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Chasing the Phoenix: a science fiction masterpiece from a five-time Hugo Award winner Michael Swanwick!

In the distant future, Surplus arrives in China dressed as a Mongolian shaman, leading a yak which carries the corpse of his friend, Darger. The old high-tech world has long since collapsed, and the artificial intelligences that ran it are outlawed and destroyed. Or so it seems.

Darger and Surplus, a human and a genetically engineered dog with human intelligence who walks upright, are a pair of con men and the heroes of a series of prior Swanwick stories. They travel to what was once China and invent a scam to become rich and powerful. Pretending to have limited super-powers, they aid an ambitious local warlord who dreams of conquest and once again reuniting China under one ruler. And, against all odds, it begins to work, but it seems as if there are other forces at work behind the scenes. Chasing the Phoenix is a sharp, slick, witty science fiction adventure that is hugely entertaining from Michael Swanwick, one of the best SF writers alive.

Dancing With Bears follows the adventures of notorious con-men Darger and Surplus: They've lied and cheated their way onto the caravan that is delivering a priceless gift from the Caliph of Baghdad to the Duke of Muscovy. The only thing harder than the journey to Muscovy is their arrival in Muscovy. An audience with the Duke seems impossible to obtain, and Darger and Surplus quickly become entangled in a morass of deceit and revolution. The only thing more dangerous than the convoluted political web surrounding Darger and Surplus is the gift itself, the Pearls of Byzantium, and Zoesophia, the governess sworn to protect their virtue.

The world is grown strange.

Gloriana, the six-brained Queen of England, squats in her throne room at the center of Buckingham Labyrinth. In Paris, the glowing Seine may, or may not, conceal the disassembled remnants of the Eiffel Tower. A dragon haunts the high passes of the Germanic states, swallowing travelers whole for purposes impossible to understand. All these signs and portents together mean but one thing to the forgettable-faced Aubrey Darger and his humanoid canine partner Surplus.

There is money to be made.

Here are five novelettes and four never-before-collected vignettes that describe episodes from the careers of those most charming of con artists, Darger and Surplus, spiritual heirs to Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser and unwitting agents of change in a world where ancient artificial intelligences scheme to destroy the descendants of their makers. The comrades' adventures across a wildly detailed world by turns astonish and delight.

The Hugo Award-winning "The Dog Says Bow-Wow" tells the tale of the redoubtable pair's first confidence game, played out at the dizzying heights of English society. In "The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Sport," Surplus works to overcome his prejudice against Darger's new lover, a member of that most contemptible and capricious of races, cats. Gods walk a future Arcadia in "Girls and Boys Come Out to Play," tables are turned by the formidable woman who lends her name as title to "Tawny Petticoats," and Darger and Surplus are separated as each attempts to thwart the machinations of a most unique AI "There Was an Old Woman," which debuts herein.

The collection closes with "Smoke and Mirrors," four brief episodes that lend nuance to all that has come before, expanding our understanding and appreciation of this world and of these unforgettable roguish characters.

Hugo Award winning and Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, October-November 2001. The story can be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 7 (2002), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Nineteenth Annual Collection (2002), edited by Gardner Dozois, Science Fiction: The Best of 2001 (2002), edited by Karen Haber and Robert Silverberg, Future Crimes (2003), edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois, Beyond Singularity (2005) edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois, Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology (2007), edited byJames Patrick Kelly and John Kessel and the Nebula Awards Showcase 2004, edited by Vonda N. McIntyre. It is included in the collections The Dog Said Bow-Wow (2007) and The Best of Michael Swanwick (2008).

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, October-November 2002. The story is included in the collection The Dog Said Bow Wow (2007).

This novelette originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, July 2005. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 11 (2006), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. The story is included in the collection The Dog Said Bow-Wow (2007).

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology Rogues (2014), edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. It can also ve found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Nine (2015), edited by Jonathan Strahan. The story is included in the collection Not So Much Said the Cat (2016).