Search Worlds Without End

One of the earliest major American novels, Wieland (1798) is a thrilling tale of suspense and intrigue set in rural Pennsylvania in the 1760s. Based on an actual case of a New York farmer who murdered his family, the novel employs Gothic devices and sensational elements such as spontaneous combustion, ventriloquism, and religious fanaticism.

A Superhero, who happens to be Queer and from an Asian American background.

First Published by Uncanny Magazine in 2022 & winner of the Nebula for Best Novelette in 2022.

John Chu deftly blends real world anti-Asian racism into a clever story about superheroics. "Tom of Finland Guy," what our narrator calls the handsome, well-built man flying around the city saving the day, is beloved for his bravery... that is until people realize he's not the white American Dream. Chu does not pull his punches (pun intended), delivering an incisive story that deconstructs the contemporary superhero mythos.

THE THING THAT WENT BUMP IN THE NIGHT

...was a helicopter. And Maynard Griggs, anthropologist, just happened to be n the vicinity completing his study of Zaire's Magenda d'Zondo tribe. So he rushed to the crash site and rescued the lone survivor, Consuela Milan, a fiery major in the Cuban army.

But, by next morning, something--something that elft tiny, hooved footprints--had come out of the jungle. Whatever it was had removed every trace fo the wreck--as well as the army payroll Consuela had stolen.

Her impetuous search for the money led her and Griggs into a strange world peopled by stranger beings, creatures whose intentions they did not understand... until it was too late!

Gracetown, Florida

June 1950

Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie's journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.

Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it's too late.

"From the summit of the ivy-grown tower, the very rooks, in the midst of their cawing, are scared away by the furious rush and the wild howl with which the Wehr-Wolf thunders over the hallowed ground." - G. W. M. Reynolds, Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf

This collection brings together fifteen chilling stories of lycanthropy and murder written from 1838 to 1896, all taken from their original appearances in Victorian periodicals and story collections, many of them reprinted here for the first time. This edition includes a new introduction by Alexis Easley and Shannon Scott, explanatory notes, and numerous rare Victorian werewolf illustrations.

This collection contains:

• "Hugues, the Wer-Wolf" (1838) by Sutherland Menzies
• "The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains" (1839) by Frederick Marryat
• "A Story of a Weir-Wolf" (1846) by Catherine Crowe
• excerpts from Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf (1846-47) by George W. M. Reynolds
• "Lycanthropy in London; or, The Wehr-Wolf of Wilton-Crescent" (1855) by Dudley Costello
• "The Gray-Wolf" (1871) by George MacDonald
• "The Were-wolf of the Grendelwold" (1882) by F. Scarlett Potter
• "The White Wolf of Kostopchin" (1889) by Gilbert Campbell
• "A Pastoral Horror" (1890) by Arthur Conan Doyle
• "The Mark of the Beast" (1890) by Rudyard Kipling
• "The Were-Wolf" (1890) by Clemence Housman
• "Dracula's Guest" (ca. 1892) by Bram Stoker
• "The Other Side: A Breton Legend" (1893) by Eric Stenbock
• "Morraha" (1894) by Joseph Jacobs
• "Where There is Nothing, There is God" (1896) by William Butler Yeats

An appendix of contextual materials is also included, featuring nonfiction articles from Victorian periodicals dealing with lycanthropy, Rosamund Marriott Watson's poem "A Ballad of the Were-wolf" (1891), excerpts from Sabine Baring-Gould's The Book of Were-Wolves (1865) and Laurence Housman's illustrations for Clemence Housman's The Were-wolf (1896).

When a team of scientists starts to investigate the flora and fauna of the distant planet of Xica, it soon becomes apparent that this is a unique opportunity to study alien life forms. The planet offers a rich and varied eco-system and each of the scientists recognises what this could mean for their individual reputations.

And then, their dreams come true - they establish first contact with a humanoid civilization.

But this is a planet where nature breaks all the rules, where logic falls apart, and where nothing is as it seems. And their dreams turn into a nightmare.

It's just business as usual at the Bureau of Metahuman, Mutant, and Occult Affairs until an employee for the government agency begins to wonder if work is following her home...

This story was originally published on Tor.com on 27 Sept 2023. Read it for free on Tor.com Tor.com

Hugo Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in the anthology Future Histories: Award-winning Science Fiction Writers Predict Twenty Tomorrows for Communications (1997), edited by Stephen McClelland. It was later reprinted in Asimov's Science Fiction, April 1998. The story can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fifteenth Annual Collection (1998), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Jaskey has a flashlight, a captive audience, and a story about the end of the world -- what could be better?

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Twelve Tomorrows (2013), edited by Stephen Cass, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, February 2016. It can also be found in the anhtology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection (2014), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Even when finding oneself engaged in interstellar war, good form must be observed. Our story is set thousands of years after the Terran Exodus, where two powerful, planet-dominating families--the elegant House Jakabitus and the less refined Hahn Empire--have reached a critical point in their generations-long war. Master Hennik, the Hahn ruler's only son, has been captured, and the disposition of his internment may represent a last and welcome chance for peace.

Enter Wollard, the impeccably distinguished and impossibly correct Master of Formalities for House Jakabitus. When he suggests that Master Hennik be taken in as a ward of the House, certain complications arise. Wollard believes utterly and devotedly in adhering to rules and good etiquette. But how does one inform the ruler of a planet that you are claiming his son as your own--and still create enough goodwill to deescalate an intergalactic war?

Haunted by starlings in the dark, a young woman spirals into an altered state of consciousness.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Misty woods; drowned towns; secrets in the landscape; a forbidden life by night; the scent of bygone days; a past that lies below the surface; and a door in a dream that seems to hold the answers.

Paftoo is a 'bod'; an artificial person made to serve. He is a groundsman on the last remaining countryside estate, once known as Harkaway Hall -- now a theme park. Paftoo holds scattered memories of the old days, but they are regularly deleted to keep him productive.

When he starts to have dreams of the Lost Lands' past and his cherished connection with Lifeform Three, Paftoo is propelled into a nocturnal battle to reclaim his memories, his former companions and his soul.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, November 2011.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Destry's life is dedicated to terraforming Sask-E. As part of the Environmental Rescue Team, she cares for the planet and its burgeoning eco-systems as her parents and their parents did before her.

But the bright, clean future they're building comes under threat when Destry discovers a city full of people that shouldn't exist, hidden inside a massive volcano.

As she uncovers more about their past, Destry begins to question the mission she's devoted her life to, and must make a choice that will reverberate through Sask-E's future for generations to come.

Barney Page, a down and out Broadway actor who has committed murder, finds himself transported back in time one year, with a chance to relive his life.

Hugo Award-winning Best Related Work

Created by the Organization for Transformative Works, the Archive of Our Own (AO3) is an open-source, non-commercial, non-profit archive for fan fiction and other transformative fanwork. The Archive is built and run entirely by volunteers, many without previous coding experience. The Archive was publicly launched into open beta on 14 November 2009, and has been growing steadily since.

Fans can post, tag and categorize their own works on AO3. Volunteer "tag wranglers" link similar tags so readers can search for works in the categories and types they want. The tagging system allows easy compilation of statistics and easy AND/OR/NOT searching.

A writer who posts a story on AO3 can record its word count on the story's header, along with other information such as the story's fandom, romantic pairings, and other tropes. Some fan works are 'crossovers' that draw on two or more universes or characters. Writers can also note if their story is finished or a work in progress (WIP).

As of 2018, the archive hosts more than 4.2 million works in more than 30,000 fandoms.

A boy who hears the voices of objects all around him; a mother drowning in her possessions; and a Book that might hold the secret to saving them both...

One year after the death of his beloved musician father, thirteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house--a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother, Annabelle, develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.

At first, Benny tries to ignore them, but soon the voices follow him outside the house, onto the street and at school, driving him at last to seek refuge in the silence of a large public library, where objects are well-behaved and know to speak in whispers. There, Benny discovers a strange new world. He falls in love with a mesmerizing street artist with a smug pet ferret, who uses the library as her performance space. He meets a homeless philosopher-poet, who encourages him to ask important questions and find his own voice amongst the many.

And he meets his very own Book--a talking thing--who narrates Benny's life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.

With its blend of sympathetic characters, riveting plot, and vibrant engagement with everything from jazz, to climate change, to our attachment to material possessions, The Book of Form and Emptiness is classic Ruth Ozeki--bold, wise, poignant, playful, humane and heartbreaking.

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

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #58 July 2011. It can also be found in the anthology Clarkesworld: Year Five (2013), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Fleeing the final war that would destroy Earth's civilization, a small group of Friends - Quakers - found refuge on the uncharted planet they named Foxfield. Somehow they managed to survive, with the aid of the bizarrely gifted native life-form, the Commensals - and, even more extraordinarily, they kept up the practice of their gentle but demanding beliefs. Then, after nearly a century of silence, Earth contacted them - human civilization had miraculously survived the war and had spread out to the stars, flourishing to an undreamed-of richness. And the Friends of Foxfield were a part of it - whether they agreed or not.

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 12, September-October 2016.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny Magazine.

Fifteen stories deal with boundaries between the sexes, facsimile humans, dreams of the dead, nightmares, and marriage in the future.

Table of Contents:

• Heart's Desire - (1989) - shortstory
• The Wound - (1987) - shortstory
• Husbands - (1990) - shortstory
• Riding the Nightmare - (1986) - shortstory
• Jamie's Grave - (1987) - shortstory
• The Spirit Cabinet - (1988) - shortstory
• The Colonization of Edward Beal - (1987) - shortstory
• Lizard Lust - (1990) - shortfiction
• Skin Deep - (1989) - shortstory
• A Birthday - (1987) - shortstory
• A Mother's Heart: A True Bear Story - (1978) - shortstory
• The Other Room - (1982) - shortstory
• Dead Television - (1990) - shortstory
• Bits and Pieces - (1990) - shortstory
• Memories of the Body - (1987) - shortstory

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk (2015), edited by Sean Wallace. It can also be foudn in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016, edited by Rich Horton.

Nebula Award nominated short story. It was originally published in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 2002. The story can also be found in the Nebula Awards Showcase 2005, edited by Jack Dann and Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse (2008), edited by John Joseph Adams. It was collected in The Last of the O-Forms & Other Stories (2005).

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

Jim Van Pelt's first collection, Strangers and Beggars, was voted one of the Best Books of 2003 by the American Library Association. Now, in this new collection, Van Pelt continues to explore the ever-changing boundaries of science fiction, fantasy and horror. Van Pelt is one of the best writers of speculative fiction writing today. The Last of the O-Forms is an important collection filled with stories that transport us to far-flung worlds and to the harder-to-find inner worlds that define the human condition. Finalist for the 2007 Colorado Blue Spruce Award for fiction.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (The Last of the O-Forms & Other Stories) - (2005) - essay by James Patrick Kelly
• The Last of the O-Forms - (2002)
• Perceptual Set - (2002)
• Once They Were Monarchs - (2000)
• A Wow Finish - (2004)
• Friday, After the Game - (2000)
• The Invisible Empire - (2002)
• Its Hour Come Round - (2002)
• The Pair-a-Duce Comet Casino All Sol Poker Championships - (2003)
• The Stars Underfoot - (2001)
• The Long Way Home - (2003)
• Nothing Is Normal - (2002)
• Do Good - (2002)
• The Safety of the Herd - (2002)
• The Sound of One Foot Dancing - (2003)
• A Flock of Birds - (2002)

World Fantasy Award winning novella. It originally appeared in the anthology Palace Corbie Eight (1999), edited by Wayne Edwards. The story is included in the collection City of Saints and Madmen (2001).

Hugo Award finalist for Best Related Work

The Hugo Awards, named after pioneer science-fiction publisher Hugo Gernsback, and voted on by members of the World Science Fiction Society, have been given out since 1953. They are widely considered the most prestigious awards in science fiction.

Between 2010 and 2013, Jo Walton wrote a series of posts for Tor.com, surveying the Hugo finalists and winners from the award's inception up to the year 2000. Her contention was that each year's full set of finalists generally tells a meaningful story about the state of science fiction at that time.

Walton's cheerfully opinionated and vastly well-informed posts provoked valuable conversation among the field's historians. Now these posts, lightly revised, have been gathered into this book, along with a small selection of the comments posted by SF luminaries such as Rich Horton, Gardner Dozois, and the late David G. Hartwell.

Engaged, passionate, and consistently entertaining, this is a book for the many who enjoyed Walton's previous collection of writing from Tor.com, the Locus Award-winning What Makes This Book So Great.

Index to read all of Jo Walton's Hugo posts for 1953-2000 online for free

When a giant meteor crashes into the earth and destroys all life, the small group of human survivors manage to leave the barren planet and establish a new home on the moon. From Tycho Base, men and woman are able to observe the devastated planet and wait for a time when return will become possible.

Generations pass. Cloned children have had children of their own, and their eyes are raised toward the giant planet in the sky which long ago was the cradle of humanity. Finally, after millennia of waiting, the descendants of the original refugees travel back to a planet they've never known, to try and rebuild a civilization of which they've never been a part.

The fate of the earth lies in the success of their return, but after so much time, the question is not whether they can rebuild an old destroyed home, but whether they can learn to inhabit an alien new world--Earth.

This short story originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, September 2015. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016, edited by Rich Horton.

This is the second volume, which charts the history of the science fiction magazine from the earliest days to the present. The first volume Time Machines traced the development of the sf magazine from its earliest days and the creation of the first specialist magazine, Amazing Stories. Transformations takes up the story to reveal a turbulent period that was to witness the extraordinary rise and fall and rise again of science. Britain's foremost sf historian, Mike Ashley charts the sf boom years in the wake of the nuclear age that was to see the 'The Golden Age' of Science Fiction with the emergence of magazines such as Galaxy, Startling Stories and Fantastic, as well as authors like Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick and Frank Herbert. He then goes on to explore the bust years of 1954-1960 followed by the renaissance in the 1960s led by the new wave of British authors like Michael Moorcock and J.G. Ballard and the rise in interest of fantasy fiction, encouraged by Lord of the Rings and the Conan books of Robert E. Howard. Transformations concludes with an examination of the new found interest in sf magazines during the late 1960s and the incredibly influential roles Star Treck , the film 2001: A Space Odyssey and, above all, the first manned Moon landing played in transforming the sf magazine.

This book explores representations of girlhood and young womanhood in recent English language children's fantasy by focusing on two fantastic body transformation types: invisibility and age-shifting. Drawing on recent feminist and queer theory, the study discusses the tropes of invisibility and age-shifting as narrative devices representing gendered experiences. The transformations offer various perspectives on a girl's changing body and identity and provide links between real-life and fantastic discourses of gender, power, invisibility and aging.

The main focus is on English-language fantasy published since the 1970s but the motifs of invisibility and age-shifting in earlier tales and children's books is reviewed; this is the first study of children's fantasy literature that considers these tropes at length. Novels discussed are from both critically acclaimed authors and the less well known. Most of the novels depicting invisible or age-shifting girls are neither thoroughly conventional nor radically subversive but present a range of styles. In terms of gender, children's fantasy novels can be more complex than they are often interpreted to be.

Once upon a time... a group of French aristocrats, trapped by their culture and gender, wanted to speak out against the regime and the king. But they could not, for that king was Louis XIV.And so they turned to fairy tales.In this collection of fourteen essays, Mari Ness explores the lives and tales of these remarkable writers who used fairy tales to subtly critique -- and in a few cases, support -- the absolutist rule of Louis XIV. They include the scandalous Henriette Julie de Murat, imprisoned for debauchery, and rumored to wear men's clothing; Charlotte-Rose de Caumont de la Force, imprisoned for writing impious poetry; and Madame d'Aulnoy, who spent years of her life in exile from her beloved country, but still insisted on contributing to French literature.

Told with wit and humor, the essays help set beloved fairy tales into their historical and cultural context. A must read for fairy tale lovers and anyone interested in how words can be shaped into acts of resistance.

This book explores the emergence and development of terraforming in science fiction from H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds (1898) to James Cameron's blockbuster Avatar (2009). Terraforming is the process of making other worlds habitable for human life. Its counterpart on Earth - geoengineering - has begun to receive serious consideration as a way to address the effects of climate change.

This book asks how science fiction has imagined the ways we shape both our world and other planets and how stories of terraforming reflect on science, society and environmentalism. It traces the growth of the motif of terraforming in stories by such writers as H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon in the UK, American pulp science fiction by Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, the counter cultural novels of Frank Herbert, Ursula K. Le Guin and Ernest Callenbach, and Pamela Sargent's Venus trilogy, Frederick Turner's epic poem of terraforming, Genesis, and Kim Stanley Robinson's acclaimed Mars trilogy. It explores terraforming as a nexus for environmental philosophy, the pastoral, ecology, the Gaia hypothesis, the politics of colonisation and habitation, tradition and memory.

This book shows how contemporary environmental awareness and our understanding of climate change is influenced by science fiction, and how terraforming in particular has offered scientists, philosophers, and many other readers a motif to aid in thinking in complex ways about the human impact on planetary environments. Amidst contemporary anxieties about climate change, terraforming offers an important vantage from which to consider the ways humankind shapes and is shaped by their world.

For modern-day detective Mallory Atkinson, being trapped in the body of Victorian housemaid means overcoming endless obstacles. Her current challenge is winning over the suspicious young parlormaid, Alice. Mallory's plan starts with teaching the girl to make Molotov cocktails, which is a perfectly valid science experiment and not at all a desperate ploy to gain Alice's attention. Before the lesson can begin, though, Alice receives a letter that has her slipping off in the night. Concerned for her safety--and naturally curious--Mallory follows.

Mallory finds Alice at what seems like a simple dance hall, watching young men and women flirting and whirling in pretty dresses and dapper suitcoats. But nothing here is what is seems, and what starts as a simple surveillance exercise turns into a full-scale spy mission with Mallory's boss, Dr. Duncan Gray, at her side. Before the evening is done, those Molotov cocktails are probably going to come in handy.

Four centuries in the future, the world is rich--nanomachines watch the health of the wealthy and manufacture food and gadgets for everybody--but no Utopia, as we see in the lives of five very different people. A singing teacher suffers for her music and fights bureaucracy and apathy. A news researcher delivers the essential background details but can't help looking deeper and wondering about the real story behind the grim incidents that make the headlines. A police investigator, assigned to study trends, begins to see a truly sinister pattern behind a series of seemingly unrelated crimes and deaths. A politician aids his constituents, fights the good fight, and tries to get reelected without compromising his principles. A ruthless businessman strives to make his family powerful, wealthy, and independent.

Theirs is a society where technology takes care of everyone's basic needs but leaves most people struggling to extract a meaningful life from a world crowded with wonders but empty of commitment and human connection. Alternating the voices and experiences of these five characters in a tour de force of imaginative creation, Modesitt overlaps, combines, and builds their disparate stories into a brilliant tale of future crime and investigation, esthetic challenge and personal triumph. In the same way that he has built fantasy landscapes of surpassing fascination, Modesitt creates a believable future, one imbued with a deep understanding of the way politics works and how people act and react when their sense of themselves, of justice and truth, is exploited by others for power and control. When there's nothing left to need or want, will beauty live on in people's lives or disappear forever? L. E. Modesitt, Jr. asks difficult questions, sets himself unlikely challenges, and once again delivers an absorbing tale that enlightens, entertains, and uplifts all at once.

Ten years ago, Jonat deVrai was a rising star in the Marines. But he shocked his superiors by walking away from the Corps after witnessing atrocity and hypocrisy during the Reclamation of Guyana. Starting his life over, he established himself as the world's expert on the effectiveness of "prod"-- product placement, the only advertising which viewers will allow through the sophisticated filters they all use against unwanted intrusions on their electronic link networks. Prod, reinforced with sublims and the "res" -- resonant frequencies, a form of sonic branding -- is the wave of the future.

Jonat now advises multinational corporations on their prod campaigns, his busy life only occasionally disturbed by vivid flashbacks to his military years. Then his comfortable world is upset when the Centre for Societal Research approaches him to study the effects of res and prod on political campaigns.

After a res-heavy political rally for Laborite Republican Senatorial candidate Juan Carlismo, armed thugs jump deVrai in a parking garage. A day later, a sniper ambushes him. What looked like a safe, lucrative contract has suddenly turned dangerous. The stakes raise further when deVrai foils a remote-controlled cydroid assassination attempt on a Popular Democrat candidate. Cydroids built from deVrai's stolen DNA are turning up dead throughout NorAm.

Suspicion and conspiracy race around Jonat. Who wants him dead? Candidate Juan Carlismo's use of prod is skirting the limits of legality. The Centre has its own obscure agenda and may want deVrai as a martyr. The terrorist group PAMD is targeting ascendents in deVrai's family. And one of his clients is known for holding legendary grudges - could he have gone over the edge?

With his life on the line, deVrai must sort flash from fact before it's too late.

Flash is a blend of all-out thriller and thoughtful social, political, and technological exploration that that gets into your mind in a way even res and prod could never match.

A chance meeting with giants. A brush with the murderous Varg. A run-in with a treacherous hedge-wizard, complete with socery-twisted henchmen. Conan thought he was just passing through on his way to the wicked delights of fabled Shadizar, but others have different plans, some of which might leave the young Cimmerian dead. He really did not need to attract the attentions of two women at once, and neither of them entirely human. This time he may not survive.

The mining ship El Cavador is far out from Earth, in the deeps of the Kuiper Belt, beyond Pluto. Other mining ships, and the families that live on them, are few and far between this far out. So when El Cavador's telescopes pick up a fast-moving object coming in-system, it's hard to know what to make of it. It's massive and moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light.

El Cavador has other problems. Their systems are old and failing. The family is getting too big for the ship. There are claim-jumping corporate ships bringing Asteroid Belt tactics to the Kuiper Belt. Worrying about a distant object that might or might not be an alien ship seems...not important.

They're wrong. It's the most important thing that has happened to the human race in a million years. The first Formic War is about to begin.

One hundred years before Ender's Game, the aliens arrived on Earth with fire and death. This is the story of the First Formic War.

Victor Delgado beat the alien ship to Earth, but just barely. Not soon enough to convince skeptical governments that there was a threat. They didn't believe that until space stations and ships and colonies went up in sudden flame.

And when that happened, only Mazer Rackham and the Mobile Operations Police could move fast enough to meet the threat.

The story of The First Formic War continues in Earth Awakens.

Nearly 100 years before the events of Orson Scott Card's bestselling novel Ender's Game, humans were just beginning to step off Earth and out into the Solar System. A thin web of ships in both asteroid belts; a few stations; a corporate settlement on Luna. No one had seen any sign of other space-faring races; everyone expected that First Contact, if it came, would happen in the future, in the empty reaches between the stars. Then a young navigator on a distant mining ship saw something moving too fast, heading directly for our sun.

When the alien ship screamed through the solar system, it disrupted communications between the far-flung human mining ships and supply stations, and between them and Earth. So Earth and Luna were unaware that they had been invaded until the ship pulled into Earth orbit, and began landing terra-forming crews in China. Politics and pride slowed the response on Earth, and on Luna, corporate power struggles seemed more urgent than distant deaths. But there are a few men and women who see that if Earth doesn't wake up and pull together, the planet could be lost.

Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston return to their Ender's Game prequel series with this first volume of an all-new trilogy about the Second Formic War in The Swarm.

The first invasion of Earth was beaten back by a coalition of corporate and international military forces, and the Chinese army. China has been devastated by the Formic's initial efforts to eradicate Earth life forms and prepare the ground for their own settlement. The Scouring of China struck fear into the other nations of the planet; that fear blossomed into drastic action when scientists determined that the single ship that wreaked such damage was merely a scout ship.

There is a mothership out beyond the Solar System's Kuiper Belt, and it's heading into the system, unstoppable by any weapons that Earth can muster.

Earth has been reorganized for defense. There is now a Hegemon, a planetary official responsible for keeping all the formerly warring nations in line. There's a Polemarch, responsible for organizing all the military forces of the planet into the new International Fleet. But there is an enemy within, an enemy as old as human warfare: ambition and politics. Greed and self-interest. Will Bingwen, Mazer Rackam, Victor Delgado and Lem Juke be able to divert those very human enemies in time to create a weapon that can effectively defend humanity in the inexorable Second Formic War?

New York Times bestselling authors Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston return to the prequels to Ender's Game following The Swarm with The Hive, book two in the Second Formic War.

Card and Johnston continue the fast-paced hard science fiction history of the Formic Wars--the alien invasions of Earth's Solar System that ultimately led to Ender Wiggin's total victory in Ender's Game.

A coalition of Earth's nations barely fought off the Formics' first scout ship. Now it's clear that there's a mother-ship out on edge of the system, and the aliens are prepared to take Earth by force. Can Earth's warring nations and corporations put aside their differences and mount an effective defense?

Ender's Game is one of the most popular and bestselling science fiction novels of all time. The Formic War series (The First Formic War and The Second Formic War) are the prequels to Ender's story.

Seventeen-year-old Duncan Greenfire is alive.

Three hours ago, he was chained to the rocks and submerged as the incoming tide washed over his head. Now the waters are receding and Duncan's continued survival has completed his initiation as a Sea Wolf.

It is the 167th year of the Dark Age. The Sea Wolves and their Eastron kin can break the glass and step into the void, slipping from the real world and reappearing wherever they wish. Wielding their power, they conquered the native Pure Ones and established their own Kingdom.

The Sea Wolves glory in piracy and slaughter. Their rule is absolute, but young Duncan Greenfire and duellist Adeline Brand will discover a conspiracy to end their dominion, a conspiracy to shatter the glass that separates the worlds of Form and Void and unleash a primeval chaos across the world.

A MAN OF THE DAWN CLAW WILL BE THE ALWAYS KING.

It will ever be so. They will always rule... but they will not always lead.

Prince Oliver Dawn Claw, heir to the Kingdom of the Four Claws, is thrust into a world he doesn't understand as he waits for his father to die. Away from home, with few allies - and too many enemies - he faces a new and otherworldly threat from beneath the sea. Alliances break and masks fall, as the Dark Brethren reveal their true master.

Meanwhile, Adeline Brand - called the Alpha Wolf - refuses to wait, and becomes the edge of the sword that swings back at the Dreaming God. Assembling allies and crushing resistance, she enters a fight she doesn't know if she can win, as the sea begins to rise.

A new and corrupt Emperor seeks to rebuild the ancient structures of Villjamur to give the people of the city hope in the face of great upheaval and an oppressing ice age. But when a stranger called Shalev arrives, empowering a militant underground movement, crime and terror becomes rampant. The Inquisition is always one step behind, and military resources are spread thinly across the Empire. So Emperor Urtica calls upon cultists to help construct a group to eliminate those involved with the uprising, and calm the populace. But there's more to The Villjamur Knights than just phenomenal skills and abilities - each have a secret that, if exposed, could destroy everything they represent.

Investigator Fulcrom of the Villjamur Inquisition is given the unenviable task of managing the Knights', but his own skills are tested when a mysterious priest, who has travelled from beyond the fringes of the Empire, seeks his help. The priest's existence threatens the church, and his quest promises to unweave the fabric of the world. And in a distant corner of the Empire, the enigmatic cultist Dartun Sur steps back into this world, having witnessed horrors beyond his imagination. Broken, altered, he and the remnants of his cultist order are heading back to Villjamur. And all eyes turn to the Sanctuary City, for Villjamur's ancient legends are about to be shattered ...

A self-proclaimed savior has arrived at the End of Time, home of the deliciously decadent and frightfully bored. Unfortunately, the last thing they need is a messiah. Especially one like Fireclown--who offers such unlikely gifts as Madness, Pain and Doom.

In The Enduring Flame trilogy, Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory have given readers a new view of the complex and fascinating world they originally created for The Obsidian Trilogy. Jumping one thousand years in time, Lackey and Mallory have told the compelling story of Harrier Gillain, the first Knight-Mage in a thousand years; Tiercel Rolfort, the first High Mage in hundreds of years; and Shaiara, the young leader of a desert tribe who takes both boys under her wing but finds that she has a special affection for Harrier.

These three young people are their world's main defense against the evil called up by the rogue Wild Mage, Bisochim. Bisochim's conviction that he was restoring the balance was shattered the moment Ahairan took her first breath. Now, in The Phoenix Transformed, Bisochim joins forces with Harrier and Tiercel and the three mages search desperately for a way to destroy Ahairan as she sends her magical forces against them and the desert nomads under their protection.

With more than one twist in the telling, centering on a magic-plagued journey across a blistering desert, The Phoenix Transformed is the stunning conclusion to The Enduring Flame.

After the collapse of galactic civilization, the computer named Center still functioned and launched electronic copies of itself and its human agent, Raj, to the thousands of worlds still waiting for the light of civilization to dawn. On Hafardine, civilization had fallen further than most. That men came from the stars was not even a rumour of memory in Adrian Gellert's day. A philosopher and Student of the Grove, Adrian's greatest desire was a life of contemplation in the service of wisdom. Until the day he touched the holy relic that contained the discarnate minds of Center and Raj Whitehall ...From that day on his life became one of action, from the law-courts of the Empire of Vanbret to the pirate cities of the Archipelago, on battlefields bloodier than any he'd learned of in history - where the prize at stake was the future of humanity.

Seyonne is a man waiting to die. He has been a slave for sixteen years, almost half his life, and has lost everything of meaning to him: his dignity, the people and homeland he loves, and the Warden's power he used to defend an unsuspecting world from the ravages of demons. Seyonne has made peace with his fate. With strict self-discipline he forces himself to exist only in the present moment and to avoid the pain of hope or caring about anyone. But from the moment he is sold to the arrogant, careless Prince Aleksander, the heir to the Derzhi Empire, Seyonne's uneasy peace begins to crumble. And when he discovers a demon lurking in the Derzhi court, he must find hope and strength in a most unlikely place...

A forgotten door on an abandoned railway platform is the entrance to a magical kingdom--an island where humans live happily with mermaids, ogres, and other wonderful creatures. Carefully hidden from the world, the Island is only accessible when the door opens for nine days every nine years. When the beastly Mrs. Trottle kidnaps the Island's young prince, it's up to a strange band of rescuers to save him. But can the rescuers--an ogre, a hag, a wizard, and a fey--sneak around London unnoticed?

Nine years after the events of The Secret of Platform 13, The Island of Mist is under siege and Odge Gribble and Prince Ben are in hiding. Desperate to find out why the mist is disappearing, Odge travels through the gump to Vienna, to find a mistmaker expert.

But in yet another case of mistaken identity, Odge finds Lena, a nine-year-old girl looking for adventure. With the help of friends old and new, and some very interesting magic, Odge and Lena must find out why the mist is disappearing, before they lose their beloved island completely.

Mira Fedor and her friends stand in the eye of the hurricane, and everything in the Orion League remains in flux. She is pregnant, and its gestation is proceeding at an inhuman pace. As she hides out on her bioship, Insignia, it seems clear that the extropist's procedures have had an unforeseen effects--but will her child be more than human? As secrets are revealed and conspiracies exposed about the attack on Araldis, Mira wonders if there is still time to thwart one last master plan? The pieces are all in plan, all that remains is for each side to commit to its endgame. But there's one question nobody has thought to ask: will the Sole Entity...God...play by the rules? It's the epic conclusion to what the Sydney Morning Herald called "Space opera supreme."

This novelette originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 2009. It can also be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Four, edited by Jonathan Strahan. The story is included in the collection Xeelee: Endurance (2015).

Space Platform tells the story of Joe Kenmore, who dreamed of Man's conquest of space and played a small but essential role in making this dream a reality. Joe helped make the gyros in his father's factory for the Space Platform that was to orbit around the Earth.

Space Platform is available to read free from Project Gutenberg.

Riley and Asha have traveled across the galaxy, found the Transcendental Machine, and been translated into something more than human. They've returned to Earth and won over the artificial intelligence which once tried to destroy the Transcendental Machine.

Now they must save the fringes of the Federation.

Planets at the edge of the Federation have fallen silent. The arrogant Federation bureaucracy grudgingly send Riley and Asha to investigate. They join forces with a planetary A.I., a paranoid Federation watchdog, and a member of a splinter group who vows to destroy the A.I. No one trusts anyone or their motives.

They need to find common ground and the answer in order to confront an enemy more ancient and powerful than the Transcendentals.

One man will transcend death to seek vengeance. One woman will transform herself to gain power. And no one will emerge unscathed...

Thorvald Spear wakes in hospital, where he finds he's been brought back from the dead. What's more, he died in a human vs. alien war which ended a whole century ago. But when he relives his traumatic final moments, he finds the spark to keep on living. That spark is vengeance. Trapped and desperate on a world surrounded by alien Prador forces, Spear had seen a rescue ship arriving. But instead of providing backup, Penny Royal, the AI within the destroyer turned rogue. It annihilated friendly forces in a frenzy of destruction, and, years later, it's still free. Spear vows to track it across worlds and do whatever it takes to bring it down.

Isobel Satomi ran a successful crime syndicate. But after competitors attacked, she needed more power. Yet she got more than she bargained for when she negotiated with Penny Royal. She paid it to turn her part-AI herself, but the upgrades hid a horrifying secret. The Dark AI had triggered a transformation in Isobel that would turn her into a monster, rapidly evolving into something far from human.

Spear hires Isobel to take him to the Penny Royal AI's last known whereabouts. But he cheats her in the process and he becomes a target for her vengeance. And as she is evolves further into a monstrous predator, rage soon wins over reason. Will Spear finish his hunt, before he becomes the hunted?

This is the first volume in a no-holds-barred adventure set in Asher's popular Polity universe.

Thorvald Spear, resurrected from his death over a hundred years earlier, continues to hunt Penny Royal, the rogue AI and dangerous war criminal on the run from Polity forces. Beyond the Graveyard, a lawless and deadly area in deep space, Spear follows the trail of several enemy Prador, the crab-like alien species with a violent history of conflict with humanity.

Sverl, a Prador genetically modified by Penny Royal and slowly becoming human, pursues Cvorn, a Prador harboring deep hatred for the Polity looking to use him and other hybrids to reignite the dormant war with mankind.

Blite, captain of a bounty hunting ship, hands over two prisoners and valuable memplants from Penny Royal to the Brockle, a dangerous forensics entity under strict confinement on a Polity spaceship that quickly takes a keen interest in the corrupted AI and its unclear motives.

Penny Royal meanwhile continues to pull all the strings in the background, keeping the Polity at bay and seizing control of an attack ship. It seeks Factory Station Room 101, a wartime manufacturing space station believed to be destroyed. What does it want with the factory? And will Spear find the rogue AI before it gets there?

War Factory, the second book in the Transformation trilogy, is signature space opera from Neal Asher: breakneck pacing, high-tech science, bizarre alien creatures, and gritty, dangerous far-future worlds.

A man battles for his life, two AIs vie for supremacy and a civilization hangs in the balance...

Several forces now pursue rogue artificial intelligence Penny Royal, hungry for revenge or redemption. And the Brockle is the most dangerous of all. This criminal swarm-robot AI has escaped its confinement and is upgrading itself, becoming ever more powerful in anticipation of a deadly showdown.

Events also escalate aboard the damaged war factory station where Penny Royal was constructed. Here Thorvald Spear, alien prador, and an assassin drone struggle to stay alive, battling insane AIs and technology gone wild. Then the Weaver arrives - last of the Atheter, resurrected from a race that suicided two million years ago. But what could it contribute to Penny Royal's tortuous plans?

And beyond the war factory a black hole conceals a tantalizing secret which could destroy the Polity. As AIs, humans and prador clash at its boundary, will anything survive their explosive final confrontation?

The classic science fiction trilogy in an omnibus edition. Back in print after two decades!

To the totalitarian state of Oerlikon, change is the most fearsome enemy. So a secret weapon was created to preserve the status quo-the Morphodite. A bioengineered and laboratory-raised super assassin, the Morphodite was designed to scent out and destroy subversive conspiracies. A unique being, it can change its sex, identity, and even its genetic code as a defense. But its creators did not foresee that this untraceable, powerful assassin would morph into a true revolutionary hero-that would turn against the police state that created it.

How do you destroy a conspiracy without making waves? Because every such underground movement has a key person, the subtle way is to remove that keystone and watch the rest of the organization fall apart.

Their world was ultra-conservative, isolated, opposed to change. Their secret police had tried many means to keep it that way. Now they had contrived their cleverest secret weapon. This was a genetically-patterned, laboratory-raised human genius, the Morphodite.

The Morphodite needed no computers to detect the key to any conspiracy -- the know-how was structured into his/her brain. The Morphodite needed no assistance to make a foolproof escape after such an assassination. The know-how was built into his/her body.

But the Morphodite had one defect its "gestapo" parents had not planned. He/she could think for itself And its thoughts were total subversion.

The Morphodite was a genetically constructed genius who had turned the tables on the police state that had created it. Settled down to a man's quiet life, he contemplated a lifetime of doing good in a liberated world... until a vengeance squad wiped out that hope.

Now, again utilizing that unique talent, the young woman who was now the Morphodite, realized that the job could not be finished until the enemies of that planet's society were tracked to their interstellar lair and blasted.

Across the planet she went and finally into outer space in a city-sized starship to a final showdown somewhere between the worlds.

Planet of darkness revolving around a white dwarf sun. Teragon, a world that by all the rules of science had no right to exist, a planet where law and order were an individual matter and only the strong, the quick and the clever could long survive.

This was Demsing's adopted home, the place that had made him all he had become or had it? For Demsing, master of illusion and manipulator of his fellow humans, held within him the deadliest secret in the starways, the secret of the Morphodite and if he ever learned how to unlock this deeply buried knowledge, he could change the entire destiny of his world...

Nia and Corwin have each fought their own battles. Now they are Joined together to face their most dangerous enemy yet: Ma'el, the evil Avatar. In order to defeat Ma'el, they must retrieve a magical sword from Atlantis. But after a treacherous journey through the sea, they are shocked to discover that the sword is nowhere to be found.

As Nia and Corwin search for the sword, they realize that the good people of Atlantis are now enslaved by Ma'el. Worse still, Ma'el plans the same for Corwin's native land of Wales. Nia and Corwin must find the sword and stop Ma'el -- before it's too late.

In an alternate 2023, the Your Forma, a miraculous "smart thread" technology initially developed to treat a massive outbreak of viral encephalitis, has become an integral part of daily life. But these convenient devices come with an invasive drawback--they record every sight, sound, and even emotion their users experience.

For electronic investigator Echika Hieda, diving into peoples' memories via the Your Forma and hunting for evidence to solve the toughest crimes is all part of a day's work. The problem is, she's so good at what she does that her assistants literally fry their brains trying to keep up with her. After putting one too many aides in the hospital, the top brass finally furnish Echika with a partner on her level, a brilliant yet cheeky android named Harold Lucraft. Does this unlikely duo have what it takes to resolve their mutual suspicions and avert a deadly technological infection from sweeping across the globe before it's too late?

Back on the beat as an Electronic Investigator, Echika finds herself up against a challenging new case: a string of assaults committed against people related to the RF Model Amicus. To make matters worse, victim testimonials suggest that the perpetrator is none other than Echika's aide, Harold. As the stakes grow higher and the pair continue their investigation despite the rift forming between them, the true distinction between humans and machines becomes all too apparent. When the shocking truth about Harold comes to light, Echika struggles to make an agonizing decision...

Echika, burdened by her decision to hide the secret of Harold's Laws of Respect, experiences a rapid loss of Brain Dive functionality. With her prospects of being reinstated as a Diver looking grim, Echika is assigned to her next case as a normal police investigator, only to find Harold working the same inquiry with the help of a new "genius" assistant.

From there, the two former partners chase separate leads after a hacker known only as E, a self-styled mind reader who has been leaking classified Interpol information on a popular message board. But what is this mysterious figure really after, and why are they inciting their followers to violence?

Harold and Echika may have brought their latest case to a close, but the developer of the AI who facilitated E's campaign against Interpol is nowhere to be found. To ascertain the identity of this enigmatic individual, the pair request the aid of their friend Bigga, now a formal consultant with the Electrocrime Investigation Bureau. Yet even her help isn't enough to give them a lead. Meanwhile, a series of spree killings against Amicus begin to unfold, and the modus operandi bears an eerie resemblance to the murder of Harold's mentor...

Echika's stubborn insistence on protecting the secret of the RF Models' Laws of Respect has driven a wedge between her and Harold. As the two partners grow distant, it comes to light that TOSTI, the mysterious AI they've been investigating, may have been developed on Farasha Island, an artificial landmass constructed off the coast of Dubai where researchers pioneer new technologies. When Echika is ordered to travel there and investigate with a small team, she discovers that nearly everyone living on the island has been assigned an Amicus double in an experiment called Project EGO. But soon after Echika and the others' search for answers gets underway, Bigga is rendered unconscious in a peculiar accident, and it becomes apparent that nothing on the island is as it seems...

In the aftermath of the Farasha Island incident, Echika receives a one-month suspension for Brain Diving into a suspect without a warrant. Meanwhile, Harold distances himself from her in an attempt to protect the secret of his neuromimetic system, faking a decline in his data-processing abilities to get reassigned as an investigator aide. When several investors with ties to the Alliance abruptly succumb to a man-made viral infection, however, Echika and Harold must team up once again to uncover the origins of the mysterious pathogen. As their investigation gets underway, the pair soon realize that they are being manipulated... and that the Alliance's reach is far greater than they could have ever imagined.