornbluth

THE WOODEN STAR comes close to being a pacifist collection, the general theme being an ironic and sometimes bitter comment on man's stupidity to man. But Tenn's humor is irrepressible and bursts forth in a joyous political satire on the war of hte sexes.

Contents:

Generation of Noah - (1951)
Brooklyn Project - (1948)
The Dark Star - (1957)
Null-P - (1951)
Eastward Ho! - (1958)
The Deserter - (1953)
Betelgeuse Bridge - (1951)
"Will You Walk a Little Faster" - (1951)
It Ends with a Flicker - (1956)
Lisbon Cubed - (1958)
The Masculinist Revolt - (1965)

The Best of Damon Knight

Damon Knight

Table of Contents:

Dark of the Knight - (1976) - essay by Barry N. Malzberg
Introduction (The Best of Damon Knight) - (1976) - essay by Damon Knight
Not With a Bang - (1950) - shortstory
To Serve Man - (1950) - shortstory
Cabin Boy - (1951) - novelette
The Analogues - (1952) - shortstory
Babel II - (1953) - novelette
Special Delivery - (1954) - novelette
Thing of Beauty - (1958) - novelette
Anachron - (1954) - shortstory
Extempore - (1956) - shortstory
Backward, O Time - (1956) - shortstory
The Last Word - (1957) - shortstory
Man in the Jar - (1957) - shortstory
The Enemy - (1958) - shortstory
Eripmav - (1958) - shortstory
A Likely Story - (1956) - shortstory
Time Enough - (1960) - shortstory
Mary - (1964) - novelette
The Handler - (1960) - shortstory
The Big Pat Boom - (1963) - shortstory
Semper Fi - (1964) - shortstory
Masks - (1968) - shortstory
Down There - (1973) - shortstory

Gladiator-at-Law

Caution! You are about to enter a world...

...where all engineering ingenuity has been employed for public spectacles of torture and death.

...where the stock market operated with pari-mutuel machines.

...where a court clerk transcribes testimony on punch cards, then feeds it to a jury machine.

...where the dream real-estate development of today has become a cracked-concrete savage jungle.

In this world, young lawyer Charles Mundin battles a great combine of corporate interest--battles them in board meetings and in dark alley--in a struggle that lays bare some brutal promises about the future... promises we are beginning to make right now.

Psi Hunt

Michael Kurland

A sixteen-year-old girl is found drugged, naked and alone in a hotel room muttering the same words over and over again.

"Siren - and tire - and - possibly air. No more than forty thousand sigh".

But what does it mean?

Lieutenant J.G. Robert Burrows from the US Naval Intelligence was sent to investigate the scene after fears arise that this incident could be an attempt to spy on the John Paul Jones society - a society made up of US Naval officials.

Burrows must call upon the help of Addison Friendly - the owner of Astral Emprise - a company which deals with metaphysics, mysticism, the occult, paranormal phenomena, psychic forces, astrology, ghosts, Ghoulies, vampires, and things what go bump in the night.

However, the US Navy have not been entirely up front with Burrows.

Why are the People's Republic of China so interested in the John Paul Jones Society?

What secrets are they hiding?

Burrows and Friendly must work together to uncover the secrets of both countries before another World War breaks loose - a war that could mean the end of humanity.

Robots Have No Tails

Henry Kuttner

Galloway Gallegher is his name. He's the greatest inventor since Leonardo Da Vinci and Tom Swift. With toothpicks and twine, a few empty beer cans and some stray isotopes he can make--well, anything imaginable. (And what an imagination he has!) He's the most delightful "scientist" in science fiction.

In Science fiction literature there's one element which is all too rare: humor. Not often does a writer succeed in combining the seriousness of science with the more light-hearted side of life. Lewis Padgett, creater of that delightfully whacky genius Gallegher, is one writer who succeeds. And what a rib-tickling success it is!

But it isn't that Gallegher is merely a screwball. Not at all. As a scientist, he's tops. It's just that Gallegher suffers (if you can call it that) from an insatiable mania--the very thing which releases his subconscious mind and turns him into such a remarkably creative genius. The only trouble is he's spending half his time fighting his way out of a hangover, trying to figure out just what he did invent. The results will astonish and amuse you--just as they do Gallegher himself.

And then, besides our hero, there's his friend Joe. Joe, with his unmorbid Narcissus complex, is more than human--a particularly fascinating fact inasmuch as Joe, after all, is just a robot. But what a robot!

This is a book packed with adventures, gadgets, and fun--which you're certain to enjoy.

Contents:

The Proud Robot
Gallegher Plus
The World Is Mine
Ex Machina
Time Locker

Space Chantey

R. A. Lafferty

Originally published as Ace Double H-56 with Pity About Earth by Ernest Hill.

Set in the far future, Space Chantey chronicles the adventures of Space Captain Roadstrum and his crew, on a journey through galaxies resonant with myth and peril as Roadstrum valiantly battles to return across the cosmos to Big Tulsa, the Capital of the World, and to his wife and young son Tele-Max.

Rocket Science

Jay Lake

In ROCKET SCIENCE, Jay Lake's first novel, Vernon Dunham's friend Floyd Bellamy has returned to Augusta, Kansas after serving in World War II, but he hasn't come back empty-handed: he's stolen a super-secret aircraft right from under the Germans. Vernon doesn't think it's your ordinary run-of-the-mill aircraft. For one thing, it's been buried under the Arctic ice for hundreds of years. When it actually starts talking to him, he realizes it doesn't belong in Kansas-or anywhere on Earth. The problem is, a lot of folks know about the ship and are out to get it, including the Nazis, the U.S. Army-and that's just for starters. Vernon has to figure out how to communicate with the ship and unravel its secrets before everyone catches up with him. If he ends up dead, and the ship falls into the wrong hands, it won't take a rocket scientist to predict the fate of humanity.

A Trace of Memory

Keith Laumer

From the Ruins of Stonehenge to the Starships of Vallon he sought the secret of a trace of memory. When the man named Legion signed on as a soldier of fortune he did not expect to end up as the master of a private island nor to cower in ancient druid pits nor fight for his life in the great hall of Okk-Hamiloth, on a planet galaxies away.

The Author of the Acacia Seeds and Other Extracts from the Journal of the Association of Therolingui

Ursula K. Le Guin

Locus Award nominated short story.

The story originally appeared in the anthology Fellowship of the Stars (1974), edited by Terry Carr. It has been reprinted many times and can be found in the anthologies:

The Best Science Fiction of the Year #4 (1974), edited by Terry Carr
The Arbor House Treasury of Science Fiction Masterpieces (1983), edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Robert Silverberg
The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF (1994), edited by Kathryn Cramer and David G. Hartwell

The story is included in the collections:

The Compas Rose (1982)
Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences (1990)
Outer Space, Inner Lands (2012)
The Wind's Twelve Quarters and The Compass Rose (2015)
The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin (2016)

The Cyberiad

Stanislaw Lem

Trurl and Klaupacius are constructor robots who try to out-invent each other. They travel to the far corners of the cosmos to take on freelance problem-solving jobs, with dire consequences for their employers.

Amnesia Moon

Jonathan Lethem

In Jonathan Lethem's wryly funny second novel, we meet a young man named Chaos, who's living in a movie theater in post-apocalyptic Wyoming, drinking alcohol, and eating food out of cans.

It's an unusual and at times unbearable existence, but Chaos soon discovers that his post-nuclear reality may have no connection to the truth. So he takes to the road with a girl named Melinda in order to find answers. As the pair travels through the United States they find that, while each town has been affected differently by the mysterious source of the apocalypse, none of the people they meet can fill in their incomplete memories or answer their questions. Gradually, figures from Chaos's past, including some who appear only under the influence of intravenously administered drugs, make Chaos remember some of his forgotten life as a man named Moon.

The Climacticon

Harold Livingston

A rather sexy sci-fi tale, and a hilarious romp!

Where did it come from?

Conceived in the turgid mind-depths of a milquetoast inventor who wanted to make girls (double entendre intentional)

Born by virtue of a hero's twisted desire to make money

Nurtured and reared in the loving care of an advertising industry which, as everyone knows, has only the best interests of mankind at heart

The Climacticon burst full-blown on a stunned but happy public which rapidly became clamorously enthusiastic:

Men welcomed it as the best thing since Adam discovered Eve. Women denounced it as an outrageous invasion of privacy, a threat to planned parenthood, and a boon to "unsuccessful sex fiends" (apparently an astonishing 94% of the population!).

The census bureau demanded quadrupled appropriations. National income plummeted, due to the demise of certain highly profitable enterprises. And, most important of all, the government formed a committee.

And all Hell broke loose!

Soulstealer

Sarah J. Maas

When the Bat's away, the Cat will play. It's time to see how many lives this cat really has.

Two years after escaping Gotham City's slums, Selina Kyle returns as the mysterious and wealthy Holly Vanderhees. She quickly discovers that with Batman off on a vital mission, Gotham City looks ripe for the taking.

Meanwhile, Luke Fox wants to prove that as Batwing he has what it takes to help people. He targets a new thief on the prowl who has teamed up with Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. Together, they are wreaking havoc. This Catwoman is clever--she may be Batwing's undoing.

In this third DC Icons book, Selina is playing a desperate game of cat and mouse, forming unexpected friendships and entangling herself with Batwing by night and her devilishly handsome neighbor Luke Fox by day. But with a dangerous threat from the past on her tail, will she be able to pull off the heist that's closest to her heart?

Elves of Antarctica

Paul J. McAuley

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Drowned Worlds (2016), edited by Jonathan Strahan. 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 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eleven (2017), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

One Last Stop

Casey McQuiston

For cynical twenty-three-year-old August, moving to New York City is supposed to prove her right: that things like magic and cinematic love stories don't exist, and the only smart way to go through life is alone. She can't imagine how waiting tables at a 24-hour pancake diner and moving in with too many weird roommates could possibly change that. And there's certainly no chance of her subway commute being anything more than a daily trudge through boredom and electrical failures.

But then, there's this gorgeous girl on the train.

Jane. Dazzling, charming, mysterious, impossible Jane. Jane with her rough edges and swoopy hair and soft smile, showing up in a leather jacket to save August's day when she needed it most. August's subway crush becomes the best part of her day, but pretty soon, she discovers there's one big problem: Jane doesn't just look like an old school punk rocker. She's literally displaced in time from the 1970s, and August is going to have to use everything she tried to leave in her own past to help her. Maybe it's time to start believing in some things, after all.

The Big Ball of Wax: A Novel of Tomorrow's Happy World

Shepherd Mead

Were you disturbed by 1984? Here is what could happen if things turned out the other way.

In the happy world of 1992, breakfast foods are ready-chewed for hurried mornings, human beings smell like pine trees, and the constellation PEPSI COLA wheels around in the sky.

Everything is so wonderful--until a delectable young lady named Molly Blood comes along with something called XP. It stands for Experience, for utter ecstasy for everybody by electrical current. In fact, it's so beautiful that people are terrified and have to take violent action.

The Carefully Considered Rape of the World: A Novel About the Unspeakable

Shepherd Mead

This is the story of women becoming inexplicably pregnant. And it happens to every type of woman, regardless of race or creed, from nuns to lesbians.

It happened to Beauford Abel's wife. With her, a perfume tester called; one of his more exotic samples made her black out for a split second. At least, she thought it was a split second...

When Beauford eventually figures out what's going on, he plays amateur sleuth. But instead of finding sex maniacs, he finds brainy apes planning to invade the earth. And the brainy apes are clever enough to ask Beauford to handle their PR. They'd like to be liked when they land. And they'd like the baby apes that earth women will soon be giving birth to, to be liked as well.

You might think this is a pretty funny way for invaders to act. In this book, everything's funny.

Behold the Ape

James Morrow

An acerbic, entertaining caper of evolution, gangsters, Darwin's brain, and the Golden Age of Hollywood.

When Sonya Orlova, a successful 1930s horror-film actress, crosses paths with a gorilla whose brain has been swapped for the frozen cerebrum of the late Charles Darwin, the two are inspired to write and produce evolution-themed monster movies--with Sonya in her greatest role, Korgora the Ape Woman!

As this offbeat and controversial Hollywood series finds a devoted cult audience, Sonia's relationship with her strange simian collaborator acquires an intensity neither could have imagined.

Then disaster strikes, as zealous opponents to Darwin's ideas contrive to put the Ape Woman out of business.

By turns satiric and romantic, madcap and thoughtful, Behold the Ape is at once an outré love story, a tribute to classic monster movies, and a science-fictional celebration of that beleaguered institution we call public education.

Convergent Series

Larry Niven

This impressive collection of twenty-one stories by Larry Niven -- science fiction, fantasy, contemporary fiction, and mixed genres (detective-noir-meets-aliens) -- highlights the range of the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author's work. From science fiction which edges toward horror ("Bordered in Black"), sf conundrums ("Singularities Make Me Nervous") to three Draco Tavern stories and many with clever twists, CONVERGENT SERIES is a feast for lovers of the short story.

Contains:

Bordered in Black
One Face
Banquo's Ghost
The Meddler
Dry Run
Convergent Series
The Deadlier Weapon
The Nonesuch
Singularities Make Me Nervous
The Schumann Computer
Assimilating Our Culture, That's What They're Doing!
Grammar Lesson
The Subject is Closed
Cruel and Unusual
Transfer of Power
Cautionary Tales
Rotating Cylinders and the Possibility of Global Causality Violation
Plaything
Mistake
Night on Mispec Moor
Wrong Way Street

The Draco Tavern

Larry Niven

From the mind of #1 New York Times bestselling author Larry Niven, come twenty-six tales and vignettes from this interplanetary gathering place, collected for the first time in one volume.

When a tremendous spacecraft took orbit around the Earth's moon and began sending smaller landers down toward the North Pole, the newly arrived visitors quickly set up a permanent spaceport at Mount Forel in Siberia. Their presence attracted many, and a few people grew conspicuously rich from secrets they learned from talking to the aliens. One of these men, Rick Schumann established a tavern catering to all of various species of visiting aliens, a place he named the Draco Tavern.

This collection includes:

"The Subject Is Closed": A priest visits the tavern and goes one-on-one with a chirpsithra alien on the subject of God and life after death.

"Table Mannners: A Folk Tale": Rick Schumann is invited to hunt with five folk aliens, but he's not quite sure what their hunt entails, or if he will be the hunted.

"Wisdom of Demons": The age-old question of wisdom vs. knowledge is asked when Rick is confronted by a human who has been granted the wisdom of an individual gligstith(click)optok alien.

"Losing Mars" in this unpublished tale, a group of aliens who call Mars and its moon home, arrive at the Tavern only to find that humans have mostly forgotten about their neighboring planet.

Contains:

The Subject is Closed
Grammar Lesson
Assimilating Our Culture, That's What They're Doing!
The Schumann Computer
The Green Marauder
The Real Thing
War Movie
Limits
Table Manners
One Night at the Draco Tavern
The Heights
The Wisdom of Demons
Smut Talk
SSoroghod's People
The Missing Mass
The Convergence of the Old Mind
Chyrsalis
The Death Addict
Storm Front
The Slow Ones
Cruel and Unusual
The One Who Stay Home
Breeding Maze
Playhouse
Lost
Losing Mars
Playground Earth

Made for Love

Alissa Nutting

Hazel has just moved into a trailer park of senior citizens, with her father and Diane--his extremely lifelike sex doll--as her roommates. Life with Hazel's father is strained at best, but her only alternative seems even bleaker. She's just run out on her marriage to Byron Gogol, CEO and founder of Gogol Industries, a monolithic corporation hell-bent on making its products and technologies indispensable in daily life. For over a decade, Hazel put up with being veritably quarantined by Byron in the family compound, her every movement and vital sign tracked. But when he demands to wirelessly connect the two of them via brain chips in a first-ever human "mind-meld," Hazel decides what was once merely irritating has become unbearable. The world she escapes into is a far cry from the dry and clinical bubble she's been living in, a world populated with a whole host of deviant oddballs.

As Hazel tries to carve out a new life for herself in this uncharted territory, Byron is using the most sophisticated tools at his disposal to find her and bring her home. His threats become more and more sinister, and Hazel is forced to take drastic measures in order to find a home of her own and free herself from Byron's virtual clutches once and for all.

Don't Forget Your Spacesuit, Dear

Jody Lynn Nye

A collection of humorous science fiction tales that follow the adventures of brave heroes and leaders who are still under the thumb of mom.

Table of Contents:

1 - From Your Mouth to God's Ear - novelette by Ellen Guon
24 - I Told You So - short story by Michael Scott
42 - You Never Call - short story by Robert Asprin
48 - A Mother's Lament - poem by Judith R. Conly
49 - Your Face Will Freeze Like That - short story by Morgan Llywelyn
63 - What's the Magic Word? - novelette by Jody Lynn Nye
86 - Don't Go Out in Holy Underwear - novelette by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
111 - Would You? - short story by William R. Forstchen
120 - Just Wait Until You Have Children of Your Own - short story by Esther M. Friesner
139 - You'll Catch Your Death of Colds - short story by Bill Fawcett
152 - The Golden Years - short story by Anne McCaffrey
163 - Maureen Birnbaum Pokes an Eye Out - short story by George Alec Effinger
182 - Clean Up Your Room! - short story by Laura Anne Gilman
201 - Return with Your Spacesuit, Or On It - short story by Christopher Stasheff and Eleanore Stasheff
221 - Don't Go Near the Water - short story by Terri Beckett and Chris Power
237 - Mother Knows Best - short story by Josepha Sherman
248 - Accidents Don't Just Happen - They're Caused - novelette by Elizabeth Moon
270 - The Starving Children on Mars - short story by Mike Resnick and Louise Rowder
284 - Don't Put That in Your Mouth, You Don't Know Where It's Been - novelette by Diane Duane

Midas World

Table of Contents:

The Fire-Bringer
The Midas Plague - (1954)
The Servant of the People - (1982)
The Man Who Ate the World - (1956)
The Farmer on the Dole - (1982)
The Lord of the Skies
The New Neighbors - (1983)

O Pioneer!

The overcrowded Earth isn't room enough for Evesham Giyt, a solitary and brilliant computer hacker who yearns for the long-gone frontiers of the past. Chasing stories of unspoiled beauty and endless possibility, he takes a leap across the stars to the rugged colony world of Tupelo and soon finds himself a respected member of the community and mayor of the colony's human population.

Humanity isn't the first race to colonize Tupelo: as mayor, Giyt is part of a council of races trying to peacefully coexist despite wildly disparate cultures and traditions. But as Giyt learns to like his alien neighbors, he begins to realize that his fellow humans may have other plans for Tupelo, plans that don't include peace but do include lots of dead aliens. It will be up to Giyt to crack the human conspiracy and carve out a future for all of Tupelo... before it gets him killed!

A Series of Steaks

Vina Jie-Min Prasad

This Hugo, Nebula, and Sturgeon Award-nominated Clarkesworld Reader's Poll-winning novelette originally appeared in Clarkesworld, #124, January 2017. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Twelve (2018), edited by Jonathan Strahan, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection (2018), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3 (2018), edited by Neil Clarke, and The Apex Book of World SF: Volume 5 (2018), edited by Cristina Jurado and Lavie Tidhar, and Nebula Awards Showcase 2019, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

A Dog Called Demolition

Robert Rankin

DANNY: THE PORTRAIT OF A SURREAL KILLER

Each one of us has an invisible space alien perched upon our shoulders controlling our thoughts. This is not a good thing!

Danny used to be a sad and lonely man, but now he is happy. Because now Danny has a dog of his very own. A nice big dog with a waggy tail and a smiley face. The dog's name is Demolition but only Danny can see him.

Men from The Ministry of Serendipity are monitoring Danny's every move. They have a special agent on the case, his name is Parton Vrane and he is half man and half cockroach.

Described as a nightmare journey to Hell and back, with only a brief stop off at a KFC for a quick bucket of grub and a visit to the toilet, A Dog called Demolition is a genuine horror story. Where Silence of the Lambs and Seven merely dipped their toes in terror's icy waters, Robert Rankin boldly takes off his lurex sock and really puts his foot in it.

Year Zero

Rob Reid

Low-level entertainment lawyer Nick Carter thinks it's a prank, not an alien encounter, when a redheaded mullah and a curvaceous nun show up at his office. But Frampton and Carly are highly advanced (if bumbling) extraterrestrials. The entire cosmos, they tell him, has been hopelessly hooked on American pop songs ever since "Year Zero" (1977 to us), resulting in the biggest copyright violation since the Big Bang and bankrupting the whole universe. Nick has just been tapped to clean up this mess before things get ugly. Thankfully, this unlikely galaxy-hopping hero does know a thing or two about copyright law.

Now, with Carly and Frampton as his guides, Nick has forty-eight hours to save humanity--while hoping to wow the hot girl who lives down the hall from him.

Yellow Blue Tibia

Adam Roberts

Russia, 1946. With the Nazis recently defeated, Stalin gathers half a dozen of the top Soviet science fiction authors in a dacha in the countryside. Convinced that the defeat of America is only a few years away-and equally convinced that the Soviet Union needs a massive external threat to hold it together-Stalin orders the writers to compose a massively detailed and highly believable story about an alien race poised to invade the earth. The little group of writers gets down to the task and spends months working until new orders come from Moscow to immediately halt the project. The scientists obey and live their lives until, in the aftermath of Chernobyl, the survivors gather again, because something strange has happened: the story they invented in 1946 is starting to come true.

Hearts of Oak

Eddie Robson

The buildings grow.
And the city expands.
And the people of the land are starting to behave abnormally.
Or perhaps they've always behaved that way, and it's normality that's at fault.

And the king of the land confers with his best friend, who happens to be his closest advisor, who also happens to be a talking cat. But that's all perfectly natural and not at all weird.

Iona, close to retirement, finds that the world she has always known is nothing like she always believed it to be. There are dark forces... not dark. There are uncanny forces... no, not uncanny. There are forces, anyway, mostly slightly odd ones, and they appear to be acting in mysterious ways. It's about town planning, it's about cats and it's about the nature of reality.

Allamagoosa

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, May 1955 and was reprinted on Sci Fiction, September 15, 2004. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Hugo Winners, Volume 1: (1955-61) (1963), edited by Isaac Asimov, Men of War (1984) edited by Jerry Pournelle, and The Great SF Stories 17 (1955) (1988), edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg. It is included in the collections Far Stars (1961), The Best of Eric Frank Russell (1978) and Major Ingredients: The Selected Short Stories of Eric Frank Russell (2000).

Super Extra Grande

Yoss

With playfulness and ingenuity in the tradition of Douglas Adams, the Cuban science fiction master Yoss delivers a space opera of intergalactic proportions with Super Extra Grande, the winner of the 20th annual UPC Science Fiction Award in 2011.

Set in a distant future, after the invention of faster-than-light space travel has propelled a still-immature mankind into the far corners of the Milky Way, the novel features creatures of immense variety--amoebas that cover entire worlds, sensual females that feed on substances from their males' reproductive systems, talking reptiles, and other creations drawn from the classics of Cuban and international science fiction--all of which serve as colleagues, fellow adventurers, sex partners, teachers, or members of the military high command in the Galactic Community governing this part of the universe. Our protagonist, Jan Amos Sangan Dongo, has a special role in this otherworldly menagerie: He is a veterinarian who specializes in treating enormous animals across the galaxy. When a colonial conflict threatens the fragile peace between the Galaxy's seven intelligent species, Dr. Sangan must embark on a daring mission to enter a gigantic creature and find two swallowed ambassadors--who also happen to be his competing love interests.

Coupling his own extensive studies in (earthly) biology with his vast curiosity and wild imagination, Yoss brings us a rare specimen in the richly parodic tradition of Cuban science fiction.

A Very Scalzi Christmas

Deck the halls with boughs of holly! 'Tis the season... for Santa's lawyer to talk about the legal status of the workshop elves, for Christmas to arrive in an unexpected month, and for the innkeeper at the nativity to spill the beans about what really went down on that one night in Bethlehem. It's not just Christmas. It's A Very Scalzi Christmas.

John Scalzi gift-wraps fifteen short takes on the holiday season -- interviews with holiday notables, "informational" articles about TV specials and Christmas carols, short stories and poems, and even a couple of nods to Thanksgiving and New Year's -- and puts them all into a stocking stuffer-sized package that makes the perfect gift for friends, family, or yourself. With stories both funny and touching, A Very Scalzi Christmas also features three new stories exclusive to this collection: "Christmas in July," "Jangle the Elf Grants Wishes" and "Resolutions For the New Year." A wonderful collection for the most wonderful time of the year.

Table of Contents:

Introduction
Science Fictional Thanksgiving Grace
A Bitter November
The 10 Least Successful Holiday Specials of All Time
An Interview With Santa's Lawyer
A Personal Top 10 of Things That Are Not Titles to Christmas Songs and/or Lifetime Holiday Movies and Honestly I Don't Understand Why
Christmas in July
Interview With Santa's Reindeer Wrangler
8 Things You Didn't Know You Didn't Know About Your Favorite Holiday Music
Jackie Jones and Melrose Mandy
Interview with the Christmas Bunny
Jangle the Elf Grants Wishes
Script Notes on The Birth of Jesus
Sarah's Sister
Interview With the Nativity Innkeeper
Resolutions for the New Year

Agent to the Stars

read "Agent to the Stars" online

The space-faring Yherajk have come to Earth to meet us and to begin humanity's first interstellar friendship. There's just one problem: They're hideously ugly and they smell like rotting fish.

So getting humanity's trust is a challenge. The Yherajk need someone who can help them close the deal.

Enter Thomas Stein, who knows something about closing deals. He's one of Hollywood's hottest young agents. But although Stein may have just concluded the biggest deal of his career, it's quite another thing to negotiate for an entire alien race. To earn his percentage this time, he's going to need all the smarts, skills, and wits he can muster.

Fuzzy Nation

Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas

Fuzzy Nation is John Scalzi's reboot of the classic H. Beam Piper novel Little Fuzzy. You can read about how the story came to be on John's blog Whatever.

Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It's a prestige posting, and Andrew is thrilled all the more to be assigned to the ship's Xenobiology laboratory.

Life couldn't be better... until Andrew begins to pick up on the fact that (1) every Away Mission involves some kind of lethal confrontation with alien forces, (2) the ship's captain, its chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these confrontations, and (3) at least one low-ranked crew member is, sadly, always killed.

Not surprisingly, a great deal of energy below decks is expendedon avoiding, at all costs, being assigned to an Away Mission. Then Andrew stumbles on information that completely transforms his and his colleagues' understanding of what the starship Intrepid really is... and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives.

Starter Villain

The Kaiju Preservation Society

Inheriting your uncle's supervillain business is more complicated than you might think. Particularly when you discover who's running the place.

Charlie's life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.

Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.

But becoming a supervillain isn't all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they're coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.

It's up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyper-intelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.

In a dog-eat-dog world... be a cat.

The President's Brain Is Missing

When COVID-19 sweeps through New York City, Jamie Gray is stuck as a dead-end driver for food delivery apps. That is, until Jamie makes a delivery to an old acquaintance, Tom, who works at what he calls "an animal rights organization." Tom's team needs a last-minute grunt to handle things on their next field visit. Jamie, eager to do anything, immediately signs on.

What Tom doesn't tell Jamie is that the animals his team cares for are not here on Earth. Not our Earth, at at least. In an alternate dimension, massive dinosaur-like creatures named Kaiju roam a warm and human-free world. They're the universe's largest and most dangerous panda and they're in trouble.

It's not just the Kaiju Preservation Society that's found its way to the alternate world. Others have, too--and their carelessness could cause millions back on our Earth to die.

The question is, how can you tell the President's brain is missing? And are we sure we need it back?

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Citizen in Space

Robert Sheckley's second story collection, including:

The Mountain Without a Name
The Accountant - (1954)
Hunting Problem - (1955)
A Thief in Time - (1954)
The Luckiest Man in the World - (1955)
Hands Off - (1954)
Something for Nothing - (1954)
A Ticket to Tranai - (1955)
The Battle - (1954)
Skulking Permit - (1954)
Citizen in Space - (1955)
Ask a Foolish Question - (1953)

Dimension of Miracles

Thomas Carmody wins the Intergalactic Sweepstakes and leaves Earth behind. He ends up following his fast-talking Prize from place to place, seeing talking dinosaurs, a perfect city smothering its residents with motherly love, a giant slightly bored God and much more. The only problem is that Death is chasing closely after him and there seems to be no way to get safely home...

Immortality, Inc.

2110 --- For a price, the Hereafter Corporation guaranteed life afer death --- but they couldn't promise what it would be like...

Mindswap

Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley

In the future, interstellar travel to alien worlds will be too expensive for most ordinary people. It certainly is for Marvin, a college student who wants to take a really good vacation. And so he signs up for what he can afford, a mindswap, in which your consciousness is swapped into the body of an alien lifeform. But Marvin is unlucky, and finds himself in the body of an interstellar criminal, a body that he has to vacate fast. But that criminal consciousness has stolen Marvin's earthly body, and Marvin has to find a body on the black market.

Travel from world to world with Marvin, each one crazier than the last, as he keeps finding far from ideal bodies in awful situations, just to stay alive.

Robert Sheckley was science fiction's in-house reply to the black humorists of the 1950s and 60s: Bruce Jay Friedman, Terry Southern, and the young Thomas Pynchon were his none-too-distant relatives; Mort Sahl's comedy, Charles Schultz's cartoons, and Tom Lehrer's songs all mined similar veins. Sheckley targeted the conformity and consumerism of our mid century technotopia while it was still under construction.

His new worlds, alternate universes, and future dystopias have only become more present with the passing years, even as his career, played out both in the pulp magazines and in front-line venues like Playboy and Omni, is a glimpse of a time when "science fiction writer" could be a kind of hipster credential. Mordant, absurdist, and deadpan, the best of Sheckley's dissident farces represent science fiction's high-water mark as an allegorical clearinghouse for twenty-century angst.

The People Trap

Tales From the Radiation Age

Sheckley's seventh story collection, including

"The People Trap" (F&SF 1968/6)
"The Victim from Space" (Galaxy 1957/4)
"Shall We Have a Little Talk?" (Galaxy 1965/10)
"Restricted Area" (Amazing 1953/6&7)
"The Odor of Thought" (Star Science Fiction Stories No.2, edited by Frederik Pohl, 1953)
"The Necessary Thing" (Galaxy 1955/6)
"Redfern's Labyrinth"
"Proof of the Pudding" (Galaxy 1952/8)
"The Laxian Key" (Galaxy 1954/11)
"The Last Weapon" (Star Science Fiction Stories No.1, edited by Frederik Pohl, 1953)
"Fishing Season" (Thrilling Wonder Stories 1953/8)
"Dreamworld"
"Diplomatic Immunity" (Galaxy 1953/8)
"Ghost V" (Galaxy 1954/10)

Jason Sheehan

In a post-apocalyptic America that has shattered into a hundred perpetually warring fiefdoms, anyone with a loud voice and a doomsday weapon can be king (and probably has been). Duncan Archer--con man, carpetbagger, survivor--has found a way to somehow successfully navigate the end of the world, with its giant killer robots, radioactive mutants, mad scientists, rampant nanotechnology, armed gangs, sea monsters, and 101 unpleasant ways to die.

But when he meets Captain James Barrow, a former OSS agent and the most wanted man in the world, Duncan finds himself a reluctant hero caught up in a whole new level of weird, rollicking adventure...

And the second most wanted man in the world.

Tales from the Radiation Age is a throwback to the pulp-origins of science fiction, painting a vision of the future that's richly detailed, wildly imaginative--and altogether too easy to imagine.

They Walked Like Men

Clifford D. Simak

Money was worthless; it had no value! It couldn't buy housing, clothing, or food. Someone with enormous quantities of cash was buying houses and tearing them down, buying stores and closing them.

Perhaps a few people could have stopped the transactions before it was too late. They could have said that Earth was being taken over by alien beings in the shapes of bowling balls, talking dogs, and dolls that walked like men.

In fact, they did say it. The trouble was, no one believed them!

Tik-Tok

Monday Begins on Saturday

Something has gone very seriously wrong with Tik-Tok's "asimov circuits." They should keep him on the straight and narrow, following Asimov's first law of robotics: A robot shall not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm. But, that's not what's happening. Although every thing looks fine from the surface, and Tik-Tok maintains the outward appearance of a mild-mannered robot, his agenda is murderously different. And, it's not just because of his artistic tendencies and sympathy for the robot rights movement, either.

Only Forward

Michael Marshall Smith

Only a handful of authors write with such startling originality that the uniqueness of their vision has become synonymous with their name. In Spares and One of Us, Michael Marshall Smith has earned that distinction. In this unsettling, suspenseful, and wildly imaginative novel he's written a tale that from page one hurtles us....

Only Forward

Call him Stark. If you have to. If you're lucky, you won't call him at all. Because if you do, it means you've got trouble. Big trouble. And the problem is that before Stark is done fixing something, a whole lot of other things usually get broken. Like laws and lives--and anyone who gets in the way. It's that attitude that's earned him his latest assignment: finding a missing VIP named Fell Alkland. The authorities believe Alkland has been kidnapped. Stark doesn't. He hasn't stayed alive this long without learning the basics of survival in a world hurtling straight to hell: Things are always more complicated than they seem. And when a job seems too easy, that's when something really ugly is about to happen. For Fell Alkland is about to become Stark's worst nightmare, a nightmare where anything can happen at any time--where friends can become enemies in a heartbeat and your most secret fear a soul-screaming reality. And the worst of it is that for this nightmare you don't even have to be asleep.

Snow Crash

Neal Stephenson

Only once in a great while does a writer come along who defies comparison--a writer so original he redefines the way we look at the world. Neal Stephenson is such a writer and Snow Crash is such a novel, weaving virtual reality, Sumerian myth, and just about everything in between with a cool, hip cybersensibility to bring us the gigathriller of the information age.

In reality, Hiro Protagonist delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo's CosaNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he's a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that's striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain threatening to bring about Infocalypse. Snow Crash is a mind-altering romp through a future America so bizarre, so outrageous...you'll recognize it immediately.

Zodiac

Neal Stephenson

Sangamon Taylor's a New Age Sam Spade who sports a wet suit instead of a trench coat and prefers Jolt from the can to Scotch on the rocks. He knows about chemical sludge the way he knows about evil -- all too intimately. And the toxic trail he follows leads to some high and foul places. Before long Taylor's house is bombed, his every move followed, he's adopted by reservation Indians, moves onto the FBI's most wanted list, makes up with his girlfriend, and plays a starring role in the near-assassination of a presidential candidate.

Closing the case with the aid of his burnout roomate, his tofu-eating comrades, three major networks, and a range of unconventional weaponry, Sangamon Taylor pulls off the most startling caper in Boston Harbor since the Tea Party. As he navigates this ecological thriller with hardboiled wit and the biggest outboard motor he can get his hands on, Taylor reveals himself as one of the last of the white-hatted good guys in a very toxic world.

Spaceballs: The Book

R. L. Stine

Spaceballs, the nastiest beings in the universe, have decided to kidnap the beautiful Princess Vespa. But she's already run off from her wedding and is speeding away in a Mercedes space coupe, accompanied by her robot, Dot Matrix. Meanwhile, our hero, Lone Starr, threatened by terrible Pizza the Hutt, is flying his Winnebago as far away as possible.

Will the wicked Spaceballs, led by the dreaful Dark Helmet and Colonel Sandurz, seize the Princess? Or will Lone Starr and his friends save the Princess from a fate worse than death?! Don't miss Spaceballs: The Book!

Never in This World

Idella Purnell Stone

Stories of the light fantastic - deliciously chilling, weirdly wonderful, frighteningly entertaining...

This is the stuff that daring dreams are made of...

shapes of things, sounds of things, somewhere, sometime - but NEVER IN THIS WORLD

Table of Contents:

Introduction (Never in This World) - (1971) - essay by Idella Purnell Stone
The Ambulance Made Two Trips - (1960) - short story by Murray Leinster
Dodger Fan - (1957) - short story by Will Stanton
Look Out! Duck! - (1957) - novelette by Randall Garrett
A Prize for Edie - (1961) - short story by J. F. Bone
Little Anton - (1951) - novelette by Reginald Bretnor
Dreamworld - (1955) - short story by Isaac Asimov
Make Mine Homogenized - (1960) - novelette by Rick Raphael
Through Time and Space with Ferdinand Feghoot - (1959) - short story by Reginald Bretnor
Rebel - (1962) - short story by Ward Moore
Senhor Zumbeira's Leg - (1962) - novelette by Felix Marti-Ibanez
Or Else - (1953) - short story by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
Critique of Impure Reason - (1962) - novelette by Poul Anderson

Arkady Strugatsky
Boris Strugatsky

When young programmer Alexander Ivanovich Privalov picks up two hitchhikers while driving in Karelia, he is drawn into the mysterious world of the National Institute for the Technology of Witchcraft and Thaumaturgy, where research into magic is serious business.

And where science, sorcery and socialism meet, can chaos be far behind?

The Dead Mountaineer's Inn: One More Last Rite for the Detective Genre

Boris Strugatsky
Arkady Strugatsky

When Inspector Peter Glebsky arrives at the remote ski chalet on vacation, the last thing he intends to do is get involved in any police work. He's there to ski, drink brandy, and loaf around in blissful solitude.

But he hadn't counted on the other vacationers, an eccentric bunch including a famous hypnotist, a physicist with a penchant for gymnastic feats, a sulky teenager of indeterminate gender, and the mysterious Mr. and Mrs. Moses. And as the chalet fills up, strange things start happening--things that seem to indicate the presence of another, unseen guest. Is there a ghost on the premises? A prankster? Something more sinister? And then an avalanche blocks the mountain pass, and they're stuck.

Which is just about when they find the corpse. Meaning that Glebksy's vacation is over and he's embarked on the most unusual investigation he's ever been involved with. In fact, the further he looks into it, the more Glebsky realizes that the victim may not even be human.

In this late novel from the legendary Russian sci-fi duo--here in its first-ever English translation--the Strugatskys gleefully upend the plot of many a Hercule Poirot mystery--and the result is much funnier, and much stranger, than anything Agatha Christie ever wrote.

Sturgeon Is Alive and Well…

Theodore Sturgeon

Table of Contents:

Foreword - (1971) - essay by Theodore Sturgeon
To Here and the Easel - (1954)
Slow Sculpture - (1970)
It's You! - (1970)
Take Care of Joey - (1971)
Crate - (1970)
The Girl Who Knew What They Meant - (1970)
Jorry's Gap - (1968)
It Was Nothing--Really! - (1969)
Brownshoes - (1969)
Uncle Fremmis - (1970)
The Patterns of Dorne - (1970)
Suicide - (1970)

Space Opera

Jack Vance

A society matron underwrites the interstellar tour of an Earth opera company, performing Beethoven, Mozart and Rossini for bewildered human and alien audiences on a kaleidoscopic range of planets. But intrigue and secret agendas complicate what was already a doubtful enterprise, and the matron's feckless nephew finds that the simple country girl he plans to marry is far more mysterious than she seems.

This is Jack Vance at his funniest, rolling out a rollicking picaresque tale where the belly laughs play a perfect duet with the grandmaster's sly observations on the absurdities of life, love and librettos.

A Fantasy of Dr. Ox

Jules Verne

In the somnolent Flemish town of Quiquendone disagreements are unheard of, courtships might last a decade and not a ripple of activity can be seen at all. But when the mysterious Dr Ox is tasked with providing lighting for the town, strange things begin to happen: animals become aggressive, fruits grow huge in size, plants climb more vigorously and tempers flare up, leading the once phlegmatic townsfolk to bitter confrontations and pushing them to the brink of all-out violence.

Verne, the acclaimed author of immortal tales of adventure and early science fiction, can be seen here in a different light, regaling readers of all ages with a light-hearted satire that, in its warnings about the dangers of scientific experimentation, has a clear and troubling resonance with our times.

Armageddon in Retrospect

First published on the anniversary of Kurt Vonnegut's death, Armageddon in Retrospect is a collection of twelve new writings - a fitting tribute to the author, and an essential contribution to the discussion of war, peace and humanity's tendency towards violence. Imbued with Vonnegut's trademark rueful humour, the pieces range from a visceral non-fiction recollection of the destruction of Dresden - to a painfully funny short story about three soldiers and their fantasies of the perfect meal.

Breakfast of Champions

In Breakfast of Champions, one of Kurt Vonnegut's most beloved characters, the aging writer Kilgore Trout, finds to his horror that a Midwest car dealer is taking his fiction as truth. What follows is murderously funny satire, as Vonnegut looks at war, sex, racism, success, politics, and pollution in America and reminds us how to see the truth.

Cat's Cradle

One of Vonnegut's major works, this is an apocalyptic tale of the planet's ultimate fate, featuring a cast of unlikely heroes.

Deadeye Dick

Deadeye Dick is Kurt Vonnegut's funny, chillingly satirical look at the death of innocence. Amid a true Vonnegutian host of horrors--a double murder, a fatal dose of radioactivity, a decapitation, an annihilation of a city by a neutron bomb--Rudy Waltz, aka Deadeye Dick, takes us along on a zany search for absolution and happiness. Here is a tale of crime and punishment that makes us rethink what we believe... and who we say we are.

Galapagos

Galápagos takes the reader back one million years, to a.d. 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galápagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave new, and totally different human race.

Player Piano

Slapstick or Lonesome No More!

Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Dr. Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a super computer and run completely by machines. His rebellion is a wildly funny, darkly satirical look at the modern society of the mid 20th century.

Welcome to the Monkey House

Slapstick presents an apocalyptic vision as seen through the eyes of the current King of Manhattan (and last President of the United States), a wickedly irreverent look at the all-too-possible results of today's follies. But even the end of life-as-we-know-it is transformed by Kurt Vonnegut's pen into hilarious farce--a final slapstick that may be the Almighty's joke on us all.

Why I Left Harry's All-Night Hamburgers

Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, these superb stories share Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.

Wikihistory

Desmond Warzel

This short story originally appeared in Abyss & Apex #24, Fourth Quarter 2007.

International Association of Time Travelers: Members' Forum
Subforum: Europe--Twentieth Century--Second World War Page 263

Read the full story for free at Abyss & Apex or Tor.com.

Lawrence Watt-Evans

Hugo Award winning and Nebula Award nominated short story. It was orginally published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, July 1987. The story can also be found in the anthologies The New Hugo Winners, Volume II (1992), edited by Isaac Asimov and The Greatest Science Fiction Stories of the 20th Century (1998), edited by Martin H. Greenberg. It is included in the collection Crosstime Traffic (1992).

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

National Lampoon's Doon

Ellis Weiner

National Lampoon's Doon brings the hottest science fiction phenomenon ever to a new, hysterical foaming head.

In a distant galaxy, far, far away, a plot is brewing as vast and elaborate as the Empire itself... to harvest the wild pools of beer that grow only on Doon, take control of the native pretzel population, and turn the plucky little orb into the lounge-planet of the universe!

And only one man, the slender-shouldered Pall, can stop the galaxy-wide web of intrigue that is fermenting on the savage, sugar-swept landscape of Doon.

At the Rialto

Nebula Award winning and Hugo Award nomnated novelette. It originally appeared in Omni, October 1989. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Seventh Annual Collection (1990), edited by Gardner Dozois, Nebula Awards 25 (1991), edited by Michael Bishop, and Women of Wonder: The Contemporary Years: SF by Women from the 1970s to the 1990s (1995), edited by Pamela Sargent. It is included in the collections Impossible Things (1994), Even the Queen and Other Short Stories (1998), The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories (2007) and Time Is the Fire: The Best of Connie Willis (2013).

Bellwether

Sandra Foster studies fads and their meanings for the HiTek corporation. Bennet O'Reilly works with monkey group behavior and chaos theory for the same company. When the two are thrust together due to a misdelivered package and a run of seemingly bad luck, they find a joint project in a flock of sheep. But a series of setbacks and disappointments arise before they are able to find answers to their questions.

Crosstalk

In the not-too-distant future, a simple outpatient procedure to increase empathy between romantic partners has become all the rage. And Briddey Flannigan is delighted when her boyfriend, Trent, suggests undergoing the operation prior to a marriage proposal -- to enjoy better emotional connection and a perfect relationship with complete communication and understanding. But things don't quite work out as planned, and Briddey finds herself connected to someone else entirely -- in a way far beyond what she signed up for.

It is almost more than she can handle -- especially when the stress of managing her all-too-eager-to-communicate-at-all-times family is already burdening her brain. But that's only the beginning. As things go from bad to worse, she begins to see the dark side of too much information, and to realize love -- and communication -- are far more complicated than she ever imagined.

D. A.

I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land

Theodora Baumgarten has just been selected as an IASA space cadet, and therein lies the problem. She didn't apply for the ultra-coveted posting, and doesn't relish spending years aboard the ship to which she's been assigned.

But the plucky young heroine, in true Heinlein fashion, has no plans to go along with the program. Aided by her hacker best friend Kimkim, in a screwball comedy that has become Connie Willis' hallmark, Theodora will stop at nothing to uncover the conspiracy that has her shanghaied.

Jim is in New York City at Christmastime shopping a book based on his blog--Gone for Good-- premised on the fact that "being nostalgic for things that have disappeared is ridiculous." Progress decides for people what they need and what's obsolete. It's that simple. Of course, not everyone agrees. After Jim bombs a contentious interview with a radio host who defends the sacred technology of the printed, tangible book, he gets caught in a rainstorm only to find himself with no place to take refuge other than a quaint, old-fashioned bookshop.

Ozymandias Books is not just any store. Jim wanders intrigued through stacks of tomes he doesn't quite recognize the titles of, none with prices. Here he discovers a mysteriously pristine, seemingly endless wonderland of books--where even he gets nostalgic for his childhood favorite. And, yes, the overwhelmed and busy clerk showing him around says they have a copy. But it's only after Jim leaves that he understands the true nature of Ozymandias and how tragic it is that some things may be gone forever...

This novella originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, November-December 2017. It was published in chapbook edition in 2018.

Remake

Terra Incognita: Three Novellas

It's the Hollywood of the future, where moviemaking's been computerized and live-action films are a thing of the past. It's a Hollywood where Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe are starring together in A Star Is Born, and if you don't like the ending, you can change it with the stroke of a key.

A Hollywood of warm bodies and sim-sex, of drugs and special effects, where anything is possible. Except for what one starry-eyed young woman wants to do: dance in the movies. It's an impossible dream, but Alis is not willing to give up. With a little magic and a lot of luck, she just might get her happy ending after all.

THREE CLASSIC SCI-FI NOVELLAS IN ONE VOLUME--from a Hugo and Nebula award-winning author

In Terra Incognita, Connie Willisexplores themes of love and mortality whilebrilliantly illuminating the human condition through biting satire.

Uncharted Territory
Findriddy and Carson are explorers, dispatched to a distant planet to survey its canyons, ridges, and scrub-covered hills. Teamed with a profit-hungry indigenous guide of indeterminate gender and an enthusiastic newcomer whose specialty is mating customs, the group battles hostile terrain as they set out for unexplored regions. Along the way, they face dangers, discover treasures, and soon find themselves in an alien territory of another kind: exploring the paths and precipices of sex--and love.

Remake
In the Hollywood of the future, live-action movies are a thing of the past. Old films are computerized and ruthlessly dissected, actors digitally ripped from one film and thrust into another. Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe in A Star Is Born? No problem. Hate the ending? Change it with the stroke of a key. Technology makes anything possible. But a starry-eyed young woman wants only one thing: to dance on the big screen. With a little magic and a lot of luck, she just may get her happy ending.

D.A.
Theodora Baumgarten is baffled and furious: Why was she selected to be part of a highly competitive interstellar cadet program? After all, she never even applied. But that hasn't stopped the powers that be from whisking her onto a spaceship bound for the prestigious Academy. With her protests ignored, Theodora takes matters into her own hands, aided by her hacker best friend, to escape the Academy and return to Earth--only to uncover a conspiracy that runs deeper than she could have imagined.

The Road to Roswell

Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station: Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0

When level-headed Francie arrives in Roswell, New Mexico, for her college roommate's UFO-themed wedding--complete with a true-believer bridegroom--she can't help but roll her eyes at all the wide-eyed talk of aliens, which obviously don't exist. Imagine her surprise, then, when she is abducted by one.

Odder still, her abductor is far from what the popular media have led her to expect, with a body like a tumbleweed and a mass of lightning-fast tentacles. Nor is Francie the only victim of the alien's abduction spree. Before long, he has acquired a charming con man named Wade, a sweet little old lady with a casino addiction, a retiree with a huge RV and a love for old Westerns, and a UFO-chasing nutjob who is thoroughly convinced the alien intends to probe them and/or take over the planet.

But the more Francie gets to know the alien, the more convinced she becomes that he's not an invader. That he's in trouble and she has to help him. Only she doesn't know how--or even what the trouble is.

Part alien-abduction adventure, part road trip saga, part romantic comedy, The Road to Roswell is packed full of Men in Black, Elvis impersonators, tourist traps, rattlesnakes, chemtrails, and Close Encounters of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth kind. Can Francie, stuck in a neon green bridesmaid's dress, save the world--and still make it back for the wedding?

30 Day Wonder

Richard Wilson

"30 Day Wonder" is a great tale in which Aliens comically invade Earth, written by science fiction specialist, Richard Wilson.

The story revolves around a reporter--a good one--who's an average guy with a sense of humor and reasonable views about the rights of his fellow man. Maybe that's why the Monolithians picked him to head up their public-relations program. After all, they had to reach a lot of average people and even though they were invulnerable, they couldn't afford to take chances. Because they had a message, and EVERYBODY had to be convinced. So he didn't have any choice in the matter... That's where the system went wrong... no choice. Act peaceful. Love thy neighbor. Obey the law. Why, people could go mad living that way. And many would.

Caroline M. Yoachim

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Lightspeed, March 2016. The story can also be found in the anthology The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017, edited by John Joseph Adams and Charles Yu.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

The Butterfly Kid

Chester Anderson

It was a nothing-special Greenwich Village day...

And good ole Chester Anderson - sometime poet, rock 'n' roll singer and self-proclaimed kinf of the Village - strolled along, content.

Content, that is, until he saw a kid make butterflies.

Real butterflies. The kind with pretty wings that flutter.

What at first seemed amusing, if a little strange, quickly changed. Chester and his ragtag pack of singers, groupies and street-wise prophets had stumbled onto a mind-blowing phenomenon that threatened the whole world.

And only Chester an his ragamuffin crew could save it.

From what? From six-foot, blue lobsters from outer space.

How? With a horrifying plan that hinged on the innocence of... The Butterfly Kid.

The World as it Shall Be

Emile Souvestre
I. F. Clarke

It's the year 3000, and children are raised by steam machines, Switzerland has been converted into a theme park, and there are no fewer than 684 kinds of mental illness. With eccentric, dark humor, Émile Souvestre portrays a society dominated by mechanization and greed. However comically exaggerated, the unmistakable echoes of real problems and possibilities in Souvestre's satire make this book science fiction's earliest warning against the dangers of mechanization in a society ruled by consumerism.

The World as It Shall Be was originally published in France in 1846--the first fully illustrated story in the history of future fiction. The satiric novel, with 87 charming illustrations, unfolds through the eyes of Maurice and Marthe, a young couple who are brought to the year 3000 by the spirit of the age, M. John Progrès. This first English translation includes all of the original art.

Angelmaker

Nick Harkaway

All Joe Spork wants to do is live quietly. He repairs clockwork and lives above his shop in a wet, unknown bit of London. The bills don't always get paid and he's single and in his mid thirties and he has no prospects of improving his lot, but at least he's not trying to compete with the reputation of Mathew "Tommy Gun" Spork, his infamous criminal dad.

Edie Banister lives quietly and wishes she didn't. She's nearly ninety and remembers when she wasn't. She used to be a spy, and now she's... well... old. Worse yet, the things she fought to save don't seem to exist anymore, and she's beginning to wonder if they ever did.

When Joe repairs one particularly unusual clockwork mechanism, his quiet life is blown apart. Suddenly he's getting visits from sinister cultists and even more sinister lawyers. One of his friends is murdered and it looks as if he may be in the frame. Oh, and in case that wasn't enough, he seems to have switched on a 1950s doomsday machine - or is it something even more alarming?

Edie's story and Joe's have collided. From here on in, nothing will be the same - Joe's world is now full of mad monks, psychopaths, villainous potentates, scientific geniuses, giant submarines, determined and extremely dangerous receptionists, and threats to the future of conscious life in the universe - and if Joe's going to fix it or even survive, he must show that he can be everything Mathew was, and much, much more.

Double Star

The Mutant Weapon / The Pirates of Zan

One minute, down and out actor Lorenzo Smythe was -- as usual -- in a bar, drinking away his troubles as he watched his career go down the tubes. Then a space pilot bought him a drink, and the next thing Smythe knew, he was shanghaied to Mars.

Suddenly he found himself agreeing to the most difficult role of his career: impersonating an important politician who had been kidnapped. Peace with the Martians was at stake -- failure to pull off the act could result in interplanetary war. And Smythe's own life was on the line -- for if he wasn't assassinated, there was always the possibility that he might be trapped in his new role forever!

Murray Leinster

The Mutant Weapon

The only links between the far-flung space colonies were the Medical Services spaceships. When these lonely travelers paid a call, they were always given a royal welcome. So why did the landing grid on Marix III try to destroy Med Serviceman Calhoun's ship?

The Pirates of Zan

Because Bran Hoddan was a serious electronice engineer, he didn't want any part of his planet's heritage. For he was from Zan -- and Zan's only occupation was spaceship piracy!

Why Do Birds

Damon Knight

It is the early 21st century, and Ed Stone says he's been in suspended animation since the 1930s--put there by aliens who have sent him on a mission: convince the nations of the world to build a massive vault, in which humanity's billions will lie in suspension and survive the Earth's impending destruction. And, the strangest thing of all is everybody believes him.

The Green Millennium

Fritz Leiber

Hugo and Nebula award-winning Fritz Leiber is a science-fiction grand master with an unparalleled ability to discern the stranger side of the universe. THE GREEN MILLENNIUM is set in a futuristic human society based on our own. The regimented, regulated and bureaucratized life style led by the misanthropic Phil Gish leaves him feeling vaguely dissatisfied and emotionally cut off from other people. He is surprised when a pure green cat appears in his room, a cat who makes him feel happier and more alive than he has ever felt. Phil decides to call the cat Lucky, hoping his life will take a turn for the better. If you consider different as change for the better, then Gish really has got something in Lucky--something that everyone else wants--including the Mob, the FBI, some nude aliens, and a gorgeous mystery woman. When Lucky seems to vanish into thin air, Phil will do anything to get him back, even if it means challenging the very powers that rule his world.

The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything

John D. MacDonald

To ever-loyal Kirby Winter, multimillionaire Uncle Omar left nothing -- nothing but a gold watch and a sealed letter to be opened in one year. But Kirby is destined to inherit the magical power to freeze time in its tracks. Power like that promises unlimited wealth, wealth that can't buy love, but does make a down payment on a lot of deadly trouble. In a universe without time, can Kirby stay one step ahead?

The Sioux Spaceman / And Then the Town Took Off

Richard Wilson
Andre Norton

The Sioux Spaceman

Redskin raiders on the galactic rim.

Kade Whitehawk had two strikes against him in the Space Service. First, he had bungled his assignment on the planet Lodi. Second, he believed all creatures had a right to freedom and dignity - and having such opinions was strictly against the rules.

But when he ws assigned to Khot, he found the Ikkinni there - tortured yet defiant slaves of a vicious tyrant race.

Right then Kade swung the last pitch. For rules or no rules, THE SIOUX SPACEMAN knew that he had to help these strange creatures gain freedom... and that he alone, because of his Indian blood, had the key to win it for them.

And Then the Town Took Off

The town of Superior, Ohio was certainly living up to its name! In what was undoubtedly the most spectacular feat of the century, it simply picked itself up one night and rose two full miles above Earth!

Radio messages simply stated that Superior had seceded from Earth. But Don Cort, stranded on that rising town, was beginning to suspect that nothing was simple about Superior except its citizens. Calmly they accepted their rise in the world as being due to one of their local townspeople, a crackpot professor.

But after a couple of weeks of floating around, it began to be obvious that the professor had no idea how to get them down. So then it was up to Cort: either find a way to anchor Superior, or spend the rest of his days on the smallest - and nuttiest - planet in the galaxy!

The Best of Frederik Pohl

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

Classic Science Fiction

Here in one superlative volume 17 Science-Fiction tales by a master storyteller.

"The Midas Plague" - They had committed the greatest crime: failure to consume enough! So their punishment was to consume more and more and more....

"The Day the Icicle Works Closed" - The world was facing total unemployment, and the people had only one thing left to hock, their bodies!

"Happy Birthday, Dear Jesus" - There was peace on Earth. But joy to all men? Well, that was another matter!

"The Martian in the Attic" - What's the value of a real, live Martian? Duniop was determined to find out - and he did!

"Tunnel Under the World" - Things are not always what they seem, in fact. Not even what they seem to seem!

And lots more!

Table of Contents:

A Variety of Excellence - (1975) - essay by Lester del Rey
The Tunnel Under the World - (1955)
Punch - (1961)
Three Portraits and a Prayer - (1962)
Day Million - (1966)
Happy Birthday, Dear Jesus - (1956)
We Never Mention Aunt Nora - (1958)
Father of the Stars - (1964)
The Day the Martians Came - (1967)
The Midas Plague - (1954)
The Snowmen - (1959)
How to Count on Your Fingers - (1956)
Grandy Devil - (1955)
Speed Trap - (1967)
The Richest Man in Levittown - (1959)
The Day the Icicle Works Closed - (1960)
The Hated - (1958)
The Martian in the Attic - (1960)
The Census Takers - (1956)
The Children of Night - (1964)
What the Author Has to Say About All This - (1975) - essay by Frederik Pohl

Charles Yu

National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award winner Charles Yu delivers his debut novel, a razor-sharp, ridiculously funny, and utterly touching story of a son searching for his father . . . through quantum space–time.

Minor Universe 31 is a vast story-space on the outskirts of fiction, where paradox fluctuates like the stock market, lonely sexbots beckon failed protagonists, and time travel is serious business. Every day, people get into time machines and try to do the one thing they should never do: change the past. That’s where Charles Yu, time travel technician—part counselor, part gadget repair man—steps in. He helps save people from themselves. Literally. When he’s not taking client calls or consoling his boss, Phil, who could really use an upgrade, Yu visits his mother (stuck in a one-hour cycle of time, she makes dinner over and over and over) and searches for his father, who invented time travel and then vanished. Accompanied by TAMMY, an operating system with low self-esteem, and Ed, a nonexistent but ontologically valid dog, Yu sets out, and back, and beyond, in order to find the one day where he and his father can meet in memory. He learns that the key may be found in a book he got from his future self. It’s called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and he’s the author. And somewhere inside it is the information that could help him—in fact it may even save his life.

Wildly new and adventurous, Yu’s debut is certain to send shock waves of wonder through literary space–time.

Requiem for a Ruler of Worlds

Alacrity Fitzhugh: Book 1

Brian Daley

Minor Terran bureaucrat, Hobart Floyt, has been left a mysterious inheritance by the ruler of an empire located many light-years away. Earth's government is broke and its functionaries want Floyt to collect the money. To make sure he succeeds, they blackmail a brash young spacer named Alacrity Fitzhugh into shepherding him on a dangerous interstellar mission.

Jinx on a Terran Inheritance

Alacrity Fitzhugh: Book 2

Brian Daley

The Second Adventure of Alacrity Fitzhugh and Hobart Floyt!

The dying ruler of a small interstellar kingdom made a minor Old-Earth bureaucrat named Hobart Floyt the surprised inheritor of an interstellar spacecraft. There were just a few minor problems: The dead ruler never told Floyt how to find the ship. The bureaucrats of Earth wanted the ship for themselves, and someone kept trying to murder Floyt and his friend Alacrity Fitzhugh.

Fall of the White Ship Avatar

Alacrity Fitzhugh: Book 3

Brian Daley

Alacrity Fitzhugh and Hobart Floyt had claimed Hobart's inheritance from the ruler of a small interstellar empire, then returned to earth and toppled its government. But Alacrity had more important goals than body-guarding Hobart. He wanted command of the fabulous White Ship. Yet it took only a few minutes at the White Ship's helm for Alacrity to learn that a Captain's problems can be tougher than the work of a knockabout Spacer. And that solving them could cost a piece of his heart.

Prologue to Analog

Analog Anthologies (Campbell)

John W. Campbell, Jr.

Table of Contents:

Introduction - (1962) - essay by John W. Campbell, Jr.
Belief - (1953) - novelette by Isaac Asimov
Pandora's Planet - [Pandora's Planet - 1] - (1956) - novelette by Christopher Anvil
Sound Decision - (1956) - novelette by Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett
Omnilingual - (1957) - novelette by H. Beam Piper
Triggerman - (1958) - shortstory by J. F. Bone
A Filbert Is a Nut - (1959) - shortstory by Rick Raphael
Business as Usual, During Alterations - (1958) - novelette by Ralph Williams
Pushbutton War - (1960) - shortstory by Joseph P. Martino
We Didn't Do Anything Wrong, Hardly - (1959) - shortstory by Roger Kuykendall
Minor Ingredient - (1956) - shortstory by Eric Frank Russell

Mack Reynolds, Part One

Armchair Fiction - Masters of Science Fiction: Book 4

Mack Reynolds

Contents:

5 - The Man in the Moon - (1950) - novelette
29 - Please to Remember - (1953) - shortstory
41 - Tourists to Terra - (1950) - shortstory
50 - The Hatchetman - (1951) - novelette by Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds
97 - Mercy Flight - (1951) - shortstory
109 - One of Our Planets Is Missing! - (1950) - shortstory
121 - Final Appraisal - (1952) - shortstory
134 - Six-Legged Svengali - (1950) - shortstory by Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds
145 - Troubador - (1951) - shortstory
157 - The Word from the Void - (1950) - shortstory
162 - Your Soul Comes C.O.D. - (1952) - shortstory
168 - Desperate Remedy - (1954) - novelette
202 - After Some Tomorrow - (1956) - shortstory
219 - Off Course - (1954) - shortstory
229 - United We Stand - (1950) - shortstory
237 - Optical Illusion - (1953) - shortstory
241 - I. Q. - (1961) - shortstory
261 - Stowaway - (1953) - novelette
289 - Halftripper - (1951) - shortstory
298 - Ask Me No Questions! - (1951) - shortstory
310 - D. P. from Tomorrow - (1953) - shortstory

From the Earth to the Moon

Baltimore Gun Club: Book 1

Jules Verne

Written almost a century before the daring flights of the astronauts, Jules Verne's prophetic novel of man's race to the stars is a classic adventure tale enlivened by broad satire and scientific acumen.

When the members of the elite Baltimore Gun Club find themselves lacking any urgent assignments at the close of the Civil War, their president, Impey Barbicane, proposes that they build a gun big enough to launch a rocket to the moon. But when Barbicane's adversary places a huge wager that the project will fail and a daring volunteer elevates the mission to a "manned" flight, one man's dream turns into an international space race.

Showboat World

Big Planet: Book 2

Jack Vance

From Handbook of the Inhabited Worlds: "Big Planet lies beyond the frontier of terrestrial law, and has been settled by groups impatient with restraint: non-conformists, anarchists, fugitives, religious dissidents, misanthropes, deviants, freaks. Big Planet represents for us that tantalizing vision of the land beyond the frontier where bravery, resource and daring are more important than the mastery of urban abstractions. Who can deem this good or bad? Who can define justice, or correctness or truth? Big Planet is in essence a problem to which there exists no solution". Shipmasters who run the magnificent showboats along the rivers of Big Planet know that each port has unique character and sensitivities. Apollon Zamp and Garth Ashgale are adept at dodging danger; two of the wiliest rascals in the business, they are deadly rivals to boot. When Zamp sets out to compete at the Grand Festival at Mornune, he knows Ashgale is never far behind!

Vance Integral Edition/Spatterlight Press title: The Magnificent Showboats of the Lower Vissel River, Lune XXIII South, Big Planet.

Bill the Galactic Hero

Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Robot Slaves

It was the highest honor to defend the Empire against the dreaded Chingers, an enemy race of seven-foot-tall lizards. But Bill, a Technical Fertilizer Operator from a planet of farmers, wasn't interested in honor-he was only interested in two things: his chosen career, and the shapely curves of Inga-Maria Calyphigia. Then a recruiting robot shanghaied him with knockout drops, and he came to in deep space, aboard the Empire warship Christine Keeler. And from there, things got even worse.

Bill the Galactic Hero: Book 1

Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of the Bottled Brains

A sequel to the author's "Bill, the Galactic Hero", published over 20 years ago, this book is the first of a new series of novels featuring Bill. With two right arms, an artificial foot, and a set of surgically-implanted tusks, Bill sets out to find the source of Chinger-controlled metal dragons.

Bill the Galactic Hero: Book 2

Robert Sheckley
Harry Harrison

Bill, the galactic hero, is sent on a suicide mission to a planet from which no one has ever returned. En-route, he must cope with the likes of Captain Dirk of the starship Gumption. Harry Harrison's previous books include "Bill, the Galactic Hero", while Robert Sheckley's include "Mindswap".

Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Tasteless Pleasure

Bill the Galactic Hero: Book 3

Harry Harrison
David Bischoff

Bill's in trouble again. A hideous outer-space infection has transformed one of his feet into a satyr's hoof; he has two right hands; the nurses at the hospital where he lies recovering from his last escapade are steel robots. But soon he's off again in search of science fiction's greatest cliches.

Bill, the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Zombie Vampires

Bill the Galactic Hero: Book 4

Harry Harrison
Jack C. Haldeman II

When Bill is assigned as an MP on a prison ship, the crew revolts against the captain and brings vampires on board in an attempt to maroon the skipper…

The Outpost

Birthright Universe

Mike Resnick

Award-winning author Mike Resnick takes us back to his wild and wooly Inner Frontier in this tall-tale of an adventure novel.

On the planet Henry II, orbiting the twin suns Plantagenet and Tudor, at the very edge of the great black hole at the center of the Milky Way, there is a tavern called The Outpost. Through the doors of The Outpost have come the greatest heroes, villains, and adventurers of the galaxcy - to drink, to brag, and to swap tales.

The Outpost is neutral territory where fighting is forbidden and blood enemies can have a drink together and tell stories of battles past. After all bounty hunters, con men, intinerant preachers, thieves, and assassins have more in common with each other than they do with the rest of the mundane galaxy.

But their pleasant life of recalling murder and mayhem is interrupted by an alien invasion, and to save their way of life these rugged individualists must try to work together for a change.

Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 1

Bofuri: Book 1

Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 2

Urged on by her friend, Kaede Honjo begins playing the VRMMORPG NewWorld Online under the name Maple. Not wanting to get hurt, Maple opts to be a shield user with maxed-out defense stats, and continues putting every status point she earns in the game into increasing only her defense level. As a result, she is left with slow foot speed and no magic, but her high defense allows her to endure most hits without taking any damage. This, along with her basic-level creative thinking, allows for her to make unexpected accomplishments in the game, its quests and events. By doing this, she ends up earning all kinds of equally unexpected skills and becomes one of the strongest players in the game.

IS SHE THE GAME'S LAST BOSS?!

Though she doesn't play many MMOs, Maple has either a natural talent or impossibly good luck, because by pouring every last stat point she has into Vitality, she's created a character who can't be hurt! Whether it's physical attacks or magic or status effects, nothing poses a real threat. In no time at all, news spreads across the server about the adorable terror who can't be defeated. While Maple may just be having fun, her broken build is sure to attract lots of unexpected attention...

Bofuri: Book 2

Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 3

Double Trouble...

Maple has become famous overnight after finishing in the top three of the battle royale and defeating a shocking two hundred players without taking any damage at all. Now, with the treasure hunt event about to start, Maple and Sally set off in search of rare gear and adventure! The game admins and other players look on in both fear and excitement as they wait to see what crazy new development is about to hit the server!

Bofuri: Book 3

Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 4

THIS IS WHERE IT ALL BEGINS!

Following their incredible performance in the treasure hunt event, Maple and Sally are interested in one thing and one thing only--buying a house! After all, every guild needs a home. Though their guild is still small, the girls and their friends are excited to have a place to meet, train, and grow--especially now that the newly minted guilds are all going to be facing off in the next big event! This is the birth of the legendary Maple Tree, the guild whose name strikes fear into the hearts of all who hear it!

Bofuri: Book 4

Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 5

BEGUN, THE GUILD WARS HAVE!

With new allies and skills at the ready, Maple Tree embarks on their first event! The obvious favorites to take the crown are the big guilds like Flame Empire and the Order of the Holy Sword, each boasting well over a hundred members and some of the best players who topped the ranks in previous events. To make matters worse, everyone on the server has been stocking up on anti-Maple skills and items after her rise to infamy. For any hope of victory, Maple Tree will have to overcome incredible odds and shatter all expectations--or wipe out everybody else trying!

Bofuri: Book 5

Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 6

NEW DAY, NEW EXPANSION!

After going toe-to-toe with two of the strongest guilds on the entire server, Maple Tree proved itself as a force to be reckoned with when they placed third overall in the latest event. That said, war isn't all the guilds are good for! Maple and her friends have steadily grown closer to members of the Order of the Holy Sword and Flame Empire as their rivalries give way to something more. With new friends and powers, everyone is more than ready to dive headfirst into the newly released stratum!

Bofuri: Book 6

Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 7

A WALKING NIGHTMARE FOR GAME DESIGN!

Between easily beating the fifth stratum's secret boss and keeping pace with the best players in the game, Maple continues to demonstrate exactly how broken she is. Unfortunately, things aren't going as smoothly for Sally because the sixth stratum's debut reveals a horror-themed level, meaning it's chock-full of ghosts, geists, and ghouls! Wanting to do something nice for her partner who's too terrified to even step onto the new map, Maple sets out to find presents in the haunted houses and cursed crypts, much to the horror of the admins...

Bofuri: Book 7

Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 8

Still feeling a bit sad for Sally, who missed out on the sixth layer, Maple proposes they try something fun for the seventh event. It'll be just the two of them, aiming to complete a no damage run with the odds against them and the difficulty set to max. What could possibly go wrong?

Bofuri: Book 8

Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense, Vol. 9

GOTTA FIND THEM ALL!

Maple Tree has just reached the seventh stratum, and there's only one thing on everyone's minds -- get every member of the guild their very own pet monster! There isn't a moment to lose because the next event is about to begin, and pets are supposed to be critical! Since Maple already has Syrup and Sally has Oboro, they're helping everyone else find their partners while exploring the massive new map. Of course, Maple still somehow finds a way to stumble into even more insanity!

Bofuri: Book 9

Callahan's Crosstime Saloon

THE GAMEDEVS TURN UP THE HEAT!

Maple Tree swept the prelims and then reunite for the eighth event's main round-a brutal three-day survival mission. Each member tamed monsters that perfectly fit their unique builds and are unmatched in combat. The guild's feeling confident thanks to the perfect plan they've devised, but the devs aren't going to make it easy. Will Maple Tree be ready for the challenges lying in wait? Teaming up with rival guilds maybe the only way to make it to the end of this harsh trial. Equipment Mud of Dead Spirit Skills.

The Secret Life of Bots

Bot 9: Book 1

Suzanne Palmer

This novelette originally appeared in Clarkesworld, #132, September 2017. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Twelve (2018), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3 (2018), edited by Neil Clarke, The Year's Best Military & Adventure SF: Volume 4 (2018), edited by David Afsharirad, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2018, edited by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Bots of the Lost Ark

Bot 9: Book 2

Suzanne Palmer

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld #177, June 2022. It is a sequel to the author's amusing (and Hugo Award) winning The Secret Life of Bots (Clarkesworld #132, September 2017).

Read the full story for free at clarkesworldmagazine.com.

Callahan: Book 1

Spider Robinson

Callahan's Place is the neighborhood tavern to all of time and space, where the regulard are anything but. Pull up a chair. grab a glass of your favorite, and listen to the stories spun by time travelers, cybernetic aliens, telepaths... and a bunch of regular folks on a mission to save the world, one customer at a time.

Callahan's Secret

Callahan: Book 3

Spider Robinson

Callahan's Place is open for business, and all the "regulars" are here-- a talking dog, an alcoholic vampire, and two telepaths--enhancing their joy by drowning their sorrows. Everyone, that is, but Mickey Finn, a seven-foot tall alien in danger of enslavement at the hands of a traveller from across the galaxy...

Come inside, pull up a chair, order a drink, make a toast, and let Spider Robinson introduce you to the most unique patrons to frequent any establishment, at a bar where the most important law is "shared pain is lessened: shared joy is increased." And if there's time left at the end of the night, just maybe they'll save the world...

Space Captain Smith

Chronicles of Isambard Smith: Book 1

In the 25th Century the British Space Empire faces the gathering menace of the evil ant-soldiers of the Ghast Empire hive, hell-bent on galactic domination and the extermination of all humanoid life. Isambard Smith is the square-jawed, courageous, and somewhat asinine new commander of the battle damaged light freighter John Pym, destined to take on the alien threat because nobody else is available. Together with his bold crew--a skull-collecting alien lunatic, an android pilot who is actually a fugitive sex toy, and a hamster called Gerald--he must collect new-age herbalist Rhianna Mitchell from the laid back New Francisco orbiter and bring her back to safety in the Empire. Straightforward enough--except the Ghasts want her too. If he is to get back to Blighty alive, Smith must defeat void sharks, a universe-weary android assassin, and John Gilead, psychopathic naval officer from the fanatically religious Republic of New Eden before facing his greatest enemy: a ruthless alien warlord with a very large behind.

God Emperor of Didcot

Chronicles of Isambard Smith: Book 2

Tea... a beverage brewed from the fermented dried leaves of the shrub Camelli sinensis and imbibed by all the great civilizations in the galaxy's history; a source of refreshment, stimulation, and, above all else, of moral fiber--without which the British Space Empire must surely crumble to leave Earth at the mercy of its enemies. Sixty percent of the Empire's tea is grown on one world--Urn, principal planet of the Didcot system. If Earth is to keep fighting, the tea must flow! When a crazed cult leader overthrows the government of Urn, Isambard Smith and his vaguely competent crew find themselves saddled with new allies--a legion of tea-obsessed nomads, an overly-civilized alien horde. and a commando unit so elite that it has only five members. Only together can they defeat the self-proclaimed God Emperor of Didcot and confront the true power behind the coup--the sinister legions of the Ghast Empire and Smith's old enemy, Commander 462.

Wrath of the Lemming Men

Chronicles of Isambard Smith: Book 3

From the depths of Space a new foe rises to do battle with mankind: the British Space Empire is threatened by the lemming-people of Yull, ruthless enemies who attack without mercy, fear, or any concept of self preservation. At the call of their war god, the Yull have turned on the Empire, hell-bent on conquest and destruction in their rush towards the cliffs of destiny. When the Yullian army is forced to retreat at the battle of the River Tam, the disgraced Colonel Vock swears revenge on the clan of Suruk the Slayer, Isambard Smith's homicidal alien friend. Now Smith and his crew must defend the Empire and civilize the stuffing out of a horde of bloodthirsty lemming-men--which would be easy were it not for a sinister robotics company, a Ghast general with a fondness for genetic engineering, and an ancient brotherhood of Morris Dancers--who may yet hold the key to victory.

A Game of Battleships

Chronicles of Isambard Smith: Book 4

In the 25th century the future of the galaxy rests on a knife-edge. The actions of one man could save the British Space Empire or leave Earth at the mercy of deadly legions of ant-people. That one man is Captain Isambard Smith, and Earth is in a lot of trouble. After blowing up a top-secret enemy base, Space Captain Smith and his crew deserve a rest. But their holiday ends when forces unknown destroy the robot convoy they were meant to be guarding. Smith finds himself in hot pursuit of a mysterious vessel that can pass through dimensions, incurring the wrath of the dreaded Grand Witchfinder of New Eden--which would be much easier to deal with if his pilot wasn't cowering under the dashboard and his spaceship wasn't infested with man-eating toads. Meanwhile, the Empire is gathering its allies to form a united front against alien tyranny. Unfortunately, the delicate negotiations have been entrusted to Major Wainscott, a man who knows no fear and very little about diplomacy or trousers. Once again, Captain Smith must summon all his courage to unite humanity behind the Empire. His quest will take him on a journey to face his greatest fears: from the depths of space, through hell itself--and even to France.

End of Empires

Chronicles of Isambard Smith: Book 5

Just One Damned Thing After Another

The lemming men of Yullia are rushing headlong towards the cliffs of destiny, and they intend to take the British Space Empire with them. When moral fiber clashes with lemming spirit, only one thing is certain--surrender is no longer an option. In the back-streets of Ravnavar, greatest planet of the Space Empire, revolution stirs. Someone will have to go deep undercover, take on the robot underworld, and reveal what lies behind the mysterious Popular Front. Worst of all, Major Wainscott--commando and nudist--has gone renegade in the most dangerous jungle in the galaxy. Someone will have to travel upriver, terminate Wainscott's command, and make him put some trousers on. That someone is Isambard Smith. Once more, Smith and his crew must leap into action, civilize the galaxy, and force legions of angry rodents to stop their nonsense at once. Smith is destined to topple a mighty empire. The only question is--whose empire will it be?

Chronicles of St. Mary's: Book 1

History is just one damned thing after another - Arnold Toynbee

Behind the seemingly innocuous façade of St Mary's, a different kind of historical research is taking place. They don't do "time-travel" - they "investigate major historical events in contemporary time". Maintaining the appearance of harmless eccentrics is not always within their power - especially given their propensity for causing loud explosions when things get too quiet.

Meet the disaster-magnets of St Mary's Institute of Historical Research as they ricochet around History. Their aim is to observe and document - to try and find the answers to many of History's unanswered questions... and not to die in the process.

But one wrong move and History will fight back - to the death. And, as they soon discover, it's not just History they're fighting.

Follow the catastrophe curve from eleventh-century London to World War I, and from the Cretaceous Period to the destruction of the Great Library at Alexandria. For wherever Historians go, chaos is sure to follow in their wake...

A Symphony of Echoes

Chronicles of St. Mary's: Book 2

In the second book in the Chronicles of St Mary's series, Max and the team visit Victorian London in search of Jack the Ripper, witness the murder of Archbishop Thomas a Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, and discover that dodos make a grockling noise when eating cucumber sandwiches.

But they must also confront an enemy intent on destroying St Mary's - an enemy willing, if necessary, to destroy History itself to do it.

A Second Chance

Chronicles of St. Mary's: Book 3

St Mary's is back and nothing is going right for Max. Once again, it's just one damned thing after another.

The action jumps from an encounter with a mirror-stealing Isaac Newton to the bloody battlefield at Agincourt. Discover how a simple fact-finding assignment to witness the ancient and murderous cheese-rolling ceremony in Gloucester can result in CBC - concussion by cheese. The long awaited jump to Bronze Age Troy ends in personal catastrophe for Max, and just when it seems things couldn't get any worse - it's back to the Cretaceous Period again to confront an old enemy who has nothing to lose.

So, make the tea, grab the chocolate biscuits, settle back and discover exactly why the entire history department has painted itself blue...

A Trail Through Time

Chronicles of St. Mary's: Book 4

St Mary's is back and is facing a battle to survive in this, the fourth instalment of the Chronicles.

Max and Leon are reunited, and looking forward to a peaceful lifetime together. But, sadly, they don't even make it to lunchtime.

The action races from 17th-century London to Ancient Egypt and from Pompeii to 14th-century Southwark as they're pursued up and down the timeline, playing a perilous game of hide-and-seek, until they're finally forced to take refuge at St Mary's - where new dangers await them.

As usual, there are plenty of moments of humour, but the final, desperate Battle of St Mary's is in grim earnest. Overwhelmed and outnumbered and with the building crashing down around them, how can St Mary's possibly survive?

So, make sure the tea's good and strong...

No Time Like The Past

Chronicles of St. Mary's: Book 5

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

St Mary's has been rebuilt and it's business as usual for the History department.

But first, there's the little matter of a seventeenth-century ghost that only Mr Markham can see. Not to mention the minor inconvenience of being trapped in the Great Fire of London... and an unfortunately-timed comfort break at Thermopylae leaving the fate of the western world hanging in the balance.

Chronicles of St. Mary's: Book 6

An Argumentation of Historians

Max is back! New husband, new job, and a training regime that cannot fail - to go wrong!

Take one interim Chief Training Officer, add five recruits, mix with Joan of Arc, a baby mammoth, a duplicitous Father of History, a bombed rat, Stone Age hunters, a couple of passing policemen who should have better things to do, and Dick the Turd.

Stir well, bring to the boil - and wait for the bang!

Chronicles of St. Mary's: Book 9

Behind the seemingly innocuous facade of St. Mary's Institute of Historical Research, a different kind of academic work is taking place. Just don't call it "time travel" -- these historians "investigate major historical events in contemporary time." And they aren't your harmless eccentrics either; a more accurate description, as they ricochet around history, might be unintentional disaster-magnets.

From Tudor England to the burning city of Persepolis, from a medieval St. Mary's under siege to Victorian Rushford and a very nasty case of gaol fever, Max is struggling to keep her private life intact. There's an ambitious programme hindered by giant teapots, plus Mrs. Midgely's objection to dead hamsters in her airing cupboard, and Mr. Markham's stubborn refusal to reveal his exact marital status.

And as if that's not enough -- the unfortunately not leprosy-laden Malcolm Halcombe is back. Admittedly, none of this is the most secure platform from which to launch an initiative to bring down the renegade Clive Ronan, but hey -- what's the worst that could happen?

Hope for the Best

Chronicles of St. Mary's: Book 10

Max is no stranger to taking matters into her own hands. Especially when she's had A Brilliant Idea. Yes, it will mean breaking a few rules, but - as Max always says - they're not her rules.

Seconded to the Time Police to join in the hunt for the renegade Clive Ronan, Max is a long way from St Mary's. But life in the future does have its plus points - although not for long.

A problem with the Time Map reveals chaos in the 16th century and the wrong Tudor queen on the throne. History has gone rogue, there's a St Mary's team right in the firing line and Max must step up.

You know what they say. Hope for the best. But plan for the worst.

Plan for the Worst

Chronicles of St. Mary's: Book 11

Another Time, Another Place

I would have trusted this man with my life. Until a couple of days ago, anyway.

You know what they say - hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

Max is quite accustomed to everything going wrong. She's St Mary's, after all. Disaster is her default state. But with her family reunited and a jump to Bronze Age Crete in the works, life is getting back to normal. Well, normal for St Mary's.

And then, following one fateful night at the Tower of London, everything Max thought she knew comes crashing down around her.

Too late for plans. The worst has happened. And who can Max trust now?

Chronicles of St. Mary's: Book 12

The League of Regrettable Superheroes

At long last it's all over. Job done. Max has her life back and everything is set for the traditional happy ending. Except, this is St Mary's and if something can go wrong, it will.

Disaster is piled upon catastrophe. A new Head of Security. A new Director of St Mary's. Historians lost in time. And Max dishonourably discharged.

Jobless and homeless, she receives an offer she cannot refuse and suddenly finds herself in another time and another place. Just a way to pass the weeks until she can reunite with Leon - or so she thinks. Because events are on the move and, as usual, St Mary's is at the centre of the storm.

Comic Book History: Book 1

Jon Morris

You know about Batman, Superman, and Spiderman, but have you heard of Doll Man, Doctor Hormone, or Spider Queen? In The League of Regrettable Superheroes, you'll meet one hundred of the strangest superheroes ever to see print, complete with backstories, vintage art, and colorful commentary. So prepare yourself for such not-ready-for-prime-time heroes as Bee Man (Batman, but with bees), the Clown (circus-themed crimebuster), the Eye (a giant, floating eyeball; just accept it), and many other oddballs and oddities.

Drawing on the entire history of the medium, The League of Regrettable Superheroes will appeal to die-hard comics fans, casual comics readers, and anyone who enjoys peering into the stranger corners of pop culture.

The Legion of Regrettable Supervillians

Comic Book History: Book 2

Jon Morris

Every hero needs a villain. But not all villains are dangerous -- some are incompetent, comical, or just... weird. In his follow-up to The League of Regrettable Superheroes, author Jon Morris presents over a hundred of the strangest, most stupefying supervillains to ever see print in comics. Meet D-list rogues like Brickbat (choice of weapon: poisonous bricks), Robbing Hood (steals from the poor to give to the rich), Swarm (a crook made of bees; Nazi bees), and many more.

Drawing on the entire history of the medium, The Legion of Regrettable Supervillains affectionately and hilariously profiles oddball criminals from the history of comics.

Men, Martians and Machines

Crown Classics of SF: Book 1

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Contents:

Dirk Gently: Book 1

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

There is a long tradition of Great Detectives, and Dirk Gently does not belong to it. But his search for a missing cat uncovers a ghost, a time traveler, AND the devastating secret of humankind! Detective Gently's bill for saving the human race from extinction: NO CHARGE.

Dirk Gently: Book 2

Larry Niven
Steven Barnes

When a passenger check-in desk at London's Heathrow Airport disappears in a ball of orange flame, the explosion is deemed an act of God. But which god, wonders holistic detective Dirk Gently? What god would be hanging around Heathrow trying to catch the 3:37 to Oslo? And what has this to do with Dirk's latest--and late-- client, found only this morning with his head revolving atop the hit record "Hot Potato"? Amid the hostile attentions of a stray eagle and the trauma of a very dirty refrigerator, super-sleuth Dirk Gently will once again solve the mysteries of the universe...

Touched by an Angel

Doctor Who New Series: Book 46

Jonathan Morris

'The past is like a foreign country. Nice to visit, but you really wouldn't want to live there.'

In 2003, Rebecca Whitaker died in a road accident. Her husband Mark is still grieving. He receives a battered envelope, posted eight years earlier, containing a set of instructions with a simple message: 'You can save her.'

As Mark is given the chance to save Rebecca, it's up to the Doctor, Amy and Rory to save the whole world. Because this time the Weeping Angels are using history itself as a weapon.

Dream Park

Dream Park: Book 1

They were all playing games.... but one of them was playing for keeps.

Chet Henderson was playing at revenge, an to boost his flagging reputation as a Lore-master.

Richard Lopez was playing to prove this his earlier successes as a Gamemaster were no fluke.

Ollie and Gwen and Mary-em and Tony were playing because it made them feel alive.

Alex Griffin was playing to protect Dream Park's darkest secret.

In Dream Park, everyone plays. But if some win, some have to lose. And losing can be a matter of life or death.

The Time Ship: A Chrononautical Journey

Early Classics of Science Fiction: Book 25

Enrique Gaspar

H. G. Wells wasn't the only nineteenth-century writer to dream of a time machine. The Spanish playwright Enrique Gaspar published El anacronópete--"He who flies against time"--eight years before Wells's influential work appeared.

The novel begins at the 1878 Paris Exposition, where Dr. Don Sindulfo unveils his new invention--which looks like a giant sailing vessel. Soon the doctor embarks on a voyage back in time, accompanied by a motley crew of French prostitutes and Spanish soldiers. The purpose of his expedition is to track down the imprisoned wife of a third-century Chinese emperor, believed to possess the secret to immortality.

A classic tale of obsession, high adventure, and star-crossed love, The Time Ship includes intricately drawn illustrations from the original 1887 edition, and a critical introduction that argues persuasively for The Time Ship's historical importance to science fiction and world literature.

Alien Bodies

Eighth Doctor Adventures: Book 6

Lawrence Miles

A Doctor Who novel set on an island in the East Indies, where alien forces are gathering in a lost city buried deep in the heart of the rain forest, desperate to acquire what might be the deadliest weapon in creation. The Doctor and Sam walk into the middle of the strangest auction in history.

Mechanical Failure

Epic Failure: Book 1

Joe Zieja

A smooth-talking ex-sergeant, accustomed to an easygoing peacetime military, unexpectedly re-joins the fleet and finds soldiers preparing for the strangest thing -- war.

The Two Hundred Years' (And Counting) Peace is a time of tranquility that hasn't been seen since... well, never. Mankind in the Galactic Age had finally conquered war, so what was left for the military to do but drink and barbecue? That's the kind of military that Sergeant R. Wilson Rogers lived in before he left the fleet to become a smuggler.

But it turns out that smuggling is hard. Like getting-arrested-for-dealing-with-pirates-and-forced-back-into-service kind of hard. It doesn't seem so bad -- the military was a perpetual tiki party anyway -- but when Rogers returns after only a year away, something has changed. These are soldiers -- actual soldiers doing actual soldier things like preparing for a war that Rogers is sure doesn't exist. Rogers vows to put a stop to all this nonsense -- even if it means doing actual work.

Communication Failure

Epic Failure: Book 2

Joe Zieja

Captain Rogers, despite his best attempts to do otherwise, has become the acting admiral of the 331st Meridan fleet. His first task: worrying. A lot.

The rival Thelicosan fleet, under the influence of bad intelligence, a forbidden romance, and a communication officer with an eardrum injury, is about to break a two-hundred-year-old nonaggression pact. They have offered a vague, easily misinterpreted message: "We're invading." Rogers isn't sure, but he thinks that's probably bad.

War is hell, especially when you've forgotten how to fight one.

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

Flatland: Book 1

Edwin A. Abbott

Flatland (1884) is an influential mathematical fantasy that simultaneously provides an introduction to non-Euclidean geometry and a satire on the Victorian class structure, issues of science and faith, and the role of women. A classic of early science fiction, the novel takes place in a world of two dimensions where all the characters are geometric shapes. The narrator, A Square, is a naïve, respectable citizen who is faced with proof of the existence of three dimensions when he is visited by a sphere and is forced to see the limitations of his world. The introduction to this Broadview Edition provides context for the book's references to Victorian culture and religion, mathematical history, and the history of philosophy. The appendices contain contemporary reviews; extracts from the work of fellow mathematical fantasy writer/mathematician Charles Hinton; Hermann von Helmboltz's "The Axioms of Geometry" (1870); and autobiographical passages from Abbott's The Kernel and the Husk (1886).

FLCL Volume 1

FLCL: Book 1

Yoji Enokido

Naota's life is not simple. He lives with his eccentric father and grandfather in a city distinguished by a gigantic hand-iron shaped factory perched on a hill. His brother's ex-girlfriend makes passes at him. And to top it all off, an impish, playful alien has run him over with her Vespa and smacked him in the head with a bass guitar! Little does he know that this is only the beginning of his involvement in an interplanetary ideological war.

FLCL Volume 2

FLCL: Book 2

Yoji Enokido

Nothing ever seems to rouse the population of Mabase, yet everyone is stirring with gossip when the mayor's adulterous affair is publicized. This is especially hard on the mayor's daughter, Ninamori, class president and Naota's friend. The other women in Naota's life aren't helping his stress levels either. Haruko is closing in on her interplanetary foes, and Mamimi's downward spiral into madness is only spinning faster...

Plunge deeper into the demented dreamscape of a junior highschool nothing turned mutant warrior in this volume of FLCL.

FLCL Volume 3

FLCL: Book 3

Yoji Enokido

Naota's father witnesses an unpredictable kiss between Naota and Haruko. Displeased with this development, he challenges Naota to a winner-takes-all duel! Not wanting to disappoint Haruko, Naota accepts the battle. Meanwhile, Mamimi's demeanor has become a bit more than eccentric. Could it possibly be... jealousy?

Experience the third novelization of the craxy anime as the CLIMAX begins!

Little Fuzzy

Fuzzy Series: Book 1

H. Beam Piper

When the Zarathustra Company takes over a supposedly uninhabited planet, reaping it for all that it is worth, Jack Holloway, a sunstone prospector, and his family of Fuzzies are determined to save this world from utter destruction.

Galaxy Quest: Junior Novelization

Galaxy Quest: Book 2

Ellen Weiss

A group of has been TV performers cash-in on their past glory by attendings Sci-Fi Conventions and signing memorabilia for their still enthusiastic fans - that is until real aliens from Thermia, who have mistaken the TV show's episodes for reality (referring to them as the 'Historical Documents'), appear at a convention to ask the former crew of the N.S.E.P. Protector for help against a malignant enemy named Saris, who has already wiped out the rest of the Thermians' squid-like species.

Lest Darkness Fall

Galaxy Science Fiction: Book 24

L. Sprague de Camp

Martin Padway, 20th-century archaeologist, becomes a reluctant one-way time-traveller, landing in Rome on the verge of the Dark Ages. With no way home, he sets out to make the world he's in a better place.

In short order, Padway "invents" and introduces such things as Printing and newspapers, Arabic numerals, Double entry bookkeeping, Copernican astronomy, and, most important -- Distilling. And the world of decaying Rome will never be the same!

Flesh

Galaxy Science Fiction: Book 41

Philip José Farmer

Space Commander Stagg explored the galaxies for 800 years. Upon his return, the hero Stagg is made the centerpiece of an incredible public ritual, one that will repeatedly take him to the heights of ecstasy and the depths of hell.

The 1968 Doubleday edition (as well as subsequent editions) is a revised and expanded version of the 1960 orginal.

Grasshopper Jungle

Grasshopper Jungle: Book 1

Andrew Smith

In the small town of Ealing, Iowa, Austin and his best friend, Robby, have accidentally unleashed an unstoppable army. An army of horny, hungry, six-foot-tall praying mantises that only want to do two things. This is the truth. This is history. It's the end of the world. And nobody knows anything about it. You know what I mean. Funny, intense, complex, and brave, Grasshopper Jungle brilliantly weaves together everything from testicle-dissolving genetically modified corn to the struggles of recession-era, small-town America in this groundbreaking coming-of-age stunner.

A Voyage to the Moon

Gregg Press Science Fiction Series: Book 20

George Tucker

A Voyage to the Moon: With Some Account of the Manners and Customs, Science and Philosophy of the People of Morosofia, and Other Lunarians.

Joseph Atterley of New York, finding himself in the doldrums after the death of his wife, resolves in 1822 to undertake a sea voyage to the Far East on one of his father's merchant ships. In the Indian Ocean the ship is caught by a mighty cyclone and driven ashore somewhere in the Burmese Empire. Mistaking the Americans for their enemies the British, the Burmese take Atterley and the crew captive. Atterley is eventually placed under rather loose house arrest, which allows him to meet and befriend a reclusive Indian Brahman who lives in the nearby hills. One day the Brahman reveals an astonishing secret: he knows how to build a machine to fly to the moon, and has already been there and back twice.

Eye in the Sky

Gregg Press Science Fiction Series: Book 68

Philip K. Dick

While sightseeing at the Belmont Bevatron, Jack Hamilton, along with seven others, is caught in a lab accident. When he regains consciousness, he is in a fantasy world of Old Testament morality gone awry-a place of instant plagues, immediate damnations, and death to all perceived infidels. Hamilton figures out how he and his compatriots can escape this world and return to their own, but first they must pass through three other vividly fantastical worlds, each more perilous and hilarious than the one before.

Winner of both the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards for best novel, widely regarded as the premiere science fiction writer of his day, and the object of cult-like adoration from his legions of fans, Philip K. Dick has come to be seen in a literary light that defies classification in much the same way as Borges and Calvino. With breathtaking insight, he utilizes vividly unfamiliar worlds to evoke the hauntingly and hilariously familiar in our society and ourselves.

Hal Spacejock

Hal Spacejock: Book 1

Simon Haynes

Everyone knows a character like Hal Spacejock - he's the guy who plugs a 12-volt lantern into a mains socket and burns his house down. He's the guy who does his own plumbing and floods the neighbour's house. He's the guy who window-shops three hardware stores to save a few bucks on a hammer, then blows a hundred and twenty on a laser-guided tape measure with built-in bottle opener.

In short, Hal's your regular, everyday guy. He just happens to have a two-hundred ton spaceship ... and he's none too flash with the controls.

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Haruhi: Book 1

The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya

Haruhi holds the fate of the universe in her hands... lucky for you she doesn't know it!

Meet Haruhi - a cute, determined girl, starting high school in a city where nothing exciting happens and absolutely no one understands her.

Meet Kyon - the sarcastic guy who sits in front of Haruhi in homeroom and the only boy Haruhi has ever opened up to. His fate is now tied to hers.

Meet the S.O.S. Brigade - an after-school club organized by Haruhi with a mission to seek out the extraordinary. Oh, and their secondary mission? Keeping Haruhi happy... because even though she doesn't know it, Haruhi has the power to destroy the universe...

Seriously!

Haruhi: Book 2

The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya

The bestselling series that took the world by storm continues with this hilarious and sly second book.

Gorgeous, confident, and demanding, Haruhi Suzumiya is the leader of the SOS Brigade, a club comprised of her high school's most extraordinary students. So when Haruhi is bored, it's up to the SOS Brigade to do something about it.

As the SOS Brigade prepares for the upcoming cultural festival, eccentric high school student and oblivious god Haruhi decides to make a movie. The star-the beautiful and reluctant Mikuru. But as filming begins, strange things begin to happen and Mikuru begins to develop superpowers. It soon becomes obvious that Haruhi's powers to change the universe are bleeding through the movie and into real life! As things begin to escalate, the SOS Brigade is called to set things right before Haruhi discovers the truth and awakens her true destructive potential. Could the end be near? Or is it just another day at high school? You never know when Haruhi is involved!

Haruhi: Book 3

The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya

Haruhi is the bossy and beautiful leader of the SOS Brigade, a club comprised of her high school's most extraordinary (and strangest) students. On a typical day, the SOS Brigade must struggle to keep Haruhi happy and occupied because, unbeknownst to her, Haruhi has the power to destroy the world!

This third volume in the Haruhi Suzumiya series is a collection of four exciting short stories that chronologically take place before The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya.

The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya:

In her latest attempt to give the S.O.S. Brigade more public exposure, Haruhi signs the group up for the city-wide baseball tournament. Featuring the bat that can only hit home runs.

Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody:

It's like Back To the Future! In order to prevent an impending disaster, Mikuru takes Kyon back in time, where he meets Haruhi as a seventh grader. Haruhi was just as much trouble then as well!

Mysterique Sign:

The computer club president at school mysteriously disappears, and it's up to the S.O.S. Brigade to get to the bottom of it!

Remote Island Syndrome:

It's vacation time when a relative of Itsuki's invites the S.O.S. Brigade to stay at his island villa. But then a dead body turns up, and Haruhi and the gang get mixed up in a thrilling murder mystery. Zoinks!

Haruhi: Book 4

The Rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya

What if you woke up one morning, and everything had changed?

It's one week before Christmas Eve, and Haruhi and the S.O.S. Brigade (a club for her high school's strangest and most extraordinary students) are gearing up for holiday festivities. But just before the fun kicks off, Kyon, the only "normal" member, wakes up one morning in a weird alternate dimension, one where Haruhi attends another school entirely, Nagato, the robot-like alien, is just an ordinary human, and Mikuru (the cute girl of Kyon's dreams) doesn't even recognize him-in other words, the S.O.S. Brigade never existed.

The only clue Kyon can find is a bookmark left by the alien version of Nagato, which leads him on a quest back in time, where he interacts with the storyline from "Bamboo Leaf Rhapsody", a short story from the previous Haruhi book, The Boredom of Haruhi Suzumiya.

This fun and quirky holiday tale is reminiscent of A Christmas Carol and It's a Wonderful Life.

Time travel, alternate dimensions, and aliens, oh my! With Haruhi, there's a surprise around every corner.

Haruhi: Book 5

The Wavering of Haruhi Suzumiya

What Haruhi wants, Haruhi gets!

Stunning, brash, and completely clueless about her powers, Haruhi Suzumiya can make anything bend to her will. Although she doesn't know it, she's a goddess who has the ability destroy the world--don't make her mad! Luckily, she has her SOS Brigade (a club comprised of her high school's most extraordinary students) to keep her happy.

This fifth volume in the wildly fun and unpredictable Haruhi Suzumiya series features three short stories for Haruhi's every mood.

Endless Eight:

An endless (never-ending) summer of fun. Featuring the time-loop from hell!

The Day of Sagittarius:

A heated (overheated) competition with the computer club. The computer club vowed revenge on the SOS Brigade, but they didn't reckon on Haruhi's secrect weapon, the alien Nagato and her abilty with games and (primitive) computer programming

Snowy Mountain Syndrome:

A ski trip getaway (with a dangerous blizzard!). And anything that can take the super-alien Nagato out, is bad news.

Haruhi: Book 6

The Intrigues of Haruhi Suzumiya

Haruhi Suzumiya, the fierce and fabulously spontaneous leader of the SOS Brigade (a club for her high school's most extraordinary students), is always a magnet for wild adventures (and trouble!).

Now, get ready to go back in time in this sixth installment of the series! Five short stories reveal never-before-seen events from the SOS Brigade's past exploits. The last story, which brings the SOS Brigade back to the present, rounds out this collection of entertaining, hilarious, and, as always, unpredictable misadventures. Anything is possible in Haruhi's world!

Live Alive:

Kyon peruses the stalls at the cultural festival and visits Mikuru's noodle stall. Everything seems normal for once, until a surprise band shows up to perform.

The Adventures of Mikuru Asahina: Episode 00

The movie that the SOS Brigade created in The Sigh of Haruhi Suzumiya (Book 2) is shown, and the Bridage gets to see it in its final form.

Love at First Sight:

Kyon meets with an old friend, who describes seeing a girl he's fallen in love with--and it turns out to be Yuki! Will this mere human have a chance with the world's most stoic robot?

Where Did the Cat Go?

This story takes readers back to Book 3 (The Rampage of Haruhi Suzumiya) in which the SOS Brigade finally begins the main event for the Snow Mountain retreat murder mystery.

The Melancholy of Mikuru Asahina:

Mikuru asks Kyon to accompany her to buy tea leaves, but a secret motive may be involved.

Haruhi: Book 7

The Indignation of Haruhi Suzumiya

After closing the time loop fiasco in The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya (Vol. 5), Kyon is ready to start a new year with a blank slate--no time travel, no apocalyptic worries, and maybe some actual peace and quiet with the SOS Brigade, a club comprised of his high school's most extraordinary students. Their leader is Haruhi, a bold, brash girl who doesn't realize that she's actually a powerful goddess whose moods can easily change the balance of the universe.

Just as Kyon starts to get comfortable, he gets a visit from his friend Mikuru. Except this isn't his Mikuru; it's a Mikuru from eight days in the future! Time traveling shenanigans start all over again as Kyon, guided by the future Mikuru, attempts to stop a terrible future from becoming a reality.

Haruhi: Book 8

The Dissociation of Haruhi Suzumiya

Two stories continue the adventure in Volume 8 of the Haruhi Suzumiya series.

Editor-in-Chief, Straight Ahead!

Since the beginning of the year, the SOS Brigade has been masking itself as the Literature Club to be recognized as an official high school organization. But when the new student council president threatens to disband the group, the members must write a collection of literature. Naturally, Haruhi assume the role of editor-in-chief and leads the team to publication with hilarious results.

Wandering Shadow:

From writers to detectives, the SOS Brigade does it all. When fellow classmate Sanaka comes to the club seeking help, the team (well, Haruhi) is up to the task. A well-trodden popular park path has suddenly begun to terrify the neighborhood dogs, and Haruhi suspects that it's being haunted by animal spirits. It looks like the SOS Brigade is about to perform its first canine exorcism!

Haruhi: Book 9

The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya

As the second year of high school begins, Haruhi's cynical and sarcastic confidant Kyon, the only "normal" member of the SOS Brigade, finds himself meeting Sasaki, an old friend from his days in junior high. Haruhi and Sasaki's shared friendship with Kyon and, possibly, shared abilities, causes tension between the two and Kyon knows Haurhi's dissatisfaction can have dire consequences! Kyon and Sasaki's chance meeting could affect his future, the future of the SOS Brigade, and the world forever.

This ninth volume of the Haruhi Suzumiya series is the first to use two alternate stories lines for the same plot, which brings the Brigade to different endings. Or is it the same ending? One can never tell with Haruhi. The story continues in the next novel, The Surprise of Haruhi Suzumiya.

Haruhi: Book 10

The Intuition of Haruhi Suzumiya

Where Haruhi goes, trouble follows!

The two storylines from The Disassociation of Haruhi Suzumiya continue, introducing a new inductee into the S.O.S. brigade who may be more than just the eager freshman she appears to be. As the two realities converge, the SOS Brigade learns that the new member may have the ability to bring the two story "timelines" together... and save the world in the process.

Haruhi: Book 11

Sometimes, even Haruhi doesn't know what she wants!

As the SOS Brigade rings in the New Year with a shrine visit, there's a surprising lack of supernatural or reality-bending phenomena. Despite this, Kyon is as wary as ever. After all, Haruhi has a tendency to turn even the most mundane events into impossible uproars! That danger could not be more apparent than when their club activities lead them into the world of school wonders and whodunit mysteries. Even peaceful moments are remarkably eccentric when Haruhi is around...

The Rolling Stones

Heinlein Juveniles: Book 6

The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy

The rollicking adventures of the Stone Family on a tour of the Solar System. It all statred when the twins, Castor and Pollux Stone, decided that life on the Lunar colony was too dull and decided to buy their own spaceship and go into business for themselves. Their father thought that was a fine, idea, except that he and Grandma Hazel bought the spaceship and the whole Stone Family were on their way out into the far reaches of the Solar System, with stops on Mars(where the twins got a lesson in the interplanetary economics of bicycles and the adorable little critters called flatcats who, it turned out, bred like rabbits; or perhaps, Tribbles....), out to the asteroids, where Mrs. Stone, an M.D., was needed to treat a dangerous outbreak of disease, even further out, to Titan and beyond.

Unforgettable Heinlein characters on an unforgettable adventure.

Hollow Kingdom

Hollow Kingdom: Book 1

Kira Jane Buxton

S.T., a domesticated crow, is a bird of simple pleasures: hanging out with his owner Big Jim, trading insults with Seattle's wild crows (those idiots), and enjoying the finest food humankind has to offer: Cheetos ®.

Then Big Jim's eyeball falls out of his head, and S.T. starts to feel like something isn't quite right. His most tried-and-true remedies--from beak-delivered beer to the slobbering affection of Big Jim's loyal but dim-witted dog, Dennis--fail to cure Big Jim's debilitating malady. S.T. is left with no choice but to abandon his old life and venture out into a wild and frightening new world with his trusty steed Dennis, where he discovers that the neighbors are devouring each other and the local wildlife is abuzz with rumors of dangerous new predators roaming Seattle. Humanity's extinction has seemingly arrived, and the only one determined to save it is a foul-mouthed crow whose knowledge of the world around him comes from his TV-watching education.

Hollow Kingdom is a humorous, big-hearted, and boundlessly beautiful romp through the apocalypse and the world that comes after, where even a cowardly crow can become a hero.

Ijon Tichy

Stanislaw Lem

Bringing his twin gifts of scientific speculation and scathing satire to bear on that hapless planet, Earth, Lem sends his unlucky cosmonaut, Ijon Tichy, to the Eighth Futurological Congress. Caught up in local revolution, Tichy is shot and so critically wounded that he is flashfrozen to await a future cure. Translated by Michael Kandel.

The Star Diaries

Ijon Tichy: Book 1

Stanislaw Lem

Ijon Tichy, Lem's Candide of the Cosmos, encounters bizarre civilizations and creatures in space that serve to satirize science, the rational mind, theology, and other icons of human pride. Line drawings by the Author.

The Illuminatus! Trilogy

Illuminatus! Trilogy

Robert Shea
Robert Anton Wilson

Filled with sex and violence--in and out of time and space--the three books of The Illuminatus are only partly works of the imagination. They tackle all the coverups of our time--from who really shot the Kennedys to why there's a pyramid on a one-dollar bill.

The Collapsing Empire

Interdependency: Book 1

Our universe is ruled by physics and faster than light travel is not possible -- until the discovery of The Flow, an extra-dimensional field we can access at certain points in space-time that transport us to other worlds, around other stars.

Humanity flows away from Earth, into space, and in time forgets our home world and creates a new empire, the Interdependency, whose ethos requires that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It's a hedge against interstellar war -- and a system of control for the rulers of the empire.

The Flow is eternal -- but it is not static. Just as a river changes course, The Flow changes as well, cutting off worlds from the rest of humanity. When it's discovered that The Flow is moving, possibly cutting off all human worlds from faster than light travel forever, three individuals -- a scientist, a starship captain and the Empress of the Interdependency -- are in a race against time to discover what, if anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse.

The Consuming Fire

Interdependency: Book 2

The Interdependency, humanity's interstellar empire, is on the verge of collapse. The Flow, the extra-dimensional conduit that makes travel between the stars possible, is disappearing, leaving entire star systems stranded. When it goes, human civilization may go with it -- unless desperate measures can be taken.

Emperox Grayland II, the leader of the Interdependency, is ready to take those measures to help ensure the survival of billions. But nothing is ever that easy. Arrayed before her are those who believe the collapse of the Flow is a myth -- or at the very least, an opportunity that can allow them to ascend to power.

While Grayland prepares for disaster, others are preparing for a civil war, a war that will take place in the halls of power, the markets of business and the altars of worship as much as it will take place between spaceships and battlefields. The Emperox and her allies are smart and resourceful, but then so are her enemies. Nothing about this power struggle will be simple or easy... and all of humanity will be caught in its widening gyre.

The Last Emperox

Interdependency: Book 3

A Talent for the Invisible

The collapse of The Flow, the interstellar pathway between the planets of the Interdependency, has accelerated. Entire star systems -- and billions of people -- are becoming cut off from the rest of human civilization. This collapse was foretold through scientific prediction... and yet, even as the evidence is obvious and insurmountable, many still try to rationalize, delay and profit from these final days of one of the greatest empires humanity has ever known.

Emperox Grayland II has finally wrested control of her empire from those who oppose her and who deny the reality of this collapse. But "control" is a slippery thing, and even as Grayland strives to save as many of her people as possible from impoverished isolation, the forces opposing her rule will make a final, desperate push to topple her from her throne and power, by any means necessary. Grayland and her thinning list of allies must use every tool at their disposal to save themselves, and all of humanity. And yet it may not be enough.

Will Grayland become the savior of her civilization... or the last emperox to wear the crown?

Jack Conger: Book 1

Ron Goulart

In 2020 A.D. even 20/20 vision wouldn't help you to see Jack Conger when he was working. Because Jack was an operative of the Wild Talents Division of the U.S. Remedial Functions Agency -- and his particular specialty was making himself invisible. The RFA sent him where nobody else was able to go. Another one whom nobody was able to set eyes upon was the scientist known as the Sandman. The legendary sandman of childhood myth used to put people to sleep. This one woke them up -- much to the chagrin of governments and plotters who had assassinated them. So they sent the Invisible Man to find the Unseen Resurrectionist...

The Panchronicon Plot

Jack Conger: Book 2

Ron Goulart

What better way to get rid of political enemies than to shove them back into the past and maroon them there? It isn't exactly murder but it sure could raise a hob with history!

That was what was happening whey they yelled for the Wild Talents Division. The actual time machine was a secret known only to the president -- who was apparently the culprit. But someone like Jake Conger would be just weird enough to be able to locate the kind of nut who could travel in time himself.

Hello, Lemuria, Hello

Jack Conger: Book 3

Ron Goulart

A prehistoric race of aliens called the Lemurians are attempting to take control of Earth after the exposure of their existence. Jake Conger, the semi-former agent of the Wild Talents Division, now needs to find their headquarters and stop them.

Terminal Alliance

Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse: Book 1

Jim C. Hines

The Krakau came to Earth to invite humanity into a growing alliance of sentient species. However, they happened to arrive after a mutated plague wiped out half the planet, turned the rest into shambling, near-unstoppable animals, and basically destroyed human civilization. You know -- your standard apocalypse.

The Krakau's first impulse was to turn around and go home. (After all, it's hard to have diplomatic relations with mindless savages who eat your diplomats.) Their second impulse was to try to fix us. Now, a century later, human beings might not be what they once were, but at least they're no longer trying to eat everyone. Mostly.

Marion "Mops" Adamopoulos is surprisingly bright (for a human). As a Lieutenant on the Earth Mercenary Corps Ship Pufferfish, she's in charge of the Shipboard Hygiene and Sanitation team. When a bioweapon attack wipes out the Krakau command crew and reverts the rest of the humans to their feral state, only Mops and her team are left with their minds intact.

Escaping the attacking aliens -- not to mention her shambling crewmates -- is only the beginning. Sure, Mops and her team of space janitors and plumbers can clean the ship as well as anyone, but flying the damn thing is another matter.

As they struggle to keep the Pufferfish functioning and find a cure for their crew, they stumble onto a conspiracy that could threaten the entire alliance... a conspiracy born from the truth of what happened on Earth all those years ago.

Mechanistria

Jay Score / Marathon: Book 2

The explorers were equipped for strange and menacing animals. But not for the highly moral--if bloodthirsty--things of that world!

This short story appears in the collection, Men, Martians and Machines, by Eric Frank Russell (1953)

Originally appeared in Astounding Science-Fiction, January 1942 available free on Internet Archives.

Symbiotica

Jay Score / Marathon: Book 3

The Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys

The explorers had run into the machine civilization gone mad on Mechanistria, but this planet seemed safe. Not a machine anywhere, just jungles. And with their weapons, they didn't have to fear anything --

This short story appears in the collections:

Men, Martians and Machines, by Eric Frank Russell (1953)
The Great Science Fiction Stories Volume 5 1943, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg (1981)
Adventures in Time and Space, edited by Raymond J. Healy, J. Francis McComas (1978)

This novelette originally appeared in Astounding Science-Fiction, October 1943 available free on Internet Archives.

Jeb Stuart Ho: Book 4

Mick Farren

A sequel to a series of 70s science fiction novels in which the Minstrel Boy is being hunted by crazed assassins. Reave is wanted as a deserter and Billy Oblivion fears that he is losing his mind. For the first time, the end seems to be in sight. Mick Farren also wrote "Their Master's War".

A Matter of Traces

Jorj McKie

Frank Herbert

There will undoubtedly be a time when tomorrow's bureaucrats will wish to question such dangerous survivals...

This story originally appeared in the November 1958 issue of Fantastic Universe,

It is also contained in the Frank Herbert collections "The Collected Stories of Frank Herbert" and "Eye".

Touched by an Alien

Kitty Katt: Book 1

Gini Koch

How can a sexy marketing manager join forces with an Alpha Centauri male in Armani to save the planet-using hairspray, a Mont Blanc pen, and rock n' roll?

Easy...

She's Touched by an Alien

Marketing manager Katherine "Kitty" Katt steps into the middle of what appears to be a domestic dispute turned ugly. And it only gets uglier when the man turns into a winged monster, straight out of a grade-Z horror movie, and goes on a killing spree. Though Kitty should probably run away, she springs into action to take the monster down.

In the middle of the chaos a handsome hunk named Jeff Martini appears, sent by the "agency" to perform crowd control. He's Kitty's kind of guy, no matter what planet he's from. And from now on, for Kitty, things are going to be sexy, dangerous, wild, and out of this world.

Finna

LitenVärld: Book 1

Nino Cipri

When an elderly customer at a Swedish big box furniture store -- but not that one -- slips through a portal to another dimension, it's up to two minimum-wage employees to track her across the multiverse and protect their company's bottom line. Multi-dimensional swashbuckling would be hard enough, but those two unfortunate souls broke up a week ago.

To find the missing granny, Ava and Jules will brave carnivorous furniture, swarms of identical furniture spokespeople, and the deep resentment simmering between them. Can friendship blossom from the ashes of their relationship? In infinite dimensions, all things are possible.

Defekt

LitenVärld: Book 2

Nino Cipri

Derek is LitenVärld's most loyal employee. He lives and breathes the job, from the moment he wakes up in a converted shipping container at the edge of the parking lot to the second he clocks out of work 18 hours later. But after taking his first ever sick day, his manager calls that loyalty into question. An excellent employee like Derek, an employee made to work at LitenVärld, shouldn't need time off.

To test his commitment to the job, Derek is assigned to a special inventory shift, hunting through the store to find defective products. Toy chests with pincers and eye stalks, ambulatory sleeper sofas, killer mutant toilets, that kind of thing. Helping him is the inventory team - four strangers who look and sound almost exactly like him. Are five Dereks better than one?

I Am Number Four

Lorien Legacies: Book 1

Pittacus Lore

John Smith seems like an ordinary teenager, living a normal life with his guardian Henri in Paradise, Ohio. But for John, keeping a low profile is essential, because he is not an ordinary teenager. He's an alien from the planet Lorien, and he's on the run. A group of evil aliens from the planet Mogadore, who destroyed his world, are hunting anyone who escaped.

Nine Loric children were sent to Earth to live in hiding until they grew up and developed their Legacies, powers that would help them fight back--and help them save us. Three of them are now dead. John is Number Four, and he knows he's next....

Magnus Ridolph

Jack Vance

"Magnus Ridolph didn't look like an interstellar troubleshooter, at first. He was not tall and muscular, ... and his voice and manner seemed far too mild for an adventurer. Yet there was a chill hardness in his mild eyes that warned of the deceptiveness of his appearance..."

This is a collection of all stories featuring Magnus Ridolph, troubleshooter for hire. Invariably those with whom he associates try to either cheat him or take advantage of him, but Magnus Ridolph always comes up with the answer to their problem and, usually with an unexpected twist, manages to collect his full fee from the cheater.

Red Team Blues

Martin Hench: Book 1

Cory Doctorow

Martin Hench is 67 years old, single, and successful in a career stretching back to the beginnings of Silicon Valley. He lives and roams California in a very comfortable fully-furnished touring bus, The Unsalted Hash, that he bought years ago from a fading rock star. He knows his way around good food and fine drink. He likes intelligent women, and they like him back often enough.

Martin is a--contain your excitement--self-employed forensic accountant, a veteran of the long guerilla war between people who want to hide money, and people who want to find it. He knows computer hardware and software alike, including the ins and outs of high-end databases and the kinds of spreadsheets that are designed to conceal rather than reveal. He's as comfortable with social media as people a quarter his age, and he's a world-level expert on the kind of international money-laundering and shell-company chicanery used by Fortune 500 companies, mid-divorce billionaires, and international drug gangs alike. He also knows the Valley like the back of his hand, all the secret histories of charismatic company founders and Sand Hill Road VCs. Because he was there at all the beginnings. He's not famous, except to the people who matter. He's made some pretty powerful people happy in his time, and he's been paid pretty well. It's been a good life.

Now he's been roped into a job that's more dangerous than anything he's ever agreed to before--and it will take every ounce of his skill to get out alive.

The Alteration

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 2

Kingsley Amis

The year is 1976 and we are alive in an all-Catholic world. The Reformation never took place because Martin Luther made a deal with Rome and became Pope Martin I. The "alteration" proposed to Hubert Anvil, brilliant 10-year-old boy soprano, is that most feared by all males. Pope John XXIV wishes Hubert to preserve the purity of his voice to glorify the Church on a permanent basis; Hubert wishes to share his talent but he has some disquieting thoughts about Pope John's proposal.

Clans of the Alphane Moon

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 3

Philip K. Dick

When CIA agent Chuck Rittersdorf and his psychiatrist wife, Mary, file for divorce, they have no idea that in a few weeks they'll be shooting it out on Alpha III M2, the distant moon ruled by various psychotics liberated from a mental ward. Nor do they suspect that Chuck's new employer, the famous TV comedian Bunny Hentman, will also be there aiming his own laser gun.

How things came to such a darkly hilarious pass is the subject of Clans of the Alphane Moon, an astutely shrewd and acerbic tale that blurs all conventional distinctions between sanity and madness.

The Müller-Fokker Effect

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 14

Nightfall and Other Stories

Bob Shairp--a writer and dreamer--has agreed to be a guinea-pig in a military experiment to find out if his personality can be turned into data and stored on computer. But a computing error quickly destroys Shairp's physical body, leaving his mind stranded in an encoded world. Can the process be reversed?

The Goblin Reservation

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 32

Clifford D. Simak

En route to an interplanetary research mission, a scientist is abducted by a strange, shadowy race of aliens and taken to a previously uncharted planet, a storehouse of information that would be invaluable--even to an Earth so advanced that time travel allows goblins, dinosaurs, even Shakespeare to coexist.

Mirabile

Janet Kagan

On the distant planet of Mirabile, a settlement of human colonists from Earth is jeopardized by genetic mutants of Earth plants and animals, and it is up to ecological troubleshooter Mama Jason to destroy the menacing mutants

Table of Contents:

The Loch Moose Monster - (1989)
The Return of the Kangaroo Rex - (1989)
The Flowering Inferno - (1990)
Getting the Bugs Out - (1990)
Raising Cane - (1991)
Frankenswine - (1991)
Afterword: Author's Note - (1991)

The Planet Dweller

Moosevan: Book 1

Jane Palmer

Diana hears the voice of Moosevan, an entity who inhabits a distant planet, in her head. Her world is threatened and she wants Diana's help. Yuri believes her, though he's usually drunk, in charge of a ten inch reflector and has a bizarre theory about the movement of the asteroids. Then two cosmic intelligences decide to help. They may understand the Universe, but mere mortals are beyond them.

Moving Moosevan

Moosevan: Book 2

Jane Palmer

Moosevan has been moved to a new planet. She didn't want to go, but the machinations of the empire building Mott, Kulp and his cronies and Dax and Reniola, cosmic super intelligences, ensured its destruction. Moosevan now lives inside the Earth, moving land masses, soaking up pollution, making deserts fertile, and adding interesting twists to motorways. Unfortunately, the maniacal Mott androids and Kulp have now turned their attention to the Earth. Even worse, Dax and Reniola are sent to deal with them: as one is obsessed with terraforming neighbouring planets, and the other with chintz curtains, the planet dweller is in for another rough cosmic ride.

Duckbill Soup

Moosevan: Book 3

Jane Palmer

Human civilisation has been moved to Titan. It is now in a synchronous orbit on the opposite side of the Sun with the Earth, where all the animals have been left to their own devices. Titan has no oceans, so when the atmosphere starts to deteriorate, the two shape-changing super-beings who caused the problem in the first place are sent back to rectify things. Can they make matters even worse?

Nightfall: Book 1

Isaac Asimov

Table of Contents:

What Is This Thing Called Love? - (1961)
Strikebreaker - (1957)
Sally - (1953)
Nightfall - (1941)
Segregationist - (1967)
Eyes Do More Than See - (1965)
Green Patches - (1950)
Hostess - (1951)
Breeds There a Man...? - (1951)
Flies - (1953)
The Up-to-Date Sorcerer - (1958)
Unto the Fourth Generation - (1959)
The Machine That Won the War - (1961)
My Son, the Physicist! - (1962)
It's Such a Beautiful Day - (1955)
Insert Knob A in Hole B - (1957)
"In a Good Cause--" - (1951)
The C-Chute - (1951)
Biographical Comments in "Nightfall and Other Stories" - essay by Isaac Asimov
"Nobody Here But--" - (1953)
What If-- - (1952)

Windswept

Occupied Space: Book 1

Adam Rakunas

Labor organizer Padma Mehta is on the edge of space and the edge of burnout. All she wants is to buy out a little rum distillery and retire, but she's supposed to recruit 500 people to the Union before she can. She's only thirty-three short. So when a small-time con artist tells her about forty people ready to tumble down the space elevator to break free from her old bosses, she checks it out -- against her better judgment. It turns out, of course, it was all lies.

As Padma should know by now, there are no easy shortcuts on her planet. And suddenly retirement seems farther away than ever: she's just stumbled into a secret corporate mission to stop a plant disease that could wipe out all the industrial sugarcane in Occupied Space. If she ever wants to have another drink of her favorite rum, she's going to have to fight her way through the city's warehouses, sewage plants, and up the elevator itself to stop this new plague.

Like a Boss

Occupied Space: Book 2

Adam Rakunas

In this breathless and hilarious followup to Windswept, former labor organiser Padma Mehta's worst nightmare comes true: she gets yanked out of early retirement.

After buying her favourite rum distillery and settling down, she thought she'd heard the last of her arch nemesis, Evanrute Saarien. But Saarien, fresh out of prison for his misdeeds in Windswept, has just fabricated a new religion, positioning himself as its holy leader. He's telling his congregation to go on strike, to fight the system. And unfortunately, they're listening to him.

Now Padma's summoned by the Union president to help stop this strike from happening. The problem is, she's out of practice. And, the more she digs, the more she realises this whole strike business is more complicated than the Union president let on...

To Say Nothing of the Dog

Oxford Time Travel: Book 3

Shada: The Lost Adventures by Douglas Adams

In her first full-length novel since her critically acclaimed Doomsday Book Connie Willis, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, once again visits the unpredictable world of time travel. But this time the result is a joyous journey into a past and future of comic mishaps and historical cross-purposes, in which the power of human love can still make all the difference.

On the surface, England in the summer of 1888 is possibly the most restful time in history--lazy afternoons boating on the Thames, tea parties, croquet on the lawn--and time traveler Ned Henry is badly in need of a rest. He's been shuttling back and forth between the 21st century and the 1940s looking for a Victorian atrocity called the bishop's birdstump. It's only the latest in a long string of assignments from Lady Schrapnell, the rich dowager who has invaded Oxford University. She's promised to endow the university's time-travel research project in return for their help in rebuilding the famed Coventry Cathedral, destroyed in a Nazi air raid over a hundred years before.

But the bargain has turned into a nightmare. Lady Schrapnell's motto is "God is in the details," and as the l25th anniversary of the cathedral's destruction--and the deadline for its proposed completion--approaches, time-travel research has fallen by the wayside. Now Ned and his colleagues are frantically engaged in installing organ pipes, researching misericords, and generally risking life and limb. So when Ned gets the chance to escape to the Victorian era, he jumps at it. Unfortunately, he isn't really being sent there to recover from his time-lag symptoms, but to correct an incongruity a fellow historian, Verity Kindle, has inadvertently created by bringing something forward from the past.

In theory, such an act is impossible. But now it has happened, and it's up to Ned and Verity to correct the incongruity before it alters history or, worse, destroys the space-time continuum. And they have to do it while coping with eccentric Oxford dons, table-rapping spiritualists, a very spoiled young lady, and an even more spoiled cat. As Ned and Verity try frantically to hold things together and find out why the incongruity happened, the breach widens, time travel goes amok, and everything starts to fall apart--until the fate of the entire space-time continuum hangs on a sÚance, a butler, a bulldog, the battle of Waterloo, and, above all, on the bishop's birdstump.

At once a mystery novel, a time-travel adventure, and a Shakespearean comedy, To Say Nothing of the Dog is a witty and imaginative tale of misconceptions, misunderstandings, and a chaotic world in which the shortest distance between two points is never a straight line, and the secret to the universe truly lies "in the details."

Past Doctor Adventures

Douglas Adams
Gareth Roberts

From the unique mind of Douglas Adams, legendary author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, comes Shada, a story scripted for the television series Doctor Who but never produced--and now transformed into an original novel...

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
Imagine how dangerous a LOT of knowledge is...

The Doctor's old friend and fellow Time Lord, Professor Chronotis, has retired to Cambridge University, where among the other doddering old professors nobody will notice if he lives for centuries. He took with him a few little souvenirs--harmless things really. But among them, carelessly, he took The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey. Even more carelessly, he has loaned this immensely powerful book to clueless graduate student Chris Parsons, who intends to use it to impress girls. The Worshipful and Ancient Law is among the most dangerous artifacts in the universe; it cannot be allowed to fall into the wrong hands.

The hands of the sinister Skagra are unquestionably the wrongest ones possible. Skagra is a sadist and an egomaniac bent on universal domination. Having misguessed the state of fashion on Earth, he also wears terrible platform shoes. He is on his way to Cambridge. He wants the book. And he wants the Doctor...

Phule's Company

Phule's Company: Book 1

Robert Lynn Asprin

Meet the soldiers of Phule's company; the few, the proud, the stupid and the inept. These soldiers do more damage before nine in the morning than most people are capable of doing in an entire year. And since fate has a perverse sense of humour they are also mankind's last hope.

Phule's Paradise

Phule's Company: Book 2

Robert Lynn Asprin

Captain Willard Phule must lead his group of unlikely interstellar armed forces on a mission to protect The Fat Chance, an intergalactic casino, from a criminal takeover.

A Phule and His Money

Phule's Company: Book 3

Captain Willard Phule and his company of misfits return in an all new, all-nutty adventure. To help develop a fledgling planet, the enterprising captain is rallying the troops and venturing into a business where no Phule has gone before: amusement parks--the final frontier.

Phule Me Twice

Phule's Company: Book 4

No Phule Like an Old Phule

When the planet Zenobia is invaded, Captain Willard Phule is made their military advisor. But, unknown to the Zenobians, they're getting two Phules for the price of one. A robot double of Captain Phule appears out of nowhere. And only the real Phule knows who the real Phule is.

Phule's Company: Book 5

Phule gets on the wrong side of celebrity canine Barky the Environmental Dog by hosting a group of big game hunters who think they can bag a dinosaur on Zenobia. Needless to say, dinosaurs are not a native species. But cold, hard facts never stopped a Phule. And neither will Barky's cold, wet nose.

Phule's Errand

Phule's Company: Book 6

Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers

When his loyal butler runs off with the Omega Company's gorgeous new medic--or so it seems--Phule sets off after him, while General Blitzkrieg decides to make a surprise visit to Zenobia.

Take Back Plenty

Plenty / Tabitha Jute: Book 1

Colin Greenland

It is carnival time on Mars, but Tabitha Jute isn't partying. She is in hiding from the law, penniless and about to lose her livelihood and her best friend, the space barge "Alice Liddell". Then, the intriguing Marco Metz offers her some money to take him to Plenty, and the adventure begins.

The Lost World

Professor Challenger: Book 1

Arthur Conan Doyle

An exciting account of a jungle expedition’s encounter with living dinosaurs, written with the same panache exhibited in the author’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries. This 1912 novel, the first installment of the Professor Challenger series, follows an eccentric paleontologist and his companions into the wilds of the Amazon, where they discover iguanodons, pterodactyls, and savage ape-people.

Brain Twister

Psi-Power: Book 1

Mark Phillips

The fantastic story of a spy who could read minds!

Brain Twister - follows the adventures of FBI agent Kenneth J. Malone as he attempts to unravel the machinations of a telepathic spy. How do you find a telepath to catch the first telepath? A fun piece of sci fi that features claims of immortality, mind-reading, spies and insanity.

Cosmicomics

Qfwfq: Book 1

Italo Calvino

Enchanting stories about the evolution of the universe, with characters that are fashioned from mathematical formulae and cellular structures. "Naturally, we were all there, - old Qfwfq said, - where else could we have been? Nobody knew then that there could be space. Or time either: what use did we have for time, packed in there like sardines?" Translated by William Weaver.

The Real-Town Murders

Real-Town Murders: Book 1

Adam Roberts

Alma is a private detective in a near-future England, a country desperately trying to tempt people away from the delights of Shine, the immersive successor to the internet. But most people are happy to spend their lives plugged in, and the country is decaying.

Alma's partner is ill, and has to be treated without fail every 4 hours, a task that only Alma can do. If she misses the 5 minute window her lover will die. She is one of the few not to access the Shine.

So when Alma is called to an automated car factory to be shown an impossible death and finds herself caught up in a political coup, she knows that getting too deep may leave her unable to get home.

What follows is a fast-paced Hitchcockian thriller as Alma evades arrest, digs into the conspiracy, and tries to work out how on earth a dead body appeared in the boot of a freshly-made car in a fully-automated factory.

Red Dwarf Omnibus

Red Dwarf

Rob Grant
Doug Naylor

Contents:

Infinity Welcome Careful Drivers (novel)
Better Than Life (novel)
Dave Hollins - Space Cadet (Short Story)
Red Dwarf Pilot Script

Published as by Grant Naylor

Red Dwarf: Book 1

Rob Grant
Doug Naylor

Awakening from a drunken spree in a London pub to find himself on one of Saturn's moons, Lister joins the Space Corps and boards the Red Dwarf, determined to return to Earth.

Better Than Life

Red Dwarf: Book 2

Rob Grant
Doug Naylor

Rimmer, Cat and Kryten are trapped in a computer game which can transport players directly to the world of imagination, a world where each player can enjoy fabulous success. The only catch is that the game kills.

Last Human

Red Dwarf: Book 3

Doug Naylor

Lister gazed out of the porthole and catalogues the series of disasters that had led him to this point in space and time: the bad decisions, the poor career choices, the unreliable friendships that had led him here - on a prison ship bound for the most inhospitable penal colony in the outer cosmos... and all he'd ever wanted was to be a soft metal guitar icon.

Lister starts out by searching for his Doppelganger and ends up having the future of the human race on his shoulders.

Backwards

Red Dwarf: Book 4

Rob Grant

This is the third adventure of the unlikely space heroes of the cult TV hit "Red Dwarf" - Lister, Rimmer, Kryten, Holly and the Cat - as they continue their epic journey through frontal-lobe-knotting realities. We join them just as Dave Lister has finally found his way back to planet Earth - which is good. What's bad, however, is that time isn't running in quite the right direction. And if he doesn't get off the planet soon, he's going to have to go through puberty again - backwards. If his crewmates can't help him, Lister will carry on growing younger until he becomes a baby, then an embryo, meeting a very sticky end indeed.

Galactic Diplomat

Retief: Book 2

Keith Laumer

Table of Contents:

Ultimatum - (1963)
Saline Solution - (1963)
The Brass God - (1965)
The Castle of Light - (1964)
Wicker Wonderland - (1964)
Native Intelligence - (1963)
The Prince and the Pirate - (1964)
Courier - (1961)
Protest Note - (1962)

Retief's War

Retief: Book 3

Keith Laumer

James Retief, assigned to unite hostile Quoppian tribes for the sake of Earth's security, must first foil the destructive plans of the evil Groaci and encounters the beautiful princess, Fifi.

Roderick at Random

Roderick: Book 2

Here is the continuing and uproarious saga of Roderick, a robot and "learning machine" growing up in an America in the near future. The mild-mannered robot is confronted with an ever-widening cast of madcap characters who typify the artificial values endemic in modern America.

The Reproductive System

SF Rediscovery: Book 3

Wompler's Walking Babies once put Millford, Utah, on the map. But they aren't selling like they used to. In fact, they aren't selling at all and the only alternative to winding the company up is to tap the government for a research grant. And so Wompler Research Laboratories and Project 32 come into being. The plan is to produce self replicating mechanisms; identical cells equipped to repair intracellular breakdowns, convert power from their environment and create new cells. But suddenly the nondescript grey metal boxes start crawling about the laboratory, feeding voraciously on any metal... and multiplying at an alarming rate.

Shades of Grey

Shades of Grey: Book 1

Jasper Fforde

Hundreds of years in the future, the world is an alarmingly different place.

Life is lived according to The Rulebook and social hierarchy is determined by your perception of colour. Eddie Russett is an above average Red who dreams of moving up the ladder by marriage to Constance Oxblood. Until he is sent to the Outer Fringes where he meets Jane - a lowly Grey with an uncontrollable temper and a desire to see him killed.

For Eddie, it's love at first sight. But his infatuation will lead him to discover that all is not as it seems in a world where everything that looks black and white is really shades of grey ...

Red Side Story

Shades of Grey: Book 2

Jasper Fforde

Welcome to Chromatacia, where the societal hierarchy is strictly regulated by one's limited color perception. Civilization has been rebuilt after an unspoken "Something that Happened" five hundred years ago. Society is now color vision-segregated, professions, marriages, and leisure activities all dictated by an individual's visual ability, and everything run by the shadowy National Color in far-off Emerald City.

Out on the fringes of Red Sector West, twenty-year-old Eddie Russett is being bullied into an arranged marriage with the powerful DeMauve family, purples who hope to redden up their progeny's color-viewing potential with Eddie's gene stock. Their obnoxious daughter Violet is confident the marriage won't hamper her style for too long because Eddie is about to go on trial for a murder he didn't commit, and he's pretty sure to be sent on a one-way trip to the Green Room for execution by soporific color exposure. Meanwhile, Eddie is engaged in an illegal relationship with his co-defendant, a Green, the charismatic, unpredictable, and occasionally deadly Jane Grey. Time is running out for Eddie and Jane to figure out how to save themselves. Negotiating the narrow boundaries of the Rules within their society, they search for a loophole--some truth of their world that has been hidden from its hyper-policed citizens.

Galactic Pot Healer

Sirius Five: Book 1

Philip K. Dick

A powerful and enigmatic alien recruits humans and aliens to help it restore a sunken cathedral in this touching and hilarious novel.

Sometimes even gods need help. In Galactic Pot-Healer that god is an alien creature known as The Glimmung, which looks alternately like a flaming wheel, a teenage girl, and a swirling mass of ocean life. In order to raise a sunken city, he summons beings from across the galaxy to Plowman's Planet. Joe Fernwright is one of those summoned, needed for his skills at pot-healing--repairing broken ceramics. But from the moment Joe arrives on Plowman's Planet, things start to go awry. Told as only Philip K. Dick can, Galactic Pot-Healer is a wildly funny tale of aliens, gods, and ceramics.

The Merchants' War

Space Merchants: Book 2

Space Tripping: The Mysterious Case of the Mysterious Case

The witty sequel to Frederik Pohl's & C. M. Kornbluth's legendary science fiction classic The Space Merchants, written 30 years later.

Great advertising agencies still dominate the world and control all governments and every aspect of human behavior. When a handful of renegades on Venus zealously opposes the so-called "benefits" of the hucksters' paradise, it seems inevitable that the all-powerful account executives of Earth will stop at nothing, not even war, to force the rebels to submit.

But the Veenies have a plan.../p>

Space Opera

Space Opera: Book 1

Catherynne M. Valente

A century ago, the Sentience Wars tore the galaxy apart and nearly ended the entire concept of intelligent space-faring life. In the aftermath, a curious tradition was invented -- something to cheer up everyone who was left and bring the shattered worlds together in the spirit of peace, unity, and understanding.

Once every cycle, the civilizations gather for Galactivision -- part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past. Instead of competing in orbital combat, the powerful species that survived face off in a competition of song, dance, or whatever can be physically performed in an intergalactic talent show. The stakes are high for this new game, and everyone is forced to compete.

This year, though, humankind has discovered the enormous universe. And while they expected to discover a grand drama of diplomacy, gunships, wormholes, and stoic councils of aliens, they have instead found glitter, lipstick and electric guitars. Mankind will not get to fight for its destiny -- they must sing.

A one-hit-wonder band of human musicians, dancers and roadies from London - Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes -- have been chosen to represent Earth on the greatest stage in the galaxy. And the fate of their species lies in their ability to rock.

Space Oddity

Space Opera: Book 2

Catherynne M. Valente

The Metagalactic Grand Prix -- part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past returns and the fate of the Earth is once again threatened.

The civilizations opposed to humanity have been plotting and want to take down the upstarts.

Can humanity rise again?

Space Tripping: Book 1

Patrick M. Edwards

Chuck never thought too deeply about whether aliens existed - not until Jopp, an intergalactic transport pilot, drunkenly crashed on Earth and tried to steal his truck.

Now, Chuck finds himself unwittingly roped into helping Jobb work off a debt to the universe's most powerful corporation. Through a series of mishaps and misfortune, the duo finds themselves in possession of a mysterious black case. Along the way they are joined by Bhanakhana, an adventurous scientist, and Rohi, a rogue law enforcement agent.

All they want is to get back to their normal lives, but in order to do so, they'll have to fend off murderous marauders, skirt the attentions of an interplanetary police force, deal with a peculiar crime boss, and escape a backwater planet inhabited by friendly yet endlessly frustrating alien yokels. It's a big and scary universe out there, and they'll be damned if they're going to face it sober.

Space Tripping 2: The Chaser

Space Tripping: Book 2

Patrick M. Edwards

A few short years after the wild series of events that brought them together, intergalactic misfits, Chuck and Jopp, along with their friend and respected scientist, Bhanakhana, are hired by a quirky Professor to join the search for the origin planet of a long lost alien civilization. It's a mystery that's confounded historians for centuries. Meanwhile, Rohi, a Universal Law Enforcement agent, investigates the peculiar murder of a young industrialist. The two endeavors become entwined as Chuck, Jopp, Bhanakhana, and Rohi find themselves running afoul of a clandestine and ruthless organization. What follows is a fun, fast-paced race across the universe toward an unknown finish line that might not even exist at all.

Trials and Tribble-ations

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Episode Novelizations: Book 5

Diane Carey

Almost a century ago, Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the "Starship Enterprise" first encountered the irresistible (and astonishingly prolific) life-form known as the tribbles, resulting in one of the most unusual adventures in the annals of Starfleet. Now Captain Benjamin Sisko and the crew of the "Defiant" are transported back in time to that historic ocassion, where Darvin, a devious Klingon spy, plots revenge against Captain Kirk. Using the seemingly harmless tribbles, Darvin attempts to destroy Kirk - but for the misplaced residents of "Deep Space Nine", saving the original "Enterprise" will be nothing but "tribble."

This book also features an introduction written by David Gerrold, the author of the "Trouble with the Tribbles" TOS script.

The Star Ghost

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Young Adult: Book 1

Brad Strickland

While living on "Deep Space Nine", Jake Sisko has seen a lot of strange things, since his father, commander of the station, opened it to every lifeform who passes through this sector of space. But when Jake's Ferengi friend Nog says he's seen a ghost, Jake doesn't believe him, until a shimmering figure with glowing red eyes appears in Jake's quarters. Soon enough the spectre has Jake on a dangerous mission into the depths of the station, with the fate of "Deep Space Nine" resting on his boyish shoulders.

Star Trek: The Voyage Home

Star Trek: Movie Novelizations: Book 4

Vonda N. McIntyre

To save Earth from destruction Kirk's crew must rescue a part of the past.

Their ship destroyed and their captain facing charges that could end his career, the men and woman of the starship USS Enterprise head home - to a planet Earth on the verge of extinction. An alien space probe has begun to destroy the atmosphere and threaten all forms of life. But somewhere in the 20th century is the key to the probe's deadly fury. Kirk and his crew must make a desperate journey into the past - to save the only hope of the future.

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Star Trek: Movie Novelizations: Book 12

Alan Dean Foster

When the crew of the Enterprise is called back home, they find an unstoppable force of terror from within their own organization has detonated the fleet and everything it stands for, leaving our world in a state of crisis.

With a personal score to settle, Captain Kirk leads a manhunt to a war-zone world to capture a one man weapon of mass destruction.

As our heroes are propelled into an epic chess game of life and death, love will be challenged, friendships will be torn apart, and sacrifices must be made for the only family Kirk has left: his crew.

How Much for Just the Planet?

Star Trek: The Original Series: Book 36

John M. Ford

Dilithium: in crystalline form, the most valuable mineral in the galaxy. It powers the Federation's starships... and the Klingon Empire's battlecruisers. Now on a small, out-of-the-way planet named Direidi, the greatest fortune in dilithium crystals ever seen has been found.

Under the terms of the Organian Peace Treaty, the planet will go to the side best able to develop the planet and its resources. Each side will contest the prize with the prime of its fleet: for the Federation -- Captain James T. Kirk and the Starship Enterprise; for the Klingons -- Captain Kaden vestai-Oparai and the Fire Blossom.

Except the Direidians are writing their own script for this contest -- a script that propels the crew of the Starship Enterprise into their strangest adventure yet.

William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope

Star Wars: Shakespeare: Book 4

Ian Doescher

Return once more to a galaxy far, far away with this sublime retelling of George Lucas's epic Star Wars in the style of the immortal Bard of Avon. The saga of a wise (Jedi) knight and an evil (Sith) lord, of a beautiful princess held captive and a young hero coming of age, Star Wars abounds with all the valor and villainy of Shakespeare's greatest plays. 'Tis a tale told by fretful droids, full of faithful Wookiees and fearstome Stormtroopers, signifying...pretty much everything.

Reimagined in glorious iambic pentameter--and complete with twenty gorgeous Elizabethan illustrations--William Shakespeare's Star Wars will astound and edify Rebels and Imperials alike. Zounds! This is the book you're looking for.

Wraith Squadron

Star Wars: X-Wing: Book 5

They are the galaxy's most elite fighting force. And as the battle against the Empire rages, the X-wing fighters risk life and machine to protect the Rebel Alliance. Now they must go on a daring undercover mission--as the crew of an Imperial warship.

It is Wedge Antilles' boldest creation: a covert-action unit of X-wing fighters, its pilots drawn from the dregs of other units, castoffs and rejects given one last chance. But before the new pilots can complete their training, the squadron's base is attacked by former Imperial admiral Trigit, and Wraith Squadron is forced to swing into action--taking over an Imperial warship and impersonating its crew. The mission: to gain vital intelligence about Trigit's secret weapons, to sabotage the admiral's plans, and to lure him into an Alliance trap. But the high-stakes gamble pits Wraith Squadron's ragtag renegades against the Empire's most brilliant master of guile and deception.

Are they up to the challenge?

If not, the penalty is instant death.

Iron Fist

Star Wars: X-Wing: Book 6

They are the Rebel Alliance's ultimate strike force--sleek, swift, and deadly. For these X-wing fighters, no job is too dirty or too dangerous. Now they must rise to meet an impossible challenge: stop a powerful warlord by pretending to be his ally.

Against all odds, the controversial Wraith Squadron has survived its first covert mission. But now they are called upon to cheat death twice. This time Wedge Antilles sends them in to stop the warlord Zsinj and his Super Star Destroyer, Iron Fist. If Zsinj joins the Empire, it could turn the tide of war against the Rebels. The Wraith Squadron's mission: infiltrate the warlord's fleet and uncover his carefully guarded plans. To do so, they must pose as ruthless pirates seeking to join Zsinj's forces. And that means first becoming pirates in space lanes teeming with Imperial Navy patrols. If that isn't enough to get them killed, they'll have to pass one last test--a suicide mission for Zsinj.

Can they survive the test and turn the tables on Zsinj?

Or is this the end for Wraith Squadron?

Solo Command

Star Wars: X-Wing: Book 7

Wraith Squadron: they are the Rebel Alliance's ultimate strike force. Sleek, swift, and deadly, they are the first in battle, the last line of defense. Now they must find and destroy a wily enemy more powerful than the Empire itself.

Their covert mission has been a success. The enemy has been vanquished. Or so they thought. The Super Star Destroyer Iron Fist somehow escaped destruction and with it the New Republic's greatest threat, the infamous warlord Zsinj. To defeat him, Wraith Squadron must join a combat task force led by the only man crafty enough to beat Zsinj at his own game: Han Solo.

But Zsinj knows the X-wing fighters' indomitable courage is both their greatest strength--and their greatest weakness. For even against the most overwhelming odds, the Rebels will fight to the death. And that will leave Zsinj the galaxy's unchallenged master!

Starfighters of Adumar

Star Wars: X-Wing: Book 9

Masaki Kajishima
Yosuke Kuroda

The X-wing fighter pilots have earned their reputation as the Rebel Alliance's ultimate strike force by overwhelming enemies with their rapid-fire assaults. But now they are about to embark on a diplomatic mission that will prove to be even more hazardous than all-out combat....

The neutral world of Adumar has decided to pick a side in the war to control the galaxy. Delegates from both the New Republic and the Empire have been invited to Adumar, and each camp will be given a chance to plead its government's case. But there is one small catch: since the Adumari prize military skill above all else, they insist that both delegations be composed exclusively of fighter pilots. For pilot Wedge Antilles and his company, it's an unfamiliar exercise in diplomacy--and one that's filled with unexpected peril. For once they arrive, the X-wing pilots are challenged by Adumar's fierce warriors and attacked by Imperial assassins bent on eliminating all competition. But these challenges pale in comparison to the threat posed by a rogue Republic agent... one who is determined to win Adumar's allegiance once and for all--even if it costs the X-wing pilots their lives.

Takeoff!

Takeoff!: Book 1

Randall Garrett

Has science fiction lost its pizazz? Fantasy not as fantastic as it used to be? Takeoff! With Randall Garrett's lively collection of classic parodies and pastiches. Within these pages, Garrett takes on such luminaries as Isaac Asimov, Alfred Bester, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Eric Frank Russell, E. E. "Doc" Smith, and more! The original "classics" will never be the same!

Contents:

Introduction - essay by A. E. van Vogt
Foreword - essay
Gentlemen: Please Note (1957) short story
Backstage Lensman (1978) novelette
The Best Policy (1957) short story
The Cosmic Beat (1962) novelette
Despoilers of the Golden Empire (1959) novelette [as by David Gordon]
The Horror Out of Time (1978) short story
Look Out! Duck! (1957) novelette [as by David Gordon]
Masters of the Metropolis (1956) short story by Lin Carter and Randall Garrett
Mustang (1961) short story
... No Connections (1958) short story
On the Martian Problem (1977) short story
Prehistoric Note (1979) short fiction
Reviews in Verse - essay
Isaac Asimov's "The Caves of Steel" [Parodies Tossed] (1956) poem
Review: The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov (1956) review
Alfred Bester's "The Demolished Man" [Parodies Tossed] (1956) poem
Review: The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester (1956) review
L. Sprague de Camp's "Lest Darkness Fall" [Parodies Tossed] (1956) poem
Review: Lest Darkness Fall by L. Sprague de Camp (1956) review
A.E. van Vogt's "Slan" [Parodies Tossed] (1956) poem
Review: Slan by A. E. van Vogt (1956) review
Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts and Three Lions": A Calypso in Search of a Rhyme [Parodies Tossed] (1979) poem by Randall Garrett and Vicki Ann Heydron
Review: Three Hearts and Three Lions by Poul Anderson (1979) review
John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?" [Parodies Tossed] (1956) poem
Review: Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell (1956) review
Zap! [Poor Willie] (1963) poem
Blaze of Glory [Poor Willie] (1955) poem
Hot Argument [Poor Willie] (1960) poem
The Adventures of "Little Willie" - essay
Introduction to Benedict Breadfruit - essay by Reginald Bretnor [as by Grendel Briarton]
Through Time and Space with Benedict Breadfruit I-VIII [Benedict Breadfruit] (1962) short fiction [as by Grandall Barretton]

Takeoff Too!

Takeoff!: Book 2

Randall Garrett

Has science fiction lost its pizazz? Fantasy not as fantastic as it used to be? Takeoff Too, Randall Garrett's lively second collection of classic parodies and pastiches.

Contents:

Takeoff Too! - interior artwork by Phil Foglio
Introduction - essay by Vicky Ann Hedron
Cum Grano Salis (1959) - novelette
...After a Few Words... (1962) - short story
Psicopath (1960) - novelette
A Memory of John W. Campbell (1968) - essay
Oh No, John (1955) - poem
A Spaceship Named McGuire (1961) - novelette
Into My Parlor - short story
Code in the Head (1956) - short story
The Briefing (1969) - short story
There's no Fool... (1956) - short story
Ballade for Convention Lovers (1960) - poem
Blank? (1957) - short story
The Breakfast Party (1953) - novelette
Overproof (1965) - novelette
James Blish and Michael Sherman's "The Duplicated Man": A Review in Verse [Parodies Tossed] (1956) - poem
Review: The Duplicated Man by James Blish and Michael Sherman - review
Infinite Resources (1954) - short story
Pride and Primacy (1974) - short story
Small Miracle (1959) - short story
The Pocket Song [Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover] - short story
The Pocket Song [Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover] (1977) - poem
Hell to Pay (1954) - novelette
The Foreign Hand-Tie (1961) - novelette
The Egyptian Diamond (1961) - poem
The World of E. E. "Doc" Smith (1978) - essay
Our Patrol (1978) - poem
...Or Your Money Back (1959) - short story
I've Got a Little List [Poor Willie] (1953) - poem
An Evening In (1979) - essay by Vicky Ann Hedron
Key to I've Got a Little List - essay

Davy

Tales of a Darkening World: Book 1

Edgar Pangborn

Davy, who relates his own story, was born in a brothel and raised in an orphanage; he travels in many directions, but always away from ignorance. His adventures are varied and range from tragic to boisterously funny.

True Tenchi Muyo! Vol. 1

Tenchi: Book 1

Light novels based on the popular Tenchi Muyo! anime series - available in English for the first time!

Before Masaki Tenchi was born, before Ryoko was released-there was a galactic empire, and the man who would come to rule it all. Based on the hit Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki OVA series, this canonical light novel trilogy explores the lore that shapes the past, present, and future of the sprawling Tenchi Muyo! universe.

Travel back in time to Jurai and follow a young Masaki Azusa (future father of Ayeka and Sasami) as he fights deadly space pirates, navigates Juraian nobility to ascend the throne, and embarks on the greatest adventure of all-falling in love!

True Tenchi Muyo! Vol. 2

Tenchi: Book 2

Masaki Kajishima
Yosuke Kuroda

THE PRINCE WHO RAN AWAY

Based on the hit Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki OVA series, this trilogy of canonical light novels explores the lore that shapes the past, present, and future of the sprawling Tenchi Muyo universe.

In this second novel, we delve deep into the mysterious past of Tenchi's grandfather Yosho, discovering why he left his home planet of Jurai and how he came to find himself on Earth.

The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases

Thackery T. Lambshead: Book 1

Jeff VanderMeer
Mark Roberts

You hold in your hands the most complete and official guide to imaginary ailments ever assembled--each disease carefully documented by the most stellar collection of speculative fiction writers ever to play doctor. Detailed within for your reading and diagnostic pleasure are the frightening, ridiculous, and downright absurdly hilarious symptoms, histories, and possible cures to all the ills human flesh isn't heir to, including Ballistic Organ Disease, Delusions of Universal Grandeur, and Reverse Pinocchio Syndrome.

Lavishly illustrated with cunning examples of everything that can't go wrong with you, the Lambshead Guide provides a healthy dose of good humor and relief for hypochondriacs, pessimists, and lovers of imaginative fiction everywhere. Even if you don't have Pentzler's Lubriciousness or Tian Shan-Gobi Assimilation, the cure for whatever seriousness may ail you is in this remarkable collection.

Buffalito Buffet

The Amazing Conroy: Book 1

For years, Lawrence M. Schoen has been producing stories about the ever more popular Amazing Conroy and his companion, a buffalito named Reggie. Buffalitos are alien creatures that look like miniature bison and can consume anything. Their only waste product is oxygen... which makes for limitless possibilities. Here we present a collection of those stories, including Nebula-Award-nominated novella, "Barry's Tale," which adds to the adventures of the hypnotist-turned-business-owner as he and Reggie travel the known universe, as well as beyond Human Space.

Buffalo Dogs - A poverty-stricken hypnotist trying to redeem his finances gains a buffalito companion, Reggie. - (2001)
Buffalogenesis - Conroy founds his Buffalogic empire of buffalitos, gets very rich, and manages to not get his arms cut off. - (2006)
Barry's Tale - Conroy and Reggie save the life of a very special little girl - while sampling spectacular intergalactic barbeque. - (2011) (nominee for 2012 Nebula Best Novella)
A Buffalito of Mars - The red planet gets a terraformed atmosphere courtesy of the buffalitos - and Conroy has an alien encounter which he uses to enrich humankind. - (2007)
Requiem - A young, impoverished Conroy becomes "The Amazing Conroy" - and helps an alien friend to acquire immortality. - (2005)
Telepathic Intent - Conroy meets the love of his life, is charged with murder, and has to solve the mystery to save himself. - (2003)
The Matter At Hand - Conroy enlists the assistance of a gambler extraordinaire to defeat a telepathic alien in an exceptionally high-stakes card game. - (2008)
Yesterday's Taste - Conroy helps a friend recreate the recipe for a legendary dish with an hypnotic sleight-of-hand. - (2011) (nominee for the 2012 WSFS Small Press Award)

This is a collection of stories which sets up the Conroyverse, and is best read prior to the Buffalito Destiny and Buffalito Contingency novels.

Barry's Tale

The Amazing Conroy: Book 2

Nebula-nominated Novella

Recipe for an entertaining and humorous SF novella:

Take one mesmerizing rogue and an adorable, flatulent pet.
Add a barbecue competition...
American bison and martian thoats...
A child with the power to destroy a world...
An old man with a secret that could rock humanity...
A woman from college who hasn't aged in fifteen years...
Alien beings with instantaneous, galaxy-wide teleportation...
And a plushie!

Read this story online for free at the author's website.

Buffalito Destiny

The Amazing Conroy: Book 3

A former stage hypnotist, the Amazing Conroy really just wants to have a good meal. He's now the wealthy CEO of a company that leases buffalo dogs, alien creatures capable of biting into and devouring nearly anything. When he attempts to implement a solution for cleaning up massive industrial waste sites, Conroy becomes targeted by ecological terrorists who resent the use of alien technology (living or otherwise) to heal the Earth.

But kidnapping and the destruction of his corporate headquarters are the least of Conroy's problems. An unknown, telepathic intelligence has begun invading his dreams, warning of geological disasters that hinge on what Conroy does next. Further complicating his life are several groups of aliens, each believing that he has a special destiny to fulfill, though they don't necessarily agree what it is.

Accompanied by his pet buffalito, Reggie, Conroy must elude terrorists, confound alien zealots, withstand temporal distortions throughout the former state of Texas, and explore ancient Mayan ruins. His adventures will result in his reunion with a long dead relative, a chance to experience the world's greatest sandwiches, exposure to alien bliss, a battle with a megalomaniac on the slope of an active volcano, and a trip to the asteroid belt for a final face-to-face confrontation with the creature that had been invading his dreams. Somewhere in the midst of it all, he has to find his true destiny.

Trial of the Century

The Amazing Conroy: Book 4

Nebula-nominated Novella

What would you do to save your best friend?

At the end of Buffalito Destiny, Conroy had lost his fortune and fled Earth. Reggie, his buffalito, had survived diving into a volcano, but slipped into a coma.

Now Reggie is dying and the buffalito's internal nuclear furnace is growing unstable. Conroy's only hope lies with the Arconi, the aliens he ripped off to create his empire. Their help comes with a price: he has to go on trial for his crimes, against people who can telepathically tell when he's lying. Conroy knows he's guilty, but Reggie must be saved!

Buffalito Contingency

The Amazing Conroy: Book 5

The Amazing Conroy has left Earth far behind and taken his hypnosis act beyond Human Space. It should be show-business-as-usual, except for the energy being the size of a hundred suns that wants to study him, a plot to smuggle liquid gravity, a troupe of alien sex wrestlers, a hypnotized ghost, and Reggie his buffalito stuck in a saurian toilet...

Publishers Weekly says of this novel: "Fans of old-fashioned SF will love this fast-paced, chaotic, and good-natured adventure full of semi-farcical humor and pleasantly believable aliens."

Calendrical Regression

The Amazing Conroy: Book 6

Nebula-nominated Novella

In December of 2012, the Mayan calendar reached the end of its 13th baktun, completing the Long Count and signaling the end of the world... metaphorically. That was the day of Galactic First Contact, and the beginning of a new age for humans and aliens.

Eighty years later, Conroy, stage-hypnotist-turned-wealthy-CEO, attempts to slip away from the corporate grind just to enjoy a little downtime performing for conventioneers in the midwest.

But the alien Uary have come to Earth, and are intent on luring the Amazing Conroy down to Mexico with the promise of gourmet cuisine. They want to hypnotically regress the descendant of a Mayan priest and ask him a simple question about the end date of that ancient calendar: How did they know?

There's just one problem. Another alien, a Svenkali, has dedicated its life to purging the galaxy of the Uary. It's tracked them to Earth and while it bungled one assassination attempt, it managed to steal Reggie, Conroy's buffalito, in the process. What's a hypnotist to do?

Read this story online for free at Noble Fusion Press.

Barry's Deal

The Amazing Conroy: Book 7

The Dancers at the End of Time

Nebula Award nominated novella.

Barry's Deal is the fourth novella-length adventure from multiple Hugo and Nebula nominee Lawrence M. Schoen and the next installment in the ongoing tales of galaxy-travelling stage hypnotist, the Amazing Conroy, and Reggie, his alien companion animal, a "buffalo dog" who can eat anything and farts oxygen.

In this sequel to BARRY'S TALE (2014 Nebula nominee) Conroy and his buffalito, Reggie are travelling to Triton, to a casino hotel with old friend LeftJohn Mocker, a professional gambler with a double Coltrane rating. Why Triton? Well, there's an illegal auction scheduled there where Conroy hopes to win a bottle of Stonefish liquer, and the Mocker was on his way there anyway at the request of the Probability Guild to investigate allegations of cheating. It looks like everyone will get what they want except... the cheater turns out to be none other than Angela Colson, an eleven-year old girl of incredible power. Conroy saved her life five years earlier with her plushie buffalito, Barry. Somehow she's back, somehow appears to be in her late teens, and somehow has taken the casino for over ten million bucks!

Throw in an evil psychometrist portmaster with a grudge against LeftJohn Mocker, a stinky alien with a secret, and a terrorist with a suitcase-sized nuke, and the state is set for hypnotic hijinks and some fine dining as only The Amazing Conroy can command.

Quicksilver

The Baroque Cycle: Book 1

Neal Stephenson

Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver is here. A monumental literary feat that follows the author's critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller Cryptonomicon, it is history, adventure, science, truth, invention, sex, absurdity, piracy, madness, death, and alchemy. It sweeps across continents and decades with the power of a roaring tornado, upending kings, armies, religious beliefs, and all expectations.

It is the story of Daniel Waterhouse, fearless thinker and conflicted Puritan, pursuing knowledge in the company of the greatest minds of Baroque-era Europe, in a chaotic world where reason wars with the bloody ambitions of the mighty, and where catastrophe, natural or otherwise, can alter the political landscape overnight. It is a chronicle of the breathtaking exploits of "Half-Cocked Jack" Shaftoe -- London street urchin turned swashbuckling adventurer and legendary King of the Vagabonds -- risking life and limb for fortune and love while slowly maddening from the pox ... and Eliza, rescued by Jack from a Turkish harem to become spy, confidante, and pawn of royals in order to reinvent a contentious continent through the newborn power of finance.

A gloriously rich, entertaining, and endlessly inventive novel that brings a remarkable age and its momentous events to vivid life -- a historical epic populated by the likes of Samuel Pepys, Isaac Newton, William of Orange, Benjamin Franklin, and King Louis XIV -- Quicksilver is an extraordinary achievement from one of the most original and important literary talents of our time.

And it's just the beginning...

Enter a decaying far, far future society, a time when anything and everything is possible, where words like 'conscience' and 'morality' are meaningless, and where heartfelt love blossoms mysteriously between Mrs Amelia Underwood, an unwilling time traveller, and Jherek Carnelian, a bemused denizen of the End of Time.

The Dancers at the End of Time, containing the novels An Alien Heat, The Hollow Lands and The End of All Songs, is a brilliant homage to the 1890s of Wilde, Beardsley and the fin de siecle decadents, satire at its sharpest and most colourful.

This is the omnibus edition of the three books in The Dancers at the End of Time series.

An Alien Heat

The Dancers at the End of Time: Book 1

When Jherek Carnelian meets Mrs Amelia Underwood, a lady time traveller from 1896, he determines to possess her and finds himself being plunged backwards in time to Victorian London. An Alien Heat is set in a crazy world of jewelled cities with ripe, rotting technologies…

The Hollow Lands

The Dancers at the End of Time: Book 2

In which we find Jherek Carnelian, one of the small population of hedonistic immortals remaining on Earth at the end of time, still obsessively in love with Amelia Underwood, a reluctant time-traveller form Victorian England.

After narrowly escaping death in 19th century London, Jherek is separated from his love by several millenia, and so he begins a new, headlong campaign -- seesawing through time and space regardless of risk and consequence -- to reunite himself with Mrs. Underwood.

The End Of All Songs

The Dancers at the End of Time: Book 3

The Early Asimov: or, Eleven Years of Trying

Jherek Carnelian's return to the End of Time with Mrs. Amelia Underwood, his platonic love, occasions unbridled celebrations among the immortals, followed by a serious crisis, a spate of unorthodox marriages, and Jherek's and Amelia's choice of an unprecedented immortality.

The Early Asimov

Isaac Asimov

The quintessence of modern science fiction is thought by many to be contained in the novels and short stories of Isaac Asimov, and this new collection of twenty-seven of his early stories again confirms his inexhaustible imagination and compelling style.

Each story is prefaced by Dr. Asimov with fascinating, and frequently amusing biographical details about how and when he came to write it as well as his own critical evaluations of it. The result is a doubly rich science fiction treat--an assortment of tales that are thoroughly entertaining in their own right besides providing a first-hand look at the development of the young author and promises of the things yet to come from this master writer.

The stories in this collection were subsequently republished in The Early Asimov Volume 1-3.

Table of Contents:

Biographical Comments - (1972) - essay by Isaac Asimov
The Callistan Menace - (1940)
Ring Around the Sun - (1940)
The Magnificent Possession - (1940)
Trends - (1939)
The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use - (1939)
Black Friar of the Flame - (1942)
Half-Breed - (1940)
The Secret Sense - (1941)
Homo Sol - (1940)
Half-Breeds on Venus - (1940)
The Imaginary - (1942)
Heredity - (1941)
History - (1941)
Christmas on Ganymede - (1942)
The Little Man on the Subway - (1950) - shortstory by Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl
The Hazing - (1942)
Super-Neutron - (1941)
Not Final! - (1941)
Legal Rites - (1950) - novelette by Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl
Time Pussy - (1942)
Author! Author! - (1964)
Death Sentence - (1943)
Blind Alley - (1945)
No Connection - (1948)
The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline - (1948)
The Red Queen's Race - (1949)
Mother Earth - (1949)
Appendix - The Sixty Stories of the Campbell Years - essay by Isaac Asimov

Striped Holes

The Faustus Hexagram: Book 5

Damien Broderick

Sopwith Hammil is a popular but rather stupid TV presenter when a time machine lands in his living room. To save his life and the human race (they're turning the Sun off!), he must find a wife inside three hours. Meanwhile, 197 years later, in a world that makes 1984 look like Brave New World, beautiful Hsia Shan-Yun is fighting the future--and losing. Meanwhile, on Alpha Grommett, two married robots find their love-life has become depressingly mechanical. Meanwhile, the wacky astrologer O'Flaherty Gribble has discovered the long-lost secret of the Callisto Effect. Meanwhile, in a pact with the devil...

Eye of the Sh*t Storm

The Frost Files: Book 3

Jackson Ford

Teagan Frost might be getting better at moving sh*t with her mind - but her job working as a telekinetic government operative only ever seems to get harder. That's not even talking about her car-crash of a love life...

And things are about to get even tougher. No sooner has Teagan chased off one psychotic kid hell-bent on trashing the whole West Coast, but now she has to contend with another supernatural being who can harness devastating electrical power. And if Teagan can't stop him, the whole of Los Angeles will be facing the sh*tstorm of the century...

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Book 1

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Join Douglas Adams's hapless hero Arthur Dent as he travels the galaxy with his intrepid pal Ford Prefect, getting into horrible messes and generally wreaking hilarious havoc. Dent is grabbed from Earth moments before a cosmic construction team obliterates the planet to build a freeway. You'll never read funnier science fiction; Adams is a master of intelligent satire, barbed wit, and comedic dialogue. The Hitchhiker's Guide is rich in comedic detail and thought-provoking situations and stands up to multiple reads. Required reading for science fiction fans, this book (and its follow-ups) is also sure to please fans of Monty Python, Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, and British sitcoms.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Book 2

Life, the Universe and Everything

Facing annihilation at the hands of the warlike Vogons is a curious time to have a craving for tea. It could only happen to the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his curious comrades in arms as they hurtle across space powered by pure improbability--and desperately in search of a place to eat.

Among Arthur's motley shipmates are Ford Prefect, a longtime friend and expert contributor to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the three-armed, two-headed ex-president of the galaxy; Tricia McMillan, a fellow Earth refugee who's gone native (her name is Trillian now); and Marvin, the moody android who suffers nothing and no one very gladly. Their destination? The ultimate hot spot for an evening of apocalyptic entertainment and fine dining, where the food (literally) speaks for itself.

Will they make it? The answer: hard to say. But bear in mind that the Hitchhiker's Guide deleted the term "Future Perfect" from its pages, since it was discovered not to be!

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Book 3

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky above their heads--so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals stand between the white killer robots of Krikkit and their goal of total annihilation.

They are Arthur Dent, a mild-mannered space and time traveler, who tries to learn how to fly by throwing himself at the ground and missing; Ford Prefect, his best friend, who decides to go insane to see if he likes it; Slartibartfast, the indomitable vicepresident of the Campaign for Real Time, who travels in a ship powered by irrational behavior; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, three-armed ex-head honcho of the Universe; and Trillian, the sexy space cadet who is torn between a persistent Thunder God and a very depressed Beeblebrox.

How will it all end? Will it end? Only this stalwart crew knows as they try to avert "universal" Armageddon and save life as we know it--and don't know it!

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Book 4

Back on Earth with nothing more to show for his long, strange trip through time and space than a ratty towel and a plastic shopping bag, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription, the mysterious disappearance of Earth's dolphins, and the discovery of his battered copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy all conspire to give Arthur the sneaking suspicion that something otherworldly is indeed going on. . . .

God only knows what it all means. And fortunately, He left behind a Final Message of explanation. But since it's light-years away from Earth, on a star surrounded by souvenir booths, finding out what it is will mean hitching a ride to the far reaches of space aboard a UFO with a giant robot. But what else is new?

Mostly Harmless

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Book 5

The Instrumentality of Mankind: Rod McBan

Douglas Adams is back with the amazing, logic-defying, but-why-stop-now fifth novel in the Hitchhiker Trilogy. Here is the epic story of Random, who sets out on a transgalactic quest to find the planet of her ancestors.

And Another Thing…

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Book 6

Eoin Colfer

An Englishman's continuing search through space and time for a decent cup of tea...

Arthur Dent's accidental association with that wholly remarkable book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, has not been entirely without incident.

Arthur has traveled the length, breadth, and depth of known, and unknown, space. He has stumbled forward and backward through time. He has been blown up, reassembled, cruelly imprisoned, horribly released, and colorfully insulted more than is strictly necessary. And of course Arthur Dent has comprehensively failed to grasp the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

Arthur has finally made it home to Earth, but that does not mean he has escaped his fate.

Arthur's chances of getting his hands on a decent cuppa have evaporated rapidly, along with all the world's oceans. For no sooner has he touched down on the planet Earth than he finds out that it is about to be blown up... again.

And Another Thing... is the rather unexpected, but very welcome, sixth installment of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. It features a pantheon of unemployed gods, everyone's favorite renegade Galactic President, a lovestruck green alien, an irritating computer, and at least one very large slab of cheese.

Norstrilia

Cordwainer Smith

Norstrilia tells the story of a boy form the planet Old North Australia (where rich, simple farmers grow the immortality drug Stroon), how he bought Old Earth, and how his visit to Earth changed both him and Earth itself.

When his ultra-logical computer tells him that to survive he must become the richest man in the universe, Rod McBan the hundred and fifty-first thought he had a good plan. A telepathic cripple, rejected by many of his people, owner of the Station of Doom, the safety of wealth would keep him safe. In one crowded, unbelievable night he achieved the impossible, became the richest boy in the galaxy.

But Rod McBan will soon discover that money brings trouble. A galaxy of people and other beings – out to rob him, use him or kill him!

The Planet Buyer

The Instrumentality of Mankind: Rod McBan

Cordwainer Smith

Rod McBan owned Earth.

One night of frenzied manipulation had made an obscure rancer on a far planet the richest man in history, and the sole owner of Man's home planet. It had also made him the target of every criminal in the Universe.

There was one way Rod McBan could reach the planet he owned - alive. But it meant he would have to die first...

The Planet Buyer and The Underpeople were combined into the novel Norstrilia.

The Long Earth

The Long Earth: Book 1

Stephen Baxter
Terry Pratchett

NORMALLY, WHEN THERE WAS NOTHING TO DO, HE LISTENED TO THE SILENCE.

The Silence was very faint here. Almost drowned out by the sounds of the mundane world. Did people in this polished building understand how noisy it was? The roar of air conditioners and computer fans, the susurration of many voices heard but not decipherable.... This was the office of the transEarth Institute, an arm of the Black Corporation. The faceless office, all plasterboard and chrome, was dominated by a huge logo, a chesspiece knight. This wasn't Joshua's world. None of it was his world. In fact, when you got right down to it, he didn't have a world; he had all of them.

ALL OF THE LONG EARTH.

The Mouse That Roared

The Mouse That Roared: Book 1

The tiny Duchy of Grand Fenwick decides the only way to survive an economic downturn is to declare war on the United States and lose to get foreign aid - but things don't go according to plan.

The Mouse That Roared was originally published as a six-part serial in the Saturday Evening Post, and was made into a successful feature film starring Peter Sellers.

The Mouse on the Moon

The Mouse That Roared: Book 2

Spurred by the Count of Mountjoy, who wants proper plumbing for the kingdom and a Russian sable coat for Her Grace, and by Dr. Kokintz, who sees a potential new source of energy by mixing iron filings and Fenwick Pinot wine, a loan from the U.S. is arranged. A rocket is fired and Grand Fenwick lands on the moon before American and Russian astronauts.

The Mouse on Wall Street

The Mouse That Roared: Book 3

The Mouse That Saved The West

Gloriana XII--The Original Wolf of Wall Street.

In this hilarious sequel to The Mouse That Roared, Grand Fenwick is at it again, this time upsetting the world's economy. The tiny country's secret weapon this time is its Grand Pinot chewing gum. When sales boom during an anti-smoking campaign, Grand Fenwick's investment is suddenly worth millions.

In an attempt to rid Grand Fenwick of its crippling budget surplus, Duchess Gloriana XII decides the stock market is the perfect place to lose it all. Instead, she makes millions more and ends up wreaking havoc on the world economy.

Never has "the money game" been more deliciously exposed than in this ingenious satire.

The Mouse That Roared: Book 4

The fourth book in the bestselling The Mouse That Roared series brings the Duchy of Grand Fenwick's most extraordinary achievement yet--the defeat of OPEC and the happy solution to the world's oil crisis, which came about through the best that international diplomacy has to offer: duplicity and dumb luck.

It all began when the Count of Mountjoy, the prime minister of Grand Fenwick, was unable to get a hot bath because of the fuel shortage...

Beware of the Mouse

The Mouse That Roared: Book 5

Home: Habitat, Range, Niche, Territory

A prequel to the bestselling classic The Mouse That Roared.

Set in the year 1450, the tiny Duchy of Grand Fenwick, ruled by the benevolent and noble Sir Roger and armed with its army of expert longbowmen, had existed peacefully without threat of invasion for decades. But when a rascally Irish Knight stumbles across its borders with news that the French were set to attack and that they had a new weapon of mass destruction called "the cannon," the Irishman and Sir Roger must find a way to drop their differences and fight together, a feat made even more difficult when Sir Roger's daughter, the Lady Matilda becomes unduly enamored in the Irish newcomer.

Compulsory

The Murderbot Diaries

Martha Wells

Even the humans think about killing the humans, especially here. I hate mines, and mining, and humans who work in mining, and of all the stupid mines I can remember, I hate this stupid mine the most. But the humans hate it more. My risk-assessment module predicts a 53 percent chance of a human-on-human massacre before the end of the contract.

This Murderbot short story was published by WIRED magazine as part of their series "The Future of Work", on December 17, 2018.

Read this story for free at WIRED Magazine.

The Murderbot Diaries

Martha Wells

This Murderbot short story, set just after the 4th novella, Exit Strategy, was published on Tor.com, April 19, 2021.

Read this story for free at Tor.com.

System Collapse

The Murderbot Diaries: Book 7

Martha Wells

Am I making it worse? I think I'm making it worse.

Following the events in Network Effect, the Barish-Estranza corporation has sent rescue ships to a newly-colonized planet in peril, as well as additional SecUnits. But if there's an ethical corporation out there, Murderbot has yet to find it, and if Barish-Estranza can't have the planet, they're sure as hell not leaving without something. If that something just happens to be an entire colony of humans, well, a free workforce is a decent runner-up prize.

But there's something wrong with Murderbot; it isn't running within normal operational parameters. ART's crew and the humans from Preservation are doing everything they can to protect the colonists, but with Barish-Estranza's SecUnit-heavy persuasion teams, they're going to have to hope Murderbot figures out what's wrong with itself, and fast!

Yeah, this plan is... not going to work.

Virgin Planet

The Psychotechnic League: Book 2

Poul Anderson

FOR 300 YEARS THE PLANET OF WOMEN AWAITED THE COMING OF MAN. THEN ONE ARRIVES...

He is Davis Bertram, a space-explorer. But how can he convince the he really is a man? Their legends have built Men into gods.

Trying to worthy of the Coming, the women imitate masculine virtues. they are warlike, ambitions, ruthless. Unless Davis can convince them he is a man, they will kill him for blasphemy. But if he does convince them, the Coctor-Priests will kill him to protect their own iron control of the planet....

The Stainless Steel Rat

The Stainless Steel Rat: Book 1

The Stainless Steel Rat's Revenge

In the vastness of space, the crimes just get bigger and Slippery Jim diGriz, the Stainless Steel Rat, is the biggest criminal of them all. He can con humans, aliens and any number of robots time after time. Jim is so slippery that all the inter-galactic cops can do is make him one of their own.

The Stainless Steel Rat: Book 2

The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World

The second adventure of slippery Jim diGriz the Robin Hood of the far future, robbing the rich to give to the even richer...himself.

The Stainless Steel Rat: Book 3

The Stainless Steel Rat Wants You

The villainous He has travelled back in time to mankind's distant past on the legendary planet Earth (or 'Dirt') of 1984, where he is altering events so that people who opposed him in the Rat's present cease to exist, Angelina amongst them. Using the Helix, a time-travel device invented by the Special Corps' Professor Coypu, diGriz travels to 1984 America, and then to Napoleonic France where tanks and aircraft are helping bring about Napoleon's victory.

The Stainless Steel Rat: Book 4

The Stainless Steel Rat for President

After saving the world, diGriz is called on to save the universe. Liberating his two, now teenage, twin' sons from a military boarding school and penitentiary, diGriz sets out to free his wife, who has been arrested by the tax men. But the family is soon fighting an enemy of a different sort, when the humans-only galaxy of the League is invaded by all manner of hideous aliens. The Rat, disguised in the most hideous combination of alien physical features, is sent into the centre of the aliens' stronghold, where he finds himself the object of desire among the aliens. His task is to stop the aliens, who plan to wipe out every human in the universe.

The Stainless Steel Rat: Book 5

A Stainless Steel Rat is Born

The Stainless Steel rat is back! Slippery Jim diGriz, the future's most lovable, laughable, larcenous conman tumed counterspy, retums for yet another high-tension mission.

This time the Special Corps has given the Rat a daring assignment - liberate a backward tourist planet from the clutches of an aging dictator. With his lovely but lethal wife, Angelina, and his two stalwart sons, James and Bolivar, diGriz pits ballots against bullets in the fight for freedom. He's vowed to restore truth, justice, and democracy to the world of Parisio-Aqui, if he has to lie, cheat, and steal to do it.

The Stainless Steel Rat: Book 6

The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted

A Rat by any other name...

Young Jim diGriz has but one ambition in life - to become a master criminal, perhaps the greatest that little Bit O'Heaven has ever seen. So that he can learn the ropes, he has to mix with the right people - or rather the wrong people. And for this kind of on-the-job training the best place to meet the worst villains is in prison. But even for a customer as slippery as Jim, getting behind bars is'nt easy.

So Jim does a bank job, very badly, with the avowed intention of getting himself knicked...

The Stainless Steel Rat: Book 7

The Stainless Steel Rat Sings the Blues

In a galaxy where civilization covers every world with steel and ferroconcrete, only a very special man can break all the rules and still stay free. A man who moves through the rafters of society like a rat. A Stainless Steel Rat . . . .

And when the galaxy goes to war, it needs special men. That's when The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted. The 25th century's most dangerous outlaw is back--and this time it means war! Slippery Jim diGriz, better known as the Stainless Steel Rat, is seeking revenge for the murder of his mentor-in-crime, the fabled archcriminal known as The Bishop. His trail leads to Nevenkebla and the iron-fisted dictator General Zennor--the kind of man who'd sell his own mother into slavery just to see the expression on her face.

Now in the uniform of a Nevenkeblan soldier, Jim discovers Zennor's vile plan to enslave a defenseless planet. Only a man with a Special code of honor--only a Stainless Steel Rat--can save the world from the invading horde.

The Stainless Steel Rat: Book 8

The Stainless Steel Rat Goes to Hell

Cutting a deal with the authorities to escape a death sentence, Slippery Jim deGriz prepares to retrieve a missing alien artifact from the Liokukae, a planet that serves as a dumping ground for the Galactic League's misfits.

The Stainless Steel Rat: Book 9

The Stainless Steel Rat Joins the Circus

Brand new adventure of slippery Jim DiGriz, the SF superhero the TLS compared to James Bond and Flash Gordon and the Daily Telegraph, called the Monty Python of the spaceways.

While our anti-hero is taking it easy on the resort planet Lussouso, his wife Angelina and her cavorting pals are at the temple ofEternal Truth, being bamboozled into believing that at last they can buy their way into heaven. When Angelina asks 1 pertinent question too many, Slippery Jim suddenly finds himself without a wife.

Within the Temple of Eternal Truth lie the doors to Heaven and Hell - to find Angelina, Jim and his twin sons will have to break down those doors and explore the worlds behind them. In outer space, the devil makes work for idle hands.

The Stainless Steel Rat: Book 10

The Stainless Steel Rat Returns

Slippery Jim DiGriz. The galaxy's greatest thief and con artist: the Stainless Steel Rat. For novel upon novel, Jim DiGriz has outfoxed the forces of conventionality, cutting a stylish swathe through dozens of star systems.

Now, Slippery Jim and his beautiful wife Angelina find themselves becalmed on a painfully boring backwater planet, with nothing to do but practice their skills at computer crime.

Then they meet a billionaire who claims to be 40,000 years old--who offers them millions of credits to investigate a string of unsolved interstellar bank robberies. Robberies which, it turns out, always happen when the circus is nearby. . . .

In a sense, The Stainless Steel Rat has always been a high-wire performer. Now, as he infiltrates the world of the galactic big top, he's taking the role to extremes . . . and drawing the attention of more dangerous ringmasters and strongmen than he ever expected.

Will this be his final show? Has Slippery Jim finally leapt for his last trapeze? Naaah.

The Stainless Steel Rat: Book 11