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"Are you happy with your life?"

Those are the last words Jason Dessen hears before the masked abductor knocks him unconscious.

Before he awakens to find himself strapped to a gurney, surrounded by strangers in hazmat suits.

Before a man Jason's never met smiles down at him and says, "Welcome back, my friend."

In this world he's woken up to, Jason's life is not the one he knows. His wife is not his wife. His son was never born. And Jason is not an ordinary college physics professor, but a celebrated genius who has achieved something remarkable. Something impossible.

Is it this world or the other that's the dream? And even if the home he remembers is real, how can Jason possibly make it back to the family he loves? The answers lie in a journey more wondrous and horrifying than anything he could've imagined -- one that will force him to confront the darkest parts of himself even as he battles a terrifying, seemingly unbeatable foe.

Dark Matter is a brilliantly plotted tale that is at once sweeping and intimate, mind-bendingly strange and profoundly human -- a relentlessly surprising science-fiction thriller about choices, paths not taken, and how far we'll go to claim the lives we dream of.

January 1937. Clouds of war are gathering over a fogbound London. Twenty-eight year old Jack is poor, lonely and desperate to change his life. So when he's offered the chance to join an Arctic expedition, he jumps at it. Spirits are high as the ship leaves Norway: five men and eight huskies, crossing the Barents Sea by the light of the midnight sun. At last they reach the remote, uninhabited bay where they will camp for the next year. Gruhuken. But the Arctic summer is brief. As night returns to claim the land, Jack feels a creeping unease. One by one, his companions are forced to leave. He faces a stark choice. Stay or go. Soon he will see the last of the sun, as the polar night engulfs the camp in months of darkness. Soon he will reach the point of no return - when the sea will freeze, making escape impossible. And Gruhuken is not uninhabited. Jack is not alone. Something walks there in the dark...

LAPD Detective Katherine Duvall risks everything as she singlemindedly pursues a savage murderer--Anthony Cross, the world's greatest theoretical physicist and a brutal serial killer who kills in order to understand the link between life and death.

On a Midwestern campus in the 1960s, a charismatic guru and his young acolytes perform a secret ritual in a local meadow. What happens is a mystery-all that remains is a gruesomely dismembered body and the shattered souls of all who were present. Forty years later, one man seeks to learn about that horrifying night, and to do so he'll have to force those involved to examine the unspeakable events that have haunted them ever since.

Unfolding through their individual stories, A Dark Matter is an electric, chilling, and unpredictable novel that proves Peter Straub to be the master of modern horror.

This volume introduces black science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction writers to the generations of readers who have not had the chance to explore the scope and diversity among African-American writers.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Looking for the Invisible - (2000) - essay by Sheree Renée Thomas [as by Sheree R. Thomas]
• Sister Lilith - (2000) - short story by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
• The Comet - (1920) - short story by W. E. B. Du Bois
• Chicago 1927 - [The Gilda Stories] - (2000) - short story by Jewelle Gomez
• Black No More (excerpt) - (1931) - short fiction by George S. Schuyler
• Separation Anxiety - (2000) - short story by Evie Shockley
• Tasting Songs - (2000) - short story by Leone Ross
• Can You Wear My Eyes - (2000) - short story by Kalamu ya Salaam
• Like Daughter - (2000) - short story by Tananarive Due
• Greedy Choke Puppy - short story by Nalo Hopkinson
• Rhythm Travel - (1996) - short fiction by Amiri Baraka
• Buddy Bolden - (1996) - short story by Kalamu ya Salaam
• Aye, and Gomorrah... - (1967) - short story by Samuel R. Delany
• Ganger (Ball Lightning) - short story by Nalo Hopkinson
• The Becoming - (2000) - short story by Akua Lezli Hope
• The Goophered Grapevine - (1887) - short story by Charles W. Chesnutt
• The Evening and the Morning and the Night - (1987) - novelette by Octavia E. Butler
• Afterword (The Evening and the Morning and the Night) - (1996) - essay by Octavia E. Butler
• Twice, at Once, Separated - (2000) - short story by Linda D. Addison [as by Linda Addison]
• Gimmile's Songs - [Dossouye] - (1984) - short story by Charles R. Saunders
• At the Huts of Ajala - (2000) - short story by Nisi Shawl
• The Woman in the Wall - (2000) - novelette by Steven Barnes
• Ark of Bones - (1974) - short story by Henry Dumas
• Butta's Backyard Barbecue - (2000) - short fiction by Tony Medina
• Future Christmas (excerpt from The Terrible Twos) - short fiction by Ishmael Reed
• At Life's Limits - [Of Wings, Nectar, & Ancestors - 3] - (2000) - novelette by Kiini Ibura Salaam
• The African Origins of UFOs (excerpt) - (2000) - short fiction by Anthony Joseph
• The Astral Visitor Delta Blues - (2000) - short story by Robert Fleming
• The Space Traders - (1992) - novelette by Derrick Bell
• The Pretended - (2000) - short story by Darryl A. Smith
• Hussy Strutt - (2000) - short story by Ama Patterson
• Racism and Science Fiction - (1998) - essay by Samuel R. Delany
• Why Blacks Should Read (and Write) Science Fiction - (2000) - essay by Charles R. Saunders
• Black to the Future - (1999) - essay by Walter Mosley
• Yet Do I Wonder - (1994) - essay by Paul D. Miller
• The Monophobic Response - (1995) - essay by Octavia E. Butler

In the tradition of The Norton Anthology of Black Literature, DARK MATTER: READING THE BONES, like its ground-breaking predecessor, will introduce black SF, fantasy, and speculative fiction writers to those who have not yet realized the depth and breadth of their work-or even, in some cases, that it exists. Including original short fiction and nonfiction as well as previously published works and essays, DARK MATTER will contain approximately 30 stories from the early part of the century through the most cutting-edge work of today. Contributors to this new volume include Charles Johnson, National Book Award-winning author of Middle Passage; Tananarive Due; Walter Mosley, W.E.B. Du Bois; Samuel R. Delany; Nalo Hopkinson; and many more.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Sheree R. Thomas
• ibo landing - (1998) - shortstory by ihsan bracy
• The Quality of Sand - shortstory by Cherene Sherrard
• Yahimba's Choice - shortstory by Charles R. Saunders
• The Glass Bottle Trick - (2000) - shortstory by Nalo Hopkinson
• Desire - shortstory by Kiini Ibura Salaam
• Recovery from a Fall - shortstory by David Findlay
• Anansi Meets Peter Parker at the Taco Bell on Lexington - (2000) - shortstory by Douglas Kearney
• The Magical Negro - shortstory by Nnedi Okorafor
• Jesus Christ in Texas - (1920) - shortstory by W. E. B. Du Bois
• Will the Circle Be Unbroken? - (1974) - shortstory by Henry Dumas
• 'Cause Harlem Needs Heroes - shortstory by Kevin Brockenbrough
• Whipping Boy - shortstory by Pam Noles
• Old Flesh Song - shortstory by Ibi Aanu Zoboi
• Whispers in the Dark - (2001) - novelette by Walter Mosley
• Aftermoon - shortstory by Tananarive Due
• Voodoo Vincent and the Astrostoriograms - shortstory by Tyehimba Jess
• The Binary - shortstory by John Cooley
• BLACKout - shortstory by Jill Robinson
• Sweet Dreams - shortstory by Charles Johnson
• Buying Primo Time - shortstory by Wanda Coleman
• Corona - (1967) - shortstory by Samuel R. Delany
• Maggies - shortstory by Nisi Shawl
• Excerpt from Mindscape - shortstory by Andrea Hairston
• Trance - shortstory by Kalamu ya Salaam
• The Second Law of Thermodynamics - essay by Jewelle Gomez
• Her Pen Could Fly: Remembering Virginia Hamilton - essay by Nnedi Okorafor
• Celebrating the Alien: The Politics of Race and Species in the Juveniles of Andre Norton - essay by Carol Cooper

An enemy might just have to become an ally... in order to save humankind

The United States of North America is now engaged in a civil war with the Earth Confederation, which wants to yield to the demands of the alien Sh'daar, limit human technology, and become a part of the Sh'daar Galactic Collective. USNA President Koenig believes that surrendering to the Sh'daar will ultimately doom humankind.

But when highly advanced, seemingly godlike aliens appear through an artificial wormhole in the Omega Centauri Cluster 16,000 light years from Earth, President Koenig is faced with a tremendous choice: continue fighting the Sh'daar... or ally with them against the newcomers in a final war that will settle the fate of more than one universe.