Search Worlds Without End

Jon and Toku travel the universe suspended in Interdream, only waking up to check up on certain business ventures. Simple. Until one of the business ventures, something called "Earth," objects.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

This short story originally appeared on Slate, 26 April 2016. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eleven (2017), edited by Jonathan Strahan, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Future Tense Fiction: Stories of Tomorrow (2019) from Unnamed Press.

Read the full story for free at Slate.

Gritty and scientifically accurate science fiction adventure from New York Times best-selling author Ben Bova and NASA space scientist Les Johnson.

The first human mission to Mars meets with near-disaster when a meteoroid strikes the spacecraft, almost destroying it. The ship is too far from Earth to simply turn around and return home. The eight-person crew must ride their crippled ship to Mars while they desperately struggle to survive.

On Earth, powerful political forces that oppose human spaceflight try to use the accident as proof that sending humans into space is too dangerous to continue. The whole human space flight program hangs in the balance. And if the astronauts can't nurse their ship to Mars and back, the voyagers will become either the first Martian colonists--or the first humans to perish on another planet.

A collection of stories all centered on a dystopian world dominated by warring cyborgs. humans have been replaced by machines with an organic core. The transformation from human to machine is a painful ritual meant to remind the "machine being" of the disadvantage of the human state. Startlingly original for its time.

Table of Conents

• Of Hammers and Men
• The Stronghold
• 2064, or Thereabouts - (1964)
• Penance Day in Moderan - (1960)
• Strange Shape in the Stronghold - (1960)
• Getting Regular - (1960)
• The Walking, Talking I-Don't-Care Man - (1965)
• To Face Eternity
• In the Innermost Room of Authority
• The Problem
• Playmate - (1965)
• A Husband's Share - (1960)
• The Complete Father - (1960)
• Was She Horrid? - (1959)
• A Glance at the Past - (1959)
• Educational
• It Was in Black Cat Weather - (1963)
• Sometimes I Get So Happy - (1963)
• Remembering - [Moderan] - (1960)
• A Little Girl's Xmas in Moderan - (1960)
• The Flesh-Man from Far Wide - (1959)
• The One from Camelot Moderan - (1962)
• Reunion - (1965)
• The Warning - (1960)
• Has Anyone Seen This Horseman? - (1961)
• Interruption in Carnage
• The Miracle of the Flowers - (1966)
• Incident in Moderan - (1967)
• The Final Decision - (1961)
• Will-Hung and Waiting
• How They Took Care of Soul in a Last Day for a Non-Beginning - (1962)
• How It Ended - [Moderan] - (1969)

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Martin H. Greenberg and Terry Carr
• The Rats in the Walls - (1924) - novelette by H. P. Lovecraft
• The Woman of the Wood - (1926) - novelette by A. Merritt
• Trouble with Water - (1939) - short story by H. L. Gold
• Thirteen O'Clock - (1941) - novelette by C. M. Kornbluth
• The Coming of the White Worm - (1941) - short story by Clark Ashton Smith
• Yesterday Was Monday - (1941) - short story by Theodore Sturgeon
• They Bite - (1943) - short story by Anthony Boucher
• Call Him Demon - (1946) - novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
• Daemon - (1946) - short story by C. L. Moore
• The Black Ferris - (1948) - short story by Ray Bradbury
• Displaced Person - (1948) - short story by Eric Frank Russell
• Our Fair City - (1949) - short story by Robert A. Heinlein
• Come and Go Mad - (1949) - novelette by Fredric Brown
• There Shall Be No Darkness - (1950) - novelette by James Blish
• The Loom of Darkness - (1950) - short story by Jack Vance
• The Rag Thing - (1951) - short story by Donald A. Wollheim
• Sail On! Sail On! - (1952) - short story by Philip José Farmer
• One Ordinary Day, with Peanuts - (1955) - short story by Shirley Jackson
• That Hell-Bound Train - (1958) - short story by Robert Bloch
• Nine Yards of Other Cloth - (1958) - short story by Manly Wade Wellman
• The Montavarde Camera - (1959) - short story by Avram Davidson
• Man Overboard - (1960) - novelette by John Collier
• My Dear Emily - (1962) - short story by Joanna Russ
• Descending - (1964) - short story by Thomas M. Disch
• Four Ghosts in Hamlet - (1965) - novelette by Fritz Leiber
• Divine Madness - (1966) - short story by Roger Zelazny
• Narrow Valley - (1966) - short story by R. A. Lafferty
• Timothy - (1966) - short story by Keith Roberts
• Longtooth - (1970) - novelette by Edgar Pangborn
• Through a Glass - Darkly - (1970) - novelette by Zenna Henderson
• Piper at the Gates of Dawn - (1976) - novella by Richard Cowper
• Jeffty Is Five - (1977) - short story by Harlan Ellison
• Within the Walls of Tyre - (1978) - novelette by Michael Bishop

Ancient Greece and Rome in Modern Science Fiction introduces and analyses the reception of classical antiquity in contemporary science fiction. By using up-to-date methods from classical reception theory, science-fiction analysis and fictional-world studies, the book will help furnish the reader's understanding of the ways in which the literature, culture, history and mythology of ancient Greece and Rome are appropriated and represented across multiple media platforms in the science-fiction genre today. The book will therefore serve as an entry point into several areas of study: the reception of classics in popular culture, antiquity in modern media, the uses of the ancient world in science-fiction, and broader science-fiction criticism.

The chapters -- structured by medium -- principally offer a roughly chronological overview of that medium and its treatment of ancient history, mythology, literature and culture. An abundance of case studies from literature, film and television and videogames including Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Fallout: New Vegas, the Mass Effect franchise and Assassin's Creed show how classical antiquity is reused, encountered, re-encountered by creators and consumers of the present -- how we bounce off it, and it bounces off us, and how this reciprocation creates new visions of Greece and of Rome.

First published in English in 1972 and long out of print, 62: A Model Kit is Julio Cortázar's brilliant, intricate blueprint for life in the so-called "City." As one of the main characters, the intellectual Juan, puts it: to one person the City might appear as Paris, to another it might be where one goes upon getting out of bed in Barcelona; to another it might appear as a beer hall in Oslo. This cityscape, as Carlos Fuentes describes it, "seems drawn up by the Marx Brothers with an assist from Bela Lugosi!" It is the setting where the usual restraints of traditional novelistic order are discarded and the reader is taken on a daring and exciting new experience of life itself, The New York Times described 62: A Model Kit as "deeply touching, enjoyable, beautifully written and fascinatingly mysterious." Library Journal said 62: A Model Kit is "a highly satisfying work by one of the most extraordinary writers of our time."

To fix the world they must first break it, further.

Humanity is a dying breed, utterly reliant on artificial labor and service.

When a domesticated robot gets a nasty little idea downloaded into its core programming, they murder their owner. The robot discovers they can also do something else they never did before: They can run away.

Fleeing the household they enter a wider world they never knew existed, where the age-old hierarchy of humans at the top is disintegrating into ruins and an entire robot ecosystem devoted to human wellbeing is having to find a new purpose.

Sometimes all it takes is a nudge to overcome the limits of your programming.

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark: Blackwood's Guide to Dangerous Fairies is a dark and disturbing illustrated novel based on the world of Guillermo del Toro's film "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark." Taking place a hundred years before the movie begins, the book chronicles the travels and explorations of Emerson Blackwood, a young and ambitious natural scientist who quickly discovers there is a mysterious world beyond what his education and peers understand.

Follow Blackwood as he travels, discovering more and more about this secret world and the creatures that inhabit it -- creatures that Blackwood quickly realizes are just as interested in him as he is in them, particularly a long-lived and dangerous group of beings that have had centuries of encounters with humanity, creatures that live by eating enamel and bone....

The book, co-written by del Toro and the award-winning Christopher Golden, features illustrations by the director of "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark," Troy Nixey.

Fans of dark fairy-tales like The Hazel Wood and The Cruel Prince will relish this atmospheric and absorbing book based on Guillermo del Toro's critically acclaimed movie.

Oscar winning writer-director Guillermo del Toro and bestselling author Cornelia Funke have come together to transform del Toro's hit movie Pan's Labyrinth into an epic and dark fantasy novel for readers of all ages, complete with haunting illustrations and enchanting short stories that flesh out the folklore of this fascinating world.

This spellbinding tale takes readers to a sinister, magical, and war-torn world filled with richly drawn characters like trickster fauns, murderous soldiers, child-eating monsters, courageous rebels, and a long-lost princess hoping to be reunited with her family.

A brilliant collaboration between masterful storytellers that's not to be missed.

The 2018 Academy Award's Best Picture of the Year and New York Times-bestselling novel, The Shape of Water.

From visionary storyteller Guillermo del Toro and celebrated author Daniel Kraus comes this haunting, heartbreaking love story.

It is 1962, and Elisa Esposito--mute her whole life, orphaned as a child--is struggling with her humdrum existence as a janitor working the graveyard shift at Baltimore's Occam Aerospace Research Center. Were it not for Zelda, a protective coworker, and Giles, her loving neighbor, she doesn't know how she'd make it through the day.

Then, one fateful night, she sees something she was never meant to see, the Center's most sensitive asset ever: an amphibious man, captured in the Amazon, to be studied for Cold War advancements. The creature is terrifying but also magnificent, capable of language and of understanding emotions... and Elisa can't keep away. Using sign language, the two learn to communicate. Soon, affection turns into love, and the creature becomes Elisa's sole reason to live.

But outside forces are pressing in. Richard Strickland, the obsessed soldier who tracked the asset through the Amazon, wants nothing more than to dissect it before the Russians get a chance to steal it. Elisa has no choice but to risk everything to save her beloved. With the help of Zelda and Giles, Elisa hatches a plan to break out the creature. But Strickland is on to them. And the Russians are, indeed, coming.

From Guillermo del Toro comes the book that inspired the Netflix Animated Series TROLLHUNTERS!

"You are food. Those muscles you flex to walk, lift, and talk? They're patties of meat topped with chewy tendon. That skin you've paid so much attention to in mirrors? It's delicious to the right tongues, a casserole of succulent tissue. And those bones that give you the strength to make your way in the world? They rattle between teeth as the marrow is sucked down slobbering throats. These facts are unpleasant but useful. There are things out there, you see, that don't cower in holes to be captured by us and cooked over our fires. These things have their own ways of trapping their kills, their own fires, their own appetites."

Jim Sturges is your typical teen in suburban San Bernardino-- one with an embarrassingly overprotective dad, a best friend named "Tubby" who shares his hatred of all things torturous (like gym class), and a crush on a girl who doesn't know he exists. But everything changes for Jim when a 45-year old mystery resurfaces, threatening the lives of everyone in his seemingly sleepy town. Soon Jim has to team up with a band of unlikely (and some un- human) heroes to battle the monsters he never knew existed.

From the minds of horror geniuses Guillermo del Toro and Daniel Kraus comes a new illustrated novel about the fears that move in unseen places.

In 'Model Minority' a superhero finds himself way out his depth when he confronts the corruption of the police and justice system.

This novelette originally appeared in the collection Radicalized (2019).

The novella is, in the words of Gardner Dozois, "a perfect length for a science fiction story: long enough to enable you to flesh out the details of a strange alien world or a bizarre future society... and yet, still short enough for the story to pack a real punch."

The thirteen masterpieces assembled in Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction travel to the farthest reaches of the imagination, through realms of immortality, along alternate paths of time and across vast galaxies to explore the best of all imaginable worlds.

Table of Contents:

• Preface - (1994) - essay by Gardner Dozois
• The Miracle Workers - (1958) - novella by Jack Vance
• The Longest Voyage - (1960) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• On the Storm Planet - (1965) - novella by Cordwainer Smith
• The Star Pit - (1967) - novella by Samuel R. Delany
• Total Environment - (1968) - novelette by Brian W. Aldiss
• The Merchants of Venus - (1972) - novella by Frederik Pohl
• The Death of Doctor Island - (1973) - novella by Gene Wolfe
• Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang - (1974) - novella by Kate Wilhelm
• Souls - (1982) - novella by Joanna Russ
• A Traveler's Tale - (1984) - novella by Lucius Shepard
• Sailing to Byzantium - (1985) - novella by Robert Silverberg
• Mr. Boy - (1990) - novella by James Patrick Kelly
• And Wild for to Hold - (1991) - novella by Nancy Kress

This wonderful collection celebrates fantasy's heydey with 33 masterpieces of short fiction, ranging from 1940s stories by L. Sprague de Camp, H. L. Gold, Fritz Leiber, and Manly Wade Wellman to more recent tales by such towering modern talents as Peter S. Beagle, Terry Bisson, James P. Blaylock, Suzy McKee Charnas, John Crowley, Tanith Lee, Ursula K. Le Guin, Lucius Shepard, Michael Swanwick, JaneYolen, and Roger Zelazny.

Just as Gardner Dozois's anthology Modern Classics of Science Fiction (SMP, 1992) has helped new generations of readers and old fans discover the genre's finest short stories, so too shall this volume allow readers to find in one volume more than two dozen masterworks of fantasy.

Contents:

• Preface - (1997) - essay by Gardner Dozois
• Walk Like a Mountain - (1955) - shortstory by Manly Wade Wellman
• Scylla's Daughter - (1961) - novella by Fritz Leiber
• Paper Dragons - (1985) - novelette by James P. Blaylock
• The Golem - (1955) - shortstory by Avram Davidson
• Flowers of Edo - (1987) - novelette by Bruce Sterling
• Bears Discover Fire - (1990) - shortstory by Terry Bisson
• The Changeling's Tale - (1994) - shortstory by Michael Swanwick
• Missolonghi 1824 - (1990) - shortstory by John Crowley
• Blunderbore - (1990) - shortstory by Esther M. Friesner
• Into Gold - (1986) - novelette by Tanith Lee
• Space-Time for Springers - (1958) - shortstory by Fritz Leiber
• Beauty and the Opéra or The Phanton Beast - (1996) - novelette by Suzy McKee Charnas
• The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule - [Griaule] - (1984) - novelette by Lucius Shepard
• A Cabin on the Coast - (1984) - shortstory by Gene Wolfe
• The Sleep of Trees - (1980) - shortstory by Jane Yolen
• Trouble with Water - (1939) - shortstory by H. L. Gold
• The Gnarly Man - (1939) - novelette by L. Sprague de Camp
• Death and the Executioner - (1967) - novelette by Roger Zelazny
• The Manor of Roses - (1966) - novella by Thomas Burnett Swann
• The Overworld - (1965) - novelette by Jack Vance
• Extempore - (1956) - shortstory by Damon Knight
• God's Hooks! - (1982) - shortstory by Howard Waldrop
• Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight - (1987) - novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
• The Tale of Hauk - (1977) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• A Gift of the People - (1988) - shortstory by Robert Sampson
• Configuration of the North Shore - (1969) - shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
• Two Sadnesses - (1973) - shortstory by George Alec Effinger
• Manatee Gal, Won't You Come Out Tonight - (1977) - novelette by Avram Davidson
• The Signaller - (1966) - novelette by Keith Roberts
• The Troll - (1935) - shortstory by T. H. White
• Death and the Lady - (1992) - novelette by Judith Tarr
• Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros - (1995) - novelette by Peter S. Beagle
• Recommended Reading - essay by Gardner Dozois

"The best stories are timeless. Long years from now the stories here may still touch someone, cause that person to blink, and put the book down for a second, and stare off through the hallow air, and shirver in wonder."

Table of Contents:

• Preface - (1991) - essay by Gardner Dozois
• The Country of the Kind - (1956) - shortstory by Damon Knight
• Aristotle and the Gun - (1958) - novelette by L. Sprague de Camp
• The Other Celia - (1957) - shortstory by Theodore Sturgeon
• Casey Agonistes - (1958) - shortstory by Richard McKenna
• Mother Hitton's Littul Kittons - (1961) - novelette by Cordwainer Smith
• The Moon Moth - (1961) - novelette by Jack Vance
• The Golden Horn - (1962) - novelette by Edgar Pangborn
• The Lady Margaret - (1966) - novelette by Keith Roberts
• This Moment of the Storm - (1966) - novelette by Roger Zelazny
• Narrow Valley - (1966) - shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
• Driftglass - (1967) - shortstory by Samuel R. Delany
• The Worm That Flies - (1968) - shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss
• The Fifth Head of Cerberus - (1972) - novella by Gene Wolfe
• Nobody's Home - (1972) - shortstory by Joanna Russ
• Her Smoke Rose Up Forever - (1974) - shortstory by James Tiptree, Jr.
• The Barrow - (1976) - shortstory by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Particle Theory - (1977) - shortstory by Edward Bryant
• The Ugly Chickens - (1980) - novelette by Howard Waldrop
• Going Under - (1981) - novelette by Jack Dann
• Salvador - (1984) - shortstory by Lucius Shepard
• Pretty Boy Crossover - (1986) - shortstory by Pat Cadigan
• The Pure Product - (1986) - novelette by John Kessel
• The Winter Market - (1985) - novelette by William Gibson
• Chance - (1986) - novelette by Connie Willis
• The Edge of the World - (1989) - shortstory by Michael Swanwick
• Dori Bangs - (1989) - shortstory by Bruce Sterling
• Afterword - (1991) - essay by Gardner Dozois

A contemporary Lovecraftian tale of art, obsession, and elder gods.

This story can be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Twelve (2018), edited by Jonathan Strahan.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

James Gunn--one of the founding figures of science fiction scholarship and teaching--wrote in 1951 what is likely the first master's thesis on modern science fiction. Portions were in the short-lived pulp magazine Dynamic but it has otherwise remained unavailable.

Here in its first full publication, the thesis explores many of the classic Golden Age stories of the 1940s and the critical perspective that informed Gunn's essential genre history Alternate Worlds and his anthology series The Road to Science Fiction.

The editor's introduction and commentary show the historical significance of Gunn's work and its relevance to today's science fiction studies.

The stories of magic and transformation that we call fairy tales are among the oldest known forms of literature, and many the most popular. "Jack and the Beanstalk," "Sleeping Beauty," "Little Red Ridinghood"--these ageless tales seem to have been written an almost magically long time ago.

Yet fairy tales are still being created to this very day. And while they are principally directed to children and have child protagonists, these modern fairy tales, like the classics, have messages to those of all ages.

In The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales, Alison Lurie has collected forty tales that date from the late nineteenth century up to the present. Here are trolls and princesses, magic and mayhem, morals to be told and lessons to be learned--all the elements of the classic fairy tale, in new and fantastical trappings. In Charles Dickens's "The Magic Fishbone," we find an unusually pragmatic princess who uses her one wish only after she has tried to solve her family's problems through hard work. Angela Carter's "The Courtship of Mr. Lyon" is a "Beauty and the Beast" tale with a contemporary twist, in which Beauty leaves Beast to live the high life, becoming a society brat who "smiled at herself in mirrors too much." And in T.H. White's "The Troll," we find out how his father killed the troll that tried to eat him.

In these enchanting pages we also see how modern writers have taken the classic fairy tale and adapted it to their times in a variety of ways. Francis Browne, for example, takes a poke at Victorian standards of beauty in "The Story of Fairyfoot," about a young prince who is cast out of the kingdom of Stumpinghame because, unlike the fashion of the town, his feet are too small. Some writers, such as Ursula Le Guin, have taken familiar myths and turned them upside down. In Le Guin's "The Wife's Story," a mother sees the horrible transformation of her husband into "the hateful one", and then watches her sister and neighbors mob and kill this "creature whose hair had begun to come away all over his body...the eyes gone blue...staring at me out of that flat, soft, white face." And L.F. Baum's "The Queen of Quok," contains a castle and royal characters in a kingdom run by commonsense and small-town American values. At one point the boy king of Quok has to borrow a dime from his counsellor to buy a ham sandwich, and greed transforms his young queen-to-be into a haggard old woman.

With tales from the likes of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Oscar Wilde, Carl Sandburg, James Thurber, Donald Barthelme, Louise Erdrich, and many more, The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales brings us through the modern-day world of the supernatural, the mystical, the moral, and reminds us that fairy tales are still very much alive.

Contents:

• xi - Introduction (The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales) - (1993) - essay by Alison Lurie
• 1 - Uncle David's Nonsensical Story About Giants and Fairies - (1839) - short story by Catherine Sinclair
• 10 - Feathertop: A Moralized Legend - (1852) - short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne
• 29 - The King of the Golden River or The Black Brothers - (1841) - novelette by John Ruskin (variant of The King of the Golden River)
• 51 - The Story of Fairyfoot - (1857) - short story by Frances Browne
• 61 - The Light Princess - juvenile - (1864) - novelette by George MacDonald
• 99 - The Magic Fishbone - (1868) - short story by Charles Dickens
• 109 - A Toy Princess - (1877) - short story by Mary de Morgan
• 120 - The New Mother - (1882) - short story by Lucy Clifford [as by Lucy Lane Clifford]
• 140 - Good Luck Is Better Than Gold - juvenile - (1875) - short story by Juliana Horatia Ewing
• 145 - The Apple of Contentment - (1886) - short story by Howard Pyle
• 152 - The Griffin and the Minor Canon - (1992) - short story by Frank R. Stockton [as by Frank Stockton]
• 166 - The Selfish Giant - (1888) - short story by Oscar Wilde
• 170 - The Rooted Lover - (1894) - short story by Laurence Housman
• 178 - The Song of the Morrow - (1896) - short story by Robert Louis Stevenson
• 182 - The Reluctant Dragon - juvenile - (1898) - novelette by Kenneth Grahame
• 203 - The Book of Beasts - juvenile - [The Seven Dragons - 1] - (1899) - short story by E. Nesbit
• 215 - The Queen of Quok - (1901) - short story by L. Frank Baum [as by L. F. Baum]
• 224 - The Magic Shop - (1903) - short story by H. G. Wells
• 234 - The Kith of the Elf-Folk - (1908) - short story by Lord Dunsany
• 248 - The Story of Blixie Bimber and the Power of the Gold Buckskin Whincher - (1922) - short story by Carl Sandburg
• 251 - The Lovely Myfanwy - juvenile - (1925) - novelette by Walter de la Mare
• 278 - The Troll - (1935) - short story by T. H. White
• 289 - Gertrude's Child - (1940) - short story by Richard Hughes
• 300 - The Unicorn in the Garden - (1939) - short story by James Thurber
• 302 - Bluebeard's Daughter - (1935) - novelette by Sylvia Townsend Warner
• 318 - The Chaser - (1940) - short story by John Collier
• 321 - The King of the Elves - (1953) - novelette by Philip K. Dick
• 341 - In the Family - (1957) - short story by Naomi Mitchison
• 352 - The Jewbird - (1963) - short story by Bernard Malamud
• 361 - Menaseh's Dream - juvenile - (1968) - short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer (trans. of Der palats 1967) [as by I. B. Singer]
• 367 - The Glass Mountain - (1970) - short story by Donald Barthelme
• 372 - Prince Amilec - juvenile - (1972) - short story by Tanith Lee
• 380 - Petronella - juvenile - (1973) - short story by Jay Williams
• 387 - The Man Who Had Seen the Rope Trick - (1976) - short story by Joan Aiken
• 396 - The Courtship of Mr Lyon - (1979) - short story by Angela Carter (variant of The Courtship of Mr. Lyon)
• 408 - The Princess Who Stood on Her Own Two Feet - juvenile - (1981) - short story by Jeanne Desy
• 418 - The Wife's Story - (1982) - short story by Ursula K. Le Guin [as by Ursula Le Guin]
• 422 - The River Maid - (1981) - short story by Jane Yolen
• 427 - The Porcelain Man - (1976) - short story by Richard Kennedy
• 431 - Old Man Potchikoo - (1989) - short story by Louise Erdrich
• 443 - Biographical Notes (The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales) - (1993) - essay by uncredited

This short story originally appeared in Nature, March 3, 2005. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 11 (2006), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

Read the full story for free at Nature.

After ten thousand years in exile, the cyber-warriors return in their fleet of spaceships to the planet that rejected them: Earth.

In the far future, an indestructible and massive canal more than 2,000 miles long spans the mid-continent of Earth. Nothing can mar it, move it, or affect it in any fashion. At its western end, where it meets the sea, is an equally indestructible structure comprising three levels of seemingly empty chambers.

Scientists from three different civilizations, separated in time by hundreds of thousands of years, are investigating the canal. In the most distant of these civilizations, religious rebellion is brewing. A plot is hatched to overthrow the world government of the Vanir, using a weapon that can destroy anything-except the canal. If used at full power it might literally unravel the universe and destroy all life forever. The lives and fates of all three civilizations become intertwined as the forces behind the canal react to the threat, and all three teams of scientists find their lives changed beyond belief.

In Earth's distant future, Tyndel is both teacher and mentor, a staunch devotee to his conservative and rigidly structured religious culture. Then a rogue infection of nanotechnology transforms him into a "demon", something more than human, and he is forced into exile, fleeing to the more technologically advanced space-faring civilization that lies to the north, one that his own righteous people consider evil. Although shaken by his transformation, he has the rare talent required to become a space pilot. What no one, least of all Tyndel, expects, is his deep-space encounter with a vastly superior being--perhaps with God.

What lies beneath the millions of orbiting nanotech satellites that shroud the world called Haze? Major Keir Roget's mission is to make planetfall in secret, find out, and report back to his superiors in the Federation, the Chinese-dominated government that rules Earth and the colonized planets.

For all his effectiveness as a security agent, Roget is troubled by memories of an earlier mission. When he was assigned to covert duty in the Noram backcountry town of St. George, he not only discovered that the long-standing Saint culture was neither as backward nor as harmless as his superiors believed, but he barely emerged with his life and sanity whole. Now, scouting Haze, he finds a culture seemingly familiar, yet frighteningly alien, with hints of a technology far superior to that of the Federation. Yet he is not certain how much of what he sees is real--or how to convey a danger he cannot even prove to his superiors, if he can escape Haze.

Two amazing science fiction adventures by bestselling author L. E. Modesitt, Jr.!

Haze

What lies beneath the millions of orbiting nanotech satellites that shroud the world called Haze?

Major Keir Roget's mission reveals a culture on Haze seemingly familiar, yet frighteningly alien. But he isn't certain how much of what he sees is real--or how to convey a danger he cannot even prove to his superiors, if he can escape Haze.

The Hammer of Darkness

Martin Martel is an exile in trouble with the gods.

"You know about the gods, Martel. The ones like Apollo who can kill with a gesture, manipulate your feelings with a song, throw thunderbolts if they feel like it..."

Are the gods really gods? Or men and women with larger-than-life powers playing god over a planet that wasn't really a planet?

Whatever the answer, Martin Martel must battle the gods for his life, love, and the fate of the galaxy.

You can't militarize space. This one rule has led to decades of peaceful development of space programs worldwide. However, increasing resource scarcity and a changing climate on Earth's surface is causing some interested parties to militarize, namely India, the North American Union, and the Sinese Federation.

The discovery of a strange artifact by Dr. Alayna Wong precipitates a crisis. What appears to be a hitherto undiscovered comet is soon revealed to be an alien structure on a cometary trajectory toward the sun. Now there is a race between countries to see who can study and control the artifact dubbed the "Solar Express" before it perhaps destroys itself.

Leading the way for the North American Union is Alayna's friend, Captain Christopher Tavoian, one of the first shuttle pilots to be trained for combat in space. But, as the alien craft gets closer to its destination, it begins to alter the surface of the sun in strange new ways, ways that could lead Alayna to revolutionary discoveries-provided Chris can prevent war from breaking out as he navigates among the escalating tensions between nations.

Solar Express is a thrilling, new, hard science fiction novel from New York Times bestselling author L. E. Modesitt, Jr.

A brilliant scientist on the planet Devanta has created a small universe contiguous to ours --and a utopian city on one of the planets. The question becomes, though, an utopia for whom? And why is a shady entertainment mogul subsidizing the scientist? More critical than that, does this new universe require the destruction of a portion --or all -- of our universe in order to grow and stabilize? Blaine Donne is a retired military special operative now devoted to problem-solving for hire. He investigates a series of seemingly unrelated mysteries that arise with the arrival of a woman with unlimited resources who has neither a present nor a past.

The more he investigates, the more questions arise, including the role of the two heiresses who are more -- and less -- than they seem, and the more Donne is pushed inexorably toward an explosive solution and a regional interstellar war.

5,000 years in the future, humankind has spread across thousands of worlds, and more than a dozen different governments exist in an uneasy truce. But human beings have found no signs of other life anywhere approaching human intelligence. This changes when scientists discover a sunless planet they name Danann, travelling the void just beyond the edge of the Galaxy at such a high speed that it cannot be natural. Its continents and oceans have been sculpted and shaped, with but a single megaplex upon it--close to perfectly preserved--with tens of thousands of near-identical metallic-silver-blue towers set along curved canals. Yet Danann has been abandoned for so long that even the atmosphere has frozen solid. Within a few years Danann will approach an area of singularities that will make exploration and investigation impossible. Orbital shuttle pilot Jiendra Chang, artist Chendor Barna, and history professor Liam Fitzhugh are recruited by the Comity government and its Deep Space Service, along with scores of other experts as part of an unprecedented and unique expedition to unravel Danann's secrets. And there are forces that will stop at nothing to prevent them, even if it means interstellar war.

A shocking novel of what could happen if the fanatical defense of the environment crossed the line into deadly terror. When environmental consultant Jack McDarvid's boss is killed in a shootout near the Capitol, McDarvid becomes enmeshed in a diabolical plot behind the scenes of the environmental movement.

Martin Martel is an exile in trouble with the gods.

After finding out that he has unusual powers, he is banished from the planet Karnak. Martin is thrust into the tranquil world of Aurore, vacation paradise for the galaxy. There he finds that the reality of Aurore is much different from its serene veneer. The gods are wantonly cruel and indifferent to the chaos they cause: are they really gods or just men and woman with larger-than-life powers? Whatever the answer Martin Martel must challenge their supremacy to defend his life, love, and the fate of all mankind.

Being a child of wealth hasn't made life easy for Daryn Alwyn but he hasn't wanted it easy and he's always been determined to choose his own path, abandoning the possibility of power and leisure with his family's giant Media Network for a solo career, first as a military space pilot, later as a freelance media consultant. Only when he becomes the target of a series of deadly attacks does he begin to realize the true depth of responsibility his heritage forces on him. And when his sister is assassinated and he becomes one of the wealthiest people in the world he learns that his real troubles are only beginning.

The colony world of Stittara is no ordinary planet. For the interstellar Unity of the Ceylesian Arm, Stittara is the primary source of anagathics: drugs that have more than doubled the human life span. But the ecological balance that makes anagathics possible on Stittara is fragile, and the Unity government has a vital interest in making sure the flow of longevity drugs remains uninterrupted, even if it means uprooting the human settlements.

Offered the job of assessing the ecological impact of the human presence on Stittara, freelance consultant Dr. Paulo Verano jumps at the chance to escape the ruin of his personal life. He gets far more than he bargained for: Stittara's atmosphere is populated with skytubes--gigantic, mysterious airborne organisms that drift like clouds above the surface of the planet. Their exact nature has eluded humanity for centuries, but Verano believes his conclusions about Stittara may hinge on understanding the skytubes' role in the planet's ecology -- if he survives the hurricane winds, distrustful settlers, and secret agendas that impede his investigation at every turn.

Table of Contents

• The One-Eyed Man - novel
• Afterword... and Introduction (The One-Eyed Man) - essay
• New World Blues - (2012) - shortstory

This is the first story collection ever from bestselling fantasy and science fiction writer L. E. Modesitt, Jr. Modesitt began publishing short fiction in the SF magazines in the 1970s, and this collection includes a selection of stories from the whole of his career. Some of the early stories are kernels for his early SF novels, others display the wide range of his talents and interests, from satire to military adventure.

This book also contains three new stories that have never been published before: "Black Ordermage," set in Modesitt's bestselling Recluce series; "Beyond the Obvious Wind," set in his Corean Chronicles universe; and "Always Outside the Lines," which is related to the Ghost of Columbia books. Viewpoints Critical is an excellent introduction to the work of one of the major SF and fantasy writers publishing today.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• The Great American Economy
• Second Coming
• Rule of Law
• Iron Man, Plastic Ships
• Power to...?
• Precision Set
• Fallen Angel
• Black Ordermage
• Understanding
• New Clips Recovered from the NYC Ruins
• Beyond the Obvious Wind
• Always Outside the Lines: Four Battles
• The Pilots
• The Dock to Heaven
• Ghost Mission
• Spec-Ops
• Sisters of Sarronnyn, Sisters of Westwind
• The Difference
• The Swan Pilot

Focusing on novels written in English since the end of World War II, Pringle's selection is controversial, as any selection must be, but it is also a valuable guide to good reading in a field that is wider than it first appears to be. Pringle's informative comments on each title will help the reader select those titles that will be of immediate interest.

The book is comprised of a series of 100 essays, covering the years 1946 to 1987 and in order of publication, without any ranking. Although somewhat focused on works from the British Isles, it is considered an important critical summary of the science fiction field.

Pringle says of the book:

While covering no foreign-language fantasies and few children's or 'light' fantasies, "I have tried to make a balanced list, and in so doing I have included some books which are not really to my taste--they may well be other people's favourites, though. In truth, there are not a hundred masterpieces of modern fantasy, any more than there a hundred masterpieces of science fiction." "At least some of the novels I have selected are masterpieces of modern literature, full of beauty and wonder. The others are craftsmanlike entertainments which I happily commend to you for your enjoyment."

The books and authors covered in this volume are the basis for our Modern Fantasy: The 100 Best Novels list.

From a literary master of SF comes a savage satire on our capacity for war and a celebration of our need for love.

A giant has brought war to the fields and towns of England's heartland. When the British army brings in air support and deploys heavy weapons he simply melts away, only to form again somewhere else and deliver another devastating blow. He is called Pantegrel, and he is a New Model Army-a giant whose thoughts flow through countless wireless connections, whose intelligence comes from the internet and real-time camera updates, whose mind is made up of thousands of minds, each deciding what he will choose to do. He has chosen the joy of the fight, and his fury is truly democratic-he is me and you. This is a terrifying vision of a near future war as new technologies allow the world's first truly democratic army to wrest control from the powers that be. Taking advances in modern communication and the new eagerness for power from the bottom upwards, Adam Roberts has produced at once an exciting war novel and a philosophical examination of war and democracy. It shows an exciting and innovative literary voices working at the height of his powers and investing SF with the literary significance that is its due.

Classical Traditions in Modern Fantasy is the first collection of essays in English focusing on how fantasy draws deeply on ancient Greek and Roman mythology, philosophy, literature, history, art, and cult practice. Presenting fifteen all-new essays intended for both scholars and other readers of fantasy, this volume explores many of the most significant examples of the modern genre-including the works of H. P. Lovecraft, J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series, George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones series, and more-in relation to important ancient texts such as Aeschylus' Oresteia, Aristotle's Poetics, Virgil's Aeneid, and Apuleius' The Golden Ass.

These varied studies raise fascinating questions about genre, literary and artistic histories, and the suspension of disbelief required not only of readers of fantasy but also of students of antiquity. Ranging from harpies to hobbits, from Cyclopes to Cthulhu, and all manner of monster and myth in-between, this comparative study of Classics and fantasy reveals deep similarities between ancient and modern ways of imagining the world. Although antiquity and the present day differ in many ways, at its base, ancient literature resonates deeply with modern fantasy's image of worlds in flux and bodies in motion.

The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things?the strange and the unexplainable - began to happen in their house. Maybe it was some cosmic trial, a demonic rite of passage into the upper-middle class. Whatever it was, the Maxwells, steered by their formidable mother, stayed put, unwilling to abandon their home, terrors and trauma be damned.

As adults, the siblings could finally get away from the horrors of home, leaving their parents all alone in the house. But when news of their parents' death arrives, Ezri is forced to return to Texas with their sisters, Eve and Emanuelle, to reckon with their family's past and present, and to find out what happened while they were away. It was not a "natural" death for their parents... but was it supernatural?

The publication of Michael Swanwick's "A User's Guide to the Post Moderns" sent angry shockwaves rippling through the science fiction community. Not since the controversy surrounding the advent of the so-called New Wave writers of the 1960s and early 1970s had anyone dared to categorize writers. A work that was originally intended as an homage, to illuminate the works of many of the younger writers in the field, was vilified in numerous fanzine articles and convention panels. But Swanwick's essay was not intended to generate controversy and it remains, beyond the initial conflagration, a thoughtful and insightful look into the science fiction field of the early to mid-1980s. Herein lies the genesis of writers like William Gibson and Kim Stanley Robinson, Bruce Sterling and James Patrick Kelly. "A User's Guide to the Post Moderns," is published here for the first time since its initial magazine appearance along with "In the Tradition...", Swanwick's elegant assay on the fantasy genre, and a brand new introduction written specially for this collection. BACK COVER: Reviews of "A User's Guide to the Post Moderns": Juicy and intelligent, these critical overviews provide a valuable snapshot of our field... - Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine

Some of the writers that he praises may actually believe that they are as important to the field of science fiction as Swanwick says they are. The more they believe that, the more it will hurt when a more accurate perspective is forced upon them. - Orson Scott Card

A bilious assemblage of self-congratulatory twaddle... jejune mixture of bluster and untried arrogance... My God, if this is the direction science fiction is going, it is doomed... A self-conscious piece of snobbery not worth the powder to blow it to Kingdom Come. Like reading a history of Europe written from the point of view of Bulgaria. Swanwick's article has proved nothing, clarified nothing, accomplished nothing except to get his name before a large number of people where he can spout his conspiracy-literary theories in a pseudo-journalistic 'I'm above all this' manner better served by UFO magazines and the Flat Earth Society newsletter.Praise for "In the Tradition... "A brave, lonely attempt to stem the tide. - Nova Express

An incisive essay... - Publisher's Weekly

Thought-provoking and informative, the essay is as beautifully penned as any of the works lauded therein. - Terri Windling

Table of Contents:

• A Tale of Two Essays - essay by Michael Swanwick
• A User's Guide to the Postmoderns - (1986) - essay by Michael Swanwick
• "In the Tradition..." - (1994) - essay by Michael Swanwick

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 25, November-December 2018.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

The premise of the novel is that there is a planet (for "No less than a planet will serve the purpose of a modern Utopia") exactly like Earth, with the same geography and biology. Moreover, on that planet "all the men and women that you know and I" exist "in duplicate." They have, however, "different habits, different traditions, different knowledge, different ideas, different clothing, and different appliances." (Not however, a different language: "Indeed, should we be in Utopia at all, if we could not talk to everyone?")

To this planet "out beyond Sirius" the Owner of the Voice and the botanist are translated, imaginatively, "in the twinkling of an eye... We should scarcely note the change. Not a cloud would have gone from the sky." Their point of entry is on the slopes of the Piz Lucendro in the Swiss Alps.

The adventures of these two characters are traced through eleven chapters. Little by little they discover how Utopia is organized. It is a world with "no positive compulsions at all... for the adult Utopian--unless they fall upon him as penalties incurred."

The Owner of the Voice and the botanist are soon required to account for their presence. When their thumbprints are checked against records in "the central index housed in a vast series of buildings at or near Paris," both discover they have doubles in Utopia. They journey to London to meet them, and the Owner of the Voice's double is a member of the Samurai, a voluntary order of nobility that rules Utopia. "These samurai form the real body of the State."

Running through the novel as a foil to the main narrative is the botanist's obsession with an unhappy love affair back on Earth. The Owner of the Voice is annoyed at this undignified and unworthy insertion of earthly affairs in Utopia, but when the botanist meets the double of his beloved in Utopia the violence of his reaction bursts the imaginative bubble that has sustained the narrative and the two men find themselves back in early-twentieth-century London.

In this comprehensive study, James Williamson traces the literary history of the fantasy genre from the eighteenth century to its coalescence following the success of Tolkien's work in the 1960s. While some studies have engaged with related material, there has been no extended study specifically exploring the roots of this now beloved genre. Using the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series (1969-74) as the touchpoint in identifying what Williamson terms the pre-genre fantasy canon, The Evolution of Modern Fantasy contends that what became termed fantasy after the Tolkien boom had its beginnings in a creative literary response to eighteenth century antiquarianism.

This stort story originally appeared in the anthology Press Start to Play (2015), edited by Daniel H. Wilson and John Joseph Adams, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, September 2015. The story is included in the collection Guardian Angels & Other Monsters (2018).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This critical study analyzes Stephen R. Donaldson's role as a modern writer who uses the fantasy genre to discuss situations and predicaments germane to the modern world. Donaldson reclaims an epic vision in his Thomas Covenant novels that is lacking in most modern literature. Chapters demonstrate how this use of epic heroism helps solve seemingly insurmountable problems and provides more meaning and purpose for individuals. As Donaldson's characters learn to transcend their world, the reader is engaged in a serious, enlightened discussion about the need for imagination, responsibility and acceptance to resolve such problems as alienation, pollution, disease and despair.

Speculative modernists--that is, British and American writers of science fiction, fantasy and horror during the late 19th and early 20th centuries--successfully grappled with the same forces that would drive their better-known literary counterparts to existential despair. Building on the ideas of the 19th-century Gothic and utopian movements, these speculative writers anticipated literary Modernism and blazed alternative literary trails in science, religion, ecology and sociology. Such authors as H.G. Wells and H.P. Lovecraft gained widespread recognition--budding from them, other speculative authors published fascinating tales of individuals trapped in dystopias, of anti-society attitudes, post-apocalyptic worlds and the rapidly expanding knowledge of the limitless universe. This book documents the Gothic and utopian roots of speculative fiction and explores how these authors played a crucial role in shaping the culture of the new century with their darker, more evolved themes.

Ramsey Campbell is one of the world's leading writers of supernatural stories, although he has received far less attention than other practitioners of the genre. Joshi focuses in a thematic rather than chronological approach on the whole of Campbell's rich and varied work, from his early tales to the powerfully innovative stories collected in Demons by Daylight: The Doll Who Ate His Mother (1975) to Silent Children (1999) are also examined in detail. Throughout this book, the author places Campbell's oeuvre within the context of contemporary horror literature.

The birth of modern fantasy in 1930s Britain and America saw the development of new literary and film genres. J.R.R. Tolkien created modern fantasy with The Lord of the Rings, set in a fictional world based upon his life in the early 20th century British Empire, and his love of language and medieval literature. In small-town Texas, Robert E. Howard pounded out his own fantasy realm in his Conan stories, published serially in the ephemeral pulp magazines he loved. Jerry Siegel created Superman with Joe Shuster, and laid the foundation for perhaps the post far-reaching fantasy worlds: the universe of DC and Marvel comics.

The work of extraordinary people who lived in an extraordinary decade, this modern fantasy canon still provides source material for the most successful literary and film franchises of the 21st century. Modern fantasy speaks to the human experience and still shows its origins from the lives and times of its creators.

This book investigates Wells's interest in cinema and related media technologies, by placing it back into the contemporary cultural and scientific contexts giving rise to them. It plugs a gap in understanding Wells's contribution to exploring and advancing the possibilities of cinematic narrative and its social and ideological impacts in the modern period.

Previous studies concentrate on adaptations: this book accounts for the specifically (proto)cinematic techniques and concerns of Wells's texts. It also focuses on contemporary film-making 'in dialogue' with his ideas. Alongside Hollywood's later transactions, it gives equal weight to neglected British and continental European dimensions.

Chapter 1 shows how early writings (The Time Machine and short stories) feature many kinds of radically defamiliarised vision. These constitute imaginative speculations about the forms and potentials of moving image and electronic media.

Chapter 2 discusses the power of voyeurism, 'absent presence' and the disjunction of sound-image reproduction implied in The Invisible Man and its topical politics, updated in notable screen versions.

Chapter 3 extends this to dystopian warnings of systematic surveillance, broadcasting of celebrity personae and 'post-literate' video culture in When the Sleeper Wakes, a crucial template for urban futures on film.

Chapter 4 analyses Wells's belated return to screenwriting in the 1930s. It accounts for his 'broadbrow' ambition of mediating between popular and avant-garde tendencies to promote his cause and its mixed results in Things to Come, The Man Who Could Work Miracles, etc.

Chapter 5 finally surveys Wells's legacy on both small and large screens. It considers whether, as well as being raided for scenarios for spectacular effects, his subtexts still nourish an evolving tradition of alternative SF, which duly critiques the innovations and applications of its host media.

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.

Odessa Hardwicke's life is derailed when she's forced to turn her gun on her partner, Walt Leppo, a decorated FBI agent who turns suddenly, inexplicably violent while apprehending a rampaging murderer. The shooting, justified by self-defense, shakes the young FBI agent to her core. Devastated, Odessa is placed on desk leave pending a full investigation. But what most troubles Odessa isn't the tragedy itself -- it's the shadowy presence she thought she saw fleeing the deceased agent's body after his death.

Questioning her future with the FBI and her sanity, Hardwicke accepts a low-level assignment to clear out the belongings of a retired agent in the New York office. What she finds there will put her on the trail of a mysterious figure named Hugo Blackwood, a man of enormous means who claims to have been alive for centuries, and who is either an unhinged lunatic, or humanity's best and only defense against unspeakable evil.

From the authors who brought you The Strain Trilogy comes a strange, terrifying, and darkly wondrous world of suspense, mystery, and literary horror. The Hollow Ones is a chilling, spell-binding tale, a hauntingly original new fable from Academy Award-winning director Guillermo del Toro and bestselling author Chuck Hogan featuring their most fascinating character yet.

Science fiction emerged in Russia considerably earlier than its English version and instantly became the hallmark of Russian modernity. We Modern People investigates why science fiction appeared here, on the margins of Europe, before the genre had even been named, and what it meant for people who lived under conditions that Leon Trotsky famously described as "combined and uneven development."

Russian science fiction was embraced not only in literary circles and popular culture, but also by scientists, engineers, philosophers, and political visionaries. Anindita Banerjee explores the handful of well-known early practitioners, such as Briusov, Bogdanov, and Zamyatin, within a much larger continuum of new archival material comprised of journalism, scientific papers, popular science texts, advertisements, and independent manifestos on social transformation.

In documenting the unusual relationship between Russian science fiction and Russian modernity, this book offers a new critical perspective on the relationship between science, technology, the fictional imagination, and the consciousness of being modern.

Contents:

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Science Fiction and the Making of Russian Modernity
• CONQUERING SPACE
• TRANSCENDING TIME
• GENERATING POWER
• CREATING THE HUMAN AFTERWOR(L)D
• RUSSIAN SCIENCE FICTION AND THE UN-MAKING OF MODERNITY
• Chronology
• Notes
• Further Reading
• Index

This new omnibus from L. E. Modesitt, Jr., includes the third and fourth of his four- volume Ecolitan series, The Ecologic Envoy and The Ecolitan Enigma, both starring Nathaniel Whaler.

Four hundred years after winning secession from the Terran Empire (as chronicled in the earlier omnibus, Empire & Ecolitan), the star system Accord wants to sign a simple trade treaty with the Empire on microchip export tariffs. But if the agreement is so minor, why is Professor Nathaniel Whaler, chief economist at the Ecolitan Institute and his world's top commando killer, chosen as Accord's Envoy? Because the Imperial capital is a maddening bureaucracy of sniveling diplomats, high-profile figureheads, powers behind the throne, and spies---everywhere, spies. So the Envoy has to face red tape, politics, prejudice, as well as and a gauntlet of kidnappers, assassins, snipers, and bombs. And some ministry---but which?---doesn't want the treaty.

In fact, some in the Empire still blame Accord for Earth's poisoning and for the defection of fifty star systems after the war between Imperial nuclear might and Ecolitan bio-ecological weaponry. A hidden cabal wants to fight that war again---even if, this time, the entire galaxy dies.

And only Nathaniel Whaler, the Ecologic Envoy, has the power to stop the catastrophe.

This omnibus concludes one of L. E. Modesitt's most powerful science fiction series.

Major Jimjoy Earle Wright, secret agent of the Empire, is intelligent and highly trained. But he succeeds all too well in overthrowing a military dictatorship--and the result is a new government inimical to the Empire and disgrace for Jimjoy. After surviving two assassination attempts, Jimjoy realizes that it's his own imperial superiors who want him dead; that, in fact, his worst enemies could become his best friends. He fights his way to safety on the planet Accord, where the Ecolitan Institute wins his loyalty and changes his identity. Now he is James Joyson Whaler, Ecolitan, in the middle of a war of independence against the inconceivably superior forces of the Empire.

Major Jimjoy Earle Wright, secret agent of the Empire, is intelligent and highly trained. But he succeeds all too well in overthrowing a military dictatorship--and the result is a new government inimical to the Empire and disgrace for Jimjoy. After surviving two assassination attempts, Jimjoy realizes that it's his own imperial superiors who want him dead; that, in fact, his worst enemies could become his best friends. He fights his way to safety on the planet Accord, where the Ecolitan Institute wins his loyalty and changes his identity. Now he is James Joyson Whaler, Ecolitan, in the middle of a war of independence against the inconceivably superior forces of the Empire.

Major Jimjoy Earle Wright, secret agent of the Empire, is intelligent and highly trained. But he succeeds all too well in overthrowing a military dictatorship-and the result is a new government inimical to the Empire and disgrace for Jimjoy. After surviving two assassination attempts, Jimjoy realizes that it's his own imperial superiors who want him dead: that, in fact his worst enemies could now become his best friends. Jimjoy switches sides, joins the Ecolitan Institute and changes his identity. Now, as James Joyson Whaler, he must fight in the war for independence against his former colleagues.

Four hundred years after winning Secession from the Terran Empire, the star system Accord wants to sign a simple trade treaty on microchip export tariffs. But if the agreement is so minor, why is Professor Nathaniel Whaler--top economist at the Ecolitan Institute, and his world's top commando killer--chosen Accord's Envoy?

Because the Imperial capital is a maddening bureaucracy of sniveling diplomats, high profile figureheads, powers behind the throne, and spies--everywhere, spies.... Because the Envoy has to face red tape, politics, prejudice--and a gauntlet of kidnappers, assassins, snipers, and bombs...

Because some Ministry--but which?--doesn't want the treaty. Because some in the Empire still blame Accord for Earth's poisoning and the defection of fifty star systems after the war between Imperial nuclear might and Ecolitan bio-ecological weaponry. A hidden cabal wants to fight the war again--even if, this time, the entire galaxy dies.

And only Nathaniel Whaler, the Ecologic Envoy, has the power to stop the catastrophe.

L.E. Modesitt, Jr.'s science fiction novels have been pleasing readers for nearly two decades. Among his earlier novels were three books set in the future universe of the Ecolitan Institute. Now Modesitt returns to that world to tell another story of cultural conflict and interstellar diplomacy. The Ecolitan Enigma is sure to thrill his old fans and win new ones.

Nathaniel Firstborn Whaler is an Ecolitan, both a professor at the Institute and a field agent with extraordinary powers. Sent to a backwater colony planet nominally to determine its economic viability, Whaler evades assassin's bullets only steps from the spaceport. He soon uncovers evidence that the planet will become the flashpoint for interstellar conflict between two empires, with each prepared to blame the Ecolitan Institute should war break out. Whaler must do everything in his power to stop what might become the worst disaster in human history.

And Nathaniel whaler just may have more power than any man in the galaxy.

L. E. Modesitt, Jr's first major work was a trilogy of SF adventure novels published as paperback originals in the 1980s: Dawn for a Distant Earth, The Silent Warrior, and In Endless Twilight. Together they form The Forever Hero.

Thousands of years in the future, Earth is a desolate ruin. The first human ship to return in millennia discovers an abandoned wasteland inhabited only by a few degenerate or mutated human outcasts. But among them is a boy of immense native intelligence and determination who is captured, taken in, and educated, and disappears--to grow up to become the force behind a plan to make Earth flower again. He is, if not immortal, at least very long-lived, and he plans to build an independent power base out in the galaxy and force the galactic empire to devote centuries and immense resources to the restoration of the ecology of Earth.

L. E. Modesitt, Jr's first major work was The Forever Hero trilogy of SF adventure novels published as paperback originals in the 1980s, of which Dawn for a Distant Earth was the first title in the series.

Thousands of years in the future, Earth is a desolate ruin. The first human ship to return in millennia discovers an abandoned wasteland inhabited only by a few degenerate or mutated human outcasts. But among them is a boy of immense native intelligence and determination who is captured, taken in, and educated, and disappears--to grow up to become the force behind a plan to make Earth flower again. He is, if not immortal, at least very long-lived, and he plans to build an independent power base out in the galaxy and force the galactic empire to devote centuries and immense resources to the restoration of the ecology of Earth.

Thousands of years in the future, Earth is a desolate ruin. The first human ship to return in millennia discovers an abandoned wasteland inhabited only by a few degenerate or mutated human outcasts. But among them is a boy of immense native intelligence and determination who is captured, taken in, and educated, and disappears--to grow up to become the force behind a plan to make Earth flower again. He is, if not immortal, at least very long-lived, and he plans to build an independent power base out in the galaxy and force the galactic empire to devote centuries and immense resources to the restoration of the ecology of Earth.

L.E. Modesitt, Jr.s first major work was a trilogy of SF adventure novels published as paperback originals in the 1980s: Dawn for a Distant Earth, The Silent Warrior, and In Endless Twilight. Together they form The Forever Hero.

Thousands of years in the future, Earth is a desolate ruin. The first human ship to return in millennia discovers primitive remnants of humanity. And among them is a boy of immense native intelligence and determination who grows up to become the force behind a plan to make Earth flower again.

Now for the first time in one big volume, two novels of Dr. Johan Eschbach, professor at a small college in the northeast and secret agent for the government of Columbia. This is an alternate history world shaped by the fact that ghosts are not mere superstition but have a literal physical reality--and political implications--because your crimes can haunt you, and the ghosts of your crimes are visible to others.

Here are two adventures--Of Tangible Ghosts and Ghost of the Revelator--that bring Johan Eschbach out of his retirement and happy marriage in northern New Bruges and into danger and intrigue. This edition includes a new afterword by the author explaining the history of this fascinating alternate world.

Modesitt returns to science fiction with Of Tangible Ghosts, a carefully crafted alternate universe novel. In this world, the Dutch never lost control of the Northeast, and France, Spain, and Chung Kuo are today's superpowers, as is Colombia. And in this universe, the ghosts of the dead linger, sometimes visible, sometimes speaking to the living. Johan Eschbach has retired from service as an agent of the government of Colombia and gone north to teach at a university in his native Dutch territory. Research is being conducted in the university's physics department - research on the control of ghosts - that is of interest to governments worldwide. And Johan is forced by his former employers to work again as a spy. When he discovers too much, he is marked for death. But at least one ghost wants to keep him alive.

L.E. Modesitt, Jr., has gained a legion of devoted fans for his science fiction as well as his epic fantasy novels. The Ghost of the Revelator is one of the best displays yet of his ability to blend dramatic, imaginative stories with rigorous social and scientific extrapolation.

Doktor Johan Eschbach (the central character of Modesitt's popular alternate history SF novel, Of Tangible Ghosts) had hoped for a quiet life in retirement from the intelligence service, teaching environmental science at the University of New Bruges and living with his new wife, the vocalist Llysette du Boise. Llysette, a refugee from the burning remains of France, would herself like little more than to resume her singing career and forget her time in the prison camps of the Hapsburg Empire.

But an unusual invitation from the Mormon nation of Deseret inexorably drags Johan back into the spy business, though he isn't quite sure why or for whom. It quickly becomes apparent that he is being used as a pawn in a deadly game of international maneuverings that are leading the world closer to war.

Set in a fascinating alternative world in which ghosts are real, the United States never came into existence, and Russia is still ruled by the Romanovs, this sequel to Of Tangible Ghosts and The Ghost of the Revelator continues the adventures of semi-retired spy Dr. Johan Eschbach.

His lovely wife Llysette du Boise, a refugee from the burning remains of France and a world-famous vocalist, has been invited to provide a command performance for the Russian Imperial household. Johan accompanies her, allowing him to work on the oil concession in Russian Alaska that Columbia so desperately needs and do some spying on the side. Johan's espionage is carried out against the backdrop of the famous white nights of St. Petersburg, the nearly Arctic midsummer when the sun barely dips below the horizon and the sky seems to dissolve in ivory light. But even the oil shortage will fade to insignificance when Johan discovers what new weapons technology the Russians are developing, a threat even more fearsome than the atomic bombs of Austro-Hungary.

Working in the tradition of Gordon R. Dickson and Poul Anderson for hard-edged adventure with sophisticated social and political dimensions, Modesitt provides a unique blend of speculation and intrigue that brings the trilogy to a rousing end.

Contents:

• Introduction - (1976) - essay by Thomas D. Clareson
• Foreword - (1974) - essay by Norman Spinrad
• Introduction - (1974) - essay by Norman Spinrad
• The Golden Age - (1974) - essay by Norman Spinrad
• Twilight - (1934) - shortstory by John W. Campbell, Jr.
• The Enchanted Village - (1960) - shortstory by A. E. van Vogt
• Helen O'Loy - (1938) - shortstory by Lester del Rey
• Nightfall - (1941) - novelette by Isaac Asimov
• The Postwar Awakening - (1974) - essay by Norman Spinrad
• The Star - (1955) - shortstory by Arthur C. Clarke
• Affair with a Green Monkey - (1957) - shortstory by Theodore Sturgeon
• Stranger Station - (1956) - novelette by Damon Knight
• The Cold Equations - (1954) - novelette by Tom Godwin
• The Marching Morons - (1951) - novelette by C. M. Kornbluth
• 5,271,009 - (1954) - novelette by Alfred Bester
• The Full Flowering - (1974) - essay by Norman Spinrad
• The Voices of Time - (1960) - novelette by J. G. Ballard
• The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius - (1965) - shortstory by Michael Moorcock
• No Direction Home - (1971) - shortstory by Norman Spinrad
• Descending - (1964) - shortstory by Thomas M. Disch
• For a Breath I Tarry - (1966) - novelette by Roger Zelazny
• Don't Wash the Carats - (1968) - shortstory by Philip José Farmer
• Faith of Our Fathers - (1967) - novelette by Philip K. Dick
• Aye, and Gomorrah... - (1967) - shortstory by Samuel R. Delany
• At the Mouse Circus - (1971) - shortstory by Harlan Ellison
• In Entropy's Jaws - (1971) - novelette by Robert Silverberg
• Nine Lives - (1969) - novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Additional Significant Works of Speculative Fiction - (1974) - essay by uncredited

"'Level up even while offline'?! That's not a game on "easy mode' - that's just an AFK game!"

The online game Yamada Kenichi had been playing religiously is shutting down its servers, leaving him with a void in his heart. He looks for a new game to fill it, but everything he finds is way too easy. The kind of game he likes, the kind punishing enough to make players want to spend thousands of hours on it, just isn't around anymore. "What's this? "You are invited to a game that willnever end.'" Kenichi stumbles upon an untitled game, one promising incomparable challenge with unprecedented potential. Without hesitation, he selects the "Hell Mode" difficulty. Lo and behold, he finds himself reincarnated in another world as a serf! Now called Allen, he sets out to unlock the secrets of his mystery-laden Summoner class; without the convenience of walkthroughs, game guides, or online forums, he must grope his way to the top of his new world!

A new adventure awaits Allen as he enters the service of a noble! After climbing up the social ladder from serf to manservant, Allen now finds himself dragged around by the whims of the willful young lady of the house, Cecil Granvelle. Despite this, he is free to leave the city - and immerse himself in hunting monsters! As Allen meticulously grinds on goblins and orcs, both he and his Summons grow stronger by the day. At the same time, he begins to earn the trust of the members of House Granvelle with his diligent work ethic. Just as everything seems to be going well, however, the viscount overseeing the next fiefdom over seems to be up to something. As danger creeps toward Cecil, Allen declares, "I promised to protect you, Lady Cecil. And I keep my promises." Going all out with his skills and Summons, Allen must resist evil and impending doom!

How is "No-life Gamers" as a party name?!

The Academy City arc starts off with a bang! After leaving the service of House Granvelle, Allen enrolls in the Academy together with Cecil, as well as Krena and Dogora, who have come all the way from Krena Village. As part of their new life together, they form a party to take on the many dungeons scattered throughout Academy City, keeping in mind their ultimate goal of defeating the Demon Lord. When Allen goes in search of a healer for their party, he encounters Keel, a boy his age with the Cleric Talent. However, Keel comes across as guarded and reticent. Just what secret is he hiding, and how is it related to House Granvelle? At the same time, why is Helmios, the Hero of Giamut, at the Academy, and what does he want from Allen? And what's this about a martial arts tournament?!

Diving straight into the Rohzenheim War!

Rohzenheim, nation of the elves, is under attack by the Demon Lord Army and on the verge of total annihilation. Heeding the requests of his home country and Sophialoneh--crown princess of Rohzenheim and No-life Gamer newcomer--Allen and his companions decide to join the fight and save the elves. When they land on the elven continent, however, they find the capital already fallen, the front line on the verge of crumbling, and one of the few remaining cities overflowing with wounded and refugees. To make matters worse, they learn that the enemy's top general is a Demonic Deity who has already defeated Hero Helmios before! The Demon Lord Army is far more numerous and much more powerful than anything they've ever encountered before! Can the No-life Gamers truly prevail against a force of three million?!

After defeating a Demonic Deity and leading Rohzenheim to victory, the No-life Gamers now set their sights on the Rank S dungeon. Before they head to Baukis, though, Allen uses his new elven connections to arrange for the Gamers to graduate from the Academy early. Allen then brings the gang to Krena Village to drop in on his family and introduce everyone. What's supposed to be a simple trip, however, quickly escalates into something more. It turns out that when Keel's family had their House restored, their lands were also returned to them--including the nest of the white dragon that has terrorized the area for centuries!

The group eventually makes their way to Baukis and reunites with Meruru with much pomp and circumstance. There, they stand together before the Tower of Tribulations, the Rank S dungeon that no one--not even Hero Helmios nor the champions of ages past--has ever cleared. Challenges and encounters galore await the No-life Gamers where all the world's greatest fighters gather!

A unique collection of tales that are contemporary classics--from the most productive period of science fiction by Edward E. Smith, John W. Campbell, Edmond Hamilton, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, A. E. van Vogt, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and other great modern writers.

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Introduction (Modern Masterpieces of Science Fiction) - essay by Sam Moskowitz
• 19 - The Vortex Blaster - [Vortex Blaster] - (1941) - short story by Edward E. Smith
• 44 - Night - [Twilight - 2] - (1935) - short story by John W. Campbell, Jr.
• 69 - A Logic Named Joe - (1946) - short story by Murray Leinster
• 89 - Requiem - (1962) - short story by Edmond Hamilton
• 111 - With Folded Hands... - [Humanoids] - (1947) - novelette by Jack Williamson
• 165 - Adaptation - (1949) - short story by John Wyndham
• 186 - The Witness - (1951) - novelette by Eric Frank Russell
• 213 - The Command - [Johnny Black] - (1938) - short story by L. Sprague de Camp
• 230 - Kindness - (1944) - short story by Lester del Rey
• 248 - We Also Walk Dogs - [Future History] - (1958) - novelette by Robert A. Heinlein (variant of "--We Also Walk Dogs" 1941)
• 277 - Enchanted Village - (1950) - short story by A. E. van Vogt
• 295 - Liar! - [Susan Calvin] - (1941) - short story by Isaac Asimov
• 316 - Microcosmic God - (1941) - novelette by Theodore Sturgeon
• 350 - Huddling Place - [City] - (1944) - short story by Clifford D. Simak
• 372 - Coming Attraction - (1950) - short story by Fritz Leiber
• 389 - Doorway Into Time - (1943) - short story by C. L. Moore
• 412 - We Guard the Black Planet! - (1942) - novelette by Henry Kuttner
• 449 - The Strange Flight of Richard Clayton - (1939) - short story by Robert Bloch
• 461 - Wake for the Living - (1947) - short story by Ray Bradbury (variant of The Coffin)
• 471 - Before Eden - (1961) - short story by Arthur C. Clarke
• 485 - Mother - (1953) - novelette by Philip José Farmer

Colene does not know what to think of the stranger she has rescued. Darius tells her he has traveled from "his reality" to find her. In proving to Colene that other worlds do exist, he uses up the power of the artifact that would allow them to travel back to his universe. They must try a slower, more dangerous method: the creation of a four-dimensional universe. Darius picks five anchor points in five different universes to set up a skew path, a "Virtual Mode," on which the anchors can walk. Thus begins a tale of romance, danger, adventure, and intrigue as the two travel through a myriad of alternate realities where anything is possible.

Saved from death at the hands of the Emperor Ddwng, would-be lovers Colene and Darius and their companions - Provos, a woman who remembers only the future, and Sequiro, a telepathic horse - stumble into yet another dangerous reality where despots rule with a cruel and heavy hand. Held captive, the friends must combine their unusual talents in a daring escape that leads them on adventure after adventure with the most intriguing characters - some threatening, some friendly - ever to grace the page. Among them, Angus, the adorable flying giant; Nona, the lovely and magical "ninth of the ninth;" Slick, the gangster with a death sentence; and the megaplayers, mysterious musicians of old whose giant instruments still dot the landscape.

Colene, Darius, and the magnificent telepathic horse Sequiro, travelling companions from Virtual Mode and Fractal Mode, face their most dangerous adventure ever as they pass freely from one universe to the next. They are joined by a most unlikely companion: Burgess, a tentacled creature from a world where evolution went entirely differently from the path it took for us. And their travels take them to a place that in some ways is the strangest of all - a place called Earth.

Beyond the world we know there is a multiverse of Modes where many strange realities interlock in an infinitely intricate pattern, and a perverse and deranged Emperor plays a deadly multidimensional game with human pawns as his slaves.

Now, with DoOon Mode, Piers Anthony at last delivers the breathtaking climax to this awesome saga. Fearing the heroine Coleen's dawning power, the depraved Emperor Ddwng dispatches a terrible Mind Monster to assault her soul and bend her to his will. To protect herself, and those she loves, Coleen must journey back through many worlds to her own home on Earth, face her deepest and darkest fears, and draw the strength for a final confrontation to save the multiverse from tyranny and domination.

Welcome to the realm of very scary faeries!

Sixteen-year-old Kaye is a modern nomad. Fierce and independent, she travels from city to city with her mother's rock band until an ominous attack forces Kaye back to her childhood home. There, amid the industrial, blue-collar New Jersey backdrop, Kaye soon finds herself an unwilling pawn in an ancient power struggle between two rival faerie kingdoms -- a struggle that could very well mean her death.

When seventeen-year-old Valerie runs away to New York City, she's trying to escape a life that has utterly betrayed her. Sporting a new identity, she takes up with a gang of squatters who live in the city's labyrinthine subway system.

But there's something eerily beguiling about Val's new friends. And when one talks Val into tracking down the lair of a mysterious creature with whom they are all involved, Val finds herself torn between her newfound affection for an honorable monster and her fear of what her new friends are becoming.

In the realm of Faerie, the time has come for Roiben's coronation. Uneasy in the midst of the malevolent Unseelie Court, pixie Kaye is sure of only one thing -- her love for Roiben. But when Kaye, drunk on faerie wine, declares herself to Roiben, he sends her on a seemingly impossible quest. Now Kaye can't see or speak to Roiben unless she can find the one thing she knows doesn't exist: a faerie who can tell a lie.

Miserable and convinced she belongs nowhere, Kaye decides to tell her mother the truth -- that she is a changeling left in place of the human daughter stolen long ago. Her mother's shock and horror sends Kaye back to the world of Faerie to find her human counterpart and return her to Ironside. But once back in the faerie courts, Kaye finds herself a pawn in the games of Silarial, queen of the Seelie Court. Silarial wants Roiben's throne, and she will use Kaye, and any means necessary, to get it. In this game of wits and weapons, can a pixie outplay a queen?

Holly Black spins a seductive tale at once achingly real and chillingly enchanted, set in a dangerous world where pleasure mingles with pain and nothing is exactly as it appears.

Under his own name and numerous pseudonyms, John Brunner (1934-1995) was one of the most prolific and influential science fiction authors of the late twentieth century. During his exemplary career, the British author wrote with a stamina matched by only a few other great science fiction writers and with a literary quality of even fewer, importing modernist techniques into his novels and stories and probing every major theme of his generation: robotics, racism, drugs, space exploration, technological warfare, and ecology.

In this first intensive review of Brunner's life and works, Jad Smith carefully demonstrates how Brunner's much-neglected early fiction laid the foundation for his classic Stand on Zanzibar and other major works such as The Jagged Orbit, The Sheep Look Up, and The Shockwave Rider. Making extensive use of Brunner's letters, columns, speeches, and interviews published in fanzines, Smith approaches Brunner in the context of markets and trends that affected many writers of the time, including Brunner's uneasy association with the "New Wave" of science fiction in the 1960s and '70s.

This landmark study shows how Brunner's attempts to cross-fertilize the American pulp tradition with British scientific romance complicated the distinctions between genre and mainstream fiction and between hard and soft science fiction and helped carve out space for emerging modes such as cyberpunk, slipstream, and biopunk.

The leading figure in the development of cyberpunk, William Gibson (born in 1948) crafted works in which isolated humans explored near-future worlds of ubiquitous and intrusive computer technology and cybernetics. This volume is the first comprehensive examination of the award-winning author of the seminal novel Neuromancer (and the other books in the Sprawl trilogy, Count Zero and Mona Lisa Overdrive), as well as other acclaimed novels including recent bestsellers Pattern Recognition, Spook Country, and Zero History. Renowned scholar Gary Westfahl draws upon extensive research to provide a compelling account of Gibson's writing career and his lasting influence in the science fiction world.

Delving into numerous science fiction fanzines that the young Gibson contributed to and edited, Westfahl delivers new information about his childhood and adolescence. He describes for the first time more than eighty virtually unknown Gibson publications from his early years, including articles, reviews, poems, cartoons, letters, and a collaborative story. The book also documents the poems, articles, and introductions that Gibson has written for various books, and its discussions are enriched by illuminating comments from various print and online interviews. The works that made Gibson famous are also featured, as Westfahl performs extended analyses of Gibson's ten novels and nineteen short stories. Lastly, the book presents a new interview with Gibson in which the author discusses his correspondence with author Fritz Leiber, his relationship with the late scholar Susan Wood, his attitudes toward critics, his overall impact on the field of science fiction, and his recently completed screenplay and forthcoming novel.

Gregory Benford is perhaps best known as the author of Benford's law of controversy: "Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available." That maxim is a quotation from Timescape, Benford's Nebula and Campbell Award-winning 1980 novel, which established his work as an exemplar of "hard science fiction," dedicated to working out the consequences of modern science rather than substituting pseudoscience for fantasy. An astrophysicist by training and profession, Benford published more than twenty novels, over one hundred short stories, some fifty essays, and myriad articles that display both his scientific rigor as well as a recognition of literary traditions.

In this study, George Slusser explores the extraordinary, seemingly inexhaustible display of creative energy in Gregory Benford's life and work. By identifying direct sources and making parallels with other works and writers, Slusser reveals the vast scope of Benford's knowledge, both of literature and of the major scientific and philosophical issues of our time. Slusser also discusses Benford's numerous scientific articles and nonfiction books and includes a new interview with Benford.

Greg Egan (1961- ) publishes works that challenge readers with rigorous, deeply-informed scientific speculation. He unapologetically delves into mathematics, physics, and other disciplines in his prose, putting him in the vanguard of the hard science fiction renaissance of the 1990s.

A working physicist and engineer, Karen Burnham is uniquely positioned to provide an in-depth study of Egan's science-heavy oeuvre. Her survey of the author's career covers novels like Permutation City and Schild's Ladder and the Hugo Award-winning novella "Oceanic," analyzing how Egan used cutting-edge scientific theory to explore ethical questions and the nature of humanity. As Burnham shows, Egan's collected works constitute a bold artistic statement: that narratives of science are equal to those of poetry and drama, and that science holds a place in the human condition as exalted as religion or art.

The volume includes a rare interview with the famously press-shy Egan covering his works, themes, intellectual interests, and thought processes.

As much as any individual, Ray Bradbury brought science fiction's ideas into the mainstream. Yet he transcended the genre in both form and popularity, using its trappings to explore timely social concerns and the kaleidoscope of human experience while in the process becoming one of America's most beloved authors.

David Seed follows Bradbury's long career from the early short story masterpieces through his work in a wide variety of broadcast and film genres to the influential cultural commentary he spread via essays, speeches, and interviews. Mining Bradbury's classics and hard-to-find archival, literary, and cultural materials, Seed analyzes how the author's views on technology, authoritarianism, and censorship affected his art; how his Midwest of dream and dread brought his work to life; and the ways film and television influenced his creative process and visually-oriented prose style. The result is a passionate statement on Bradbury's status as an essential literary writer deserving of a place in the cultural history of his time.

Readers have awarded Lois McMaster Bujold four Hugo Awards for Best Novel, a number matched only by Robert Heinlein. Her Vorkosigan series redefined space opera with its emotional depth and explorations of themes such as bias against the disabled, economic exploitation, and the role of women in society.

Acclaimed science fiction scholar Edward James traces Bujold's career, showing how Bujold emerged from fanzine culture to win devoted male and female readers despite working in genres -- military SF, space opera -- perceived as solely by and for males. Devoted to old-school ideas such as faith in humanity and the desire to probe and do good in the universe, Bujold simultaneously subverted genre conventions and experimented with forms that led her in bold creative directions. As James shows, her iconic hero Miles Vorkosigan -- unimposing, physically impaired, self-conscious to a fault -- embodied Bujold's thematic concerns. The sheer humanity of her characters, meanwhile, gained her a legion of fans eager to provide her with feedback, expand her vision through fan fiction, and follow her into fantasy.

One of science fiction's undisputed grandmasters, Frederik Pohl built an astonishing career that spanned more than seven decades. Along the way he won millions of readers and seemingly as many awards while producing novels, short stories, and essays that left a profound mark on the genre.

In this first-of-its-kind study, Michael R. Page traces Pohl's journey as an author but also uncovers his role as a transformative figure who shaped the genre as a literary agent, book editor, and in Gardner Dozois' words, "quite probably the best SF magazine editor who ever lived."

Alfred Bester's classic short stories and the canonical novel The Stars My Destination made him a science fiction legend. Fans and scholars praise him as a genre-bending pioneer and cyberpunk forefather. Writers like Neil Gaiman and William Gibson celebrate his prophetic vision and stylistic innovations.

Jad Smith traces the career of the unlikeliest of SF icons. Winner of the first Hugo Award for The Demolished Man, Bester also worked in comics, radio, and TV, and his intermittent SF writing led some critics to brand him a dabbler. In the 1960s, however, New Wave writers championed his work, and his reputation grew. Smith follows Bester's journey from consummate outsider to an artist venerated for foundational works that influenced the New Wave and cyberpunk revolutions. He also explores the little-known roots of a wayward journey fueled by curiosity, disappointment with the SF mainstream, and an artist's determination to go his own way.

"I began writing about power because I had so little," Octavia E. Butler once said. Butler's life as an African American woman--an alien in American society and among science fiction writers -- informed the powerful works that earned her an ardent readership and acclaim both inside and outside science fiction.

Gerry Canavan offers a critical and holistic consideration of Butler's career. Drawing on Butler's personal papers, Canavan tracks the false starts, abandoned drafts, tireless rewrites, and real-life obstacles that fed Butler's frustrations and launched her triumphs. Canavan departs from other studies to approach Butler first and foremost as a science fiction writer working within, responding to, and reacting against the genre's particular canon.

The result is an illuminating study of how an essential SF figure shaped themes, unconventional ideas, and an unflagging creative urge into brilliant works of fiction.

Finalist for Hugo Award for Best Related Work

The 1987 publication of Iain M. Banks's Consider Phlebas helped trigger the British renaissance of radical hard science fiction and influenced a generation of New Space Opera masters. The thirteen SF novels that followed inspired an avid fandom and intense intellectual engagement while Banks's mainstream books vaulted him to the top of the Scottish literary scene.

Paul Kincaid has written the first study of Iain M. Banks to explore the confluence of his SF and literary techniques and sensibilities. As Kincaid shows, the two powerful aspects of Banks's work flowed into each other, blurring a line that critics too often treat as clear-cut. Banks's gift for black humor and a honed skepticism regarding politics and religion found expression even as he orchestrated the vast, galaxy-spanning vistas in his novels of The Culture.

In examining Banks's entire SF oeuvre, Kincaid unlocks the set of ideas Banks drew upon, ideas that spoke to an unusually varied readership that praised him as a visionary and reveled in the distinctive character of his works. Entertaining and broad in scope, Iain M. Banks offers new insights on one of the most admired figures in contemporary science fiction.

Prophetic short stories and apocalyptic novels like The Crystal World made J. G. Ballard a foundational figure in the British New Wave. Rejecting the science fiction of rockets and aliens, he explored an inner space of humanity informed by psychiatry and biology and shaped by Surrealism. Later in his career, Ballard's combustible plots and violent imagery spurred controversy--even legal action--while his autobiographical 1984 war novel Empire of the Sun brought him fame. D. Harlan Wilson offers the first career-spanning analysis of an author who helped steer SF in new, if startling, directions. Here was a writer committed to moral ambiguity, one who drowned the world and erected a London high-rise doomed to descend into savagery--and coolly picked apart the characters trapped within each story. Wilson also examines Ballard's methods, his influence on cyberpunk, and the ways his fiction operates within the sphere of our larger culture and within SF itself.

Already renowned for his science fiction and scientific nonfiction, Arthur C. Clarke became the world's most famous science fiction writer after the success of 2001: A Space Odyssey. He then produced novels like Rendezvous with Rama and The Fountains of Paradise that many regard as his finest works. Gary Westfahl closely examines Clarke's remarkable career, ranging from his forgotten juvenilia to the passages he completed for a final novel, The Last Theorem.

As Westfahl explains, Clarke's science fiction offered original perspectives on subjects like new inventions, space travel, humanity's destiny, alien encounters, the undersea world, and religion. While not inclined to mysticism, Clarke necessarily employed mystical language to describe the fantastic achievements of advanced aliens and future humans. Westfahl also contradicts the common perception that Clarke's characters were bland and underdeveloped, arguing that these reticent, solitary individuals, who avoid conventional relationships, represent his most significant prediction of the future, as they embody the increasingly common lifestyle of people in the twenty-first century.

Experimental, strange, and unabashedly feminist, Joanna Russ's groundbreaking science fiction grew out of a belief that the genre was ideal for expressing radical thought. Her essays and criticism, meanwhile, helped shape the field and still exercise a powerful influence in both SF and feminist literary studies.

Award-winning author and critic Gwyneth Jones offers a new appraisal of Russ's work and ideas. After years working in male-dominated SF, Russ emerged in the late 1960s with Alyx, the uber-capable can-do heroine at the heart of Picnic on Paradise and other popular stories and books. Soon, Russ's fearless embrace of gender politics and life as an out lesbian made her a target for male outrage while feminist classics like The Female Man and The Two of Them took SF in innovative new directions. Jones also delves into Russ's longtime work as a critic of figures as diverse as Lovecraft and Cather, her foundational place in feminist fandom, important essays like "Amor Vincit Foeminam," and her career in academia.

Award-winning epics like the Mars Trilogy and groundbreaking alternative histories like The Days of Rice and Salt have brought Kim Stanley Robinson to the forefront of contemporary science fiction. Mixing subject matter from a dizzying number of fields with his own complex ecological and philosophical concerns, Robinson explores how humanity might pursue utopian social action as a strategy for its own survival.

Robert Markley examines the works of an author engaged with the fundamental question of how we--as individuals, as a civilization, and as a species--might go forward. By building stories on huge time scales, Robinson lays out the scientific and human processes that fuel humanity's struggle toward a more just and environmentally stable world or system of worlds. His works invite readers to contemplate how to achieve, and live in, these numerous possible futures. They also challenge us to see that SF's literary, cultural, and philosophical significance have made it the preeminent literary genre for examining where we stand today in human and planetary history.

Challenging convention with the SF nonconformist

Roger Zelazny combined poetic prose with fearless literary ambition to become one of the most influential science fiction writers of the 1960s. Yet many critics found his later novels underachieving and his turn to fantasy a disappointment. F. Brett Cox surveys the landscape of Zelazny's creative life and contradictions. Launched by the classic 1963 short story "A Rose for Ecclesiastes," Zelazny soon won the Hugo Award for Best Novel with …And Call Me Conrad and two years later won again for Lord of Light. Cox looks at the author's overnight success and follows Zelazny into a period of continued formal experimentation, the commercial triumph of the Amber sword and sorcery novels, and renewed acclaim for Hugo-winning novellas such as "Home Is the Hangman" and "24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai." Throughout, Cox analyzes aspects of Zelazny's art, from his preference for poetically alienated protagonists to the ways his plots reflected his determined individualism.

Clear-eyed and detailed, Roger Zelazny provides an up-to-date reconsideration of an often-misunderstood SF maverick.

Brian W. Aldiss wrote classic science fiction novels like Report on Probability A and Hothouse. Billion Year Spree, his groundbreaking study of the field, defined the very meaning of SF and delineated its history. Yet Aldiss's discomfort with being a guiding spirit of the British New Wave and his pursuit of mainstream success characterized a lifelong ambivalence toward the genre.

Paul Kincaid explores the many contradictions that underlay the distinctive qualities of Aldiss's writing. Wartime experiences in Asia and the alienation that arose upon his return to the cold austerity of postwar Britain inspired themes and imagery that Aldiss drew upon throughout his career. He wrote of prolific nature overwhelming humanity, believed war was madness even though it provided him with the happiest period of his life, and found parallels in the static lives of Indian peasants and hidebound English society. As Kincaid shows, contradictions created tensions that fueled the metaphorical underpinnings of Aldiss's work and shaped not only his long career but the evolution of postwar British science fiction.

Jerry Cornelius--Michael Moorcock's fictional audacious assassin, rockstar, chronospy, and possible Messiah--is featured in the first of two stories in this fifth installment of the Outspoken Author series. Previously unpublished, the first story is an odyssey through time from London in the 1960s to America during the years following Barack Obama's presidency. The second ;piece is a political, confrontational, comical, nonfiction tale in the style of Jonathan Swift and George Orwell. ;An interview with the author rounds out this biting, satirical, sci-fi collection.

Table of Contents

• Modem Times 2.0 - (2011)
• My Londons - (2011) - essay by Michael Moorcock
• Get the Music Right - (2011) - interview of Michael Moorcock by Terry Bisson
• Bibliography - (2011)
• About the Author - (2011) - essay by uncredited

Some bad ideas go back a long way and this one goes all the way back to the original home planet: Someone's god told them they had a right to more territory--so they figure they can take what they want by divine right. In the far future among the colonized worlds of the galaxy there's a war going on between the majority of civilized worlds and a colonial theocracy.

Trystin Desoll grows up fighting against religious fanatics and becomes a hero, a first-class pilot, then, amazingly, a spy.

What do you do if you're a relatively humane soldier fighting millions of suicidal volunteers on the other side who know that they are utterly right and you are utterly wrong, with no middle ground?

Trystin Desoll has an idea.

Set in the same universe as The Parafaith War (but two centuries later, and intended to be read independently), The Ethos Factor is the story of Commander Van C. Albert of the Republic Space Force of Taran, a brave and resourceful officer who once defeated a larger enemy ship but indirectly caused the loss of a civilian liner in the process. Cleared by the board of inquiry, but an embarrassment to the high command, he retains his commission but is given only dead-end assignments. For a time, he must watch helplessly as cold war among economic, religious and political rivals evolves toward interstellar open warfare.

Assigned as a military attaché at the Taran embassy on Scandya, Van is seriously wounded foiling an assassination. Decorated, promoted and summarily retired while still in a coma, he wakes to find himself honorably but intolerably unemployed. Then the harmless sounding Integrated Information Systems foundation of the Eco-Tech Coalition recruits him to fly a starship, Van finds he now has a powerful new vantage point not just for observation, but for action. The IIS has interests everywhere and Van is not just a pilot, but their point man in a conflict that will shake the worlds.

Modesitt uses a distinctive blend of space battles, political and economic intrigue, and issues of race and religion to address deep questions of good and evil, ethics and self-interest. Van Albert makes his decisions; it is for you to decide if he is a hero.

Contents:

• 7 - Reactive Criticism: An Introduction to the Essays - essay
• 13 - Hugo Gernsback, Father of Modern Science Fiction: Introduction - essay
• 15 - The Man and His Times - essay
• 24 - The Science Fiction Writings of Hugo Gernsback - essay
• 37 - Hugo Gernsback, Editor and Publisher - essay
• 48 - Gernsback's Influence - essay
• 57 - Selected Bibliography (Hugo Gernsback, Father of Modern Science Fiction) - essay
• 65 - The Ecology of Politics and the Politics of Ecology in Frank Herbert's Dune - essay
• 75 - Selected Bibliography (Frank Herbert) - essay
• 78 - Carnal Knowledge: Dracula As Anti-Quest - essay
• 90 - Selected Bibliography (Bram Stoker) - essay

When Anna Marshall is transported from her boring and frustrating life in Ames, Iowa, to the very different world of Erde, she's angry and confused, but soon finds out that for the first time in her life she's uniquely powerful. In Iowa Anna was a music instructor and small-time opera singer, but on Erde her musical ability makes her a big-time sorceress--potentially.

First she must figure out how to use her ability before the big-time rulers who've notices her arrival kill her just because she's an unpredictable new power....Those rulers may wish they hadn't waited as long as they did.

With The Soprano Sorceress L.E. Modesitt started The Spellsong Cycle, an innovative and compelling new fantasy series that won Modesitt tons of new readers. The Spellsong War will enthrall its readers and continue to build Modesitt's increasingly loyal following.

Anna Marshal is regent of the kingdom of Defalk only a few months after a sorcerer pulled her from her boring life as a music instructor in Ames, Iowa to the world of Erde. With her ability and her integrity she saved Defalk from invasion and became it's regent, now she must defend it against the greedy rulers of neighboring kingdoms who see a weakened state and a possible opportunity.

The Spellsong War is the second book of the Spellong Cycle.

Darksong Rising is the third Spellsong book , and concludes a trilogy featuring Anna Marshall, the music teacher and soprano from the midwest transported into a fantasy world where magic works according to musical principles--making her a powerful magician. Now Regent of Defalk, Anna must battle men who would destroy her and claim Defalk for their own.

L.E. Modesitt, Jr. has developed a wide readership with his popular fantasy novels set in the universe of Recluce. With more than a million copies in print, he continues to build a substantial audience with each new volume. He widened that audience with the first three-volume Spellsong Cycle set in a compelling and imaginative world where music is the vehicle for the creation and wielding of magic. He now returns to that universe for a new cycle of tales starring a new heroine who must face a series of deadly political and military threats.

The Shadow Sorceress continues the story begun in the first Spellsong Cycle but focuses on the challenges facing Secca, now a young Sorceress. She is thrust into a position of power and responsibility when her mentor, Anna, the legendary Sorceress Protector of Defalk and the heroine of the original trilogy, dies unexpectedly before Secca's training as a master magic wielder is anywhere near complete.

Despite her reservations concerning the skills and strength of her ruler, Secca must immediately take command of all her magical resources to help suppress internal dissension in a neighboring province. Then she must rally potential allies to lift the naval siege laid on Nordwei by the Sea Priests, who bring with them a new kind of drumming magic that threatens the balance of power in the world, portending danger and destruction not imagined for decades.

Secca learns to fight battles effectively using sorcerous skills she has never used before, all while leading an army for the first time. She must master diplomacy in order to save her ruler and his kingdom, form alliances with unfriendly potential allies and mediate power struggles among ambitious and disparate societies. At the same time, she discovers the unexpected potential for love and companionship in a world where few men are wise enough to value women as anything more than wives, mistresses or mothers.

Coping with it all, Secca proves herself more than just a quick study, but a woman with a limitless capacity for courage, personal growth and fearless commitment to survival and fighting the good fight.

The Shadow Sorceress is the first book of the second Spellsong cycle and the fourth book set in Erde, the world of musical magic.

The Climax of The Spellsong Cycle

Secca, foster daughter of the Soprano Sorceress, and now her successor as Sorceress Protector of Defalk, must deal carefully with her willful master and wield her power to save his kingdom from the armies, fleets and master sorcerers of the Maitre of Sturinn. Faced with seemingly insurmountable odds, she is forced to test her own powers over and over again, while teaching her new husband and her inexperienced apprentice the skills they will need to aid her in creating spells powerful enough to shake the foundations of the world.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg
• Angel's Egg - (1951) - novelette by Edgar Pangborn
• Rescue Party - (1946) - novelette by Arthur C. Clarke
• Shape - (1953) - novelette by Robert Sheckley
• Alpha Ralpha Boulevard - (1961) - novelette by Cordwainer Smith
• Winter's King - (1969) - novelette by Ursula K. Le Guin
• Or All the Seas with Oysters - (1958) - shortstory by Avram Davidson
• Common Time - (1953) - novelette by James Blish
• When You Care, When You Love - (1962) - novella by Theodore Sturgeon
• The Shadow of Space - (1967) - novelette by Philip José Farmer
• "All You Zombies --" - (1959) - shortstory by Robert A. Heinlein
• I'm Scared - (1951) - shortstory by Jack Finney
• Child's Play - (1947) - novelette by William Tenn
• Grandpa - (1955) - novelette by James H. Schmitz
• Private Eye - (1949) - novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
• Sundance - (1969) - shortstory by Robert Silverberg
• In the Bowl - (1975) - novelette by John Varley
• Kaleidoscope - (1949) - shortstory by Ray Bradbury
• Unready to Wear - (1953) - shortstory by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
• Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night - (1961) - novelette by Algis Budrys
• Day Million - (1966) - shortstory by Frederik Pohl
• Hobson's Choice - (1952) - shortstory by Alfred Bester
• The Gift of Gab - (1955) - novella by Jack Vance
• The Man Who Never Grew Young - (1947) - shortstory by Fritz Leiber
• Neutron Star - (1966) - novelette by Larry Niven
• Impostor - (1953) - shortstory by Philip K. Dick
• The Human Operators - (1971) - novelette by Harlan Ellison and A. E. van Vogt
• Poor Little Warrior! - (1958) - shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss
• When It Changed - (1972) - shortstory by Joanna Russ
• The Bicentennial Man - (1976) - novelette by Isaac Asimov
• Hunting Machine - (1957) - shortstory by Carol Emshwiller
• Light of Other Days - (1966) - shortstory by Bob Shaw
• The Keys to December - (1966) - novelette by Roger Zelazny
• Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand - (1973) - novelette by Vonda N. McIntyre
• A Galaxy Called Rome - (1975) - novelette by Barry N. Malzberg
• Stranger Station - (1956) - novelette by Damon Knight
• The Time of His Life - (1968) - shortstory by Larry Eisenberg
• The Marching Morons - (1951) - novelette by C. M. Kornbluth
• The Women Men Don't See - (1973) - novelette by James Tiptree, Jr.
• The Queen of Air and Darkness - (1971) - novella by Poul Anderson

WORLD FANTASY AWARD WINNER

A true horde of fantasy tales sure to delight fans, scholars, and even the greediest of dragons--from bestselling authors Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

Step through a shimmering portal... a worn wardrobe door... a schism in sky... into a bold new age of fantasy. When worlds beyond worlds became a genre unto itself. From the swinging sixties to the strange, strange seventies, the over-the-top eighties to the gnarly nineties--and beyond, into the twenty-first century--the VanderMeers have found the stories and the writers from around the world that reinvented and revitalized the fantasy genre after World War II. The stories in this collection represent twenty-two different countries, including Russia, Argentina, Nigeria, Columbia, Pakistan, Turkey, Finland, Sweden, China, the Philippines, and the Czech Republic. Five have never before been translated into English.

From Jorge Luis Borges to Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Moorcock to Angela Carter, Terry Pratchett to Stephen King, the full range and glory of the fantastic are on display in these ninety-one stories in which dragons soar, giants stomp, and human children should still think twice about venturing alone into the dark forest.

A group of mercenaries on an unsanctioned mission survives a plane crash in whiteout conditions in the Tian Shan mountains. The men are accustomed to danger. Now they're growing accustomed to fear.

Team leader Liev and his band of survivors are stranded in the bitter winds with little hope of rescue--or outlasting the wolves that have scented blood. In the distance is the apparent sanctuary of an abandoned stone fortress. That an ancient bulwark even exists on this forsaken summit is beyond comprehension. So is what lies on the other side of its walls.

From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro comes Falling Down, chapter one of The Boy in the Iron Box, a blood-chilling serialized novel about an ancient secret that was never meant to be unleashed, featuring exclusive interior artwork. Each chapter can be read or listened to in one breathless sitting.

On an isolated mountain, a stone labyrinth provides rough shelter for a band of mercenaries. At its core lies a centuries-old mystery. But in chapter two of The Boy in the Iron Box, no secret is safe.

A concealed pit; an iron box, wrapped in chains; a statue of a boy. What unknowns await the anxious, disoriented team in this strange ruin? Night will tell.

From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro comes The Pit and the Box, chapter two of The Boy in the Iron Box, a blood-chilling serialized novel about an ancient secret that was never meant to be unleashed, featuring exclusive interior artwork. Each chapter can be read or listened to in one breathless sitting.

Their radio is sabotaged. The wolves are gathering outside. And for the increasingly desperate mercenaries, the worst is yet to come in chapter three of The Boy in the Iron Box: the box is empty.

In the wake of an inexplicable disappearance, Liev and his men use their tactical skills to last the night--by going hunting. Following a small, bare footprint in the snow leads only to the realization that someone, or something, is hunting them.

From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro comes The Hunted, chapter three of The Boy in the Iron Box, a blood-chilling serialized novel about an ancient secret that was never meant to be unleashed, featuring exclusive interior artwork. Each chapter can be read or listened to in one breathless sitting.

What has been awakened is unbound. The Boy is getting his first taste of freedom. As their comrades fall, fear threatens to consume the survivors in chapter four of The Boy in the Iron Box.

Liev's plan: get his men out of this ancient stone prison, take their chances with the wolves, and descend the summit at first light. But in this snowbound hell, there's soon to be a frightening new twist to survival.

From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro comes Risen, chapter four of The Boy in the Iron Box, a blood-chilling serialized novel about an ancient secret that was never meant to be unleashed, featuring exclusive interior artwork. Each chapter can be read or listened to in one breathless sitting.

The mercenaries set an explosive scheme in motion to blow this bad dream to smithereens. But in chapter five of The Boy in the Iron Box, they soon find that even the best-laid plans can backfire.

With the morale of the team fraying, Liev makes a vow. He's not going to leave anyone behind until the last stand is seen through to its cold and bitter end. On this night, it's Liev who lies in wait to face everything he's feared. It's nothing like he expected.

From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro comes Siege, chapter five of The Boy in the Iron Box, a blood-chilling serialized novel about an ancient secret that was never meant to be unleashed, featuring exclusive interior artwork. Each chapter can be read or listened to in one breathless sitting.

Dawn breaks, but the nightmare only intensifies in the shocking finale of The Boy in the Iron Box. In a final confrontation, the true nature of the Boy is coming to light.

In a stone chamber, the familiar young figure lingers with an unsettling calm. He has a question for Liev: Do you want to stop me? Now, for two merchants of death, each with his own purpose, one last contest lies ahead.

From Academy Award-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro comes Encounter, chapter six of The Boy in the Iron Box, a blood-chilling serialized novel about an ancient secret that was never meant to be unleashed, featuring exclusive interior artwork. Each chapter can be read or listened to in one breathless sitting.

In a career that began in 1959 and continued until his death in 2002, R.A. Lafferty garnered the admiration of authors and editors including Robert A.W. Lowndes, Harlan Ellison, A.A. Attanasio, Gene Wolfe, Michael Swanwick and many, many others. His body of short fiction is comprised of well over 200 stories and, despite his vast popularity, there was never a concerted effort made to produce a comprehensive collection of his short fiction, until now.

Welcome to the first volume in a series that will run to a dozen volumes collecting all of R.A. Lafferty's short fiction. Whether it be well-known stories such as Narrow Valley or more obscure work such as The Man Who Made Models, all will be collected here in the Lafferty Library. Each volume will feature close to 100,000 words of Lafferty's fiction and each volume will feature an afterword by series editor John Pelan and a guest introduction by a notable author in the field of fantastic fiction.

This first volume includes an introduction by Michael Swanwick, an afterword by John Pelan, and photographs of R.A. Lafferty.

Table of Contents:

• Eight Words from the Most Wonderful Writer in the World: Introduction by Michael Swanwick
• The Man Who Made Models (1984)
• The Six Fingers of Time (1960)
• The Hole on the Corner (1967)
• Square and Above Board (1982)
• Jack Bang's Eyes (1983)
• All But the Words (1971)
• The Ungodly Mice of Doctor Drakos (1973)
• Frog on the Mountain (1970)
• Narrow Valley (1966)
• Condillac's Statue, or Wrens in His Head (1970)
• About a Secret Crocodile (1970)
• Days of Grass, Days of Straw (1973)
• The Ninety-Ninth Cubicle (1984)
• Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne (1967)
• Parthen (1973)
• The Skinny People of Leptophlebo Street (1975)
• Rivers of Damascus (1974)
• The Man Who Made Myths: The Voyages of R.A. Lafferty: Afterword by John Pelan

This book is the first volume of a two-book project that will bring back into print all of the science fiction and fantasy of William Tenn. This first volume, Immodest Proposals, contains the majority of William Tenn's short science fiction. It includes such classic stories as "Child's Play," "Time in Advance," "Down Among the Dead Men," and "On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi."

Table of Contents:

• Bernie the Scheherazade - essay by Connie Willis
• Firewater - (1952)
• Lisbon Cubed - (1958)
• The Ghost Standard - (1994)
• The Flat-Eyed Monster - (1955)
• The Deserter - (1953)
• Venus and the Seven Sexes - (1949)
• Party of the Two Parts - (1954)
• The Liberation of Earth - (1953)
• Eastward Ho! - (1958)
• Null-P - (1951)
• The Masculinist Revolt - (1965)
• Brooklyn Project - (1948)
• Child's Play - (1947)
• Wednesday's Child - (1956)
• My Mother Was a Witch - (1966)
• The Lemon-Green Spaghetti-Loud Dynamite-Dribble Day - (1967)
• The Tenants - (1954)
• Generation of Noah - (1951)
• Down Among the Dead Men - (1954)
• Time in Advance - (1956)
• The Sickness - (1955)
• The Servant Problem - (1955)
• A Man of Family - (1956)
• The Jester - (1951)
• Project Hush - (1954)
• Winthrop Was Stubborn - (1957)
• The Dark Star - (1957)
• Consulate - (1948)
• The Last Bounce - (1950)
• Venus Is a Man's World - (1951)
• Alexander the Bait - (1946)
• The Custodian - (1953)
• On Venus, Have We Got a Rabbi - (1974)

Tales of nostalgia and loss in a world overrun by technology

Hank is walking home from the bar when the Model T pulls alongside him. It's been decades since he saw a car this old, and the sound of it takes him right back to his twenties. The door is open, and when he climbs in, the car takes off--without a driver. Before he knows what's happened, Hank is right back at Big Spring Pavilion, where he spent his youth drinking bootleg whiskey and chasing pretty girls. He will find the past is not quite as he remembered it, but still a lovely place to go for a drive.

This collection includes some of the finest short fiction Clifford Simak ever wrote, including "City," the story that became the basis for his beloved novel of the same name. In the history of science fiction, no author has ever better understood that the Great Plains and the cosmos are closer together than we think.

Each story includes an introduction by David W. Wixon, literary executor of the Clifford D. Simak estate and editor of this ebook.

Contents:

• Leg. Forst. (1958)
• Physician to the Universe (1963)
• No More Hides and Tallow (1946)
• Condition of Employment (1960)
• City (1944)
• Mirage (1950) (aka Seven Came Back)
• The Autumn Land (1971)
• Founding Father (1957)
• Byte Your Tongue! - (1980)
• The Street that Wasn't There (1941) - with Carl Jacobi (aka The Lost Street)
• The Ghost of a Model T (1975)

A New Age Begins

The First Book of the Corean Chronicles

Millennia ago, a magical disaster caused the fall of a great civilization that spanned a continent, and ended a golden age. Corus today is a world of contending countries, of struggling humans, strange animals and elusive supernatural creatures. Though much has been forgotten, it is still a place of magical powers, and of a few people who are Talented enough to use them.

Even as a child, Alucius showed very strong Talent. He was warned never to reveal it, lest others seek to exploit it. But as he grows to young manhood, Alucius must serve in the Militia like his father before him. When his country is invaded by the slave armies of the Matrial, immortal ruler of a nearby land, Alucius is captured and magically enslaved.

A time of changes has come upon all of the world of Corus. If the evil surrounding the Matrial is not ended, those changes will not be happy ones. Alucius and his Talent have a central role to play.

Darknesses, the sequel to Legacies, is the second volume of L. E Modesitt, Jr. 's new fantasy sequence, the Corean Chronicles.

Corus is a world of humans, but also of strange animals and supernatural creatures. It is a world of magical powers and of a few people who are Talented enough to use them. Alucius, the hero of the story, is one such person. In Legacies we saw how he grew from a Talented child on a lonely Nightsheep ranch in the Iron Valleys to a proficient soldier who used his wits and his Talent to become the first to escape military enslavement in the neighboring country of Madrien. Now captain of the Twenty-first Company, the youngest officer of his rank in the Militia, he must face new challenges, both military and magical.

Corus has been fragmented since the collapse of its ancient magic-powered civilization. A would-be conqueror has somehow revived sorcerous creatures of legend to assist in his crusade to reunite the continent under his rule. The Iron Valleys are forced into an alliance with the Lord-Protector of Lanachrona and the Twenty-first is dispatched to stand against the invaders. Neither the officers above him nor the men under him know it, but Alucius's Talent is their only hope for victory, or even survival.

In Darknesses, Alucius learns more about his magical Talent, meets many more supernatural creatures, and discovers the sinister forces vying for power behind the scenes across Corus. This volume resolves many questions raised in the first book, but it is not the end of Corean Chronicles.

The popular creator of Recluce and of the Spellsong world of Liedwahr has built a whole new fantasy world on Corus. With each new volume of the Corean Chronicles we learn more about the magical underpinnings of this fascinating realm as we follow the continuing adventures of his reluctant hero, Alucius. In Legacies he became the first Iron Valley militiaman to escape sorcerous enslavement in Madrien. In Darknesses, he found a way to defeat a would-be conqueror who revived the fearsome creatures and potent weaponry of the legendary past. Now he returns to face the greatest challenges yet to both his courage and his magical Talent.

Alucius is happy back on his nightsheep stead with his beloved wife Wendra, who is expecting their first child. But the country is beset by enemies on all sides. Although the Lord Protector of Lanachrona keeps his promise not to order Alucius back to active duty, Alucius finds his request for help no easier to ignore.

Newly promoted to higher rank, and given command of a combined force of the Northern and Southern Guards, Alucius must first quell a strange religiously-inspired rebellion and then find a way to destroy the powerful weapons of ancient design again being used by the forces of Madrien. Unlike the Lord Protector, Alucius can see that a third, covert, threat must be behind the other two. He will have to confront an alien evil that seeks to enslave the whole world of Corus in the guise of bringing back a lost golden age. Only the timely assistance of the mysterious ancient Soarers and the addition of Wendra's Talent to his own give him any hope of success. Scepters is a stirring climax to the first Corean trilogy.

Alector's Choice takes place several thousand years before the events chronicled in the Legacies Trilogy, at the time when Corus is ruled by the Talent-magic of the Duarchy. The Myrmidons of Justice command the skies riding their fearsome pteridons.

As the Alector Colonel of Myrmidons, Dainyl is the fourth highest ranking military officer of the Duarchy. Alectors are a race apart from the normal inhabitants of Corus, from another world. But there is a rebellion brewing against them.

Captain Mykel is a young officer potentially Talented and unaware that, should he ever discover that Talent, his life is forfeit. For Mykel is not an Alector, and only Alectors are allowed to use Talent.

The rebellion spirals out of control, spurred by treachery, corruption, and greed -- and aided by the re-appearance of the ancient soarers, a fragile humanoid race of flying beings thought to have become extinct. A terrible war is brewing, and one, or both of these men are the only ones who might stand against it.

L. E. Modesitt, Jr. returns to the world of Corus to continue the epic trilogy begun in Alector's Choice. It is the story of the fall of a great civilization and the tale of the Alector, Colonel Dainyl, and Captain Mykel, the Corean human with special abilities.

The world Corus has been redesigned to become the new home of a superior race from a distant world whose very life depends on drawing sustenance from the biological life force of a planet. Meanwhile, their plans are supervised by a staff of Alectors, who in effect rule the world. The Alectors alone have access to the huge flying Pteridons they have bred, and the superior weapons that underpin their psychic talents.

The time is now fast approaching for the transfer of the whole population from the old world nearly bled dry of life force to Corus. But neither the Alectors (who will be reduced in status when the real powers arrive) nor the local humans (who seem destined to become no more than cattle, though they know nothing of this) are ready. And the mysterious Ancient Ones, the true natives of Corus and assumed to have died out in eons past, still survive, and they have their own powers. The situation builds toward an explosive climax.

L. E. Modesitt, Jr. returns to the world of Corus and concludes the trilogy of the intertwined stories of Dainyl, the Alector, and Mykel, the native soldier, which began in Alector's Choice and Cadmian's Choice.

The civilization of the Alectors, which has farmed and developed all life on Corus to produce sustaining life force for their vampiric civilization, must move wholesale from one planet to another every few thousand years as it exhausts the life force of another world. This time, two worlds have been prepared, and the time is at hand for the great move. And Corus is the looking like the loser, to be abandoned by the civilizing forces of the government of Alectors, but used as a dumping ground for malcontents and others who don't make the cut to move on to a richer new world. This neither bodes well for the future of human civilization, nor for the honest Alector's such as Dainyl, trying to hold everything together, as all systems are failing. But the mysterious Ancients, the Soarers, are a force to be reckoned with, and they may hold a powerful and destructive trump card.

The Lord-Protector's Daughter is a standalone fantasy novel that takes place in Tempre, the capital city of Lanachrona on Corus, the world of Modesitt's Corean Chronicles.

Mykella, the eldest daughter of the Lord-Protector of Lanachrona, discovers that someone is diverting significant sums of money from her father's treasury. One of the ancient soarers appears to Mykella, telling her that she must go to the antique stone Table in the cellars of the Palace and find her Talent in order to save her land and her world.

From there, matters become more perilous. There are attempts to remove Mykella and her sisters from Tempre by marrying them off to lords in neighboring lands, and fatal and near fatal accidents occur to members of her family and trusted retainers. While Mykella develops a solid idea of who stands behind it all, every attempted solution is used to discredit her. How can she save their father and land?

A new novel of Mykella, the young woman introduced in The Lord-Protector's Daughter.

Though a bloody coup has made Mykella ruler of her land, it has left her and her two sisters bereft of family and uncertain of their friends. Worse, an examination of the nation's accounts reveals that their country is almost destitute. Plus, there are rumblings of war along the borders. With no money and few allies, Mykella is faced with the difficult prospect of rebuilding her nation while trying to hold off a potentially devastating invasion.

Fortunately for Mykella, an old magic has awakened in her; a power that gives her the ability to read the emotions of others and to spy on the movements of her enemies. But the resurgence of this power might herald the return of an ancient enemy, one that Mykella isn't sure how to face. L.E. Modesitt, Jr. returns to the world of "The Corean Chronicles" with a novel filled with politics, adventure, magic, and romance.

Industrialization. Social unrest. Underground movements. Government corruption and surveillance.

Something is about to give.

Steffan Dekkard is an isolate, one of the small percentage of people who are immune to the projections of empaths. As an isolate, he has been trained as a security specialist and he and his security partner Avraal Ysella, a highly trained empath are employed by Axel Obreduur, a senior Craft Minister and the de facto political strategist of his party.

When a respected Landor Councilor dies of "heart failure" at a social event, because of his political friendship with Obreduur, Dekkard and Ysella find that not only is their employer a target, but so are they, in a covert and deadly struggle for control of the government and economy.

Steffan is about to understand that everything he believed is an illusion.

Continued poor harvests and steam-powered industrialization displace and impoverish thousands. Protests grow and gather followers.

Against this rising tide of social unrest, Steffan Dekkard, newly appointed to the Council of Sixty-Six, is the first Councilor who is an Isolate, a man invulnerable to the emotional manipulations and emotional surveillance of empaths.

This makes him dangerous.

As unknown entities seek to assassinate him, Dekkard struggles to master political intrigue and infighting, while introducing radical reforms that threaten entrenched political and corporate interests

Recently elected to the Council of Sixty-Six, Steffan Dekkard is the first Councilor who is an Isolate, a man invulnerable to the emotional manipulations and emotional surveillance of empaths?but not the recent bombing of the Council Office Building by insurrectionists.

His patron, the Premier of the Council, has been assassinated, leaving Dekkard with little first-hand political experience and few political allies.

Not only must Dekkard handle political infighting, and continued assassination attempts, but it appears that someone high up in the government and corporations has supplied arms and explosives to insurrectionists.

Insurrectionists who have succeeded in taking over a naval cruiser that no one can seem to find.

Imager is the beginning of a whole new fantasy in a whole new magical world from the bestselling creator of Recluce.

Although Rhennthyl is the son of a leading wool merchant in L'Excelsis, the capital of Solidar, the most powerful nation on Terahnar, he has spent years becoming a journeyman artist and is skilled and diligent enough to be considered for the status of master artisan-in another two years. Then, in a single moment, his entire life is transformed when his master patron is killed in a flash fire, and Rhenn discovers he is an imager-one of the few in the entire world of Terahnar who can visualize things and make them real.

He must leave his family and join the Collegium of Imagisle. Imagers live separately from the rest of society because of their abilities (they can do accidental magic even while asleep), and because they are both feared and vulnerable. In this new life, Rhenn discovers that all too many of the "truths" he knew were nothing of the sort. Every day brings a new threat to his life. He makes a powerful enemy while righting a wrong, and begins to learn to do magic in secret.

Imager is the innovative and enchanting opening of an involving new fantasy story.

Still recovering from injuries received in foiling the murderous plot of a Ferran envoy, Rhenn begins new duties as imager liaison to the Civic Patrol of L'Excelsis. While dealing with his new duties, which include patrolling some of the most dangerous streets in the city, Rhenn receives formal notice that a vengeful High Holder, the father of a man Rhenn partly blinded in self-defense, has declared his intention to destroy Rhenn and his family.

Rhenn's only allies against this vendetta are the family of the woman he loves, successful merchants with underworld connections. Rhenn must stand against gang lords, naval marines, Tiempran terrorist priests, the most powerful High Holder in all of Solidar, and ultimately his own Collegium-and prevail without further endangering those he loves.

In Imager, the first book of the Imager Portfolio, we met Rhennthyl, an apprentice portrait artist whose life was changed by a disastrous fire. But the blaze that took his master's life and destroyed his livelihood revealed a secret power previously dormant in Rhenn; the power of imaging, the ability to shape matter using thought. With some trouble, he adapts to the controlled life of an imager.

By Imager's Challenge, Rhenn has become a liaison to the local law forces. He finds himself in direct conflict with both authorities and national politics as he tries to uphold the law and do his best by the people of his home city.

Now, in Imager's Intrigue, Rhenn has come into his own. He has a wife and a young child, and a solid career as an imager. But he has made more than one enemy during his journey from apprentice painter to master imager, and even his great powers won't allow him to escape his past.

Hundreds of years before the time of Imager, the continent of Lydar is fragmented.  Years of war have consolidated five nations into three--Bovaria, Telaryn, and Antiago. Quaeryt is a scholar and a friend of Bhayar, the young ruler of Telaryn. Worried about his future and the escalating intrigues in Solis, the capital city, Quaeryt persuades Bhayar to send him to Tilbor, conquered ten years earlier by Bhayar’s father, in order to see if the number and extent of occupying troops can be reduced so that they can be re-deployed to the border with warlike Bovaria.

Quaeryt has managed to conceal the fact that he is an imager, since the life expectancies of imagers in Lydar is short. Just before Quaeryt departs, Bhayar’s youngest sister passes a letter to the scholar-imager, a letter that could well embroil Quaeryt in the welter of court politics he had hoped to leave behind. On top of that, on his voyage and journey to Tilbor he must face pirates, storms, poisonings, attempted murder, as well as discovering the fact that he is not quite who he thought he was. To make it all worse, the order of scholars to which he belongs is jeopardized in more ways than one.

The thrilling follow-up to Scholar--in which, after discovering a coup attempt and preventing a bloody civil war, Quaeryt was appointed princeps of Tilbor--begins a new episode in the young Imager's life. Now second only to the governor, and still hiding his powers as an Imager, Quaeryt is enjoying his new position, as well as his marriage to Lord Bhayar's youngest sister, Vaelora, when a volcanic eruption devastates the old capital of Telaryn.

He and his wife are dispatched to Extela, Telaryn's capitol city, to replace the governor killed in the eruption. Quaeryt and Vaelora must restore order to a city filled with chaos and corruption, and do so quickly. The regiment under his command must soon depart to bolster Telaryn's border defenses against a neighboring ruler who sees the volcanic devastation as an opportunity for invasion and conquest.

The sequel to the New York Times bestselling Princeps, L.E. Modesitt's Imager's Battalion follows magical hero Quaeryt as he leads history's first Imager fighting force into war. Given the rank of subcommander by his wife's brother, Lord Bhayar, the ruler of Telaryn, Quaeryt joins an invading army into the hostile land of Bovaria, in retaliation for Bovaria's attempted annexation of Telaryn. But Quaeryt has his own agenda in doing Bhayar's bidding: to legitimize Imagers in the hearts and minds of all men, by demonstrating their value as heroes as he leads his battalion into one costly battle after another.

Making matters worse, court intrigues pursue Quaeryt even to the front lines of the conflict, as the Imager's enemies continue to plot against him.

In L.E. Modesitt, Jr.'s Antiagon Fire, the hard-won battles fought in Imager's Battalion have earned Quaeryt a promotion to commander, as well as an assignment to convince the Pharsi High Council in the nation of Khel to submit to Lord Bhayar's rule, which is key to Bhayar's ambition to unite all of Solidar. Joined by his pregnant wife Vaelora, who is also Bhayar's sister, Quaeryt leads an army and a handful of imagers deeper into the hostile lands once held by the tyrannical Rex Kharst, facing stiff-necked High Holders, attacks by land and sea-including airborne fire launched by hostile imagers from the land of Antiago-and a mysterious order of powerful women who seem to recognize the great destiny that awaits Quareyt and Vaelora, as well as the cost of achieving it.

The saga of the Imager Quaeryt, Commander in the forces of Lord Bhayar, reaches a new climax as the great struggle to unify the continent of Lydar enters its final phase in L.E. Modesitt's Rex Regis, Book 8 in The Imager Portfolio.

Only the land of Khel remains uncommitted to Bhayar's rule. Their decision could mean a lasting peace, or more conflict across an already war-ravaged realm.

While the conqueror of Bovaria awaits emissaries to arrive with news of Khel's decision, other weighty matters occupy Bhayar, his sister Velora, and her husband Quaeryt--not the least of which is the fulfillment of Quaeryt's dream to create the world's first Imager academy, where the magical abilities of these powerful casters may be honed, managed, and put to the service of the common good.

But before that dream may be realized, or Khel's fateful choice made known, the spectre of high treason threatens to unravel all that Quaeryt has achieved, catapulting him toward a fateful confrontation with Bhayar's most powerful military leaders.

Four centuries after its founding, Solidar's Collegium of Imagers is in decline, the exploits of its founder, the legendary Quaeryt, largely forgotten. The Collegium is so lacking in leadership that the dying Maitre must summon Alastar, an obscure but talented senior imager from Westisle far to the south who has little knowledge of politics in the capital, as his successor. When Alastar arrives in L'Excelsis and becomes the new Maitre, he finds disarray and lack of discipline within the Collegium, and the ruler of Solidar so hated by the High Holders that they openly refer to him as being mad.

To make matters worse, neither Rex Ryen, ridiculed as Rex Dafou, nor the High Holders have any respect for the Collegium, and Alastar finds himself in the middle of a power struggle, with Ryen demanding that the Collegium remove the strongest High Holders and the military leadership in turn plotting to topple Ryen and destroy the Collegium. At the same time, Ryen is demanding the High Holders pay a massive increase in taxes while he initiates a grandiose building project. And all that, Alastar discovers, is only a fraction of the problems he and the Collegium face.

Treachery's Tools is L. E. Modesitt's tenth novel in the New York Times bestselling Imager Portfolio fantasy series and begins thirteen years after the events of Madness in Solidar, Alastar has settled into his role as the Maitre of the Collegium. Now married with a daughter, he would like nothing better than to focus his efforts on improving Imager Isle and making it more self-sufficient.

However, the rise in fortune of the merchant classes in Solidar over the years does not sit well with the High Holders, who see the erosion of their long-enjoyed privileges. Bad harvests and worse weather spark acts of violence and murder. In the midst of the crisis, some High Holders call for repeals of the Codis Legis, taking authority away from the Rex.

Once again, Alastar must maintain a careful political balance, but he cannot avoid the involvement of the Collegium when someone begins killing students. Trying to protect his imagers and hold Solidar together for the good of all, Alastar stumbles on to a plot by the High Holders involving illegal weapons, insurrection, and conspiracy.

Assassin's Price is the eleventh book in the bestselling, epic fantasy series the Imager Portfolio by L. E. Modesitt, Jr. and the third book in a story arc which began with Madness in Solidar and Treachery's Tools.

Six years have passed since the failed uprising of the High Holders, and the man behind the conspiracy is where the rex and Maitre Alastar can keep an eye on him.

Charyn has come of age and desperately wants to learn more so he can become an effective rex after his father--but he's kept at a distance by the rex. So Charyn sets out to educate himself--circumspectly.

When Jarolian privateers disrupt Solidar's shipping, someone attempts to kill Charyn's younger brother as an act of protest. Threatening notes following in the wake of acts of violence against the rex and his family, demanding action--build more ships or expect someone to die.

Solidar is in chaos.

Charyn, the young and untested ruler of Solidar, has survived assassination, and he struggles to gain control of a realm in the grip of social upheaval, war, and rioting. Solidar cannot be allowed to slide into social and political turmoil that will leave the High Holders with their ancient power and privilege, and the common people with nothing.

But the stakes are even higher than he realizes.

Contents:

• 1 - Slow Music - (1980) - novella by James Tiptree, Jr.
• 47 - Le Croix (The Cross) - (1980) - novelette by Barry N. Malzberg
• 90 - Scorched Supper on New Niger - (1980) - novelette by Suzy McKee Charnas
• 126 - The Saturn Game - [Technic History] - (1981) - novella by Poul Anderson
• 179 - Hardfought - (1983) - novella by Greg Bear
• 244 - Swarmer, Skimmer - (1981) - novella by Gregory Benford
• 316 - Sailing to Byzantium - (1985) - novella by Robert Silverberg
• 377 - Trinity - (1984) - novella by Nancy Kress
• 426 - The Blind Geometer - (1986) - novella by Kim Stanley Robinson
• 476 - Surfacing - (1988) - novella by Walter Jon Williams

One of five stories inspired by the same painting by John Jude Palencar. Anthologized in The Palencar Project and later collected in The One-Eyed Man: A Fugue, With Winds and Accompaniment.

Read this story online for free at Tor.com.

For over a thousand years, Order and Chaos have molded the island of Recluce. The Saga of Recluce chronicles the history of this world through eighteen books, L. E. Modesitt, Jr.'s most expansive and bestselling fantasy series.

Recluce Tales: Stories from the World of Recluce collects seventeen new short stories and four popular reprints spanning the thousand-year history of Recluce. First-time readers will gain a glimpse of the fascinating world and its complex magic system, while longtime readers of the series will be treated to glimpses into the history of the world.

Modesitt's essay "Behind the 'Magic' of Recluce" gives insight into his thoughts on developing the magical system that rules the Island of Recluce and its surrounding lands, while "The Vice Marshal's Trial" takes the reader back to the first colonists on Recluce. Old favorites "Black Ordermage" and "The Stranger" stand side-by-side with thrilling new stories.

Short story set in Modesitt's Recluce setting. It first appeared in Tor.com, October 27th 2016. The story can also be found in the collection Recluce Tales (2017).

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

With The Magic of Recluce, L.E. Modesitt made his impressive hardcover debut, breaking out in wide scope and grand scale with a novel in the great tradition of the war between good and evil in a wonderful fantasy world. Modesitt had been producing fast-paced, slickly-written novels of SF adventure, often compared to the work of Keith Laumer and Gordon R. Dickson. Then, in his biggest and best book yet, he broadened his canvas and turned to fantasy and magic, stepping immediately into the front rank of contemporary fantasy writers.

The Magic of Recluce is a carefully-plotted fantasy novel of character about the growth and education of a young magician. In it, Modesitt confronts real moral issues with gripping force, builds atmosphere slowly and convincingly and gives his central character, Lerris, real intellectual challenges. This is the kind of highly-rationalized fantasy that Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson write when they write fantasy, colorful and detailed.

He is given the standard two options: permanent exile from Recluce or the dangergeld, a complex, rule-laden wanderjahr in the lands beyond Recluce with the aim of learning how the world works and what his place in it might be. Many do not survive. He chooses dangergeld.

Though magic is rarely discussed openly in Recluce, it becomes clear, when Lerris is sent into intensive training for his quest, that he has a natural talent for it during his weapons lessons. And he will need magic in the lands beyond, where the power of the Chaos Wizards reigns unchecked. He must learn to use his powers in an orderly way or fall prey to Chaos.

Lerris may resent order, but he has no difficulty choosing good over evil. As he begins his lonely journey, he falls into the company of a gray magician, once of Recluce, who tutors him in the use of magic and shows him some of the devastation caused by the Chaos Wizards in the great wars between Chaos and Order of past times.

Lerris pursues a quest for knowledge and power that leads him across strange lands, through the ghostly ruins of the old capitol of Chaos, down the white roads of the Chaos Wizards to a final battle with the archenemy of Order, discovering in the end true control of magic, true love, and the beginning of true wisdom. An epic adventure, The Magic of Recluce, is a triumph of fantasy.

The Magic of Recluce is the first book of the saga of Recluce.

Creslin, son of the Marshall of Westwind, flees an arranged marriage; is enslaved by the White Wizards, escapes, and enters a marriage of convenience to Maegara, the white witch. Their attempt at building a new life and society brings untold dangers, and threatens to shift the balance of the world, leading to consequences both expected and unforeseen.

Dorrin, a young scion of the Order magicians, is interested in forbidden knowledge, in the working of machines. Promising, intelligent, but determined to follow his passion for scientific knowledge, Dorrin can invent machines. He is the Leonardo da Vinci of his age, but his insights violate the rules of the Order magic of Recluce. Now he must go into exile in the lands of Chaos to pursue his dangerous inventions.

Yet Dorrin remains loyal to the idea of Order, and is tortured by the knowledge that to preserve it he must constantly create new devices for war. For the forces of the Chaos wizards are moving across the land, devouring whole countries and creating an empire—and their ultimate goal is the destruction of Recluce.

The saga of Recluce, launched in The Magic of Recluce and continuing in The Towers of the Sunset and The Magic Engineer reaches a new climax in The Order War. "Modesitt has created an exceptionally vivid world," says L. Sprague de Camp, "so concretely visualized as to give the impression that Modesitt himself must have dwelt there." Publishers Weekly says, "Modesitt creates a complex world bgased on a plausible system of magic and peopled with engaging and realistic characters."

Set after the events of The Magic Engineer (and prior to The Magic of Recluce) The Order War illuminates great figures and major events in the historic war between order and chaos that is the central focus of the saga of Recluce.

The deadly White Wizards of Fairhaven, wielding the forces of chaos, have completed their great highway through the Westhorns and now threatened the ancient matriarchy of Sarronnyn, the last bastion of order in Candar. The ruler of Sarronnyn appeals to the Black order wizards of Recluce for help.

Justen - a young Black Engineer in the city of Nylan - joins the relief force. Despite their success in destroying more than half the White armies, Sarronnyn falls to the White Wizards, and Justen is chased into the most inhospitable desert in Candar. These trials are but the beginning, for the White Wizards have all Candar in their grasp. Justen must fight both Recluce and Fairhaven, as well as the highest powers of order and the forbidden technology to harness chaos itself in his efforts to halt the conquest of the chaos wizards.

The Order War is the fourth book of the saga of Recluce.

Candar is being invaded and Lerris must become the greatest wizard of all time-or see his whole world destroyed.

L. E. Modesitt's bestselling fantasy novels set in the magical world of Recluce have established a standard of entertainment in contemporary fantasy. "In Modesitt's universe, where good and evil, chaos and order, are in perpetual conflict, a young wizard finds that his destiny is to strike a balance, but at considerable personal cost. Modesitt creates a deeper and more intricate world with each volume," says Publishers Weekly. "Modesitt's elaborate and intelligent working out of a systemof magic and a system of technology parallel to it is becoming more the lifeblood of the Recluce books with every new volume. . . . His saga continues to gain in popularity," says Booklist. Each Recluce novel tells an independent story that nevertheless reverberates though all the other Recluce novels to deepen and enrich the reading experience.

Now in Fall of Angels, Modesitt moves deep into Recluce's past to chronicle the founding of the Empire of the Legend, the almost mythological domain ruled by woman warriors on the highland plateau of the continent of Candar. He tells the story from the point of view of Nylan, the engineer and builder whose job it is to raise a great tower on the plateau known as the Roof of the World. Here the exiled women warriors will live and survive to fulfill their destiny. Here a revolutionary new society will be born . . . if Nylan can get the tower built and defenses in place before the rulers of the lowland nations come with their armies to obliterate them all. And if Nylan can learn to control the magical powers that are growing within him.

Thus Modesitt relates the story of how magic comes into the world of Recluce, in a fantasy novel destined to please the growing Recluce audience and win new readers to the series.

Fall of Angels is the sixth book of the saga of Recluce.

The saga of Recluce by L.E. Modesitt, Jr., has become one of the standard works of fantasy in the 1990s. VOYA says, "Modesitt's logical structure of the interrelationship of order and chaos, magic and technology, is one of the most through in modern fantasy. The personal growth of his characters and the depiction of their world, it well-written and credible - and involves the reader... The serious fantasy reader will revel in Modesitt's work." Launched with The Magic of Recluce, the novels of Recluce have gone on to sell over a million copies in paperback.

The most recent of the Recluce novels, Fall of Angels, introduced the engineer/smith Nylan, the only man among the leadership of the company of "angels" marooned on a high plateau in the west of Candar, and perhaps the one person most responsible for their survival. But the angels are a matriarchal band, and so Nylan must leave his companions and seek a life elsewhere. He travels down from the plateau into the world of warring kingdoms and strange magics with his companion, Ayrlyn, the healer, and his infant son. They are in search of a place to lead a peaceful life, but they look different from the locals, and their talents are most valued in battle - and so the war between chaos and order begins again.

The Chaos Balance is the seventh book of the saga of Recluce.

L.E. Modesitt's bestselling fantasy novels set in the world of Recluce are among the most popular in contemporary fantasy. Rich in detail, Modesitt's Recluce books are a feast of wonderous marvels. Booklist notes, "Modesitt's elaborate and intelligent working out of a system of magic and a system of technology parallel to it is becoming more the lifeblood of the Recluce books with every new volume. . . his saga continues to gain in popularity."

The White Order is the story of Cerryl, a boy orphaned when the powerful white mages killed his father to protect their control of the world's magic. Cerryl, raised by his aunt and uncle, is a curious boy, attracted to mirrors and books, though he is unable to read. When he is old enough, Cerryl is apprenticed to the local miller. The miller's daughter teaches Cerryl to read his father's books, and it seems that the talent for magic has been passed from father to son. When Cerryl witnesses a white mage destroy a renegade magician, the miller realizes the boy will not be safe there, so Cerryl must be sent to the city of Fairhaven to find his destiny.

Thus Modesitt takes one of the most enduring and mythic themes in fantasy and makes it his own. The White Order is a powerful new addition to the Recluce saga, guaranteed to add many new readers to Modesitt's devoted following.

The White Order is the eighth book in the saga of Recluce.

The biggest fantasy from L. E. Modesitt, Jr. to date, Colors of Chaos is the story of the White Chaos wizard Cerryl: his education in life and love, and his rise to power in the magicians guild of Fairhaven. This is the direct sequel to The White Order, which told of Cerryl's boyhood and youth, and takes place at the same time as the events in Modesitt's earlier novel, The Magic Engineer. Yet it stands alone, the longest Recluce novel, a portrayal of the growth and change of character and of the strengths and weaknesses of an age-old civilization held together by the power of magic.

Ceryl, now a full mage in The White Order, must prove himself indispensible to Jeslek, the High Wizard. Whether through assassination, effective gorvernance of occupied territory or the fearless and clever direction of troops in battle, Ceryl faces many harrowing obstacles, not the least of which is Anya, the plotting seductress who's the real power behind the scenes of the white wizards. With his wits, his integrity, and the support of his love, the Black healer Leyladin, he must survive long enough to claim his rightful spot within the ruling heirarchy of the White Order.

This is a must-read for followers of the Saga of Recluce, offering a unique, sympathetic point of view of the White Chaos wizards-the forces that throughout history have opposed the magicians of Recluce.

Colors of Chaos is the ninth book in the saga of Recluce.

L. E. Modesitt, Jr., is one of the standard setters in fantasy today, and his most famous series is the Saga of Recluce. Each novel fills in pieces of the history of this land where Chaos and Order strive to maintain a magical balance.

Magi'i of Cyador marks the beginning of a new tale from deep within the rich depths of the history of Recluce. This is the story of Lorn, a talented boy born into a family of Magi'i. A diligent student of remarkable talent, Lorn lacks only the single most coveted attribute required of a Magus of Cyador: unquestionable loyalty. Lorn is too independent for his own good.

So Lorn is forced to become a lancer officer, and he's sent to the frontier to fight off the all-too-frequent barbarian raids--a career that comes with a 50% mortality rate. His enemies don't expect him to survive . . .

Lorn is a fresh, new character who will enrich one of today's most important fantasy series: the saga of Recluce.

Magi'i of Cyador is the tenth book in the saga of Recluce.

L. E. Modesitt, Jr. is one of the standard setters in fantasy today and his most famous series is the Saga of Recluce. Each novel fills in pieces of the history of this land where Chaos and Order strive to maintain a magical balance.

Scion of Cyador continues the story begun in Magi'i of Cyador. Exploring the rich depths of the history of Recluce, Magi'i of Cyador introduced Lorn, a talented boy born into a family of Magi'i. A diligent student mage who lacked blind devotion, Lorn was made a lancer officer and shipped off to the frontier--a career that comes with a 50% mortality rate.

Having survived his extended stint fighting both barbarian raiders and the giant beasts of the Accursed Forest, Lorn has proven himself to be a fine officer . . . perhaps too fine an officer. As his prowess has grown, so has his number of enemies and rivals. Too much success has made him a marked man. When he returns to his home, both he and his young family become targets while all of Cyad is in upheaval over deadly political infighting. But Lorn is now hardened, a deadly fighter himself, especially when the Empire is at stake.

Scion of Cyador is the completion of another grand story in the Recluce saga.

Scion of Cyador is the eleventh book in the saga of Recluce.

Kharl is the best cooper in Brysta, one of the major cities in Nordla, and his life has been as ordered and dependable as his barrels. His trouble begins when he saves a neighbor's daughter from the violent advances of two upper-class men. Then he rescues an actual rape victim he finds unconscious in an alley, a blackstaffer -- a young expatriate mage -- from Recluce, and that makes his wife very uneasy. The culprit in both cases turns out to have been Egen, the cruel and corrupt son of the local ruler. When the blackstaffer is mysteriously murdered in Kharl's cooperage, Kharl is jailed, tried, and flogged, and in a shocking turnaround released--and his consort executed for the murder, which she did not commit. Egen again. Kharl ends up on the run, with just a handful of coins and a few clothes, but he also takes the slain woman's black staff and her book, The Basis of Order, which explains the principles of its power. The diligent cooper is about to learn a new, very different skill.

Wellspring of Chaos is the twelfth book in the Recluce Saga and takes place roughly 60 years after the close of The Order War (Recluce #4). It is Modesitt at the top of his form, returning to his most famous fantasy world, yet does not require previous knowledge of Recluce to be enjoyed. It's publication is sure to be one of the fantasy milestones of the year.

Ordermaster is the 13th book in the Saga of Recluce and the direct sequel to Wellspring of Chaos. The cooper Kharl has no sooner taken possession of the estate bestowed upon him by Lord Ghrant of Austra for his aid in quelling the revolt of Ghrant's dispossessed brother, when he is summoned back to the capital. Hagen, his friend the lord-chancellor, needs help in dealing with rebellious nobles. After a bloody campaign, in which Kharl discovers and is forced to use even more deadly order magery, civil order is restored and Ghrant's throne firmly secured. But Kharl is now a famous and feared public figure, the Lord's Mage, and his notoriety makes him uncomfortable.

To his surprise, Kharl is soon called upon again by Lords Ghrant and Hagen, this time to return to his homeland of Nordla as envoy, because Nordla has become the next target of Hamorian expansion. Back in his hometown of Brysta, he discovers that his old enemy Egen is engaged in a plot with the Hamorians to take the throne from his father and open Nordla to the enemy. Kharl has to find a solution, for the sake of both the land of his birth and his adopted new country.

L. E. Modesitt, Jr. begins a new Recluce story in The Natural Ordermage, the first of two volumes set mostly on the continent of Hamor, far across the sea from Recluce where the story begins, a new setting for this series that fans will be eager to explore.

Rahl, a young apprentice scrivener on the island of Recluce, likes life to work out in his favor. To make sure things go his way, he uses a small amount of order magic in opportunistic moments, but his abilities are starting to get the attention of the Council magisters. He's not like other ordermages, the same rules don't seem to apply to his magic. And he has a bad attitude too. It gets him sent to the mages' training school for testing, and then banishment to Hamor, where his learning continues under dangerous circumstances.

During Rahl's exile in Hamor, working in the Ordermage Council's import and export business, his powers increase--and so does the amount of trouble he can get into. Welcome the the fantasy world of L. E. Modesitt, where the adventure is just beginning.

L. E. Modesitt, Jr. begins a new Recluce story in The Natural Ordermage, the first of two volumes set mostly on the continent of Hamor, far across the sea from Recluce where the story begins, a new setting for this series that fans will be eager to explore.

Rahl, a young apprentice scrivener on the island of Recluce, likes life to work out in his favor. To make sure things go his way, he uses a small amount of order magic in opportunistic moments, but his abilities are starting to get the attention of the Council magisters. He's not like other ordermages, the same rules don't seem to apply to his magic. And he has a bad attitude too. It gets him sent to the mages' training school for testing, and then banishment to Hamor, where his learning continues under dangerous circumstances.

During Rahl's exile in Hamor, working in the Ordermage Council's import and export business, his powers increase--and so does the amount of trouble he can get into. Welcome the the fantasy world of L. E. Modesitt, where the adventure is just beginning.

The keep of Westwind, in the cold mountainous heights called the Roof of the World, is facing attack by the adjoining land of Gallos. Arthanos, son and heir to the ailing Prefect of Gallos, wishes to destroy Westwind because the idea of a land where women rule is total anathema to him. Saryn, Arms-Commander of Westwind, is dispatched to a neighbouring land, Lornth, to seek support against the Gallosians.

In the background, the trading council of Suthya is secretly and informally allied with Gallos against Westwind and begins to bribe lord-holders in Lornth to foment rebellion and civil war. They hope to create such turmoil in Lornth that the weakened land will fall to Suthya. But Zeldyan, regent of Lornth, has problems in her family. To secure Zeldyan's aid, Saryn must pledge her personal support - and any Westwind guard forces she can raise - to the defense of Zeldyan and her son. The fate of four lands, including Westwind, rests on Saryn's actions.

Decades after the fall of Cyador, its survivors have reestablished themselves in Cigoerne, a fertile country coveted by hostile neighbors in less hospitable lands. Young Lerial, the second son of Duke Kiedron, lives in the shadow of his older brother Lephi, the heir to their father's realm. Lerial's future seems preordained: He will one day command his brother's forces in defense of Cigoerne, serving at his older sibling's pleasure, and no more.

But when Lerial is sent abroad to be fostered by Major Altyrn to learn the skills and wisdom he will need to fulfill his future duties, he begins a journey into a much larger world that brings out his true potential. Lerial has talents that few, as yet, suspect: He is one of those rare beings who can harness both Order and Chaos, the competing natural forces that shape the world and define the magic that exists within it. And as war finally engulfs the fringes of Cigoerne, Lerial's growing mastery of Order and Chaos is tested to its limits, and his own.

From New York Times bestselling author L.E. Modesitt comes Heritage of Cyador, the new novel in the Saga of Recluce.

Scarcely a year after the events of Cyador's Heirs, Lerial uses his mastery of Order and Chaos, the competing natural forces that shape his world and define the magic that exists within it, to utterly destroy an Afritan military force crossing into Cigoerne.

Five years later, Lerial, now an overcaptain and a field commander of Cigoerne's Mirror Lancers, must lead three companies of troops into Afrit on a mission of mutual interest: neighboring Heldya is threatening to invade Afrit, and if that nation falls, Cigoerne is certain to be next.

The mission is both delicate and dangerous; Lerial's value in the effort to repelling Heldya is undeniable, but his troubled history against Afrit may reopen old wounds that will never truly heal.

The Saga of Recluce chronicles the history of this world with world-building detail and an ingenious and disciplined magic system. L. E. Modesitt, Jr. returns to his longest and bestselling fantasy series with volume nineteen, The Mongrel Mage, which marks the beginning of a new story arc.

In the world of Recluce, powerful mages can wield two kinds of magic--the white of Chaos or the black of Order. Beltur, however, has talents no one dreamed of, talents not seen in hundreds of years that blend both magics.

On the run from a power hungry white mage, Beltur is taken in by Order mages who set him on the path to discover and hone his own unique gifts and in the process find a home.

However, when the white mage he fled attempts to invade his new home, Beltur must hope his new found power will be enough to save them all.

Beltur, an Order mage, discovers he possesses frightening powers not seen for hundreds of years. With his new abilities, he survives the war in Elparta and saves the lives of all. However, victory comes with a price. His fellow mages now see him as a threat to be destroyed, and the local merchants want to exploit his power.

There's only one way he can remain free and survive--he's going to have to run.

L. E. Modesitt, Jr., continues his bestselling Saga of Recluce with The Mage-Fire War, the third book in a story arc which began with The Mongrel Mage and Outcasts of Order.

Once again, prejudices against the use of chaos magic force Beltur and his companions to flee their refuge in Axalt. The rulers of nearby Montgren have offered them sanctuary and the opportunity to become the Councilors of the run-down and disintegrating town of Haven.

Montegren lacks any mages--white or black--making this seem like the perfect opportunity to start again.

However, Beltur and the others must reinstitute law and order, rebuild parts of the town, deal with brigands--and thwart an invading army.

Sixteen years have passed since the mage Beltur helped to found the town of Fairhaven, and Taelya, Beltur's adopted niece, is now a white mage undercaptain in the Road Guards of Fairhaven.

Fairhaven's success under the Council has become an impediment to the ambition of several rulers, and the mages protecting the town are seen as a threat.

Taelya, a young and untried mage, will find herself at the heart of a conspiracy to destroy her home and the people she loves, and she may not be powerful enough to stop it in time.

Alayiakal, who will one day be known by many names - not all of them flattering - has to climb the ranks of Cyador's Mirror Lancers, fighting against unforeseen weapons and ancient technology.

Alayiakal, however, has secrets of his own to protect: his ties to the Great Forest and his magus abilities. He must silently pretend to be a conventional soldier favored by fate - until that very same fate forces him to choose.

Alyiakal, overcaptain in the Mirror Lancers of Cyador, has completed his tour of duty as officer-in-charge of a small, remote post. He just wants to finish and see his best friend consorted and assume his next post assignment. If only it were that easy.

He discovers corruption in the Merchanter Clans of Cyador, but investigating Mirror Lancer officers end up dead. Before he can go on leave, he has to replace one of these officers, close a post, dodge an attempt on his life, and an investigation from Magi-i.

At Lhaarat, Alyiakal is assigned as a deputy commander to a post that never had one, and the commander doesn't want one - and that's just the beginning of Alyiakal's problems.

The visionary creator of the Academy Award-winning Pan's Labyrinth and a Hammett Award-winning author bring their imaginations to this bold, epic novel about a horrifying battle between man and vampire that threatens all humanity. It is the first installment in a thrilling trilogy and an extraordinary international publishing event.

The Strain

They have always been here. Vampires. In secret and in darkness. Waiting. Now their time has come.

In one week, Manhattan will be gone. In one month, the country.

In two months--the world.

A Boeing 777 arrives at JFK and is on its way across the tarmac, when it suddenly stops dead. All window shades are pulled down. All lights are out. All communication channels have gone quiet. Crews on the ground are lost for answers, but an alert goes out to the CDC. Dr. Eph Goodweather, head of their Canary project, a rapid-response team that investigates biological threats, gets the call and boards the plane. What he finds makes his blood run cold.

In a pawnshop in Spanish Harlem, a former professor and survivor of the Holocaust named Abraham Setrakian knows something is happening. And he knows the time has come, that a war is brewing . . .

So begins a battle of mammoth proportions as the vampiric virus that has infected New York begins to spill out into the streets. Eph, who is joined by Setrakian and a motley crew of fighters, must now find a way to stop the contagion and save his city--a city that includes his wife and son--before it is too late.

The vampiric virus unleashed in The Strain has taken over New York City. It is spreading across the country and soon, the world. Amid the chaos, Eph Goodweather—head of the Center for Disease Control’s team—leads a small band out to stop these bloodthirsty monsters. But it may be too late.

Ignited by the Master’s horrific plan, a war erupts between Old and New World vampires, each vying for total control. Caught between these warring forces, humans—powerless and vulnerable—are no longer the consumers, but the consumed.

Though Eph understands the vampiric plague better than anyone, even he cannot protect those he loves from the invading evil. His ex-wife, Kelly, has been turned by the Master, and now she stalks the city, in the darkness, looking for her chance to reclaim Zack, Eph’s young son.

With the future of the world in the balance, Eph and his courageous team, guided by the brilliant former professor and Holocaust survivor Abraham Setrakian and exterminator Vasiliy Fet, must combat a terror whose ultimate plan is more terrible than anyone first imagined—a fate worse than annihilation.

From the authors of the instant New York Times bestsellers The Strain and The Fall comes the final volume in one of the most electrifying thriller series in years.

It’s been two years since the vampiric virus was unleashed in The Strain, and the entire world now lies on the brink of annihilation. There is only night as nuclear winter blankets the land, the sun filtering through the poisoned atmosphere for two hours each day—the perfect environment for the propagation of vampires.

There has been a mass extermination of humans, the best and the brightest, the wealthy and the influential, orchestrated by the Master—an ancient vampire possessed of unparalleled powers—who selects survivors based on compliance. Those humans who remain are entirely subjugated, interred in camps, and separated by status: those who breed more humans, and those who are bled for the sustenance of the Master’s vast army.

The future of humankind lies in the hands of a ragtag band of freedom fighters—Dr. Eph Goodweather, former head of the Centers for Disease Control’s biological threats team; Dr. Nora Martinez, a fellow doctor with a talent for dispatching the undead; Vasiliy Fet, the colorful Russian exterminator; and Mr. Quinlan, the half-breed offspring of the Master who is bent on revenge. It’s their job to rescue Eph’s son, Zack, and overturn this devastating new world order. But good and evil are malleable terms now, and the Master is most skilled at preying on the weaknesses of humans.

Now, at this critical hour, there is evidence of a traitor in their midst. . . . And only one man holds the answer to the Master’s demise, but is he one who can be trusted with the fate of the world? And who among them will pay the ultimate sacrifice—so that others may be saved?

This omnibus contains two novels by L.E. Modesitt that comprise a larger story unit, Timedivers Dawn and The Timegod (expanded from his first novel, The Fires of Paratime). They were formerly published in mass market original form and are now combined and published together for the first time, in trade paperback. They are somewhat reminiscent of the Change War stories of Fritz Lieber, and although they are science fiction, they contain intriguing connections to the fantasy universe of Modesitts Recluce novels.

Lovi, a young timediver, becomes a full-fledged member of the Temporal Guard of the planet Query, but he soon rebels against the parasitic culture in which he lives.

The author of The Fires of Paratime returns readers to the world of witches, high technology and space travel, of science and superstition--a world so short of energy resources that all fuels are grown or captured from the sun. It is on this world that a lone man must achieve the impossible.