Search Worlds Without End

It is 1994, and in the desert near Tillman, Arizona, forty miles from Tucson, a grand experiment involving the future of humanity is underway. As climate change threatens the earth, eight scientists, four men and four women dubbed the "Terranauts," have been selected to live under glass in E2, a prototype of a possible off-earth colony. Their sealed, three-acre compound comprises five biomes -- rainforest, savanna, desert, ocean, and marsh -- and enough wildlife, water, and vegetation to sustain them.

Closely monitored by an all-seeing Mission Control, this New Eden is the brainchild of ecovisionary Jeremiah Reed, aka G.C. -- "God the Creator" -- for whom the project is both an adventure in scientific discovery and a momentous publicity stunt. In addition to their roles as medics, farmers, biologists, and survivalists, his young, strapping Terranauts must impress watchful visitors and a skeptical media curious to see if E2's environment will somehow be compromised, forcing the Ecosphere's seal to be broken -- and ending the mission in failure. As the Terranauts face increased scrutiny and a host of disasters, both natural and of their own making, their mantra: "Nothing in, nothing out," becomes a dangerously ferocious rallying cry.

"Jacky was running. There was no thought in his head, only an intense drive to run. There was no sense he was getting anywhere, no plan, no destination, no future. All he had was a sense of what was behind, what he was running from. Jacky was running."

The Natives of the Colony are restless. The Settlers are eager to have a nation of peace, and to bring the savages into line. Families are torn apart, reeducation is enforced. This rich land will provide for all.

This is not Australia as we know it. This is not the Australia of our history books. This TERRA NULLIUS is something new, but all too familiar.

This is an incredible debut from a striking new Australian Aboriginal voice.

In this action-packed adventure and coming-of-age story that finely weaves fact and fiction, thirteen-year-old Ming lives in a small village in Maoist China in the 1970s. His father is convinced that Emperor Qin's tomb--and the life-size terra-cotta army created to serve and protect the emperor in the afterlife--lies hidden in the hills around them. But if Ming's father doesn't prove it soon, the town's Political Officer will condemn him to the brutal labor camps.

From the stories of a terra-cotta soldier who has survived through the centuries, Ming learns the history of Emperor Qin, known for building the Great Wall of China, and how and why the terra-cotta soldiers came to be. As their unlikely friendship develops, Ming experiences the mysterious tomb firsthand, braving deadly traps and witnessing the terra-cotta army in action. Most importantly, he comes to see how he can save both the terra-cotta soldiers and his father from the corrupt Political Officer and his Communist cronies.

The book is illustrated with photographs of Communist Chinese village life in the 1970s, the Great Wall, and, of course, the excavated tomb with its many terra-cotta soldiers. It also features a special recipe from the story.

Ever since the alien Masters had taken control, domesticating mankind with their energy-technology and the all-powerful mental Leash, the human condition had changed from toil and trouble to Total Wish Fulfillment. Only the Dingoes, the obstinate ones who resisted the Masters' Leash, weren't invited to the cosmic party. Poor Dingoes!

Sturgeon Award winning and Hugo Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 2007 and was later reprinted in Clarkesworld, Issue 79, April 2013. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection (2008), edited by Gardner Dozois, Twenty-First Century Science Fiction (2013), edited by David G. Hartwell and Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Space Opera (2014), edited by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, November 2011.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

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

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

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

When an Earth-like planet is discovered, a team of six teens, along with three veteran astronauts, embark on a twenty-year trip to set up a planet for human colonization--but find that space is more deadly than they ever could have imagined.

Have you ever hoped you could leave everything behind?
Have you ever dreamt of a better world?
Can a dream sustain a lifetime?

A century ago, an astronomer discovered an Earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star. She predicted that one day humans would travel there to build a utopia. Today, ten astronauts are leaving everything behind to find it. Four are veterans of the twentieth century's space-race.

And six are teenagers who've trained for this mission most of their lives.

It will take the team twenty-three years to reach Terra-Two. Twenty-three years locked in close quarters. Twenty-three years with no one to rely on but each other. Twenty-three years with no rescue possible, should something go wrong.

And something always goes wrong.

A MAN... A GIRL... AND CIVILIZATION IN THE BALANCE!

An uprising of subversive Earth mutants...

An attack by enemy aliens...

And Terra 10, Earth's only defense, is in the rebels' hands!

The outcome of this crisis will determine whether mankind will survive upon his planet-and one man, Zachary Whaleman, a blond giant of incredible strength and intelligence, holds the balance of power!

What will determine man's fate-Zach's Earth-normal upbringing or his tradition-defying love for one of the rebel girls?

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

Beneath the ice at the bottom of the Earth is a magnificent subterranean labyrinth, a place of breathtaking wonders--and terrors beyond imagining. A team of specialists led by archaeologist Ashley Carter has been hand-picked to explore this secret place and to uncover the riches it holds. But they are not the first to venture here--and those they follow did not return. There are mysteries here older than time, and revelations that could change the world. But there are also things that should not be disturbed--and a devastating truth that could doom Ashley and the expedition: they are not alone.

THE ART OF STAYING ALIVE

San Francisco is turning into a jungle - more and more people living in cars, mobs forever roaming the streets, life an increasingly precarious prospect.

Rheinhardt is a sculptor who does the best he can in this urban cess-pit...

* Until they draft his best friend to fight in South America

* Until his artists' colony turns into a home for spoiled no-talents

* Until his girlfriend begins asking him where he's going

* Until he feels he just can't take it any more.

But soon, he won't have to. For in the background is a mystery man - Justinian - a Vietnam veteran who stalks Reinhardt quietly, calmly, waiting for the right moment. Waiting to take him to the Subterranean Gallery.

In the 21st century, humanity has abandoned the Earth for the Enclosure: a network of cities, built from the salvage of the old world, sealed against all of nature. In Oregon City, a small group plans to escape to the wild Earth beyond the walls. United by something much more than just an idea, they meet in secret. But they are not unobserved. And what they find outside is not what they expect.

From its launch in 2005 to its final issue in 2014, Subterranean magazine published stories by the leading lights of science fiction and fantasy literature. From Hugo and Nebula winners to Pulitzer and Booker Prize finalists to New York Times bestsellers, this anthology collects 30 pieces of Subterranean's best, representing diverse, breathtaking short fiction from today's modern masters.

In "Last Breath" Joe Hill spins the tale of a man who collects the breaths of the dying for his haunting museum. Catherynne M. Valente's "White Lines on a Green Field" chronicles what might happen if Coyote became a small town high school quarterback. Karen Joy Fowler's "Younger Women" finds a woman confronting her daughter's new boyfriend, who happens to be a vampire. Visit the Twilight Zone via George R.R. Martin in the script "The Toys of Caliban." In Ted Chiang's "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" the narratives of a journalist and a young man are told in contrast, both impacted by technology and literacy. And in Kelley Armstrong's "The Screams of Dragons" a boy is declared a changeling and things only get stranger from there. Other pieces visit far-flung space and intimate sick rooms, the futuristic pyramids of the rich and a jungle where a man-eating tiger stalks a village.

The Best of Subterranean, edited by William Schafer, is a must-have anthology that brings together more than 700 pages of stories as varied and distinguished as their authors, and which are utterly unforgettable.

Table of Contents:

• Perfidia--Lewis Shiner
• Game--Maria Dahvana Headley
• The Last Log of the Lachrimosa--Alastair Reynolds
• The Seventeenth Kind--Michael Marshall Smith
• Dispersed by the Sun, Melting in the Wind--Rachel Swirsky
• The Pile--Michael Bishop
• The Bohemian Astrobleme--Kage Baker
• Tanglefoot--Cherie Priest
• Hide and Horns--Joe R. Lansdale
• Balfour and Meriwether in the Vampire of Kabul--Daniel Abraham
• Last Breath--Joe Hill
• Younger Women--Karen Joy Fowler
• White Lines on a Green Field--Catherynne M. Valente
• The Least of the Deathly Arts--Kat Howard
• Water Can't be Nervous--Jonathan Carroll
• Valley of the Girls--Kelly Link
• Sic Him, Hellhound! Kill! Kill!--Hal Duncan
• Troublesolving--Tim Pratt
• The Indelible Dark--William Browning Spencer
• The Prayer of Ninety Cats--Caitlín R. Kiernan
• The Crane Method--Ian R. MacLeod
• The Tomb of the Pontifex Dvorn--Robert Silverberg
• The Toys of Caliban (script)--George R. R. Martin
• The Secret History of the Lost Colony--John Scalzi
• The Screams of Dragons--Kelley Armstrong
• The Dry Spell--James P. Blaylock
• He Who Grew Up Reading Sherlock Holmes--Harlan Ellison
• A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong--K. J. Parker
• The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling--Ted Chiang
• A Long Walk Home--Jay Lake

Appeared in Ace Double D-311 (1958).

What do you do when your planet is under threat from aliens, you have travelled light years to make contact with Earth (after 500 years of silence) and you then find no-one cares? A classic novel by the Hugo and Nebula award winner.

John Sladek's hilarious SF satires may show a world riddled with shambolic flaws, but this (he pointed out) is actually the good news: "My own small ray of hope concerns human frailty. All conspiracies, no matter how monstrous, are ultimately the work of mere imperfect people, whose irresolution or bad judgement or even bad conscience works against the system. They get bunions, their cars break down, their children run away -and all this grit gets into the smooth-running gears of their world domination plans. I hope."

Table of Contents:

• The Last of the Whaleburgers
• Great Mysteries Explained!
• Red Noise
• Guesting
• Absent Friends
• After Flaubert
• The Brass Monkey
• White Hat
• The Island of Dr Circe
• Answers
• Breakfast with the Murgatroyds
• The Next Dwarf
• An Explanation for the Disappearance of the Moon
• How to Make Major Scientific Discoveries at Home in Your Spare Time
• The Kindly Ones
• Fables
• Ursa Minor
• Calling All Gumdrops!

Temptation, indulgence, exploration and shortcuts. Love and compulsion. An ocean in Kansas, the Magic Lino, the real story behind the one told by Robert Louis Stevenson, a chef dying of ennui, gathering bluebirds, paying with candywrap. And the greatest story ever told--by Asher E. Treat, of course. The glorious chaos of singing, prancing, perfumed and stinking, the dead and the busy, tragic and achingly otherwise--life itself.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (2003) - essay by Keith Brooke
• Klokwerk's Heart - (2002) - novelette
• The Eel - (2001) - short story
• The Curse of Hyperica - (2003) - short story
• Temptation of the Seven Scientists - (2003) - short story
• The Afterlife at Seahorse Drive - (2003) - short story
• The It and the Ecstasy - (2003) - poem
• Travels with Robert Louis Stevenson in the Cévennes - (2003) - short story
• The Chosen - (2001) - short story
• Stargazing - (2003) - poem
• Kidnapped! - (2003) - short story
• The Helford Deal - (2003) - short story
• Me-Too - (2000) - short story
• Crumpled Sheets and Death-Fluffies - (2003) - short story
• Sweat, Joy, and Thunderation - (2003) - poem
• Valley of the Sugars of Salt - (2003) - novelette
• Catechismic Chaos - (2001) - poem
• Dr. Babiram's Potentials - (2003) - short story
• Exhibition - (2003) - short story
• The Refloat of D'Urbe Isle - (2003) - short story
• The Apple - (2003) - short story
• The Rest Cure - (2003) - short story
• The Magic Lino - (2003) - short story
• Call Me Omniscient - (2003) - short story
• Bluebird Pie - (2003) - poem
• Picking Blueberries - (2003) - short story
• The Wages of Food-Play - (2001) - short story
• Öm - (2003) - short story
• The Ocean in Kansas - (2003) - short story
• Monterra's Deliciosa - (2003) - novella
• Literary Titan, Asher E. (Huh?) Treat - (2002) - essay
• Pearls - (2003) - poem

Terrain, by Genevieve Valentine, is a steampunk western about six diverse people living and working together on a farm outside a small town in Wyoming. The encroaching Union Pacific railroad wants the land, threatening their home and their livelihood, running a unique message service with mechanical "dogs" (actually looking more insectile) that can climb up mountains where the Pony Express cannot.

Read this story online for free at Tor.com.

Six top Spanish-language authors prove that science fiction remains sharp and visionary, with stories about the deepest anxieties, challenges, and problems of our societies. Their speculations and metaphors analyze and dissect a reality in continuous change.

Contents:

The Texture of Words, by Felicidad Martínez: women seek to lead despite being blind and dependent, while men fight constant wars.

Deirdre, by Lola Robles: in the future, robotics can create made-to-order lovers.

Greetings from a Zombie Nation, by Eric J. Mota: a stagnant society turns its citizens into the living dead.

Light a Single Candle, by Victor Conde: social networks want too much and never let go.

Bodies, by Juanfran Jiménez: in a globalized and pseudodemocratic Europe, the rich practice sex tourism by means of mind exchange.

Memory, by Teresa P. Mira de Echeverría: personal relationships and sex roles evolve in radical ways on a terraformed Mars in a relatively near future.

Science Fiction from Spain, by Mariano Villarreal: a close view of what Spanish science fiction is and has been.

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

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

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

The men of Earth were on the verge of breaking into space. The first of their manned moon rockets was on its way to Luna. Now, after ten thousand years, the celestial Watchers were forced to a decision.

Were the Earth people ready to join in the civilizations of sapce - or should they be turned down and wiped out with solar fire?

THE TRIAL OF TERRA had begun!

The men of Earth were on the verge of breaking into space. The first of their manned moon rockets was on its way to Luna. Now, after ten thousand years, the celestial Watchers were forced to a decision.

Were the Earth people ready to join in the civilizations of space - or should they be turned down and wiped out with solar fire?

THE TRIAL OF TERRA had begun!

THREE CLASSIC SCI-FI NOVELLAS IN ONE VOLUME--from a Hugo and Nebula award-winning author

In Terra Incognita, Connie Willisexplores themes of love and mortality whilebrilliantly illuminating the human condition through biting satire.

Uncharted Territory
Findriddy and Carson are explorers, dispatched to a distant planet to survey its canyons, ridges, and scrub-covered hills. Teamed with a profit-hungry indigenous guide of indeterminate gender and an enthusiastic newcomer whose specialty is mating customs, the group battles hostile terrain as they set out for unexplored regions. Along the way, they face dangers, discover treasures, and soon find themselves in an alien territory of another kind: exploring the paths and precipices of sex--and love.

Remake
In the Hollywood of the future, live-action movies are a thing of the past. Old films are computerized and ruthlessly dissected, actors digitally ripped from one film and thrust into another. Humphrey Bogart and Marilyn Monroe in A Star Is Born? No problem. Hate the ending? Change it with the stroke of a key. Technology makes anything possible. But a starry-eyed young woman wants only one thing: to dance on the big screen. With a little magic and a lot of luck, she just may get her happy ending.

D.A.
Theodora Baumgarten is baffled and furious: Why was she selected to be part of a highly competitive interstellar cadet program? After all, she never even applied. But that hasn't stopped the powers that be from whisking her onto a spaceship bound for the prestigious Academy. With her protests ignored, Theodora takes matters into her own hands, aided by her hacker best friend, to escape the Academy and return to Earth--only to uncover a conspiracy that runs deeper than she could have imagined.

David and Anne Case were linked as only twins can be, always aware of each other's thoughts and feelings. Now Anne is dead - murdered - and David cannot accept the fact that she is gone.

Determined to contact Anne, to discover from her shade the name of her killer, David takes an experimental drug and crosses the boundary between life and death. But the "other side" is a mysterious and confusing place and Anne is not easily found.

Anne's murderer knows of David's search... and that its success will be his destruction. David Case must never re-cross the border to the world of the living.

Why would a demon want a child?

When his six-year-old son vanishes, Miles Gale is suspected of having committed an unthinkable crime. He alone knows that the truth is even more unthinkable: his son has been taken by a creature out of time, a creature out of nightmare. The boy's mother has returned to claim him... and Miles will have to go through hell to get him back.

Harry Briggs led a fairly normal life. He had a good job, a nice house, and a beautiful wife named Barbara, with whom he was very much in love. Then he died. that's when Harry's story really began. That's when he found himself in a strange little town called Silver Lake, with a mystery to solve.

Under the spell of the charismatic Regina Watson, Elmo Land falls into the nightmare world of the undead. All he has left is hunger and a grim existence feeding from the larder of the living. Then nuclear war occurs.

Working together to transform an abandoned public school into a unique bed-and-breakfast, Frank and Allison Hitchcock hope to rekindle their love--a love that has grown thin after the death of their son in a tragic accident. But ghostly children stalk the halls, silent and unsmiling. And in the basement, something unnatural is growing ever stronger.

Collision Course

The crew of the XV-ftl was looking forward to shore leave, vacation, and a chance to see their families after a month in space. But once they brought back the news that they had discovered aliens, they were doomed to another, and longer, journey. Accompanying them on the return were several technical experts, who seemed to be more interested in squabbling with each other than meeting the first alien race in the history of humankind. But face to face with the blue humanoid Norglans, everyone began to realise just how important these first meetings could be - for they could make the difference between peaceful coexistence in space and interstellar war!

The Nemesis from Terra

Rick Urquhart was going to conquer the turmoil-ridden planet of Mars. He was penniless and unknown, but there could be no doubt that he would rule the Red Planet--the ancient Martian mystic had made the prophecy, there was no way fate could cheat him of his prize.

But there were powerful interests on both Earth and Mars who didn't believe in prophecies--and they were going to undo Rick's future before it had a chance to begin.

The Rim of Space

Derek Calver touches down on Lorn and is determined to join the Rim Runners to explore desolate planets.

He joins the crew of Lorn Lady and sets forth for Mellise, inhabited by intelligent amphibians; for Groller, where the natives have just qualified as humanoids; for Stree with its tea loving lizards; and Tharn, home of a pre-industrial civilization., January 1965

Secret Agent of Terra

Once the city of Carrig stood supreme on this planet that had been settled by space refugees in the distant, forgotten past. From every corner of this primitive lost world caravans came to trade - and to view the great King-Hunt, the gruesome test by which the people of Carrig chose their rulers.

Then from space came new arrivals. And with them came their invincible death guns and their ruthless, all-powerful tyranny.

Now there would be no King-Hunt in Carrig, or hope for the planet-unless a fool-hardy high-born named Saikmar and a beautiful Earthling space-spy named Maddalena, could do the impossible...

Alpha Yes, Terra No!

The Alphans had been watching Earth for centuries, seeing its technological advances and its moral stagnation. They had erected a barrier against Earth's attempts to enter their system. Finally, they decided that Earth was a canker on the face of the universe, and decreed it's total destruction... The Earth was on trial, would no one defend her.

The Ballad of Beta-2

Centuries ago, the Star Folk had left Earth on twelve spaceships on a generations-long mission to colonize the distant stars. Ten of the ships had reached thier destination. Two had failed--and nobody, in the hundreds of years since the disaster, had the slightest inkling of what had happened.

Joneny, a student of galactic anthropology, was assigned the problem. It had seemed routine to him. Just some faster-than-light travel to the two wrecked ships, a bit of poking around and then writing up his findings.

But he was ill-prepared for what he found in space at the site of the two ancient worlds. One, the Sigma-9, was not subject to the laws of time-stasis (the only exception he knew of), and it was covered entirely with a mysterious green fire that shimmered so much that it seemed alive. And the other ship, the Beta-2, was nowhere to be seen.

The Proxima Project

They took the "pop-star" route out of this world!

Target: Terra

Beware the beserk satelite.

The Duplicators

The Duplicators is an expansion of the novella Lord of the Uffts.

A planet where everyone has a machine which can duplicate anything would be the wealthiest world in the galaxy, right? Wrong. And unless the hapless voyager who's trapped on the planet can find a solution to its problem, his voyaging will be over -- permanently.

No Truce with Terra

From: The Shaldron Race
To: The Human Race
Greetings:
Your presence has been noted and the reason for your visit analyzed by our instruments. We have, therefore, taken the liberty of selecting one of your party for first contact, one whom we feel is best suited to grasp the motivations of both our races and arrange for future group contacts.

Peter Collard stared at the message with a cold feeling of foreboding. He felt pity for the poor devil.

"Who is this selected contact:"

"Ah now," Dyson became suddenly interested in the papers on the table. 'Well, I'm sorry and all that, but, as a matter of fact, they want you."

Pennterra is a beautiful and fertile planet and humanity’s last hope for survival. But Pennterra is already inhabited. After warning other colony ships to stay away, the small advance colony of Quakers has adapted to life on Pennterra. Heeding the empathic warnings of the native hrossa, they have settled in a single valley, sharply limited their population, and continued to use no heavy machinery in their building and farming. But surviving under these conditions has left the Quakers little time to learn more about their native neighbors. Catastrophe or peace—Tanka Wakan, the omnipotent master spirit of Pennterra, will decide.

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

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

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

Stepsons of Terra

What do you do when your planet is under threat from aliens, you have travelled light years to make contact with Earth (after 500 years of silence) and you then find no-one cares? A classic novel by the Hugo and Nebula award winner.

A Man Called Destiny

Suddenly he became the most valuable human in space.

The Second Adventure of Alacrity Fitzhugh and Hobart Floyt!

The dying ruler of a small interstellar kingdom made a minor Old-Earth bureaucrat named Hobart Floyt the surprised inheritor of an interstellar spacecraft. There were just a few minor problems: The dead ruler never told Floyt how to find the ship. The bureaucrats of Earth wanted the ship for themselves, and someone kept trying to murder Floyt and his friend Alacrity Fitzhugh.

When the ruling council of the Galactica strips Adama of his powers of supreme command, themighty ship is thrown into chaos. As if being caught in the middle of an all-out space war wasn't enough, Baltar has escaped and is streaking across the galaxy to his Cylon allies. Book 9 in the Battlestar Galactica series.

The Terraphiles are a group obsessed with Earth's past and dedicated to re-enacting ancient sporting events. The Doctor and Amy join them on a trip to Miggea, a star on the very edge of reality, and venue for a competition to win the fabled Arrow of Law. But the Terraphiles' grasp of Earth history and customs is dubious to say the least, and just getting to Miggea is going to prove tricky.

For reality is falling apart, ships are disappearing, and Captain Cornelius and his pirates are looking for easy pickings. And the Doctor and Amy have to find out who is so desperate to get the Arrow of Law that they will kill for it.

Bershad stands apart from the world, the most legendary dragonslayer in history, both revered and reviled.

Once, he was Lord Silas Bershad, but after a disastrous failure on the battlefield he was stripped of his titles and sentenced to one violent, perilous hunt after another. Now he lives only to stalk dragons, slaughter them, collect their precious oil, and head back into the treacherous wilds once more. For years, death was his only chance to escape. But that is about to change.

The king who sentenced Bershad to his fate has just given him an unprecedented chance at redemption. Kill a foreign emperor and walk free forever.

The journey will take him across dragon-infested mountains, through a seedy criminal underworld, and into a forbidden city guarded by deadly technology.

But the links of fate bind us all.

They called her the Witch Queen...

Driven from her kingdom, the would-be queen now seeks haven in the land of her mother, but Ashlyn will not stop until justice has been done. Determined to unlock the secret of powers long thought impossible, Ashlyn bends her will and intelligence to mastering the one thing people always accused her of, sorcery.

Meanwhile, having learned the truth of his mutation, Bershad is a man on borrowed time. Never knowing when his healing powers will drive him to a self-destruction, he is determined to see Ashlyn restored to her throne and the creatures they both love safe.

Only Earl Dumarest himself believed that there was ever a planet called Earth. He had been seeking it a long time - but nobody else at the crowded galactic centre believed in it. During his quest he had acquired some bits of information - a Terrestrial zodiac, and authentic painting of Luna, a general series of hints that he was getting closer.

The he learned of a man on Elysius who knew where Earth was, and who had the special coordinates that would take a starship directly to it. Though the man was dead, his widow knew where the data lay. But she demanded a price from Dumarest - a chore that involved a mining expedition which would bring her back a fortune... and for him the information he sought.

But the Terra Data would not be so easily come by!

Clues from Angado, clues from the lady Govinda, all leading Dumarest on in his search for the lost Planet Earth. But first they lead him to a collector of ancient wisdom called Tama Chenault.

But Chenault is not all that he seems, and Dumarest is forced to bargain for the information he seeks. In return he must pledge allegiance to Chenault's deadly plan...

The bizarre idea that the earth's interior is hollow and, perhaps, even populated has been put to effective literary use by writers ranging from Edgar Allen Poe and Jules Verne to Rudy Rucker and Edgar Rice Burroughs. This notion had respectability as a scientific hypothesis until the early 1800s, and the theory that the earth "is hollow and inhabitable within" continues to find believers as an alternative description of the earth to this day.

The hollow earth is one of the most important settings in the literature of the imagination that fed into early science fiction. Subterranean Worlds presents a fascinating look at the theme of the hollow earth and its history, as well as the geological theories which produced many of these stories. It excerpts key passages from the major subterranean world fictions, some translated into English for the first time. With helpful introductions to each selection and a comprehensive bibliography, this book is the definitive treatment of this entertaining topic.

Contents:

• A Bluffer's Guide to The Underworld: An Introduction to the Hollow Earth
• Theories and Descriptions of the Inner Earth, from Kicher to Symmes
• Relation D'Un Voyage Du Pole Arctique Au Pole Antarctique
• Lamekis ou les voyages extraordinaries d'un Egyptien dans la terre interieure
• The Journey of Niels Klim to the World Underground
• The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins
• A Voyage to the World in the Center of the Earth
• L'aventurier Francois
• L'Icosameron
• John Cleves Symmes Jr. and Symzonia
• Collin de Plancy: Voyage au centre de la terre
• Edgar Allen Poe and "the Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym"
• Jules Verne: Voyage au centre de la terre
• After Verne: Later Developments

The Eighth Doctor succumbs to a trap left by the Master and loses his memories. The TARDIS takes him to meet all his former selves in order to regain them again.

Feliks, an acquaintance of the Doctor's, is killed in an accident. He leaves the Doctor a coded message. With difficulty, the Doctor decodes the message and finds himself caught up in the middle of a dangerous, world-threatening conflict.

Photographer Abner Cray arrives in Manhattan to begin work on an illustrated book of the city. However he finds that Art, the owner of the flat he is staying in, has gone missing, leaving behind a beguiling and sensuous young lady called Phyllis Pellaprat to whom he's instantly attracted.

Soon Abner is deeply involved with Phyllis and is wholly unprepared for the revelation that Art is actually wanted for her murder - an event which took place some time earlier. When Phyllis disappears, Abner wanders the streets, and he sees what appear to be disaffected and strangely acting people everywhere - hailing taxis, selling puppies on street corners, pushing baby carriages, and he starts to suspect...

When Sam Feary meets his old high school buddy Abner in Manhattan, he knows something is wrong.

But he doesn't know how wrong.

Abner has stepped over the boundary, into the world of unseen spirits - a world that has suddenly become a terrifying reality.

It will take Abner's life unless Sam can rescue him...

But now it wasnt Sam's life as well!

Contents:

• The Coming of the Terrans (frontispiece) - interior artwork by uncredited
• Foreword - essay by Leigh Brackett
• The Beast-Jewel of Mars - (1948) - novella by Leigh Brackett
• Mars Minus Bisha - (1954) - short story by Leigh Brackett
• The Last Days of Shandakor - (1952) - novelette by Leigh Brackett
• Purple Priestess of the Mad Moon - (1964) - short story by Leigh Brackett
• The Road to Sinharat - [Eric John Stark] - (1963) - novelette by Leigh Brackett

A jubilant Third Doctor has been given freedom again by the Time Lords to roam time and space. But when he and Sam arrive on the planet of Catastrophea, he begins to wish perhaps his exile on Earth had remained imposed, for the Doctor becomes embroiled in the schemes of off-world drug-smugglers.

Arriving on the sun-baked veldt in the middle of the Boer War, the Sixth Doctor is soon involved in the adventures of struggling politician and war correspondent Winston Churchill. Of course, he knows Churchill is destined for great things, but unseen forces seem to be interfering with Winston's historic career. The Doctor suspects the hidden hand of the Players, mysterious beings who regard human history as little more than a game. With time running out, can the Doctor find the right moves to defeat them?

This book chosen to represent the Sixth Doctor in the 50th Anniversary Collection.

A chain of events has been set in motion that will change the Sixth Doctor and Peri forever. A chain that involves old enemies as well as old friends. How does Peri come to be the leader of a gang of rebel fighters on an outlying planet? Who is the mysterious 'General' against whom they are rebelling so violently? Where does the so-called 'Supremo', leader of the Alliance forces ranged against the General, come from, and why is he so interested in Peri? The answers lie in the origins of a conflict that will affect the whole cosmos - a conflict that will find humans, Sontarans, Draconians and even Cybermen fighting together for the greater good and glory. For the Supremo.

It is a conflict that will test both the Doctor and Peri to the limit, and bring them face to face with the dark sides of their own personalities.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart - then a young subaltan - was involved in intelligence operations in the Greek islands. But now his problems are rather closer to home. The Third Doctor and Jo are caught up in mysterious events in a small English village. Sergeant Benton and Captain Yates are ready to rush to the rescue. A sinister cult holds unholy ceremonies and prepares for a day of reckoning. And the Doctor has a shrewd idea who might be behind it all.

This might seem like business as usual, but things are not always as they seem. The Brigadier finds himself trying to separate the truth from the lies, and the past from the present. Can he once again help prevent the end of the world? His friends and colleagues are not so sure - because this time, the Brigadier has fallen in love...

The Second Doctor has been captured and put on trial by his own people - accused of their greatest crime: interfering with the affairs of other peoples and planets. He is sentenced to exile on Earth. But now the truth can be told - the Doctor did not go straight into exile. First the Time Lords have a task for him. From the trenches of the Great War to the terrors of the French Revolution, the Doctor finds himself on a mission he does not want with a companion he does not like, his life threatened at every turn.

Will the Doctor survive to serve his sentence? Or will this adventure prove to be his Waterloo?

Fantasy comes in all shades, from gentle tales of elves and fairies, to the blackest of horrors. Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy tends toward the darker edges, where the fantastic mixes with the horrific. With all original tales by a number of SubPress favorites, and writers new to our stable, we ve aimed to illuminate these shadowed corners, to bring into the light the creatures that venture forth from the sea, those that alter our reality to suit their sinister needs, and others who head into territory so bleak it s best left undescribed.

Table of Contents:

• The Gulf - short story by Poppy Z. Brite
• Alastair Baffle's Emporium of Wonders - (2008) - novelette by Mike Resnick
• It Washed Up - short story by Joe R. Lansdale
• The Hour of Babel - short story by Tim Powers
• Monstrous Embrace - short story by Rachel Swirsky
• The Lunatic Miss Teak - short story by Darren Speegle
• The Steam Dancer (1896) - short story by Caitlín R. Kiernan
• Penguins of the Apocalypse - novelette by William Browning Spencer
• Caverns of Mystery - short story by Kage Baker
• Face - short story by Mike Carey
• The Road to Levinshir - (2002) - short story by Patrick Rothfuss

Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy, published in 2008 to widespread critical and popular acclaim, provided a unique showcase for some of our finest practitioners of dark, disturbing fiction. This much anticipated second volume more than meets the standards set by its predecessor, offering a diverse assortment of stories guaranteed to delight, unsettle, and enthrall. Volume two proper is a full 20,000 words longer than the first installment in the series.

Table of Contents:

• Wolverton Station - short fiction by Joe Hill
• The Passion of Mother Vajpai - short fiction by Jay Lake and Shannon Page
• Not Last Night but the Night Before - short fiction by Steven R. Boyett
• Chivalrous - short fiction by Kelley Armstrong
• Smelling Danger: A Story of The Black Company - short fiction by Glen Cook
• That Dappled Thing - short fiction by William Browning Spencer
• Hydraguros - novelette by Caitlín R. Kiernan
• The Parthenopean Scalpel - (2010) - short story by Bruce Sterling
• A Pulp Called Joe - short fiction by David Prill
• Vampire Lake - short fiction by Norman Partridge
• A Room with a View - novelette by K. J. Parker

Nicholas van Rijn, the most flamboyant member of the Polesotechnic League of star traders, could see dark times ahead. Fellow league members were using tactics verging on outright piracy, and others were all too eager to sell starships and high-tech weapons to alien barbarians. A planet not previously known for interstellar commerce suddenly revealed a secret fleet of armed starships, and started building an empire. Even if Van Rijn and his right-hand man David Falkayn could find a way to stop this blatant aggression, the glory days of the League were over. Hereafter, for its own protection against well-armed alien marauders the Earth must maintain a strong military fleet, and one charismatic man would found an empire that would learn nothing of the lessons history taught about the fates of other empires as it began annexing other star systems, whether they wanted to join the Terran Empire or not...

This is the third volume in the first complete edition of Poul Anderson's Technic Civilization saga, and it includes a classic novella which appears here in book form for the first time. And the next volume begins the adventures of Poul Anderson's other legendary character, Captain Sir Dominic Flandry.

Table of Content

• Mirkheim (1977)
• "Wingless" (also known as "Wingless on Avalon") (1973)
• "Rescue on Avalon" (1973)
• "The Star Plunderer" (1952)
• "Saragasso of Lost Starships" (1951)
• The People of the Wind (1973)

Contents:

• Tiger by the Tail
• Warriors from Nowhere
• Honorable Enemies
• Hunters of the Sky Cave

Contents:

• The Game of Glory
• A Message in Secret
• The Plague of Masters

No-one trusts humanity. No-one can quite understand why we're intent on destroying the only place we have to live in the Universe. No-one thinks we're worth a second thought. And certainly no-one is about to let us get off Rrth. That would be a complete disaster.

But one alien thinks Rrth is worth looking at. Not humanity, obviously, we're appalling, but until we manage to kill every other living thing on the planet there are some truly wonderful places on Rrth and some wonderful creatures living in them. Best take a look while they're still there.

But on one trip to Rrth our alien biologist causes a horrendous accident. The occupants of a car traveling down a lonely road spot his ship (the sort of massive lemon coloured, lemon shaped starship that really shouldn't be hanging in the sky over a road). Understandably the Bradbury's crash (interrupting the latest in a constant procession of bitter rows). And in the wreckage of their car our alien discovers a baby girl. She needs rescuing. From the car. From Rrth. From her humanity.

And now eleven years later a girl called Terra is about to go to school for the first time. It's a very alien experience...

Billy Martin loved science fiction. But SF has had it. Two years ago, the girl Terra came back to earth, having spent most of her life on an actual factual alien planet., Science Fiction is kind of beside the point once it's come true. And then even Terra disappeared. Billy's only friend Lydia doesn't really understand, but then she hasn't lost everything. But now a new girl has arrived at school, and she loved the dead genre of SF every bit as much as Billy. And she seems really interested in Billy, too. Things are looking up. But Terra didn't disappear. She just hid. But the time for hiding is over. Something awful is happening back home. Really awful...

Mycroft Canner is a convict. For his crimes he is required, as is the custom of the 25th century, to wander the world being as useful as he can to all he meets. Carlyle Foster is a sensayer--a spiritual counselor in a world that has outlawed the public practice of religion, but which also knows that the inner lives of humans cannot be wished away.

The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our 21st-century eyes as ours would be to a native of the 1500s. It is a hard-won utopia built on technologically-generated abundance, and also on complex and mandatory systems of labelling all public writing and speech. What seem to us normal gender distinctions are now distinctly taboo in most social situations. And most of the world's population is affiliated with globe-girdling clans of the like-minded, whose endless economic and cultural competion is carefully managed by central planners of inestimable subtlety. To us it seems like a mad combination of heaven and hell. To them, it seems like normal life.

And in this world, Mycroft and Carlyle have stumbled on the wild card that may destablize the system: the boy Bridger, who can effortlessly make his wishes come true. Who can, it would seem, bring inanimate objects to life...

In a future of near-instantaneous global travel, of abundant provision for the needs of all, a future in which no one living can remember an actual war... a long era of stability threatens to come to an abrupt end. For known only to a few, the leaders of the great Hives, nations without fixed location, have long conspired to keep the world stable, at the cost of just a little blood. A few secret murders, mathematically planned. So that no faction can ever dominate, and the balance holds.

And yet the balance is beginning to give way. Mycroft Canner, convict, sentenced to wander the globe in service to all, knows more about this conspiracy the than he can ever admit. Carlyle Foster, counselor, sensayer, has secrets as well, and they burden Carlyle beyond description. And both Mycroft and Carlyle are privy to the greatest secret of all: Bridger, the child who can bring inanimate objects to life.

"For Warre, consisteth not in Battell onely, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to contend by Battell is sufficiently known..."

-- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan XIII.

The world of Terra Ignota has been upended. War is inevitable. But after three centuries of peace, how does a war begin? With every world ruler friends with every other, how do the nations pick sides? How can war begin when every nation already has surrendered? Genius convict Mycroft Canner has completed the history started in Too Like the Lightning and concluded in Seven Surrenders. Now he begins his chronicle of the guideless search for an order to the conflict as the world slouches toward war, while a living myth contends with a celebrity assassin, a corrupt priestess and a captive god to shape the conflict and the world to come.

From the 2017 John W. Campbell Award Winner for Best Writer, Ada Palmer's Perhaps the Stars is the final book of the Hugo Award-shortlisted Terra Ignota series.

World Peace turns into global civil war.

In the future, the leaders of Hive nations--nations without fixed location--clandestinely committed nefarious deeds in order to maintain an outward semblance of utopian stability. But the facade could only last so long. The comforts of effortless global travel and worldwide abundance may have tempered humanity's darkest inclinations, but conflict remains deeply rooted in the human psyche. All it needed was a catalyst, in form of special little boy to ignite half a millennium of repressed chaos.

Now, war spreads throughout the globe, splintering old alliances and awakening sleeping enmities. All transportation systems are in ruins, causing the tyranny of distance to fracture a long-united Earth and threaten to obliterate everything the Hive system built.

With the arch-criminal Mycroft nowhere to be found, his successor, Ninth Anonymous, must not only chronicle the discord of war, but attempt to restore order in a world spiraling closer to irreparable ruin.

The fate of a broken society hangs in the balance. Is the key to salvation to remain Earth-bound or, perhaps, to start anew throughout the far reaches of the stars?

Terra Incognita - the blank spaces on the map, past the edge of the known world, marked only by the words 'here be monsters.'Two nations at war, fighting for dominion over the world, pin their last hopes of ultimate victory on finding a land out of legend.Each will send its ships to brave the untamed waters, wild storms, sea serpents, and darker dangers unseen by any man. It is a perilous undertaking, but there will always be the impetuous, the brave, and the mad, willing to leave their homes to explore the unknown.Even unto the edge of the world...

After terrible atrocities by both sides, the religious war between Tierra and Uraba has spread and intensified, irreparably dividing the known world. What started as a series of skirmishes has erupted into a full-blown crusade.Now that the Uraban leader, Soldan-Shah Omra, has captured the ruined city of Ishalem, his construction teams discover a priceless ancient map in an underground vault - a map that can guide brave explorers to the mysterious Key to Creation.

After long voyages, encountering hurricanes and sea monsters, Criston Vora and Saan race to Terravitae, the legendary promised land. Saan's quest is to find the Key to Creation, a weapon that may defeat Uraba's enemies, and Criston wants vengeance against the monstrous Leviathan that ruined his life long ago.Back home, two opposing continents and religions clash for the remnants of a sacred city, unleashing their hatred in a war that could end both civilizations. Queen Anjine and Soldan-Shah Omra are driven by mutual hatred, heaping atrocity upon atrocity in an escalating conflict that only their gods can end.Meanwhile, the secretive Saedrans manipulating both sides, come ever closer to their ultimate goal: to complete the Map of All Things and bring about the return of God.

Sir Kesrick of Dragonrouge enters the strange world of Terra Magica in search of the stolen pommel stone of the sword Dastagard and has many adventures.

Come with us out of this dull, workaday world to Terra Magica, tha land beyond World's Edge, where knights ride out on wonder quests, where beautiful princesses wait for rescue from sea serpents, where sky-high giants seek human morsels for their cookpots, and where a king may seek a champion to set aside his realm's enchantment.

Here again is Kesrick, knight of Dragonrouge, in combat against villainy. At his side stand a Scythian princess and a lost nobleman of Tartary. Here be wizards of good and wizards of evil; here be mighty giants and witches of utter meanness. Here be high fantasy from thne golden pen of the Grand Master himself, Lin Carter!

Come with us out of this dull, workaday world to Terra Magica, the land beyond World's Edge, where knights ride out on wonder quests, where beautiful princesses wait for rescue from sea serpents, where sky-high giants seek human morsels for their cookpots, and where a king may seek a champion to set aside his realm's enchantment.

Here again is Kesrick, knight of Dragonrouge, in combat against villainy. At his side stand a Scythian princess and a lost nobleman of Tartary. Here be wizards of good and wizards of evil; here be mighty giants and witches of utter meanness. Here be high fantasy from the golden pen of the Grand Master himself, Lin Carter!

WELCOME TO TERRA MAGICA...

Terra Magica, the fabulous land next door to our own Terra Cognita, is where trolls and monsters, warriors and wizards vie over virtuous maidens and the wealth of kingdoms...

Callipygia the Amazon and her stalwart knight Mandricardo had had more than enough. All they really wanted was to avoid the perils, both swordlike and sorcerous, of the many fabled lands of Terra Magica and win their way home.

But a realm of roving monsters and wild enchantments is not so easily traveled, and when Callipygia and Mandricardo find themselves trapped on a spell-run flying island from which no one has ever escaped, it signals the start of a madcap romp of magic and menace that will lead them to far-distant lands and new dangers...

Taken from their planet and their century, they are not just the Lost Soldiers: they are Murphy's Lawless.

Major Rodger Y. Murphy should have died when his helicopter crashed off the coast of Mogadishu in 1993. Instead, he woke up in 2125, 152 light-years from home. Murphy and a hundred other "Lost Soldiers" have been retrieved and awakened by two officers of the Consolidated Terran Republic: Trevor Corcoran and Richard Downing.

Promising to return, Corcoran and Downing leave the twentieth-century castaways with a daunting objective: establish a base of operations on the main world of R'Bak using local allies they have yet to recruit and enemy equipment they have yet to seize.

They haven't been back yet.

But the company of misfits and ne'er-do-wells who've taken the nickname Murphy's Lawless rises to the challenge!

It has been 15 Terran months since Colonel Rodger Murphy and his Lost Soldiers were dropped in the 55 Tauri binary system. Since then, they have forged an uneasy alliance with space-dwelling descendants of the Ktor, liberated the earlier human inhabitants of the planet R'bak, and driven their oppressors from the neighboring system back into a few fortified cities.

But there's another pivotal battle looming before them: intercepting the Harvester fleet sent by those same oppressors, the Kulsians. And time is growing short. The two stars are nearing periastron, which the natives of R'Bak call the Searing, due to the approach of the blistering F-class star. That's when the Kulsians cross the 10 AU separating the systems to strip R'Bak of rare biological resources and destroy any powers that might become a challenge to future Harvesters. But Murphy has a plan to break that cycle of interstellar rapine. With the cooperation of both indigenous R'Baku and the mutually suspicious Spindogs and Rockhounds, the Lost Soldiers--now sporting the nickname Murphy's Lawless--have pulled off a delicate scheme to capture an advanced Kulsian corvette. The objective: to improve the cutting-edge warship and use Spindog "autofab" technology to create a flotilla with which to repel the Harvester fleet.

But true to the source of the Lawless nickname, Murphy's Law may be their greatest foe. Murphy's worsening multiple sclerosis is becoming impossible to hide, and the corvettes are proving far more difficult to replicate than anything the Spindogs have ever attempted.

However, it's the job of training and forging crews from the highly competitive Spindogs and Rock Hounds that is pushing both groups toward mutiny--and possibly murder. The only chance to bring all those forces together? Ex-Navy fighter jock Kevin Bowden--now known as "The Admiral"--who has his work cut out for him.

Problem is, both Bowden and Murphy are running out of time. Not only is the Harvester fleet coming earlier than expected, but it's bigger than ever before. Much bigger. And its objective is clear: to reassert complete control over the system and annihilate Murphy's Lawless, their allies, and any who would stand with them.

It's just a little later than now and Lola Hart is writing her life in a diary. She's a nice middle-class girl on the verge of her teens who schools at the calm end of town. A normal, happy, girl. But in a disintegrating New York she is a dying breed. War is breaking out on Long Island, the army boys are flamethrowing the streets, five Presidents have been assassinated in a year. No one notices any more. Soon Lola and her family must move over to the Lower East side - Loisaida - to the Pit and the new language of violence of the streets. The metamorphosis of the nice Lola Hart into the new model Lola has begun...

The year is 1998, and the nightmare is close at hand.

The world economy has gone into a mega-crash. Most of the population has been plunged into abject poverty. Anarchy and violence stalk the streets. All power is in the hands of Dryco, headed by paranoid tycoon Thatcher Dryden, and his monstrous wife, Susie.

But on the desperate streets of the Lower East Side miracles are happening. A Messiah seems to have risen from the people and is healing the sick, teaching children, raising the dead.

Dryco's New Projects Manager, Joanna, is sent to check him out. Thatcher's got a plan for world domination, and a genuine Messiah could be the key he's looking for. And even if he's fake, he may have his uses.

But soon, Joanna finds herself trapped in a crisis of conscience, between the relative security of a Dryco job and the dream of healing a sick world.

You need to be rich to survive at all. But it's easier to be dead than poor.

Twenty-first-century New York. It's a nightmare. Reaganomics has gone mad. There's murder and mutilation on the bombed-out streets and in the corporate conference rooms. Manhattan is a zoo. There's guerrilla war on Long Island.

Seamus O'Malley is a bodyguard and assassin in the outrageously powerful Dryco organisation, and he's in deep trouble. Taking the job sounded like a good idea at the time. Falling in love with his employer's mistress, Avalon, probably wasn't so bright. Getting caught up in the Dryden family's crazy rivalries didn't help. Agreeing to murder the Old Man was plain stupid. And getting involved with the Ambients could only complicate matters further.

Before long, O'Malley's on the run, and there's nowhere safe to hide.

Terraplane is a vision of alternate reality -- New York in 1939, as experienced by travelers from the twenty-first century. Retired general-turned-corporate-spy Luther Biggerstaff and his hit man Jake are on a covert mission to kidnap Soviet superscientist Alekhine for their boss, the head of the multinational corporation Dryco. But Alekhine has disappeared, and they must be content with his genius assistant Oktobriana and a device he left behind -- which catapults them headlong into the past. But this 1939 is different -- slavery was not abolished until 1907, F.D.R. has been assassinated, and the Great Depression has cut even deeper; Churchill has died in a street accident, and the world is at Hitler's mercy. The only hope Luther and Jake have of getting home again depends on an unlikely conjunction of the New York World's Fair, the blues tunes of Robert Johnson, and the avant-garde physics of Nikola Tesla. Terraplane is a surreal, darkly comic, and gripping journey into the twilight zone of history gone mad.

Elvissey is Jack Womack's most ambitious novel to date. At once brilliant satire & taut, fast-paced adventure, Elvissey is the story of a troubled couple who voyage across time on a desperate mission -- to kidnap the young Elvis Presley at the dawn of his career, & make him a demigod in a decadent urban future. A poignant, unforgettable tour-de-force of the imagination, Elvissey is a darkly comic vision of a violent, paranoid world struggling for redemption & hope.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK...

Walter Bullitt's New York, 1968. Part-time U.S. government provocateur and full-time hepcat, Walter isn't keen on the assignment his employers are trying to toss him - no need to mix with the Kennedys if you don't have to.

...SO GOOD THEY MADE IT TWICE

He also hopes the ghosts he's been talking to lately are only a side-effect of the recreational drugs. Then two women from a different New York show up and tell him they aren't. Now, Walter saw When Worlds Collide but he never thought he'd be starring in the road show, especially when one world is his and the other is invisible - at the moment.

Jean Johnson's first novel in an explosive new science fiction trilogy set in the world of the national bestselling Theirs Not to Reason Why series--set two-hundred years earlier, at the dawn of the First Salik War...

Born into a political family and gifted with psychic abilities, Jacaranda MacKenzie has served as a border-watcher and even spent time as a representative on the United Planets Council. Now she just wants to spend her days in peace and quiet as a translator--but the universe has other plans...

Humans have long known that they would encounter more alien species, and while those with precognitive abilities agree a terrible war is coming, they do not agree on who will save humanity--a psychic soldier or a politician.

But Jackie is both.

After she is pressured into rejoining the Space Force to forestall the impending calamity, Jackie makes an unsettling discovery. Their new enemy, the Salik, seem to be rather familiar with fighting Humans--as if their war against humanity had already begun...

Marseguro, a water world far from Earth, is home to a colony of humans and the Selkies, a water-dwelling race created from modified human DNA. For seventy years the colony has lived in peace. Then Earth discovers Marseguro, and a strike force is sent to eradicate this "abomination." But Marseguro has created a genetically tailored plague to use against Earth's Holy Warriors.

With the enemy defeated, the people of Marseguro feel they are safe. But Chris Keating, the traitor who signaled Marseguro's location to the Holy Warriors, has fled to Earth, unknowingly carrying the deadly plague within him. The people of Marseguro feel they must send a ship to Earth with a life-saving vaccine. Only time will tell what awaits them when they reach their destination.

An anthology of Horus Heresy tales written by some of Black Library's bestselling authors.

Once, the title of Warmaster stood for honour, loyalty and a fierce pride in the strength of the Space Marine Legions. But perhaps by following the myriad lines of destiny and defiance that were already woven around the primarchs and their sons, we may yet come to understand the bitterness that can eat away at even the most steadfast of souls...

This Horus Heresy anthology contains fifteen short stories by authors such as Graham McNeill, Nick Kyme, Gav Thorpe and many more. It also includes Aaron Dembski-Bowden's acclaimed novella Aurelian.

In the midst of the Siege of Terra, Magnus the Red embarks on a very personal mission -- one that will bring him face to face with the Emperor once more!

Of all the Emperor's sons who fell to Chaos, it is perhaps Magnus the Red whose tale is the most tragic. Sanctioned because of his desire for knowledge, chastised, judged, and shattered to his very elements -- there is much for the Crimson King to feel vengeful for. Yet revenge is not the only thing that draws him to Terra alongside the Warmaster's besieging armies. He seeks something, a fragment, the missing piece of himself that lies within the most impregnable place on the planet -- the inner sanctum of the Imperial Palace. As the greatest conflict of the ages reaches fever pitch, Magnus fights his own inner battle. To be whole once more, he must not only overcome the fiercest of defences, but also face the one being whom he loves and hates with equal fervour more than any other -- his errant father, the Emperor of Mankind.

A Siege of Terra novella from New York Times best selling author Graham McNeill.

The Shattered Legion crew of the Sisypheum, broken and at the end of their endurance, find themselves divided; torn between following their resurrected captain on a suicidal mission or obeying orders to return to Terra and rejoin their Legion brothers.

Following a series of garbled messages intercepted by the Kryptos, the divided warriors descend to the shattered surface of Luna. Here, their bonds of loyalty, duty, as well as their devotion to one another will be tested as ancient horrors of the earliest days of genemanipulation are unleashed, and a longburied secret is revealed.

A secret that will have farreaching consequences for the future course of the galaxy, no matter who eventually claims Terra.

Explore the final stages of the New York Times Bestselling Series The Horus Heresy in this fantastic miniseries, a must have for all fans!

After seven years of bitter war, the end has come at last for the conflict known infamously as the Horus Heresy. Terra now lies within the Warmaster's sights, the Throneworld and the seat of his father's rule. Horus' desire is nothing less than the death of the Emperor of Mankind and the utter subjugation of the Imperium. He has become the ascendant vessel of Chaos, and amassed a terrible army with which to enact his will and vengeance. But the way to the Throne will be hard as the primarch Rogal Dorn, the Praetorian and protector of Terra, marshals the defences. First and foremost, Horus must challenge the might of the Sol System itself and the many fleets and bulwarks arrayed there. To gain even a foothold on Terran soil, he must first contend the Solar War. Thus the first stage of the greatest conflict in the history of all mankind begins.

Book 2 in The Horus Heresy: The Siege of Terra. Essential reading for all Horus Heresy fans. Discover the lengths to which Horus will go to claim Terra as his own!

On the thirteenth day of Secundus, the bombardment of Terra began... With the solar defences overcome through the devastating strength of the Traitor armada and the power of the warp, Horus launches his assault on the Throneworld in earnest. After withstanding a ferocious barrage of ordnance, an immense ground war commences outside the Palace with every inch gained paid for in the lives of billions. The front lines are beyond horrific and the very air is reduced to poison and blood. Bodies are thrown into the meatgrinder but the outer redoubts cannot possibly hold for long, even with the loyal primarchs to reinforce them. For Horus has his own generals to call upon... Between the plague weapons of Mortarion and the fury of Angron, the defenders face a losing battle.

Book 3 in the Global best selling Horus Heresy Siege of Terra series

The war for the fate of mankind blazes on. Though the outer defences have fallen, the walls of the Palace itself remain inviolate as Rogal Dorn, the Praetorian of Terra himself, uses every known stratagem and ploy to keep Horus's vast armies at bay. In Perturabo, the Traitor siegebreaker, Dorn faces an adversary worthy of his skill. A terrible, grinding attrition ensues. The crucial battle for the Lion's Gate spaceport is at the heart of this conflict. With it in their possession, the Traitors can land their most devastating weapons on Terran soil. Dorn knows it must not fall. But with enemies attacking from within as well as without and the stirrings of the neverborn drawn to the slaughter, can the Imperial defenders possibly prevail?

As the traitors tighten their grip on Terra, Rogal Dorn must marshal the Imperial hosts to weather the storm. But not all of the defenders will survive the onslaught…

The Traitor Host of Horus Lupercal tightens its iron grip on the Palace of Terra, and one by one the walls and bastions begin to crumple and collapse. Rogal Dorn, Praetorian of Terra, redoubles his efforts to keep the relentless enemy at bay, but his forces are vastly outnumbered and hopelessly outgunned. Dorn simply cannot defend everything. Any chance of survival now requires sacrifice, but what battles dare he lose so that others can be won? Is there one tactical stroke, one crucial combat, that could turn the tide forever and win the war outright?

The victories of Saturnine and the sacrifices of the Eternity Wall space port have faded into the hope of yesterday. Denied but not defeated, the traitors intensify their assault on the Imperial Palace. With the principal space ports in Horus' hands, the Warmaster now drains the heavens of his reserves. As the pressure of the assault increases, the power of Chaos waxes. The waking lives of the defenders are filled with despair, while their dreams pull them in search of a false paradise.

As the fabric of the defences fails and the will of those who stand on them cracks, Horus commands the Titans of the Legio Mortis to breach the walls. Against them stands the might of Mercury Wall and the strength of the Legio Ignatum. Ancient rivals, the god-engines of both Legions meet in battle, while within the walls a few desperate individuals seek a way to turn back the tide of the warp's malign influence. Across Terra lost warriors and travellers make their way through wastelands and gardens of horror, towards home and an unknown future.

With the Lion's Gate space port taken by the enemy, Jaghatai Khan of the White Scars prepares a brazen gambit, but one of his former brothers rises to take up arms against him.

The Inner Walls are breached.

Traitor vanguards tear towards the heart of the Palace, sensing victory. Desperate gambits are attempted: an unwilling saint is released into the ruins, as well as an enthusiastic sinner. A black sword rises, forged from spite, ready to create a legend. But amid the slaughter, Jaghatai Khan, Warhawk of Chogoris, prepares to launch the most audacious strike of the conflict. His goal is nothing less than the liberation of the Lion's Gate space port. Cut off from any help, he stakes everything on one desperate counter-offensive, launched against an old enemy who has been made far greater than he ever was before. As the White Scars ride out against the newly crowned lords of life and death, they know that defeat for them dooms not only the Legion, but Terra itself.

The walls have fallen. The defenders are broken. The Inner Palace lies in ruins.

The Warmaster's horde advances through the fire and ash of Terra's dying breaths, forcing the loyalists back to the Delphic Battlement -- the very walls of the Sanctum Imperialis. Angron, Primarch of the World Eaters and Herald of Horus, has achieved immortality through annihilation -- now he leads the armies of the damned in a wrathful tide, destroying all before them as the warp begins its poisonous corruption of Terra's very soil.

For the Emperor's beleaguered forces, the end has come. The Khan lies on the edge of death. Rogal Dorn is encircled, fighting his own war at Bhab Bastion. Guilliman will not reach Terra in time. Without his brothers, Sanguinius -- the Angel of the Ninth Legion -- waits on the final battlements, hoping to rally a desperate band of defenders and refugees for one last stand.

The Doctor and Ace arrive in London 1951, but discover that somehow the Nazis have won the war. They must travel back into the history of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party to ensure that history is restored to its proper course. Timewyrm: Exodus is an original Doctor Who novel, published by Virgin Publishing in their New Adventures range of Doctor Who novels. It is a sequel to author Terrance Dick's 1969 Second Doctor story The War Games as well as part of the ongoing four novel Timewyrm narrative.

"Doc's peddling bootleg liquor in an illegal speakeasy. You're carrying a gun for him, Ace - which makes you no better than any other gun-moll."

Dekker is a private eye; an honest one. But when Al Capone hires him to investigate a new joint called 'Doc's', he knows this is one job he can't refuse. And just why are the Doctor and Ace selling illegal booze in a town full of murderous gangsters?

Meanwhile, Bernice has been abandoned on a vampire-infested planet outside normal space. There she meets a mysterious stranger called Romanadvoratrelundar -- and discovers an ancient and malevolent power, linking 1929 Chicago with a lair of immortal evil.

The consequences of this story are inextricably linked to events in the Doctor's past.

For thousands of years the Sontarans and the Rutans have fought a brutal war across the galaxy. Now the Sontarans have a secret plan to destroy the Rutan race - a secret plan the Doctor is racing against time to uncover. Only one Rutan spy knows the Sontarans' plan. As he is chased through the galaxy in a desperate bid for his life, he reaches the planet Sentarion - where Professor Bernice Summerfield's research into the history of the Sontaran-Rutan war is turning into an explosive reality. It is an adventure featuring the Seventh Doctor, as played by Sylvester McCoy.

Table of Contents:

• In Search of European Science Fiction - essay by Richard D. Nolane
• Test Flesh - short story by Gianni Montanari (trans. of Universo e Dintorni 1978)
• Parallel Worlds - short story by Paul van Herck (trans. of Parallel 1978)
• The Fifth Time Out - short story by Bertil Martensson
• Drugs'll Do You - (1978) - short story by Kathinka Lannoy (trans. of Drugs)
• Opportunities Galore (Cuestión de oportunidades) - (1978) - novelette by Gabriel Bermúdez Castillo (trans. of Cuestión de oportunidades)
• Fill in the Blank(s) - (1978) - novelette by Michel Jeury (trans. of Les colmateurs)
• Where Neuroses Thrive - short story by Richard D. Nolane (trans. of Où fleurissent les névroses 1978)
• Back to Earth, Finally - (1976) - novelette by Philip Goy (trans. of Retour à la Terre, définitif)
• Take Me Down the River - (1979) - short story by Sam J. Lundwall
• Turnabout - (1977) - short story by Ingar Knudtsen, Jr.
• Aruna - (1979) - short story by Erwin Neutzsky-Wulff
• Red Rhombuses - (1981) - novelette by Lino Aldani (trans. of Screziato di rosso 1977)
• The Many Miniworlds of Matuschek - novelette by Thomas Ziegler (trans. of Matuscheks Welten 1978)
• End of an Era - novelette by Hans Joachim Alpers and Ronald M. Hahn (trans. of Zusammenbruch 1976)
• Meet the Authors - essay by uncredited

Table of Contents:

• Preface - essay by Richard D. Nolane
• Shoobeedoowah Across the Universe - short story by Karl Michael Armer (trans. of Durch das Weltall, schubiduwah 1986)
• The Hospital, a Cynical Fable - short story by Daniel Walther (trans. of L'hôpital, une fable cynique 1982)
• El Pape - (1983) - novelette by Bob van Laerhoven (trans. of El Pape)
• John Henry - short story by Øyvind Myhre
• The Biological Truth - (1982) - short story by Veikko Rekunen
• Disslish the Aquamancer - short story by Tais Teng (trans. of Disslish de Aquamancer 1981)
• The Last Atlantean - short story by Francis Carsac (trans. of Celui qui vint de la Grande Eau 1982)
• Mikey Turns Three - short story by Merete Kruuse (trans. of Mugger Blive Tre)
• The Emerald-Studded Scepter - novelette by Carlos Saiz Cidoncha (trans. of El cetro de esmeraldas 1980)
• In Search of Aurade - novelette by Gianluigi Zuddas (trans. of Per cercare Aurade 1981)
• The Ogre's Head - short story by Richard D. Nolane (trans. of La tête de l'ogre)
• Haike the Heretic's Writings - novelette by Wolfgang Jeschke (trans. of Dokumente über den Zustand des Landes vor der Verheerung 1981)

The Nemesis From Terra:

Rick Urquahrt was going to conquer the turmoil-ridden planet of Mars. He was penniless and unknown, but there could be no doubt that he would rule the Red Planet - the ancient Martian mystic had made the prophecy, there was no way fate could cheat him of his prize.

But there were powerful interests on both Earth and Mars who didn't believe in prophecies - and they were going to undo Rick's future before it had a chance to begin.

Battle for the Stars:

A husband and wife find themselves at odds with each other when they become the center of a whirlpool of galactic intrigue.

BEHIND THE WALLS OF TERRA .... LAY THE SECRET NO MAN COULD BE ALLOWED TO LEARN!

Kickaha was the name by which Paul Janus Finnegan, adventurer had been known on the artificial universes created by that super-race known as the Lords. And though Earthman and mortal, he had survived the worst they could throw at him.

But it was to be upon his return to Earth that Kickaha was to face his greatest trial. For once back on the streets of an American city, armed with the knowledge of the forces that moved the heavens, he was a target for the cosmic venom of the powers that contended for this very universe.

BEHIND THE WALLS OF TERRA lay a secret no human could learn - and live. But Kickaha had learned it - and he was not going to take it lying down!

The diplomatic mission from Earth to World ended in disaster, as the Earth scientists discovered that the Worlders were not the scientifically advanced culture they believed. Though they brought a limited quantity of the vaccine against the deadly spore cloud, there was no way to make enough to vaccinate more than a few dozen. The Earth scientists, and surviving diplomats, fled back to Earth.

But once home, after the 28-year gap caused by the space ship transit, they find an Earth changed almost beyond recognition. In the aftermath of the spore cloud plague, the human race has been reduced to only a few million isolated survivors. The knowledge brought back by Marianne Jenner and her staff may not be enough to turn the tide of ongoing biological warfare.