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The language of the originators defines reality, every word warping the world to fit its meaning. Its study transforms the mind and body, and is closely guarded by stodgy, paranoid academics. These hidebound men don't trust many students with their secrets, especially not women, and more especially not "madwomen." Polymede and her lover Erishti believe they've made a discovery that could blow open the field's unexamined assumptions, and they're ready to face expulsion to make their mark. Of course, if they're wrong, the language will make its mark on them instead.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Table of Contents:

• 1 - Chinese Puzzle - (1953) - novelette
• 20 - Una - (1937) - novelette (variant of The Perfect Creature)
• 44 - The Wheel - (1952) - short story
• 51 - Jizzle - (1949) - short story
• 63 - Heaven Scent - (1954) - short story
• 73 - Compassion Circuit - (1954) - short story
• 84 - More Spinned Against... - (1953) - short story (variant of More Spinned Against)
• 95 - A Present from Brunswick - (1951) - short story
• 108 - Confidence Trick - (1953) - short story
• 125 - Opposite Number - (1954) - short story (variant of Opposite Numbers)
• 141 - Wild Flower - (1955) - short story

Markus Selvage has been bent by life, ground up and spit out again. In San Francisco's darkest sexual underground, he is a perpetual innocent, looking within bodies--his own and others'--for the lost secrets of satisfaction. But extreme body modification is only the beginning of where he will go before he's finished...

Double En, the most powerful corporation ever created, and its founders, Nakamura and Norton, are two of the most brilliant minds in history. But now they have launched a private war against each other and winner takes all. While Norton is hidden deep inside the heart of the Double En's mainframe, Nakamura is busy hiring the very best in computer warfare -- that's Iceberg Berg, master of security systems. No one can penetrate a barrier he has created, except for one woman, his ex-wife, Icebreaker Calley. No wall has ever been barred to her. Together again, they face the impossible task of separating Norton from his beloved matrix before the man becomes the computer and the computer becomes more powerful than anything humanity has ever seen.

Once, we'd worshipped them as Gods.

For nearly 400 years, the Veil has protected us from the Fae of Alfheimr. In their absence, our lives have shifted from decadence and sin to survival and virtue under the guidance of the New Gods. I've spent my entire life tending to the gardens next to the boundary between our worlds, drawn to the shimmering magic like a moth to the flame.

Then, we died on their swords.

All of that changes the day the Veil shatters, unleashing the fae upon our world once again. The magic of faerie marks those of us they mean to take, but the Mist Guard protecting Nothrek will kill us all before they let the fae have us. There's no choice but to flee everything I've ever known, not if I want to live to see my twenty-first birthday as a free woman.

Now, they'll claim what's theirs.

But before they capture me, Caelum saves me from the Wild Hunt. Fae-marked and on the run, he is able to fight back in ways I only dream of. From tentative alliance to all-consuming passion, our bond strengthens as the fae close in and evil lurks ever nearer. With my life on the line, he is everything I shouldn't dare to want and a distraction I can't afford. I can't seem to stay away, not even with something greater on the line.

My heart.

Once, I fell in love with a man who deceived me. Then, he revealed the truth of who he is.

For weeks, Caelum seduced me with whispered promises and manipulative half-truths. He used his deception to ensnare my heart and enrapture my body. I'd already begun to suspect there was more to him than met the eye.

But the truth was so much worse than I could have expected.

He is Caldris--a God only spoken of in hushed tones and with whispered words. Somehow, he is my mate.

He's determined to drag me back to Alfheimr with him, whether I like it or not. But the Mist Guard have sworn to keep us from crossing onto Faerie soil. They blamed me when the Veil fell.

Now they want me to pay the price to restore it.

Once, I'd chosen my mate instead of freedom. Then, I woke up in a cage of my own making.

For weeks, I denied the evidence in front of me, unable to fathom that I wasn't the lost princess of Faerie. Instead, it is Fallon who must fear the consequences of her heritage.

But the games of the Fae and the cruel Queen Mab know no bounds.

She keeps all of Alfheimr held squirming within her clawed grasp, strengthened by the cursed gem atop her crown. I am not her daughter, but she keeps me close anyway. She sees me as a weapon to be wielded against those who would be my allies.

Mab may not own me yet, but she controls the life of the man I love. There is nothing I wouldn't do to see him freed.

Even if I have to become the villain to do it.

Once, I bartered my soul to save my mate. Now, the Fates demand my life instead.

Offering Mab my bound allegiance was the only way to save Caldris's life. But Queen Mab only wants one thing from me.

A tribute.

She demands a snake from the crown of Medusa?a being that lives in the depths of Tartarus. It can only be won by passing the Trials of the Five Rivers without magic and standing victorious where all others have failed

Survival is dependent on so much more than my physical strength. It hinges on my ability to understand who and what I am.

Embracing the light and the dark is the only way I will save Caldris, the Fae, and the humans from Mab's reign.

Even if it kills me in the process.

These are the candid recollections of self-proclaimed Aberchef Orlando Crispe, whose overwhelming passion in life is for meat. In frank detail, he relates the progress of his love affair with beef, lamb, pork, chicken and, in the end, human flesh. He likens meat-eating to the act of physical love at its most intensely unifying. Crispe has even devised his own philosophy to explain it: 'Absorptionism'. Unfortunately the authorities in England and Italy do not share this elevated perspective and he is arrested for the murder of at least four people. The bulk of these confessions are written while Crispe languishes in Rome's Regina Coeli prison.

Hugo Award winning and Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Galaxy Magazine, December 1968. It can also be found in The Hugo Winners, Volume 2: (1963-70) (1971) and edited by Isaac Asimov, More Stories From the Hugo Winners, Volume 2 (1973), also edited by Isaac Asimov. It is included in the collections The Night Face and Other Stories (1978), Winners (1981), The Dark Between the Stars (1981), The Long Night (1983), Call Me Joe (2009) and Flandry's Legacy (2011).

Storm Constantine's first novel, expanded and re-edited from the original 1980s edition, with extra appendices and chapter heading illustrations. New edition 2007.

"Terror hung in the air like the foul-smelling smoke from a gutted house, where people have been burned alive inside. I could feel it. "Wraeththu. I shiver to say the word. Something has happened to them. Where did they come from? How did it happen? Why is it spreading like a plague? "I have seen. I have seen what they do. I have seen their faces. They always take their dead with them, always. There is a secret. Dont you understand? A secret. Wraeththu are not what they seem. They are more than they seem." Ground-breaking when they first appeared, the Wraeththu Chronicles chart the history of a new race of hermaphrodite beings who come to replace humanity on Earth.

Daring, erotic and magical, these editions include 'deleted scenes', which have now been restored and expanded. The book also includes new chapter heading illustrations by acclaimed fantasy artist, Ruby.