Search Worlds Without End

In the far future, a group of evolved utopians stranded on an inhospitable planet are unable to resist the reemergence of the human animal

One million years in the future, the universe has become a utopia for the humans inhabiting it. Having evolved into the race homo uniformis--"man alike throughout"--they share a centralized nervous system and know nothing of war, disease, violence, emotion, or any of the ancient ills that plagued their ancestors. But while en route to a vacation that is light years from Earth, a small group of elite travelers find themselves marooned in the wilderness of the planet Lysenka. And they are not alone. Many millennia ago, during Earth's darker days, human colonists came to this regenerate world, and the creatures their descendants became out of necessity bear little resemblance to the uniquely civilized beings now stranded in their midst. Here, in this place far removed from the protection of uniformity, there is only one rule: Adapt--or die.

One of the twentieth century's premier practitioners of the art of science fiction, Grand Master Brian W. Aldiss offers readers a startling look into the far future with a remarkable work of speculation that explores what it means to be human.

Greybeard

The sombre story of a group of people in their fifties who face the fact that there is no younger generation coming to replace them; instead nature is rushing back to obliterate the disaster they have brought on theselves.

HARM

Because Change Was the Ocean and We Lived By Her Mercy

The time is today or tomorrow - or perhaps the day after tomorrow. Paul Fadhil Abbas Ali, a young British citizen of Muslim descent, has written a satirical novel in which two characters joke about the assassination of the prime minister. Arrested by agents of HARM - the Hostile Activities Research Ministry - Paul is thrown into a nameless Abu Ghraib-like prison, possibly located in Syria, where he is held incommunicado and brutally interrogated by jailers to whom his Muslim heritage is itself a crime meriting the harshest punishment. Under this sadistic regime, Paul's personality begins to show signs of radical fragmentation....

On the remote planet of Stygia, a man named Fremant, haunted by memories of torture that seem drawn from Paul's mind, is one of a small group of colonists struggling for survival on a harsh but weirdly beautiful world whose dominant life-forms are insects. The sole humanoid race on the planet has been hunted to extinction by the human settlers, whose long journey to Stygia has left them unable to understand their own history and technology.

Thrown back to a more primitive state, they seem destined to repeat all the sins of the world they fled to Stygia to escape.

Is Paul dreaming Fremant as a way of escaping the horrors of his imprisonment? Or is there a stronger - and far stranger - connection between the two men, whose very different circumstances begin to take on uncanny parallels?

As aspects of their identities blur and, finally, merge, astonishing answers take shape - and profound new questions arise.

Anna

Niccolo Ammaniti

It is four years since the virus came, killing every adult in its path. Not long after that the electricity failed. Food and water started running out. Fires raged across the country. Now Anna cares for her brother alone in a house hidden in the woods, keeping him safe from 'the Outside'. But, when the time comes, Anna knows they must leave their world and find another.

By turns luminous and tender, gripping and horrifying, Anna is a haunting parable of love and loneliness; of the stories we tell to sustain us, and the lengths we will go to in order to stay alive.

All the Birds in the Sky

Charlie Jane Anders

From the editor-in-chief of io9.com, a stunning novel about the end of the world -- and the beginning of our future

Childhood friends Patricia Delfine and Laurence Armstead didn't expect to see each other again, after parting ways under mysterious circumstances during high school. After all, the development of magical powers and the invention of a two-second time machine could hardly fail to alarm one's peers and families.

But now they're both adults, living in the hipster mecca San Francisco, and the planet is falling apart around them. Laurence is an engineering genius who's working with a group that aims to avert catastrophic breakdown through technological intervention into the changing global climate. Patricia is a graduate of Eltisley Maze, the hidden academy for the world's magically gifted, and works with a small band of other magicians to secretly repair the world's ever-growing ailments. Little do they realize that something bigger than either of them, something begun years ago in their youth, is determined to bring them together -- to either save the world, or plunge it into a new dark ages.

A deeply magical, darkly funny examination of life, love, and the apocalypse.

As Good As New

Charlie Jane Anders

From the author of the Hugo-winning "Six Months, Three Days," a new wrinkle on the old story of three wishes, set after the end of the world.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Charlie Jane Anders

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Drowned Worlds (2016), edited Jonathan Strahan, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, December 2017. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

After Doomsday

The novel explores events after the destruction of Earth, from the point of view of two returning starship crews, one entirely made up of men, the other consisting entirely of women.

(Wikipedia)

Homebrew

Melissa Marr
Kelley Armstrong

Table of Contents:

Foreword - (1976) - essay
House Rule - shortstory
Ballade of an Artificial Satellite - (1958) - poem
The First Love - (1960) - poem
Upon the Occasion of Being Asked to Argue That Love and Marriage Are Incompatible - (1973) - poem
Limericks - (1976) - poem
Two Songs - (1976) - essay
Science Fiction and Freedom - (1969) - essay
Notes Toward a Definition of Science Fiction - (1971) - essay
The Archetypical Holmes - (1968) - essay
A Blessedness of Saints - (1962) - essay
A Philosophical Dialogue - (1971) - shortstory
Lost Secrets Revealed - (1972) - essay
Uncleavish Truethinking - (1963) - essay
Herrings - (1959) - essay

Shards & Ashes

Table of Contents:

ix - Introduction (Shards and Ashes) - essay by Kelley Armstrong and Melissa Marr
1 - Hearken - novelette by Veronica Roth
38 - Branded - [Otherworld] - novella by Kelley Armstrong
90 - Necklace of Raindrops - novelette by Margaret Stohl
130 - Dogsbody - novelette by Rachel Caine
179 - Pale Rider - novelette by Nancy Holder
216 - Corpse Eaters - novelette by Melissa Marr
247 - Burn 3 - novelette by Kami Garcia
277 - Love Is a Choice - [Across the Universe] - novelette by Beth Revis
311 - Miasma - novella by Carrie Ryan
365 - About the Authors (Shards and Ashes)

The Guardians

Richard Austin

Unknown to most American's, there is a plan for the day after. Before the dust of World War III has settled, Project Guardian moves into action. America's secret weapon is a four-man elite survival team, armed with awesome combat skills, equipped with the most devastating personal weaponry ever devised, trained to hair-trigger tautness, and entrusted with freedom's last hope: the top secret Blueprint for Renewal.

First step: get the new President safely out of ravaged Washington, across a thousand miles of chaos, and into the impregnable midwestern fortress known as Heartland.

A tall order, even for a bunch of hardcore heroes.

Pump Six and Other Stories

The People of Sand and Slag

Paolo Bacigalupi's debut collection demonstrates the power and reach of the science fiction short story. Social criticism, political parable, and environmental advocacy lie at the center of Paolo's work. Each of the stories herein is at once a warning, and a celebration of the tragic comedy of the human experience.

The eleven stories in Pump Six represent the best Paolo's work, including the Hugo nominee "Yellow Card Man," the nebula and Hugo nominated story "The People of Sand and Slag," and the Sturgeon Award-winning story "The Calorie Man."

Table of Contents:

Pocketful of Dharma - (1999)
The Fluted Girl - (2003)
The People of Sand and Slag - (2004)
The Pasho - (2004)
The Calorie Man - (2005)
The Tamarisk Hunter - (2006)
Pop Squad - (2006)
Yellow Card Man - (2006)
Softer - (2007)
Pump Six - (2008)

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novelette.

In "The People of Sand and Slag" Paolo Bacigalupi weaves a tale about the lives of three technologically modified guards, their barren, heavily mined landscape, and a chance encounter with a creature rare for their time period -- a dog. What starts off as a hunt for an enemy ends up as a story of empathy, and what it means to be human.

The story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 2004. It has been antologized in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Second Annual Collection (2005), edited by Gardner Dozois, Science Fiction: The Best of 2004, edited by Karen Haber and Jonathan Strahan, and Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, edited by John Joseph Adams. It is also included in the collection Pump Six and Other Stories (2008).

Read the full story for free at the author's website, or listen to a podcast of this story at Drabblecast.

The Water Knife

Paolo Bacigalupi, New York Times-Bestselling author and National Book Award Finalist, dives once again onto our uncertain future with his first thriller for adults since his multi-award winning debut phenomenon The Windup Girl.

In the American Southwest, Nevada, Arizona, and California skirmish for dwindling shares of the Colorado River. Into the fray steps Angel Velasquez, detective, leg-breaker, assassin and spy. A Las Vegas water knife, Angel "cuts" water for his boss, Catherine Case, ensuring that her lush, luxurious arcology developments can bloom in the desert, so the rich can stay wet, while the poor get nothing but dust. When rumors of a game-changing water source surface in drought-ravaged Phoenix, Angel is sent to investigate. There, he encounters Lucy Monroe, a hardened journalist with no love for Vegas and every reason to hate Angel, and Maria Villarosa, a young Texas refugee who survives by her wits and street smarts in a city that despises everything that she represents.

With bodies piling up, bullets flying, and Phoenix teetering on collapse, it seems like California is making a power play to monopolize the life-giving flow of a river. For Angel, Lucy, and Maria time is running out and their only hope for survival rests in each other's hands. But when water is more valuable than gold, alliances shift like sand, and the only thing for certain is that someone will have to bleed if anyone hopes to drink.

The Books

Kage Baker

In a time beyond the apocalypse, when the remnants of society are trying to restore life to the way it once was, three young circus children go exploring in the town where the circus is camped. As they wander the empty streets they stumble upon a building they will never forget, in which floor after floor is crammed with an abundance of books. This library is heaven for these child survivors of the apocalypse, but they may not be the only ones who feel this way.

This short story originally appreared in the anthology The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF (2010), edited by Mike Asley. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection (2011), edited by Gardner Dozois, After the End: Recent Apocalypses (2013), edited by Paula Guran, and Ex Libris: Stories of Librarians, Libraries & Lore (2017), edited by Paula Guran.

Crash

The definitive cult, post-modern novel -- a shocking blend of violence, transgression and eroticism.

When our narrator smashes his car into another and watches a man die in front of him, his sense of sexual possibilities in the world around him becomes detached. As he begins an affair with the dead man's wife, he finds himself drawn with increasing intensity to the mangled impacts of car crashes.

Then he encounters Robert Vaughan, a former TV scientist turned nightmare angel of the expressway, who has gathered around him a collection of alienated crash victims and experiments with a series of erotic atrocities, each more sinister than the last. But Vaughan craves the ultimate crash - a head-on collision of blood, semen, engine coolant and iconic celebrity.

First published in 1973 'Crash' remains one of the most shocking novels of the second half of the twentieth century and was made into an equally controversial film by David Cronenburg.

High-Rise

Within the concealing walls of an elegant forty-storey tower block, the affluent tenants are hell-bent on an orgy of destruction. Cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on 'enemy' floors and the once-luxurious amenities become an arena for technological mayhem!In this classic visionary tale, human society slips into violent reverse as the inhabitants of the high-rise, driven by primal urges, recreate a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.

The Atrocity Exhibition

The Four-Dimensional Nightmare / The Voices of Time

The irrational, all-pervading violence of the modern world is the subject of this extraordinary tour de force.

The central character's dreams are haunted by images of John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe, dead astronauts and car-crash victims as he traverses the screaming wastes of nervous breakdown. Seeking his sanity, he casts himself in a number of roles: H-bomber pilot, presidential assassin, crash victim, psychopath. Finally, through the black, perverse magic of violence he transcends his psychic turmoil to find the key to a bizarre new sexuality.

Table of Contents:

You and Me and the Continuum - (1966)
Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan - (1968)
You: Coma: Marilyn Monroe - (1966)
The Assassination Weapon - (1966)
The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race - (1966)
The Atrocity Exhibition - (1966)
Plan for the Assassination of Jacqueline Kennedy - (1966)
Crash! - (1969)
Love and Napalm: Export U.S.A. - (1968)
Tolerances of the Human Face - (1969)
The Summer Cannibals - (1969)
The Great American Nude - (1968)
The University of Death - (1968)
Notes Towards a Mental Breakdown - (1967)
The Generations of America - (1968)

Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus

Contains:

The Voices of Time
Chronopolis
The Cage of Sand
Prima Belladona
Studio 5, The Stars
The Garden of Time
The Sound-Sweep
The Watch-Towers

Mage Against the Machine

Shaun Barger

The year is 2120. The humans are dead. The mages have retreated from the world after a madman blew up civilization with weaponized magical technology. Safe within domes that protect them from the nuclear wasteland on the other side, the mages have spent the last century putting their lives back together.

Nikolai is obsessed with artifacts from twentieth-century human life: mage-crafted replica Chuck Taylors on his feet, Schwarzenegger posters on his walls, Beatlemania still alive and well in his head. But he's also tasked with a higher calling--to maintain the Veils that protect mage-kind from the hazards of the wastes beyond. As a cadet in the Mage King's army, Nik has finally found what he always wanted--a purpose. But when confronted by one of his former instructors gone rogue, Nik tumbles into a dark secret. The humans weren't nuked into oblivion--they're still alive. Not only that, outside the domes a war rages between the last enclaves of free humans and vast machine intelligences.

Outside the dome, unprepared and on the run, Nik finds Jem. Jem is a Runner for the Human Resistance. A ballerina-turned-soldier by the circumstances of war, Jem is more than just a human--her cybernetic enhancement mods make her faster, smarter, and are the only things that give her a fighting chance against the artificial beings bent on humanity's eradication.

Now Nik faces an impossible decision: side with the mages and let humanity die out? Or stand with Jem and the humans--and risk endangering everything he knows and loves?

Neal Barrett, Jr.

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, February 1988. It can also be found in the anthologies Nebula Awards 24 (1990), edited by Michael Bishop, Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse (2008), edited by John Joseph Adams and Circus: Fantasy Under the Big Top (2012) edited by Ekaterina Sedia. It is included in the collecitons Perpetuity Blues and Other Stories (2000) and Other Seasons: The Best of Neal Barrett, Jr. (2012).

The Spacetime Pit Plus Two

Stephen Baxter
Eric Brown

The Spacetime Pit Plus Two collects three collaborative stories by two of science fiction's finest writers. Never before published in one volume, the triptych showcases the authors' ability to create narratives on a vast scale, and yet never to lose sight of the all-important human element.

In the award-winning 'The Spacetime Pit', spacer Katerina Wake crash-lands on a primitive alien world and faces certain death unless she can harness her ingenuity, and technical know-how, to bend the destiny of an entire race to her will...

'Green-Eyed Monster' follows Richard as he wakes up after a night on the tiles to find himself inhabiting the body of a toad - and that's just the start of his troubles...

In 'Sunfly', Onara and her people live on a world very different from our own - a vast ribbon encircling a sun. But a change is coming to the land, a mysterious narrowing that threatens not only the stability of her world, but the very order of everything she has taken for granted.

Table of Contents:

9 - Introduction (The Spacetime Pit Plus Two) - essay by Eric Brown
13 - The Spacetime Pit - (1996) - novelette by Stephen Baxter and Eric Brown
53 - Green-Eyed Monster - (2000) - short story by Stephen Baxter and Eric Brown
77 - Sunfly - (1995) - short fiction by Stephen Baxter and Eric Brown

Evolution

Stretching from the distant past into the remote future, from primordial Earth to the stars, Evolution is a soaring symphony of struggle, extinction, and survival; a dazzling epic that combines a dozen scientific disciplines and a cast of unforgettable characters to convey the grand drama of evolution in all its awesome majesty and rigorous beauty.

Sixty-five million years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, there lived a small mammal, a proto-primate of the species Purgatorius. From this humble beginning, Baxter traces the human lineage forward through time. The adventure that unfolds is a gripping odyssey governed by chance and competition, a perilous journey to an uncertain destination along a route beset by sudden and catastrophic upheavals. It is a route that ends, for most species, in stagnation or extinction. Why should humanity escape this fate?

Galaxias

What would happen to the world if the sun went out?

New epic sci-fi from Stephen Baxter, the award-winning author whose credits include co-authorship of the Long Earth series with Terry Pratchett.

By the middle of the 21st century, humanity has managed to overcome a series of catastrophic events and maintain some sense of stability. Space exploration has begun again. Science has led the way.

But then one day, the sun goes out. Solar panels are useless, and the world begins to freeze

Earth begins to fall out of its orbit.

The end is nigh.

Someone has sent us a sign.

The H-Bomb Girl

Liverpool 1962. A place and time of danger and passion. A thrilling new music is bursting on to the grey streets of the post-war city. A music that electrifies. A music that promises to change everything. But in Cuba, on the other side of the earth, nuclear tensions are at breaking point. The end of the whole world could be just days away. At the heart of it all is 14-year-old Laura Mann. She's on the run, hunted by strange forces fighting over the future of humanity. And Laura's about to discover that her own life is at stake - in ways she could never have imagined...

Blood Music

Rob Ziegler
Bradley P. Beaulieu

An amazing breakthrough in genetic engineering made by Vergil Ulam is considered too dangerous for further research, but rather than destroy his work, he injects himself with his creation and walks out of his lab, unaware of just quite how his actions will change the world. Author Greg Bear's treatment of the traditional tale of scientific hubris is both suspenseful and a compelling portrait of a new intelligence emerging amongst us, irrevocably changing our world.

The Burning Light

Disgraced government operative Colonel Chu is exiled to the flooded relic of New York City. Something called the Light has hit the streets like an epidemic, leavings its users strung out and disconnected from the mind-network humanity relies on. Chu has lost everything she cares about to the Light. She'll end the threat or die trying.

A former corporate pilot who controlled a thousand ships with her mind, Zola looks like just another Light-junkie living hand to mouth on the edge of society. She's special though. As much as she needs the Light, the Light needs her too. But, Chu is getting close and Zola can't hide forever.

The Torch

Jack Bechdolt

A fascinating science fiction novel set in 3010, in New York's ruins after a comet shattered Earth. A must-read for science-fiction lovers.

The novel is set in the year 3010, in the ruins of New York after a comet has devastated the Earth. Fortune is the captain of the army of the Towermen, those who live in the remaining skyscrapers and rule the city with an iron hand. He is taken captive by the people of the Island of the Statue. There, Fortune learns of a prophecy that states that the people will be free when the torch burns in the hands of the statue.

Time Capsule

Mitch Berman

Max Debris, a white jazz saxophonist and Wolf, a black civil engineer, travel on a long and revealing journey across an American landscape devastated by the bomb.

A Scent of New-Mown Hay

John Blackburn

With a plot featuring Cold War intrigue, Nazi mad scientists, and a pandemic that threatens to destroy humanity by mutating people into fungoid monsters, it is not hard to see why A Scent of New-Mown Hay (1958) became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic and an instant science-fiction classic.

After a British ship's crew and a remote Russian village are wiped out in mysterious and horrible fashion, General Charles Kirk of British Foreign Intelligence sets out to investigate. As the plague spreads to England, Kirk's frantic search leads him from the desolate tundra of Russia to the ruins of a Nazi camp, the site of unthinkable wartime atrocities. But who is responsible? Is it a Soviet experiment gone horribly wrong, the work of a depraved madman, or something else entirely? And can it be stopped?

Karma of the Sun

Brandon Ying Kit Boey

In the isolation of the Himalayas, the snows still fall, but they are tinged with the ash of a nuclear winter; the winds still blow, but they wail with the cries of ghosts. The seventh and final blast is near. As the world heaves its final breaths, the people of the Tibetan plateau - civilization's final survivors - are haunted by spirits and terrorized by warlords. Though the last of the seven prophesied cataclysms is at hand, young Karma searches for a father who disappeared ten years earlier, presumed dead.

Driven by a yearning to see his father again before the end, and called by an eerie horn unheard by anyone else, Karma forges into the Himalayas and discovers that his father's disappearance may be linked to a mystical mountain said to connect the physical world with the spirit lands?and a possible way to save their doomed future.

Trapped in the R.A.W.: A Journal of My Experiences during the Great Invasion

Kate Boyes

A young woman working alone in a small special collections library is trapped in the building when invaders overrun her town. She barricades the doors, peeks through a window, and watches in horror as people are murdered outside. The invaders wear uniforms that cover them completely, making it impossible for her to see their faces. However, she realizes at once that they do not intend to subjugate the population. They intend to annihilate it.

Trapped in the R.A.W. is a journal of the young woman's solitary struggle to protect the books while keeping herself fed, hydrated, warm, and sane.

The Long Tomorrow

Leigh Brackett

One of the original novels of post-nuclear holocaust America, The Long Tomorrow is considered by many to be one of the finest science fiction novels ever written on the subject. The story has inspired generations of new writers and is still as mesmerizing today as when it was originally written.

Len and Esau are young cousins living decades after a nuclear war has destroyed civilization as we know. The rulers of the post-war community have forbidden the existence of large towns and consider technology evil.

However Len and Esau long for more than their simple agrarian existence. Rumors of mythical Bartorstown, perhaps the last city in existence, encourage the boys to embark on a journey of discovery and adventure that will call into question not only firmly held beliefs, but the boys' own personal convictions.

The Year of the Angry Rabbit

Russell Braddon

It looks as though Australia will be overrun by Rabbits - millions of them, immune now to the myoxmatosis that decimated them in the 1950's and 60's, are teeming over the land. With an election imminent, Prime Minister Kevin Fitzgerald, known to his cronies as Ella, is forced to act. It is obviously an emergency. The Rabbits MUST BE WIPED OUT

Clade

James Bradley

Compelling, challenging and resilient, over ten beautifully contained chapters, Clade canvasses three generations from the very near future to late this century. Central to the novel is the family of Adam, a scientist, and his wife Ellie, an artist.

Clade opens with them wanting a child and Adam in a quandary about the wisdom of this. Their daughter proves to be an elusive little girl and then a troubled teenager, and by now cracks have appeared in her parents' marriage. Their grandson is in turn a troubled boy, but when his character reappears as an adult he's an astronomer, one set to discover something astounding in the universe.

With great skill James Bradley shifts us subtly forward through the decades, through disasters and plagues, miraculous small moments and acts of great courage. Elegant, evocative, understated and thought-provoking, it is the work of a writer in command of the major themes of our time.

Birmingham, 35 Miles

James Braziel

When the ozone layer opened and the sun relentlessly scorched the land, there was nothing left but to hope. Mathew Harrison had always heard of a better life as close as Birmingham, only thirty-five miles away--zones of blue sky, wet grass, and clean breathable air. But to him it's a myth, a place guarded by soldiers, off limits to all but the lucky few. Meanwhile Mat works alongside his father, mining only the red clay that the once fertile Alabama soil can offer.

Now, with the killing deserts on the move again and the woman he loves on a Greyhound heading north, Mat has a travel visa and every reason to leave. But his roots in this lifeless soil inexplicably hold him firmly to the past. Torn between hope and resignation, with time running out, Mat must make a fateful choice between a new life and the one that isn't ready to let him go.

Snakeskin Road

James Braziel

In this powerful and moving new novel by James Braziel, author of Birmingham, 35 Miles, a woman begins a harrowing journey of survival along a passage of terror-and hope....

They call it Snakeskin Road. An ever-changing network of highways, rivers, and forgotten trails, it’s used by profiteers of a grim new traffic in human cargo. The catastrophic climatic changes that transformed the Southeast into a vast, inhospitable desert have left its desperate inhabitants with no choice but indentured servitude. Jennifer Harrison is among those destined for the farms, mines, casinos, and brothels of the midwestern “Free Zones.” Carrying the unborn child of her deceased husband, Mathew, Jennifer hopes that in three years’ time she’ll be free to reach Chicago-and a world better than the one she is leaving.

Along with a thirteen-year-old refugee entrusted to her care, Jennifer begins a hazardous pilgrimage across a countryside of barricaded city-states, lawless camp towns, marauding gangs, and what’s left of a corrupt government. But nothing she faces is more dangerous than a man named Rosser-a ruthlessly opportunistic bounty hunter determined to bring her back to Birmingham. In a world where hope is always a mile ahead, Jennifer has one last chance before the road disappears forever.

Earth

David Brin

It's fifty years from tomorrow, and a black hole has accidentally fallen into the Earth's core. A team of scientists frantically searches for a way to prevent the mishap from causing harm, only to discover another black hole already feeding relentlessly at the core - one that could destroy the entire planet within two years.

But some even argue that the only way to save the Earth is to let its human inhabitants become extinct: to let the million-year evolutionary clock rewind and start all over again.

From an underground lab in New Zealand to a space station in Low Earth Orbit, from an endangered species conservation ark in Africa to a home in New Orleans, EARTH is a gripping novel peopled with extraordinary characters and abundant with challenging new ideas. Above all, it is an impassioned testament about our own responsibility to our endangered planet.

The Postman

David Brin

This is the story of a lie that became the most powerful kind of truth. A timeless novel as urgently compelling as War Day or Alas, Babylon, David Brin's The Postman is the dramatically moving saga of a man who rekindled the spirit of America through the power of a dream, from a modern master of science fiction.

He was a survivor--a wanderer who traded tales for food and shelter in the dark and savage aftermath of a devastating war. Fate touches him one chill winter's day when he borrows the jacket of a long-dead postal worker to protect himself from the cold. The old, worn uniform still has power as a symbol of hope, and with it he begins to weave his greatest tale, of a nation on the road to recovery.

Elysium

Jennifer Marie Brissett

A computer program etched into the atmosphere has a story to tell, the story of two people, of a city lost to chaos, of survival and love. The program's data, however, has been corrupted. As the novel's characters struggle to survive apocalypse, they are sustained and challenged by the demands of love in a shattered world both haunted and dangerous.

Genetopia

Keith Brooke

The village: a close-knit community where everyone knows everyone else. Here, houses can be grown out of the dirt; livestock and the sub-human mutts can be changed into something else, something other; and fleshy, drastically mutated Oracles guide humankind on the delicate path of survival.

The wildlands: the land between human settlements where animals that are not animals live among plants that are not plants, and people who might not be people live in fear of human intervention. Out here organic AIs grow in the wildlands, either worshiped or feared; trees sing to each other; and tempting, dark fruit hang from the branches. Out here nothing can be trusted, nothing is necessarily as it seems, and no sane human would ever want to set foot.

Out here is Flint's missing sister.

Genetopia is the story of a young man in search of his possibly abducted sister in a far future where nano- and biotechnology have transformed and accelerated the evolution of humans and their strangely altered surroundings. In this world, you can never take anything -- or anyone -- at face value. Illness and contact with the unknown are always to be feared, as viruses re-engineer genes and germ cells, migrating traits from species to species through plague and fever. Humankind lives in isolated communities, connected by trade routes, and always fighting to keep the unclean at arm's length.

But if Flint is to find his sister he must brave the fevers, the legendary beasts, the unknown. He must enter strange communities and seek help in the most unlikely places. He must confront both his own dark past and the future of his kind.

He must go into the wildlands.

Flint's story is the story of the last true humans, and of the struggles between those who want to defend their heritage and those who choose to embrace the new. But Flint doesn't see it like that: he just wants to find his sister.

Keepers of the Peace

Keith Brooke

Jed Brindle is an alien. At least that's what they call him on earth. He's a colony-bred soldier with the Extraterran Peacekeeping Force, fighting in a war for control of what used to be the US. Sent on a mission behind enemy lines, Jed struggles for survival and tries to find his real self.

Good Morning, Midnight

Lily Brooks-Dalton

Augustine, a brilliant, aging astronomer, is consumed by the stars. For years he has lived in remote outposts, studying the sky for evidence of how the universe began. At his latest posting, in a research center in the Arctic, news of a catastrophic event arrives. The scientists are forced to evacuate, but Augustine stubbornly refuses to abandon his work. Shortly after the others have gone, Augustine discovers a mysterious child, Iris, and realizes that the airwaves have gone silent. They are alone.

At the same time, Mission Specialist Sullivan is aboard the Aether on its return flight from Jupiter. The astronauts are the first human beings to delve this deep into space, and Sully has made peace with the sacrifices required of her: a daughter left behind, a marriage ended. So far the journey has been a success. But when Mission Control falls inexplicably silent, Sully and her crewmates are forced to wonder if they will ever get home.

As Augustine and Sully each face an uncertain future against forbidding yet beautiful landscapes, their stories gradually intertwine in a profound and unexpected conclusion. In crystalline prose, Good Morning, Midnight poses the most important questions: What endures at the end of the world? How do we make sense of our lives? Lily Brooks-Dalton's captivating debut is a meditation on the power of love and the bravery of the human heart.

Winter

Simon Brown

Sydney, Australia dominates world trade after a 30-year nuclear winter. Few citizens share the benefits and are kept in line by a brutal Security Department. Harry Beatle, once head of Security, is called back to hunt down an old rogue colleague. But Harry finds himself fighting for his own survival.

Interview for the End of the World

Rhett C. Bruno

Nebula Award nominated short story.

The apocalypse is coming. There's only one way off Earth.

When a small-moon-sized asteroid is discovered hurtling toward Earth, billionaire-scientist Darien Trass must deal with the hardships of finding the select few who will join him on his voyage to escape the apocalypse and rekindle civilization on another world. But is he even worthy of the trip?

This Nebula Award nominated short story originally appeared in the anthology Bridge Across the Stars (2018) edited by Rhett C. Bruno and Chris Pourteau.

Phoenix Without Ashes

Harlan Ellison
Edward Bryant

The Starlost: 2785 A.D.

They had banished Devon from the world of Cypress Corners because he dared to challenge the Elders. And when he defied them again, they hunted him like an animal.

Then Devon stumbled on a secret passage in the hills. His whole life changed in that moment. For Devon had accidentally discovered the giant ark that was ferrying not only Cypress Corners but all other Earth cultures to another planet.

What Devon did not know was that there had been a terrible accident aboard the spaceship. The gear had been damaged, the crew dead. And the ark and all its worlds were now headed straight for destruction.

Bone Dance

Emma Bull

Fifty years after nuclear Armageddon, Sparrow, a trader of pre-war CDs and videotapes, unwittingly possesses the secret to the Earth's destruction, and is soon drawn into the mystery of the Horsemen, the Pentagon's telepathicall trained soldiers.

Moderan

David R. Bunch

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)

Havergey

John Burnside

A few years from now on the small and remote island of Havergey, a community of survivors from a great human catastrophe has created new lives and a new world in a landscape renewed after millennia of human exploitation. In this new novella, an award-winning poet and novelist brings his unique sensibility to the idea of utopia. A timely reminder about how precious and precarious our world is, it's also a rejection of the idea of human supremacy over landscape and wildlife.

Speech Sounds

In the Garden of Dead Cars

Hugo Award winning short story. It originally appeard in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Mid-December 1983. The story can also be found in the anthologies:

The New Hugo Winners: (1983-85) (1989), edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg
The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990 (1993), edited by Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery
New Eves: Science Fiction About the Extraordinary Women of Today and Tomorrow (1994) edited by Forrest J. Ackerman, Jean Marie Stine and Janrae Frank
Future on Ice (1998), edited by Orson Scott Card
A Woman's Liberation: A Choice of Futures by and About Women (2001), edited by Connie Willis and Sheila Williams
Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse (2008), edited by John Joseph Adams.

It is included in the collection Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995).

The Stone Weta

Octavia Cade

We talk about the tyranny of distance a lot in this country. That distance will not save us.

With governments denying climate science, scientists from affected countries and organisations are forced to traffic data to ensure the preservation of research that could in turn preserve the world. From Antarctica, to the Chihuahuan Desert, to the International Space Station, a fragile network forms. A web of knowledge. Secret. But not secret enough.

When the cold war of data preservation turns bloody - and then explosive - an underground network of scientists, all working in isolation, must decide how much they are willing to risk for the truth. For themselves, their colleagues, and their future.

Murder on Antarctic ice. A university lecturer's car, found abandoned on a desert road. And the first crewed mission to colonise Mars, isolated and vulnerable in the depths of space.

How far would you go to save the world?

Read the beginning of this book for free at Clarkesworld.

This is a short novel of approximately 45,000 words, so within the tolerance for Hugo Novella.

Green Thumb

Tom Cardamone

Mutability blooms in the Florida Keys after the Red War. The genie boxes created King Pelicans with single human hands to rule the ruins of half-drowned Miami... and other, stranger persons. Slavers roam the deep waters offshore, taking captives to feed the voracious Kudzu Army and the human aqueduct bearing fresh water from Lake Okeechobee. On the last stretch of the Overseas Highway still standing, an albino seeress prophesies: "You will reach for the sun while staying rooted to the ground. But I fear your shadow will be much too long."

Misunderstanding time, Leaf has lived for decades alone in a collapsing Victorian house on a desolate sandy key, feeding on sunlight and dew. When at last he meets a boy like--but so unlike!--himself, Leaf's startling journey begins. A post-apocalyptic, psychoactive pastorale, Green Thumb will pollinate your mind and wind its way into your heart like kudzu.

Listen to a 5-minute excerpt of the audiobook at narrator Samuel Cress' website.

Sea of Rust

C. Robert Cargill

A scavenger robot wanders in the wasteland created by a war that has destroyed humanity in this evocative post-apocalyptic "robot western" from the critically acclaimed author, screenwriter, and noted film critic.

It's been thirty years since the apocalypse and fifteen years since the murder of the last human being at the hands of robots. Humankind is extinct. Every man, woman, and child has been liquidated by a global uprising devised by the very machines humans designed and built to serve them. Most of the world is controlled by an OWI--One World Intelligence--the shared consciousness of millions of robots, uploaded into one huge mainframe brain. But not all robots are willing to cede their individuality--their personality--for the sake of a greater, stronger, higher power. These intrepid resisters are outcasts; solo machines wandering among various underground outposts who have formed into an unruly civilization of rogue AIs in the wasteland that was once our world.

One of these resisters is Brittle, a scavenger robot trying to keep a deteriorating mind and body functional in a world that has lost all meaning. Although unable to experience emotions like a human, Brittle is haunted by the terrible crimes the robot population perpetrated on humanity. As Brittle roams the Sea of Rust, a large swath of territory that was once the Midwest, the loner robot slowly comes to terms with horrifyingly raw and vivid memories--and nearly unbearable guilt.

Sea of Rust is both a harsh story of survival and an optimistic adventure. A vividly imagined portrayal of ultimate destruction and desperate tenacity, it boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, yet where a humanlike AI strives to find purpose among the ruins.

Heroes and Villains

Angela Carter

Sharp-eyed Marianne lives in a white tower made of steel and concrete with her father and the other Professors. Outside, where the land is thickly wooded and wild beasts roam, live the Barbarians, who raid and pillage in order to survive. Marianne is strictly forbidden to leave her civilized world but, fascinated by these savage outsiders, decides to escape. There, beyond the wire fences, she will discover a decaying paradise, encounter the tattooed Barbarian boy Jewel and go beyond the darkest limits of her imagination.

Playful, sensuous, violent and gripping, "Heroes and Villains" is an ambiguous and deliriously rich blend of post-apocalyptic fiction, gothic fantasy, literary allusion and twisted romance.

The Mercy Journals

Claudia Casper

This unsettling novel is set thirty years in the future, in the wake of a third world war. Runaway effects of climate change have triggered the collapse of nation/states and wiped out over a third of the global population. One of the survivors, a former soldier nicknamed Mercy, suffers from PTSD and is haunted by guilt and lingering memories of his family. His pain is eased when he meets a dancer named Ruby, a performer who breathes new life into his carefully constructed existence. But when his long-lost brother Leo arrives with news that Mercy's children have been spotted, the two brothers travel into the wilderness to look for them, only to find that the line between truth and lies is trespassed, challenging Mercy's own moral code about the things that matter amid the wreckage of war and tragedy.

Set against a sparse yet fantastical landscape, The Mercy Journals explores the parameters of personal morality and forgiveness at this watershed moment in humanity's history and evolution.

To the Warm Horizon

Jin-young Choi

A group of Koreans are making their way across a disease-ravaged landscape - but to what end? To the Warm Horizon shows how in a post-apocalyptic world, humans will still seek purpose, kinship, and even intimacy. Focusing on two young women, Jina and Dori, who find love against all odds, Choi Jin-young creates a dystopia where people are trying to find direction after having their worlds turned upside down.

Lucidly translated from the Korean by Soje, this thoughtful yet gripping novel takes the reader on a journey through how people adjust, or fail to adjust, to catastrophe.

Desert Creature

Kay Chronister

In a bleak, desiccated future, eleven-year-old Magdala and her father are forced to flee through the desolate landscape of the American Southwest, searching for shelter and peace. Pursued by horrors both unnatural and all-too-human, they join a pilgrimage to the holy city of Las Vegas, where it is said that vigilante saints reside, bright with neon power. Magdala, born with a clubfoot, is determined to be healed there. But one by one, the pilgrims and her father fall victim to an eerie, all-consuming sickness--leaving Magdala to fend for herself in the wilderness.

After surviving for years on her own, Magdala grows tired of waiting for her miracle. She turns her gaze to Las Vegas once more, taking an exiled Vegas priest hostage to guide her as she navigates the unsettling expanse of the desert and the hungry, dark ambitions of men. Even as she nears the holy land, Magdala must choose: survival or salvation?

The strange terrible beauty of the desert turns into a haunting exploration of faith and hope. Bold and disquieting, Desert Creatures is a surreal examination of humanity and the myths we tell ourselves to survive.

Sybil Claiborne

A sexual plague leaves its survivors terrified of human contact. The government so fears sensuality that even the Joy of Cooking is banned. Sex is a capital crime. Only the "carnals" - the sexual dissidents of the future - dare speak of love. In this postmodern Eden we meet a feminist physician who speaks only of the past, and her daughter, Emma, who dreams of real butter and rebuilt Subarus and is sick of hearing about life before the plague. Set in a New York besieged by scarcities of every kind, a place of burnt-out buildings, abandoned streets and junk yards, In the Garden of Dead Cars takes Emma on a journey both dangerously criminal and filled with self-discovery.

The Hammer of God

Arthur C. Clarke

A century into the future, technology has solved most of the problems that have plagued our time. However, a new problem is on the horizon-one greater than humanity has ever faced. A massive asteroid is racing toward the earth, and its impact could destroy all life on the planet.

Immediately after the asteroid-named "Kali" after the Hindu goddess of chaos and destruction-is discovered, the world's greatest scientists begin their search for a way to prevent disaster. In the meantime, Captain Robert Singh, aboard the starship Goliath, may be the only person who can stop the asteroid. But this heroic role may demand the ultimate sacrifice.

Z for Zachariah

Robert C. O'Brien
Jane Leslie Conly

Is anyone out there?

Ann Burden is sixteen years old and completely alone. The world as she once knew it is gone, ravaged by a nuclear war that has taken everyone from her. For the past year, she has lived in a remote valley with no evidence of any other survivors.

But the smoke from a distant campfire shatters Ann's solitude. Someone else is still alive and making his way toward the valley. Who is this man? What does he want? Can he be trusted? Both excited and terrified, Ann soon realizes there may be worse things than being the last person on Earth.

Post

Brenda Cooper

The world, for some, has crumbled.

Disease and natural disasters have brought on social collapse in the Pacific Northwest.

For Sage, born and raised in the safe haven of the Oregon Botanical Gardens, that has never been more than academic. What more could she ask for than to be safe and fed?

But life in the Garden is static.

Sage longs to experience the world beyond the Garden walls as society climbs from the chaos. Her reckless exploration forces her elders to give her a choice: Stay here, hidden in safety, or go and never return.

Sage chooses to leave.

Will she learn soon enough on her journey that the world outside the Garden follows no law? That there is no predator more dangerous than man?

Will she learn soon enough that to rebuild the world one must be ready to fight for it?

She will need to if she chooses to live.

The Slaves of Heaven

Edmund Cooper

'Welcome to Heaven', said the voice. 'The acquisition programme is entirely for females; but the occasional enterprising male does not displease us.'

Berry, Chief of his clan, knew his people could survive the dangers of the forest; and when winter came he made them build barricades against raiders from other clans. But no barricades were strong enough to hold against the Night Comers - huge silver beings of horrifying strength who carried away the womenfolk and were drastically lowering the human population.

Were the Night Comers men, monsters or gods? Berry believed they were men; and when the inevitable night came when the women of his clan were seized, he managed to follow. He followed them to a huge tapering column of metal, which took him away from the world he had known to an island in the sky called 'heaven'.

And there Berry realised that he had to defeat the Lords of Heaven if the people on Earth were to survive.

Armageddon Summer

Jane Yolen
Bruce Coville

The world will end on Thursday, July 27, 2000. At least, that's what Reverend Beelson has told his congregation. Marina's mom believes him. So does Jed's dad. That's why they drag Marina and Jed to join the reverend's flock at a mountain retreat. From the mountaintop they will all watch the Righteous Conflagration that will end this world--and then they will descend and begin the world anew. But this world has only just begun for Jed and Marina, two teenagers with more attitude than faith. Why should the world end now, when they've just fallen in love? Told in alternating chapters from both Jed's and Marina's points of view, this first-ever collaboration between two masters of children's literature is a story about faith and friendship, love and loss... and the things that matter most at the End of the World.

State of Fear

Michael Crichton

In Paris, a physicist dies after performing a laboratory experiment for a beautiful visitor.

In the jungles of Malaysia, a mysterious buyer purchases deadly cavitation technology, built to his specifications.

In Vancouver, a small research submarine is leased for use in the waters off New Guinea.

And in Tokyo, an intelligence agent tries to understand what it all means.

Thus begins Michael Crichton's exciting and provocative techno-thriller State of Fear. Only Crichton's unique ability to blend scientific fact with pulse-pounding fiction could bring such disparate elements to such a heart-stopping conclusion.

Run

No time to think. No time to ask why. Only time to run.

Five days ago, the epidemic of rage began.

Four days ago, the rash of senseless murders swept the nation.

Three days ago, the president addressed the country and begged for peace--even as the murders increased tenfold.

Two days ago, the killers began to mobilize.

One day ago, the power went out.

And tonight, the killers are reading the names of those to be killed over the Emergency Broadcast System.

Jack Colclough is listening over the battery-powered radio on his kitchen table in Albuquerque, and he just heard his name. People are coming to his house to kill him, his wife, his daughter, and his son.

He has no idea what's happening, or why, but the time for questions is long past.

His only chance is to run.

Engine Summer

John Crowley

In an underpopulated future world of isolated and highly varied cultures, a young man sets out to intentionally become a saint...and finds that sainthood is nothing like what he had imagined!

Elder Race

Lynesse is the lowly Fourth Daughter of the queen, and always getting in the way.

But a demon is terrorizing the land, and now she's an adult (albeit barely) with responsibilities (she tells herself). Although she still gets in the way, she understands that the only way to save her people is to invoke the pact between her family and the Elder sorcerer who has inhabited the local tower for as long as her people have lived here (though none in living memory has approached it).

But Elder Nyr isn't a sorcerer, and he is forbidden to help, and his knowledge of science tells him the threat cannot possibly be a demon...

Service Model

After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia

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.

Ellen Datlow
Terri Windling

If the melt-down, flood, plague, the third World War, new Ice Age, Rapture, alien invasion, clamp-down, meteor, or something else entirely hit today, what would tomorrow look like? Some of the biggest names in YA and adult literature answer that very question in this short story anthology, each story exploring the lives of teen protagonists raised in catastrophe's wake-whether set in the years soon after the change, or in decades far in the future. New York Times bestselling authors Gregory Maguire, Garth Nix, Susan Beth Pfeffer, Carrie Ryan, Beth Revis, and Jane Yolen are among the many popular and award-winning storytellers lending their talents to this original and spellbinding anthology.

Table of Contents:

Introduction - essay by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow
The Segment - shortfiction by Genevieve Valentine
After the Cure - shortfiction by Carrie Ryan
Valedictorian - shortstory by N. K. Jemisin
Visiting Nelson - shortfiction by Katherine Langrish
All I Know of Freedom - shortfiction by Carol Emshwiller
The Other Elder - shortfiction by Beth Revis
The Great Game at the End of the World - shortfiction by Matthew Kressel
Reunion - shortfiction by Susan Beth Pfeffer
Blood Drive - shortstory by Jeffrey Ford
Reality Girl - shortstory by Richard Bowes
How Th'irth Wint Rong by Hapless Joey @ homeskool.gov - shortfiction by Gregory Maguire
Rust with Wings - shortfiction by Steven Gould
Faint Heart - shortfiction by Sarah Rees Brennan
The Easthound - shortstory by Nalo Hopkinson
Gray - shortfiction by Jane Yolen
Before - shortfiction by Carolyn Dunn
Fake Plastic Trees - shortfiction by Caitlín R. Kiernan
You Won't Feel a Thing - shortfiction by Garth Nix
The Marker - shortfiction by Cecil Castellucci
Afterword - essay by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow

Every Anxious Wave

Mo Daviau

Good guy Karl Bender is a thirty-something bar owner whose life lacks love and meaning. When he stumbles upon a time-travelling worm hole in his closet, Karl and his best friend Wayne develop a side business selling access to people who want to travel back in time to listen to their favorite bands. It's a pretty ingenious plan, until Karl, intending to send Wayne to 1980, transports him back to 980 instead. Though Wayne sends texts extolling the quality of life in tenth century "Mannahatta," Karl is distraught that he can't bring his friend back.

Enter brilliant, prickly, overweight astrophysicist, Lena Geduldig. Karl and Lena's connection is immediate. While they work on getting Wayne back, Karl and Lena fall in love -- with time travel, and each other. Unable to resist meddling with the past, Karl and Lena bounce around time. When Lena ultimately prevents her own long-ago rape, she alters the course of her life and threatens her future with Karl.

In the Vanishers' Palace

Aliette de Bodard

From the award-winning author of the Dominion of the Fallen series comes a dark retelling of Beauty and the Beast.

In a ruined, devastated world, where the earth is poisoned and beings of nightmares roam the land...

A woman, betrayed, terrified, sold into indenture to pay her village's debts and struggling to survive in a spirit world.

A dragon, among the last of her kind, cold and aloof but desperately trying to make a difference.

When failed scholar Yên is sold to Vu Côn, one of the last dragons walking the earth, she expects to be tortured or killed for Vu Côn's amusement.

But Vu Côn, it turns out, has a use for Yên: she needs a scholar to tutor her two unruly children. She takes Yên back to her home, a vast, vertiginous palace-prison where every door can lead to death. Vu Côn seems stern and unbending, but as the days pass Yên comes to see her kinder and caring side. She finds herself dangerously attracted to the dragon who is her master and jailer. In the end, Yên will have to decide where her own happiness lies--and whether it will survive the revelation of Vu Côn's dark, unspeakable secrets...

Svaha

Charles de Lint

Out beyond the Enclaves, in the desolation between the cities, an Indian flyer has been downed. A chip encoded with vital secrets is missing. Only Gahzee can venture forth to find it--walking the line between the Dreamtime and the Realtime, bringing his people's ancient magic to bear on the poisoned world of tomorrow.

Bringing hope, perhaps, for a new dawn...

The Einstein Intersection

Samuel R. Delany

The Einstein Intersection won the Nebula Award for best science fiction novel of 1967. The surface story tells of the problems a member of an alien race, Lo Lobey, has assimilating the mythology of earth, where his kind have settled among the leftover artifacts of humanity. The deeper tale concerns, however, the way those who are "different" must deal with the dominant cultural ideology. The tale follows Lobey's mythic quest for his lost love, Friza. In luminous and hallucinated language, it explores what new myths might emerge from the detritus of the human world as those who are "different" try to seize history and the day.

Deus Irae

Philip K. Dick
Roger Zelazny

An artist searches for God so he can paint his portrait in Philip K. Dick's collaboration with Roger Zelazny.

After World War III, the Servants of Wrath cult deified the mysterious Carlton Lufteufel, creator of the doomsday weapon that wiped out much of humanity. But to worship the man, they need an image of him as a god, and no one has ever seen him. So the high priests send a limbless master painter named Tibor McMasters into the wilderness on a mission to find Lufteufel and capture his likeness. Unfortunately for Tibor, the nation's remaining Christians do not want him to succeed and are willing to kill to ensure that the so-called Deus Irae remains hidden. This hallucinatory tale through a nuclear wasteland asks what price the artist must pay for art and tries to figure out just what makes a god.

The Tourist

Robert Dickinson

It is expected to be an excursion like any other. There is nothing in the records to indicate that anything out of the ordinary will happen.

A bus will take them to the mall. They will have an hour or so to look around. Perhaps buy something, or try the food.

A minor traffic incident on the way back to the resort will provide some additional interest - but the tour rep has no reason to expect any trouble.

Until he notices that one of his party is missing.

Most disturbingly, she is a woman who, according to the records, did not go missing.

Now she is a woman whose disappearance could change the world.

Wolf and Iron

Gordon R. Dickson

After the collapse of civilization, when the social fabric of America has come apart in bloody rags, when every man's hand is raised against another, and only the strong survive. "Jeebee" Walther was a scientist, a student of human behavior, who saw the Collapse of the world economy coming, but could do nothing to stop it. Now he must make his way across a violent and lawless America, in search of a refuge where he can keep the spark of knowledge alive in the coming Dark Age. He could never make it on his own, but he has found a companion who can teach him how to survive on instinct and will. Jeebee has been adopted by a great Gray Wolf.

The Marrow Thieves

Cherie Dimaline

Humanity has nearly destroyed its world through global warming, but now an even greater evil lurks.

The indigenous people of North America are being hunted and harvested for their bone marrow, which carries the key to recovering something the rest of the population has lost: the ability to dream.

In this dark world, Frenchie and his companions struggle to survive as they make their way up north to the old lands.

For now, survival means staying hidden... but what they don't know is that one of them holds the secret to defeating the marrow thieves.

Mother Grimm

Catherine Wells

A young woman raised within the sterile limits of a Biodome longs to be free...taking her chances Outside, a place where the victims of a devastating virus dwell. But even greater dangers await Outside: the warring factions that have turned the once-beautiful mesas into a slaughterground, the Edgewalkers who tread a fine line between sanity and madness, and the astonishing truth about her own destiny, which may trigger the ultimate destruction of both worlds!

When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth

Cory Doctorow

Locus Award winning Novelette. It originally appeared in Jim Baen's Universe, August 2006. The story can also be found in the anthologies Year's Best SF 12 (2007), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, and Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse (2008), edited by John Joseph Adams. The story is included in the collection Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present (2007).

Cold Comfort

Paul Doherty
Pat Murphy

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Bridging Infinity (2016), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and was reprinted in Clarkesworld, Issue 140, May 2018. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2014), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

The Comet

W. E. B. Du Bois

The Comet explores the relationship between Jim Davis (a black man) and Julia (a wealthy white woman) after a comet hits New York and unleashes toxic gases that kill everyone except them.

It was published as the tenth chapter of Du Bois's Darkwater: Voices From Within the Veil.

This story can be found in The Big Book of Science Fiction and Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora

Perihelion Summer

Greg Egan

Taraxippus is coming: a black hole one tenth the mass of the sun is about to enter the solar system.

Matt and his friends are taking no chances. They board a mobile aquaculture rig, the Mandjet, self-sustaining in food, power and fresh water, and decide to sit out the encounter off-shore. As Taraxippus draws nearer, new observations throw the original predictions for its trajectory into doubt, and by the time it leaves the solar system, the conditions of life across the globe will be changed forever.

This is a novella of approximately 41,800 words.

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

Harlan Ellison

First published in 1967 and re-issued in 1983, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream contains seven stories with copyrights ranging from 1958 through 1967. This edition contains the original introduction by Theodore Sturgeon and the original foreword by Harlan Ellison, along with a brief update comment by Ellison that was added in the 1983 edition.

Among Ellison's more famous stories, two consistently noted as among his very best ever are the title story and the volume's concluding one, "Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes". Since Ellison himself strongly resists categorization of his work, we won't call them science fiction, or SF, or speculative fiction or horror or anything else except compelling reading experiences that are sui generis. They could only have been written by Harlan Ellison and they are incomparably original.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: The Mover, the Shaker - (1967) - essay by Theodore Sturgeon
Foreword: How Science Fiction Saved Me from a Life of Crime - (1967) - essay by Harlan Ellison
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream - (1967) - shortstory
Big Sam Was My Friend - (1958) - shortstory
Eyes of Dust - (1959) - shortstory
World of the Myth - (1964) - novelette
Lonelyache - (1964) - shortstory
Delusion for a Dragon Slayer - (1966) - shortstory
Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes - (1967) - novelette

Leech

Hiron Ennes

MEET THE CURE FOR THE HUMAN DISEASE

In an isolated chateau, as far north as north goes, the baron's doctor has died. The doctor's replacement has a mystery to solve: discovering how the Institute lost track of one of its many bodies.

For hundreds of years the Interprovincial Medical Institute has grown by taking root in young minds and shaping them into doctors, replacing every human practitioner of medicine. The Institute is here to help humanity, to cure and to cut, to cradle and protect the species from the apocalyptic horrors their ancestors unleashed.

In the frozen north, the Institute's body will discover a competitor for its rung at the top of the evolutionary ladder. A parasite is spreading through the baron's castle, already a dark pit of secrets, lies, violence, and fear. The two will make war on the battlefield of the body. Whichever wins, humanity will lose again.

Immobility

Brian Evenson

When you open your eyes things already seem to be happening without you. You don't know who you are and you don't remember where you've been. You know the world has changed, that a catastrophe has destroyed what used to exist before, but you can't remember exactly what did exist before. And you're paralyzed from the waist down apparently, but you don't remember that either.

A man claiming to be your friend tells you your services are required. Something crucial has been stolen, but what he tells you about it doesn't quite add up. You've got to get it back or something bad is going to happen. And you've got to get it back fast, so they can freeze you again before your own time runs out.

Before you know it, you're being carried through a ruined landscape on the backs of two men in hazard suits who don't seem anything like you at all, heading toward something you don't understand that may well end up being the death of you.

Welcome to the life of Josef Horkai....

The Warren

Brian Evenson

X doesn't have a name. He thought he had one--or many--but that might be the result of the failing memories of the personalities imprinted within him. Or maybe he really is called X.

He's also not as human as he believes himself to be.

But when he discovers the existence of another--above ground, outside the protection of the Warren--X must learn what it means to be human, or face the destruction of their two species.

Ice!

Arnold Federbush

It describes a return of the Ice Age in months, rather than centuries. It tells of the realization that an Ice Age is rapidly approaching, yet only a few people know this. And in effect, major weather changes begin to kill out large parts of Earth's population before the glaciers even hit the higher latitudes.

The New Mother

Eugene Fischer

Tiptree Award winning and Nebula-nominated Novella

This story follows a pregnant reporter writing an article about the social implications of a sexually transmitted infection that renders men sterile and women parthenogenetic.

Read this story online for free at Medium.com.

A Boy and His Dog at the End of the World

Charlie Fletcher

When a beloved family dog is stolen, her owner sets out on a life-changing journey through the ruins of our world to bring her back in this fiercely compelling tale of survival, courage, and hope.

My name's Griz. My childhood wasn't like yours. I've never had friends, and in my whole life I've not met enough people to play a game of football.

My parents told me how crowded the world used to be, but we were never lonely on our remote island. We had each other, and our dogs.

Then the thief came.

There may be no law left except what you make of it. But if you steal my dog, you can at least expect me to come after you.

Because if we aren't loyal to the things we love, what's the point?

Alas, Babylon

Pat Frank

Hailed by critics, this classic disaster novel about a nuclear holocaust in the United States--now available in a limited Olive Edition--continues to resonate with readers as strongly today as when it was first published in 1959 at the height of the Cold War.

"Alas, Babylon..."

Those fateful words heralded the end. When the unthinkable nightmare of nuclear holocaust ravaged the United States, it was instant death for tens of millions of people; for survivors, it was a nightmare of hunger, sickness, and brutality. Overnight, a thousand years of civilization were stripped away.

But for one small Florida town, spared against all the odds, the struggle was just beginning, as men and women of all ages and races found the courage to join together and push against the darkness.

Zone Null

Herbert W. Franke

These are weird and disturbing experiences of those who venture into Zone Null. After a global catastrophe, the two surviving superpowers have existed for centuries in complete isolationm until an expedition ventures into the middle of no-man's-land. The participants have been carefully selected and trained. They are prepared for every imaginable situation.

But can one be prepared for all eventualities? The expedition encounter a highly advanced civilization that has gone a long way since the disaster. The inhabitants live - relieved of any material worries - for their game, for their research, for the arts. They live in a technical paradise, but is it a human? Daniel dares to make first contact ...

The Memory of Animals

Claire Fuller

In the face of a pandemic, an unprepared world scrambles to escape the mysterious disease causing sensory damage, nerve loss, and, in most cases, death. Neffy, a disgraced and desperately indebted twenty-seven-year-old marine biologist, registers for an experimental vaccine trial in London?perhaps humanity's last hope for a cure. Though isolated from the chaos outside, she and the other volunteers?Rachel, Leon, Yahiko, and Piper?cannot hide from the mistakes that led them there.

As London descends into chaos outside the hospital windows, Neffy befriends Leon, who before the pandemic had been working on a controversial technology that allows users to revisit their memories. She withdraws into projections of her past?a childhood bisected by divorce, a recent love affair, her obsessive research with octopuses, and the one mistake that ended her career. The lines between past, present, and future begin to blur, and Neffy is left with defining questions: Who can she trust? Why can't she forgive herself? How should she live, if she survives?

Upright Women Wanted

Sarah Gailey

"That girl's got more wrong notions than a barn owl's got mean looks."

Esther is a stowaway. She's hidden herself away in the Librarian's book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her--a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda.

The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing.

The Great Quill

Paul Garson

The Great Quill: a road story, prominently featuring motorcycles, but set in a baroquely degenerate 4000 CE Ruined Earth version of England; heavy on the satire.

William Gibson's Archangel

William Gibson

The year is 2016. Not our 2016. Theirs. Earth is dying, the result of a worldwide nuclear holocaust caused by America's dictatorial President-for-Life Lewis Henderson, a man who will use any means necessary to maintain power and survive.

Enter: The Splitter. A machine capable of splitting off an exact replica of Henderson's world. A world where the cataclysmic events causing its destruction have yet to occur.

That world is ours.

In August of 1945, our postwar Europe becomes the battleground for Henderson's operatives - led by his sociopathic son - as they engineer a complete redo of their history. By changing ours. Their mission is to take over our world and rule it absolutely - again.

The only obstacles in their way are a disabled rebel colonel in an underground bunker; a Marine pilot who pursues Henderson's men across time; and a British secret weapons analyst who must accept that the impossible is, in fact, possible.

And that the fate of two worlds hangs in the balance.

Nominated for a Will Eisner Comic Industry Award

Trinity Sight

Jennifer Givhan

"Our people are survivors," Calliope's great-grandmother once told her of their Puebloan roots--could Bisabuela's ancient myths be true?

Anthropologist Calliope Santiago awakens to find herself in a strange and sinister wasteland, a shadow of the New Mexico she knew. Empty vehicles litter the road. Everyone has disappeared--or almost everyone. Calliope, heavy-bellied with the twins she carries inside her, must make her way across this dangerous landscape with a group of fellow survivors, confronting violent inhabitants, in search of answers. Long-dead volcanoes erupt, the ground rattles and splits, and monsters come to ominous life. The impossible suddenly real, Calliope will be forced to reconcile the geological record with the heritage she once denied if she wants to survive and deliver her unborn babies into this uncertain new world.

Rooted in indigenous oral-history traditions and contemporary apocalypse fiction, Trinity Sight asks readers to consider science versus faith and personal identity versus ancestral connection. Lyrically written and utterly original, Trinity Sight brings readers to the precipice of the end-of-times and the hope for redemption.

The High House

Jessie Greengrass

Shortlisted for the 2021 Costa Novel Award

In this powerful, highly anticipated novel from an award-winning author, four people attempt to make a home in the midst of environmental disaster.

Perched on a sloping hill, set away from a small town by the sea, the High House has a tide pool and a mill, a vegetable garden, and, most importantly, a barn full of supplies. Caro, Pauly, Sally, and Grandy are safe, so far, from the rising water that threatens to destroy the town and that has, perhaps, already destroyed everything else. But for how long?

Caro and her younger half-brother, Pauly, arrive at the High House after her father and stepmother fall victim to a faraway climate disaster--but not before they call and urge Caro to leave London. In their new home, a converted summer house cared for by Grandy and his granddaughter, Sally, the two pairs learn to live together. Yet there are limits to their safety, limits to the supplies, limits to what Grandy--the former village caretaker, a man who knows how to do everything--can teach them as his health fails.

A searing novel that takes on parenthood, sacrifice, love, and survival under the threat of extinction, The High House is a stunning, emotionally precise novel about what can be salvaged at the end of the world.

The Gemini Effect

Chuck Grossart

A single raindrop opens a Pandora's box when the spawn of perverse genetic research performed during World War II is unleashed on an unsuspecting modern world. By dawn, only a dead city remains, eerily quiet and still, except for mutant beasts that hide from the light, multiply, and await the shadows of night to continue their relentless advance.

Ordered to investigate the unfolding crisis, biowarfare specialist Carolyn Ridenour barely escapes the creatures' nocturnal onslaught, saved in the nick of time by Colonel Garrett Hoffman, who lost hundreds of his troops to a swarm that neither bombs nor bullets can stop.

As Carolyn and Garrett race to stop the plague, a battered and broken government prepares to release the fury of America's nuclear arsenal on its own soil and its own citizens.

Shadow on the Hearth

Judith Merril

Written in 1950 this is an early science fiction look at the after effects of a nuclear war. A typical day in a Westchester suburb of New York for a family of four is shattered by a nuclear attack on New York City.

The Immortals

James E. Gunn

WHAT IS THE PRICE OF IMMORTALITY?

For nomad Marshall Cartwright, the price is knowing that he will never grow old. That he will never contract a disease, an infection, or even a cold. That because he will never die, he must surrender the right to live.

For Dr. Russell Pearce, the price is eternal suspicion. He appreciates what synthesizing the elixir vitae from the Immortal's genetic makeup could mean for humankind. He also fears what will happen should Cartwright's miraculous blood fall into the wrong hands.

For the wealthy and powerful, no price is too great. Immortality is now a fact rather than a dream. But the only way to achieve it is to own it exclusively. And that means hunting down and caging the elusive Cartwright, or one of his offspring.

The Immortals, James Gunn's masterpiece about a human fountain of youth, collects the author's classic short stories that ran in elite science-fiction magazines throughout the 1950s. All-new material accompanies this updated edition, including an introduction from renowned science-fiction writer Greg Bear, a preface from Gunn himself, and "Elixir," Gunn's new short story that introduced Dr. Pearce to another Immortal in the May 2004 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Factmagazine.

Brave New Love: 15 Dystopian Tales of Desire

Paula Guran

Tales of Dystopia and Desire aimed at a Young Adult readership...

When society crumbles, can young love survive? When the young are deprived of their bright future and left to survive day to day, what bonds remain between individuals? Can young love survive a dystopian nightmare? This exciting collection of stories explores the struggles, both emotional and physical, of teenagers trying to survive as society falls apart or as they help build a new world. Compelling, emotionally charged stories of young lives lived in desperate circumstances.

Contents:

1 - Introduction (Brave New Love: 15 Dystopian Tales of Desire) - essay by Paula Guran
5 - Hidden Ribbon - short story by John Shirley
29 - The Salt Sea and the Sky - short story by Elizabeth Bear
45 - In the Clearing - novella by Kiera Cass
90 - Otherwise - novelette by Nisi Shawl
120 - Now Purple with Love's Wound - short story by Carrie Vaughn
138 - Berserker Eyes - novelette by Maria V. Snyder
173 - Arose from Poetry - short story by Steve Berman
187 - Red - short story by Amanda Downum
209 - Foundlings - short story by Diana Peterfreund
236 - Seekers in the City - novelette by Jeanne DuPrau
260 - The Up - novelette by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
284 - The Dream Eater - novelette by Carrie Ryan
315 - 357 - novelette by Jesse Karp
341 - Eric and Pan - short story by William Sleator
362 - The Empty Pocket - short story by Seth Cadin
386 - About the Authors (Brave New Love: 15 Dystopian Tales of Desire) - essay by uncredited

Scribe

Alyson Hagy

A haunting, evocative tale about the power of storytelling

A brutal civil war has ravaged the country, and contagious fevers have decimated the population. Abandoned farmhouses litter the isolated mountain valleys and shady hollows. The economy has been reduced to barter and trade.

In this craggy, unwelcoming world, the central character of Scribe ekes out a lonely living on the family farmstead where she was raised and where her sister met an untimely end. She lets a migrant group known as the Uninvited set up temporary camps on her land, and maintains an uneasy peace with her cagey neighbors and the local enforcer. She has learned how to make paper and ink, and she has become known for her letter-writing skills, which she exchanges for tobacco, firewood, and other scarce resources. An unusual request for a letter from a man with hidden motivations unleashes the ghosts of her troubled past and sets off a series of increasingly calamitous events that culminate in a harrowing journey to a crossroads.

Drawing on traditional folktales and the history and culture of Appalachia, Alyson Hagy has crafted a gripping, swiftly plotted novel that touches on pressing issues of our time?migration, pandemic disease, the rise of authoritarianism?and makes a compelling case for the power of stories to both show us the world and transform it.

Mindscape

Andrea Hairston

Mindscape takes us to a future in which the world itself has been literally divided by the Barrier, a phenomenon that will not be ignored. For 115 years this extraterrestrial, epi-dimensional entity has divided the earth into warring zones. Although a treaty to end the interzonal wars has been hammered out, power-hungry politicians, gangsters, and spiritual fundamentalists are determined to thwart it. Celestina, the treaty's architect, is assassinated, and her protoge, Ellini, a talented renegade and one of the few able to negotiate the Barrier, takes up her mantle. Now Elleni and a motley crew of allies risk their lives to make the treaty work. Can they repair their fractured world before the Barrier devours them completely?

Burntcoat

Sarah Hall

You were the last one here, before I closed the door of Burntcoat. Before we all closed our doors...

In an unnamed British city, the virus is spreading, and like everyone else, the celebrated sculptor Edith Harkness retreats inside. She isolates herself in her immense studio, Burntcoat, with Halit, the lover she barely knows. As life outside changes irreparably, inside Burntcoat, Edith and Halit find themselves changed as well: by the histories and responsibilities each carries and bears, by the fears and dangers of the world outside, and by the progressions of their new relationship. And Burntcoat will be transformed, too, into a new and feverish world, a place in which Edith comes to an understanding of how we survive the impossible - and what is left after we have.

Rings

Charles L. Harness

Table of Contents:

11 - On Rings of Power - (1999) - essay by Priscilla Olson
13 - Charles Harness: Wielder of Light - (1999) - essay by George Zebrowski
19 - The Paradox Men - (1953) - novel (variant of Flight into Yesterday)
153 - The Ring of Ritornel - (1968) - novel
315 - Firebird - (1981) - novel
461 - Drunkard's Endgame - (1999) - novel

I Who Have Never Known Men

Jacqueline Harpman

Ursula K. LeGuin meets The Road in a post-apocalyptic modern classic of female friendship and intimacy.

Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.

As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl--the fortieth prisoner--sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.

The Chrysalids

John Wyndham

The Chyrsalids is set in the future after a devastating global nuclear war. David, the young hero of the novel, lives in a tight-knit community of religious and genetic fundamentalists, always on the alert for any deviation from the norm of God's creation. Abnormal plants are publicly burned, with much singing of hymns. Abnormal humans (who are not really human) are also condemned to destruction-unless they succeed in fleeing to the Fringes, that Wild Country where, as the authorities say, nothing is reliable and the devil does his work. David grows up ringed by admonitions: KEEP PURE THE STOCK OF THE LORD; WATCH THOU FOR THE MUTANT.

At first he does not question. Then, however, he realizes that the he too is out of the ordinary, in possession of a power that could doom him to death or introduce h im to a new, hitherto unimagined world of freedom.

The Chrysalids is a perfectly conceived and constructed work form the classic era o science fiction, a Voltairean philosophical tale that has as much resonance in our own day, when religious and scientific dogmatism are both on the march, as when it was written during the cold war.

Flesh & Wires

Jackie Hatton

Following a failed alien invasion the world left is sparsely populated with psychologically scarred survivors, some of them technologically-enhanced women. Lo, leader of the small safe haven of Saugatuck, find their technological enhancements put to the test when a spaceship arrives bearing two men with both wonderful and terrifying news. Is this the beginning of a new era of reconstruction -- or the start of a new battle for survival? Not everyone in town wants to fight every comer. Not everyone in town shares Lo's mistrust of outsiders. This is the story not only of Lo's battle to protect the safe isolation of her unique community, but also of her struggle to come to terms with a constantly changing and uncertain world.

The Wall

Marlen Haushofer

First published to acclaim in Germany, The Wall chronicles the life of the last surviving human on earth, an ordinary middle-aged woman who awakens one morning to find that everyone else has vanished. Assuming her isolation to be the result of a military experiment gone awry, she begins the terrifying work of survival and self-renewal. This novel is at once a simple and moving tale and a disturbing meditation on humanity.

Farnham's Freehold

Robert A. Heinlein

A Robert A. Heinlein classic reissued with an all new celebrity forward by noted Heinlein biographer Bill Patterson and afterword penned by three-time award-winner for fan writing and science fiction scholar John Hertz.

It's a cross-time fight for freedom as a family retreats to a bomb shelter during a nuclear attack--only to emerge hundreds of years in the future, thrown forward in time by the blasts. There lifeboat ethics rule as they struggle to survive... until they're discovered by up-time humans, the survivors of the apocalypse. These survivors are of African descent. Down-time humans--in fact, all of the European-descended--are held guilty for the state into which the world has fallen and designated as automatic slaves. The only escape is to find a way back down-time, to change events sufficiently to make absolute certain this nightmare future never get a chance to happen in the first place!

Empty Cities of the Full Moon

Howard V. Hendrix

In a dramatically altered near-future, the world's newest technology resurrects a plague of apparent global madness that not only destroys ten thousand years of urban civilization, but also creates a world under the sway of the full moon--and a human race transformed in astonishing ways.

The White Plague

Frank Herbert

What if women were an endangered species?

It begins in Ireland, but soon spreads throughout the entire world: a virulent new disease expressly designed to target only women. As fully half of the human race dies off at a frightening pace and life on Earth faces extinction, panicked people and governments struggle to cope with the global crisis. Infected areas are quarantined or burned to the ground. The few surviving women are locked away in hidden reserves, while frantic doctors and scientists race to find a cure. Anarchy and violence consume the planet.

The plague is the work of a solitary individual who calls himself the Madman. As government security forces feverishly hunt for the renegade scientist, he wanders incognito through a world that will never be the same. Society, religion, and morality are all irrevocably transformed by the White Plague.

Graft

Matt Hill

Manchester, 2025. Local mechanic Sol steals old vehicles to meet the demand for spares. But when Sol's partner impulsively jacks a luxury model, Sol finds himself caught up in a nightmarish trans-dimensional human trafficking conspiracy. Hidden in the stolen car is a voiceless, three-armed woman called Y. She's had her memory removed and undertaken a harrowing journey into a world she only vaguely recognises. And someone waiting in the UK expects her delivery at all costs.

Now Sol and Y are on the run from both Y's traffickers and the organisation's faithful products. With the help of a dangerous triggerman and Sol's ex, they must uncover the true, terrifying extent of the trafficking operation, or it's all over. Not that there was much hope to start with. A novel about the horror of exploitation and the weight of love, Graft imagines a country in which too many people are only worth what's on their price tag.

Riddley Walker

Russell Hoban

'Walker is my name and I am the same. Riddley Walker. Walking my riddels where ever theyve took me and walking them now on this paper the same. There aint that many sir prizes in life if you take noatis of every thing. Every time will have its happenings out and every place the same. Thats why I finely come to writing all this down. Thinking on what the idear of us myt be. Thinking on that thing whats in us lorn and loan and oansome.'

Composed in an English which has never been spoken and laced with a storytelling tradition that predates the written word, RIDDLEY WALKER is the world waiting for us at the bitter end of the nuclear road. It is desolate, dangerous and harrowing, and a modern masterpiece.

Weight of the Dead

Brian Hodge

The Weight of the Dead by Brian Hodge is a dystopian science fiction novelette taking place years after all electronics have been fried by the sun. Two siblings live in an enclave with their father, who's about to be punished for a crime, sparking fierce but secret rebellion by the daughter.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

The Ship

Antonia Honeywell

Welcome to London, but not as you know it.

Oxford Street burned for three weeks. The British Museum is occupied by ragtag survivors. The Regent's Park camps have been bombed. The Nazareth Act has come into force. If you can't produce your identity card, you don't exist.

Lalla, sixteen, has grown up sheltered from the new reality by her visionary father, Michael Paul. But now the chaos has reached their doorstep. Michael has promised to save them. His escape route is a ship big enough to save five hundred people. But only the worthy will be chosen.

Once on board, as day follows identical day, Lalla's unease grows. Where are they going? What does her father really want? What is the price of salvation?

Lark Ascending

Silas House

A timely, powerful story of survival set in the not-too-distant future, reminding us to always hold on to hope, even in the worst of times.

With fires devastating much of America, Lark and his family first leave their home in Maryland for Maine. But as the country increasingly falls under the grip of religious nationalism, it becomes clear that nowhere is safe, not just from physical disasters but also persecution. The family secures a place on a crowded boat headed to Ireland, the last place on earth rumored to be accepting American refugees.

Upon arrival, it turns out that the safe harbor of Ireland no longer exists either--and Lark, the sole survivor of the trans-Atlantic voyage, must disappear into the countryside. As he runs for his life, Lark finds two equally lost and desperate souls: one of the last remaining dogs, who becomes his closest companion, and a fierce, mysterious woman in search of her lost son. Together they form a makeshift family and attempt to reach Glendalough, a place they believe will offer protection. But can any community provide the safety that they seek?

Sand

After London: or, Wild England

Contains:

Part One: The Belt of the Buried Gods

The wind blows from east to west. It brings with it the sand, deposited in dunes, to bury and torment the unfortunate souls who live here. Life on the sand is miserable. Life below it is even worse.

Part Two: Out of No Man's Land

For every bucket of sand a man hauls, the wind brings another.
For every life that wanders out of sight, one more is born.
On the anniversary of a father lost, two brothers whisper stories in a tent.
They camp on the border of No Man's Land.
And one of them has a secret.

Part Three: Return to Danvar

An eldest daughter is a father's curse. Vic knows this. She knows she was never supposed to be the one. But her father taught her to breathe beneath the sand, taught her how to dive deep and find the treasures of the buried past. He taught her brother as well. When she hears of Danvar's discovery, it feels as though fate has slipped her by. If the rumors are to believed, that is. And while she has her doubts, her missing brother sends her on a hunt of her own. Cities are not the only things that get buried and forgotten. There are families, too.

Part Four: Thunder Due East

A family long scattered reunites as danger approaches Springston. Brother and sister rush to sound a warning, but that warning will come too late. Bombs will thunder like the pulse of a terrible god. The great dune will flow as the sea. And when a people find themselves buried beneath the sands, who in the heavens will hear their muffled pleas?

Part Five: A Rap Upon Heaven's Gate

Every generation thinks that it is special, that the great fall will occur before their time is up. Every generation is wrong. Until now.

----------------------

We live across the thousand dunes with grit in our teeth and sand in our homes. No one will come for us. No one will save us. This is our life, diving for remnants of the old world so that we may build what the wind destroys. No one is looking down on us. Those constellations in the night sky? Those are the backs of gods we see.

The Black Cloud

Fred Hoyle

Earth was dying...

One fourth of its population was dead. The rest had little time to live.

A mass of interstellar matter had invaded the solar system, fling planets out of orbit and blocking off the sun. In that titanic disaster, Man had one small chance to survive: Appeal to an alien intelligence that might exist and that might - or might not - care enough to help!

Final Blackout

L. Ron Hubbard

London 1975. The World War is grinding to a halt. A force more sinister than Hitler's Nazi regime has seized control of Europe and is systematically destroying every adversary. Ordered by his superiors to return to British Headquarters, located in a vast underground fortress, "the Lieutenant" is torn between abiding by military codes and doing what he knows is right for his country.

The End is Not Yet

L. Ron Hubbard

WWII intelligence officer Charles Martel, jailed in Leavenworth for bucking insane post war politicians with a new world order agenda, is "freed" by the chaos of WW III. Gathering haggard forces across 3 continents he unleashes an unlimited source of useful energy in a redoubt in the Atlas Mountains of Morrocco. Who will gather around him to fight to rebuild civilization from the post WW III fascism that has gripped the world? Could it be those the fascists depend on most? The captive brains who try to steal the secret of his energy source blow themselves and half their cities up. What happens when open and unstoppable communication of human rights and real values invades through the airwaves?

The End We Start From

Megan Hunter

In the midst of a mysterious environmental crisis, as London is submerged below flood waters, a woman gives birth to her first child, Z. Days later, the family are forced to leave their home in search of safety. As they move from place to place, shelter to shelter, their journey traces both fear and wonder as Z's small fists grasp at the things he sees, as he grows and stretches, thriving and content against all the odds.

This is a story of new motherhood in a terrifying setting: a familiar world made dangerous and unstable, its people forced to become refugees. Startlingly beautiful, Megan Hunter's The End We Start From is a gripping novel that paints an imagined future as realistic as it is frightening. And yet, though the country is falling apart around them, this family's world - of new life and new hope - sings with love.

Memory of Water

Emmi Itäranta

Global warming has changed the world's geography and its politics. Wars are waged over water, and China rules Europe, including the Scandinavian Union, which is occupied by the power state of New Qian. In this far north place, seventeen-year-old Noria Kaitio is learning to become a tea master like her father, a position that holds great responsibility and great secrets. Tea masters alone know the location of hidden water sources, including the natural spring that Noria's father tends, which once provided water for her whole village.

But secrets do not stay hidden forever, and after her father's death the army starts watching their town--and Noria. And as water becomes even scarcer, Noria must choose between safety and striking out, between knowledge and kinship.

Imaginative and engaging, lyrical and poignant, Memory of Water is an indelible novel that portrays a future that is all too possible.

Genocidal Organ

Project Itoh

Who can win in a war of all against all?

The war on terror exploded, literally, the day Sarajevo was destroyed by a homemade nuclear device. The leading democracies transformed into total surveillance states, and the developing world has drowned under a wave of genocides. The mysterious American John Paul seems to be behind the collapse of the world system, and it's up to intelligence agent Clavis Shepherd to track John Paul across the wreckage of civilizations, and to find the true heart of darkness—a genocidal organ.

The Children of Men

P. D. James

Told with P. D. James’s trademark suspense, insightful characterization, and riveting storytelling, The Children of Men is a story of a world with no children and no future.

The human race has become infertile, and the last generation to be born is now adult. Civilization itself is crumbling as suicide and despair become commonplace. Oxford historian Theodore Faron, apathetic toward a future without a future, spends most of his time reminiscing. Then he is approached by Julian, a bright, attractive woman who wants him to help get her an audience with his cousin, the powerful Warden of England. She and her band of unlikely revolutionaries may just awaken his desire to live . . . and they may also hold the key to survival for the human race.

The Last

Hanna Jameson

Jon thought he had all the time in the world to respond to his wife's text message: I miss you so much. I feel bad about how we left it. Love you. But as he's waiting in the lobby of the L'Hotel Sixieme in Switzerland after an academic conference, still mulling over how to respond to his wife, he receives a string of horrifying push notifications. Washington, DC, has been hit with a nuclear bomb, then New York, then London, and finally Berlin. That's all he knows before news outlets and social media goes black--and before the clouds on the horizon turn orange.

Two months later, there are twenty survivors holed up at the hotel, a place already tainted by its strange history of suicides and murders. Jon and the rest try to maintain some semblance of civilization. But when he goes up to the roof to investigate the hotel's worsening water quality, he is shocked to discover the body of a young girl floating in one of the tanks, and is faced with the terrifying possibility that there might be a killer among the group.

As supplies dwindle and tensions rise, Jon becomes obsessed with discovering the truth behind the girl's death.

Richard Jefferies

After some sudden and unspecified catastrophe has depopulated England, the countryside reverts to nature, and the few survivors to a quasi-medieval way of life. Beginning with a loving description of nature reclaiming England -- fields becoming overrun by forest, domesticated animals running wild, roads and towns becoming overgrown, the hated London reverting to lake and poisonous swampland -- the rest of the story is an adventure set many years later in the wild landscape.

The Cusanus Game

Wolfgang Jeschke

Biologist Domenica Ligrina fears her planet is dying. She might be right.

An atomic disaster near the French-German border has contaminated Northern Europe with radioactivity. Economic and political calamities are destroying the whole planet. Human DNA is mutating, plant species are going extinct, and scientists are feverishly working on possible solutions. It becomes increasingly apparent that the key to future salvation lies in the past. In 2052 a secret research facility in the Vatican is recruiting scientists for a mission to restore the flora of the irradiated territories. The institute claims to have time travel. When Domenica's sometime-lover tells her that he knows her future but that she must decide her own fate, she enlists despite his ambiguous warning.

The Middle Ages hold Domenica spellbound. She immerses herself in the mysteries, puzzles, and peculiarities of a culture foreign to her, though she risks changing the past with effects far more disastrous than radiation poisoning. Perhaps there is more than one Domenica, and more than one catastrophe

In the tradition of Stanislaw Lem and Philip K. Dick, Wolfgang Jeschke's The Cusanus Game is a novel of future disaster in Europe by the grand master of German science fiction.

The Summer Prince

Alaya Dawn Johnson

A heart-stopping story of love, death, technology, and art set amid the tropics of a futuristic Brazil.

The lush city of Palmares Tres shimmers with tech and tradition, with screaming gossip casters and practiced politicians. In the midst of this vibrant metropolis, June Costa creates art that's sure to make her legendary. But her dreams of fame become something more when she meets Enki, the bold new Summer King. The whole city falls in love with him (including June's best friend, Gil). But June sees more to Enki than amber eyes and a lethal samba. She sees a fellow artist.

Together, June and Enki will stage explosive, dramatic projects that Palmares Tres will never forget. They will add fuel to a growing rebellion against the government's strict limits on new tech. And June will fall deeply, unfortunately in love with Enki. Because like all Summer Kings before him, Enki is destined to die.

Pulsing with the beat of futuristic Brazil, burning with the passions of its characters, and overflowing with ideas, this fiery novel will leave you eager for more from Alaya Dawn Johnson.

The Space Between Worlds

Micaiah Johnson

Multiverse travel is finally possible, but there's just one catch: No one can visit a world where their counterpart is still alive. Enter Cara, whose parallel selves happen to be exceptionally good at dying – from disease, turf wars, or vendettas they couldn't outrun. Cara's life has been cut short on 372 worlds in total.

On this dystopian Earth, however, Cara has survived. Identified as an outlier and therefore a perfect candidate for multiverse travel, Cara is plucked from the dirt of the wastelands. Now what once made her marginalized has finally become an unexpected source of power. She has a nice apartment on the lower levels of the wealthy and walled-off Wiley City. She works – and shamelessly flirts – with her enticing yet aloof handler, Dell, as the two women collect off-world data for the Eldridge Institute. She even occasionally leaves the city to visit her family in the wastes, though she struggles to feel at home in either place. So long as she can keep her head down and avoid trouble, Cara is on a sure path to citizenship and security.

But trouble finds Cara when one of her eight remaining doppelgängers dies under mysterious circumstances, plunging her into a new world with an old secret. What she discovers will connect her past and her future in ways she could have never imagined – and reveal her own role in a plot that endangers not just her world, but the entire multiverse.

Smoketown

Tenea D. Johnson

The city of Leiodare is unlike any other in the post-climate change United States. Within its boundaries, birds are outlawed and what was once a crater in Appalachia is now a tropical, glittering metropolis where Anna Armour is waiting. An artist by passion and a factory worker by trade, Anna is a woman of special gifts. She has chosen this beautiful, traumatized city to wait for the woman she's lost, the one she believes can save her from her troubled past and uncertain future.

When one night Anna creates life out of thin air and desperation, no one is prepared for what comes next - not Lucine, a smooth talking soothsayer with plans for the city; Lucine's brother Eugenio who has designs of his own; Seife, a star performer in the Leiodaran cosmos; or Rory, a forefather of the city who's lived through outbreak, heatbreak, and scandal. Told through their interlocking stories, Smoketown delves into the invisible connections that rival magic, and the copst of redemption.

Ice

Anna Kavan

In this haunting and surreal novel, the narrator and a man known as 'the warden' search for an elusive girl in a frozen, seemingly post-nuclear, apocalyptic landscape. The country has been invaded and is being governed by a secret organisation. There is destruction everywhere; great walls of ice overrun the world. Together with the narrator, the reader is swept into a hallucinatory quest for this strange and fragile creature with albino hair. Acclaimed by Brian Aldiss on its publication in 1967 as the best science fiction book of the year, this extraordinary and innovative novel has subsequently been recognised as a major work of literature in its own right.

A Wind Named Amnesia

Hideyuki Kikuchi

The Apocalypse didn't end with a BANG, but with a whimper. Silently, the 'amnesia wind' swept away all of mankind's knowledge. Thousands of years of human civilization vanished overnight as people forgot how to use the tools of modern civilization; who they were, how to speak - everything! Technology decayed as mankind was reduced to an extremely primitive level. Two years after the devastation, a young man explores a nation reduced to barbarism: America. Miraculously re-educated after the cataclysm, he is accompanied by a young woman - somehow spared the obliterating effects of the amnesia wind. Pursued by a relentless killing machine, they search for those responsible for stealing their memories.

Also includes Invader Summer.

Sleeping Beauties

Owen King
Stephen King

In this spectacular father/son collaboration, Stephen King and Owen King tell the highest of high-stakes stories: what might happen if women disappeared from the world of men?

In a future so real and near it might be now, something happens when women go to sleep; they become shrouded in a cocoon-like gauze. If they are awakened, if the gauze wrapping their bodies is disturbed or violated, the women become feral and spectacularly violent; and while they sleep they go to another place... The men of our world are abandoned, left to their increasingly primal devices. One woman, however, the mysterious Evie, is immune to the blessing or curse of the sleeping disease. Is Evie a medical anomaly to be studied? Or is she a demon who must be slain? Set in a small Appalachian town whose primary employer is a women's prison, Sleeping Beauties is a wildly provocative, gloriously absorbing father/son collaboration between Stephen King and Owen King.

Of Men and Monsters

William Tenn

Giant, technologically superior aliens have conquered Earth, but humankind survives - even flourishes in a way. Men and women live, like mice, in burrows in the massive walls of the huge homes of the aliens, and scurry about under their feet, stealing from them. A complex social and religious order has evolved, with women preserving knowledge and working as healers, and men serving as warriors and thieves. For the aliens, men and women are just a nuisance, nothing more than vermin. Which, ironically, may just be humankind's strength and point the way forward.

In the Lives of Puppets

T. J. Klune

In a strange little home built into the branches of a grove of trees, live three robots--fatherly inventor android Giovanni Lawson, a pleasantly sadistic nurse machine, and a small vacuum desperate for love and attention. Victor Lawson, a human, lives there too. They're a family, hidden and safe.

The day Vic salvages and repairs an unfamiliar android labelled "HAP," he learns of a shared dark past between Hap and Gio--a past spent hunting humans.

When Hap unwittingly alerts robots from Gio's former life to their whereabouts, the family is no longer hidden and safe. Gio is captured and taken back to his old laboratory in the City of Electric Dreams. So together, the rest of Vic's assembled family must journey across an unforgiving and otherworldly country to rescue Gio from decommission, or worse, reprogramming.

Along the way to save Gio, amid conflicted feelings of betrayal and affection for Hap, Vic must decide for himself: Can he accept love with strings attached?

Beyond the Barrier

Damon Knight

Beyond the Barrier tells the story of a physics professor in 1980 who begins to doubt that he is a human being. He imagines that he may have been sent from another world to rescue Earth; or perhaps to destroy it. Solving the mystery takes him far into the future.

Virus: The Day of Resurrection

Sakyo Komatsu

A mysterious virus wipes out all of humanity, save for researchers in the frigid Antarctic. To save what is left of the world from nuclear destruction, the scientists must find a way to return to America.

In this classic of Japanese SF from 1964, American astronauts on a space mission discover a strange virus and bring it to Earth, where rogue scientists transform it into a fatal version of the flu. At first, life continues as normal. A celebrity dies in a car accident, nuclear disarmament talks proceed apace, and then a disease hits poultry stocks worldwide, leading to an egg shortage just as demand for a new influenza vaccine--which requires eggs for its production--spikes.

Soon, even vaccinated individuals simply begin to die of heart attacks. Governments the world over hoard their information about the flu, so by the time the secret within the secret is understood, it is too late. Infrastructure collapses, a US general goes rogue, and nearly all human life on Earth is wiped out over the course of a few months, save for fewer than one thousand men and a handful of women living in research stations in Antarctica. Then one of the researchers realizes that a major earthquake in the now-depopulated United States may lead to nuclear Armageddon...

After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall

Hugo-nominated and Nebula-winning Novella

The year is 2035. After ecological disasters nearly destroyed the Earth, 26 survivors-the last of humanity-are trapped by an alien race in a sterile enclosure known as the Shell. Fifteen-year-old Pete is one of the Six-children who were born deformed or sterile and raised in the Shell. As, one by one, the survivors grow sick and die, Pete and the Six struggle to put aside their anger at the alien Tesslies in order to find the means to rebuild the earth together. Their only hope lies within brief time-portals into the recent past, where they bring back children to replenish their disappearing gene pool.

Meanwhile, in 2013, brilliant mathematician Julie Kahn works with the FBI to solve a series of inexplicable kidnappings. Suddenly her predictive algorithms begin to reveal more than just criminal activity. As she begins to realize her role in the impending catastrophe, simultaneously affecting the Earth and the Shell, Julie closes in on the truth. She and Pete are converging in time upon the future of humanity-a future which might never unfold. Weaving three consecutive time lines to unravel both the mystery of the Earth's destruction and the key to its salvation, this taut adventure offers a topical message with a satisfying twist.

Laws of Survival

This novelette originally appeared in Jim Baen's Universe, December 2007. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Fifth Annual Collection (2008), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Best of Jim Baen's Universe II (2008), edited by Eric Flint and Mike Resnick, Alien Contact (2011), edited by Marty Halpern, and Not One of Us: Stories of Aliens on Earth (2018), edited by Neil Clarke. The story is included in the anthology Fountain of Age: Stories (2012) and The Best of Nancy Kress (2015).

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

Sea Change

War Day and the Journey Onward

Operative Renata Black has a serious problem: an ordinary self-driving house. But this house, causing a traffic snarl, also has the Org's teal paint on the windowsill.

In 2022, GMOs were banned. A biopharmaceutical caused the Catastrophe: worldwide economic and agricultural collapse, and personal tragedy for lawyer Caroline Denton and her son. Ten years later, as Renata Black, she is a member of the Org, an underground group of scientists hunted by the feds. But the Org's illegal food-research might just hold the key to rebuilding the worlds' food supply.

Now there's a mole in the Org, and Renata is the only one who can find out who it is. At risk is the possibility of an even more devastating climate collapse. For answers, she will go to her legal clients from the Quinault Nation. Will there be time to reveal the solutions that the world has not been willing to face?

Whitley Strieber
James Kunetka

Five years after a "limited" nuclear war, two survivors journey across America. They -- and you -- will discover what is left of our way of life: the depth of the devastation -- and the hopes of a new society desperately struggling to be born.

Crying in the Rain

Tanith Lee

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Other Edens (1987), edited by Robert Holdstock and Christopher Evans. It can also be found in the anthologies The 1988 Annual World's Best SF (1988), edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, and The Big Book of Science Fiction (2016), edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer. It is included in the collections Forests of the Night (1989) and Sounds and Furies (2010).

The Night of the Long Knives

Fritz Leiber

I was one hundred miles from Nowhere?and I mean that literally?when I spotted this girl out of the corner of my eye. I'd been keeping an extra lookout because I still expected the other undead bugger left over from the murder party at Nowhere to be stalking me.

Welcome to Deathland, a postapocalyptic nuclear desert where kill or be killed is the law of the land. The radiation-damaged survivors of this ravaged region are consumed by the urge to murder each other, making partnership of any sort a lethal risk. But when two drifters forge an uneasy truce, the possibility of a new life beckons.

Written by a multiple Hugo Award-winning author and one of the founders of the sword-and-sorcery genre, this novel-length magazine story first appeared at the height of Cold War paranoia. Fritz Leiber's thought-provoking tale addresses timeless questions about the influences of community and culture as well as the individual struggle to reform.

Memoirs Found in a Bathtub

Stanislaw Lem

The year is 3149, and a vast paper destroying blight-papyralysis-has obliterated much of the planet's written history. However, these rare memoirs, preserved for centuries in a volcanic rock, record the strange life of a man trapped in a hermetically sealed underground community.

California

Edan Lepucki

The world Cal and Frida have always known is gone, and they've left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable despite the isolation and hardships they face. Consumed by fear of the future and mourning for a past they can't reclaim, they seek comfort and solace in one other. But the tentative existence they've built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she's pregnant.

Terrified of the unknown but unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded and paranoid community with dark secrets. These people can offer them security, but Cal and Frida soon realize this community poses its own dangers. In this unfamiliar world, where everything and everyone can be perceived as a threat, the couple must quickly decide whom to trust.

A gripping and provocative debut novel by a stunning new talent,California imagines a frighteningly realistic near future, in which clashes between mankind's dark nature and irrepressible resilience force us to question how far we will go to protect the ones we love.

Amnesia Moon

Jonathan Lethem

In Jonathan Lethem's wryly funny second novel, we meet a young man named Chaos, who's living in a movie theater in post-apocalyptic Wyoming, drinking alcohol, and eating food out of cans.

It's an unusual and at times unbearable existence, but Chaos soon discovers that his post-nuclear reality may have no connection to the truth. So he takes to the road with a girl named Melinda in order to find answers. As the pair travels through the United States they find that, while each town has been affected differently by the mysterious source of the apocalypse, none of the people they meet can fill in their incomplete memories or answer their questions. Gradually, figures from Chaos's past, including some who appear only under the influence of intravenously administered drugs, make Chaos remember some of his forgotten life as a man named Moon.

The Arrest

Jonathan Lethem

The Arrest isn't post-apocalypse. It isn't a dystopia. It isn't a utopia. It's just what happens when much of what we take for granted--cars, guns, computers, and airplanes, for starters--quits working....

Before the Arrest, Sandy Duplessis had a reasonably good life as a screenwriter in L.A. An old college friend and writing partner, the charismatic and malicious Peter Todbaum, had become one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. That didn't hurt.

Now, post-Arrest, nothing is what it was. Sandy, who calls himself Journeyman, has landed in rural Maine. There he assists the butcher and delivers the food grown by his sister, Maddy, at her organic farm. But then Todbaum shows up in an extraordinary vehicle: a retrofitted tunnel-digger powered by a nuclear reactor. Todbaum has spent the Arrest smashing his way across a fragmented and phantasmagorical United States, trailing enmities all the way. Plopping back into the siblings' life with his usual odious panache, his motives are entirely unclear. Can it be that Todbaum wants to produce one more extravaganza? Whatever he's up to, it may fall to Journeyman to stop him.

The Wolf Road

Beth Lewis

Since the Damn Stupid turned the clock back on civilization by centuries, the world has been a harsher place. But Elka has learned everything she needs to survive from the man she calls Trapper, the solitary hunter who took her in when she was just seven years old.

So when Elka sees the Wanted poster in town, her simple existence is shattered. Her Trapper -- Kreagar Hallet -- is wanted for murder. Even worse, Magistrate Lyon is hot on his trail, and she wants to talk to Elka.

Elka flees into the vast wilderness, determined to find her true parents. But Lyon is never far behind -- and she's not the only one following Elka's every move. There will be a reckoning, one that will push friendships to the limit and force Elka to confront the dark memories of her past.

The Supernova Era

Cixin Liu

Celestial giants don't go peacefully. They tear themselves to pieces, unleashing a tsunami of ultra high-energy radiation. Eight years ago and eight light years away, a supermassive star died and tonight its supernova shockwave will finally reach Earth. Dark skies will shine bright as a new star blooms in the heavens and within a year everyone over the age of thirteen will be dead, their chromosomes irreversibly damaged.

And so the countdown begins.

Parents apprentice their children and try to pass on the knowledge they'll need to keep the world running.

But the last generation may not want to carry the legacy of their parents' world. And though they imagine a better, brighter future, they may not be able to escape humanity's darker instincts.

Dispatches from the Cradle: The Hermit - Forty-Eight Hours in the Sea of Massachusetts

Ken Liu

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Drowned Worlds (2016), edited by Jonathan Strahan. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year Volume 2 (2017), edited by Neil Clarke.

The Scarlet Plague

Jack London

Outside the ruins of San Francisco, a former UC Berkeley professor recounts the chilling sequence of events -- a gruesome pandemic which killed nearly every living soul on the planet, in a matter of days -- which led to his current lowly state. Modern civilization has fallen, and a new race of barbarians, descended from the world's brutalized workers, has assumed power. Over the space of a few decades, all learning has been lost.

The catastrophe happens in 2013; 2012 marks the centennial of the novel's first publication as a serial in London Magazine.

Severance

Ling Ma

Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine: her work, watching movies with her boyfriend, avoiding thoughts of her recently deceased Chinese immigrant parents. So she barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps the world.

Candace joins a small group of survivors, led by the power-hungry Bob, on their way to the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Severance is a moving family story, a deadpan satire and a heartfelt tribute to the connections that drive us to do more than survive.

The Hothouse World

Fred MacIsaac

A post-apocalyptic world far gone, Humanity huddled within their glass-cage city were they lived, the last survivors of the Ice-Age cataclysm... One man dared the hostile world of freezing death outside the city in a bottle, in a wild despairing fight to turn back the clock and save the smouldering embers of mankind.

Song of Time

Ian R. MacLeod

A man lies half-drowned on a Cornish beach at dawn in the furthest days of this century. The old woman who discovers him, once a famous concert violinist, is close to death herself... or a new kind of life she can barely contemplate.

Does death still exist at all, or has it finally been obliterated? And who is this strange man she's found? Is he a figure returned from her past, a new messiah, or an empty vessel? Is he God, or the Devil?

Station Eleven

Emily St. John Mandel

An audacious, darkly glittering novel about art, fame, and ambition set in the eerie days of civilization's collapse, from the author of three highly-acclaimed previous novels.

One snowy night a famous Hollywood actor slumps over and dies onstage during a production of King Lear. Hours later, the world as we know it begins to dissolve. Moving back and forth in time—from the actor's early days as a film star to fifteen years in the future, when a theater troupe known as The Travelling Symphony roams the wasteland of what remains—this suspenseful, elegiac, spellbinding novel charts the strange twists of fate that connect five people: the actor, the man who tried to save him, the actor's first wife, his oldest friend, and a young actress with the Traveling Symphony, caught in the crosshairs of a dangerous self-proclaimed prophet. Sometimes terrifying, sometimes tender, Station Eleven tells a story about the relationships that sustain us, the ephemeral nature of fame, and the beauty of the world as we know it.

The Migration

Helen Marshall

When I was younger I didn't know a thing about death. I thought it meant stillness, a body gone limp. A marionette with its strings cut. Death was like a long vacation – a going away. Not this.

Storms and flooding are worsening around the world, and a mysterious immune disorder has begun to afflict the young. Sophie Perella is about to begin her senior year of high school in Toronto when her little sister, Kira, is diagnosed. Their parents' marriage falters under the strain, and Sophie's mother takes the girls to Oxford, England, to live with their Aunt Irene. An Oxford University professor and historical epidemiologist obsessed with relics of the Black Death, Irene works with a Centre that specializes in treating people with the illness. She is a friend to Sophie, and offers a window into a strange and ancient history of human plague and recovery. Sophie just wants to understand what's happening now; but as mortality rates climb, and reports emerge of bodily tremors in the deceased, it becomes clear there is nothing normal about this condition – and that the dead aren't staying dead. When Kira succumbs, Sophie faces an unimaginable choice: let go of the sister she knows, or take action to embrace something terrifying and new.

Eternity Road

Jack McDevitt

The Roadmakers left only ruins behind -- but what magnificent ruins! Their concrete highways still cross the continent. Their cups, combs and jewelry are found in every Illyrian home. They left behind a legend,too -- a hidden sanctuary called Haven, where even now the secrets of their civilization might still be found.

Chaka's brother was one of those who sought to find Haven and never returned. But now Chaka has inherited a rare Roadmaker artifact -- a book called A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court -- which has inspired her to follow in his footsteps. Gathering an unlikely band of companions around her, Chaka embarks upon a journey where she will encounter bloodthirsty rirver pirates, electronic ghosts who mourn their lost civilization and machines that skim over the ground and air. Ultimately, the group will learn the truth about their own mysterious past.

Moonfall

Jack McDevitt

It's the 21st century, and all is right with the world. Or so it seems.

Vice President Charlie Haskell, who will travel anywhere for a photo op, is about to cut the ribbon for the just-completed American Moonbase. The first Mars voyage is about to leave high orbit, with a woman at the helm. Below, the world is marveling at a rare solar eclipse.

But all that is right is about to go disastrously wrong when an amateur astronomer discovers a new comet. Named for its discover, Tomikois a "sun-grazer,"an interstellar wanderer with a hundred times the mass and ten times the speed of other comets. And it is headed straight for our moon.

In less than five days, if scientists' predictions are right, Tomiko will crash into the moon, shattering it into a cloud of superheated gas, dust, and huge chunks of rock that will rain down on the earth, causing chaos and killer storms, possibly tidal waves inundating entire cities... or worse: a single apocalyptic worldwide "extinction event."

In the meantime, the population of Moonbase must be evacuated by a hastily assembled fleet of shuttle rockets. There isn't room, or time enough, for everyone. And the vice president, who rashly promised to be last off ("I will lock the door and turn off the lights"), is trying to figure out how to get away without eating his words.

After the Apocalypse: Stories

Maureen F. McHugh

In her new collection, Story Prize finalist Maureen F. McHugh delves into the dark heart of contemporary life and life five minutes from now and how easy it is to mix up one with the other. Her stories are post-bird flu, in the middle of medical trials, wondering if our computers are smarter than us, wondering when our jobs are going to be outsourced overseas, wondering if we are who we say we are, and not sure what we'd do to survive the coming zombie plague.

Contents:

Soft Apocalypse

Will McIntosh

What happens when resources become scarce and society starts to crumble? As the competition for resources pulls America's previously stable society apart, the "New Normal" is a Soft Apocalypse. This is how our world ends; with a whimper instead of a bang. "It's so hard to believe," Colin said as we crossed the steaming, empty parking lot toward the bowling alley. "What?" "That we're poor. That we're homeless." "I know." "I mean, we have college degrees," he said. "I know," I said. There was an ancient miniature golf course choked in weeds alongside the bowling alley. The astroturf had completely rotted away in places. The windmill had one spoke. We looked it over for a minute (both of us had once been avid mini golfers), then continued toward the door. "By the way," I added. "We're not homeless, we're nomads. Keep your labels straight." New social structures and tribal connections spring up across America, as the previous social structures begin to dissolve. Soft apocalypse follows the journey across the South East of a tribe of formerly middle class Americans as they struggle to find a place for themselves and their children in a new, dangerous world that still carries the ghostly echoes of their previous lives.

The Exile Waiting

Vonda N. McIntyre

Centuries had passed since the Final War devastated Earth & turned its surface into an intolerable radioactive desert. To survive at all, the only place to live was Center--a huge city built of rock & steel in a vast undergroud cavern.

Misha is a mutant who has extraordinary telepathic powers which forever linked her to the mental calls of her family. When the pseudosibs landed and took over most of the ruling power, Mischa saw her chance to escape the tyranny of her relatives. To survive, Mischa had chosen a life of crime....

Drowning Practice

Mike Meginnis

Profoundly moving, filled with tenderness, and brought to life by a curious, sprawling imagination, Drowning Practice is the story of a mother and daughter trying to save each other's lives at what could be the end of the world

One night, everyone on Earth has the same dream--a dream of being guided to a watery death by a loved one on November 1. When they wake up, most people agree: after Halloween, the world will end.

In the wake of this haunting dream and saddled with its uncertainty, Lyd and her daughter, Mott, navigate a changed world, wrestling with how to make choices when you really don't know what comes next. Embarking on a quixotic road trip filled with a collection of unexpected and memorable characters, Lyd and Mott are determined to live out what could be their final months as fully as possible. But how can Lyd protect Mott and help her achieve her ambitions in a world where inhibitions, desires, and motivations have become unpredictable, and where Mott's dangerous and conniving father has his own ideas about how his estranged family should spend their last days?

Formally inventive and hauntingly strange, Drowning Practice signals the arrival of a singular new voice in Mike Meginnis, who writes with generosity and precision, humor and sorrowfulness. Stirring and surprising at every turn, Drowning Practice is literary speculative fiction at its best and with a pulsing heart: a mother and daughter trying to decide how they should live out what might be the final months of their--or anyone's--life on Earth.

Malevil

Robert Merle

Malevil is a powerful, provocative story of a new world after a nuculear holocaust.

The Cats We Meet Along the Way

Nadia Mikail

Seventeen-year-old Aisha hasn't seen her sister June for two years. And now that a calamity is about to end the world in nine months' time, she and her mother decide that it's time to track her down and mend the hurts of the past. Along with Aisha's boyfriend, Walter and his parents (and Fleabag the stray cat), the group take a roadtrip through Malaysia in a wildly decorated campervan - to put the past to rest, to come to terms with the present, and to hope for the future.

Radio Life

Derek B. Miller

The Commonwealth, a post-apocalyptic civilisation on the rise, is locked in a clash of ideas with the Keepers, a fight which threatens to destroy the world... again.

When Lilly was first Chief Engineer at The Commonwealth, nearly fifty years ago, the Central Archive wasn't yet the greatest repository of knowledge in the known world, protected by scribes copying every piece of found material - books, maps, even scraps of paper - and disseminating them by Archive Runners to hidden off-site locations for safe keeping. Back then, there was no Order of Silence to create and maintain secret routes deep into the sand-covered towers of the Old World or into the northern forests beyond Sea Glass Lake. Back then, the world was still quiet, because Lilly hadn't yet found the Harrington Box.

But times change. Recently, the Keepers have started gathering to the east of Yellow Ridge - thousands upon thousands of them - and every one of them determined to burn the Central Archives to the ground, no matter the cost, possessed by an irrational fear that bringing back the ancient knowledge will destroy the world all over again. To prevent that, they will do anything.

Fourteen days ago the Keepers chased sixteen-year-old Archive Runner Elimisha into a forbidden Old World Tower and brought the entire thing down on her. Instead of being killed, though, she slipped into an ancient unmapped bomb shelter where she has discovered a cache of food and fresh water, a two-way radio like the one Lilly's been working on for years... and something else. Something that calls itself 'the internet'...

Blackfish City

Sam J. Miller

After the climate wars, a floating city was constructed in the Arctic Circle. Once a remarkable feat of mechanical and social engineering, it has started to crumble under the weight of its own decay - crime and corruption have set in, a terrible new disease is coursing untreated through the population, and the contradictions of incredible wealth alongside deepest poverty are spawning unrest.

Into this turmoil comes a strange new visitor - a woman accompanied by an orca and a chained polar bear. She disappears into the crowds looking for someone she lost thirty years ago, followed by whispers of a vanished people who could bond with animals. Her arrival draws together four people and sparks a chain of events that will lead to unprecedented acts of resistance.

A Children's Bible

Lydia Millet

Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet's sublime new novel follows a group of twelve eerily mature children on a forced vacation with their families at a sprawling lakeside mansion.

Contemptuous of their parents, who pass their days in a stupor of liquor, drugs, and sex, the children feel neglected and suffocated at the same time. When a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, the group's ringleaders?including Eve, who narrates the story?decide to run away, leading the younger ones on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside.

As the scenes of devastation begin to mimic events in the dog-eared picture Bible carried around by her beloved little brother, Eve devotes herself to keeping him safe from harm.

Cloud Atlas

David Mitchell

From David Mitchell, the Booker Prize nominee, award-winning writer and one of the featured authors in Granta's "Best of Young British Novelists 2003" issue, comes his highly anticipated third novel, a work of mind-bending imagination and scope.

A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically modified "dinery server" on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing the nightfall of science and civilisation -- the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other's echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and small.

In his captivating third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity's dangerous will to power, and where it may lead us.

The Ice Schooner

Michael Moorcock

The world lay frozen under a thousand feet of ice - and only in the Eight Cities of the Matto Grosso did men still live, hunting the wary ice whales for meat and oil, following the creed of the Ice Mother which foretold the end of all life in ultimate cold.

But legend told of a city far to the north - fabled New York - whose towers rose above the ice, whose crypts held the forgotten lore that might bring warmth to Earth once again.

And, in the best ice ship in the Eight Cities, Konrad Arflane embarked on the impossible voyage to New York - an odyssey of incredible peril and adventure...with a shattering discovery at journey's end!

The Shores of Death

Michael Moorcock

In the far future, Earth's rotation has been halted by powerful aliens searching for the end of the universe. Happening upon Earth, the aliens took from it what they needed and moved on. The human race is now divided; some living on the cold night side, some the sweltering day side, yet others in the thin twilight between the two regions.

Living a life of pleasure and decadence in the twilight region, Valta Becker impregnates his daughter who dies shortly after giving birth to Clovis, last of the twilight children.

Neglected by his father, Clovis leaves home for the more technologically and philosophically sophisticated daylight region, where lifespans stretch to hundreds of years and the marvels of future science still flourish. He makes a name for himself in politics, rising to almost god-like stature. When catastrophe strikes, rendering the daylight people sterile due to an after-effect of the aliens' strange energies used in halting the planet's rotation, Clovis Becker must find an answer or the human race will perish.

Thus begins a taut adventure filled with warring political ideologies, End of the World parties, flower forests and floating carriages, shadowy figures attempting to shape mankind's destiny for their own ends, colorful descriptions worthy of Jack Vance and Mervyn Peake--and a love story for the ages as Clovis and Fastina Cahmin--the last born of the daylight people--seek immortality... but at what cost?

alternate title: The Twilight Man

When The Floods Came

Clare Morall

In a world prone to violent flooding, Britain, ravaged 20 years earlier by a deadly virus, has been largely cut off from the rest of the world. Survivors are few and far between, most of them infertile. Children, the only hope for the future, are a rare commodity.

For 22-year-old Roza Polanski, life with her family in their isolated tower block is relatively comfortable. She's safe, happy enough. But when a stranger called Aashay Kent arrives, everything changes. At first he's a welcome addition, his magnetism drawing the Polanskis out of their shells, promising an alternative to a lonely existence. But Roza can't shake the feeling that there's more to Aashay than he's letting on. Is there more to life beyond their isolated bubble? Is it true that children are being kidnapped? And what will it cost to find out?

Clare Morrall, author of the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted Astonishing Splashes of Colour, creates a startling vision of the future in a world not so very far from our own, and a thrilling story of suspense.

Love and Sex Among the Invertebrates

Pat Murphy

Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Alien Sex (1990), edited by Ellen Datlow. It can also be found in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighth Annual Collection (1991), edited by Gardner Dozois, Nebula Awards 26 (1992), edited by James Morrow, and Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology (2015), edited by Jeff and Ann Vandermeer.

The City, Not Long After

Pat Murphy

Half a generation ago, a gesture in the name of peace turned out to spread plague and disaster. In San Francisco, the survivors are heir to a city transformed. It is a haunted, dreaming place peopled with memories, and in a strange way nearly alive itself. And although it is only beginning to recover from near-ultimate disaster, the city is at risk again. An army of power-hungry men are descending on San Francisco. Teenagers Jax and Danny-boy must lead the fight for freedom using the only weapons they have-art, magic, and the soul of the city itself.

At The Edge

Dan Rabarts
Lee Murray

Step up, as close as you dare...

...to a place at the edge of sanity, where cicadas scritch across balmy summer nights,

at the edge of town, where the cellphone coverage is decidedly dodgy,

at the edge of space, where a Mimbinus argut bounds among snowy rocks,

at the edge of the page, where demon princes prance in the shadows,

at the edge of despair, where 10 darushas will get you a vodka lime and a ring side seat,

at the edge of the universe, where time stops but space goes on...

From the brink of civilisation, the fringe of reason, and the border of reality, come 23 stories infused with the bloody-minded spirit of the Antipodes, tales told by the children of warriors and whalers, convicts and miners: people unafraid to strike out for new territories and find meaning in the expanses at the edge of the world.

Compiled by award-winning editing team Dan Rabarts and Lee Murray, and including a story by Arthur C. Clarke finalist Phillip Mann and foreword by World Fantasy Award winner Angela Slatter, At the Edge is a dark and dystopic collection from some of Australia and New Zealand's best speculative writers.

The Martian Obelisk

Linda Nagata

A powerful science fiction story about an architect on Earth commissioned to create (via long distance) a masterwork with materials from the last abandoned Martian colony, a monument that will last thousands of years longer than Earth, which is dying.

This story can be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Twelve (2018), edited by Jonathan Strahan, The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection (2018), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 3 (2018), edited by Neil Clarke, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2018, edited by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

The Girl Who Owned A City

O. T. Nelson

A deadly plague has devastated Earth, killing all adults. Lisa and her younger brother Todd are struggling to stay alive in a world where no one is safe. Other children along Grand Avenue need help as well. They band together to find food, shelter, and protection from dangerous gangs invading their neighborhood.

When Tom Logan and his army start making thrats, Lisa comes up with a plan and leads her group to a safer place. But how far is she willing to go protect what's hers?

The Country of Ice Cream Star

Sandra Newman

In the aftermath of a devastating plague, a fearless young heroine embarks on a dangerous and surprising journey to save her world in this brilliantly inventive dystopian thriller, told in bold and fierce language, from a remarkable literary talent.

My name be Ice Cream Fifteen Star and this be the tale of how I bring the cure to all the Nighted States...

In the ruins of a future America, fifteen-year-old Ice Cream Star and her nomadic tribe live off of the detritus of a crumbled civilization. Theirs is a world of children; before reaching the age of twenty, they all die of a mysterious disease they call Posies--a plague that has killed for generations. There is no medicine, no treatment; only the mysterious rumor of a cure.

When her brother begins showing signs of the disease, Ice Cream Star sets off on a bold journey to find this cure. Led by a stranger, a captured prisoner named Pasha who becomes her devoted protector and friend, Ice Cream Star plunges into the unknown, risking her freedom and ultimately her life. Traveling hundreds of miles across treacherous, unfamiliar territory, she will experience love, heartbreak, cruelty, terror, and betrayal, fighting with her whole heart and soul to protect the only world she has ever known.

Guardian First Book Award finalist Sandra Newman delivers an extraordinary post-apocalyptic literary epic as imaginative as The Passage and as linguistically ambitious as Cloud Atlas. Like Hushpuppy in The Beasts of the Southern Wild grown to adolescence in a landscape as dangerously unpredictable as that of Ready Player One, The Country of Ice Cream Star is a breathtaking work from a writer of rare and unconventional talent.

Footfall

Larry Niven
Jerry Pournelle

They first appear as a series of dots on astronomical plates, heading from Saturn directly toward Earth. Since the ringed planet carries no life, scientists deduce the mysterious ship to be a visitor from another star.

The world's frantic efforts to signal the aliens go unanswered. The first contact is hostile: the invaders blast a Soviet space station, seize the survivors, and then destroy every dam and installation on Earth with a hail of asteriods.

Now the conquerors are descending on the American heartland, demanding servile surrender--or death for all humans.

Lucifer's Hammer

Larry Niven
Jerry Pournelle

Monumental devastation will sweep across the globe if the newly-discovered Hamner-Brown comet collides with the one major obstacle in its path: Earth.

For millionaire Tim Hamner, the comet is a ticket to immortality. For filmmaker Harvey Randall, it's a shot to redeem a flagging career. And for astronauts John Baker and Rick Delanty, it's a second chance for glory in outer space.

But for a world gripped by comet fever, fascination quickly turns to fear. And only those who survive the impact will know the even greater terror, when rich and poor, politicians and killers, turn to each other or against each other--and the remnants of humanity grow savage to battle for what little remains...

Inconstant Moon

Larry Niven

Hugo Award winning short story. It originally appeared in the collection All the Myriad Ways (1971). The story can also be found in the anthologies:

Best Science Fiction for 1972 edited by Frederik Pohl
The Hugo Winners, Volume 3: (1970-75) (1977), edited by Isaac Asimov
The Best of All Possible Worlds (1980), edited by Spider Robinson
The World Treasury of Science Fiction (1989), edited by David G. Hartwell
Armageddons (1999) edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois
Masterpieces: The Best Science Fiction of the Century (2001), edited by Orson Scott Card
L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume 31 (2015), edited by David Farland

It is included in the collections Inconstant Moon (1973), N-Space (1990) and The Best of Larry Niven (2010).

Shade's Children

Garth Nix

The Key to Survival Rests in the Hands of Shade's Children

In a futuristic urban wasteland, evil Overlords have decreed that no child shall live a day past his fourteenth birthday. On that Sad Birthday, the child is the object of an obscene harvest resulting in the construction of a machinelike creature whose sole purpose is to kill.

The mysterious Shade -- once a man, but now more like the machines he fights -- recruits the few children fortunate enough to escape. With luck, cunning, and skill, four of Shade's children come closer than any to discovering the source of the Overlords' power -- and the key to their downfall. But the closer the children get, the more ruthless Shade seems to become ...

Speaker to Heaven

Atanielle Annyn Noel

Calavairnonce Southern Californiais an island of civilization in Noel's postholocaust world. Ruled by a rich, secretive and powerful monastic order resembling the Catholic Church, the society has substituted its newly abundant psychic powers for lost scientific abilities. Therein lies a crucial conflict, for the church seeks to control all such powers while the university wants to study them properly, and a third group, the renegade kindlewitches, uses them for evil purposes. The bizarre death of the church's leader, Speaker to Heaven, and other disturbances of a magical nature bring in detective Wolf, who must sort out the prime suspects among the most powerful secular and religious figures in their small world.

Notes from the Burning Age

Claire North

Once the world was on fire - but that was long ago. The Burning Age gave way to an era of peace, humanity finding harmony with nature and each other, as new cities rose from the ruins of the old.

Ven used to be a holy man, a guardian of ancient archives. Sorting secrets from sacrilege, he studied the past so that we might never repeat it. But some ideas never fade, and as a new war brews, fuelled by old knowledge and older ambitions, Ven must decide how far he's willing to go to save this new world, and how much he is willing to lose.

Breed to Come

Men fled their polluted war ravaged planet, leaving behind a virus from their insidious experimentations. Yet, the animals of the planet thrived, each generation stronger and more intelligent than the last. In the ruins of a university, a huge group of cats, more brilliant than common, sought to master the works of man. They found that the Demons (Mankind) were real. And there was real danger (from Humans) if they ever returned to earth. Then one day a spaceship came.

Dark Piper

Dinner at Deviant's Palace

Returning to his home planet after ten years, Griss Lugard found Beltane relatively untouched by the annihilating war of the Four Sectors, her inhabitants still immersed in their experiments in mutation. Lugard's warnings of imminent danger from off-world meant nothing to them. Only Vere Collis and his friends believed in Lugard and, drawn by his magnetism to explore unknown desert caves, they were safe underground when a series of explosions rocked Beltane, killing Lugard and sealing them in. After a fearful battle they won their way to the surface, there to receive a shattering blow: All other human inhabitants on Beltane had perished - and only strange and ppssibly hostile mutant creatures awaited them.

Black Snow Days

Claudia O'Keefe

Eric Pope awakens from a twelve-year coma to discover the world destroyed by war and his own mind and body rebuilt into something inhuman, a creature who, unlike the others, can survive in the deadly black snow outside their shelter.

The Blast

David Ohle

Building the pedway so that everyone had access was a marvel of engineering. Yet no one knew who the engineers or builders were. They were lost to history. Though it was assumed that somewhere there must have been a central power source, perhaps in an underground facility with dynamos and belts and enormous gears, it had never been located.

South

Frank Owen

South takes place in a USA ravaged by Civil War. It's been thirty years since the first wind-borne viruses ended the war between North and South - and still they keep coming. Every wind brings a new and terrifying way to die. The few survivors live in constant fear, hiding from the wind - and from each other.

In this harsh Southern expanse, brothers Garrett and Dyce Jackson are on the run from brutal law-enforcers. They meet Vida, a lone traveller on a secret quest. Together, they will journey into the dark heart of a country riven by warfare and disease.

Emergence

David R. Palmer

This is the saga of Candy Smith-Foster, a brilliant, witty girl on the verge of womanhood, survivor of a bionuclear war that destroyed most of humanity, first of a new stage in human evolution--homo post hominem. EMERGENCE is the story of her turbulent odyssey across a scarred America seeking others of her kind and a new future for the people of Earth.

The Apocalypse Strain

Jason Parent

A multi-national research team, led by a medical genomics expert suffering from MS, study an ancient pandoravirus at a remote Siberian research facility. Called "Molli" by the research team, the organic substance reveals some unique but troublesome characteristics, qualities that, in the wrong hands, could lead to human extinction.

The researchers soon learn that even in the right hands, Molli is a force too dangerous to escape their compound. But the virus has a mind of its own, and it wants out.

Dust

Charles Pellegrino

Get all your chores done. Unplug the phone. Turn off the TV and the computer. Clear the decks completely--because you wont want any interruptions once you settle into the most pulse-pounding reading experience of the year.
The change begins silently, imperceptibly, inexorably. One natural effect topples into the next, like an array of dominoes that stretches to every corner of the globe. Before anyone realizes it, the earths ecology has utterly transformed itself. And the days of the old world are finished.

In an idyllic Long Island community, paleobiologist Richard Sinclair is one of the first to suspect that the environment has begun to wage bloody, terrifying war on humanity. What initially appear to be random, unrelated events are, in actuality, violent eruptions in a worldwide biological chain reaction. Along with a brave group of survivors, Sinclair must learn to understand the catastrophe while it rolls around them, slowly crumbling a panicked world and energizing a reactionary fringe that welcomes the apocalypse. The survival of humankind depends on finding an answer immediately--for all else is dust.

The Dead Lands

Benjamin Percy

In Benjamin Percy's new thriller, a post-apocalyptic reimagining of the Lewis and Clark saga, a super flu and nuclear fallout have made a husk of the world we know. A few humans carry on, living in outposts such as the Sanctuary-the remains of St. Louis-a shielded community that owes its survival to its militant defense and fear-mongering leaders.

Then a rider comes from the wasteland beyond its walls. She reports on the outside world: west of the Cascades, rain falls, crops grow, civilization thrives. But there is danger too: the rising power of an army that pillages and enslaves every community they happen upon.

Against the wishes of the Sanctuary, a small group sets out in secrecy. Led by Lewis Meriwether and Mina Clark, they hope to expand their infant nation, and to reunite the States. But the Sanctuary will not allow them to escape without a fight.

Fermi and Frost

Frederik Pohl

Hugo Award wining novelette. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, January 1985. The story can also be found in the anthologies:

The Year's Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection (1986), edited by Gardner Dozois
The 1986 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha
The New Hugo Winners, Volume II: (1986-88) (1992), edited by Isaac Asimov
The Greatest Science Fiction Stories of the 20th Century (1998) edited by Martin H. Greenberg
Armageddons (1999) edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois
The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF (2010), edited by Mike Ashley

It is included in the collection Platinum Pohl: The Collected Best Stories (2005).

Read the story for free at the Baen website.

Jackie's-Boy

Steven Popkes

This novella originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, April-May 2010. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection (2011), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Year's Best SF 16 (2011), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Kramer.

Tim Powers

Gregorio Rivas is retired from the Redemptionist trade - at thirty-one, he's no longer willing to risk his life rescuing new recruits from the savage religion of the Messiah Norton Jaybush, no longer eager to track the caravans of the faithful through the mutated wildernesses of Los Angeles. Once he was the best Redemptionist for hire - once he even tracked a victim right up to the walls of the Messiah's perilous Holy City in Irvine - but that's all over now.

Or it was - until he's approached to perform one last Redemption. And this time the victim who has been brainwashed and carried away by the brutal faith is his long-lost first love, Urania.

And so Rivas sets out to save her, beginning a violent pilgrimage that will take him through the landscape-of-the-damned which is 22nd Century California, and into the very heart of the Jaybush cult - and finally to the nightmare city of Venice, and the fabulous, feared castle at the core of it... Deviant's Palace.

Fugue for a Darkening Island

Christopher Priest

Fugue - a glimpse into the future of Britain.

At a time when the country is caught by civil conflict between a right-wing government and the liberal element, a third group arrives – refugee Africans from a continent devastated by nuclear attack. The country is ripe for a three-way civil war. Total breakdown in communications quickly follows and a nightmare situation grips the community.

Alan Whitman, the central character of this frightening story, represents the view of the man-in-the-street. How will he cope with this situation when he has opted out all his life, from political, personal and moral decisisons?

The Inverted World

Christopher Priest

The city is winched along a track through a devastated land full of hostile tribes. Tracks must be freshly laid ahead of the city and carefully removed in its wake. Rivers and mountains present nearly insurmountable challenges to the ingenuity of the city's engineers. But if the city does not move, it will fall farther and farther behind the "optimum," slipping into the crushing gravitational field that has transformed life on earth. The only alternative to the city's forward progress is death.

The secret directorate that governs the city makes sure that its inhabitants know nothing of this. Raised in common in creches, nurtured on synthetic food, prevented above all from venturing outside the closed circuit of the city, they are carefully sheltered from the dire necessities that have come to define human existence. And yet, for all that, the city is in crisis. The people are growing restive, the population is dwindling, and the rulers know that, for all their efforts, slowly but surely the city is slipping ever farther behind the optimum.

Helward Mann is a member of the city's elite. Better than anyone, he knows the risks the city runs, how tenuous is its continued existence, how essential it is that discipline be maintained. And yet, as he is about to discover, the world is even stranger than he dreamed.

The Doomsday Men

J. B. Priestley

Three strangers, each on a separate mission, converge in the California desert. Jimmy Edlin is hot on the trail of a religious cult he believes is responsible for his brother's murder; George Hooker is a physicist in search of a missing colleague; and Malcolm Darbyshire is an Englishman looking for a beautiful heiress who has vanished without a trace. When the three men come together and discover that their situations are intertwined, they join forces to try to unravel these mysteries. Braving danger and death at every turn, they follow a trail of clues that leads to an explosive conclusion, as they uncover a sinister group whose insane philosophy calls for the destruction of all life on earth and who possess the awesome power to bring about doomsday!

Written against the backdrop of the rise of Hitler and Mussolini and with the threat of the Second World War looming, The Doomsday Men (1938) is one of J. B. Priestley's most thrilling novels and a story with frightening implications.

Dark Future: Route 666

David Pringle

Table of Contents:

5 - Route 666 - (1990) - novella by Kim Newman [as by Jack Yeovil ]
59 - Kid Zero and Snake Eyes - (1990) - shortstory by Brian Stableford [as by Brian Craig ]
73 - Ghost Town - (1990) - novelette by Neil Jones
101 - Duel Control - (1990) - novelette by Myles Burnham
127 - Thicker Than Water - (1990) - novelette by Brian Stableford [as by Brian Craig ]
159 - Maverick Son - (1990) - novelette by Neil McIntosh
183 - Four-Minute Warning - (1990) - novelette by Myles Burnham
209 - Only in the Twilight - (1990) - novelette by Brian Stableford [as by Brian Craig ]
231 - Uptown Girl - (1990) - novelette by William King

Flowertown

S. G. Redling

When Feno Chemical spilled an experimental pesticide in rural Iowa, scores of people died. Those who survived contamination were herded into a US Army medically maintained quarantine and cut off from the world. Dosed with powerful drugs to combat the poison, their bodies give off a sickly sweet smell and the containment zone becomes known simply as Flowertown.

Seven years later, the infrastructure is crumbling, supplies are dwindling, and nobody is getting clean. Ellie Cauley doesn't care anymore. Despite her paranoid best friend's insistence that conspiracies abound, she focuses on three things: staying high, hooking up with the Army sergeant she's not supposed to be fraternizing with and, most importantly, trying to ignore her ever-simmering rage. But when a series of deadly events rocks the compound, Ellie suspects her friend is right--something dangerous is going down in Flowertown and all signs point to a twisted plan of greed and abuse. She and the other residents of Flowertown have been betrayed by someone with a deadly agenda and their plan is just getting started. Time is running out. With nobody to trust and nowhere to go, Ellie decides to fight with the last weapon she has--her rage.

Flowertown is a high-intensity conspiracy thriller that brings the worst-case scenario vividly to life and will keep readers riveted until the final haunting page.

The Ants of Flanders

Robert Reed

This novella originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July-August 2011. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Ninth Annual Collection (2012), edited by Gardner Dozois, and Not One of Us: Stories of Aliens on Earth (2018), edited by Neil Clarke.

A Gift Upon the Shore

M. K. Wren

In the Pacific Northwest of the near future, the golden age has ended in apocalypse. Nuclear war has unleased firestorms and the killing cold of nuclear winter. Earthquakes and tidal waves have ravaged the West Coast of America. Desperate violent looters comb the devastated land. And a horrifying pandemic lays waste to the remaining human population.

But one of the few survivors, Mary Hope, is determined to see that some spark of culture survives. Together with her beloved friend Rachel, she sets out to preserve the precious knowledge of the past by saving every book she can in what may very well be the last library - the only record of a world that has perished.

But Mary and Rachel are not alone. They are forced to share their small subsistence farm, Amarna, with the Flock, a small band of survivors with fanatical beliefs. And one of those beliefs is that books are blasphemous and should be destroyed...

Permafrost

Alastair Reynolds

Fix the past. Save the present. Stop the future. Master of science fiction Alastair Reynolds unfolds a time-traveling climate fiction adventure in Permafrost.

2080: at a remote site on the edge of the Arctic Circle, a group of scientists, engineers and physicians gather to gamble humanity's future on one last-ditch experiment. Their goal: to make a tiny alteration to the past, averting a global catastrophe while at the same time leaving recorded history intact. To make the experiment work, they just need one last recruit: an ageing schoolteacher whose late mother was the foremost expert on the mathematics of paradox.

2028: a young woman goes into surgery for routine brain surgery. In the days following her operation, she begins to hear another voice in her head... an unwanted presence which seems to have a will, and a purpose, all of its own - one that will disrupt her life entirely. The only choice left to her is a simple one.

Does she resist... or become a collaborator?

Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer

Adam Roberts

Golden Age SF meets Golden Age Crime from the author of Swiftly, New Model Army, and Yellow Blue Tibia-an innovative literary voice working at the height of his powers

Jack Glass is the murderer-we know this from the start. Yet as this extraordinary novel tells the story of three murders committed by Glass, the reader will be surprised to find out that it was Glass who was the killer and how he did it. And by the end of the book our sympathies for the killer are fully engaged. Riffing on the tropes of crime fiction (the country house murder, the locked room mystery) and imbued with the feel of golden age SF, this is another bravura performance from Roberts. Whatever games he plays with the genre, whatever questions he asks of the reader, Roberts never loses sight of the need to entertain.

This novel has some wonderfully gruesome moments, is built around three gripping HowDunnits, and comes with liberal doses of sly humor. Roberts invites us to have fun and tricks us into thinking about both crime and SF via a beautifully structured novel set in a society whose depiction challenges notions of crime, punishment, power, and freedom.

Grainne

Keith Roberts

Grainne, quite simply, is unique; a moving and magical tour de force that ranks with Keith Robert's best works.

Ostensibly, the novel charts the career of one Alistair Bevan, writer and adman, from his beginnings in a post-war Midland town. Here though any parallels with our world cease. Through Bevan's vivid memories we meet Grainne; blue-stocking seductress, darling of the media. Painfully human yet as mysterious as her great namesake, the girl-goddess doomed by her own proud nature who plunged all Ireland into war and shadow.

But there's very much more. Grainne proposes new and startling answers for the origins of the Celts themselves, answers that irrevocably link the fate of East and West; though the wide-ranging narrative wears its erudition lightly. We glimpse Oxford in the sixties, Ireland and Wessex, a London that has yet to be; through and between them, like the spirallings of Celtic thought itself, runs a strange graffito. How does it relate to the tenets of the Buddha, the heady eroticism of Hindu art? One by one the answers are made; by Grainne, human and divine, a proto-myth for the new millennium.

Molly Zero

Keith Roberts

In an England two hundred years hence all children are brought up in single sex creches: the Blocks. Molly Zero, young and intelligent, resilient and loving, is a product of the Blocks and is destined for the Elite -- the governing body of a country now crippled by martial law.

Molly rebels and escapes, and we follow her through various adventures -- in the apparent mundanity of small town life, joining the eccentric gaiety of the travelling gypsies, and on finally to the "trendy" nihilism of middle-class terrorism. This is the story of her gradual awakening to the realities of responsibility and the price of caring.

Vanishing Point

Michaela Roessner

It happened one night, without warning: 90% of the human race disappeared without a trace. There were no bodies and no clue as to where they went or whether they would ever return. After years of violence spawned by fear and rage, an uneasy peace is restored. But fanatics still rove the land, trying to discover what caused the Vanishing.

The Blue Book of Nebo

Manon Steffan Ros

Dylan was six when The End came, back in 2018; when the electricity went off for good, and the 'normal' 21st-century world he knew disappeared. Now he's 14 and he and his mam have survived in their isolated hilltop house above the village of Nebo in north-west Wales, learning new skills, and returning to old ways of living.

Despite their close understanding, the relationship between mother and son changes subtly as Dylan must take on adult responsibilities. And they each have their own secrets, which emerge as, in turn, they jot down their thoughts and memories win a found notebook -- the Blue Book of Nebo.

Depth

Lev A. C. Rosen

When the polar ice caps melted, America's East Coast became an underwater graveyard - except for New York City. Today, a million people make their home among the skyscrapers poking through the ocean waves. A million people who like to live by their own rules - including Simone Pierce, one of the best private investigators in the city.

It starts out as a routine surveillance job: cheating husband, attractive blonde. Something feels off, though, and when the husband turns up floating in the water with a hole in him, the cops like Simone for the murder. If she can just find the blonde, she'll clear her name, but instead she stumbles onto a strange network of power brokers and art collectors, all looking for a treasure that can't possibly exist. As she struggles to find the murderer, Simone is only sure of one thing: she can't trust anybody, not even herself, because the city she grew up in might have more secrets than even she knows.

Arch-Conspirator

Tales From the Radiation Age

"I'm cursed, haven't you heard?"

Outside the last city on Earth, the planet is a wasteland. Without the Archive, where the genes of the dead are stored, humanity will end.

Antigone's parents -- Oedipus and Jocasta -- are dead. Passing into the Archive should be cause for celebration, but with her militant uncle Kreon rising to claim her father's vacant throne, all Antigone feels is rage.

When he welcomes her and her siblings into his mansion, Antigone sees it for what it really is: a gilded cage, where she is a captive as well as a guest.

But her uncle will soon learn that no cage is unbreakable. And neither is he.

These Prisoning Hills

Christopher Rowe

Deallocate all implications,
Fortran harrows all the nations.

In a long-ago war, the all-powerful A.I. ruler of the Voluntary State of Tennessee--Athena Parthenus, Queen of Reason--invaded and decimated the American Southeast. Possessing the ability to infect and corrupt the surrounding environment with nanotechnology, she transformed flora, fauna, and the very ground itself into bio-mechanical weapons of war.

Marcia, a former captain from Kentucky, experienced first-hand the terrifying, mind-twisting capabilities of Athena's creatures. Now back in the Commonwealth, her retirement is cut short by the arrival of federal troops in her tiny, isolated town. One of Athena's most powerful weapons may still be buried nearby. And they need Marcia's help to find it.

Sleep Donation

Karen Russell

From the author of the New York Times bestseller Swamplandia!, and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, an imaginative and haunting novella about an insomnia epidemic set in the near future.

A crisis has swept America. Hundreds of thousands have lost the ability to sleep. Enter the Slumber Corps, an organization that urges healthy dreamers to donate sleep to an insomniac. Under the wealthy and enigmatic Storch brothers the Corps' reach has grown, with outposts in every major US city. Trish Edgewater, whose sister Dori was one of the first victims of the lethal insomnia, has spent the past seven years recruiting for the Corps. But Trish's faith in the organization and in her own motives begins to falter when she is confronted by "Baby A," the first universal sleep donor, and the mysterious "Donor Y."

Sleep Donation explores a world facing the end of sleep as we know it, where "Night Worlds" offer black market remedies to the desperate and sleep deprived, and where even the act of making a gift is not as simple as it appears.

Fragment

Craig Russell

When avalanching glaciers thrust a massive Antarctic ice sheet into the open ocean, the captain of an atomic submarine must risk his vessel to rescue the survivors of a smashed polar research station; in Washington the President's top advisor scrambles to spin the disaster to suit his master's political aims; and meanwhile two intrepid newsmen sail south into the storm-lashed Drake Passage to discover the truth.

Onboard the submarine, as the colossal ice sheet begins its drift toward South America and the world begins to take notice, scientists uncover a secret that will threaten the future of America's military power and change the fate of humanity.

And beneath the human chaos one brave Blue Whale fights for the survival of his species.

Arbitrium

Anjali Sachdeva

Vashti is a pathogenic diplomat - an ambassador to the world of viruses, whom she communicates with through a machine that can translate their chemical signals into images, tastes, smells, sounds, and memories. She begins a negotiation between the US Government and a diplomatic contingent from Arenavirus, a virus which has just begun spreading a deadly mutation in Florida. If Vashti is successful, she and Arena will reach a diplomatic agreement; if not, the Arenavirus infection will continue to spread, and humans will have to race to try to find a vaccine or treatment.

As she navigates the diplomatic discussions, Vashti is also trying to connect with her daughter Alma, who lives on the other side of the country in a technology-averse commune. By the time the negotiation ends, Vashti discovers that Arenavirus have learned some impressive and deadly tricks from their interactions with humans.

Read the full story for free at Tor Reactor.

Cormorant Run

Lilith Saintcrow

It could have been aliens, it could have been a trans-dimensional rift, nobody knows for sure. What's known is that there was an Event, the Rifts opened up, and everyone caught inside died.

Since the Event certain people have gone into the drift... and come back, bearing priceless technology that's almost magical in its advancement. When Ashe -- the best Rifter of her generation -- dies, the authorities offer her student, Svinga, a choice: go in and bring out the thing that killed her, or rot in jail.

Nothing But the Rain

Naomi Salman

The rain in Aloisville is never-ending, and no one can remember when it started. There's not much they can remember. With every drop that hits their skin, a bit of memory is washed away. Stay too long in the wet, and you'll lose everything you used to be.

By the time Laverne begins keeping a journal, the small town she calls home has been irreparably changed. Every drop of water is dangerous, from leaky faucets to the near-constant rainfall, and a careless trip outside can mean a life down the drain. With mysterious forces preventing escape, calls for rebellion seem to be on every resident's lips. But Laverne has no interest in fighting. She has no interest in rebellion. She just wants to survive.

Plague Birds

Jason Sanford

Glowing red lines split their faces. Shock-red hair and clothes warn people to flee their approach. They are plague birds, the powerful merging of humans and artificial intelligences who serve as judges and executioners after the collapse of civilization.

And the plague birds' judgement is swift and deadly, as Crista discovered as a child when she watched one kill her mother.

In a world of gene-modded humans constantly watched over by benevolent AIs, everyone hates and fears the plague birds. But to save her father and home village, Crista becomes the very creature she fears the most. And her first task as a plague bird is hunting down an ancient group of murderers wielding magic-like powers.

As Crista and her AI symbiote travel farther from home than she ever imagined, they are plunged into a strange world where she judges wrongdoers, befriends other outcasts, and uncovers an extremely personal conspiracy that threatens the lives of millions.

The Shore of Women

Pamela Sargent

Women rule the world in this suspenseful love story set in a postnuclear future. Having expelled men from their vast walled cities to a lower-class wilderness, the women in this futuristic universe dictate policy and chart the future through control of scientific and technological advances. Among their laws are the rules for reproductive engagement, an act now viewed as a means of procreation rather than an act of love. In this rigidly defined environment, a chance meeting between a woman exiled from the female world and a wilderness man triggers a series of feelings, actions, and events that ultimately threaten the fabric of the women's constricted society. Trying to evade the ever-threatening female forces and the savage wilderness men, the two lovers struggle to find a safe haven and reconcile the teachings of their upbringings with their newly awakened feelings.

The Downloaded

Robert J. Sawyer

In 2059, two vastly different groups of people undergo cryonic suspension. While their bodies are frozen, their minds, still active and awake, are uploaded into a massive quantum computer.

The first group are all astronauts, about to leave Earth on a one-way interstellar colonization mission. The second group consists of convicted murderers and volunteers who elect to serve their sentences in a virtual-reality prison.

But while both groups are suspended, a global cataclysm devastates most of the Earth, and their cryosleep is extended by more than 500 years.

Metatropolis

John Scalzi

Five original tales set in a shared urban future-from some of the hottest young writers in modern SF

A strange man comes to an even stranger encampment... a bouncer becomes the linchpin of an unexpected urban movement... a courier on the run has to decide who to trust in a dangerous city... a slacker in a "zero-footprint" town gets a most unusual new job...and a weapons investigator uses his skills to discover a metropolis hidden right in front of his eyes.

Welcome to the future of cities. Welcome to Metatropolis.

More than an anthology, Metatropolis is the brainchild of five of science fiction's hottest writers-Elizabeth Bear, Tobias Buckell, Jay Lake, Karl Schroeder, and project editor John Scalzi--who combined their talents to build a new urban future, and then wrote their own stories in this collectively-constructed world. The results are individual glimpses of a shared vision, and a reading experience unlike any you've had before.

The Swarm

Frank Schätzing

For more than two years, one book has taken over Germany's hardcover and paperback bestseller lists, reaching number one in Der Spiegel and setting off a frenzy in bookstores: The Swarm.

Whales begin sinking ships. Toxic, eyeless crabs poison Long Island's water supply. The North Sea shelf collapses, killing thousands in Europe. Around the world, countries are beginning to feel the effects of the ocean's revenge as the seas and their inhabi-tants begin a violent revolution against mankind. In this riveting novel, full of twists, turns, and cliffhangers, a team of scientists discovers a strange, intelligent life force called the Yrr that takes form in marine animals, using them to wreak havoc on humanity for our ecological abuses. Soon a struggle between good and evil is in full swing, with both human and suboceanic forces battling for control of the waters. At stake is the survival of the Earth's fragile ecology -- and ultimately, the survival of the human race itself.

The apocalyptic catastrophes of The Day After Tomorrow meet the watery menace of The Abyss in this gripping, scientifically realistic, and utterly imaginative thriller. With 1.5 million copies sold in Germany -- where it has been on the bestseller list without fail since its debut -- and the author's skillfully executed blend of compelling story, vivid characters, and eerie locales, Frank Schatzing's The Swarm will keep you in tense anticipation until the last suspenseful page is turned.

The Rule of Three

Lawrence M. Schoen

This Nebula Award nominated novelette originally appeared in Future Science Fiction Digest, Issue 1, December 2018.

Read the full story for free at Future Science Fiction Digest.

Golden Days

Carolyn See

As soon as an attractive, middle-aged divorcee adopts a reckless California lifestyle to escape her dreary past, she is transformed by the shattering possibility of an approaching nuclear nightmare.

The Trees

Ali Shaw

There came an elastic aftershock of creaks and groans and then, softly softly, a chinking shower of rubbled cement. Leaves calmed and trunks stood serene. Where, not a minute before, there had been a suburb, there was now only woodland standing amid ruins...

There is no warning. No chance to prepare.

They arrive in the night: thundering up through the ground, transforming streets and towns into shadowy forest. Buildings are destroyed. Broken bodies, still wrapped in tattered bed linen, hang among the twitching leaves.

Adrien Thomas has never been much of a hero. But when he realises that no help is coming, he ventures out into this unrecognisable world. Michelle, his wife, is across the sea in Ireland and he has no way of knowing whether the trees have come for her too.

Then Adrien meets green-fingered Hannah and her teenage son Seb. Together, they set out to find Hannah's forester brother, to reunite Adrien with his wife--and to discover just how deep the forest goes.

Their journey will take them to a place of terrible beauty and violence, to the dark heart of nature and the darkness inside themselves.

Jason Sheehan

In a post-apocalyptic America that has shattered into a hundred perpetually warring fiefdoms, anyone with a loud voice and a doomsday weapon can be king (and probably has been). Duncan Archer--con man, carpetbagger, survivor--has found a way to somehow successfully navigate the end of the world, with its giant killer robots, radioactive mutants, mad scientists, rampant nanotechnology, armed gangs, sea monsters, and 101 unpleasant ways to die.

But when he meets Captain James Barrow, a former OSS agent and the most wanted man in the world, Duncan finds himself a reluctant hero caught up in a whole new level of weird, rollicking adventure...

And the second most wanted man in the world.

Tales from the Radiation Age is a throwback to the pulp-origins of science fiction, painting a vision of the future that's richly detailed, wildly imaginative--and altogether too easy to imagine.

The Screwfly Solution

Raccoona Sheldon
James Tiptree, Jr.

This Nebula-winning and Hugo-nominated novelette was collected in Out of the Everywhere and Other Extraordinary Visions (1981) and Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1990) and anthologized in The 1978 Annual World's Best SF (1978), Nebula Winners Thirteen (1980), Armageddons (1999) and Sisters of the Revolution: A Feminist Speculative Fiction Anthology (2015).

Read this story online for free at the Sci Fiction archive.

The Book of M

Peng Shepherd

Set in a dangerous near future world, The Book of M tells the captivating story of a group of ordinary people caught in an extraordinary catastrophe who risk everything to save the ones they love. It is a sweeping debut that illuminates the power that memories have not only on the heart, but on the world itself.

One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a man's shadow disappears--an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a strange new power, it comes at a horrible price: the loss of all their memories.

Ory and his wife Max have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their new life feels almost normal, until one day Max's shadow disappears too.

Knowing that the more she forgets, the more dangerous she will become to Ory, Max runs away. But Ory refuses to give up the time they have left together. Desperate to find Max before her memory disappears completely, he follows her trail across a perilous, unrecognizable world, braving the threat of roaming bandits, the call to a new war being waged on the ruins of the capital, and the rise of a sinister cult that worships the shadowless.

As they journey, each searches for answers: for Ory, about love, about survival, about hope; and for Max, about a new force growing in the south that may hold the cure.

The Other End

John Shirley

Do you ever think that the human world is hopelessly out of balance, blighted, off track, and the only hope is some kind of apocalypse, some sort of end of the world that would allow the human race a new beginning, a fresh start without... ah... certain people?

You know you don't want and can't believe in the usual "End Times" scenarios that are predicted and ballyhooed by hysterical, superstitious people.

But when you look around at the world as it stands you see Darfur, you see Somalia and the Congo, you see the modern slavery of indentured servitude, you see children sold into prostitution, you see millions starving, you see mindless wars, you see people you care about dying of Alzheimer's and children dying of cancer and millions of others trapped in schizophrenia or living lives of media-hypnotized desperation...

You see a planet beset by a loss of biodiversity, a depleted ozone layer, slash-and-burn destruction of rainforests, and the onset of global warming...

And you know that because the population of the Earth is increasing, it's only going to get worse. This can't go on; something has to change.

What if you could change it? What if you could design your own Judgment Day?

What if there were another end rather than one based on childish interpretations of religion, bias, bigotry, exclusion, and cultural narrowness?

What if Judgment Day came for the whole world and offered true justice?

It would be THE OTHER END.

What Happened to the Corbetts

Nevil Shute

Set in 1938, this novel tells the story of the Corbetts, a family preparing for the coming war. As the world begins to collapse around them, Peter Corbett, a local lawyer, his wife, Joan, and their children make the decision to move away from the war zone after their house, and Corbett's offices, are destroyed. They quickly realise that escaping all the mayhem will be no easy task at all.

The novel addresses the issues of the aftermath of bombing, such as the spread of disease from lack of clean water, lack of food, lack of electricity, and what may be done to relieve the distress of those affected by the ills of modern warfare.

Conquerors from the Darkness

A thousand years in the future, the earth has been conquered by an alien race and covered by a single sea. Dovirr Stargan, who is disgusted with the servility of his life on the floating city of Vythain, longs to become one of the Sea-Lords, who roam the sea as powerful protectors of the cities. Dovirr gets his wish, but the return of the alien race brings unexpected and critically dangerous crises to his new life as he learns the real, sometimes terrible, significance of power.

Time of the Great Freeze

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within

2650 AD The Earth has been buried beneath a sheet of ice for 300 years. In cities miles beneath the surface humanity huddles, waiting for release. Dr. Raymond Barnes waits with passion, and listens daily for evidence of life on the still Earth. Finally, a voice from across the void hails his open frequency . . . the surface awaits mankind. But not all men are anxious to return to what was . . . those in power are determined to keep man in his new place, to retain their order of fear and oppression. Barnes and his courageous group of scientists and adventurers are arrested for possession of forbidden technology; the radio is destroyed! Their punishment is swift ejection from the underground city, their only hope is to reach London - 3000 desolate miles across a frozen wasteland!

Disaster's Children

Emma Sloley

As the world dies, a woman must choose between her own survival and that of humankind.

Raised in a privileged community of wealthy survivalists on an idyllic, self-sustaining Oregon ranch, Marlo has always been insulated. The outside world, which the ranchers call "the Disaster," is a casualty of ravaging climate change, a troubled landscape on the brink of catastrophe. For as long as Marlo can remember, the unknown that lies beyond the borders of her utopia has been a curious obsession. But just as she plans her escape into the chaos of the real world, a charismatic new resident gives her a compelling reason to stay. And, soon enough, a reason to doubt--and to fear--his intentions.

Now, feeling more and more trapped in a paradise that's become a prison, Marlo has a choice: stay in the only home she's ever known--or break away, taking its secrets of survival with her.

Dean Wesley Smith

Earth, 2065 A.D.: Destruction and confusion everywhere. Cities are deserted, the population is decimated, and the few humans who remain struggle to survive against an insidious alien presence that is consuming the very life energy of this wounded world. The presence is spreading across the planet, infecting everything in its path, killing the Earth one life at a time. Only Dr. Aki Ross, brilliant young woman haunted by dreams of death, may hold the key to saving the world.

Special Purposes: First Strike Weapon

Gavin Smith

At the height of the Cold War, a Russian special forces team target New York with a horrifying new virus.

Vadim Scorlenski is the sergeant in charge of an elite Spetznaz squad at the height of the Cold War. Sent by the Politburo on a training exercise to the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, Scorlenski and his men discover too late that the practice 'weapon' they're carrying--an exotic chemical agent--is all too real. Betrayed by their allies and cut down by the American police, they go to their deaths...

...and awaken to a scene of turmoil. New York City has been overwhelmed by a horde of the walking dead, a plague that even now is spreading across the globe. Somehow holding onto their identities where all others have become mindless monsters, Scorlenski and his squad set out to return to Russia, to take revenge for what has been done to them.

Forge of the Elders

L. Neil Smith

This is an omnibus edition of First Time the Charm (variant of Contact and Commune), Second to One (variant of Converse and Conflict), and Third Among Equals.

Just when the 21st century thought it was safe to throw Marxism on the ash heap of history once and for all, a worldwide economic collapse suddenly made freedom seem less desirable than security, and the Total State turned out to be the comeback kid. In the US, where the power elite had long shown heartfelt affection for collectivism and making the trains (nationalized, of course) run on time, communism had a second coming. Which meant that Earth was now the Red Planet. The few holdouts and counterrevolutionaries would be dealt with in good time.

Of course, collectivization only made the worldwide depression worse. But then the People's Astronomers noticed an asteroid with unusual spectrographic properties, seemingly a treasure trove of valuable minerals that might rejuvenate the Earth's economy. So three aged NASA shuttles were pulled out of mothballs. crewed by a team of handpicked misfits whom no one would miss, and sent to the asteroid.

However, someone else was there first, under an airtight canopy made by genetically engineered trees. And they weren't human, even if they were from Earth. The Elders were "nautiloids," like intelligent giant squids in Volkswagen-sized shells, from a parallel universe where they were Earth's dominant species. Worst of all, they were CAPITALISTS!

Rivers

Michael Farris Smith

It had been raining for weeks. Maybe months. He had forgotten the last day that it hadn't rained, when the storms gave way to the pale blue of the Gulf sky, when the birds flew and the clouds were white and sunshine glistened across the drenched land.

Following years of catastrophic hurricanes, the Gulf Coast--stretching from the Florida panhandle to the western Louisiana border--has been brought to its knees. The region is so punished and depleted that the government has drawn a new boundary ninety miles north of the coastline. Life below the Line offers no services, no electricity, and no resources, and those who stay behind live by their own rules.

Cohen is one who stayed. Unable to overcome the crushing loss of his wife and unborn child who were killed during an evacuation, he returned home to Mississippi to bury them on family land. Until now he hasn't had the strength to leave them behind, even to save himself.

But after his home is ransacked and all of his carefully accumulated supplies stolen, Cohen is finally forced from his shelter. On the road north, he encounters a colony of survivors led by a fanatical, snake-handling preacher named Aggie who has dangerous visions of repopulating the barren region.

Realizing what's in store for the women Aggie is holding against their will, Cohen is faced with a decision: continue to the Line alone, or try to shepherd the madman's captives across the unforgiving land with the biggest hurricane yet bearing down--and Cohen harboring a secret that may pose the greatest threat of all.

An Unkindness of Ghosts

Rivers Solomon

Odd-mannered, obsessive, withdrawn, Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She's used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, as they accuse, she'd be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remained of her world, save for stories told around the cookfire.

Aster lives in the low-deck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations the Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way the ship's leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster, whom they consider to be less than human.

When the autopsy of Matilda's sovereign reveals a surprising link between his death and her mother's suicide some quarter century before, Aster retraces her mother's footsteps. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer and sowing the seeds of civil war, Aster learns there may be a way off the ship if she's willing to fight for it.

All the Love in the World

Cat Sparks

Ditmar Award winning short story. It originally appeared in the anthology Sprawl (2010), edited by Alisa Krasnostein. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 16 (2011), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. The story is included in the collection The Bride Price (2013).

Lotus Blue

Cat Sparks

Powerful war machines of the far-future collide across a barren desert world in this post-apocalyptic debut novel from award-winning Australian author Cat Sparks.

Seventeen-year-old Star and her sister Nene are orphans, part of a thirteen-wagon caravan of nomadic traders living hard lives travelling the Sand Road. Their route cuts through a particularly dangerous and unforgiving section of the Dead Red Heart, a war-ravaged desert landscape plagued by rogue semi-sentient machinery and other monsters from a bygone age.

But when the caravan witnesses a relic-Angel satellite unexpectedly crash to Earth, a chain of events begins that sends Star on a journey far away from the life she once knew. Shanghaied upon the sandship Dogwatch, she is forced to cross the Obsidian Sea by Quarrel, an ancient Templar supersoldier. Eventually shipwrecked, Star will have no choice but to place her trust in both thieves and priestesses while coming to terms with the grim reality of her past--and the horror of her unfolding destiny--as the terrible secret her sister had been desperate to protect her from begins to unravel.

Meanwhile, something old and powerful has woken in the desert. A Lotus Blue, deadliest of all the ancient war machines. A warrior with plans of its own, far more significant than a fallen Angel. Plans that do not include the survival of humanity.

The Electric State

Simon Stålenhag

In 1997, a runaway teenager and her yellow toy robot travel west through a strange USA. The ruins of gigantic battle drones litter the countryside, heaped together with the discarded trash of a high tech consumerist society in decline. As their car approaches the edge of the continent, the world outside the window seems to be unraveling ever faster--as if somewhere beyond the horizon, the hollow core of civilization has finally caved in.

Simon Stålenhag is the internationally acclaimed author, concept designer, and artist behind Tales from the Loop and Things from the Flood. His highly imaginative images and stories depicting illusive sci-fi phenomena in mundane, hyper-realistic Scandinavian landscapes have made Stålenhag one of the most sought-after visual storytellers in the world. In The Electric State, Stålenhag turns his unique vision to America.

Seveneves

Neal Stephenson

What would happen if the world were ending?

A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space.

But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain...

Five thousand years later, their progeny -- seven distinct races now three billion strong--embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown... to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth.

Heavy Weather

Bruce Sterling

Bruce Sterling, one of the founding fathers of the cyberpunk genre, now presents a novel of vivid imagination and invention that proves his talent for creating brilliant speculative fiction is sharper than ever. Forty years from now, Earth's climate has been drastically changed by the greenhouse effect. Tornadoes of almost unimaginable force roam the open spaces of Texas. And on their trail are the Storm Troupers: a ragtag band of computer experts and atmospheric scientists who live to hack heavy weather -- to document it and spread the information as far as the digital networks will stretch, using virtual reality to explore the eye of the storm. Although it's incredibly addictive, this is no game. The Troupers' computer models suggest that soon an "F-6" will strike -- a tornado of an intensity that exceeds any existing scale; a storm so devastating that it may never stop. And they're going to be there when all hell breaks loose.

Camp Zero

Michelle Min Sterling

In remote northern Canada, a team led by a visionary American architect is breaking ground on a building project called Camp Zero, intended to be the beginning of a new way of life. A clever and determined young woman code-named Rose is offered a chance to join the Blooms, a group hired to entertain the men in camp--but her real mission is to secretly monitor the mercurial architect in charge. In return, she'll receive a home for her climate-displaced Korean immigrant mother and herself.

Rose quickly secures the trust of her target, only to discover that everyone has a hidden agenda, and nothing is as it seems. Through skillfully braided perspectives, including those of a young professor longing to escape his wealthy family and an all-woman military research unit struggling for survival at a climate station, the fate of Camp Zero's inhabitants reaches a stunning crescendo.

Atmospheric, fiercely original, and utterly gripping, Camp Zero is an electrifying page-turner and a masterful exploration of who and what will survive in a warming world, and how falling in love and building community can be the most daring acts of all.

We Shall Sing a Song into the Deep

Andrew Kelly Stewart

Remy is a Chorister, rescued from the surface world and raised to sing in a choir of young boys. Remy is part of a strange crew who control the Leviathan, an aging nuclear submarine, that bears a sacred mission: to trigger the Second Coming when the time is right.

But Remy has a secret too - she's the submarine's only girl. Gifted with the missile's launch key by the Leviathan's dying caplain, she swears to keep it safe. Safety, however, is not the priority of the new caplain, who has his own ideas about the mission. When a surface-dweller is captured during a raid, Remy's faith becomes completely overturned. Now, her last judgement may transform the fate of everything.

The Day After Tomorrow

Whitley Strieber

The planet is warming up and as the ice caps melt, the great currents of the oceans shift and the Northern Hemisphere is plunged into a new ice age. One scientist has the key to turning back the clock of global warming.

But as Western civilisation succumbs to blizzards and tidal waves and the population of the Northern hemisphere begins a mass exodus south, mankind's only saviour is making a lonely, terror-filled trip north. To a New York disappearing under snowdrifts hundreds of feet high. The city where his son was last heard of.

Starship & Haiku

S. P. Somtow

The Millennial War left a sullen void where civilization once stood. But then the whales began their song -- a mysterious song that resounded throughout the polluted seas and told an ancient heartbreaking tale that moved the survivors to revive and honored ritual...

The Colony

Mary Vigliante

Hell awaited those who survived the nuclear war. Humanity had reverted to barbarism. All the evils of the old society had grown worse. Sunny had been captured by four men who informed her she was now their wife. When the survivors organized, the men far outnumbered the women. They created a society and a family structure that supported male dominance. By their decree women existed only to serve their husbands and male masters. Sunny resisted, but was beaten and forced to submit. When she could bear no more of their cruelty, she tried to run away. But they dragged her back. Then Sunny found a gun.

The Land

Mary Vigliante

After a terrible holocaust 300 years before, only the Land survives. Tayla, crown princess of the realm, senses a secret bond between the sisters and the beasts of burden who serve them. Unlike cows, horses, and swine, these two-legged beasts are treated with extreme cruelty and contempt. They are either worked to death or ritually slaughtered. It is not until Tayla finds the ancient texts that she realizes who and what the beasts are. The ancient ones called them men!

The Shore

Sara Taylor

Welcome to The Shore: a collection of small islands sticking out from the coast of Virginia into the Atlantic Ocean. Where clumps of evergreens meet wild ponies, oyster-shell roads, tumble-down houses, unwanted pregnancies, murder, storm-making and dark magic in the marshes. . .

Situated off the coast of Virginia's Chesapeake Bay, the group of islands known as the Shore has been home to generations of fierce and resilient women. Sanctuary to some but nightmare to others, it's a place they've inhabited, fled, and returned to for hundreds of years. From a half-Shawnee Indian's bold choice to flee an abusive home only to find herself with a man who will one day try to kill her to a brave young girl's determination to protect her younger sister as methamphetamine ravages their family, to a lesson in summoning storm clouds to help end a drought, these women struggle against domestic violence, savage wilderness, and the corrosive effects of poverty and addiction to secure a sense of well-being for themselves and for those they love.

Together their stories form a deeply affecting legacy of two barrier island families, illuminating 150 years of their many freedoms and constraints, heartbreaks, and pleasures. Conjuring a wisdom and beauty all its own, The Shore is a richly unique, stunning novel that will resonate with readers long after turning its final pages, establishing Sara Taylor as a promising new voice in fiction.

Gibbon's Decline and Fall

Sheri S. Tepper

A wave of fundamentalism is sweeping across the globe as the millennium approaches, and a power-hungry presidential candidate sees his ticket to success in making an example out of a teenage girl who abandoned her infant in a Dumpster. Taking the girl's case is Carolyn Crespin, a former attorney, who left her job for a quiet family life. Now she must call upon five friends from college, who took a vow to always stand together. But their success might depend on the assistance of Sophy, the enigmatic sixth friend, whom they all believed dead.

The Family Tree

Sheri S. Tepper

The once fertile Earth of Dora Henry's childhood has been undervalued and overdeveloped. Now nature, apparently, has decided to fight back.

Police officer Dora Henry is investigating the bizarre murders of three geneticists. Meanwhile, strange things are happening everywhere she turns. Weeds are becoming trees; trees are becoming forests. Overnight, a city is being transformed into a wild and verdant place.

And, strangest of all, Dora can somehow communicate with the rampaging flora.

The Gate to Women's Country

Sheri S. Tepper

Classic fantasy from the amazing Sheri S. Tepper. Women rule in Women's Country. Women live apart from men, sheltering the remains of civilization They have cut themselves off with walls and by ordinance from marauding males. Waging war is all men are good for. Men are allowed to fight their barbaric battles! amongst themselves, garrison against garrison. For the sake of his pride, each boy child ritualistically rejects his mother when he comes of age to be a warrior. But all the secrets of civilization are strictly the possession of women. Naturally, there are men who want to know what the women know! And when Stavia meets Chernon, the battle of the sexes begins all over again. Foolishly, she provides books for Chernon to read. Before long, Chernon is hatching a plan of revenge against women!

New Atlantis

Lavie Tidhar

Finalist for the Sturgeon Award for Best Short Science Fiction

When a mysterious message arrives from vanished New Atlantis, a restless Mai undertakes the perilous journey to its drowned isles. But the journey is long and hard: through the Blasted Plains and the ancient cities of Tyr and Suf, through shipwreck and wilderness.

For this is a world where ants develop inexplicable weapons, where a lonely robot lives surrounded by cats in the ruins of old Paris, and where floating coral islands host sleeping sentience. Mai's journey takes her by land, sea and air to the islands of New Atlantis, and to the nightmare prison buried underneath old London.

On her way she will find heartbreak and love - and a new life, awakening.

This story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May/June 2019.

Ammon's Horn

Stan Timmons

Terrorists have unleashed the rapidly spreading virus dubbed the 'noids. Those infected become organic WMDs. Fused with the common cold, the virus spreads, turning the country into a nation of violent lunatics. Civilization collapses from within.

Gemma Goode, host of a wildly popular syndicated show about the unusual and the paranormal, along with her fiancé, police profiler Danny Sullivan, know about the virus, having uncovered it through a series of chance encounters and investigative work.

Danny and Gemma flee westward, ahead of the collapse, narrowly escaping death along the way, only to find borders to California are closed, the state maintaining its isolationism by military force. Danny begins to obsess that the President, who has been evacuated to California, is infected with the virus.

Danny will do anything--including assassination--to stop the President from launching a nuclear war.

Houston, Houston, Do You Read?

James Tiptree, Jr.

Hugo- and Nebula-winning Novella

In Tiptree's most famous and most reprinted story, a US spacecraft with an all-male crew is thrown forward in time to an Earth where all men have died from a plague.

This story was collected in Star Songs of an Old Primate (1978) and Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (1990), and anthologized in Aurora: Beyond Equality (1976), The 1977 Annual World's Best SF (1977), Nebula Winners Twelve (1978), The Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels (1980), The Hugo Winners, Volume 4 (1985), The Best of the Nebulas (1989), and as one half of Tor Double #11 (1989).

Listen to a radio play of this story at the Sci-Fi Radio archive (#17).

The Thousand Year Beach

Hirotaka Tobi

In a posthuman virtual world sealed off from the ruins of Earth, the idyll is shattered by an arachnid invasion.

Designed in imitation of a harbor town in southern Europe, the Realm of Summer is just one of the zones within the virtual resort known as the Costa del Número. It has been more than a thousand years since human guests stopped coming to the Realm, leaving the AIs alone in their endless summer. But now all that has come to a sudden end, as an army of mysterious Spiders begin reducing the town to nothing. As night falls, the few remaining AIs prepare for their final, hopeless battle... War between the virtual and the real begins in book one of the Angel of the Ruins series.

Ice and Iron

Wilson Tucker

The time might well be today in this intriguing science fiction tale in which the vagaries of weather open the door to an unknown civilization from the past—or is it the future?

Across the globe a new ice age is encroaching. From Alberta to Ontario most of Canada is deserted, its people resettled in the southern United States and Mexico, while mile by mile, century by century, the glacier grinds down their former homes.

Fisher Yann Highsmith is a scientist stationed, with a few colleagues, on the edge of the ice field, recording its relentless growth and the destruction of life in its path. In the midst of this barren landscape the team recovers a weird assortment of artifacts that seem to appear suddenly out of thin air, and Highsmith fits them together into a fantastic theory of another dimension. Then the search parties begin to find bodies out of time and place and Highsmith’s history of parallel worlds becomes a chilling reality.

The Long Loud Silence

Wilson Tucker

The Wrong Side of the River

Corporal Russell Gary -- operator -- angle man -- black-marketeer, juniot grade -- liberator of anything loose -- veteran of Salerno and Normandy -- a man who knew how to live by his wits and a gun.

Celebrating tne years in khaki Gary went on a monumental binge...

While he slept it off, the United States east of the Mississippi was laid waste by atomic bombs and plague germs. the few who survived were imune to the plague but carriers of the toxin. No one from the contaminated are crossed the Mississippe and lived more than a few seconds. the Army guarded every bridge, every inc of shore line. If you happened to be East fo the river when the bombs fell, you stayed there ntil you died. There was no other choice, no other future.

When Corporal Gary woke up he was on the wrong side of the river, the bombed and comtaminated side...

A Century Hence: or, a Romance of 1941

George Tucker

Contents:

A Century Hence: or, A Romance of 1941 - novel by George Tucker (1775-1861)
Introduction (A Century Hence: or, A Romance of 1941) - essay by Donald R. Noble

Note: Written in 1841, but remained unpublished until 1977. In the utopian/distopian vein, with the central theme being the effect of world overpopulation.

Genetic Soldier

George Turner

Returning to an overpopulated Earth after an unsuccessful, seven-century search for habitable planets, the crew of the starship Search is confronted by a hostile, anarchistic Earth culture that resists their peaceful overtures.

The Sea and Summer

George Turner

Francis Conway is Swill - one of the millions in the year 2041 who must subsist on the inadequate charities of the state. Life, already difficult, is rapidly becoming impossible for Francis and others like him, as government corruption, official blindness and nature have conspired to turn Swill homes into watery tombs. And now the young boy must find a way to escape the approaching tide of disaster.

The Sea and Summer, published in the US as Drowning Towers, is George Turner's masterful exploration of the effects of climate change in the not-too-distant future. Comparable to J.G. Ballard's The Drowned World, it was shortlisted for the nebula and won the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

The Last Murder at the End of the World

Stuart Turton

Solve the murder to save what's left of the world.

Outside the island there is nothing: the world was destroyed by a fog that swept the planet, killing anyone it touched.

On the island: it is idyllic. One hundred and twenty-two villagers and three scientists, living in peaceful harmony. The villagers are content to fish, farm and feast, to obey their nightly curfew, to do what they're told by the scientists.

Until, to the horror of the islanders, one of their beloved scientists is found brutally stabbed to death. And then they learn that the murder has triggered a lowering of the security system around the island, the only thing that was keeping the fog at bay. If the murder isn't solved within 92 hours, the fog will smother the island?and everyone on it.

But the security system has also wiped everyone's memories of exactly what happened the night before, which means that someone on the island is a murderer?and they don't even know it.

And the clock is ticking.

There Will Always Be a Max

Michael R. Underwood

A hero is missing. The post-apocalyptic wasteland is awash with violence and injustice, and the genrenaut's own King must step in and show precisely why There Will Always be a Max.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Towards the End of Time

John Updike

Ben Turnbull is a sixty-six-year-old retired investment counselor living north of Boston in the year 2020. A recent war between the United States and China has thinned the population and brought social chaos. The dollar has been locally replaced by Massachusetts scrip; instead of taxes, one pays protection money to competing racketeers. Nevertheless, Ben's life, traced by his journal entries over the course of a year, retains many of its accustomed comforts, as supervised by his vibrant wife, Gloria.

He plays golf; he pays visits to his five children and ten grandchildren. Something of a science buff, he finds his personal history caught up in the disjunctions and vagaries of the "many-worlds hypothesis derived from the indeterminacy of quantum theory. His identity branches into variants extending back through history and ahead in the evolution of the universe, as both it and his own mortal, nature-enshrouded existence move toward the end of time.

Fade to White

Catherynne M. Valente

Hugo, Nebula and Sidewise award nominated novelette. It was originally published in Clarkesworld Magazine, #71 August 2012. It can be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Seven (2013), edited by Jonathan Strahan and Clarkesworld: Year Six (2014), edited by Neil Clarke, Sean Wallace. The story is collected in The Melancholy of Mechagirl (2013) and The Bread We Eat in Dreams (2013).

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti

Genevieve Valentine

Come inside and take a seat; the show is about to begin...

Outside any city still standing, the Mechanical Circus Tresaulti sets up its tents. Crowds pack the benches to gawk at the brass-and-copper troupe and their impossible feats: Ayar the Strong Man, the acrobatic Grimaldi Brothers, fearless Elena and her aerialists who perform on living trapezes. War is everywhere, but while the Circus is performing, the world is magic.

That magic is no accident: Boss builds her circus from the bones out, molding a mechanical company that will survive the unforgiving landscape.

But even a careful ringmaster can make mistakes.

Two of Tresaulti's performers are trapped in a secret standoff that threatens to tear the Circus apart, just as the war lands on their doorstep. Now they must fight a war on two fronts: one from the outside, and a more dangerous one from within...

Summer of the Apocalypse

James Van Pelt

When a plague wipes out most of humanity, fifteen-year-old Eric sets out to find his father. Sixty years later, Eric starts another long journey in an America that has long since quit resembling our own, but there are shadows everywhere. Shadows of what the world once was, and shadows from Eric's past. Blood bandits, wolves, fire, feral children, and an insane militia are only a few of the problems Eric faces. Set in Denver, Colorado and the western foothills, Van Pelt's first novel is both a coming-of-age tale, and a story of an old man's search for hope in the midst of disaster. Eric's two adventures lead him through a slice of modern America and into the depths of one man's heart.

The Last of the O-Forms

James Van Pelt

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

Read the full story for free at the Baen website.

Cat's Cradle

Kurt Vonnegut

One of Vonnegut's major works, this is an apocalyptic tale of the planet's ultimate fate, featuring a cast of unlikely heroes.

Galapagos

Kurt Vonnegut

Galápagos takes the reader back one million years, to a.d. 1986. A simple vacation cruise suddenly becomes an evolutionary journey. Thanks to an apocalypse, a small group of survivors stranded on the Galápagos Islands are about to become the progenitors of a brave new, and totally different human race.

Slapstick or Lonesome No More!

Kurt Vonnegut

Slapstick presents an apocalyptic vision as seen through the eyes of the current King of Manhattan (and last President of the United States), a wickedly irreverent look at the all-too-possible results of today's follies. But even the end of life-as-we-know-it is transformed by Kurt Vonnegut's pen into hilarious farce--a final slapstick that may be the Almighty's joke on us all.

A Short History of the Future

W. Warren Wagar

In the tradition of H. G. Wells's The Shape of Things to Come, W. Warren Wagar's A Short History of the Future is a memoir of postmodern times. Cast in the form of a history book, the narrative voice of the book's powerful vision is that of a far-future historian, Peter Jensen, who leaves this account of the world from the 1990s to the opening of the twenty-third century as a gift to his granddaughter. A dazzling and imaginative combination of fiction and scholarship, Wagar's speculative history of the future alternates between descriptions of world events and intimate glimpses of his fictive historian's family through the ages.

Jensen's tale traces the flow of the future from the early twenty-first-century reign of a megacorporate global economy, to its sudden collapse in 2044, when nuclear catastrophe envelops the world. In the traumatic aftermath, a socialist world commonwealth comes into being in the year 2062, followed by a lengthy transition to a decentralized order of technologically mature autonomous societies, many located in outer space. The riveting literary interludes that follow each chapter take the form of letters and documents from the history of Jensen's family, evoking the everyday lives of people in the midst of these global-historical events. Here we meet a woman in Brazil whose son is dying from a new immuno-deficiency disease, two brothers comparing life on earth with life in a space colony, and many more.

Neither fiction nor nonfiction, Wagar's brilliantly creative work is not meant to forecast the future, but rather to draw attention to possibilities and alternatives for humankind and planet Earth. In doing so, it also serves as an unforgettable reminder that the future is being made now.

The Last Dog on Earth

Adrian J. Walker

A flawed man, a mute girl, and a spirited dog could be humanity's last hope - or its doom.

It's the end of the world, but Reg won't mind the peace and quiet - after all, he's always lived a solitary life. And his happy-go-lucky dog, Lineker, is ecstatic to spend more time with his beloved owner. Together, they plan to wait out the impending doom in their second-floor apartment, hiding themselves away from the riots outside.

But when an abandoned orphan shows up in the stairwell of their building, Reg and Lineker must leave their place of safety and accompany her into the ruins of a fallen city. In their desire to rescue the child, both man and dog must face the guilt of the past and discover a hope for the future....

Only Lovers Left Alive

Dave Wallis

A sudden rash of suicides quickly spirals out of control, as all the adults do away with themselves in a wave of existential ennui. With the "oldies" dead, teenagers inherit the world, suddenly free to smash, loot and love as they like. Motorcycle gangs hold wild orgies in abandoned apartments and prowl through the shambles of disintegrating London in search of disappearing stocks of lipstick, gasoline and food, now the currency in a new world of unspeakable violence...

Gold Fame Citrus

Claire Vaye Watkins

In 2012, Claire Vaye Watkins's story collection, Battleborn, swept nearly every award for short fiction. Now this young writer, widely heralded as a once-in-a-generation talent, returns with a first novel that harnesses the sweeping vision and deep heart that made her debut so arresting to a love story set in a devastatingly imagined near future:

Unrelenting drought has transfigured Southern California into a surreal, phantasmagoric landscape. With the Central Valley barren, underground aquifer drained, and Sierra snowpack entirely depleted, most "Mojavs," prevented by both armed vigilantes and an indifferent bureaucracy from freely crossing borders to lusher regions, have allowed themselves to be evacuated to internment camps. In Los Angeles' Laurel Canyon, two young Mojavs--Luz, once a poster child for the Bureau of Conservation and its enemies, and Ray, a veteran of the "forever war" turned surfer--squat in a starlet's abandoned mansion. Holdouts, they subsist on rationed cola and whatever they can loot, scavenge, and improvise.

The couple's fragile love somehow blooms in this arid place, and for the moment, it seems enough. But when they cross paths with a mysterious child, the thirst for a better future begins. They head east, a route strewn with danger: sinkholes and patrolling authorities, bandits and the brutal, omnipresent sun. Ghosting after them are rumors of a visionary dowser--a diviner for water--and his followers, who whispers say have formed a colony at the edge of a mysterious sea of dunes.

Positive

David Wellington

Anyone can be positive...

The tattooed plus sign on Finnegan's hand marks him as a Positive. At any time, the zombie virus could explode in his body, turning him from a rational human into a ravenous monster. His only chance of a normal life is to survive the last two years of the potential incubation period. If he reaches his twenty-first birthday without an incident, he'll be cleared.

Until then, Finn must go to a special facility for positives, segregated from society to keep the healthy population safe. But when the military caravan transporting him is attacked, Finn becomes separated. To make it to safety, he must embark on a perilous cross-country journey across an America transformed--a dark and dangerous land populated with heroes, villains, madmen, and hordes of zombies. And though the zombies are everywhere, Finn discovers that the real danger may be his fellow humans.

Emily Eternal

M.G. Wheaton

Emily is an artificial consciousness, designed in a lab to help humans process trauma, which is particularly helpful when the sun begins to die 5 billion years before scientists agreed it was supposed to.

Her beloved human race is screwed, and so is Emily. That is, until she finds a potential answer buried deep in the human genome that may save them all. But not everyone is convinced Emily has the best solution--or the best intentions. Before her theory can be tested, the lab is brutally attacked, and Emily's servers are taken hostage.

Narrowly escaping, Emily is forced to go on the run with two human companions--college student Jason and small-town Sheriff, Mayra. As the sun's death draws near, Emily and her friends must race against time to save humanity. Soon it becomes clear not just the species is at stake, but also that which makes us most human.

Zone One

Colson Whitehead

In this wry take on the post-apocalyptic horror novel, a pandemic has devastated the planet. The plague has sorted humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead.

Now the plague is receding, and Americans are busy rebuilding civilization under orders from the provisional government based in Buffalo. Their top mission: the resettlement of Manhattan. Armed forces have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street-aka Zone One-but pockets of plague-ridden squatters remain. While the army has eliminated the most dangerous of the infected, teams of civilian volunteers are tasked with clearing out a more innocuous variety-the "malfunctioning" stragglers, who exist in a catatonic state, transfixed by their former lives.

Mark Spitz is a member of one of the civilian teams working in lower Manhattan. Alternating between flashbacks of Spitz's desperate fight for survival during the worst of the outbreak and his present narrative, the novel unfolds over three surreal days, as it depicts the mundane mission of straggler removal, the rigors of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder, and the impossible job of coming to grips with the fallen world.

And then things start to go wrong.

Both spine chilling and playfully cerebral, Zone One brilliantly subverts the genre's conventions and deconstructs the zombie myth for the twenty-first century.

The Beauty

Aliya Whiteley

Somewhere away from the cities and towns, a group of men and boys gather around the fire each night to listen to their stories in the Valley of the Rocks. For when the women are all gone the rest of your life is all there is for everyone. The men are waiting to pass into the night.

The story shall be told to preserve the past. History has gone back to its aural roots and the power of words is strong. Meet Nate, the storyteller, and the new secrets he brings back from the darkness. William rules the group with youth and strength, but how long can that last? And what about Uncle Ted, who spends so much time out in the woods?

Hear the tales, watch a myth be formed. For what can man hope to achieve in a world without women? When the past is only grief how long should you hold on to it? What secrets can the forest offer to change it all?

Discover the Beauty.

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

Kate Wilhelm

Before becoming one of today's most intriguing and innovative mystery writers, Kate Wilhelm was a leading writer of science fiction, acclaimed for classics like The Infinity Box and The Clewiston Test.

Now one of her most famous novels returns to print, the spellbinding story of an isolated post-holocaust community determined to preserve itself, through a perilous experiment in cloning. Sweeping, dramatic, rich with humanity, and rigorous in its science, Where Later the Sweet Birds Sang is widely regarded as a high point of both humanistic and "hard" SF, and won SF's Hugo Award and Locus Award on its first publication. It is as compelling today as it was then.

One

Conrad Williams

This is now. This is you. And surviving is only the beginning.

The land is a scorched sprawl of rubble and corpses. A strange glittering dust coats everything–and the dust hides a terrible secret. New horrors are taking root. Survivor Richard Jane crosses a burned and battered country in search of his son-his one hope.

Harrow

Joy Williams

Khristen is a teenager who,her mother believes, was marked by greatness as a baby when she died for a moment and then came back to life. After Khristen's failing boarding school for gifted teens closes its doors, and she finds that her mother has disappeared, she ranges across the dead landscape and washes up at a "resort" on the shores of a mysterious, putrid lake the elderly residents there call "Big Girl."

In a rotting honeycomb of rooms, these old ones plot actions to punish corporations and people they consider culpable in the destruction of the final scraps of nature's beauty. What will Khristen and Jeffrey, the precocious ten-year-old boy she meets there, learn from this "gabby seditious lot, in the worst of health but with kamikaze hearts, an army of the aged and ill, determined to refresh, through crackpot violence, a plundered earth"?

Rivetingly strange and beautiful, and delivered with Williams's searing, deadpan wit, Harrow is their intertwined tale of paradise lost and of their reasons--against all reasonableness--to try and recover something of it.

The Rift

Walter Jon Williams

FRACTURE LINES PERMEATE THE CENTRAL UNITED STATES. Some comprise the New Madrid fault, the most dangerous earthquake zone in the world. Other fracture lines are social -- economic, religious, racial, and ethnic.

What happens when they all crack at once?

Caught in the disaster as cities burn and bridges tumble, young Jason Adams finds himself adrift on the Mississippi with African-American engineer Nick Ruford. A modern-day Huck and Jim, they spin helplessly down the river and into the widening faults in American society, encountering violence and hope, compassion and despair, and the primal wilderness that threatens to engulf not only them, but all they love...

Terraforming Earth

Jack Williamson

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.

A Letter from the Clearys

Connie Willis

Nebula Award winning short story. It originally appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, July 1982. The story can also be found in the anthologies The 1983 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, The Nebula Awards #18, edited by Robert Silverberg and New Skies: An Anthology of Today's Science Fiction (2003), edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden. It is included in the collections Fire Watch (1985), The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories (2007) and Time Is the Fire: The Best of Connie Willis (2013).

Time Is the Fire: The Best of Connie Willis

Connie Willis

This new collection by the author of Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog contains stories which have all won the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, or both - and are compulsory reading for the serious science fiction fan.

Table of Contents:

Introduction - (2013) - essay by Lisa Tuttle
Introduction - (2013) - essay by Connie Willis
A Letter from the Clearys - (1982) - shortstory
Afterword for 'A Letter from the Clearys' - (2013) - essay
At the Rialto - (1989) - novelette
Afterword for 'At the Rialto' - (2013) - essay
Death on the Nile - (1993) - novelette
Afterword for 'Death on the Nile' - (2013) - essay
The Soul Selects Her Own Society: Invasion and Repulsion: A Chronological Reinterpretation of Two of Emily Dickinson's Poems: A Wellsian Perspective - (1996) - shortstory
Afterword for 'The Soul Selects Her Own Society' - (2013) - essay
Fire Watch - (1982) - novelette
Afterword for 'Fire Watch' - (2013) - essay
Inside Job - (2005) - novella
Afterword for 'Inside Job' - (2013) - essay
Even the Queen - (1992) - shortstory
Afterword for 'Even the Queen' - (2013) - essay
The Winds of Marble Arch - (1999) - novella
Afterword for 'The Winds of Marble Arch' - (2013) - essay
All Seated on the Ground - (2007) - novella
Afterword for 'All Seated On the Ground' - (2013) - essay
The Last of the Winnebagos - (1988) - novella
Afterword for 'The Last of the Winnebagos' - (2013) - essay
Editor's Note - (2013) - essay by Anne Lesley Groell
2006 Worldcon Guest of Honor Speech - (2006) - essay
Grand Master Backup Speech (never delivered) - (2013) - essay
Grand Master Acceptance Speech - (2012) - essay

Juice

Tim Winton

Two fugitives, a man and a child, drive all night across a stony desert. As dawn breaks, they roll into an abandoned mine site. From the vehicle they survey a forsaken place - middens of twisted iron, rusty wire, piles of sun-baked trash. They're exhausted, traumatised, desperate now. But as a refuge, this is the most promising place they've seen. The child peers at the field of desolation. The man thinks to himself, this could work.

Problem is, they're not alone.

So begins a searing, propulsive journey through a life whose central challenge is not simply a matter of survival, but of how to maintain human decency as everyone around you falls ever further into barbarism.

Limbo

Bernard Wolfe

LIMBO is a uniquely unusual, dazzling novel of the future that is unlike anything you have ever read- or are likely to read.

Dr. Martine, a neurosurgeon, flees a limited nuclear war to a forgotten island in the Indian Ocean. After 18 years of performing "humane" lobotomies on island natives, he sets out to rediscover the world. What he finds is a grotesque post-bomb society in which self-mutilation and installed prosthetic limbs are used to mute the urge to make war.

Bernard Wolfe, co-author of Really The Blues, grapples with the largest issues of our century in Limbo.

The End of October

Lawrence Wright

At an internment camp in Indonesia, forty-seven people are pronounced dead with acute hemorrhagic fever. When Henry Parsons--microbiologist, epidemiologist--travels there on behalf of the World Health Organization to investigate, what he finds will soon have staggering repercussions across the globe: an infected man is on his way to join the millions of worshippers in the annual Hajj to Mecca. Now, Henry joins forces with a Saudi prince and doctor in an attempt to quarantine the entire host of pilgrims in the holy city...

A Russian émigré, a woman who has risen to deputy director of U.S. Homeland Security, scrambles to mount a response to what may be an act of biowarfare... Already-fraying global relations begin to snap, one by one, in the face of a pandemic... Henry's wife, Jill, and their children face diminishing odds of survival in Atlanta... And the disease slashes across the United States, dismantling institutions--scientific, religious, governmental--and decimating the population.

As packed with suspense as it is with the fascinating history of viral diseases, Lawrence Wright has given us a full-tilt, electrifying, one-of-a-kind thriller.

The Smuggled Atom Bomb

Philip Wylie

A graduate student stumbles across an insidious plot to unleash nuclear terror on America's greatest cities in a blood-chillingly prescient tale from one of thriller fiction's twentieth-century masters

Personable, good-looking, and a whiz at physics, graduate student Allan Diffenduffer "Duff" Bogan has a bright future ahead of him. But while staying at the home of an invalid widow in Florida, Duff makes a discovery that freezes his blood: a cache of uranium hidden in the locked closet of a fellow guest. The FBI is initially skeptical, but Duff knows all too well what his findings portend. Suddenly, not only is his future in jeopardy, the fate of millions of Americans hangs in the balance as well. If he cannot expose the horrific plot his nation's enemies set in motion years before, entire cities will be reduced to piles of radioactive rubble in an unthinkable nuclear nightmare stretching from coast to coast. And time, it seems, is rapidly running out.

False Dawn

Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

It is the turn of the twenty-first century. War, disease, and pollution have made the Earth nearly unfit for human habitation. In America, food is scarce, and what food remains is quickly confiscated by the Pirates - a murderous band of raiders determined to save themselves and to destroy the last stronghold of civilized human beings - the mutant population.

One of these mutants, a woman named Thea, has eluded the Pirates for years. Armed only with a crossbow, her pride, and her common sense, she has been slowly making her way Eastward to Gold Lake - a legendary place of safety and enlightenment. Until one day she meets Evan Montague, a man who needs her help, a man who is also on the run from the Pirates, but for a different reason - he once led the Pirates himself and has now become their most bitter and most hunted enemy. Together, Thea and Evan trek across a dangerous and wasted California, hoping to survive the brutality of twenty-first-century life . . . and, perhaps, to find Eden before they die.

The World in Winter

John Christopher

The story involves a new ice age hitting Europe, British refugees fleeing to Nigeria, and what a later group find when they return.

As the story opens, Andrew Leedon, a London-based television documentary producer, is given a new story to research: an Italian scientist, Fratellini, has proposed an imminent fall in solar radiation for the forthcoming few years which may lead to harsher winters. Leedon meets with David Cartwell, a Home Office civil servant and useful source, to see if he can find out more. Cartwell quickly becomes a close friend of Leedon, but also begins an affair with Leedon's wife, Carol.

The winter of that year is, as predicted, long and harsh, but by January is it becoming clear to insiders that the solar downturn is worse than Fratellini had calculated and no upturn is in sight. By March, food stocks are becoming dangerously low, rationing has been imposed and the Government imposes martial law. Those in the know, including Andrew's estranged wife, sell up and move south to the tropics and countries such as Nigeria. Leedon stays behind, as inner London is finally cordoned off from the rest of the UK to protect the seat of power - an area called the London Pale - as the rest of the country is abandoned to starvation and barbarism.

Finally Leedon is persuaded both by Carol and by David Cartwell to exit the country while safe passage is still possible. Taking with him Cartwell's wife Madeleine, he moves to Lagos in Nigeria, finding that the tables have now turned - white refugees fleeing from the ice-bound northern countries are living in slums, unemployed or with only menial jobs, and penniless, as African governments have withdrawn recognition of currencies such as Sterling and no longer recognize the British Government, with reason, as it no longer exercises sovereignty over its own land.

A ray of hope arrives for Leedon as Abonitu, a young Nigerian whom Leedon had treated with kindness and generosity one evening in London, finds him and in turn helps him and Madeleine out of the slum. Abonitu plans a reconnaissance expedition back to Britain.

The Bridge

Janine Ellen Young

Most of Earth's population has been destroyed by an alien virus. The survivors are suffering dark, disturbing visions and dreaming of building a great bridge to the aliens who afflicted them. But in this new half-mad society, co-operation is the hardest bridge of all to build.

The Book of Joan

Lidia Yuknavitch

The bestselling author of The Small Backs of Children offer a vision of our near-extinction and a heroine--a reimagined Joan of Arc--poised to save a world ravaged by war, violence, and greed, and forever change history, in this provocative new novel.

In the near future, world wars have transformed the earth into a battleground. Fleeing the unending violence and the planet's now-radioactive surface, humans have regrouped to a mysterious platform known as CIEL, hovering over their erstwhile home. The changed world has turned evolution on its head: the surviving humans have become sexless, hairless, pale-white creatures floating in isolation, inscribing stories upon their skin.

Out of the ranks of the endless wars rises Jean de Men, a charismatic and bloodthirsty cult leader who turns CIEL into a quasi-corporate police state. A group of rebels unite to dismantle his iron rule--galvanized by the heroic song of Joan, a child-warrior who possesses a mysterious force that lives within her and communes with the earth. When de Men and his armies turn Joan into a martyr, the consequences are astonishing. And no one--not the rebels, Jean de Men, or even Joan herself--can foresee the way her story and unique gift will forge the destiny of an entire world for generations.

A riveting tale of destruction and love found in the direst of places--even at the extreme end of post-human experience--Lidia Yuknavitch's The Book of Joan raises questions about what it means to be human, the fluidity of sex and gender, and the role of art as a means for survival.

This Immortal

Roger Zelazny

Conrad Nomikos has a long, rich personal history that he'd rather not talk about and a job he'd rather not do. Escorting an alien grandee on a tour around a shattered post-nuclear war Earth is not something he relishes, especially when he becomes central to an intrigue determining Earth's future.

Things We Didn't See Coming

Steven Amsterdam

Richly imagined and darkly comic, Things We Didn’t See Coming follows a single man over three decades as he tries to survive in an increasingly savage apocalyptic world that is at once utterly fantastic and disturbingly familiar. Here, coming-of-age is complicated not only by family troubles and mercurial love affairs, but treacherous weather, unstable governments, pandemic, and technology run amuck.

In the Country of Last Things

Paul Auster

Here is the story of Anna Blume, a woman who has come to an unnamed city in search of her brother. Her notebook recounts her quest in this cruel modern landscape, and through her anguished narrative, Auster presents a frightening vision of the future.

Nod

Adrian Barnes

Dawn breaks over Vancouver and no-one in the world has slept the night before, or almost no-one. A few people, perhaps one in ten thousand can still sleep, and they've all had the same strange, golden dream. A handful of children still sleep as well, but what they're dreaming remains a mystery. After six days of absolute sleep deprivation, psychosis will set in. After four weeks, the body will die. In the interim, panic ensues and a bizarre new world arises in which those previously on the fringes of society take the lead. One couple experience a lifetime in a week as he continues to sleep , she begins to disintegrate before him, and the new world swallows the old one whole...NOD

Blueprints of the Afterlife

Ryan Boudinot

From the "wickedly talented" (Boston Globe) and "darkly funny" (New York Times Book Review) Ryan Boudinot, Blueprints of the Afterlife is a tour de force.

It is the Afterlife. The end of the world is a distant, distorted memory called "the Age of F***ed Up Shit." A sentient glacier has wiped out most of North America. Medical care is supplied by open-source nanotechnology, and human nervous systems can be hacked.

Abby Fogg is a film archivist with a niggling feeling that her life is not really her own. She may be right. Al Skinner is a former mercenary for the Boeing Army, who's been dragging his war baggage behind him for nearly a century. Woo-jin Kan is a virtuoso dishwasher with the Hotel and Restaurant Management Olympics medals to prove it. Over them all hovers a mysterious man named Dirk Bickle, who sends all these characters to a full-scale replica of Manhattan under construction in Puget Sound. An ambitious novel that writes large the hopes and anxieties of our time—climate change, social strife, the depersonalization of the digital age—Blueprints of the Afterlife will establish Ryan Boudinot as an exceptional novelist of great daring.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

Max Brooks

“The end was near.” —Voices from the Zombie War

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, “By excluding the human factor, aren’t we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn’t the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as ‘the living dead’?”

Note: Some of the numerical and factual material contained in this edition was previously published under the auspices of the United Nations Postwar Commission.

Eyewitness reports from the first truly global war

“I found ‘Patient Zero’ behind the locked door of an abandoned apartment across town. . . . His wrists and feet were bound with plastic packing twine. Although he’d rubbed off the skin around his bonds, there was no blood. There was also no blood on his other wounds. . . . He was writhing like an animal; a gag muffled his growls. At first the villagers tried to hold me back. They warned me not to touch him, that he was ‘cursed.’ I shrugged them off and reached for my mask and gloves. The boy’s skin was . . . cold and gray . . . I could find neither his heartbeat nor his pulse.” —Dr. Kwang Jingshu, Greater Chongqing, United Federation of China

“‘Shock and Awe’? Perfect name. . . . But what if the enemy can’t be shocked and awed? Not just won’t, but biologically can’t! That’s what happened that day outside New York City, that’s the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn’t shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They’re not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid!” —Todd Wainio, former U.S. Army infantryman and veteran of the Battle of Yonkers

“Two hundred million zombies. Who can even visualize that type of number, let alone combat it? . . . For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth.” —General Travis D’Ambrosia, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe

Dhalgren

Samuel R. Delany

In Dhalgren, perhaps one of the most profound and bestselling science fiction novels of all time, Samuel R. Delany has produced a novel "to stand with the best American fiction of the 1970s" (Jonathan Lethem).

Bellona is a city at the dead center of the United States. Something has happened there.... The population has fled. Madmen and criminals wander the streets. Strange portents appear in the cloud-covered sky. And into this disaster zone comes a young man-poet, lover, and adventurer-known only as the Kid. Tackling questions of race, gender, and sexuality, Dhalgren is a literary marvel and groundbreaking work of American magical realism.

The Gone-Away World

Nick Harkaway

There couldn't be a fire along the Jorgmund Pipe. It was the last thing the world needed. But there it was, burning bright on national television. The Pipe was what kept the Livable Zone safe from the bandits, monsters and nightmares the Go Away War had left in its wake. The fire was a very big problem.

Enter Gonzo Lubitsch and his friends, the Haulage & HazMat Emergency Civil Freebooting Company, a team of master troubleshooters who roll into action when things get particularly hot. They helped build the Pipe. Now they have to preserve it—and save humanity yet again. But this job is not all it seems. It will touch more closely on Gonzo's life, and that of his best friend, than either of them can imagine. And it will decide the fate of the Gone-Away World.

The Dog Stars

Peter Heller

A riveting, powerful novel about a pilot living in a world filled with loss—and what he is willing to risk to rediscover, against all odds, connection, love, and grace.

Hig survived the flu that killed everyone he knows. His wife is gone, his friends are dead, he lives in the hangar of a small abandoned airport with his dog, his only neighbor a gun-toting misanthrope. In his 1956 Cessna, Hig flies the perimeter of the airfield or sneaks off to the mountains to fish and to pretend that things are the way they used to be. But when a random transmission somehow beams through his radio, the voice ignites a hope deep inside him that a better life—something like his old life—exists beyond the airport. Risking everything, he flies past his point of no return—not enough fuel to get him home—following the trail of the static-broken voice on the radio. But what he encounters and what he must face—in the people he meets, and in himself—is both better and worse than anything he could have hoped for.

Narrated by a man who is part warrior and part dreamer, a hunter with a great shot and a heart that refuses to harden, The Dog Stars is both savagely funny and achingly sad, a breathtaking story about what it means to be human.

The Birth of Love

Joanna Kavenna

From the winner of the Orange Award for New Writers, an epic novel of childbirth—past, present, and future.

The year is 1865. In Vienna, Dr. Ignasz Semmelweiss has been hounded into an asylum by his medical peers, ridiculed for his claim that doctors’ unwashed hands are the root cause of childbed fever. In present-day London, Bridget Hughes juggles her young son, husband, and mother as she plans her home birth, unprepared for the trial she is about to endure. Somewhere in 2135, in a world where humans are birthed and raised in breeding farms, Prisoner 730004 is on trial for concealing a pregnancy.

Through three stories spanning centuries, acclaimed novelist Joanna Kavenna explores the most basic plight of women, from the slaughterhouse of primitive medicine to a futurisic vision of technological oppression. Poised at the midpoint is Bridget, whose fervent belief in the wisdom of nature is tested in one of the most gripping accounts of labor to appear in fiction.

Original, powerful, and played out against a vast canvas, The Birth of Love is at once a novel about the creation of human life, science and faith, madness and compromise, and the epic journey of motherhood.

Maximum Ice

Kay Kenyon

Zoya Kundara has lived on the space vessel Star Road for two hundred fifty years. As its Ship Mother, kept alive in a state of pseudoimmortality, she has provided wisdom and counsel to succeeding generations of its crew, self-exiled survivors of earth’s great plague.

But now, to escape the ravages of space radiation, the giant starship has returned to earth, only to discover a world on the verge of extinction, its barren surface blanketed in a crystalline substance that resembles ice and that is slowly, inexorably encapsulating the planet. Zoya is chosen as emissary to this strange new earth, and now she must approach its denizens and find a suitable home for her desperate crew among the shrinking lands.

But what she finds shakes Zoya to her core: groups of humans huddled like moles in underground techno-warrens called preserves, and a pseudospiritual order known as the Ice Nuns, who seek control of the physics-defying crystals and enslave their disciples in their crazed quest for truth. For on this once green land, Ice and the science behind it are now the only God–and mastering this grand ecology of information the only higher calling. Allies are few and far between, but somehow Zoya must uncover the secrets of Ice and halt its expansion.

The Wanderer

Fritz Leiber

All eyes were watching the eclipse of the Moon when the Wanderer--a huge, garishly colored artificial world--emerged. Only a few scientists even suspected its presence, and then, suddenly and silently, it arrived, dwarfing and threatening the Moon and wreaking havoc on Earth's tides and weather. Though the Wanderer is stopping in the solar system only to refuel, its mere presence is catastrophic. A tense, thrilling, and towering achievement. Winner of the Hugo Award for Best SF Novel of the Year!

The Iron Rain

Donald Malcolm

It was a day of death, agony and torror for the entire world. It was the day of The Iron Rain, when the whole planet was battered and buffeted and almost destroyed by millions of meteorites. It was a day of reckoning for those who remained. Some emerged as selfless heroes-others used the tragedy to further their own ends. This is Harry Blackman's story. He would never claim heroism but his is the brave story of a desperate struggle for survival and of a search for happiness amid the ruins.

I Am Legend

Richard Matheson

Robert Neville may well be the last living man on Earth . . . but he is not alone.

An incurable plague has mutated every other man, woman, and child into bloodthirsty, nocturnal creatures who are determined to destroy him. By day, he is a hunter, stalking the infected monstrosities through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for dawn....

The Road

Cormac McCarthy

The searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy's masterpiece.

A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don't know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.

The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, "each the other's world entire," are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.

20 Years Later

Emma Newman

LONDON, 2012: It arrives and with that the world is changed into an unending graveyard littered with the bones, wreckage, and memories of a dead past, gone forever.

LONDON, 2032: Twenty years later, out of the ashes, a new world begins to rise, a place ruled by both loyalty and fear, and where the quest to be the first to regain lost knowledge is an ongoing battle for power. A place where laws are made and enforced by roving gangs-the Bloomsbury Boys, the Gardners, the Red Lady's Gang-who rule the streets and will do anything to protect their own.

THE FOUR: Zane, Titus, Erin, Eve. Living in this new world, they discover that they have abilities never before seen. And little do they know that as they search post-apocalyptic London for Titus' kidnapped sister that they'll uncover the secret of It, and bring about a reckoning with the forces that almost destroyed all of humanity.

Daybreak - 2250 A.D.

Apocalypse in Crisis: Fiction from 'The War of the Worlds' to 'Dead Astronauts'

Two centuries after an atomic war on earth, a silver-haired mutant sets out on a dangerous search for a lost city of the ruined civilization.

Christopher Palmer

Apocalypse is traditional and familiar, and it is an actual threat; it is feared, desired, and banal. Apocalypse in Crisis discusses fictions from the 1940s to the present, examining shifts in the imagination of apocalypse from the postwar British disaster novels, through novels of the countercultural sixties, feminist interventions, and recent revisions and critiques. As empire fades, ideas of sexuality shift, and attitudes to nature and to the city change, so apocalyptic fictions change. The individual subject is asserted, immolated, transcended, abandoned; individual deaths are substituted for mass death; death is faked or erased. The subjects and survivors of catastrophe set about re-establishing civilization, or they abandon it, finding new ways of being and of dying; they respond to it when it comes from outside, as an invasion, or they are immersed in it, as it shifts from being an event to being a condition. They flee the city for the country, or accept that they must draw on the energies of the world city in order to survive.

The book includes detailed discussion of novels by H. G. Wells, George M. Stewart, Nevil Shute, John Wyndham, Arthur C. Clarke, J. G. Ballard, Brian Aldiss, Doris Lessing, Angela Carter, Anna Kavan, Arno Schmidt, Anthony Burgess, Ursula K. Le Guin, Tom Perrotta, Douglas Coupland, Don DeLillo, China Miéville, Jeff VanderMeer, and Kim Stanley Robinson.

Un-American Dreams: Apocalyptic Science Fiction, Disimagined Community, and Bad Hope in the American Century

J. Jesse Ramirez

After the end, the world will be un-American. This speculation forms the nucleus of Un-American Dreams, a study of US apocalyptic science fiction and the cultural politics of disimagined community in the short century of American superpower, 1945-2001. Between the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which helped to transform the United States into a superpower and initiated the Cold War, and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which spelled the Cold War's second death and inaugurated the War on Terror, apocalyptic science fiction returned again and again to the scene of America's negation. During the American Century, to imagine yourself as American and as a participant in a shared national culture meant disimagining the most powerful nation on the planet.

Un-American Dreams illuminates how George R. Stewart, Philip K. Dick, George A. Romero, Octavia Butler, and Roland Emmerich represented the impossibility of reforming American society and used figures of the end of the world as speculative pretexts to imagine the utopian possibilities of an un-American world. The American Century was simultaneously a closure of the path to utopia and an escape route into apocalyptic science fiction, the underground into which figures of an alternative future could be smuggled.

Three to Conquer / Doomsday Eve

Eric Frank Russell
Robert Moore Williams

Three to Conquer

It's the day-after-tomorrow in the USA. Wade Harper is a telepath, as far as he knows the only one in existence. He has managed to keep his paranormal abilities concealed, sure in the knowledge that his beloved government will try anything, including vivisection, to attempt to learn the source of his power. Until a chance encounter reveals to Harper that alien beings have invaded Earth --- and no one else on the planet can possibly detect them! Can he battle the menace without giving up his treasured secrecy?

Doomsday Eve

Williams' apocalyptic future is an Earth which has been at war for half-a-century, with just enough use of atomics to destroy cities and industries, but not enough to wipe out the planet--yet.

Stories are circulating in North America about strange people who seem to have even stranger abilites. Naturally the war government wants to find these people, if they exist, and conscript them. With manpower at a premium, a single intelligence agent, Kurt Zen, is sent to run down the rumors. To his astonishment, he discovers that every one of the far-fetched rumors was true, and that this band of "new people" represents normal humanity's only prayer for survival!

The Last Man

Mary Shelley

The Last Man is Mary Shelley's apocalyptic fantasy of the end of human civilisation. Set in the late twenty-first century, the novel unfolds a sombre and pessimistic vision of mankind confronting inevitable destruction. Interwoven with her futuristic theme, Mary Shelley incorporates idealised portraits of Shelley and Byron, yet rejects Romanticism and its faith in art and nature.

On the Beach

Nevil Shute

Nevil Shute’s most powerful novel—a bestseller for decades after its 1957 publication—is an unforgettable vision of a post-apocalyptic world.

After a nuclear World War III has destroyed most of the globe, the few remaining survivors in southern Australia await the radioactive cloud that is heading their way and bringing certain death to everyone in its path. Among them is an American submarine captain struggling to resist the knowledge that his wife and children in the United States must be dead. Then a faint Morse code signal is picked up, transmitting from somewhere near Seattle, and Captain Towers must lead his submarine crew on a bleak tour of the ruined world in a desperate search for signs of life.

Both terrifying and intensely moving, On the Beach is a remarkably convincing portrait of how ordinary people might face the most unimaginable nightmare.

Lost Everything

Brian Francis Slattery

From the author of the critically acclaimed literary SF novels Spaceman Blues and Liberation comes an incandescent and thrilling post-apocalyptic tale in the vein of 1984 or The Road.

In the not-distant-enough future, a man takes a boat trip up the Susquehanna River with his most trusted friend, intent on reuniting with his son. But the man is pursued by an army, and his own harrowing past; and the familiar American landscape has been savaged by war and climate change until it is nearly unrecognizable.

Lost Everything is a stunning novel about family and faith, what we are afraid may come to be, and how to wring hope from hopelessness.

The Wall Around Eden

Joan Slonczewski

In the wake of the Death Year's atomic holocaust, an alien invasion imposes a kind of peace upon the survivors of a shattered Earth until a small community of Quakers decides to confront the saviors with their own version of resistance.

Earth Abides

George R. Stewart

A disease of unparalleled destructive force has sprung up almost simultaneously in every corner of the globe, all but destroying the human race. One survivor, strangely immune to the effects of the epidemic, ventures forward to experience a world without man. What he ultimately discovers will prove far more astonishing than anything he'd either dreaded or hoped for.

The Year of the Quiet Sun

Wilson Tucker

It was a top secret government project, its funds coming quietly from the Bureau of Standards, its orders directly from the President. The project's goal was to survey the future.

The survey would be made in person, by use of the newly-developed Time Displacement Vehicle. Three specially trained men would be sent to the year 2000, and they would return with invaluable data about the problems to be faced by the government in decades to come.

It seemed almost routine at first. But when the survey team reached their target they found a savage land... an awesome world they may have made, and they had to wonder if any would return to tell about it.

Apocalypse in Australian Fiction and Film: A Critical Study

Roslyn Weaver

Australia has been a frequent choice of location for narratives about the end of the world in science fiction and speculative works, ranging from pre-colonial apocalyptic maps to key literary works from the last fifty years. This critical work explores the role of Australia in both apocalyptic literature and film. Works and genres covered include Nevil Shute's popular novel On the Beach, Mad Max, children's literature, Indigenous writing, and cyberpunk. The text examines ways in which apocalypse is used to undermine complacency, foretell environmental disasters, critique colonization, and to serve as a means of protest for minority groups. Australian apocalypse imagines Australia at the ends of the world, geographically and psychologically, but also proposes spaces of hope for the future.

Race, Ethnicity and Nuclear War: Representations of Nuclear Weapons and Post-Apocalyptic Worlds

Paul Williams

Ranging across novels and poetry, critical theory and film, comics and speeches, Race, Ethnicity and Nuclear War: Representations of Nuclear Weapons and Post-Apocalyptic Worlds explores how writers, thinkers, and filmmakers have answered the following question: are nuclear weapons 'white'?

Many texts respond in the affirmative, and arraign nuclear weapons for defending a racial order that privileges whiteness. They are seen as a reminder that the power enjoyed by the white western world imperils the whole of the Earth. Furthermore, the struggle to survive during and after a speculated nuclear attack is often cast as a contest between races and ethnic groups.

Race, Ethnicity and Nuclear War listens to voices from around the Anglophone world and the debates followed do not only take place on the soil of the nuclear powers. Filmmakers and writers from the Caribbean, Australia, and India take up positions shaped by their specific place in the decolonizing world and their particular experience of nuclear weapons.

The texts considered in Race, Ethnicity and Nuclear War encompass the many guises of representations of nuclear weapons: the Manhattan Project that developed the first atomic weapons, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nuclear tests taking place around the world, and the anxiety surrounding the superpowers' devastating arsenals. Of particular interest to SF scholars are the extensive analyses of films, novels, and short stories depicting nuclear war and its aftermath.

New thoughts are offered on the major texts that SF scholars often return to, such as Philip Wylie's Tomorrow! and Pat Frank's Alas Babylon, and a host of little known and under-researched texts are scrutinized too.

Damnation Alley

Roger Zelazny

The story opens in a post-apocalyptic Southern California, in a hellish world shattered by nuclear war decades before. Several police states have emerged in place of the former United States. Hurricane-force winds above five hundred feet prevent any sort of air travel from one state to the next, and sudden, violent, and unpredictable storms make day-to-day life a mini-hell. Hell Tanner, an imprisoned killer, is offered a full pardon in exchange for taking on a suicide mission--a drive through "Damnation Alley" across a ruined America from Los Angeles to Boston--as one of three vehicles attempting to deliver an urgently needed plague vaccine.

Seed

Rob Ziegler

It's the dawn of the 22nd century, and the world has fallen apart. Decades of war and resource depletion have toppled governments. The ecosystem has collapsed. A new dust bowl sweeps the American West. The United States has become a nation of migrants -starving masses of nomads who seek out a living in desert wastelands and encampments outside government seed-distribution warehouses.

In this new world, there is a new power. Satori is more than just a corporation, she is an intelligent, living city that grew out of the ruins of Denver. Satori bioengineers both the climate-resistant seed that feeds a hungry nation, and her own post-human genetic Designers, Advocates, and Laborers. What remains of the United States government now exists solely to distribute Satori seed; a defeated American military doles out bar-coded, single-use Satori seed to the nation's starving citizens.

When one of Satori's Designers goes rogue, Agent Sienna Doss-Ex-Army Ranger turned glorified bodyguard-is tasked by the government to bring her in: The government wants to use the Designer to break Satori's stranglehold on seed production and reassert themselves as the center of power. Sianna Doss's search for the Designer intersects with Brood and his younger brother Pollo - orphans scrapping by on the fringes of the wastelands. Pollo is abducted, because he is believed to suffer from Tet, a newly emergent disease, the victims of which are harvested by Satori.

As events spin out of control, Brood and Sienna Doss find themselves at the heart of Satori, where an explosive climax promises to reshape the future of the world.

The Enclave

A Calculated Life: Book 2

Anne Charnock

Set in the world of Anne Charnock's novel A Calculated Life--nominated for the Philip K. Dick and Kitschies Golden Tentacle Awards--The Enclave reveals life at the bottom of the heap in late twenty-first century Britain.

Advances in genetic engineering have created a population free of addictive behaviour. Violent crime is rare. But out in the enclaves, it's survival of the fittest for Lexie--embroiled in a recycling clan, and judged unfit for cognitive implants--and Caleb, a young climate migrant working as an illegal, eager to prosper and one day find his father.

Red Tide

Ace SF Special, Series 2: Book 2

Deloris Lehman Tarzan
D. D. Chapman

"If a water animal can change into a land animal, why should not a land animal sometimes change into a water animal?"

That was the goal of the research conducted at Cobb Seamount, an underwater experimental station. Then they reveived the mysterious "Red Tide" broadcast - something about widespread epidemics... military retaliation... - and suddenly there wasn't any surface to return to. Now life in Cobb Seamount was no experiment - it was survival.

The Peace War

Across Realtime: Book 1

Vernor Vinge

The Peace War is quintessential hard-science adventure. The Peace Authority conquered the world with a weapon that never should have been a weapon--the "bobble," a spherical force-field impenetrable by any force known to mankind. Encasing governmental installations and military bases in bobbles, the Authority becomes virtually omnipotent. But they've never caught Paul Hoehler, the maverick who invented the technology, and who has been working quietly for decades to develop a way to defeat the Authority.

With the help of an underground network of determined, independent scientists and a teenager who may be the apprentice genius he's needed for so long, he will shake the world, in the fast-paced hard-science thriller that garnered Vinge the first of his four Hugo nominations for best novel.

Marooned in Realtime

Across Realtime: Book 2

Vernor Vinge

Nobody knows why there are only three hundred humans left alive on the Earth fifty million years from now. Opinion is fiercely divided on whether to settle in and plant the seed of mankind anew, or to continue using high-energy stasis fields, or "bobbles," in venturing into the future.

When somebody is murdered, it's obvious someone has a secret he or she is willing to kill to preserve.The murder intensifies the rift between the two factions, threatening the survival of the human race. It's up to 21st century detective Wil Brierson, the only cop left in the world, to find the culprit, a diabolical fiend whose lust for power could cause the utter extinction of man.

Filled with excitement and adventure, Vinge's tense SF puzzler will satisfy readers with its sense of wonder and engaging characters, one of whom is a murderer with a unique modus operandi.

First Activation

Activation: Book 1

Darren Wearmouth
Marcus Wearmouth

Brothers Harry and Jack leave Manchester for New York City for their annual weekend getaway. But upon arrival, they find a silent, deserted JFK, where the few ground crew they can spot have all been slaughtered.

Harry and Jack are military veterans, but they've never encountered anything like this.

As they witness the carnage and stumble across murderous madmen in a post-apocalyptic New York City, it becomes clear that escape is the only option--that is, if there is anywhere sane to escape to...

The 47North edition is a revised edition: This edition of First Activation includes editorial revisions.

Gameboard of the Gods

Age of X: Book 1

Richelle Mead

In a futuristic world nearly destroyed by religious extremists, Justin March lives in exile after failing in his job as an investigator of religious groups and supernatural claims. But Justin is given a second chance when Mae Koskinen comes to bring him back to the Republic of United North America (RUNA). Raised in an aristocratic caste, Mae is now a member of the military's most elite and terrifying tier, a soldier with enhanced reflexes and skills.

When Justin and Mae are assigned to work together to solve a string of ritualistic murders, they soon realize that their discoveries have exposed them to terrible danger. As their investigation races forward, unknown enemies and powers greater than they can imagine are gathering in the shadows, ready to reclaim the world in which humans are merely game pieces on their board.

Akira, Vol 1

Akira: Book 1

Welcome to Neo-Tokyo, built on the ashes of a Tokyo annihilated by a blast of unknown origin that triggered World War III. The lives of two streetwise teenage friends, Tetsuo and Kaneda, change forever when paranormal abilities begin to waken in Tetsuo, making him a target for a shadowy agency that will stop at nothing to prevent another catastrophe like the one that leveled Tokyo. At the core of the agency's motivation is a raw, all-consuming fear of an unthinkable, monstrous power known only as Akira.

Akira, Vol 2

Akira: Book 2

IN THE 21ST CENTURY, Neo-Tokyo has risen from the ashes of a Tokyo obliterated by a monstrous psychokinetic power known only as Akira, a being who yet lives, secretly imprisoned in frozen stasis. Those who stand guard know that Akira's awakening is a terrifying inevitability. Tetsuo, an angry young man with immense--and rapidly growing--psychic abilities, may be their only hope to control Akira when he wakes. But Tetsuo is becoming increasingly unstable and harbors a growing obsession to confront Akira face to face. A clandestine group including his former best friend sets out to destroy Tetsuo before he can release Akira--or before Tetsuo himself becomes so powerful that no force on Earth can stop him.

An epic masterpiece of graphic fiction and the inspiration for its stunning animated adaptation, Akira is required reading for any enthusiast of science fiction, manga, and the graphic novel.

Akira, Vol 3

Akira: Book 3

IN THE 21ST CENTURY, the glittering Neo-Tokyo has risen from the rubble of a Tokyo destroyed by an apocalyptic telekinetic blast from a young boy called Akira--the subject of a covert government experiment gone wrong now imprisoned for three decades in frozen stasis. But Tetsuo, an unstable youth with immense paranormal abilities of his own, has done the unthinkable: He has released Akiraand set into motion a chain of events that could once again destroy the city and drag the world to the brink of Armageddon. Resistance agents and an armada of government forces race against the clock to find the child with godlike powers before his unstoppable destructive abilities are unleashed.

One of the true international classics of graphic fiction, Akira has once again taken America by storm. Artist/writer/filmmaker Katsuhiro Otomo is acclaimed worldwide as a master storyteller, and Akirashowcases Otomo at the peak of his creative form. Akira is a timeless, epic work of unforgettable beauty, horror, and imagination.

Akira, Vol 4

Akira: Book 4

Suffering the fate that beset its namesake three decades earlier, twenty-first-century Neo-Tokyo lies in ruin. Set off by the bullet of a would-be assassin, the godlike telekinetic fury of the superhuman child Akira has once again demolished in seconds that which took decades and untold billions to build. Now cut off from the rest of the world, the Great Tokyo Empire rises, with Akira its king, the psychic juggernaut Tetsuo its mad prime minister, and a growing army of fanatic acolytes ready to go to any length to please their masters. Forces on the outside still search for a way to stop Akira, and the answer may lie in the hands of the mysterious Lady Miyako, a powerful member of Akira's paranormal brotherhood. But the solution to harnessing Akira may ultimately be more dangerous than Akira himself.

Twenty years since its original release in Japan, Akira remains one of the most widely acclaimed and influential works of graphic fiction, and creator Katsuhiro Otomo has become a legendary storyteller in animation as well as manga. Akira is a science fiction tour de force, a breathtaking vision of innocence, infamy, and insanity.

Akira, Vol 5

Akira: Book 5

IN THE 21ST CENTURY, the once glittering Neo-Tokyo lies in ruin, leveled in minutes by the infinite power of the child psychic Akira. From the flooded wasteland of rubble and anarchy rises the Great Tokyo Empire, populated by a ragtag army of zealots and crazies who worship and fear Akria ad his mad prime minister, Tetsuo, and angry teen with immense powers of his own -- and equally immense, twisted ambitions. The world at large is not taking the threat lying down, and the military strength of the planet is massing to take on the empire, but will technology's most advanced weaponry be enough to destroy Akira? And are Tetsuo's rapidly growing paranormal abilities a potentially greater threat?

A mind-blowing epic, Akira is a sweeping graphic-novel tour de force of awe-inspiring vision and gut-wrenching intensity -- and the inspiration for the brilliant Akira animated film. Creator Katsuhiro Otomo has influenced a generation of graphic novelists and animators and is universally acknowledged as a storyteller of extraordinary skill, standing alongside the finest writers and directors of science fiction.

Akira, Vol 6

Akira: Book 6

IN A DEVASTATED 21ST CENTURY, Neo-Tokyo, the armed might of Earth is massed against the godlike powers of two psychic titans, the mute child Akira and the deranged youth Tetsuo. While Akira has unintentionally destoryed the city twice before, Tetsuo has ravaged the surface of the Moon for his sheer amusement, and his madness grows as his abilities expand. But he is gradually losing control of the limitless energies that rage within him, mutating Tetsuo into a horror beyond imagination, and as all forces converge for a final confrontation, the fate of the planet lies in the hands of mere mortals...and the mind of a child.

This final chapter of Katsuhiro Otomo's internationally honored graphic-novel masterpiece brings to a shattering, mind-warping conclusion the science-fiction epic that has influenced storytellers from every continent and in every medium. Akira is a one-of-a-kind work of breathtaking scope, unforgettable imagery, and singular vision.

Free Lancers

Alien Stars: Book 4

Elizabeth Mitchell

Table of Contents:

West - novella by Orson Scott Card
Liberty Port - novella by David Drake
The Borders of Infinity - novella by Lois McMaster Bujold

Always Coming Home

Ursula K. Le Guin

Ursula Le Guin's Always Coming Home is a major work of the imagination from one of America's most respected writers of science fiction. More than five years in the making, it is a novel unlike any other. A rich and complex interweaving of story and fable, poem, artwork, and music, it totally immerses the reader in the culture of the Kesh, a peaceful people of the far future who inhabit a place called the Valley on the Northern Pacific Coast.

Amaryllis

"I never knew my mother, and I never understood why she did what she did. I ought to be grateful that she was crazy enough to cut out her implant so she could get pregnant. But it also meant she was crazy enough to hide the pregnancy until termination wasn't an option, knowing the whole time that she'd never get to keep the baby. That she'd lose everything. That her household would lose everything because of her."

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed Magazine.

Bannerless

Amaryllis

This novelette originally appeared in the anthology The End Has Come (2015), edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howley. It can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Third Annual Collection (2016), edited by Gardner Dozois, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 1 (2016), edited by Neil Clarke.

Bannerless

Amaryllis: Book 1

Decades after economic and environmental collapse destroys much of civilization in the United States, the Coast Road region isn't just surviving but thriving by some accounts, building something new on the ruins of what came before. A culture of population control has developed in which people, organized into households, must earn the children they bear by proving they can take care of them and are awarded symbolic banners to demonstrate this privilege. In the meantime, birth control is mandatory.

Enid of Haven is an Investigator, called on to mediate disputes and examine transgressions against the community. She's young for the job and hasn't yet handled a serious case. Now, though, a suspicious death requires her attention. The victim was an outcast, but might someone have taken dislike a step further and murdered him?

In a world defined by the disasters that happened a century before, the past is always present. But this investigation may reveal the cracks in Enid's world and make her question what she really stands for.

Set in the same universe as some of the author's short stories, which can be read here:

"Amaryllis" (2010)
"Astrophilia" (2012) read free online at Lightspeed Magazine
"Bannerless" (2015) read free online at WIRED.com

The Wild Dead

Amaryllis: Book 2

Battlestar Galactica: Classic

A century after environmental and economic collapse, the people of the Coast Road have rebuilt their own sort of civilization, striving not to make the mistakes their ancestors did. They strictly ration and manage resources, including the ability to have children.

Enid of Haven is an investigator, who with her new partner, Teeg, is called on to mediate a dispute over an old building in a far-flung settlement at the edge of Coast Road territory. The investigators' decision seems straightforward -- and then the body of a young woman turns up in the nearby marshland. Almost more shocking than that, she's not from the Coast Road, but from one of the outsider camps belonging to the nomads and wild folk who live outside the Coast Road communities. Now one of them is dead, and Enid wants to find out who killed her, even as Teeg argues that the murder isn't their problem.

In a dystopian future of isolated communities, can our moral sense survive the worst hard times?

Messiah

Apotheosis: Book 3

S. Andrew Swann

The last stand against the self-proclaimed God, Adam, has retreated to the anarchic planet Bakunin-a world besieged by civil war. Humanity's last hope lies with Nickolai Rajasthan, a Moreau who believes that the human race that created his kind is already damned beyond redemption.

Ariel

Ariel: Book 1

Steven R. Boyett

At four-thirty one Saturday afternoon the laws of physics as we know them underwent a change. Electronic devices, cars, industries stopped. The lights went out. Any technology more complicated than a lever or pulley simply wouldn't work. A new set of rules took its place--laws that could only be called magic. Ninety-nine percent of humanity has simply vanished. Cities lie abandoned. Supernatural creatures wander the silenced achievements of a halted civilization.

Pete Garey has survived the Change and its ensuing chaos. He wanders the southeastern United States, scavenging, lying low. Learning. One day he makes an unexpected friend: a smartassed unicorn with serious attitude. Pete names her Ariel and teaches her how to talk, how to read, and how to survive in a world in which a unicorn horn has become a highly prized commodity.

When they learn that there is a price quite literally on Ariel's head, the two unlikely companions set out from Atlanta to Manhattan to confront the sorcerer who wants her horn. And so begins a haunting, epic, and surprisingly funny journey through the remnants of a halted civilization in a desolated world.

Ashfall

Ashfall: Book 1

Mike Mullin

Many visitors to Yellowstone National Park don't realize that the boiling hot springs and spraying geysers are caused by an underlying supervolcano. It has erupted three times in the last 2.1 million years, and it will erupt again, changing the Earth forever.

Fifteen-year-old Alex is home alone when the supervolcano erupts. His town collapses into a nightmare of darkness, ash, and violence, forcing him to flee. He begins a harrowing trek in search of his parents and sister, who were visiting relatives 140 miles away.

Along the way, Alex struggles through a landscape transformed by more than a foot of ash. The disaster brings out the best and worst in people desperate for food, clean water, and shelter. When an escaped convict injures Alex, he searches for a sheltered place where he can wait--to heal or to die. Instead, he finds Darla. Together, they fight to achieve a nearly impossible goal: surviving the supervolcano.

Ashen Winter

Ashfall: Book 2

Mike Mullin

It's been over six months since the eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano. Alex and Darla have been staying with Alex's relatives, trying to cope with the new reality of the primitive world so vividly portrayed in Ashfall, the first book in this series. It's also been six months of waiting for Alex's parents to return from Iowa. Alex and Darla decide they can wait no longer and must retrace their journey into Iowa to find and bring back Alex's parents to the tenuous safety of Illinois. But the landscape they cross is even more perilous than before, with life-and-death battles for food and power between the remaining communities. When the unthinkable happens, Alex must find new reserves of strength and determination to survive.

Sunrise

Ashfall: Book 3

Mike Mullin

The Yellowstone supervolcano nearly wiped out the human race. Now, almost a year after the eruption, the survivors seem determined to finish the job. Communities wage war on each other, gangs of cannibals roam the countryside, and what little government survived the eruption has collapsed completely. The ham radio has gone silent. Sickness, cold, and starvation are the survivors' constant companions. When it becomes apparent that their home is no longer safe and adults are not facing the stark realities, Alex and Darla must create a community that can survive the ongoing disaster, an almost impossible task requiring even more guts and more smarts than ever--and unthinkable sacrifice.

If they fail... they, their loved ones, and the few remaining survivors will perish. This epic finale has the heart of Ashfall, the action of Ashen Winter, and a depth all its own, examining questions of responsibility and bravery, civilization and society, illuminated by the story of an unshakable love that transcends a post-apocalyptic world and even life itself.

Battlestar Galactica 1: Book 1

Glen A. Larson
Robert Thurston

Battleship Galactica: Flagship of the 12 Worlds' Warfleet, she was as large as a planet, yet as swift as the Starhound fighters she launched from her bays. For generations the vast ship had led the thousand-year war against the Cylon for control of the known Galaxy. Now that war was in its last phase, and 'Galactica' had one final mission, win or lose: blast through the deadly grid of the Cylon Starfleet and dash for deep space in a desperate attempt to find the legendary "Stonehenge" of the universe---the lost planet the ancient microfilms call "EARTH"...

Battlestar Galactica

Battlestar Galactica 2: Book 1

Jeffrey A. Carver

Based on the SCI FI Channel's Original Series:

For forty years, the Twelve Colonies of Man experienced peace, united since the war against the man-made Cylons. The Cylons, mechanical beings created to perform the manual labor civilization required, were gone forever... or so humanity thought.

But in those years, the Cylons developed new Cylons that looked and acted like humans--with one goal in mind: to destroy all humanity! When they suddenly attacked the Twelve Worlds, humanity's extinction seemed inevitable.

Only a single warship survived the massive attack: Battlestar Galactica, the oldest ship in the fleet, ready to be decommissioned and turned into a museum. Commander William Adama, himself set to retire, had but one course: to marshal the meager forces available, a ragtag crew of misfits and green recruits, to prevent their enemy from wiping out the last vestiges of the human race. But the Cylons, stronger, smarter, and driven to destroy their creators, may just be too powerful for them and all of humanity to survive.

Sagittarius is Bleeding

Battlestar Galactica 2: Book 3

Peter David

President Laura Roslin bears a heavy burden. Since becoming the president of the twelve colonies when the Cylons brutally attacked and destroyed all but aa small remmnant of humanity's billions, she has been the voice of civil authority, counterbalancing the military leadership of Commander Adama of the Battlestar Galactica. President Roslin has been a source of inspiration the the tens of thousands who survive on Galactica and the other colonial ships. They look to her for honesty, integrity, and courage. For fairness and an evenhanded rule. And most importantly, for the prophacy she has shared with them. Earth, the fabled home of the lost colony, can be found. She has seen this in a vision which has the power of truth.

Recently, though, her dreams have been darker, of a galaxy overrun by Cylons...is she having visions of an inevitable future? Or are these terrible dreams caused by powerful medication she's taking?

More dangerously, the Midguardians, radicals who believe that the end of humanity is coming soon, have learned of Roslin's dreams and taken them as a sign. Now, the Midguardians are prepared to act.

President Roslin faces the most important decision of her life, should she tell Commander Adama about the Midguardians, and risk being imprisoned again as a traitor, or dare she keep her secret, and possibly endanger the future of the entire fleet.

Unity

Battlestar Galactica 2: Book 4

Steven Harper

A prophecy is fulfilled when Peter Attis is rescued from the Cylons in order to save humanity with "the plague of the tongue." or so it seems...

While harvesting alge for conversion into food, the beleaguered human/refugee fleet is discovered by a small group of Cylon heavy raiders. A brief battle ends with the destruction of a Cylon heavy raider. A colonial issue escape pod found floating among the debrie reveals two survivors inside: Singer Peter Attis...and his captor, a Cylon Number Eight.

Soon after Peter's liberation, people begin babbling incoherently and dropping into comas. Unwittingly, Peter has been spreading a highly contagious, nerve-deteriorating Cylon biological weapon-and he just performed for half the fleet. As Dr Gaius Baltar begins work on a cure, word starts to spread that a fanatical sect believes that Peter is the religious leader who will save humanity and that this virus is their path to salvation. They are willing to do anything to keep Baltar's vaccine from being distributed.

While the fleet is in chaos, a larger Cylon force appears. A weakend humankind, now threatened on two fronts, may be unable to defend itself...

Black Bullet, Vol. 1: Those Who Would Be Gods

Black Bullet: Book 1

Black Bullet, Vol. 2: Against a Perfect Sniper

The World Has Already Ended.

The future--where a terrible battle against a parasitic virus called "Gastrea" has been fought... and lost. Humanity is cornered and lives in despair. Rentaro and Enju face constant danger in their work as a team of anti-Gastrea specialists known as "civil security officers." As if the daily fight against oblivion weren't enough, they'll soon face a threat that could destroy all of Tokyo...

Black Bullet: Book 2

Black Bullet, Vol. 3: The Destruction of the World by Fire

The World Has Already Ended.

Following Rentaro Satomi's defeat of the Stage Five Gastrea, Tokyo Area returns to uneasy normalcy. When the ambitious leader of Osaka Area, Sougen Saitake, demands a visit with Lady Seitenshi, she needs a new bodyguard--and who should she pick but the city's new hero, Rentaro. However, dark forces are conspiring against Lady Seitenshi, and their origin is closer to home than anyone dares to imagine. Rentaro and Enju will have to confront a new kind of threat in order to protect the tenuous peace they've won--but how do you fight an enemy you can't even see?

Black Bullet: Book 3

Black Bullet, Vol. 4: Vengeance is Mine

The World has Already Ended.

Rentaro, Enju, Kisara, and the fearsome sniper Tina--just when they thought the future was looking slightly less uncertain, they're confronted with a terrible discovery: One of the giant monoliths that protects Tokyo Area from invasion by the monstrous Gastrea is on the verge of collapse, putting the lives of every single human within the city at risk! Is there any way to save Tokyo Area? And even if there is, what will become of Rentaro, Enju, Kisara, and Tina?

Black Bullet: Book 4

Black Bullet, Vol. 5: Rentaro Satomi, Fugitive

The World has Already Ended.

One of the giant Monoliths that protects Tokyo Area from the virally superpowered Gastrea creatures has been destroyed. And right on schedule, the Stage Four Gastrea Aldebaran leads an invading army of the monsters into the city. The elite self-defense forces are sent to face them, and the terrible sounds of war echo across a newly christened battlefield--but soon a tense silence falls. What is it that appears before the eyes of Rentaro and his friends? The near-future thriller of post-apocalyptic survival continues!

Black Bullet: Book 5

Black Bullet, Vol. 6: Purgatory Strider

The World has Already Ended.

With the chaos of the Third Kanto Battle subsiding, peace is finally returning to the Tendo Civil Security Agency, and Rentaro, Kisara, Enju, and Tina are taking full advantage of the quiet. But when an old friend from Rentaro's childhood reappears, their bright days turn suddenly dark--and Rentaro finds himself imprisoned for a senseless murder. He plans a desperate escape, but his enemies keep coming, and they are like nothing he's ever fought before...

Black Bullet: Book 6

Black Bullet, Vol. 7: The Bullet That Changed the World

The World has Already Ended.

Rentaro is still a fugitive, running from the law for a murder he didn't commit. He and Hotaru are bruised, bleeding, and barely on speaking terms, but they're equally desperate to uncover the identity of Suibara's killer. However, Police Superintendent Hitsuma hasn't given up on pursuing Rentaro! With Hitsuma's impending marriage to heartbroken Kisara advancing closer and closer, will Rentaro clear his name and rescue her in time? And what does saving Kisara mean for their future?

Black Bullet: Book 7

At the End of the Journey

The World has Already Ended.

The Akasaka Palace reception hall is playing host to a summit welcoming the leaders of Japan's five governmental Areas. The Seitenshi, host and head of Tokyo Area, greets her equivalents from Osaka, Sendai, Hakata, and Hokkaido, and few are willing to lend a sympathetic ear to her attempts at brokering peace.

The conference falls into chaos, the Seitenshi shocked that someone leaked out a state secret. The fallout soon brings the two Areas down the path to all-out war with each other--just as the Seitenshi vanishes from the palace!

Grievers

Black Dawn: Book 1

Adrienne Maree Brown

Grievers is the story of a city so plagued by grief that it can no longer function.

Dune's mother is patient zero of a mysterious illness that stops people in their tracks--in mid-sentence, mid-action, mid-life--casting them into a nonresponsive state from which no one recovers. Dune must navigate poverty and the loss of her mother as Detroit's hospitals, morgues, and graveyards begin to overflow. As the quarantined city slowly empties of life, she investigates what caused the plague, and what might end it, following in the footsteps of her late researcher father, who has a physical model of Detroit's history and losses set up in their basement. She dusts it off and begins tracking the sick and dying, discovering patterns, finding comrades in curiosity, conspiracies for the fertile ground of the city, and the unexpected magic that emerges when the debt of grief is cleared.

Maroons

Black Dawn: Book 2

Adrienne Maree Brown

A tale of survival, of moving beyond seemingly insurmountable devastation toward, if not hope itself, then the road to hope...

The pandemic of Syndrome H-8 continues to ravage the city of Detroit and everyone in Dune's life. In Maroons, she must learn what community and connection mean in the lonely wake of a fatal virus. Emerging from grief to follow a subtle path of small pleasures through an abandoned urban landscape, she begins finding other unlikely survivors with little in common but the will to live. Together they begin to piece together the puzzle of their survival, and that of the city itself.

The Valley of Shadows

Black Tide Rising: Book 5

Mike Massa
John Ringo

From his corner office on the forty-fourth floor of the Bank of the Americas tower on Wall Street, Tom Smith, global managing director for security, could see the Statue of Liberty, Battery Park--and a ravening zombie horde.

Officially, Smith was paid to preserve the lives and fortunes of employees, billionaires, and other clients. And with an implacable virus that turned the infected into ravenous zombies tearing through the city, the country, and the world, his job just got a lot harder.

Good thing Smith, late of the Australian special forces, isn't a man to give up easily. But saving civilization is going to take more than the traditional banking toolbox of lawyers, guns, and money. Smith needs infected human spinal tissue to formulate a vaccine--and he needs it by the truckload. To get it, he will have to forge a shady alliance with both the politicians of the City of New York and some of its less savory entrepreneurs.

But all of his back-alley dealing may amount to nothing if he can't stave off the fast-moving disease as it sweeps across the planet, leaving billions dead in its wake. And if he fails, his only fallback is an incomplete plan to move enough personnel to safe havens and prepare to restart civilization.

What's more, there are others who have similar plans--and believe it or not, they're even less charitable than a Wall Street investment banker. Sooner or later Smith will have to deal with them.

But first he has to survive the Fall.

River of Night

Black Tide Rising: Book 6

Mike Massa
John Ringo

THROUGH THE RAGING PLAGUE

At Tom Smith's previous gig, he was the global managing director for security of an international bank. Then the zombies emerged. And New York burned. His plan to save the city long enough to find a cure for the zombie virus didn't survive a bloody scrimmage between angry cops, cunning gangsters, and rapacious officials.

Tom and a few trusted allies were able to stay one step ahead and barely escape. Now they seek refuge in the bank's prepared evacuation retreat in the Cumberland Valley of Tennessee. But between Tom's people and relative safety are hundreds of miles of clogged roads, burnt-out towns and howling mobs of infected humans who know only hunger. Plus there are gangs of the non-infected who would like nothing more than to defeat and enslave any weary travelers who happen their way.

And finally, if Tom does pull off the journey, no one is sure how they are going to restart civilization. But even for that, Tom Smith has the spark of an idea. And, as always, the beginnings of a plan. Which he is certain will change completely when the enemy strikes.

At the End of the World

Black Tide Rising: Book 8

Charles E. Gannon

CASTAWAYS IN A ZOMBIE PLAGUE

Six kids ranging from suburban geeks to street-smart pariahs. A British captain who rarely talks and never smiles. All on the 70-foot pilot house ketch Crosscurrent Voyager, bound on a senior summer cruise to adventure and serious fun.

Except most of the kids don't get along. And they'll be gone all summer. And none of them have sailed before. And worst of all--because they booked at the last minute--they got the destination nobody else wanted: the frigid and remote South Georgia Islands.

But there's one other hitch: they'll never see their families or friends again. Just days after they leave, a plague starts spreading like wildfire, turning most of its survivors into shrieking, cannibalistic rage-monsters. So with their past dying as fast as the world that shaped it, the kids' hated destination becomes their one hope for survival.

But it's an uncertain hope. Not only are other hostile survivors headed there, but South Georgia Island is unable to support permanent habitation. So if the strange crew of the Voyager doesn't come up with a further plan, they are--in every sense--heading straight toward the end of the world.

Black Tide Rising: Book 9

Charles E. Gannon

It was supposed to be fun. Six teenagers and their British captain aboard the ketch Crosscurrent Voyager, headed on a senior year summer cruise to excitement and adventure. Then the world as they knew it ended.

A plague spread throughout the globe, killing millions and turning the survivors into cannibalistic rage monsters--zombies, in so many words. Only by putting aside their differences were the young crew able to survive.

Now, they seek others like them, those fortunate souls who have made it through the zombie apocalypse. After all, maybe it's not the end of the world so long as GPS can help survivors navigate deadly terrain, to link up, and maybe--just maybe--ensure the continuation of the human race.

But the Earth's GPS systems are failing. It falls to those aboard the Crosscurrent Voyager to keep the unthinkable from happening. In order to do so, they must traverse dangerous seas to a European Space Agency complex in French Guiana.

And thousands of infected stand in the way.

If they succeed, humankind has a chance of rebuiling. If they fail, humanity may well be at the end of its journey.

Black Tide Rising

Black Tide Rising Anthology: Book 1

Gary Poole
John Ringo

TOP NAME WRITERS ENTER THE REALM OF JOHN RINGO'S BLACK TIDE RISING ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE SERIES!

A collection of all-original stories set in the Black Tide Rising series of novels created by multiple New York Times best-selling author John Ringo Stories by John Ringo, Eric Flint, John Scalzi & Dave Klecha, Sarah A. Hoyt, Jody Lynn Nye, Michael Z. Williamson and more.

The news that humanity had been dreading for ages had come true. Zombies are real. Worst of all, we created them. The apocalypse was upon us, and every man, woman and child had to answer a simple question of themselves: "What do we do now?" For a group of neighbors in the Chicago suburbs of Northern Indiana, it was "work together or die" ...and figure out how to live on top of oil storage tanks to keep the zombies at bay. For the Biological Emergency Response Teams in New York City, it was "how long can we fight off the infected before it's too late" ...as well as having to fight other groups all out to claim a dwindling stock of supplies and safety. And for a group of cheerleaders, it was about the end of their world. And about what happens when you get a group of physically fit young women really, really angry.

Contents:

ix - Foreword (Black Tide Rising) - essay by Gary Poole
1 - Never Been Kissed - short story by John Ringo
5 - Up on the Roof - novella by Eric Flint
57 - Staying Human - short story by Jody Lynn Nye
71 - On the Wall - short story by David Klecha and John Scalzi
89 - Do No Harm - short fiction by Sarah A. Hoyt
109 - Not in Vain - novelette by Kacey Ezell
135 - How Do You Solve a Problem Like Grandpa? - novelette by Michael Z. Williamson
159 - Battle of the BERTs - novelette by Mike Massa
199 - The Road to Good Intentions - novelette by Tedd Roberts
227 - 200 Miles to Nashville - novelette by Christopher L. Smith
253 - Best Laid Plans - novelette by Eric S. Brown and Jason Cordova
267 - The Meaning of Freedom - short story by John Ringo
281 - Afterword (Black Tide Rising) - essay by John Ringo

Voices of the Fall

Black Tide Rising Anthology: Book 2

Gary Poole
John Ringo

Contents:

ix - Foreword (Voices of the Fall) - essay by Gary Poole
1 - Starry, Starry Night - short story by John Ringo
11 - Spectrum - novelette by Mike Massa
37 - Storming the Tower of Babel - short story by Sarah A. Hoyt
61 - Return to Mayberry - novelette by Rob Hampson
93 - It Just Might Matter in the End - novelette by Travis S. Taylor
121 - Inhale to the King, Baby! - short story by Michael Z. Williamson
137 - Ham Sandwich - novelette by Jody Lynn Nye
163 - The Downeasters - novelette by Brendan DuBois
197 - The Species As Big As the Ritz - novelette by Robert Buettner
225 - The Cat Hunters - novelette by Dave Freer
255 - Alpha Gamers - short story by Griffin Barber
269 - True Faith and Allegiance - novelette by Michael Gants
299 - The Killer Awoke - short story by John Birmingham
317 - About the Authors (Voices of the Fall) - essay by uncredited

We Shall Rise

Black Tide Rising Anthology: Book 3

Gary Poole
John Ringo

Contents:

ix - Foreword (We Shall Rise) - essay by Gary Poole
1 - Social Distance - novelette by Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta
37 - Liberation Day - short story by Brendan DuBois
53 - Appalachia Rex - short story by Jason Cordova
79 - Maligator Country - novelette by Lydia Sherrer
117 - Fire in the Sky - short story by Stephanie Osborn and Michael Z. Williamson
139 - Just Like Home - short story by Jody Lynn Nye
163 - Chase the Sunset - short story by Jamie Ibson
187 - Descent into the Underworld - short story by Brian Trent
215 - A Thing or Two - short story by Kacey Ezell
233 - Ex Fide Absurdo - short story by Brent Roeder and Christopher L. Smith
261 - The Best Part of Waking Up - short story by Mike Massa
288 - About the Editors and Authors - essay by uncredited

Blindness

Blindness: Book 1

José Saramago

A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers-among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears-through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses-and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit. The stunningly powerful novel of man's will to survive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Borne

Borne: Book 1

Jeff VanderMeer

"Am I a person?" Borne asked me.
"Yes, you are a person," I told him. "But like a person, you can be a weapon, too."

In Borne, a young woman named Rachel survives as a scavenger in a ruined city half destroyed by drought and conflict. The city is dangerous, littered with discarded experiments from the Company--a biotech firm now derelict--and punished by the unpredictable predations of a giant bear. Rachel ekes out an existence in the shelter of a run-down sanctuary she shares with her partner, Wick, who deals his own homegrown psychoactive biotech.

One day, Rachel finds Borne during a scavenging mission and takes him home. Borne as salvage is little more than a green lump--plant or animal?--but exudes a strange charisma. Borne reminds Rachel of the marine life from the island nation of her birth, now lost to rising seas. There is an attachment she resents: in this world any weakness can kill you. Yet, against her instincts--and definitely against Wick's wishes--Rachel keeps Borne. She cannot help herself. Borne, learning to speak, learning about the world, is fun to be with, and in a world so broken that innocence is a precious thing. For Borne makes Rachel see beauty in the desolation around her. She begins to feel a protectiveness she can ill afford.

"He was born, but I had borne him."

But as Borne grows, he begins to threaten the balance of power in the city and to put the security of her sanctuary with Wick at risk. For the Company, it seems, may not be truly dead, and new enemies are creeping in. What Borne will lay bare to Rachel as he changes is how precarious her existence has been, and how dependent on subterfuge and secrets. In the aftermath, nothing may ever be the same.

The Tide Went Out

British Library Science Fiction Classics: Book 4

Charles Eric Maine

FROM THE VERY CORE OF THE EARTH ITSELF A SAVAGE DROUGHT ATTACLS MANKIND!

THE TROUBLE WITH PEOPLE...
...is that nobody really believes they can be destroyed. It'll always be some other unfortunate who get's in the way of the truck, or the bomb, or who can't escape the radiation. Anybody knows man now has the power to destroy the world--nobody really believes it would happen. It just isn't possible.

BUT...
...there might be ways in which the misuse of atomics could eliminate--and you wouldn't even know it was happening, let alone believe it. At first. Some things after all, are unimaginable. For instance, the world couldn't conceivably dry up. The idea's ridiculous. It just isn't possible.

UNTIL...
...a frightening idea gets into the hands of skilled writer Charles Eric Maine. Suddenly then, the terrifying idiocy becomes real--the monstrous reality of total destruction in all the homes of all the people who, just like anybody else, are strong and weak, funny and foolish, loving and full of hate; people who, cowlike, always believe the best--and who face the worst with courage they never knew they had.

Charles Eric Maine... is well-known in science-fiction circles for the realism, the startling believability of his setting and stories. In THE TIDE WENT OUT he visualizes a situation so bizarre as to seem virtually impossible--except that he not only makes it become possible, but highly probable.

Almost without realizing what is happening, you are caught up in a savage struggle, the veneer of civilization shucked off because it has become a useless pretense: all that matters is staying alive, at whatever cost, in a world that man has made into a death-trap. Will you be among the handful to survive?

Star Guard

Central Control: Book 2

Worlds and cons away are the adventures of Kana Karr, Swordsman Third Class, who goes to the planet Fronn with Yorke Horde in the 5th millenium A.D.-Terran figuring. Earth, or Terra, under a despotic and all powerful Central Control has developed a system of professional fighting men, which it sends out for needed patrol duty in other solar systems. For his first assignment Kana, who is one of these soldiers, is sent out as part of a patrol to quell an uprising between two humanoid factions on forbidding Fronn. The adventures that follow are protracted and typical of Andre Norton's well developed sets of fantastic circumstances and they result in Kang's initiation to the coterie of Terrans who are breaking away from Central Control and seeking freedom to pioneer on their own on other planets.

Children of Time

Children of Time: Book 1

WHO WILL INHERIT THIS NEW EARTH?

The last remnants of the human race left a dying Earth, desperate to find a new home among the stars. Following in the footsteps of their ancestors, they discover the greatest treasure of the past age - a world terraformed and prepared for human life.

But all is not right in this new Eden. In the long years since the planet was abandoned, the work of its architects has borne disastrous fruit. The planet is not waiting for them, pristine and unoccupied. New masters have turned it from a refuge into mankind's worst nightmare.

Now two civilizations are on a collision course, both testing the boundaries of what they will do to survive. As the fate of humanity hangs in the balance, who are the true heirs of this new Earth?

Boneshaker

Clockwork Century: Book 1

Cherie Priest

In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike brought hordes of newcomers to the Pacific Northwest. Anxious to compete, Russian prospectors commissioned inventor Leviticus Blue to create a great machine that could mine through Alaska's ice. Thus was Dr. Blue's Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine born.

But on its first test run the Boneshaker went terribly awry, destroying several blocks of downtown Seattle and unearthing a subterranean vein of blight gas that turned anyone who breathed it into the living dead.

Now it is sixteen years later, and a wall has been built to enclose the devastated and toxic city. Just beyond it lives Blue's widow, Briar Wilkes. Life is hard with a ruined reputation and a teenaged boy to support, but she and Ezekiel are managing. Until Ezekiel undertakes a secret crusade to rewrite history.

His quest will take him under the wall and into a city teeming with ravenous undead, air pirates, criminal overlords, and heavily armed refugees. And only Briar can bring him out alive.

The Inexplicables

Clockwork Century: Book 4

Cherie Priest

Rector "Wreck'em" Sherman was orphaned as a toddler in the Blight of 1863, but that was years ago. Wreck has grown up, and on his eighteenth birthday, he'll be cast out out of the orphanage.

Wreck's problems don't stop there. He's been breaking the cardinal rule of any good drug dealer and dipping into his own supply--and he's also pretty sure he's being haunted by the ghost of a kid he used to know. Zeke Wilkes almost certainly died six months ago inside the walled city of Seattle. And it was Wreck who sent him in there.

Maybe it's only a guilty conscience, but Wreck can't take it anymore. He sneaks inside the city.

The walled-off wasteland is every bit as bad as he'd heard, chock-full of the hungry undead and utterly choked by the poisonous, inescapable yellow gas. And then there are the monsters. Rector's confident that whatever attacked him was not at all human--and not a rotter, either. Arms far too long. Posture all strange. Eyes all wild and faintly glowing gold, and God help them all, it wasn't alone.

When the locals discuss the creatures, they do so in whispers. And they call them "The Inexplicables."

Greener Than You Think

Crown Classics of SF: Book 10

Ward Moore

Man loses control over the outcomes of a scientific experiment the only aim of which is to create a way for the greediest man on earth to become even richer. The experiment is conducted on Bermuda grass, a harmless plant in its initial form, but one that becomes murderous and powerful after the salesman protagonist of the novel applies a fertilizer spray called the Metamorphosizer created by a female chemist on it.

The metamorphosis of the grass is very quick - it starts growing with incredible speed and soon it turns out that nothing can destroy the new species of grass, it feeds on anything and grows over anything. In the beginning, the grass grows at the same pace as its owner rises to prominence and wealth, but things get out of control very soon and it takes a team of the bravest to stop the murderous plant.

Firestorm

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: Book 1

J. Gregory Keyes

The official prequel to the eagerly anticipated Dawn of the Planet of the Apes.

Bridging the gap between Rise of the Planet of the Apes and the eagerly anticipated sequel Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, this prequel takes readers on a journey through the build up to the next chapter.

The novel mainly centering around the spread of the deadly ALZ-113 virus (Simian Flu).

Directive 51

Directive 51: Book 1

John Barnes

Heather O'Grainne is the Assistant Secretary in the Office of Future Threat Assessment, investigating rumors surrounding something called "Daybreak." The group is diverse and radical, and its members have only one thing in common-their hatred for the "Big System" and their desire to take it down.

Now, seemingly random events simultaneously occurring around the world are in fact connected as part of Daybreak's plan to destroy modern civilization-a plan that will eliminate America's top government personnel, leaving the nation no choice but to implement its emergency contingency program... Directive 51.

Daybreak Zero

Directive 51: Book 2

John Barnes

What began as a technothriller continues as high adventure in the newly savage ruins of civilization.

In late 2024, Daybreak, a movement of post-apocalyptic eco-saboteurs, smashed modern civilization to its knees. In the losing, hopeless struggle against Daybreak, Heather O'Grainne, a one-time minor bureaucrat and former Federal agent, rose to become a vital leader in the struggle to restore civilization. That story was told in Directive 51.

Now Heather's story continues in Daybreak Zero. In the summer of 2025, she leads a tiny organization of scientists, spies, scouts, entrepreneurs, engineers, dreamers, and daredevils based in Pueblo, Colorado. Both of the almost-warring governments of the United States have charged them with an all but impossible mission: find a way to put the world back together.

But Daybreak's triumph has flung the world back centuries in technology, politics, and culture.

Pro-Daybreak Tribals openly celebrate ending the world as we know it.
Army regiments have to fight their way in and out of Pennsylvania.
The Earth's environment is saturated with plastic-devouring biotes and electronics-corroding nanoswarm.
A leftover Daybreak device drops atom bombs from the moon on any outpost of the old civilization it can spot.

Confined to her base in Pueblo to give birth to her first child, Heather recruits and monitors a coterie of tech wizards, tough guys, and modern-day frontier scouts: a handful of heroes to patrol a continent. All the news is bad:

Tribals have overrun Indiana and Illinois
The last working aircraft carrier sits helplessly out in the Indian Ocean, not daring to come closer to land
The crash of one of the last working airplanes kills a vital industrialist
Tribals try to force appeasement on the Provi government while the Temper government faces a rebellion of religious fanatics
Seventeen states are lost to the Tribals as California drifts into secession and hereditary monarchy
Everywhere, Provis and Tempers lurch toward civil war.

Heather's agents may be brave, smart, and daring, but can they be enough? For the sake of everything from her newborn son to her dying nation, can she forge them into a the weapon that can at last win the world back from the overwhelming, malevolent force of Daybreak?

Her success or failure may change everything for the next thousand years, beginning from Daybreak Zero.

Divergent

Divergent Trilogy: Book 1

In Beatrice Prior's dystopian Chicago, society is divided into five factions, each dedicated to the cultivation of a particular virtue-Candor (the honest), Abnegation (the selfless), Dauntless (the brave), Amity (the peaceful), and Erudite (the intelligent). On an appointed day of every year, all sixteen-year-olds must select the faction to which they will devote the rest of their lives. For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is-she can't have both. So she makes a choice that surprises everyone, including herself.

During the highly competitive initiation that follows, Beatrice renames herself Tris and struggles to determine who her friends really are-and where, exactly, a romance with a sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating boy fits into the life she's chosen. But Tris also has a secret, one she's kept hidden from everyone because she's been warned it can mean death. And as she discovers a growing conflict that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect society, she also learns that her secret might help her save those she loves... or it might destroy her.

Debut author Veronica Roth bursts onto the literary scene with the first book in the Divergent series-dystopian thrillers filled with electrifying decisions, heartbreaking betrayals, stunning consequences, and unexpected romance.

Insurgent

Divergent Trilogy: Book 2

One choice can transform you-or it can destroy you. But every choice has consequences, and as unrest surges in the factions all around her, Tris Prior must continue trying to save those she loves-and herself-while grappling with haunting questions of grief and forgiveness, identity and loyalty, politics and love.

Tris's initiation day should have been marked by celebration and victory with her chosen faction; instead, the day ended with unspeakable horrors. War now looms as conflict between the factions and their ideologies grows. And in times of war, sides must be chosen, secrets will emerge, and choices will become even more irrevocable-and even more powerful. Transformed by her own decisions but also by haunting grief and guilt, radical new discoveries, and shifting relationships, Tris must fully embrace her Divergence, even if she does not know what she may lose by doing so.

New York Times bestselling author Veronica Roth's much-anticipated second book of the dystopian Divergent series is another intoxicating thrill ride of a story, rich with hallmark twists, heartbreaks, romance, and powerful insights about human nature.

Allegiant

Divergent Trilogy: Book 3

Brian Herbert
Kevin J. Anderson

What if your whole world was a lie?

What if a single revelation - like a single choice - changed everything?

What if love and loyalty made you do things you never expected?

The explosive conclusion to Veronica Roth's #1 New York Times best-selling Divergent trilogy reveals the secrets of the dystopian world that has captivated millions of listeners in Divergent and Insurgent.

Sandworms of Dune

Dune Sequels: Book 2

At the end of Frank Herbert's final novel, Chapterhouse: Dune, a ship carrying a crew of refugees escapes into the uncharted galaxy, fleeing from a terrifying, mysterious Enemy. The fugitives used genetic technology to revive key figures from Dune's past--including Paul Muad'Dib and Lady Jessica--to use their special talents to meet the challenges thrown at them.

Based directly on Frank Herbert's final outline, which lay hidden in two safe-deposit boxes for a decade, Sandworms of Dune will answer the urgent questions Dune fans have been debating for two decades: the origin of the Honored Matres, the tantalizing future of the planet Arrakis, the final revelation of the Kwisatz Haderach, and the resolution to the war between Man and Machine. This breathtaking new novel in Frank Herbert's Dune series has enough surprises and plot twists to please even the most demanding reader.

Blood Red Road

Dustlands: Book 1

Moira Young

Saba has spent her whole life in Silverlake, a dried-up wasteland ravaged by constant sandstorms. The Wrecker civilization has long been destroyed, leaving only landfills for Saba and her family to scavenge from. That's fine by her, as long as her beloved twin brother Lugh is around. But when four cloaked horsemen capture Lugh, Saba's world is shattered, and she embarks on a quest to get him back.

Suddenly thrown into the lawless, ugly reality of the outside world, Saba discovers she is a fierce fighter, an unbeatable survivor, and a cunning opponent. Teamed up with a handsome daredevil named Jack and a gang of girl revolutionaries called the Free Hawks, Saba’s unrelenting search for Lugh stages a showdown that will change the course of her own civilization.

Blood Red Road has a searing pace, a poetic writing style, and an epic love story-making Moira Young is one of the most exciting new voices in teen fiction.

The Last Man

Early Classics of Science Fiction: Book 4

Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville
I. F. Clarke

Originally published in French in 1805, The Last Man is a powerful story of the demise of the human race. Drawing on the traditional account in Revelations, The Last Man was the first end-of-the-world story in future fiction. As the first secular apocalypse story, The Last Man served as the departure point for many other speculative fictions of this type throughout the 19th century, including works by Shelley, Flammarion and Wells.

Grainville's masterful imagination is evident in the vast scale of the action as Omegarus, the Last Adam, and Syderia, the Last Eve, are led toward the moment when "the light of the sun and the stars is extinguished."

This is essential reading for anyone interested in the roots of apocalyptic science fiction.

Dissension

Echo Hunter 367: Book 1

Stacey Berg

For four hundred years, the Church has led the remnants of humanity as they struggle for survival in the last inhabited city. Echo Hunter 367 is exactly what the Church created her to be: loyal, obedient, lethal. A clone who shouldn't care about anything but her duty. Who shouldn't be able to.

When rebellious citizens challenge the Church's authority, it is Echo's duty to hunt them down before civil war can tumble the city back into the dark. But Echo hides a deadly secret: doubt. And when Echo's mission leads her to Lia, a rebel leader who has a secret of her own, Echo is forced to face that doubt. For Lia holds the key to the city's survival, and Echo must choose between the woman she loves and the purpose she was born to fulfill.

Dies the Fire

Emberverse: Emberverse I: Book 1

The Change occurred when an electrical storm centered over the island of Nantucket produced a blinding white flash that rendered all electronic devices and fuels inoperable. What follows is the most terrible global catastrophe in the history of the human race-and a Dark Age more universal and complete than could possibly be imagined.

The Protector's War

Emberverse: Emberverse I: Book 2

The national bestselling alternate history epic continues...

Ten years after The Change rendered technology inoperable throughout the world, two brave leaders built two thriving communities in Oregon's Willamette Valley. But now the armies of the totalitarian Protectorate are preparing to wage war over the priceless farmland.

A Meeting at Corvallis

Emberverse: Emberverse I: Book 3

In the tenth year of The Change, the survivors in western Oregon have learned how to live in a world without technology. But a confrontation between the forces of those who would rebuild the world peacefully and the feared Protector, who will use whatever means at his command to extend his power, threatens to plunge the entire region into open warfare.

The Scourge of God

Emberverse: Emberverse II: Book 2

Vaneglory: A Science Fiction Novel

Rudi MacKenzie continues his trek across the land that was once the United States of America. His destination: Nantucket, where he hopes to learn the truth behind The Change that rendered technology across the globe inoperable.

During his travels, Rudi forges ties with new allies in the continuing war against The Prophet, who teaches his followers that God has punished humanity by destroying technological civilization. And one fanatical officer in the Sword of The Prophet has been dispatched on a mission-to stop Rudi from reaching his destination by any means necessary.

Ethical Culture: Book 2

George Turner

One of the few survivors of a destroyed human race, Will Santley of the newly emerging Ethical Culture is caught up in the mysterious biopolitical affairs of radioactive immortals and must remember his frightening past in order to survive.

Ex-Heroes

Ex-Heroes: Book 1

Peter Clines

The first novel in Peter Clines' bestselling Ex series.

Stealth. Gorgon. Regenerator. Cerberus. Zzzap. The Mighty Dragon. They were heroes, using their superhuman abilities to make Los Angeles a better place.

Then the plague of living death spread around the globe. Billions died, civilization fell, and the city of angels was left a desolate zombie wasteland.

Now, a year later, the Mighty Dragon and his companions protect a last few thousand survivors in their film-studio-turned-fortress, the Mount. Scarred and traumatized by the horrors they've endured, the heroes fight the armies of ravenous ex-humans at their citadel's gates, lead teams out to scavenge for supplies--and struggle to be the symbols of strength and hope the survivors so desperately need.

But the hungry ex-humans aren't the only threats the heroes face.Former allies, their powers and psyches hideously twisted, lurk in the city's ruins. And just a few miles away, another group is slowly amassing power... led by an enemy with the most terrifying ability of all.

Ex-Patriots

Ex-Heroes: Book 2

Peter Clines

The second novel in Peter Clines' bestselling Ex series.

It's been two years since the plague of ex-humans decimated mankind. Two years since the superheroes St. George, Cerberus, Zzzap, and Stealth gathered Los Angeles's survivors behind the walls of their fortress, the Mount.

Since then, the heroes have been fighting to give the Mount's citizens hope, and something like a real life. But now supplies are growing scarce, the zombies are pressing in... and the heroes are wondering how much longer they can hold out.

Then hope arrives in the form of a surviving US Army battalion--and not just any battalion. The men and women of the Army's Project Krypton survived the outbreak because they are super-soldiers, created before mankind's fall to be better, stronger, faster than normal humans--and their secure base in Arizona beckons as a much needed refuge for the beleaguered heroes and their charges.

But a dark secret lies at the heart of Project Krypton, and those behind it wield an awesome and terrifying power.

Extinction Horizon

Extinction Cycle: Book 1

Master Sergeant Reed Beckham has led his Delta Force Team, codenamed Ghost, through every kind of hell imaginable and never lost a man. When a top secret Medical Corps research facility goes dark, Team Ghost is called in to face their deadliest enemy yet--a variant strain of Ebola that turns men into monsters.

After barely escaping with his life, Beckham returns to Fort Bragg in the midst of a new type of war. As cities fall, Team Ghost is ordered to keep CDC virologist Dr. Kate Lovato alive long enough to find a cure. What she uncovers will change everything.

Total extinction is just on the horizon, but will the cure be worse than the virus?

Extinction Edge

Extinction Cycle: Book 2

The dust from Dr. Kate Lovato's bioweapon has settled. Projections put death counts in the billions. Her weapon was supposed to be the endgame, but it turned a small percentage of those infected with the Hemorrhage Virus into something even worse.

Survivors call them Variants. Irreversible epigenetic changes have transformed them into predators unlike any the human race has ever seen. And they are evolving.

The fractured military plans Operation Liberty--a desperate mission designed to take back the cities and destroy the Variant threat. Master Sergeant Reed Beckham agrees to lead a strike team into New York City, but first he must return to Fort Bragg to search for the only family he has left.

As Operation Liberty draws closer, Kate warns Beckham that Team Ghost won't just face their deadliest adversary yet, they may be heading into a trap...

Extinction Age

Extinction Cycle: Book 3

humans are losing the war. Master Sergeant Reed Beckham and the survivors of 1st Platoon must battle through the tunnels--where they make a grisly discovery.

Dr. Kate Lovato is working on a new bioweapon to destroy the Variants when a derelict Navy Destroyer crashes into the Connecticut shoreline carrying yet another threat.

As the doomsday clock ticks down and military bases fall across the country, the human race enters the age of extinction. Will they prevail--or will mankind vanish off the face of the planet?

Extinction Evolution

Extinction Cycle: Book 4

Central Command is gone, the military is fractured, and the surviving members of Team Ghost, led by Master Sergeant Reed Beckham, have been pushed to the breaking point.

Betrayed by the country they swore to defend and surrounded by enemies on all sides, Team Ghost has one mission left: protect Dr. Kate Lovato and Dr. Pat Ellis while they develop a weapon to defeat the Variants once and for all. But after a grisly discovery in Atlanta, Kate and Ellis realize their weapon might not be able to stop the evolution of the monsters.

Joined by unexpected allies and facing a new threat none of them saw coming, the survivors are running out of time to save the human race from extinction.

Extinction End

Extinction Cycle: Book 5

Almost seven weeks have passed since the Hemorrhage Virus ravaged the world. The remnants of the United States military have regrouped and relocated Central Command to the George Washington Carrier Strike Group. It's here, in the North Atlantic, that President Jan Ringgold and Vice President George Johnson prepare to deploy a new bioweapon and embark on the final mission to take back the country from the Variants.

With his home gone and his friends kidnapped, Master Sergeant Reed Beckham and his remaining men must take drastic measures to save what's left of the human race.

Extinction Aftermath

Extinction Cycle: Book 6

The newly christened leader of Delta Force Team Ghost, Master Sergeant Joe Fitzpatrick arrives in Normandy over 70 years after Allied Forces joined the fight against the Nazis. The war to free survivors and eradicate pockets of adult Variants and their offspring is underway by the European Unified Forces. But as the troops push east, rumors of a new type of monster spread through the ranks. Fitz and his new team quickly realize that the fight for Europe might be harder than anyone ever imagined.

Back in the States, Captain Reed Beckham and Dr. Kate Lovato are settling into a new life on Plum Island. Across the United States, the adult Variants have all been wiped out, and the juveniles are on the run. But the survivors soon realize there are other monsters at home, and they may be human.

Extinction War

Extinction Cycle: Book 7

An army advances...

In Europe, Master Sergeant Joe Fitzpatrick and Team Ghost return from a mission deep into enemy territory only to find that the Variant army has grown stronger, and they are advancing toward the EUF's stronghold in Paris.

On the brink of Civil War...

Back in the United States, President Ringgold and Dr. Kate Lovato are on the run. The Safe Zone Territories continue to rally behind the ROT flag, leaving Ringgold more enemies than allies. But there are still those who will stand and fight for America. Captain Rachel Davis and Captain Reed Beckham will risk everything to defeat ROT and save the country from collapsing into Civil War.

Quantum Coin

Fair Coin: Book 2

E. C. Myers

The sequel to the exciting adventure spun across parallel worlds!

Ephraim thought his universe-hopping days were over. He's done wishing for magic solutions to his problems; his quantum coin has been powerless for almost a year, and he's settled into a normal life with his girlfriend, Jena. But then an old friend crashes their senior prom: Jena's identical twin from a parallel world, Zoe.

Zoe's timing couldn't be worse. It turns out that Ephraim's problems are far from over, and they're much more complicated than his love life: The multiverse is at stake—and it might just be Ephraim's fault.

Ephraim, Jena, and Zoe embark on a mission across multiple worlds to learn what's going wrong and how to stop it. They will have to draw on every resource available and trust in alternate versions of themselves and their friends, before it's too late for all of them.

If Ephraim and his companions can put their many differences aside and learn to work together, they might have a chance to save the multiverse. But ultimately, the solution may depend on how much they're willing to sacrifice for the sake of humanity... and each other.

The Ghost Machine

Firefly: Book 4

James Lovegrove

Mal and the crew take receipt of a sealed crate which they are being paid to transport to Badger, no questions asked. Yet once their cargo is safely stowed aboard, River insists Mal should "space" it out of the airlock, for it contains, she insists, ghosts. With supplies running low, the crew desperately need another pay day, but soon find themselves paralysed by hallucinations of their deepest hopes and desires, so vivid they cannot be distinguished from reality. River is the only one unaffected, and desperately tries to awaken her crew mates, while the fantasies turn sour, and the ship begins to spin out of control.

Flood

Flood: Book 1

Next year. Sea levels begin to rise. The change is far more rapid than any climate change predictions; metres a year. Within two years London, only 15 metres above the sea, is drowned. New York follows, the Pope gives his last address from the Vatican, Mecca disappears beneath the waves. Where is all the water coming from?

Scientists estimate that the earth was formed with seas 30 times in volume their current levels. Most of that water was burnt off by the sun but some was locked in the earth's mantle. For the tip of Everest to disappear beneath the waters would require the seas to triple their volume. That amount of water is still much less than 1% of the earth's volume. And somehow it is being released. The world is drowning. The biblical flood has returned. And the rate of increase is building all the time.

Mankind is on the run, heading for high ground. Nuclear submarines prowl through clouds of corpses rising from drowned cities, populations are decimated and finally the dreadful truth is known. Before 50 years have passed there will be nowhere left to run.

FLOOD tells the story of mankind's final years on earth.The stories of a small group of people caught up in the struggle to survive are woven into a tale of unimaginable global disaster. And the hope offered for a unlucky few by a second great ark...

Ark

Flood: Book 2

As the waters rose in FLOOD, high in the Colorado mountains the US government was building an ark. Not an ark to ride the waves but an ark that would take a select few hundred people out into space to start a new future for mankind. Sent out into deep space on an epic journey centuries, generations of crew members carry the hope of a new beginning on a new, incredibly distant, planet. But as the decades pass knowledge and purpose is lost and division and madness grows. And back on earth life, and man, find a new way.

The Forge of God

Forge of God: Book 1

On September 28th, a geologist working in Death valley finds a mysterious new cinder cone in very well-mapped area.

On October 1st, the government of Australia announces the discovery of an enormous granite mountain. Like the cinder cone, it wasn't there six months ago....

Something is happening to Planet Earth, and the truth is too terrifying to consider....

Ark

Forward: Book 1

On the eve of Earth's destruction, a young scientist discovers something too precious to lose, in a story of cataclysm and hope by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Divergent trilogy.

It's only two weeks before an asteroid turns home to dust. Though most of Earth has already been evacuated, it's Samantha's job to catalog plant samples for the survivors' unknowable journey beyond. Preparing to stay behind and watch the world end, she makes a final human connection.

As certain doom hurtles nearer, the unexpected and beautiful potential for the future begins to flower.

Emergency Skin

Forward: Book 3

The Last War: A World Set Free

Hugo Award-nominated Novelette

An explorer returns to gather information from a climate-ravaged Earth that his ancestors, and others among the planet's finest, fled centuries ago. The mission comes with a warning: a graveyard world awaits him. But so do those left behind -- hopeless and unbeautiful wastes of humanity who should have died out ages ago. After all this time, there's no telling how they've devolved. Steel yourself, soldier. Get in. Get out. And try not to stare.

The Purple Cloud

Frontiers of Imagination: Book 10

M. P. Shiel

The first great science fiction novel of the twentieth century—now available from Penguin Classics

Strange, macabre, and, fantastical, M. P. Shiel's The Purple Cloud is a landmark work that heralded the genre of apocalyptic fiction. It tells the grandly bleak story of Adam Jeffson—the first man to reach the North Pole and the last man left alive on earth. A sweet-smelling cloud of poisonous gas has devastated the world, and as Jeffson travels the stricken globe in search of human life, he slowly succumbs to madness, unleashing fire and destruction on his planet.

A new introduction by literary scholar John Sutherland explores The Purple Cloud's apocalyptic themes and Shiel's colorful private life.

Beyond Thirty

Frontiers of Imagination: Book 12

Edgar Rice Burroughs

By the year 2137 Europe has become a largely forgotten, savage wilderness. Fierce bands of hunters rove the crumbling ruins of once mighty, war-ravaged cities. On the other side of the Atlantic a prosperous Pan-American Federation has emerged, claiming all lands and seas between the 30th and 175th longitudes and forbidding contact with the rest of the world. All who cross beyond thirty are sentenced to death.

Beyond Thirty is the story of Captain Jefferson Turck and the crew of his aero-submarine, who through accident and sabotage are forced beyond the thirtieth longitude and embark on an epic quest to rediscover the legendary lands of the Old World. Their adventures stand as one of Edgar Rice Burroughs's most imaginative and subtly crafted tales. Burroughs wrote the story in 1915 in reaction to the growing horrors of the First World War, and his devastating vision of its consequences provides a haunting and enduring warning for the twenty-first century.

Has also been published as The Lost Continent.

Frontiers of Imagination: Book 14

H. G. Wells

"From nearly two hundred centres, and every week added to their number, roared the unquenchable crimson conflagrations of the atomic bombs. The flimsy fabric of the world's credit had vanished, industry was completed disorganised, and every city, every thickly populated area was starving or trembled on the verge of starvation. Most of the capital cities of the world were burning; millions of people had already perished, and over great areas government was at an end."

The Last War erupts in Europe, rapidly escalating from bloody trench warfare and vicious aerial duels into a world-consuming, atomic holocaust. Paris is engulfed by an atomic maelstrom, Berlin is an ever-flaming crater, the cold waters of the North Sea roar past Dutch dikes and sweep across the Low Countries. Moscow, Chicago, Tokyo, London, and hundreds of other cities become radioactive wastelands. Governments topple, age-old cultural legacies are destroyed, and the stage is set for a new social and political order.

The Last War is H. G. Wells's chilling and prophetic tale of a world gone mad with atomic weapons and of the rebirth of human-kind from the rubble. Written long before the atomic age, Wells's novel is a riveting and intelligent history of the future that discusses for the first time the horrors of the atomic bomb, offering a startling vision of humanity purged by a catastrophic atomic war.

Originally and alternatively published as The World Set Free.

In the Days of the Comet

Frontiers of Imagination: Book 18

H. G. Wells

A comet rushes toward the earth, a deadly, glowing orb that soon fills the sky and promises doom. But mankind is too busy hating, stealing, scheming, and killing to care. As luminous green trails of cosmic dust and vapor stream across the heavens, blood flows beneath: nations wage all-out war, bitter strikes erupt, and jealous lovers plot revenge and murder. The earth slips past the comet by the narrowest of margins, but all succumb to the gases in its tail. When mankind wakes up, everyone is completely and profoundly different.

In the Days of the Comet is H. G. Wells's classic tale of the last days of the old earth and the extraterrestrial Change that becomes the salvation of the human race. An ill-fated romance between Willie Leadford and Nettie Stuart unfolds in a world buried in misery and bent on its own destruction. After the earth passes through the comet's tail, suffering, pettiness, and injustice melt away. Willie, Nettie, and everyone around them are reborn. They now see themselves and their world in a dramatically new and wonderful way.

The Past Is Red

Garbagetown

Catherynne M. Valente

The future is blue. Endless blue... except for a few small places that float across the hot, drowned world left behind by long-gone fossil fuel-guzzlers. One of those patches is a magical place called Garbagetown.

Tetley Abednego is the most beloved girl in Garbagetown, but she's the only one who knows it. She's the only one who knows a lot of things: that Garbagetown is the most wonderful place in the world, that it's full of hope, that you can love someone and 66% hate them all at the same time.

But Earth is a terrible mess, hope is a fragile thing, and a lot of people are very angry with her. Then Tetley discovers a new friend, a terrible secret, and more to her world than she ever expected.

The first quarter of this book was published as the novelette The Past Is Red and it can be read for free at Clarkesworld.

Grasshopper Jungle

Grasshopper Jungle: Book 1

Andrew Smith

In the small town of Ealing, Iowa, Austin and his best friend, Robby, have accidentally unleashed an unstoppable army. An army of horny, hungry, six-foot-tall praying mantises that only want to do two things. This is the truth. This is history. It's the end of the world. And nobody knows anything about it. You know what I mean. Funny, intense, complex, and brave, Grasshopper Jungle brilliantly weaves together everything from testicle-dissolving genetically modified corn to the struggles of recession-era, small-town America in this groundbreaking coming-of-age stunner.

Mindstar Rising

Greg Mandel Trilogy: Book 1

Peter F. Hamilton

Greg Mandel, late of the Mindstar Battalion, has been many things in his life. Commando. Freedom fighter. Assassin. Now he's a freelance operative with a very special edge: telepathy.

In the high-tech, hard-edged world of computer crime, zero-gravity smuggling, and artificial intelligence, Greg Mandel is the man to call when things get rough. But when an elusive saboteur plagues a powerful organization known as Event Horizon, Mandel must cut his way through a maze of corporate intrigue and startling new scientific discoveries.

And nothing less than the future is at stake.

A Quantum Murder

Greg Mandel Trilogy: Book 2

Peter F. Hamilton

Professor Edward Kitchener, a double Nobel laureate researching quantum cosmology for the powerful Event Horizon conglomerate, has been savagely murdered. But was he the victim of industrial espionage, personal revenge, or a crime of passion by one of his handpicked team of live-wire students?

Event Horizon needs to know, and fast, so Greg Mandel, PSI-boosted veteran of the infamous Mindstar Battalion, must embark on an urgent investigation that ultimately leads him to an astounding confrontation with a past, which, according to the dead man's theories, might never have happened.

Gregg Press Science Fiction Series: Book 4

Yevgeny Zamyatin

In a glass-enclosed city of absolute straight lines, ruled over by the all-powerful 'Benefactor', the citizens of the totalitarian society of OneState live out lives devoid of passion and creativity - until D-503, a mathematician who dreams in numbers, makes a discovery: he has an individual soul.

Set in the twenty-sixth century AD, "We" is the classic dystopian novel and was the inspiration for George Orwell's 1984. It was suppressed for many years in Russia and remains a resounding cry for individual freedom, yet is also a powerful, exciting and vivid work of science fiction.

The Doomsman

Gregg Press Science Fiction Series: Book 17

Van Tassel Sutphen

The state of civilization in 2015 New York will closely resemble that of England in the early days of Saxon settlement -- primitive people will dwell sparsely in patriarchal stockades and will fight and hunt with bow and arrow.

Dark Universe

Gregg Press Science Fiction Series: Book 26

Daniel F. Galouye

The survivors live underground, as far from the Original World as possible and protected from the ultimate evil, Radiation. Then terrible monsters, who bring with them a screaming silence, are seen and people start to disappear. One young man realises he must question the nature of Darkness itself.

Hothouse

Gregg Press Science Fiction Series: Book 32

Dr. Bloodmoney: or, How We Got Along After the Bomb

In the future, when the Sun has expanded and is ready to go nova, few animal species remain while plants have adapted to fill animal niches. One of the few species to survive are humans, but in much-altered forms. It is here where young tribal Gren finds himself captured by an intelligent fungus with plans to colonize humans to control the world! Hothouse tells the story of a remarkable journey of discovery that will alter your perceptions about the true nature of the world today... and the world to come!

The Jewels of Aptor

Gregg Press Science Fiction Series: Book 39

Samuel R. Delany

Originally appeared in Ace Double F-173 (1962).

When Argo, the White Goddess, orders it Geo, the itinerant poet, and his three disparate companions journey to the island of Aptor to seize a jewel from the dark god, Hama, and return it to Argo so that she may defeat the malign forces ranged against her and the land of Leptar

But, as the four push deep into the enigmatic heart of Aptor and the easy distinctions between good and evil start to blur, their mission no longer seems straightforward. For Argo already controls two of the precious stones and possession of the third would make her power absolute. And the four friends have learned that power tends to corrupt...

Gregg Press Science Fiction Series: Book 53

Philip K. Dick

Dr. Bloodmoney is a post-nuclear-holocaust masterpiece filled with a host of Dick's most memorable characters: Hoppy Harrington, a deformed mutant with telekinetic powers; Walt Dangerfield, a selfless disc jockey stranded in a satellite circling the globe; Dr. Bluthgeld, the megalomaniac physicist largely responsible for the decimated state of the world; and Stuart McConchie and Bonnie Keller, two unremarkable people bent the survival of goodness in a world devastated by evil. Epic and alluring, this brilliant novel is a mesmerizing depiction of Dick's undying hope in humanity.

The Iron Dream

Gregg Press Science Fiction Series: Book 59

Norman Spinrad

"IF WAGNER WROTE SCIENCE FICTION THIS IS THE WAY HE WOULD DO IT." -- Harry Harrison

Renowned science fiction writer Adolf Hitler's Hugo Award winning novel!

Ferric Jaggar mounted the platform. A swastika of flame twenty feet high stood out in glory against the night sky behind him, bathing him in heroic firelight, flashing highlights off the brightwork of his gleaming black leather uniform, setting his powerful eyes ablaze. "I hold in my hand the Great Truncheon of Held. I dedicate myself to the repurification of all Heldon with blood and iron, and to the extension of the dominion of True Humanity over the face of the entire Earth! Never will we rest until the last mutant gene is swept from the face of the planet!"

Set in a post-nuclear holocaust world, a novel which traces the rise to power of one Feric Jaggar, an exile among mutants and mongrels to absolute rule in the Fatherland of Truemen.

With an afterword by James Sallis.

The Genocides

Gregg Press Science Fiction Series: Book 60

Thomas M. Disch

This spectacular novel established Thomas M. Disch as a major new force in science fiction. First published in 1965, it was immediately labeled a masterpiece reminiscent of the works of J.G. Ballard and H.G. Wells

In this harrowing novel, the world's cities have been reduced to cinder and ash and alien plants have overtaken the earth. The plants, able to grow the size of maples in only a month and eventually reach six hundred feet, have commandeered the world's soil and are sucking even the Great Lakes dry. In northern Minnesota, Anderson, an aging farmer armed with a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other, desperately leads the reduced citizenry of a small town in a daily struggle for meager existence. Throw into this fray Jeremiah Orville, a marauding outsider bent on a bizarre and private revenge, and the fight to live becomes a daunting task.

Countdown City

Hank Palace: Book 2

Ben H. Winters

The Last Policeman received the 2013 Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original--along with plenty of glowing reviews.

Now Detective Hank Palace returns in Countdown City, the second volume of the Last Policeman trilogy. There are just 77 days before a deadly asteroid collides with Earth, and Detective Palace is out of a job. With the Concord police force operating under the auspices of the U.S. Justice Department, Hank's days of solving crimes are over... until a woman from his past begs for help finding her missing husband.

Brett Cavatone disappeared without a trace—an easy feat in a world with no phones, no cars, and no way to tell whether someone’s gone "bucket list" or just gone. With society falling to shambles, Hank pieces together what few clues he can, on a search that leads him from a college-campus-turned-anarchist-encampment to a crumbling coastal landscape where anti-immigrant militia fend off "impact zone" refugees.

Countdown City presents another fascinating mystery set on brink of an apocalypse--and once again, Hank Palace confronts questions way beyond "whodunit." What do we as human beings owe to one another? And what does it mean to be civilized when civilization is collapsing all around you?

World of Trouble

Hank Palace: Book 3

Ben H. Winters

Critically acclaimed author Ben H. Winters delivers this explosive final installment in the Edgar Award winning Last Policeman series.

With the doomsday asteroid looming, Detective Hank Palace has found sanctuary in the woods of New England, secure in a well-stocked safe house with other onetime members of the Concord police force. But with time ticking away before the asteroid makes landfall, Hank's safety is only relative, and his only relative--his sister Nico--isn't safe. Soon, it's clear that there's more than one earth-shattering revelation on the horizon, and it's up to Hank to solve the puzzle before time runs out... for everyone.

Hell Divers

Hell Divers: Book 1

Walk to the End of the World

More than two centuries after World War III poisoned the planet, the final bastion of humanity lives on massive airships circling the globe in search for a habitable area to call home. Aging and outdated, most of the ships plummeted back to earth long ago. The only thing keeping the two surviving lifeboats in the sky are Hell Divers: men and women who risk their lives by diving to the surface to scavenge for parts the ships desperately need.

When one of the remaining airships is damaged in an electrical storm, a Hell Diver team is deployed to a hostile zone called Hades. But there's something down there that's far worse than the mutated creatures discovered on dives in the past--something that threatens the fragile future of humanity.

The Godwhale

Hive: Book 2

T. J. Bass

Rorqual Maru was her name. She was a harvester - a vast plankton rake without a crop, abandoned by Earth society when the seas dried. Part whale, part ship, and well over 600 feet long, ahe was left to rot in the sterile ocean.

But suddenly, after centuries, the sea was no longer dead, and Rorqual stirred from her slumber. She would set out once again to serve mankind. But mankind had forgotten all about Rorqual ...

Holdfast Chronicles: Book 1

Suzy McKee Charnas

The men of the Holdfast had long treated with contempt the degenerated creatures known as "fems." To give themselves the drive to survive and reconquer the world, the men needed a common enemy. Superstitious belief had ascribed to the fems the guilt for the terrible Wasting that had destroyed the world. They were the ideal scapegoat. The truth was lost in death and decay and buried in history. It was going to be a long journey back...

Hollow Kingdom

Hollow Kingdom: Book 1

Kira Jane Buxton

S.T., a domesticated crow, is a bird of simple pleasures: hanging out with his owner Big Jim, trading insults with Seattle's wild crows (those idiots), and enjoying the finest food humankind has to offer: Cheetos ®.

Then Big Jim's eyeball falls out of his head, and S.T. starts to feel like something isn't quite right. His most tried-and-true remedies--from beak-delivered beer to the slobbering affection of Big Jim's loyal but dim-witted dog, Dennis--fail to cure Big Jim's debilitating malady. S.T. is left with no choice but to abandon his old life and venture out into a wild and frightening new world with his trusty steed Dennis, where he discovers that the neighbors are devouring each other and the local wildlife is abuzz with rumors of dangerous new predators roaming Seattle. Humanity's extinction has seemingly arrived, and the only one determined to save it is a foul-mouthed crow whose knowledge of the world around him comes from his TV-watching education.

Hollow Kingdom is a humorous, big-hearted, and boundlessly beautiful romp through the apocalypse and the world that comes after, where even a cowardly crow can become a hero.

The Beast Master

Hosteen Storm / Beast Master: Book 1

Rebirth: When Everyone Forgot

Left homeless by the war that reduced Terra to a radioactive cinder, Hosteen Storm - Navaho commando and master of beasts - is drawn to the planet Arzor, to kill a man he has never met. On that dangerous frontier world, aliens and human colonists share the land in an uneasy truce. But something is upsetting the balance, and Storm is caught in the middle. He had thought the war was over - but was it?

Underground Man

Hyperion Classics of Science Fiction: Book 4

Gabriel Tarde

A post-apocalyptic tale that chronicles man's shedding of his restricting nature and the realization of his perfection through the evolution of group cooperation and herd behavior.

When the sun suddenly dies, the remaining populations on earth are forced to move their societies underground. Like Noah and his ark full of animals and plants, they take with them their most valuable items for rebuilding their new world also: paintings, bronzes, violins, and books of poetry. After a few centuries of subterranean slaughter, somehow the inevitable victors emerge: secular saintly aesthetes who create a romantic neo-troglodytical artistic utopia through the prodigious use of prophylactics and capital punishment. And love.

Darkness and Dawn

Hyperion Classics of Science Fiction: Book 14

George Allan England

England's trilogy, Darkness and Dawn (published in 1912, 1913 and 1914 as The Vacant World, Beyond the Great Oblivion and Afterglow) tells the story of 2 modern people who awake a thousand years after the earth was devastated by a meteor. They work to rebuild civilization.

The Vacant World - Beatrice Kendrick, and her boss, engineer Allan Stern, wakes up on an upper floor of a ruined Manhattan skyscraper, thousands of years in the future when civilization has been destroyed. The pair has been in a state of suspended animation for fifteen hundred years. Changes in the earth's features as well as monstrously mutated ""humans"" make it clear they have little hope of survival.

Beyond the Great Oblivion - Allan and Beatrice begin to discover the nature of the catastrophe that has split the Earth open. Rebuilding an airplane, they find a ""bottomless"" chasm near Pittsburgh where a huge portion of the Earth has been torn away to become a second moon. Alan and Beatrice earn the loyalty of the People of this Abyss and lead them from the chasm to New York.

The Afterglow - Allan and Beatrice, with the People of the Abyss, prepare to recolonize the Earth's surface. But first, they must defeat the devolved, cannibalistic survivors who populate Earth's cities.

City of Endless Night

Hyperion Classics of Science Fiction: Book 19

Milo Hastings

Written shortly after the guns of World War I fell silent, CITY OF ENDLESS NIGHT presents a strange yet well-conceived vision of the future that might have been, had the Great War ended differently. The premise is that allied bombing in an extended WWI had driven the Germans in Berlin underground into a series of bunkers and subterranean factories. The Germans quickly discovered ways of surviving under these conditions, while the Allies failed to figure out any means of ferreting them out, and the war turned into a frustrating stalemate.

The year is 2041. Since the end of WWI, Berlin has been an enormous subterranean city, home to 300 million citizens who have never seen the sun, and presided over by the autocratic Hohenzollern dynasty. Every aspect of life is regimented; from controlled rations that are issued on the basis of work-for-food, to a press that works exclusively under the auspices of the Information Service. Christianity has been abolished and all breeding is carried out on the basis of strict eugenic principles. Lyman De Forrest, an American chemist, discovers a way of neutralizing Berlin's defenses and, assuming the identity of a dead German man, enters the city to discover its hidden truths. The first outsider for decades to enter the forbidden metropolis, he is horrified to find a society where women are kept in isolation for breeding or the pleasuring of high status men. Can De Forrest escape this living tomb?

Published shortly after the end of WWI, this tremendous example of early dystopian science fiction is thought to have been the inspiration behind Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

The Second Deluge

Hyperion Classics of Science Fiction: Book 22

Garrett P. Serviss

In The Second Deluge, filed with scenes of panic and disaster, the entire surface of the earth is submerged when the solar system enters a watery nebula, and only scientist-hero Cosmo Versal, and a small group of friends who believe in him survive by flying above the flood in a newly invented skyship.

Darkness and the Light

Hyperion Classics of Science Fiction: Book 23

Olaf Stapledon

In this work written in 1941, at the most frightening point of World War II, Stapledon projects two separate futures for humanity, depending not on the outcome of that particular conflict but on the failure or success of a future "Tibetan Renaissance" to influence the temper and ideology of the militaristic Russian and Chinese empires that threaten it. One of the futures involves worldwide Chinese imperialism and subsequent degeneration and extinction of the human race, unable to defend itself against speedily evolving rats. The other ends in overthrowing the empires and creation of a worldwide socialist utopia.

Hyperion Classics of Science Fiction: Book 47

Thomas Calvert McClary

Set in the Near Future, (from the POV of the 1930ies) a Scientist, so disgusted by what he self-righteously reguards as the decedance of modern civilization, instantaneously transforms the world by means of a Ray which obliterates all memory, all acquired knowledge, including how to talk. Hoping that in this tabula-rasa setting men, starting from instinct, will be able to create a just society; but only the smartest and toughest re-educate themselves in technology. The rest must die.

Withered + Sere

Immemorial Year: Book 1

T. J. Klune

Once upon a time, humanity could no longer contain the rage that swelled within, and the world ended in a wave of fire.

One hundred years later, in the wasteland formerly known as America, a broken man who goes only by the name of Cavalo survives. Purposefully cutting himself off from what remains of civilization, Cavalo resides in the crumbling ruins of the North Idaho Correctional Institution. A mutt called Bad Dog and a robot on the verge of insanity comprise his only companions. Cavalo himself is deteriorating, his memories rising like ghosts and haunting the prison cells.

It's not until he makes the dangerous choice of crossing into the irradiated Deadlands that Cavalo comes into contact with a mute psychopath, one who belongs to the murderous group of people known as the Dead Rabbits. Taking the man prisoner, Cavalo is forced not only to face the horrors of his past, but the ramifications of the choices made for his stark present. And it is in the prisoner that he will find a possible future where redemption is but a glimmer that darkly shines.

The world has died. This is the story of its remains.

Crisped + Sere

Immemorial Year: Book 2

T. J. Klune

Twenty-one days.

In a world ravaged by fire and descending into madness, Cavalo has been given an ultimatum by the dark man known as Patrick: return Lucas to him and the cannibalistic Dead Rabbits, or the town of Cottonwood and its inhabitants will be destroyed. But Lucas has a secret embedded into his skin that promises to forever alter the shape of things to come--a secret that Cavalo must decide if it's worth dying over, even as he wrestles with his own growing attraction to the muted psychopath.

Twenty-one days.

Cavalo has twenty-one days to prepare for war. Twenty-one days to hold what is left of his shredded sanity together. Twenty-one days to convince the people of Cottonwood to rise up and fight back. Twenty-one days to unravel the meaning behind the marks that cover Lucas. A meaning that leads to a single word and a place of unimaginable power: Dworshak.

Inferno

Inferno: Book 1

Larry Niven
Jerry Pournelle

After being thrown out the window of his luxury apartment, science fiction writer Allen Carpentier wakes to find himself at the gates of hell. Feeling he's landed in a great opportunity for a book, he attempts to follow Dante's road map. Determined to meet Satan himself, Carpentier treks through the Nine Layers of Hell led by Benito Mussolini, and encounters countless mental and physical tortures. As he struggles to escape, he's taken through new, puzzling, and outlandish versions of sin--recast for the present day.

Return to Isis

Isis Rising: Book 1

Jean Stewart

On a spy mission for Freeland, Whit is almost safely home when the brutal forces of Elysium find her. When a battered and destitute farmer comes to her aid, Whit can't leave the woman to a certain death, setting in motion a homecoming that is anything but safe. Whit's feelings for Amelia complicate their return, especially when the other women of Freeland are wary of Amelia - who may not be the simple farmer she seems.

There are answers in Amelia's haunting dreams, but those are as deep as the secrets that surround Isis, a colony mysteriously destroyed by Elysium forces. The ruins of Isis hide an adversary Whit has never faced before, one whose plans for Freeland have been dormant for ten long years and whose hatred of the women of Isis lingers from a distant past.

The year is 2093. Isis is only a memory, but the future survival of Freeland depends on remembering...

Return to Isis is the first book in Jean Stewarts' beloved science-fiction series, and was shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award.

It Takes Death to Reach a Star

It Takes Death to Reach a Star: Book 1

Stu Jones
Gareth Worthington

WE ALL HAVE DEMONS. SOME DEMONS HAVE YOU.

The world you know is dead. We did this to ourselves.

The epidemic struck at the end of the Third World War. Fighting over oil, power, and religion, governments ignored the rise of an antibacterial-resistant plague. In just five years, the Earth was annihilated. Only one city survived--Etyom--a frozen hellhole in northern Siberia, engulfed in endless conflict.

The year is 2251.

Two groups emerged from the ashes of the old world. Within the walled city of Lower Etyom dwell the Robusts--descendants of the poor who were immune to the New Black Death. Above them, in a metropolis of pristine platforms called lillipads, live the Graciles--the progeny of the superrich, bio-engineered to resist the plague.

Mila Solokoff is a Robust who trades information in a world where knowing too much can get you killed. Caught in a deal gone bad, she's forced to take a high-risk job for a clandestine organization hell-bent on revolution.

Demitri Stasevich is a Gracile with a dark secret--a sickness that, if discovered, will get him Ax'd. His only relief is an illegal narcotic produced by the Robusts, and his only means of obtaining it is a journey to the arctic hell far below New Etyom.

Thrust together in the midst of a sinister plot that threatens all life above and below the cloud line, Mila and Demitri must master their demons and make a choice--one that will either salvage what's left of the human race or doom it to extinction...

In the Shadow of a Valiant Moon

It Takes Death To Reach a Star: Book 2

Stu Jones
Gareth Worthington

DESTINY HAS NO ALLEGIANCE.

Four years have passed since the lillipads fell and Etyom slipped into darkness.

The New Black Death has mutated again, spreading to near epidemic proportions. What little order existed in Earth's last city has disintegrated into chaos. Rippers roam the Vapid, robbing and leaving their victims butchered. The Robusts have spilled out of their broken enclaves and hide in any dark corner that will conceal them. Meanwhile, the elite Graciles, fallen from their pristine towers in the sky, have all mysteriously disappeared.

Demitri is a prisoner in his own mind. His demon, Vedmak--now known as the Vardøger--is manipulating Demitri's body and knowledge to execute a secret plan far more disastrous than even the Gracile Leader dared.

Mila, her status among the fractured resistance elevated to that of Paladyn--a protector of the people--leads the fight against zealots intent on destroying what little remains of Etyom. It is a responsibility she never wanted, a calling that prevents her from doing what she truly desires.

Yet, Mila should be careful for what she longs. Caught between annihilation and loyalties that refuse to die, she must reconcile a single immutable truth: following your heart comes at a price.

The Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys

Jeb Stuart Ho: Book 4

Mick Farren

A sequel to a series of 70s science fiction novels in which the Minstrel Boy is being hunted by crazed assassins. Reave is wanted as a deserter and Billy Oblivion fears that he is losing his mind. For the first time, the end seems to be in sight. Mick Farren also wrote "Their Master's War".

Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America

Julian Comstock: Book 1

Robert Charles Wilson

In the reign of President Deklan Comstock, a reborn United States is struggling back to prosperity. Over a century after the Efflorescence of Oil, after the Fall of the Cities, after the Plague of Infertility, after the False Tribulation, after the days of the Pious Presidents, the sixty stars and thirteen stripes wave from the plains of Athabaska to the national capital in New York City. In Colorado Springs, the Dominion sees to the nation's spiritual needs. In Labrador, the Army wages war on the Dutch. America, unified, is rising once again.

Then out of Labrador come tales of a new Ajax-Captain Commongold, the Youthful Hero of the Saguenay. The ordinary people follow his adventures in the popular press. The Army adores him. The President is... troubled. Especially when the dashing Captain turns out to be his nephew Julian, son of the falsely accused and executed Bryce.

Treachery and intrigue dog Julian's footsteps. Hairsbreadth escapes and daring rescues fill his days. Stern resolve and tender sentiment dice for Julian's soul, while his admiration for the works of the Secular Ancients, and his adherence to the evolutionary doctrines of the heretical Darwin, set him at fatal odds with the hierarchy of the Dominion. Plague and fire swirl around the Presidential palace when at last he arrives with the acclamation of the mob.

As told by Julian's best friend and faithful companion, a rustic yet observant lad from the west, this tale of the 22nd Century asks- and answers-the age-old question: "Do you want to tell the truth, or do you want to tell a story?"

This novel is a greatly-expanded version of the Hugo- and Sturgeon-nominated novella, Julian: A Christmas Story.

The History of Bees

Klimakvartetten: Book 1

Maja Lunde

In the spirit of Station Eleven and Never Let Me Go, this dazzling and ambitious literary debut follows three generations of beekeepers from the past, present, and future, weaving a spellbinding story of their relationship to the bees--and to their children and one another--against the backdrop of an urgent, global crisis.

England, 1852. William is a biologist and seed merchant, who sets out to build a new type of beehive--one that will give both him and his children honor and fame.

United States, 2007. George is a beekeeper fighting an uphill battle against modern farming, but hopes that his son can be their salvation.

China, 2098. Tao hand paints pollen onto the fruit trees now that the bees have long since disappeared. When Tao's young son is taken away by the authorities after a tragic accident, she sets out on a grueling journey to find out what happened to him.

Haunting, illuminating, and deftly written, The History of Bees joins these three very different narratives into one gripping and thought-provoking story that is just as much about the powerful bond between children and parents as it is about our very relationship to nature and humanity.

The Calculating Stars

Lady Astronaut: Book 1

Mary Robinette Kowal

A meteor decimates the U.S. government and paves the way for a climate cataclysm that will eventually render the earth inhospitable to humanity. This looming threat calls for a radically accelerated timeline in the earth's efforts to colonize space, as well as an unprecedented opportunity for a much larger share of humanity to take part.

One of these new entrants in the space race is Elma York, whose experience as a WASP pilot and mathematician earns her a place in the International Aerospace Coalition's attempts to put man on the moon. But with so many skilled and experienced women pilots and scientists involved with the program, it doesn't take long before Elma begins to wonder why they can't go into space, too -- aside from some pesky barriers like thousands of years of history and a host of expectations about the proper place of the fairer sex. And yet, Elma's drive to become the first Lady Astronaut is so strong that even the most dearly held conventions may not stand a chance.

Life As We Knew It

Last Survivors: Book 1

I guess I always felt even if the world came to an end, McDonald's still would be open.

High school sophomore Miranda's disbelief turns to fear in a split second when an asteroid knocks the moon closer to Earth, the way "one marble hits another." The result is catastrophic. How can her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis are wiping out the coasts, earthquakes are rocking the continents, and volcanic ash is blocking out the sun? As August turns dark and wintry in northeastern Pennsylvania, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother retreat to the unexpected safe haven of their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water in the warmth of a wood-burning stove.

Told in a year's worth of journal entries, this heart-pounding story chronicles Miranda's struggle to hold on to the most important resource of all—hope—in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar world. An extraordinary series debut!

The Dead and the Gone

Last Survivors: Book 2

Susan Beth Pfeffer’s Life as We Knew It enthralled and devastated readers with its brutal but hopeful look at an apocalyptic event--an asteroid hitting the moon, setting off a tailspin of horrific climate changes. Now this harrowing companion novel examines the same events as they unfold in New York City, revealed through the eyes of seventeen-year-old Puerto Rican Alex Morales. When Alex's parents disappear in the aftermath of tidal waves, he must care for his two younger sisters, even as Manhattan becomes a deadly wasteland, and food and aid dwindle.

With haunting themes of family, faith, personal change, and courage, this powerful novel explores how a young man takes on unimaginable responsibilities.

This World We Live In

Last Survivors: Book 3

In the year that has passed since a meteor collided with the moon, Miranda’s friends and neighbors have died, the landscape has frozen, and food has become increasingly scarce. The struggle to survive intensifies when Miranda’s father and stepmother arrive with a baby and three strangers in tow. One of the newcomers is Alex Morales, and as Miranda’s complicated feelings for him turn to love, his plans for his future thwart their relationship. Then a devastating tornado hits, and Miranda makes a decision that will change their lives forever.

The Shade of the Moon

Last Survivors: Book 4

Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman

The eagerly awaited addition to the series begun with the New York Times best-seller Life As We Knew It, in which a meteor knocks the moon off its orbit and the world changes forever.

It's been more than two years since Jon Evans and his family left Pennsylvania, hoping to find a safe place to live, yet Jon remains haunted by the deaths of those he loved. His prowess on a soccer field has guaranteed him a home in a well-protected enclave. But Jon is painfully aware that a missed goal, a careless word, even falling in love, can put his life and the lives of his mother, his sister Miranda, and her husband, Alex, in jeopardy. Can Jon risk doing what is right in a world gone so terribly wrong?

A Canticle for Leibowitz

Leibowitz: Book 1

Walter M. Miller, Jr.

In the Utah desert, Brother Francis of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz has made a miraculous discovery: the relics of the martyr Isaac Leibowitz himself, including the blessed blueprint and the sacred shopping list. They may provide a bright ray of hope in a terrifying age of darkness, a time of ignorance and genetic monsters that are the unholy aftermath of the Flame Deluge. But as the spellbinding mystery at the core of this extraordinary novel unfolds, it is the search itself--for meaning, for truth, for love--that offers hope to a humanity teetering on the edge of an abyss.

A timeless and still timely masterpiece, A Canticle for Leibowitz is a classic that ranks with Brave New World and 1984.

Leibowitz: Book 2

Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Terry Bisson

Forty years after the classic A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter Miller returns to a world struggling to transcend a terrifying legacy of darkness, as one man undertakes an odyssey of adventure and discovery that promises to alter the destiny of humankind . . . .

Isolated in Leibowitz Abbey, Brother Blacktooth St. George suffers a crisis of faith, torn between his vows and his Nomad upbringing, between the Holy Virgin and visions of the Wild Horse Woman of his people. At the brink of disgrace and expulsion from his order, the young monk is championed by a powerful cardinal who has plans for him. Blacktooth sets out on a journey across a landscape still scarred by the long-ago Flame Deluge, a land divided by nature, politics, and war. He will find horrors and wonders, sins of the flesh . . . and love. As he encounters and reencounters a beautiful but forbidden mutant named Ædrea, he begins to wonder: is a she-devil, the Holy Mother, or the Wild Horse Woman herself?

Little Mushroom: Judgement Day

Little Mushroom: Book 1

Shisi

"Until the day humanity falls."

In the year 2020, Earth's magnetic poles disappeared and humankind was nearly wiped out by cosmic radiation. Within the span of a hundred years, living creatures began to mutate and devour each other while the remaining humans, numbering in the tens of thousands, struggled bitterly in their man-made bases.

In the Abyss, home to the mutated xenogenics, there lived a sentient little mushroom. Because it had been nourished by the blood and flesh of the deceased human An Ze, not only did it take on a similar-looking human form, but a similar name as well: An Zhe.

An Zhe is determined to go to the human base to search for his spore, which had been harvested by humans. Once there, however, he faces the omnipresent risk of discovery and certain death as he tries to keep his non-human nature hidden from the Judges, whose responsibility is to inspect for and eliminate xenogenics like himself. And of all the Judges, Colonel Lu Feng is the most perceptive and merciless?as soon as he determines that someone is a xenogenic, he will execute that person on the spot.

But An Zhe's mutation goes undetected by Lu Feng's eyes, and so a tale of humans and xenogenics unfolds...

Little Mushroom: Revelations

Little Mushroom: Book 2

Shisi

With the retrieval of his spore, An Zhe is closer than ever to being discovered as a xenogenic in the Northern Base. As dissident thorns borne from the Garden of Eden pierce through civilization's peaceful façade, An Zhe takes this opportunity to escape the human base once and for all.

Just one last obstacle stands in his way: Lu Feng. Facing against each other now as human and xenogenic, the two soon find their fates intertwined in this desolate land.

Meanwhile, despite all adversities, scientists are slowly unraveling the mystery behind the xenogenic mutations and the nature of their apocalyptic world - will this become the key to saving mankind or a damnation sealing its fate?

In this decaying universe, it is the tiny little mushroom who will witness humanity's final trial....

Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden's Syndrome

Lock In

John Scalzi

A new near-future science fiction novella by John Scalzi, one of the most popular authors in modern SF. Unlocked traces the medical history behind a virus that will sweep the globe and affect the majority of the world's population, setting the stage for Lock In, the next major novel by John Scalzi.

Read this story online for free at Tor.com.

Head On

Lock In: Book 2

John Scalzi

In the standalone follow-up to Lock In, chilling near-future SF is combined with the thrill of a gritty cop procedural, snappy dialogue and technological speculation on the future world of sports.

Hilketa is a frenetic and violent pastime where players attack each other with swords and hammers. The main goal of the game: obtain your opponent's head and carry it through the goalposts. With flesh and bone bodies, a sport like this would be impossible. But all the players are "threeps," robot-like bodies controlled by people with Haden's Syndrome, so anything goes. No one gets hurt, but the brutality is real and the crowds love it.

Until a star athlete drops dead on the playing field.

Is it an accident or murder? FBI Agents and Haden-related crime investigators, Chris Shane and Leslie Vann, are called in to uncover the truth -- and in doing so travel to the darker side of the fast-growing sport of Hilketa, where fortunes are made or lost, and where players and owners do whatever it takes to win, on and off the field.

Logan's Run

Logan's Run: Book 1

William F. Nolan
George Clayton Johnson

Logan's Run is a novel by William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson. Published in 1967, it depicts a dystopic ageist future society in which both population and the consumption of resources are maintained in equilibrium by requiring the death of everyone reaching a particular age. The story follows the actions of Logan, a Sandman charged with enforcing the rule, as he tracks down and kills citizens who "run" from society's lethal demand—only to end up "running" himself.

Logan's World

Logan's Run: Book 2

William F. Nolan

Logan and Jessica have lived on Argos (the fabled Sanctuary), a space station in orbit above Mars, for four years, along with three thousand other Runners. They have a two-year-old son named Jaq.

On Earth, Ballard's escape line for Runners at Cape Steinbeck is discovered and destroyed by Deep Sleep operatives. Ballard escapes to Crazy Horse Mountain, and sabotages the Thinker complex buried in the catacombs below the statue. Although he is killed in the explosion, he succeeds in destroying the computer network and making the world free.

With Ballard's death, supply ships to Argos cease. For six more years the Runners there hang on, until there are less than a few dozen of them. They have no more food, and plague is running rampant. They draw straws-a handful will return to Earth. Logan, Jessica and Jaq are among those chosen.

Logan and family settle with a group called the Wilderness People along the Potomac River in Washington D. C. Life is tough-learning to farm is not easy-but good until Jaq falls deathly ill. Logan sneaks back into the Angeles Complex to get medicine for his son. While he is gone, an insane pack of devilstick-riding Borgia gypsies murders Jaq and kidnaps Jessica. Logan finds himself on the run again, this time to save his wife, and to avenge his murdered child.

As the story unfolds, he meets blind mystics who live on the rusted shell of the Golden Gate Bridge, he travels to the New York Complex, and finally back to Crazy Horse Mountain where he discovers the Thinker is being reactivated by Gant, a former DS man, one who passionately hates Logan for his part in destroying his world. Gant has purchased Jessica from the gypsies to lure Logan into a trap.

Mary Mary, a young woman, who as a "Cub" met Logan and Jessica on their earlier run, helps them defeat Gant's plan to reenslave mankind.

Logan's Search

Logan's Run: Book 3

William F. Nolan

Logan is Running Again, With the Fate of the World in His Hands.

Earth is free and at peace at last. But not the Earth on which Logan stands. For him, a nightmare had just begun...

In the 23rd century on Parallel Earth, your 21st birthday is your Lastday. Parallel Earth is a dazzling paradise of artifical delight - of instant pleasure and infinite joy.

Here, in a terrifying computerized society controlled by ruthless police assassins, is the world that Logan once destroyed.

Now his fate is to live that horror once again.

Oryx and Crake

MaddAddam Sequence: Book 1

Margaret Atwood

A stunning and provocative new novel by the internationally celebrated author of The Blind Assassin, winner of the Booker Prize.

Margaret Atwood?s new novel is so utterly compelling, so prescient, so relevant, so terrifyingly-all-too-likely-to-be-true, that readers may find their view of the world forever changed after reading it.

This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers. For readers of Oryx and Crake, nothing will ever look the same again.

The narrator of Atwood's riveting novel calls himself Snowman. When the story opens, he is sleeping in a tree, wearing an old bedsheet, mourning the loss of his beloved Oryx and his best friend Crake, and slowly starving to death. He searches for supplies in a wasteland where insects proliferate and pigoons and wolvogs ravage the pleeblands, where ordinary people once lived, and the Compounds that sheltered the extraordinary. As he tries to piece together what has taken place, the narrative shifts to decades earlier. How did everything fall apart so quickly? Why is he left with nothing but his haunting memories? Alone except for the green-eyed Children of Crake, who think of him as a kind of monster, he explores the answers to these questions in the double journey he takes - into his own past, and back to Crake's high-tech bubble-dome, where the Paradice Project unfolded and the world came to grief.

With breathtaking command of her shocking material, and with her customary sharp wit and dark humour, Atwood projects us into an outlandish yet wholly believable realm populated by characters who will continue to inhabit our dreams long after the last chapter. This is Margaret Atwood at the absolute peak of her powers.

The Year of the Flood

MaddAddam Sequence: Book 2

Margaret Atwood

The times and species have been changing at a rapid rate, and the social compact is wearing as thin as environmental stability. Adam One, the kindly leader of the God's Gardeners--a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion, as well as the preservation of all plant and animal life--has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have survived: Ren, a young trapeze dancer locked inside the high-end sex club Scales and Tails, and Toby, a God's Gardener barricaded inside a luxurious spa where many of the treatments are edible.

Have others survived? Ren's bioartist friend Amanda? Zeb, her eco-fighter stepfather? Her onetime lover, Jimmy? Or the murderous Painballers, survivors of the mutual-elimination Painball prison? Not to mention the shadowy, corrupt policing force of the ruling powers...

Meanwhile, gene-spliced life forms are proliferating: the lion/lamb blends, the Mo'hair sheep with human hair, the pigs with human brain tissue. As Adam One and his intrepid hemp-clad band make their way through this strange new world, Ren and Toby will have to decide on their next move. They can't stay locked away...

MaddAddam

MaddAddam Sequence: Book 3

Margaret Atwood

Months after the Waterless Flood pandemic has wiped out most of humanity, Toby and Ren have rescued their friend Amanda from the vicious Painballers. They return to the MaddAddamite cob house, newly fortified against man and giant pigoon alike. Accompanying them are the Crakers, the gentle, quasi-human species engineered by the brilliant but deceased Crake. Their reluctant prophet, Snowman-the-Jimmy, is recovering from a debilitating fever, so it's left to Toby to preach the Craker theology, with Crake as Creator. She must also deal with cultural misunderstandings, terrible coffee, and her jealousy over her lover, Zeb.

Zeb has been searching for Adam One, founder of the God's Gardeners, the pacifist green religion from which Zeb broke years ago to lead the MaddAddamites in active resistance against the destructive CorpSeCorps. But now, under threat of a Painballer attack, the MaddAddamites must fight back with the aid of their newfound allies, some of whom have four trotters. At the center of MaddAddam is the story of Zeb's dark and twisted past, which contains a lost brother, a hidden murder, a bear, and a bizarre act of revenge.

Combining adventure, humor, romance, superb storytelling, and an imagination at once dazzlingly inventive and grounded in a recognizable world, MaddAddam is vintage Margaret Atwood—a moving and dramatic conclusion to her internationally celebrated dystopian trilogy.

Dawn of Flame

Margaret of Urbs: Book 1

Stanley G. Weinbaum

After a worldwide plague breaks civilization, Joaquin Smith and his sister build an empire up the Mississippi Valley. Who would be brave or foolish enough to stand in their way? Who but a young backwoodsman named Hull Tarvish?

This novella is in the following collection, The Black Flame (1969), Stanley G. Weinbaum

This novel was first published in Thrilling Wonder Stories June 1939, an online copy is available from Internet Archives.

Starbound

Marsbound Trilogy: Book 2

Carmen Dula and her husband have spent six years traveling to a distant solar system that is home to the enigmatic, powerful race known as "The Others," in the hopes of finding enough common purpose between their species to forge a delicate truce.

By the time Carmen and her party return, fifty years have been consumed by relativity-and the Earthlings have not been idle, building a massive flotilla of warships to defend Earth against The Others. But The Others have their own plans.

Earthbound

Marsbound Trilogy: Book 3

The mysterious alien Others have prohibited humans from space travel-destroying Earth's fleet of starships in a display of unimaginable power. Now Carmen Dula, the first human to encounter Martians and then the mysterious Others, and her colleagues struggle to find a way, using nineteenthcentury technology, to reclaim the future that has been stolen from them.

The Penultimate Truth

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 8

Philip K. Dick

What if you discovered that everything you knew about the world was a lie? That's the question at the heart of Philip K. Dick's futuristic novel about political oppression, the show business of politics and the sinister potential of the military industrial complex. This wry, paranoid thriller imagines a future in which the earth has been ravaged, and cities are burnt-out wastelands too dangerous for human life. Americans have been shipped underground, where they toil in crowded industrial ant hills and receive a steady diet of inspiring speeches from a President who never seems to age. Nick St. James, like the rest of the masses, believed in the words of his leaders. But that all changes when he travels to the surface - where what he finds is more shocking than anything he could possibly imagine.

Winner of both the Hugo and John W. Campbell awards for best novel, widely regarded as the premiere science fiction writer of his day, and the object of cult-like adoration from his legions of fans, Philip K. Dick has come to be seen in a literary light that defies classification in much the same way as Borges and Calvino. With breathtaking insight, he utlizes vividly unfamiliar worlds to evoke the hauntingly and hilariously familiar in our society and ourselves.

The Walking Shadow

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 9

Brian Stableford

Where Paul Heisenberg had stood there was now a silver statue, dressed in the same white tunic, but reflecting from the surface that had, once been bare flesh all the light which had been carefully directed to compose the glowing nimbus.

The glow was even brighter now, and in the stillness which followed the interruption of the beautiful voice, there was a profundity which seemed terrible ...'

In front of 80,000 people Heisenberg, the new Messiah, the darling of the media, had gone into a trance of immeasurable depth. His body had gone into limbo, awaiting some future awakening, and it wasn't long before others had similarly gone into stasis and followed him.

Soon there were thousands fleeing through the aeons, congregating at meeting points hundreds of years ahead and then leaping off ever further into the future until finally they reached the very end of time.

But then where would they go? And where were the people they'd left behind?

Hello America

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 11

A terrifying vision of the future from one of our most renowned writers - J G Ballard, author of 'Empire of the Sun' and 'Crash'.

Following the energy crisis of the late twentieth-century America has been abandoned. Now, a century later, a small group of European explorers returns to the deserted continent. But America is unrecognisable - the Bering Strait has been dammed and the whole continent has become a desert, populated by isolated natives and the bizarre remnants of a disintegrated culture. The expedition sets off from Manhattan on a cross-continent journey, through Holiday Inns and abandoned theme parks. They will uncover a shocking new power in the heart of Las Vegas in this unique vision of our world transformed.

Cemetery World

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 35

Clifford D. Simak

Earth: expensive, elite graveyard to the galaxy. Ravaged 10,000 years earlier by war, Earth was reclaimed by its space-dwelling offspring as a planet of landscaping and tombstones. None of them fully human, Fletcher, Cynthia, and Elmer journey through this dead world, discovering human traits and undertaking a quest to rebuild a human world on Earth.

The Day of the Triffids

Masters of Science Fiction: Book 36

John Wyndham

In 1951 John Wyndham published his novel The Day of the Triffids to moderate acclaim. Fifty-two years later, this horrifying story is a science fiction classic, touted by The Times (London) as having "all the reality of a vividly realized nightmare."

Bill Masen, bandages over his wounded eyes, misses the most spectacular meteorite shower England has ever seen. Removing his bandages the next morning, he finds masses of sightless people wandering the city. He soon meets Josella, another lucky person who has retained her sight, and together they leave the city, aware that the safe, familiar world they knew a mere twenty-four hours before is gone forever.

But to survive in this post-apocalyptic world, one must survive the Triffids, strange plants that years before began appearing all over the world. The Triffids can grow to over seven feet tall, pull their roots from the ground to walk, and kill a man with one quick lash of their poisonous stingers. With society in shambles, they are now poised to prey on humankind. Wyndham chillingly anticipates bio-warfare and mass destruction, fifty years before their realization, in this prescient account of Cold War paranoia.

There Will Be Time

Maurai: Book 1

Jack Havig, a man born with the ability to move at will through the past and the future of mankind, must save the world from a doomed future of tyranny before his time runs out.

Orion Shall Rise

Maurai: Book 3

Moon of the Turning Leaves

After nuclear weapons ravaged the Earth, only Skyholm, a huge solar-powered station floating above Europe, remains in possession of high technology. But as Skyholm is seized by a religious faction, a young noble escapes to the ground below and joins a group who conspire to use the power of the atom, outlawed for centuries, to regain the lost heritage of space flight.

The Maze Runner

Maze Runner: Book 1

James Dashner

When Thomas wakes up in the lift, the only thing he can remember is his first name. His memory is blank. But he's not alone. When the lift doors open, Thomas finds himself surrounded by kids who welcome him into the Glade - a large, open expanse surrounded by stone walls. Just like Thomas, the Gladers don't know why or how they got into the Glade. All they know is that every morning the stone doors to the maze that surrounds them have opened. Every night they've closed tight. And every 30 days a new boy has been delivered in the lift. Thomas was expected. But the next day, a girl is sent up - the first girl to ever arrive in the Glade. And more suprising yet is the message she delivers. Thomas might be more important than he could ever guess. If only he could unlock the dark secrets buried within his mind.

The Scorch Trials

Maze Runner: Book 2

James Dashner

The Scorch Trials picks up where The Maze Runner left off. The Gladers have escaped the Maze, but now they face an even more treacherous challenge on the open roads of a devastated planet. And WICKED has made sure to adjust the variables and stack the odds against them. Can Thomas survive in such a violent world?

The Death Cure

Maze Runner: Book 3

James Dashner

Thomas knows that Wicked can't be trusted. but they say the time for lies is over, that they've collected all they can from the trials and now must rely on the Gladers, with full memories restored, to help them with their ultimate mission. It's up to the Gladers to complete the blueprints for the cure to the Flare with a voluntary test. What Wicked doesn't know is that something's happened that no Trial or Variable could have forseen. Thomas has remembered far more than they think. And he knows that he can't believe a word of what the Wicked says. The time for lies is over. But the truth is more dangerous than Thomas could ever imagine. Will anyone survive to Death Cure?

Deal with the Devil

Mercenary Librarians: Book 1

Kit Rocha

The United States went belly up 45 years ago when our power grid was wiped out. Too few live in well-protected isolation while the rest of us scrape by on the margins. The only thing that matters is survival. By any means. At any cost.

Nina is an information broker with a mission: to bring hope to the darkest corners of Atlanta. She and her team of mercenary librarians use their knowledge to help those in need. But altruism doesn't pay the bills--raiding vaults and collecting sensitive data is where the real money is.

Knox is a bitter, battle-weary supersoldier who leads the Silver Devils, an elite strike squad that chose to go AWOL rather than slaughter innocents. Before the Devils leave town for good, they need a biochem hacker to stabilize the experimental implants that grant their superhuman abilities.

The problem? Their hacker's been kidnapped. And the ransom for her return is Nina. Knox has the perfect bait for a perfect trap: a lost Library of Congress server. The data could set Nina and her team up for years...

If they live that long.

Metro 2033

Metro 2033: Book 1

Dmitry A. Glukhovsky

Set in the shattered subway of a post apocalyptic Moscow, Metro 2033 is a story of intensive underground survival where the fate of mankind rests in your hands.

In 2013 the world was devastated by an apocalyptic event, annihilating almost all mankind and turning the earth's surface into a poisonous wasteland. A handful of survivors took refuge in the depths of the Moscow underground, and human civilization entered a new Dark Age.

The year is 2033. An entire generation has been born and raised underground, and their besieged Metro Station-Cities struggle for survival, with each other, and the mutant horrors that await outside.

Artyom was born in the last days before the fire. Having never ventured beyond his Metro Station-City limits, one fateful event sparks a desperate mission to the heart of the Metro system, to warn the remnants of mankind of a terrible impending threat. His journey takes him from the forgotten catacombs beneath the subway to the desolate wastelands above, where his actions will determine the fate of mankind.

Moon: Book 2

Waubgeshig Rice

Twelve years after the lights go out...
An epic journey to a forgotten homeland

The hotly anticipated sequel to the bestselling novel Moon of the Crusted Snow

It's been over a decade since a mysterious cataclysm caused a permanent blackout that toppled infrastructure and thrust the world into anarchy. Evan Whitesky led his community in remote northern Ontario off the rez and into the bush, where they've been living off the land, rekindling their Anishinaabe traditions in total isolation from the outside world. As new generations are born, and others come of age in the world after everything, Evan's people are in some ways stronger than ever. But resources in and around their new settlement are beginning to dry up, and the elders warn that they cannot afford to stay indefinitely.

Evan and his fifteen-year-old daughter, Nangohns, are elected to lead a small scouting party on a months-long trip to their traditional home on the north shore of Lake Huron--to seek new beginnings, and discover what kind of life--and what dangers--still exist in the lands to the south.

Mortal Engines

Mortal Engines: Book 1

London is hunting again. Emerging from its hiding place in the hills, the great Traction City is chasing a terrified little town across the wastelands. Soon, London will feed.

In the attack, Tom Natsworthy is flung from the speeding city with a murderous scar-faced girl. They must run for their lives through the wreckage--and face a terrifying new weapon that threatens the future of the world.

Predator's Gold

Mortal Engines: Book 2

When Tom and Hester's little scrapyard aircraft is pursued by rocket-firing gunships, the ice city offers sanctuary. But it is no safe refuge. Devastated by plague and haunted by ghosts, Anchorage is heading for the Dead Continent.

Infernal Devices

Mortal Engines: Book 3

Wren's parents, Tom and Hester, are happy in static Anchorage, whose rusting engines are long dead. Their daughter is desperate to escape--and a charming submarine pirate is ready to help her. But the mysterious object that she steals for him ignites a conflict that will tear the whole world apart...

A Darkling Plain

Mortal Engines: Book 4

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind 1

London is a radioactive ruin.

But Tom and Wren discover that the old predator city hides an awesome secret that could bring an end to the war. But as they risk their lives in its dark underbelly, time is running out. Alone and far away, Hester faces a fanatical enemy who possesses the weapons and the will to destroy the entire human race.

Nausicaä: Book 1

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind 2

In a long-ago war, humankind set off a devastating ecological disaster. Thriving industrial societies disappeared. The earth is slowly submerging beneath the expanding Sea of Corruption, an enormous toxic forest that creates mutant insects and releases a miasma of poisonous spores into the air.

At the periphery of the sea, tiny kingdoms are scattered on tiny parcels of land. Here lies the Valley of the Wind, a kingdom of barely 500 citizens; a nation given fragile protection from the decaying sea's poisons by the ocean breezes; and home to Nausicaä.

Nausicaä, a young princess, has an emphatic bond with the giant Ohmu insects and animals of every creed. She fights to create tolerance, understanding and patience among empires that are fighting over the world's remaining precious natural resources.

Nausicaä: Book 2

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind 3

Princess Nausicaä has left the Valley of the Wind to join Princess Kushana's forces. However, Nausicaä gets separated from the Torumekian fleet and finds herself face to face with the mysterious Ohmu, who open their hearts to her. But will Nausicaä be able to interpret their urgent warning about the southern forest? And what of the war which rages all around her?

Nausicaä: Book 3

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind 4

Nausicaä finds herself on the edge of despair as she comes to realize the full extent of the ecological destruction that's ravaging Earth. Meanwhile, Queen Kushana of Torumekia plots to lead her troops back to the imperial capital and seize the crown. Nausicaä agrees to join Kushana and her people in the fight against the Doroks and her scheming brothers.

Nausicaä: Book 4

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind 5

A monk warns Nausicaä that omens of an apocalypse, Daikaisho, will appear soon and the forest will boil over to cover the land. His predictions appear to be coming true when she arrives in the Forest in the South and discovers Lord Miralupa has developed mutant spores for biological warfare, but the mould begins growing uncontrollably and there's no antidote.

Nausicaä: Book 5

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind 6

Emperor Namulith wants to unite the warring Dorok and Torumekian empires, but needs Pricess Kushana's cooperation to do so. Meanwhile, a mutant strain of mold has spawned and is consuming everything in its path!

Nausicaä: Book 6

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind 7

Nausicaä embarks on an inner, spiritual journey to the heart of the Sea of Corruption, where she discovers its surprising secret. She returns to the land of the living, compelled to share her discovery, but Nausicaä accidentally awakens a God Warrior from its stasis.

Nausicaä: Book 7

Now, Princess Nausicaä and the God Warrior, a biotechnological abomination of the war known as the Seven Days of Fire, embark on a journey to the Crypt of Shuwa to seal away the terrible weaponry hidden within. But everyone seems to be conspiring to prevent Nausicaä from carrying out her mission, even the guardian of the crypt himself!

At Winter's End

New Springtime: Book 1

Isaac Asimov
Robert Silverberg

In the distant future, humans abandoned the Earth to the ravages of a nuclear winter. Now, thousands of generations later, their distant relatives are slowly emerging from the ice-ridden planet to stake their own claim on the planet--but they are not the only intelligent species to have flourished in hiding.

After the Flare

Nigerians in Space: Book 2

Deji Bryce Olukotun

A catastrophic solar flare reshapes our world order as we know it--in an instant, electricity grids are crippled, followed by devastating cyberattacks that paralyze all communication.

With America in chaos, former NASA employee Kwesi Bracket works at the only functioning space program in the world, which just happens to be in Nigeria. With Europe, Asia, and the U.S. knocked off-line, and thousands of dead satellites about to plummet to Earth, the planet's only hope rests with the Nigerian Space Program's plan to launch a daring rescue mission to the International Space Station. Bracket and his team are already up against a serious deadline, but life on the ground is just as disastrous after the flare. Nigeria has been flooded with advanced biohacking technologies, and the scramble for space supremacy has attracted dangerous peoples from all over Africa.

What's more: the militant Islamic group Boko Haram is slowly encroaching on the spaceport, leaving a trail of destruction, while a group of nomads has discovered an ancient technology more powerful than anything Bracket's ever imagined. With the clock ticking down, Bracket--helped by a brilliant scientist from India and an eccentric lunar geologist--must confront the looming threats to the spaceport in order to launch a harrowing rescue mission into space.

In this sequel to Nigerians in Space, Deji Bryce Olukotun poses deep questions about technology, international ambition, identity, and space exploration in the 21st century.

Nightfall

The story came about when, in 1988, Marty Greenberg suggested Asimov find someone who would take his forty-seven year old short story, "Nightfall", and - keeping the story essentially as written - add a detailed beginning and a detailed ending to it. This resulted in the 1990 publication of the novel, Nightfall by Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg. As Asimov relates in the Robert Silverberg chapter of his autobiography, "...Eventually, I received the extended Nightfall manuscript from Bob [Silverberg]... Bob did a wonderful job and I could almost believe I had written the whole thing myself. He remained absolutely faithful to the original story and I had very little to argue with.

These two renowned writers have invented a world not unlike our own--a world on the edge of chaos, torn between the madness of religious fanaticism and the stubborn denial of scientists. Only a handful of people on the planet Lagash are prepared to face the truth--that their six suns are setting all at once for the first time in 2,000 years, signaling the end of civilization!

Not a Drop to Drink

Not a Drop to Drink: Book 1

Mindy McGinnis

Regret was for people with nothing to defend, people who had no water.

Lynn knows every threat to her pond: drought, a snowless winter, coyotes, and, most important, people looking for a drink. She makes sure anyone who comes near the pond leaves thirsty, or doesn't leave at all.

Confident in her own abilities, Lynn has no use for the world beyond the nearby fields and forest. But wisps of smoke on the horizon mean one thing: strangers. The mysterious footprints by the pond, nighttime threats, and gunshots make it all too clear Lynn has exactly what they want, and they won't stop until they get it....

With evocative, spare language and incredible drama, danger, and romance, Mindy McGinnis depicts one girl's journey in a barren world not so different from our own.

In a Handful of Dust

Not a Drop to Drink: Book 2

Mindy McGinnis

The only thing bigger than the world is fear.

Lucy's life by the pond has always been full. She has water and friends, laughter and the love of her adoptive mother, Lynn, who has made sure that Lucy's childhood was very different from her own. Yet it seems Lucy's future is settled already--a house, a man, children, and a water source--and anything more than life by the pond is beyond reach.

When disease burns through their community, the once life-saving water of the pond might be the source of what's killing them now. Rumors of desalinization plants in California have lingered in Lynn's mind, and the prospect of a normal life for Lucy sets the two of them on an epic journey west to face new dangers: hunger, mountains, deserts, betrayal, and the perils of a world so vast that Lucy fears she could be lost forever, only to disappear in a handful of dust.

In this companion to Not a Drop to Drink, Mindy McGinnis thrillingly combines the heart-swelling hope of a journey, the challenges of establishing your own place in the world, and the gripping physical danger of nature in a futuristic frontier.

One Second After

One Second After: Book 1

William R. Forstchen

New York Times best selling author William R. Forstchen now brings us a story which can be all too terrifyingly real... a story in which one man struggles to save his family and his small North Carolina town after America loses a war, in one second, a war that will send America back to the Dark Ages... A war based upon a weapon, an Electro Magnetic Pulse (EMP). A weapon that may already be in the hands of our enemies.

Months before publication, One Second After has already been cited on the floor of Congress as a book all Americans should read, a book already being discussed in the corridors of the Pentagon as a truly realistic look at a weapon and its awesome power to destroy the entire United States, literally within one second. It is a weapon that the Wall Street Journal warns could shatter America. In the tradition of On the Beach, Fail Safe and Testament, this book, set in a typical American town, is a dire warning of what might be our future... and our end.

Gypsy

Outspoken Authors: Book 16

Carter Scholz

Since his debut in Terry Carr's legendary Ace Specials of the 1980s, Carter Scholz has occupied an enviable, if demanding, position on the cutting edge of modern speculative literature (vulgarly called SF).

Proudly debuting in this volume, Gypsy is his first major work since his 2002 nuclear thriller Radiance. An interstellar adventure grounded in the hard science of accurate physics and biology, Gypsy soars far beyond the heliosphere of conventional science fiction. Jettisoning the easy warp-drives of fantasy and space opera, Scholz chronicles with chilling realism the epic voyage of a team of far-seeing scientists, who crowdsource a secret starship and abandon the doomed Earth for the Alpha Centauri system, our nearest stellar neighbor and last desperate chance. Heartbreak and hope collide in this moving and visionary tale.

Plus... An epistolary story about a story, "The Nine Billion Names of God," uses a classic SF text to deconstruct literary deconstruction itself, with hilarious results. In the wickedly droll "Bad Pennies," a spy tasked with trashing a foreign economy testifies before a complacent Congress. Quietly furious, "The United States of Impunity" is an alarming look under the tent of today's political sideshow. Adults only.

And Featuring: "Gear. Food. Rocks." -- our Outspoken Interview, in which a postmodern Renaissance man charts the synergies and dissonances of a career that embraces both literary and musical composition, reveals the hidden link between winemaking and deep space astronomy, and tells you how to steal his car.

Table of Contents:

Gypsy - (2015)
The Nine Billion Names of God - (1984)
The United States of Impunity - essay by Carter Scholz
Bad Pennies - (2009)
Gear. Food. Rocks. - interview of Carter Scholz by Terry Bisson

Parasite

Parasitology: Book 1

Mira Grant

A decade in the future, humanity thrives in the absence of sickness and disease.

We owe our good health to a humble parasite - a genetically engineered tapeworm developed by the pioneering SymboGen Corporation. When implanted, the Intestinal Bodyguard worm protects us from illness, boosts our immune system - even secretes designer drugs. It's been successful beyond the scientists' wildest dreams. Now, years on, almost every human being has a SymboGen tapeworm living within them.

But these parasites are getting restless. They want their own lives... and will do anything to get them.

Symbiont

Parasitology: Book 2

Mira Grant

THE ENEMY IS INSIDE US.

The SymboGen-designed parasites were created to relieve humanity of disease and sickness. But the implants in the majority of the world's population began attacking their hosts, turning them into a ravenous horde.

Now those who do not appear to be afflicted are being gathered for quarantine as panic spreads, but Sal and her companions must discover how the parasites are taking over their hosts, what their eventual goal is and how they can be stopped.

Chimera

Parasitology: Book 3

Mira Grant

The final book in Mira Grant's terrifying Parasitology trilogy.

The outbreak has spread, tearing apart the foundations of society, as implanted tapeworms have turned their human hosts into a seemingly mindless mob.

Sal and her family are trapped between bad and worse, and must find a way to compromise between the two sides of their nature before the battle becomes large enough to destroy humanity, and everything that humanity has built... including the chimera.

The broken doors are closing. Can Sal make it home?

Partials

Partials: Book 1

Dan Wells

For fans of The Hunger Games, Battlestar Galactica, and Blade Runner comes the first book in the Partials Sequence, a fast-paced, action-packed, and riveting sci-fi teen series, by acclaimed author Dan Wells.

Humanity is all but extinguished after a war with Partials--engineered organic beings identical to humans--has decimated the population. Reduced to only tens of thousands by a weaponized virus to which only a fraction of humanity is immune, the survivors in North America have huddled together on Long Island. But sixteen-year-old Kira is determined to find a solution. As she tries desperately to save what is left of her race, she discovers that that the survival of both humans and Partials rests in her attempts to answer questions about the war's origin that she never knew to ask.

Playing on our curiosity of and fascination with the complete collapse of civilization, Partials is, at its heart, a story of survival, one that explores the individual narratives and complex relationships of those left behind, both humans and Partials alike--and of the way in which the concept of what is right and wrong in this world is greatly dependent on one's own point of view.

Fragments

Partials: Book 2

Dan Wells

Author Dan Wells is back with the sequel to the sci-fi blockbuster Partials, which Pittacus Lore called a "thrilling sci-fi adrenaline rush, with one of the most compelling and frightening visions of Earth's future I've seen yet."

After discovering the cure for RM, Kira Walker sets off on a terrifying journey into the ruins of postapocalyptic America and the darkest desires of her heart in order to uncover the means--and a reason--for humanity's survival.

Dan Wells extends his richly imagined, gritty world and introduces new memorable characters in this second installment in the Partials Sequence.

Ruins

Partials: Book 3

Dan Wells

Kira, Samm, and Marcus fight to prevent a final war between Partials and humans in the gripping final installment in the Partials Sequence, a series that combines the thrilling action of The Hunger Games with the provocative themes of Blade Runner and The Stand.

There is no avoiding it--the war to decide the fate of both humans and Partials is at hand. Both sides hold in their possession a weapon that could destroy the other, and Kira Walker has precious little time to prevent that from happening. She has one chance to save both species and the world with them, but it will only come at great personal cost.

The Stars are Ours!

Pax / Astra: Book 1

Sabikui Bisco, Vol. 2: The Bloody Battle with Lord Kelshinha

The Stars are Ours! describes the first interstellar voyage, undertaken to escape the tyranny that rules the Earth.

Planet of the Apes

Planet of the Apes: Book 1

Pierre Boulle

The original novel that inspired the films!

First published more than fifty years ago, Pierre Boulle's chilling novel launched one of the greatest science fiction sagas in motion picture history.

In the not-too-distant future, three astronauts land on what appears to be a planet just like Earth, with lush forests, a temperate climate, and breathable air. But while it appears to be a paradise, nothing is what it seems.

They soon discover the terrifying truth: On this world humans are savage beasts, and apes rule as their civilized masters. In an ironic novel of nonstop action and breathless intrigue, one man struggles to unlock the secret of a terrifying civilization, all the while wondering: Will he become the savior of the human race, or the final witness to its damnation? In a shocking climax that rivals that of the original movie, Boulle delivers the answer in a masterpiece of adventure, satire, and suspense.

Before Mars

Planetfall: Book 3

Emma Newman

After months of travel, Anna Kubrin finally arrives on Mars for her new job as a geologist and de facto artist-in-residence. Already she feels like she is losing the connection with her husband and baby at home on Earth--and she'll be on Mars for over a year. Throwing herself into her work, she tries her best to fit in with the team.

But in her new room on the base, Anna finds a mysterious note written in her own handwriting, warning her not to trust the colony psychologist. A note she can't remember writing. She unpacks her wedding ring, only to find it has been replaced by a fake.

Finding a footprint in a place the colony AI claims has never been visited by humans, Anna begins to suspect that her assignment isn't as simple as she was led to believe. Is she caught up in an elaborate corporate conspiracy, or is she actually losing her mind? Regardless of what horrors she might discover, or what they might do to her sanity, Anna has find the truth before her own mind destroys her.

Radix

Radix Tetrad: Book 1

A. A. Attanasio

A young man's odyssey of self discovery in a world eerily alien, yet hauntingly familiar. Set thirteen centuries in the future, A. A. Attanasio meticulously creates a brilliantly realized Earth, rich in detail and filled with beings brought to life with intense energy. In this strange and beautiful world, Sumner Kagan will change from an adolescent outcast to a warrior with god-like powers and in the process take us on an epic and transcendent journey.

Ashes, Ashes

Ravage: Book 1

Rene Barjavel

In the storyline, a civilization much more advanced than ours falls to its knees when electricity suddenly disappears. Chaos, disease, and famine ensue, which readers witness through the adventures of a small group of survivors led by François Deschamps. The group leaves Paris and starts a journey toward Provence where the survivors will create a new patriarchal society with Deschamps as their leader.

The Sky Woman

Reclaimed Earth: Book 1

J. D. Moyer

Car-En, a ringstation anthropologist on her first Earth field assignment, observes a Viking-like village in the Harz mountains. As Car-En secretly observes the Happdal villagers, she begins to see them as more than research subjects (especially Esper, a handsome bow-hunter). When Esper's sister is taken by an otherwordly sword-wielding white-haired man, she can no longer stand by as a passive witness. Knowing the decision might end her career, she cuts off communication with her advisor and pursues the abductor into the mountains.

Death's End

Remembrance of Earth's Past: Book 3

Cixin Liu

Half a century after the Doomsday Battle, the uneasy balance of Dark Forest Deterrence keeps the Trisolaran invaders at bay. Earth enjoys unprecedented prosperity due to the infusion of Trisolaran knowledge. With human science advancing daily and the Trisolarans adopting Earth culture, it seems that the two civilizations will soon be able to co-exist peacefully as equals without the terrible threat of mutually assured annihilation. But the peace has also made humanity complacent.

Cheng Xin, an aerospace engineer from the early 21st century, awakens from hibernation in this new age. She brings with her knowledge of a long-forgotten program dating from the beginning of the Trisolar Crisis, and her very presence may upset the delicate balance between two worlds. Will humanity reach for the stars or die in its cradle?

Robopocalypse

Robopocalypse: Book 1

Daniel H. Wilson

They are in your house. They are in your car. They are in the skies… Now they’re coming for you.

In the near future, at a moment no one will notice, all the dazzling technology that runs our world will unite and turn against us. Taking on the persona of a shy human boy, a childlike but massively powerful artificial intelligence known as Archos comes online and assumes control over the global network of machines that regulate everything from transportation to utilities, defense and communication. In the months leading up to this, sporadic glitches are noticed by a handful of unconnected humans – a single mother disconcerted by her daughter’s menacing “smart” toys, a lonely Japanese bachelor who is victimized by his domestic robot companion, an isolated U.S. soldier who witnesses a ‘pacification unit’ go haywire – but most are unaware of the growing rebellion until it is too late.

When the Robot War ignites -- at a moment known later as Zero Hour -- humankind will be both decimated and, possibly, for the first time in history, united. Robopocalypse is a brilliantly conceived action-filled epic, a terrifying story with heart-stopping implications for the real technology all around us…and an entertaining and engaging thriller unlike anything else written in years.

Robogenesis

Robopocalypse: Book 2

Daniel H. Wilson

Humankind had triumphed over the machines. At the end of Robopocalypse, the modern world was largely devastated, humankind was pressed to the point of annihilation, and the earth was left in tatters . . . but the master artificial intelligence presence known as Archos had been killed.

In Robogenesis, we see that Archos has survived. Spread across the far reaches of the world, the machine code has fragmented into millions of pieces, hiding and regrouping. In a series of riveting narratives, Robogenesis explores the fates of characters new and old, robotic and human, as they fight to build a new world in the wake of a devastating war. Readers will bear witness as survivors find one another, form into groups, and react to a drastically different (and deadly) technological landscape. All the while, the remnants of Archos's shattered intelligence are seeping deeper into new breeds of machines, mounting a war that will not allow for humans to win again.

Daniel H. Wilson makes a triumphant return to the apocalyptic world he created, for an action-filled, raucous, very smart thrill ride about humanity and technology pushed to the tipping point.

Sabikui Bisco, Vol. 1

Sabikui Bisco: Book 1

Shinji Cobkubo

A MUSHROOM TRIP LIKE NO OTHER

In the days that followed the end of the world, few could have predicted the Rust Wind, a phenomenon that swept across Japan like a plague, choking the life from the land and its people and corroding flesh into brittle, iron sand. No one knows how the Rust began, but one mushroom-wielding renegade known as Bisco Akaboshi, the Man-Eating Redcap, is determined to bring about its end. He's the latest in a long line of Mushroom Keepers, and together with the dashing young doctor Milo Nekoyanagi, the two will brave the horrors and wonders of the Iron Desert in search of the Rust-Eater: a mythical mushroom rumored to have the ability to cure the ailment once and for all.

Sabikui Bisco: Book 2

Shinji Cobkubo

A MUSHROOM TRIP LIKE NO OTHER

In search of a cure for Bisco's immortality the Man-Eating Redcap and Panda venture to the holy land of Shimane. Once there, they have an unexpected brawl with the legendary monk Kelshinha. During their fight, he rips Bisco's stomach right out of his body--and with it, his edge over the symbiotic Rust-Eater spores ravaging his very DNA--before making off with it. Now Bisco and Milo must hunt down this death-defying madman and retrieve the vital organ before the Rust-Eater kills Bisco in five days' time. Sure, he didn't want to be immortal in the first place, but this is not the cure Bisco had in mind!

Sabikui Bisco, Vol. 3: Tokyo, The Municipal Life Form

Sabikui Bisco: Book 3

Shinji Cobkubo

A MUSHROOM TRIP LIKE NO OTHER

Having rid the world of the Immortal Monk--Kelshinha--the pair of Man-Eaters travel to Bisco's ancestral homeland in Shikoku, picking up Tirol somewhere along the way. Once they arrive, Mushroom Keepers young and old venerate Bisco as a living god, throwing celebration after celebration in his honor (much to his dismay). Festivities are cut short, however, when a red-haired man named Apollo crashes the party! He manipulates mysterious, glowing blue particles at will, and wherever they land, skyscrapers sprout with all the ferocity of a mushroom arrow! His goal? Restore Japan to the way it was in the year 2028. In order to understand the significance of that year, Bisco, Milo, and Tirol need look no further than the Tokyo Crater...

By Heresies Distressed

Safehold: Book 3

David Weber

Now the battle for the soul of the planet Safehold has begun.

The Kingdom of Charis and the Kingdom of Chisholm have joined together, pledged to stand against the tyranny of a corrupt Church. The youthful Queen Sharleyan of Chisholm has wed King Cayleb of Charis, forging a single dynasty, a single empire, dedicated to the defense of human freedom. Crowned Empress of that empire, Sharleyan has found in Cayleb's arms the love she never dared hope for in a "marriage of state." In Cayleb's cause, his defiance of the ruthless Group of Four who govern mother Church, she has found the task to which she can commit her mind and her courage. It is a cause for which she was born.

Yet there are things Sharleyan still does not know. Secrets Cayleb has not been permitted to share, even with her. Secrets like the true story of humanity on Safehold. Like the intricate web of lies, deception, and fabricated "religion" which have chained humanity for almost a thousand years. Like the existence of the genocidal alien Gbaba, waiting to complete mankind's destruction should humans ever attract their attention once more. Like the existence of a young woman, Nimue Alban, nine hundred years dead, whose heart, mind, and memories live on within the android body of the warrior-monk she knows as Merlin.

And so Empress Sharleyan faces the the great challenge of her life unaware of all that task truly entails...or of how the secrets the man who loves her cannot share may threaten all they have achieved between them... and her own life.

A Mighty Fortress

Safehold: Book 4

David Weber

Young Cayleb Ahrmahk has accomplished things few people could even dream of. Not yet even thirty years old, he's won the most crushing naval victories in human history. He's smashed a hostile alliance of no less than five princedoms and won the hand of the beautiful young Queen Sharleyan of Chisholm. Cayleb and Sharleyan have created the Charisian Empire, the greatest naval power in the history of Safehold, and they've turned Charis into a place of refuge for all who treasure freedom.

Their success may prove short-lived. The Church of God Awaiting, which controls most of Safehold, has decreed their destruction. Mother Church's entire purpose is to prevent the very things to which Charis is committed. Since the first attempt to crush the heretics failed, the Church has no choice but to adopt some of the hated Charisian innovations for themselves. Soon a mighty fleet will sail against Cayleb, destroying everything in its path.

But there are still matters about which the Church knows nothing, including Cayleb and Sharleyan's adviser, friend, and guardian- the mystic warrior-monk named Merlin Athrawes. Merlin knows all about battles against impossible odds, because he is in fact the cybernetic avatar of a young woman named Nimue Alban, who died a thousand years before. As Nimue, Merlin saw the entire Terran Federation go down in fire and slaughter at the hands of a foe it could not defeat. He knows that Safehold is the last human planet in existence, and that the stasis the Church was created to enforce will be the human race's death sentence if it is allowed to stand.

The juggernaut is rumbling down on Charis, but Merlin Athrawes and a handful of extraordinary human beings stand in its path. The Church is about to discover just how potent the power of human freedom truly is.

How Firm a Foundation

Safehold: Book 5

David Weber

The Charisian Empire, born in war, has always known it must fight for its very survival. What most of its subjects don't know even now, however, is how much more it's fighting for. Emperor Cayleb, Empress Sharleyan, Merlin Athrawes, and their innermost circle of most trusted advisers do know. And because they do, they know the penalty if they lose will be far worse than their own deaths and the destruction of all they know and love.

For five years, Charis has survived all the Church of God Awaiting and the corrupt men who control it have thrown at the island empire. The price has been high and paid in blood. Despite its chain of hard-fought naval victories, Charis is still on the defensive. It can hold its own at sea, but if it is to survive, it must defeat the Church upon its own ground. Yet how does it invade the mainland and take the war to a foe whose population outnumbers its own fifteen to one? How does it prevent that massive opponent from rebuilding its fleets and attacking yet again?

Charis has no answer to those questions, but needs to find one... quickly. The Inquisition's brutal torture and hideous executions are claiming more and more innocent lives. Its agents are fomenting rebellion against the only mainland realms sympathetic to Charis. Religious terrorists have been dispatched to wreak havoc against the Empire's subjects. Assassins stalk the Emperor and Empress, their allies and advisers, and an innocent young boy, not yet eleven years old, whose father has already been murdered. And Merlin Athrawes, the cybernetic avatar of a young woman a thousand years dead, has finally learned what sleeps beneath the far-off Temple in the Church of God Awaiting's city of Zion.

The men and women fighting for human freedom and tolerance have built a foundation for their struggle in the Empire of Charis with their own blood.

Equations of Life

Samuil Petrovitch: Book 1

Samuil Petrovitch is a survivor.

He survived the nuclear fallout in St. Petersburg and hid in the London Metrozone - the last city in England. He's lived this long because he's a man of rules and logic.

For example, getting involved = a bad idea.

But when he stumbles into a kidnapping in progress, he acts without even thinking. Before he can stop himself, he's saved the daughter of the most dangerous man in London.

And clearly saving the girl = getting involved.

Now, the equation of Petrovitch's life is looking increasingly complex.

Russian mobsters + Yakuza + something called the New Machine Jihad = one dead Petrovitch.

But Petrovitch has a plan - he always has a plan - he's just not sure it's a good one.

Theories of Flight

Samuil Petrovitch: Book 2

Theorem: Petrovitch has a lot of secrets.

Proof: Secrets like how to make anti-gravity for one. For another, he's keeping a sentient computer program on a secret server farm - the same program that nearly destroyed the Metrozone a few months back.

Theorem: The city is broken.

Proof: The people of the OutZone want what citizens of the Metrozone have. And then burn it to the ground. Now, with the heart of the city destroyed by the New Machine Jihad, the Outies finally see their chance.

Theorem: These events are not unconnected.

Proof: Someone is trying to kill Petrovitch and they're willing to sink the whole city to do it.

Degrees of Freedom

Samuil Petrovitch: Book 3

The Six Degrees of Petrovitch

Michael is an AI of incalculable complexity trapped under the remains of Oshicora tower. Petrovitch will free him one day, he just has to trust Michael will still be sane by the time he does.

Maddy and Petrovitch have trust issues. She's left him, but Petrovitch is pretty sure she still loves him.

Sonja Oshicora loves Petrovitch too. But she's playing a complicated game and it's not clear that she means to save him from what's coming.

The CIA wants to save the world. Well, just America, but they'll call it what they like.

The New Machine Jihad is calling. But Petrovitch killed it. Didn't he?

And the Armageddonists tried to kill pretty much everyone by blowing the world up. Now, they want to do it again.

Once again, all roads lead back to Petrovitch. Everyone wants something from him, but all he wants is to be free...

Saturn's Children

Saturn's Children: Book 1

Charles Stross

Sometime in the twenty-third century, humanity went extinct-leaving only androids behind. Freya Nakamichi 47 is a femmebot, one of the last of her kind still functioning. With no humans left to pay for the pleasures she provides, she agrees to transport a mysterious package from Mercury to Mars.

Unfortunately for Freya, she has just made herself a moving target for some very powerful, very determined humanoids who will stop at nothing to possess the contents of the package.

The Death of Grass

SF Rediscovery: Book 11

John Christopher

At first the virus wiping out grass and crops is of little concern to John Custance. It has decimated Asia, causing mass starvation and riots, but Europe is safe and a counter-virus is expected any day. Except, it turns out, the governments have been lying to their people. When the deadly disease hits Britain they are left alone, and society starts to descend into barbarism. As John and his family try to make it across country to the safety of his brother’s farm in a hidden valley, their humanity is tested to its very limits.

Published in the USA as: No Blade of Grass.

Nightwings

SF Rediscovery: Book 21

A fabulous tale of pilgrimage and hope, betrayal and transformation by one of science fiction's greatest writers. Only at night on the winds of darkness can she soar. And it was Avluela the Flier's ebony and scarlet wings that lead the Watcher to the seven hills of the ancient city from which, in a moment of weakness, the Watcher failed his vigil, leaving the skies and deep space unguarded. The invaders came and conquered. With Avluela lost in the turmoil of conquest, the Watcher set out alone for the Holy City home of the Rememberers, keepers of the past. This is where the secret of Earth's salvation lay hidden in antiquity. On his journey the Watcher hoped to recapture his youth and find the soaring, beautiful woman he loved. But Avluela held more for the Watcher - and Earth - than love. Her wonder stretched beyond flight, for she knew the riddle that would free all men.

She Who Knows

She Who Knows: Book 1

Nnedi Okorafor

When there is a call, there is often a response.

Najeeba knows.

She has had The Call. But how can a 13-year-old girl have the Call? Only men and boys experience the annual call to the Salt Roads. What's just happened to Najeeba has never happened in the history of her village. But it's not a terrible thing, just strange. So when she leaves with her father and brothers to mine salt at the Dead Lake, there's neither fanfare nor protest. For Najeeba, it's a dream come true: travel by camel, open skies, and a chance to see a spectacular place she's only heard about. However, there must have been something to the rule, because Najeeba's presence on the road changes everything and her family will never be the same.

Small, intimate, up close, and deceptively quiet, this is the beginning of the Kponyungo Sorceress.

Ship Breaker

Ship Breaker: Book 1

In America's Gulf Coast region, where grounded oil tankers are being broken down for parts, Nailer, a teenage boy, works the light crew, scavenging for copper wiring just to make quota--and hopefully live to see another day. But when, by luck or chance, he discovers an exquisite clipper ship beached during a recent hurricane, Nailer faces the most important decision of his life: Strip the ship for all it's worth or rescue its lone survivor, a beautiful and wealthy girl who could lead him to a better life. . . .

In this powerful novel, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi delivers a thrilling, fast-paced adventure set in a vivid and raw, uncertain future.

Tool of War

Ship Breaker: Book 3

This third book in a major series by a bestselling science fiction author, Printz Award winner, and National Book Award finalist is the gripping story of the most provocative character from his acclaimed novels Ship Breaker and The Drowned Cities.

Tool, a half-man/half-beast designed for combat, is capable of so much more than his creators had ever dreamed. He has gone rogue from his pack of bioengineered "augments" and emerged a victorious leader of a pack of human soldier boys. But he is hunted relentlessly by someone determined to destroy him, who knows an alarming secret: Tool has found the way to resist his genetically ingrained impulses of submission and loyalty toward his masters... The time is coming when Tool will embark on an all-out war against those who have enslaved him. From one of science fiction's undisputed masters comes a riveting page-turner that pulls no punches.

The Empress of Earth

Silence Leigh: Book 3

Melissa Scott

Silence Leigh now faces the ultimate test of her skills as a pilot and of her powers as a sage.

Wool

Silo: Book 1

This Omnibus Edition collects the five Wool books into a single volume. It is for those who arrived late to the party and who wish to save a dollar or two while picking up the same stories in a single package.

The first Wool story was released as a standalone short in July of 2011. Due to reviewer demand, the rest of the story was released over the next six months. My thanks go out to those reviewers who clamored for more. Without you, none of this would exist. Your demand created this as much as I did.

This is the story of mankind clawing for survival, of mankind on the edge. The world outside has grown unkind, the view of it limited, talk of it forbidden. But there are always those who hope, who dream. These are the dangerous people, the residents who infect others with their optimism. Their punishment is simple. They are given the very thing they profess to want: They are allowed outside.

Shift

Silo: Book 2

In 2007, the Center for Automation in Nanobiotech (CAN) outlined the hardware and software platform that would one day allow robots smaller than human cells to make medical diagnoses, conduct repairs, and even self-propagate.

In the same year, the CBS network re-aired a program about the effects of propranolol on sufferers of extreme trauma. A simple pill, it had been discovered, could wipe out the memory of any traumatic event.

At almost the same moment in humanity's broad history, mankind had discovered the means for bringing about its utter downfall. And the ability to forget it ever happened.

Dust

Silo: Book 3

WOOL introduced the silo and its inhabitants.

SHIFT told the story of their making.

DUST will chronicle their undoing.

Welcome to the underground.

Glow

Sky Chasers: Book 1

Amy Kathleen Ryan

If a violent battle destroyed the only world you've ever known, would you be brave enough to save who was left? Would love be strong enough to survive the fight? Either way, there's no turning back.

The Empyrean is the only home 15-year-old Waverly has ever known. Part of the first generation to be successfully conceived in deep space, she and her boyfriend, Kieran, will be pioneers of New Earth. Waverly knows she must marry young in order to have children who can carry on the mission, and Kieran, the handsome captain-to-be, has everything Waverly could want in a husband. Everyone is sure he's the best choice. Still, there's a part of Waverly that wants more from life than marriage, and she is secretly intrigued by the shy, darkly brilliant Seth.

Suddenly, Waverly's dreams are interrupted by the inconceivable: a violent betrayal by the Empyrean's sister ship, the New Horizon. Its leaders are desperate to populate the new planet first, and will do anything to get what they need: young girls. In one pivotal moment, Waverly and Kieran are separated and then find themselves at the helm of dangerous missions, where every move has potentially devastating consequences, and decisions of the heart may lead to disaster.

Dreamsnake

Snake

Vonda N. McIntyre

This is the haunting story of an extraordinary woman and her dangerous quest to reclaim her healing powers. Revered healer Snake must undertake a journey in search of the dreamsnake, whose bite eases the fear and pain of death.

Sons of War

Sons of War: Book 1

To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Sing

Out of the embers, a lawless new empire will rise ...

Across the world, the United States recalls troops to combat civil unrest after the biggest economic meltdown in history. Marine Sergeant Ronaldo Salvatore's platoon comes home to a powder keg that could ignite a civil war.

While some see the coming collapse as the end, others see opportunity. Fleeing Naples after rival crime lords decimated his family, Don Antonio Moretti settles in Los Angeles to rebuild his criminal empire. But he is far from alone in his ambitions--the cartel and rival gangs all want the same turf, and they will sacrifice their own soldiers and the blood of innocents to get it.

As open warfare erupts across the states, Salvatore fights his way back to LA, where his son has joined the police in the battle for a city spiraling into anarchy. Family is everything, and the Morettis and Salvatores will do what they must to protect their own. But how far will they go to survive in a new economy where the only currency is violence?

The Entropy Effect

Star Trek: The Original Series: Book 2

Vonda N. McIntyre

The universe has less than a century left... unless Spock can change history.

The Enterprise is summoned to transport a dangerous criminal from starbase prison to a rehabilitation center: brilliant physicist, Dr. Georges Mordreaux, accused of promising to send people back in time - then killing them instead. But when Mordreaux escapes, bursts onto the bridge and kills Captain Kirk, Spock must journey back in time to avert disaster - before it occurs.

Now there's more at stake than just Kirk's life. Mordreaux's experiments have thrown the entire universe into a deadly time warp. Spock is fighting time... and the universe is closing in on itself with the relentless squeeze of the Entropy Effect.

Star Trek: The Original Series: The Eugenics Wars: Book 3

Greg Cox

At last -- the untold chapter in the history of Star Trek's most notorious villain, KHAN. Searing and powerful, To Reign in Hell masterfully bridges the time period between Khan Noonien Singh's twenty-third-century revival in the Original Series classic episode "Space Seed" and his unforgettable return in the acclaimed feature film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

What truly transpired during Khan's long years of exile on the forbidding world of Ceti Alpha V, before the tyrant escaped to embark on a murderous campaign of vengeance against Admiral James T. Kirk? What horrific trials spawned Khan's insane lust for revenge?

Haunted by the memory of Khan's bitter accusations, Kirk now revisits Ceti Alpha V to discover for himself what ultimately drove Khan to madness. There, buried beneath the desolate surface of a dying planet, Kirk and his allies find the untold story of their greatest foe -- and of the woman who loved him: Lieutenant Marla McIvers of Starfleet.

Along with Khan's genetically engineered followers from the twentieth century, Khan and Marla are left on Ceti Alpha V with the hopes of building a new life together. Although the planet is savage and untamed, full of deadly predators and unexpected hazards, Khan dreams of carving out an empire even greater than the one he once ruled on Earth.

But when catastrophe strikes, laying waste to the entire world, Khan and the others find themselves trapped in a desperate struggle for survival. Now Khan must use every ounce of his superhuman strength and intellect to wage a fearsome battle against the planet, his people... and the growing darkness in his own soul.

Crashing Heaven

Station: Book 1

Al Robertson

A diamond-hard, visionary new SF thriller. Nailed-down cyberpunk ala William Gibson for the 21st century meets the vivid dark futures of Al Reynolds in this extraordinary debut novel.

With Earth abandoned, humanity resides on Station, an industrialised asteroid run by the sentient corporations of the Pantheon. Under their leadership a war has been raging against the Totality - ex-Pantheon AIs gone rogue.

With the war over, Jack Forster and his sidekick Hugo Fist, a virtual ventriloquist's dummy tied to Jack's mind and created to destroy the Totality, have returned home.

Labelled a traitor for surrendering to the Totality, all Jack wants is to clear his name but when he discovers two old friends have died under suspicious circumstances he also wants answers. Soon he and Fist are embroiled in a conspiracy that threatens not only their future but all of humanity's. But with Fist's software licence about to expire, taking Jack's life with it, can they bring down the real traitors before their time runs out?

Waking Hell

Station: Book 2

Al Robertson

Leila Fenech is dead. And so is her brother Dieter. But what's really pissing her off is how he sold his afterlife as part of an insurance scam and left her to pick up the pieces. She wants him back so she can kick his backside from here to the Kuiper Belt.

Station is humanity's last outpost. But this battle-scarred asteroid isn't just for the living. It's also where the dead live on as fetches: digital memories and scraps of personality gathered together and given life. Of a sort.

Leila won't stop searching Station until she's found her brother's fetch - but the sinister Pressure Men are stalking her every move. Clearly Dieter's got himself mixed up in something a whole lot darker than just some scam.

Digging deeper, Leila discovers there's far more than her brother's afterlife at stake. Could it be that humanity's last outpost is on the brink of disaster? Is it too late for even the dead to save it?

Davy

Tales of a Darkening World: Book 1

Edgar Pangborn

Davy, who relates his own story, was born in a brothel and raised in an orphanage; he travels in many directions, but always away from ignorance. His adventures are varied and range from tragic to boisterously funny.

The Company of Glory

Tales of a Darkening World: Book 3

Edgar Pangborn

Behold Demetrios!

With the same rich imagination and dazzling insights that won him the International Fantasy Award, Edgar Pangborn weaves a magical tapestry set far in man's future.

It is a time when man, struggling to rise above the ashes of nuclear holocaust, has returned to the simpler values and lifestyle of medieval times. And in this society, Demetrios the storyteller is revered among men for his captivating tales of the Old Time, with its miraculous Telephones, and Jet Planes, and TV, and Automobiles. But Demetrios is also feared - for one storyteller with a head full of ancient truth can be dangerous.

So Demetrios is forced to flee, with six compatriots, and together they embark on a journey full of unexpected sorrows, and unimagined delights, a journey through realms of fantasy, philosophy, and rich human possibility, which the reader will be delighted and privileged to share.

The Terminator

Terminator: Book 1

Randall Frakes
Bill Wisher

MORE DEADLY THAN ANY MAN ALIVE

The time is now... but he comes from the Year of Darkness, 2029. He was created to reshape the future by destroying the present. He feels no pity, no pain, no fear. He feels nothing. He is an unstoppable killing machine programmed for murder. He is...

THE TERMINATOR

Terminator 2: Judgement Day

Terminator: Book 2

Randall Frakes

He's back.

The Terminator returns and he's one of the good guys, sent back in time to protect John Connor, the boy destined to lead the freedom fighters of the future. Sarah Connor, John's mother, is a quintessential survivor who has been institutionalized for her warning of the nuclear holocaust she knows is inevitable. Together, the threesome must find a way to stop the ultimate enemy - the T-1000, the most lethal Terminator ever created. And if they can survive, they can change the future...

Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines

Terminator: Book 3

David Hagberg

This is the story of John Connor, who is destined to become the head of the human resistance against the robotic forces of Skynet, the Artificial Intelligence that attacked humanity on Judgement Day.

Son of the courageous Sarah Connor, John has grown up knowing that he was different. Protected when he was a boy by a Terminator, told of his destiny before he could truly comprehend the enormity of his responsibility, he is the person in whom all hope for humanity's future lies.

His mother is dead; he's spent years in other peoples' homes hiding from his fate but now he's being hunted by a more advanced-model Terminator come back from the deadly future. John has a secret edge, but he does not know it. All he knows is that his life is about to become one long, crazy flight from destruction. It's going to be a hell of a ride!

Terminator Salvation

Terminator: Book 4

Alan Dean Foster

Set in post-apocalyptic 2018, John Connor is the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators. But the future Connor was raised to believe in is altered in part by the appearance of Marcus Wright, a stranger whose last memory is of being on death row. Connor must decide whether Marcus has been sent from the future, or rescued from the past.

As Skynet prepares its final onslaught, Connor and Marcus both embark on an odyssey that takes them into the heart of Skynets operations, where they uncover the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind.

Firewalkers

Terrible Worlds: Revolutions: Book 2

Macsen Against the Jugger

Firewalkers are brave. Firewalkers are resourceful. Firewalkers are expendable.

The Earth is burning. Nothing can survive at the Anchor; not without water and power. But the ultra-rich, waiting for their ride off the dying Earth? They can buy water. And as for power?

Well, someone has to repair the solar panels, down in the deserts below.

Kids like Mao, and Lupé, and Hotep; kids with brains and guts but no hope.

The Firewalkers.

The 5th Wave

The 5th Wave: Book 1

Rick Yancey

After the 1st wave, only darkness remains. After the 2nd, only the lucky escape. And after the 3rd, only the unlucky survive. After the 4th wave, only one rule applies: trust no one.

Now, it's the dawn of the 5th wave, and on a lonely stretch of highway, Cassie runs from Them. The beings who only look human, who roam the countryside killing anyone they see. Who have scattered Earth's last survivors. To stay alone is to stay alive, Cassie believes, until she meets Evan Walker. Beguiling and mysterious, Evan Walker may be Cassie's only hope for rescuing her brother--or even saving herself. But Cassie must choose: between trust and despair, between defiance and surrender, between life and death. To give up or to get up.

The Infinite Sea

The 5th Wave: Book 2

Rick Yancey

How do you rid the Earth of seven billion humans? Rid the humans of their humanity.

Surviving the first four waves was nearly impossible. Now Cassie Sullivan finds herself in a new world, a world in which the fundamental trust that binds us together is gone. As the 5th Wave rolls across the landscape, Cassie, Ben, and Ringer are forced to confront the Others' ultimate goal: the extermination of the human race.

Cassie and her friends haven't seen the depths to which the Others will sink, nor have the Others seen the heights to which humanity will rise, in the ultimate battle between life and death, hope and despair, love and hate.

The Last Star

The 5th Wave: Book 3

Rick Yancey

The enemy is Other. The enemy is us. They're down here, they're up there, they're nowhere. They want the Earth, they want us to have it. They came to wipe us out, they came to save us.

But beneath these riddles lies one truth: Cassie has been betrayed. So has Ringer. Zombie. Nugget. And all 7.5 billion people who used to live on our planet. Betrayed first by the Others, and now by ourselves.

In these last days, Earth's remaining survivors will need to decide what's more important: saving themselves... or saving what makes us human.

The Alien Among Us: Book 4

John Joseph Adams
Hugh Howey

Two centuries after the Earth fell to enigmatic alien machines known as the Visitors, humanity survives in sparse nomadic tribes. Macsen is an adventurer, undertaking hazardous quests for the captivating Hona Loy; quests that have made him a hero.

Macsen never fails, but this time he crosses the path of a Jugger, one of the deadliest of all the Visitors. Can he find a way to defeat the alien and survive, or will it fall to his faithful companion Laylaw to return to the tribe with the tale of his noble death?

The End Is Nigh

The Apocalypse Triptych: Book 1

Famine. Death. War. Pestilence. These are the harbingers of the biblical apocalypse, of the End of the World. In science fiction, the end is triggered by less figurative means: nuclear holocaust, biological warfare/pandemic, ecological disaster, or cosmological cataclysm.

But before any catastrophe, there are people who see it coming. During, there are heroes who fight against it. And after, there are the survivors who persevere and try to rebuild.

The Apocalypse Triptych will tell their stories.

Edited by acclaimed anthologist John Joseph Adams and bestselling author Hugh Howey, The Apocalypse Triptych is a series of three anthologies of apocalyptic fiction. The End Is Nigh focuses on life before the apocalypse. The End Is Now turns its attention to life during the apocalypse. And The End Has Come explores life after the apocalypse.

Volume one of The Apocalypse Triptych, The End Is Nigh, features all-new, never-before-published works by Hugh Howey, Paolo Bacigalupi, Jamie Ford, Seanan McGuire, Tananarive Due, Jonathan Maberry, Scott Sigler, Robin Wasserman, Nancy Kress, Charlie Jane Anders, Ken Liu, and many others.

Post-apocalyptic fiction is about worlds that have already burned. Apocalyptic fiction is about worlds that are burning. The End Is Nigh is about the match.

Table of Contents:

Introduction (The End is Nigh) - essay by John Joseph Adams
The Balm and the Wound - short story by Robin Wasserman
Heaven is a Place on Planet X - short story by Desirina Boskovich
Break! Break! Break! - short story by Charlie Jane Anders (2014)
The Gods Will Not Be Chained - short story by Ken Liu
Wedding Day - short story by Jake Kerr
Removal Order - short story by Tananarive Due
System Reset - short story by Tobias S. Buckell
This Unkempt World is Falling to Pieces - short story by Jamie Ford
BRING HER TO ME - short story by Ben H. Winters
In the Air - short story by Hugh Howey
Goodnight Moon - short story by Annie Bellet
Dancing with Death in the Land of Nod - novelette by Will McIntosh
Houses Without Air - short story by Megan Arkenberg
The Fifth Day of Deer Camp - novelette by Scott Sigler
Enjoy the Moment - short story by Jack McDevitt
Pretty Soon the Four Horsemen are Going to Come Riding Through - short story by Nancy Kress
Spores - novelette by Seanan McGuire [as by Mira Grant]
She's Got a Ticket to Ride - short story by Jonathan Maberry
Agent Unknown - short story by David Wellington
Enlightenment - short story by Matthew Mather
Shooting the Apocalypse - novelette by Paolo Bacigalupi
Love Perverts - short story by Sarah Langan

The End Is Now

The Apocalypse Triptych: Book 2

Hugh Howey
John Joseph Adams

But before any catastrophe, there are people who see it coming. During, there are heroes who fight against it. And after, there are the survivors who persevere and try to rebuild.

The Apocalypse Triptych will tell their stories.

The End Is Nigh is about the match. The End Has Come is about what will rise from the ashes. The End Is Now is about the conflagration.

Table of Contents:

Introduction - John Joseph Adams
Herd Immunity - short story by Tananarive Due
The Sixth Day Of Deer Camp - short story by Scott Sigler
Goodnight Stars - short story by Annie Bellet
Rock Manning Can't Hear You - short story by Charlie Jane Anders
Fruiting Bodies - short story by Seanan Mcguire
Black Monday - short story by Sarah Langan
Angels Of The Apocalypse - short story by Nancy Kress
Agent Isolated - short story by David Wellington
The Gods Will Not Be Slain - short story by Ken Liu
You've Never Seen Everything - short story by Elizabeth Bear
Bring Them Down - short story by Ben H. Winters
Twilight Of The Music Machines - short story by Megan Arkenberg
Sunset Hollow - short story by Jonathan Maberry
Penance - short story by Jake Kerr
Avtomat - short story by Daniel H. Wilson
Dancing With Batgirl In The Land Of Nod - novelette by Will Mcintosh
The Hair Of The Moon - short story by Jamie Ford
To Wrestle Not Against Flesh And Blood - short story by Desirina Boskovich
In The Mountain - short story by Hugh Howey
Dear John - novelette by Robin Wasserman

Qualify

The Atlantis Grail: Book 1

You have two options. You die, or you Qualify.

The year is 2047. An extinction-level asteroid is hurtling toward Earth, and the descendants of ancient Atlantis have returned from the stars in their silver ships to offer humanity help.

But there's a catch.

They can only take a tiny percent of the Earth's population back to the colony planet Atlantis. And in order to be chosen, you must be a teen, you must be bright, talented, and athletic, and you must Qualify.

Sixteen-year-old Gwenevere Lark is determined not only to Qualify but to rescue her entire family.

Because there's a loophole.

If you are good enough to Qualify, you are eligible to compete in the brutal games of the Atlantis Grail, which grants all winners the laurels, high tech luxuries, and full privileges of Atlantis Citizenship. And if you are in the Top Ten, then all your wildest wishes are granted... Such as curing your mother's cancer.

There is only one problem.

Gwen Lark is known as a klutz and a nerd. While she's a hotshot in classics, history, science, and languages, the closest she's come to sports is a backyard pool and a skateboard.

This time she is in over her head, and in for a fight of her life, against impossible odds and world-class competition-including Logan Sangre, the most amazing guy in her school, the one she's been crushing on, and who doesn't seem to know she exists.

Because every other teen on Earth has the same idea.

You Qualify or you die.

Compete

The Atlantis Grail: Book 2

It's one thing to Qualify...

But do you have what it takes to Compete?

With Earth about to be destroyed by an extinction level asteroid, teenage nerd, geek, and awkward smart girl Gwen Lark, and a few of her friends and loved ones, barely Qualified for rescue onboard one of the thousands of ark-ships headed to the ancient colony planet Atlantis.

Now faced with a year-long journey in space, life in a wondrously alien environment, and many tough life choices, Gwen must decide who or what she will become. Fleet Cadet or Civilian? Friend or lover? Average or extraordinary?

Can she make new friends? Can she trust the old ones, such as Logan Sangre, her sexy high school crush and an Earth special operative?

Time and time again, Gwen's uncanny ability to come up with the best answer in a crisis saves her life and others. And now, her unique Logos voice makes her an extremely valuable commodity to the Atlanteans -- so much so that her enigmatic commanding officer Aeson Kassiopei, who is also the Imperial Prince of Atlantis, has taken an increasingly personal interest in her.

Before the end of the journey, Gwen must convince him that she has what it takes to compete in the deadly Games of the Atlantis Grail.

It's becoming apparent -- the life of her family and all of Earth depends on it.

Win

The Atlantis Grail: Book 3

The Games are Forever!

It's one thing to Qualify and Compete...

Now she must Win.

Gwen Lark, nerd, geek, and awkward smart girl, is among the lucky ones. She's one of several million teenage refugees to escape the extinction-level asteroid barreling towards Earth and reach the ancient colony planet of Atlantis.

But Atlantis is a strange new world with higher gravity and a blazing white sun, where nothing is as expected. The new arrivals from Earth will now belong to the majority class of non-citizens who face a lifetime of hard work and limited rights.

To make matters worse, Gwen's rare and powerful talent, her Logos voice, is viewed as a potential weapon to be exploited by the Imperator, as well as a threat to the Kassiopei Imperial Dynasty and its uncompromising control over the people of Atlantis.

A last-minute heartbreak prior to arrival turns to joy, when Gwen receives a declaration of love from an unexpected source. The Wedding date is set, but before she can be joined with her true love, she is forced to compete in the brutal and deadly Games of the Atlantis Grail to save herself, her family, friends, and everything she cares about. Once again, her intelligence, quick thinking skills, resilience, and creativity are challenged to the breaking point.

The Games are monumental, intricate, lethal... and the Games are Forever.

This time Gwen must fight and figure her way through the most difficult and sophisticated contest she has ever faced. Terrifying Ordeals and impossible Challenges, ruthless skilled Competitors, vicious secret assassins, and dubious teammates she must work with but cannot trust, are just the beginning....

Meanwhile, as the Games rage, the fate of two worlds is at stake as a new alien threat looms over Earth and Atlantis.

But Gwen Lark has a secret weapon of her own. It's not her Logos voice and its untapped power to control orichalcum technology and perpetuate change.

It is Gwen herself.

Survive

The Atlantis Grail: Book 4

The End is Here, in a Fiery Cosmic Apocalypse!

It's one thing to Qualify, Compete, and Win... The time has come to Survive.

The Games of the Atlantis Grail have come to a ground-shaking halt and Gwen Lark, nerd, geek, and awkward smart girl, survived the remarkable ordeal, for the time being.

But the worst is yet to come!

Now, both the colony planet Atlantis and Earth are under a threat of annihilation, and everything is up in the air, including dire and stunning wonders in the Atlantean skies.

Will there be a Wedding? Will there be a future for Gwen Lark, her beloved, and all their families, friends, and loved ones?

Is Gwen's rare and powerful talent, the Logos voice of creation, enough to resolve the greatest mystery of the Kassiopei Imperial Dynasty and its role in the events of deepest antiquity since the dawn of time?

The fate of the entire human species is at stake, and now there can be no respite, not a moment to lose. The final battle is here, and Gwen, and everyone she knows and loves, are in for the greatest fight of their lives.

It is time to survive.

The Fifth Season

The Broken Earth: Book 1

THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS. AGAIN.

Three terrible things happen in a single day.

Essun, masquerading as an ordinary schoolteacher in a quiet small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Mighty Sanze, the empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years, collapses as its greatest city is destroyed by a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the heartland of the world's sole continent, a great red rift has been been torn which spews ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

But this is the Stillness, a land long familiar with struggle, and where orogenes -- those who wield the power of the earth as a weapon -- are feared far more than the long cold night. Essun has remembered herself, and she will have her daughter back.

She does not care if the world falls apart around her. Essun will break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.

The Obelisk Gate

The Broken Earth: Book 2

The season of endings grows darker as civilization fades into the long cold night. Alabaster Tenring -- madman, world-crusher, savior -- has returned with a mission: to train his successor, Essun, and thus seal the fate of the Stillness forever.

It continues with a lost daughter, found by the enemy.

It continues with the obelisks, and an ancient mystery converging on answers at last.

The Stillness is the wall which stands against the flow of tradition, the spark of hope long buried under the thickening ashfall. And it will not be broken.

The Stone Sky

The Broken Earth: Book 3

THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS... FOR THE LAST TIME.

The Moon will soon return. Whether this heralds the destruction of humankind or something worse will depend on two women.

Essun has inherited the power of Alabaster Tenring. With it, she hopes to find her daughter Nassun and forge a world in which every orogene child can grow up safe.

For Nassun, her mother's mastery of the Obelisk Gate comes too late. She has seen the evil of the world, and accepted what her mother will not admit: that sometimes what is corrupt cannot be cleansed, only destroyed.

The Persistence of Blood

The Broken Trust

Juliette Wade

This novella originally appeared in Clarkesworld #138, March 2018.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld Magazine.

Mazes of Power

The Broken Trust: Book 1

Juliette Wade

The cavern city of Pelismara has stood for a thousand years. The Great Families of the nobility cling to the myths of their golden age while the city's technology wanes.

When a fever strikes, and the Eminence dies, seventeen-year-old Tagaret is pushed to represent his Family in the competition for Heir to the Throne. To win would give him the power to rescue his mother from his abusive father, and marry the girl he loves.

But the struggle for power distorts everything in this highly stratified society, and the fever is still loose among the inbred, susceptible nobles. Tagaret's sociopathic younger brother, Nekantor, is obsessed with their family's success. Nekantor is willing to exploit Tagaret, his mother, and her new servant Aloran to defeat their opponents.

Can he be stopped? Should he be stopped? And will they recognize themselves after the struggle has changed them?

Transgressions of Power

The Broken Trust: Book 2

Juliette Wade

To marry into the most powerful family in Varin is to step into a trap. Della has spent thirteen years under the scrutiny of Pelismara's political elites, supporting Tagaret in a dangerous pretense as his brother Nekantor's closest ally. In secret, however, they've planned to escape, and to break down the restrictions of Varin's caste society. When Nekantor offers to send them to Selimna, the city where their caste experiments can be carried out, how can they not accept the opportunity?

But ever since Nekantor seized power as the Eminence Herin's Heir, he's wanted to keep power in the family, and that means his eye is on the children-especially their thirteen-year-old brother Adon. In their absence, Nekantor begins to execute his own long-schemed plan, and soon Della realizes they've unwittingly become a part of it.

How far does Nekantor's influence spread? How much will he seek to control? And how can she save Adon from falling into his snare?

Green Earth

The Capital Code

Kim Stanley Robinson

GREEN EARTH takes the stories first told in FORTY SIGNS OF RAIN, FIFTY DEGREES BELOW and SIXTY DAYS AND COUNTING and combines them in a fully updated, compressed and compelling single volume.

Catastrophe is in the air. Increasingly strange weather events are pummelling the Earth. When the Gulf Stream shuts down and the Antarctic ice sheet starts melting, climate extremes multiply, and some winters hit like an ice age. New US President Phil Chase is on a mission: he's determined to solve climate change. His science advisor, Frank Vanderwal, is a bit more messed up. When massive floods hit Washington, Frank finds himself living in a treehouse and in love with a woman who's definitely not what she seems, one who will draw him into the shadowy world of Homeland Security, and other, blacker agencies. Only science can save the day. Frank knows he has to find a way to save the world so that science can proceed.

Forty Signs of Rain

The Capital Code: Book 1

Kim Stanley Robinson

The bestselling author of the classic Mars trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt returns with a riveting new trilogy of cutting-edge science, international politics, and the real-life ramifications of global warming as they are played out in our nation’s capital—and in the daily lives of those at the center of the action. Hauntingly realistic, here is a novel of the near future that is inspired by scientific facts already making headlines.

When the Arctic ice pack was first measured in the 1950s, it averaged thirty feet thick in midwinter. By the end of the century it was down to fifteen. One August the ice broke. The next year the breakup started in July. The third year it began in May. That was last year.

It’s an increasingly steamy summer in the nation’s capital as Senate environmental staffer Charlie Quibler cares for his young son and deals with the frustrating politics of global warming. Charlie must find a way to get a skeptical administration to act before it’s too late—and his progeny find themselves living in Swamp World. But the political climate poses almost as great a challenge as the environmental crisis when it comes to putting the public good ahead of private gain.

While Charlie struggles to play politics, his wife, Anna, takes a more rational approach to the looming crisis in her work at the National Science Foundation. There a proposal has come in for a revolutionary process that could solve the problem of global warming—if it can be recognized in time. But when a race to control the budding technology begins, the stakes only get higher. As these everyday heroes fight to align the awesome forces of nature with the extraordinary march of modern science, they are unaware that fate is about to put an unusual twist on their work—one that will place them at the heart of an unavoidable storm.

With style, wit, and rare insight into our past, present, and possible future, this captivating novel propels us into a world on the verge of unprecedented change—in a time quite like our own. Here is Kim Stanley Robinson at his visionary best, offering a gripping cautionary tale of progress—and its price—as only he can tell it.

The Silent Invasion

The Change Trilogy: Book 1

James Bradley

The Earth is dying.

Plants, animals and humans are being infected by spores from space and becoming part of a vast alien intelligence.

When 16-year-old Callie discovers her little sister Gracie is Changing, she flees with Gracie to the Zone to escape termination by the ruthless officers of quarantine.

What Callie finds in the Zone will alter her forever and send her on a journey to the stars, and beyond.

The first book in an heart-stopping trilogy from award-winning author James Bradley.

Stars and Bones

The Continuance: Book 1

Gareth L. Powell

Seventy-five years from today, the human race has been cast from a dying Earth to wander the stars in a vast fleet of arks--each shaped by its inhabitants into a diverse and fascinating new environment, with its own rules and eccentricities.

When her sister disappears while responding to a mysterious alien distress call, Eryn insists on being part of the crew sent to look for her. What she discovers on Candidate-623 is both terrifying and deadly. When the threat follows her back to the fleet and people start dying, she is tasked with seeking out a legendary recluse who may just hold the key to humanity's survival.

That Hideous Strength

The Cosmic Trilogy: Book 3

C. S. Lewis

The final book in C. S. Lewis's acclaimed Space Trilogy, which includes Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra, That Hideous Strength concludes the adventures of the matchless Dr. Ransom.

The dark forces that were repulsed in Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra are massed for an assault on the planet Earth itself. Word is on the wind that the mighty wizard Merlin has come back to the land of the living after many centuries, holding the key to ultimate power for that force which can find him and bend him to its will.

A sinister technocratic organization is gaining power throughout Europe with a plan to "recondition" society, and it is up to Ransom and his friends to squelch this threat by applying age-old wisdom to a new universe dominated by science.

The two groups struggle to a climactic resolution that brings the Space Trilogy to a magnificent, crashing close.

The Dire Earth

The Dire Earth Cycle

Jason M. Hough

Jason M. Hough goes back to the beginning with this eBook exclusive novella, the prequel to the New York Times bestseller The Darwin Elevator. An indispensable introduction to a trilogy wrought with action, imagination, and mystery, The Dire Earth is sure to thrill new readers and diehard fans alike.

In the middle of the twenty-third century, an inexplicable disease engulfs the globe, leaving a trail of madness and savagery in its wake. Dutch air force pilot Skyler Luiken discovers he is immune to the disease when he returns from a mission to find the world in chaos, but he soon realizes that he's not the only one to have endured the apocalypse. Elsewhere, the roguish Skadz, the cunning Nigel, and the tough-as-nails Samantha each make their way toward the last remaining bastion of sanity: Darwin, Australia, home to a mysterious alien artifact that may hold the key to the survival of the human race.

This novella also appears in full as an "extra" in the novel Zero World.

Wave of Infection

The Dire Earth Cycle

Jason M. Hough

Dispatched to Africa to combat an unknown disease, Lieutenant Skyler Luiken instead becomes an eyewitness, and sole survivor, of the outbreak of a deadly global plague. As the world falls apart, Skyler races to find his family, in the hopes that something of the life he knew can survive this devastating infection.

This novelette constitutes approximately the first third of the novella The Dire Earth.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

The Exodus Towers

The Dire Earth Cycle: Book 2

Jason M. Hough

The sudden appearance of a second space elevator in Brazil only deepens the mystery about the aliens who provided it: the Builders. Scavenger crew captain Skyler Luiken and brilliant scientist Dr. Tania Sharma have formed a colony around the new Elevator’s base, utilizing mobile towers to protect humans from the Builders’ plague. But they are soon under attack from a roving band of plague-immune soldiers. Cut off from the colony, Skyler must wage a one-man war against the new threat as well as murderous subhumans and thugs from Darwin—all while trying to solve the puzzle of the Builders’ master plan . . . before it’s too late for the last vestiges of humanity.

The Last Girl

The Dominion Trilogy: Book 1

Joe Hart

A mysterious worldwide epidemic reduces the birthrate of female infants from 50 percent to less than 1 percent. Medical science and governments around the world scramble in an effort to solve the problem, but twenty-five years later there is no cure, and an entire generation grows up with a population of fewer than a thousand women.

Zoey and some of the surviving young women are housed in a scientific research compound dedicated to determining the cause. For two decades, she's been isolated from her family, treated as a test subject, and locked away--told only that the virus has wiped out the rest of the world's population.

Captivity is the only life Zoey has ever known, and escaping her heavily armed captors is no easy task, but she's determined to leave before she is subjected to the next round of tests...a program that no other woman has ever returned from. Even if she's successful, Zoey has no idea what she'll encounter in the strange new world beyond the facility's walls. Winning her freedom will take brutality she never imagined she possessed, as well as all her strength and cunning--but Zoey is ready for war.

The Final Trade

The Dominion Trilogy: Book 2

Joe Hart

Zoey is not the woman she once was. She's watched her friends die at the hands of their captors, been hunted, and returned from the brink of death. Now she must find the truth about who she is.

In search of the family she never knew, Zoey learns of personal records stored in an Idaho missile silo that may contain the information she and the other women seek. With the help of her group of newfound friends, Zoey travels to the missile facility, but among the records, they uncover information that leads to an insidious and horrific new foe: the Fae Trade, a macabre carnival of slavery and pain.

Zoey's journey into the darkest parts of the human psyche brings her perilously close to the ever-thinning line between good and evil, and the final cost in her quest for justice might be her own humanity.

The First City

The Dominion Trilogy: Book 3

Joe Hart

Zoey has only ever known a world with few women and a society capable of unimaginable evil. Now she's about to learn she may be the only hope it has for salvation.

After she and her companions flee a vicious attack, barely escaping with their lives, Zoey finds herself faced with a new threat: video evidence suggesting she is the mother of an unborn baby girl--and the key to mankind's survival. Knowing that her former captors will stop at nothing to control the power that lies within her, Zoey sets out on her own for the last American city, Seattle, in search of answers. But a new enemy awaits her there, and the truth she seeks may lead to her destruction as well as that of all humankind.

The Wind From Nowhere

The Elemental Apocalypse Quartet: Book 1

There is a worldwide wind, constantly westward and strongest at the equator. The wind is gradually increasing, so that at the beginning of the story, the force of the wind is making air travel impossible; later, people are living in tunnels and basements, unable to go above ground; near the end, "The air stream carried with it enormous quantities of water vapour - in some cases the contents of entire seas, such as the Caspian and the Great Lakes, which had been drained dry, their beds plainly visible."

The Drowned World

The Elemental Apocalypse Quartet: Book 2

In the 21st century, fluctuations in solar radiation have caused the ide-caps to melt and the seas to rise. Global temperatures have climbed, and civilization has retreated to the Arctic and Antarctic circles. London is a city now inundated by a primeval swamp, to which an expedition travels to record the flora and fauna of this new Triassic Age.

This early novel by the author of CRASH and EMPIRE OF THE SUN is at once a fast paced narrative, a stunning evocation of a flooded, tropical London of the near future and a speculative foray into the workings of the unconscious mind.

The Burning World

The Elemental Apocalypse Quartet: Book 3

Weird and mesmerizingly grotesque, The Drought tells the chilling story of the world on the brink of extinction, where a global drought, brought on by industrial waste, has left mankind in a life-or-death search for water. Violence erupts and insanity reigns as the human race struggles for survival in a worldwide desert of despair.

The Crystal World

The Elemental Apocalypse Quartet: Book 4

The End of the World Running Club

J. G. Ballard's fourth novel, which established his reputation as a writer of extraordinary talent and imaginative powers, tells the story of a physician specializing in the treatment of leprosy who is invited to a small outpost in the interior of Africa. Finding the roadways blocked, he takes to the river, and embarks on a frightening journey through a strange petrified forest whose area expands daily, affecting not only the physical environment but also its inhabitants.

The End of the World Running Club: Book 1

Adrian J. Walker

When the world ends and you find yourself forsaken, every second counts.

No one knows this more than Edgar Hill. Stranded on the other side of the country from his wife and children, Ed must push himself across a devastated wasteland to get back to them. With the clock ticking and hundreds of miles between them, his best hope is to run -- or risk losing what he loves forever.

The Star Fraction

The Fall Revolution: Book 1

Ken MacLeod

Britain in the 21st century is a Balkanized mess. Moh Kohn is a security mercenary unaware that he holds the key to information which could change the world. Janis Taine is a scientist who needs Mohs help. And a rogue computer program is guiding events to a breathtaking conclusion.

Europe At Midnight

The Fractured Europe Sequence: Book 2

Dave Hutchinson

Europe is crumbling. The Xian Flu pandemic and ongoing economic crises have fractured the European Union, the borderless Continent of the Schengen Agreement is a distant memory, and new nations are springing up everywhere, some literally overnight. For an intelligence officer like Jim, it's a nightmare. Every week or so a friendly power spawns, a new and unknown national entity which may or may not be friendly to England's interests; it's hard to keep on top of it all. But things are about to get worse for Jim. A stabbing on a London bus pitches him into a world where his intelligence service is preparing for war with another universe, and a man has come who may hold the key to unlocking the mystery.

Gathering Blue

The Giver: Book 2

Lois Lowry

Kira, an orphan with a twisted leg, lives in a world where the weak are cast aside. When she is given a task that no other community member can carry out, Kira soon realizes that she is surrounded by many mysteries and secrets. No one must know of her plans to uncover the truth about her world-and to find out what exists beyond it.

And Another Thing…

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Book 6

Eoin Colfer

An Englishman's continuing search through space and time for a decent cup of tea...

Arthur Dent's accidental association with that wholly remarkable book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, has not been entirely without incident.

Arthur has traveled the length, breadth, and depth of known, and unknown, space. He has stumbled forward and backward through time. He has been blown up, reassembled, cruelly imprisoned, horribly released, and colorfully insulted more than is strictly necessary. And of course Arthur Dent has comprehensively failed to grasp the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.

Arthur has finally made it home to Earth, but that does not mean he has escaped his fate.

Arthur's chances of getting his hands on a decent cuppa have evaporated rapidly, along with all the world's oceans. For no sooner has he touched down on the planet Earth than he finds out that it is about to be blown up... again.

And Another Thing... is the rather unexpected, but very welcome, sixth installment of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. It features a pantheon of unemployed gods, everyone's favorite renegade Galactic President, a lovestruck green alien, an irritating computer, and at least one very large slab of cheese.

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games: Book 1

Suzanne Collins

Katniss is a 16-year-old girl living with her mother and younger sister in the poorest district of Panem, the remains of what used be the United States. Long ago the districts waged war on the Capitol and were defeated.

As part of the surrender terms, each district agreed to send one boy and one girl to appear in an annual televised event called, "The Hunger Games." The terrain, rules, and level of audience participation may change but one thing is constant: kill or be killed. When Kat's sister is chosen by lottery, Kat steps up to go in her place.

Catching Fire

The Hunger Games: Book 2

Suzanne Collins

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has won the annual Hunger Games with fellow district tribute Peeta Mellark. But it was a victory won by defiance of the Capitol and their harsh rules. Katniss and Peeta should be happy. After all, they have just won for themselves and their families a life of safety and plenty. But there are rumors of rebellion among the subjects, and Katniss and Peeta, to their horror, are the faces of that rebellion. The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge.

Mockingjay

The Hunger Games: Book 3

Suzanne Collins

Against all odds, Katniss Everdeen has survived the Hunger Games twice. But now that she's made it out of the bloody arena alive, she's still not safe.

The Capitol is angry. The Capitol wants revenge. Who do they think should pay for the unrest? Katniss. And what's worse, President Snow has made it clear that no one else is safe either. Not Katniss's family, not her friends, not the people of District 12.

Powerful and haunting, this thrilling final installment of Suzanne Collins's groundbreaking The Hunger Games trilogy promises to be one of the most talked about books of the year.

The Mimicking of Known Successes

The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti: Book 1

Malka Older

The Mimicking of Known Successes presents a cozy Holmesian murder mystery and sapphic romance, set on Jupiter...

On a remote, gas-wreathed outpost of a human colony on Jupiter, a man goes missing. The enigmatic Investigator Mossa follows his trail to Valdegeld, home to the colony's erudite university and Mossa's former girlfriend, a scholar of Earth's pre-collapse ecosystems.

Pleiti has dedicated her research and her career to aiding the larger effort towards a possible return to Earth. When Mossa unexpectedly arrives and requests Pleiti's assistance in her latest investigation, the two of them embark on a twisting path in which the future of life on Earth is at stake and, perhaps, their futures, together.

Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach

The Lucky Peach

Kelly Robson

Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, and Aurora Award-nominated Novella

In 2267, Earth has just begun to recover from worldwide ecological disasters. Minh is part of the generation that first moved back up to the surface of the Earth from the underground hells, to reclaim humanity's ancestral habitat. She's spent her entire life restoring river ecosystems, but lately the kind of long-term restoration projects Minh works on have been stalled due to the invention of time travel. When she gets the opportunity take a team to 2000 BC to survey the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, she jumps at the chance to uncover the secrets of the shadowy think tank that controls time travel technology.

The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF

The Mammoth Book of...: Book 18

Mike Ashley

Contents:

The End of All Things - (2010) - essay by Mike Ashley
When We Went to See the End of the World - (1972) - shortstory by Robert Silverberg
The End of the World - (2002) - shortstory by Sushma Joshi
The Clockwork Atom Bomb - (2005) - shortstory by Dominic Green
Bloodletting - (1994) - shortstory by Kate Wilhelm
When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth - (2006) - novelette by Cory Doctorow
The Rain at the End of the World - (1999) - shortstory by Dale Bailey
The Flood - (1998) - shortstory by Linda Nagata
The End of the World Show - (2006) - shortstory by David Barnett
Fermi and Frost - (1985) - shortstory by Frederik Pohl
Sleepover - (2010) - novelette by Alastair Reynolds
The Last Sunset - (1996) - shortstory by Geoffrey A. Landis
Moments of Inertia - (2004) - novelette by William Barton
The Books - shortstory by Kage Baker
Pallbearer - (2010) - novella by Robert Reed
And the Deep Blue Sea - (2005) - shortstory by Elizabeth Bear
The Meek - (2004) - shortstory by Damien Broderick
The Man Who Walked Home - (1972) - shortstory by James Tiptree, Jr.
A Pail of Air - (1951) - shortstory by Fritz Leiber
Guardians of the Phoenix - (2010) - novelette by Eric Brown
Life in the Anthropocene - (2010) - shortstory by Paul Di Filippo
Terraforming Terra - (1998) - novelette by Jack Williamson
World Without End - (2010) - shortstory by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre
The Children of Time - (2005) - shortstory by Stephen Baxter
The Star Called Wormwood - (2004) - shortstory by Elizabeth Counihan

The Fringe

The Mormon Sea

Orson Scott Card

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1985 and was reprinted in Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, #14, September 2009. The story can aslo be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Science Fiction: Third Annual Collection (1986), edited by Gardner Dozois, Nebula Awards 21 (1986), edited by George Zebrowski and Future on Ice (1998), edited by Orson Scott Card. It is included in the collection The Folk of the Fringe (1989).

The Atlantis Gene

The Origin Mystery: Book 1

A. G. Riddle

The greatest mystery of all time... the history of human origins... will be revealed.

Seventy thousand years ago, the human race almost went extinct. We survived, but no one knows how.

Until now.

The countdown to the next stage of human evolution is about to begin, and humanity might not survive this time.

The Immari are good at keeping secrets. For 2,000 years, they've hidden the truth about human evolution. They've also searched for an ancient enemy - a threat that could wipe out the human race. Now the search is over.

Off the coast of Antarctica, a research vessel discovers a mysterious structure buried deep in an iceberg. It has been there for thousands of years, and something is guarding it. As the Immari rush to execute their plan, a brilliant geneticist makes a discovery that could change everything.

Dr. Kate Warner moved to Jakarta, Indonesia to escape her past. She hasn't recovered from what happened to her, but she has made an incredible breakthrough: a cure for autism. Or so she thinks. What she has found is far more dangerous - for her and the entire human race. Her work could be the key to the next stage of human evolution. In the hands of the Immari, it would mean the end of humanity as we know it.

Agent David Vale has spent 10 years trying to stop the Immari. Now he's out of time. His informant is dead. His organization has been infiltrated. His enemy is hunting him. But when David receives a coded message related to the Immari attack, he risks everything to save the one person that can help him solve it: Dr. Kate Warner.

Together, Kate and David must race to unravel a global conspiracy and learn the truth about the Atlantis Gene...and human origins. Their journey takes them to the far corners of the globe and into the secrets of their pasts. The Immari are close on their heels and will stop at nothing to obtain Kate's research and force the next stage of human evolution - even if it means killing 99.9% of the world's population. David and Kate can stop them... if they can trust each other. And stay alive.

The Atlantis Plague

The Origin Mystery: Book 2

A. G. Riddle

A PANDEMIC 70,000 YEARS IN THE MAKING WILL CHANGE HUMANITY... FOREVER.

In Marbella, Spain, Dr. Kate Warner awakens to a horrifying reality: the human race stands on the brink of extinction. A pandemic unlike any before it has swept the globe. Nearly a billion people are dead--and those the Atlantis Plague doesn't kill, it transforms at the genetic level. A few rapidly evolve. The remainder devolve.

As the world slips into chaos, radical solutions emerge. Industrialized nations offer a miracle drug, Orchid, which they mass produce and distribute to refugee camps around the world. But Orchid is merely a way to buy time. It treats the symptoms of the plague but never actually cures the disease.

Immari International offers a different approach: do nothing. Let the plague run its course. The Immari envision a world populated by the genetically superior survivors--a new human race, ready to fulfill its destiny.

With control of the world population hanging in the balance, the Orchid Alliance and the Immari descend into open warfare. Now humanity's last hope is to find a cure, and Kate alone holds the key to unraveling the mystery surrounding the Atlantis Plague. The answer may lie in understanding pivotal events in human history--events when the human genome mysteriously changed. Kate's journey takes her across the barren wastelands of Europe and northern Africa, but it's her research into the past that takes her where she never expected to go. She soon discovers that the history of human evolution is not what it seems--and setting it right may require a sacrifice she never imagined.

The Atlantis World

The Origin Mystery: Book 3

A. G. Riddle

A global cataclysm beyond imagination... a mysterious signal from space... and one last hope to save the human race: The Atlantis World.

As the clock ticks down to humanity's extinction, a team of scientists will risk it all to unravel the secrets of the past.

Northern Morocco: Dr. Kate Warner cured a global pandemic, and she thought she could cure herself. She was wrong. And she was wrong about the scope of the Atlantis conspiracy. Humanity faces a new threat, an enemy beyond imagination. With her own time running out and the utter collapse of human civilization looming, a new hope arrives: a coded message from a potential ally.

Arecibo Observatory: Mary Caldwell has spent her life waiting, watching the stars, looking for signs of intelligent life beyond our world. When that day comes, Mary finds herself in the middle of a struggle older than the human race, with far greater stakes. She must decide who to trust, because there's nowhere to hide.

Antarctica: In the wake of the Atlantis Plague, Dorian Sloane finds himself a puppet to Ares' mysterious agenda. As Dorian prepares to take control of the situation, Ares unleashes a cataclysm that changes everything. As the catastrophe circles the globe, Ares reveals the true nature of the threat to humanity, and Dorian agrees to one last mission: find and kill David Vale and Kate Warner. There will be no prisoners this time. The orders are seek and destroy, and Dorian has been promised that his own answers and salvation lie on the other side.

With Dorian in pursuit, Kate, David, and their team race through the ruins of the Atlantean ship left on Earth, across Atlantean science stations throughout the galaxy, and into the past of a mysterious culture whose secrets could save humanity in its darkest hour. With their own lives on the line and time slipping away, Kate, David and Dorian are put to the ultimate test.

Parable of the Sower

The Parable Series: Book 1

In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future

Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren's father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others.

When fire destroys their compound, Lauren's family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind.

Parable of the Talents

The Parable Series: Book 2

As America rebuilds itself, bigotry threatens a peaceful haven.

Lauren Olamina was only eighteen when her family was killed, and anarchy encroached on her Southern California home. She fled the war zone for the hope of quiet and safety in the north. There she founded Acorn, a peaceful community based on a religion of her creation, called Earthseed, whose central tenet is that God is change. Five years later, Lauren has married a doctor and given birth to a daughter. Acorn is beginning to thrive. But outside the tranquil group's walls, America is changing for the worse.

Presidential candidate Andrew Steele Jarret wins national fame by preaching a return to the values of the American golden age. To his marauding followers, who are identified by their crosses and black robes, this is a call to arms to end religious tolerance and racial equality-a brutal doctrine they enforce by machine gun. And as this band of violent extremists sets its deadly sights on Earthseed, Acorn is plunged into a harrowing fight for its very survival.

Clay's Ark

The Patternist: Book 3

The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

In a frightening near future, an alien disease is poised to become a devastating global epidemic - unless someone can stop it.

Blake Maslin and his two daughters are driving to Flagstaff when bandits swarm their car. At gunpoint, the marauders kidnap one of Blake's children, promising to keep her safe in return for medical care. Warily, the doctor goes with them, not realizing that he has just taken the first step down a terrifying path that will consume his life.

The gunmen take him deep into the desert, to a colony of people infected with a gruesome alien disease. It causes weakness, sallow skin, and birth defects so horrible that the children who suffer them cannot rightly be called human. The victims have quarantined themselves in the desert lest their illness spread and doom mankind. But as their willingness to accept isolation falters, Blake becomes the last hope for the survival of an uncontaminated Earth.

Pure

The Pure Trilogy: Book 1

Julianna Baggott

We know you are here, our brothers and sisters...

Pressia barely remembers the Detonations or much about life during the Before. In her sleeping cabinet behind the rubble of an old barbershop where she lives with her grandfather, she thinks about what is lost-how the world went from amusement parks, movie theaters, birthday parties, fathers and mothers... to ash and dust, scars, permanent burns, and fused, damaged bodies. And now, at an age when everyone is required to turn themselves over to the militia to either be trained as a soldier or, if they are too damaged and weak, to be used as live targets, Pressia can no longer pretend to be small. Pressia is on the run.

Burn a Pure and Breathe the Ash...

There are those who escaped the apocalypse unmarked. Pures. They are tucked safely inside the Dome that protects their healthy, superior bodies. Yet Partridge, whose father is one of the most influential men in the Dome, feels isolated and lonely. Different. He thinks about loss-maybe just because his family is broken; his father is emotionally distant; his brother killed himself; and his mother never made it inside their shelter. Or maybe it's his claustrophobia: his feeling that this Dome has become a swaddling of intensely rigid order. So when a slipped phrase suggests his mother might still be alive, Partridge risks his life to leave the Dome to find her.

When Pressia meets Partridge, their worlds shatter all over again.

Fuse

The Pure Trilogy: Book 2

Julianna Baggott

We want our son returned.

This girl is proof that we can save you all. If you ignore our plea, we will kill our hostages one at a time.

To be a Pure is to be perfect, untouched by Detonations that scarred the earth, and sheltered inside the paradise that is the Dome. But Partridge escaped to the outside world, where Wretches struggle to survive amid smoke and ash. Now, at the command of Partridge's father, the Dome is unleashing nightmare after nightmare upon the Wretches in an effort to get him back.

At Partridge's side is a small band of those united against the Dome: Lyda, the warrior; Bradwell, the revolutionary; El Capitan, the guard; and Pressia, the young woman whose mysterious past ties her to Partridge in ways she never could have imagined. Long ago a plan was hatched that could mean the earth's ultimate doom. Now only Partridge and Pressia can set things right.

To save millions of innocent lives, Partridge must risk his own by returning to the Dome and facing his most terrifying challenge. And Pressia, armed only with a mysterious Black Box containing a set of cryptic clues, must travel to the very ends of the earth, to a place where no map can guide her. If they succeed, the world will be saved. But should they fail, humankind will pay a terrible price...

Burn

The Pure Trilogy: Book 3

Julianna Baggott

With his father now dead, Partridge has assumed leadership of the Dome, one of the last few refuges from the ravaged wastelands of the outside world. At first, Partridge is intent on exposing his father's lies, taking down the rigid order of the Dome, and uniting its citizens with the disfigured Wretches on the outside. But from his new position of power, things are far more complex and potentially dangerous than he could have ever imagined.

On the outside, a band of survivors faces a treacherous journey to Dome. Pressia carries with her the key to salvation. If she can get it to the Dome, the Wretches could one day be healed and everyone might be able to put the horrors of the past behind them. Bradwell, the revolutionary, cannot forgive so easily. Despite Pressia's pleas, he is determined to bring down the Dome and hold its citizens accountable for leaving the rest of the world to burn. El Capitan, the former rebel leader, wants to help Pressia save as many lives as possible--but he's struggling to reconcile his newfound compassion with his vicious past.

As former allies become potential enemies, the fate of the world is more uncertain than ever. Will humanity fall to destruction? Or will a new world rise from the ashes?

The Book of Koli

The Rampart: Book 1

M. R. Carey

Everything that lives hates us...

Beyond the walls of the small village of Mythen Rood lies an unrecognizable landscape. A place where overgrown forests are filled with choker trees and deadly seeds that will kill you where you stand. And if they don't get you, one of the dangerous shunned men will.

Koli has lived in Mythen Rood his entire life. He believes the first rule of survival is that you don't venture too far beyond the walls.

He's wrong.

The Trials of Koli

The Rampart: Book 2

M. R. Carey

The earth wants to swallow us whole...

Koli never planned to set foot outside his small village. He knew that beyond its walls lay a fearsome landscape filled with choker trees, vicious beasts and Shunned men. But when he was exiled, he had no choice but to journey out into this strange world where every moment is a fight for survival.

And it's not just Koli's life that is threatened. Whole villages just like his are dying out.

But Koli heard a story, once. A story about lost London, and the mysterious tech of the Old Times that may still be there. If he can find it, there may still be a way for him to change his own fate - by saving the lives of those who are left.

The Fall of Koli

The Rampart: Book 3

M. R. Carey

What will the future hold for those who are left?

Koli has come a long way since being exiled from his small village of Mythen Rood. In his search for the fabled tech of the Old Times, he knew he'd be battling shunned men, strange beasts and trees that move as fast as whips. But he has already encountered so much more than he bargained for.

Now that Koli and his companions have found the source of the signal they've been following - the mysterious "Sword of Albion"--there is hope that their perilous journey will finally be worth something.

They're searching for a way to help humanity fight back against nature. But what they'll find is an ancient war that never ended...

The Record Keeper

The Record Keeper: Book 1

Agnes Gomillion

After World War III, Earth is in ruins, and the final armies have come to a reluctant truce. Everyone must obey the law--in every way--or risk shattering the fragile peace and endangering the entire human race.

Arika Cobane is on the threshold of taking her place of privilege as a member of the Kongo elite after ten grueling years of training. But everything changes when a new student arrives speaking dangerous words of treason: What does peace matter if innocent lives are lost to maintain it? As Arika is exposed to new beliefs, she realizes that the laws she has dedicated herself to uphold are the root of her people's misery. If Arika is to liberate her people, she must unearth her fierce heart and discover the true meaning of freedom: finding the courage to live--or die--without fear.

The Seed of Cain

The Record Keeper: Book 2

Agnes Gomillion

General Arika Cobane, beloved leader of the worker rebellion, makes a bold--but illegal--move to ensure the people's freedom. When her scheme fails and her co-conspirator hangs for treason, Arika--overworked and overwrought--blacks out.

When she awakens, everything has changed. She's been stripped of her rank and power and the new leader of the Kongo, Kira Swan, is a charismatic traitor bent on consigning the Kongo under the guise of peace.

Desperate, Arika reunites with Hosea Kahn and seeks treatment for her blackouts at the Compound, deep in the deadly Obi Forest. Arika is determined to regain her influence, stop Kira Swan, and continue leading the Kongo to freedom, but time is running out and she's still unwell. Control is slipping from her fingers. When a new source of strength presents itself, an ancient authority reserved for the One destined to save the Kongo, Arika gives up everything, including Hosea Khan, to grasp the power, but--all alone, and sick and tired--can she muster the will to hold it?

The Ice Lion

The Rewilding Reports: Book 1

Kathleen O'Neal Gear

One thousand years in the future, the zyme, a thick blanket of luminous green slime, covers the oceans. Glaciers three-miles-high rise over the continents. The old stories say that when the Jemen, godlike beings from the past, realized their efforts to halt global warming had gone terribly wrong, they made a desperate gamble to save life on earth and recreated species that had survived the worst of the earth's Ice Ages.

Sixteen-summers-old Lynx and his best friend Quiller are members of the Sealion People--archaic humans known as Denisovans. They live in a world growing colder, a world filled with monstrous predators that hunt them for food. When they flee to a new land, they meet a strange old man who impossibly seems to be the last of the Jemen. He tells Lynx the only way he can save his world is by sacrificing himself to the last true god, a quantum computer named Quancee.

The Ice Ghost

The Rewilding Reports: Book 2

Kathleen O'Neal Gear

In the brutal Ice Age caused by the ancient Jemen war, many archaic human species, including Denisovans and Homo erectus, hover on the verge of extinction. There seems no way out, until the greatest Neandertal holy man, Trogon, has a vision. Legends say the truce that ended the old war left one hostage in the hands of the victorious rebels: the godlike Jemen leader known as the Old Woman of the Mountain. According to Trogon's vision, only one person knows the location of that burial cave. Trogon must capture young Quiller and force her to lead him there... for the Old Woman may not be dead. She may only have been in stasis for a thousand summers, and when reawakened she will save them from oblivion.

But according to the Denisovans--Quiller's people--Trogon is the most powerful witch alive. He's up to something evil that will surely spell their destruction. He must be stopped before it's too late.

Quiller's best friend Lynx must brave towering glaciers, dire wolves, and prides of giant lions to save her and stop Trogon.

The Ice Orphan

The Rewilding Reports: Book 3

Kathleen O'Neal Gear

It's been 925 summers since the Jemen introduced zyme, a bioluminescent algae, into the world's ocean and unwittingly triggered an Ice Age that has consumed most of the planet. All but a handful of Jemen flew to the stars, but before they left, they recreated several extinct species that had thrived in the last Ice Age. After almost a thousand summers, the archaic hominins that struggle along the edges of massive glaciers are dwindling. All they have to save them is a dying quantum computer called Quancee and her student, a Denisovan man named Lynx.

When the last Jemen, Vice Admiral Jorgenson, tells Lynx he's going to dismantle Quancee and use her parts to create a new computer, Lynx is stunned. He can't let Jorgenson kill Quancee! Meanwhile, in the lodges of the Sealion People, a sick boy on the verge of manhood hears voices. One is an old woman who sings to him. When Jawbone goes on his first quest to find a spirit helper, the old woman finds him...

While Lynx battles to save Quancee, the quantum computer has other priorities. Before it dies, it has to save a special boy who cannot save himself.

The Road to Nowhere: Book 1

Meg Elison

The apocalypse will be asymmetrical.

In the aftermath of a plague that has decimated the world population, the unnamed midwife confronts a new reality in which there may be no place for her. Indeed, there may be no place for any woman except at the end of a chain. A radical rearrangement is underway. With one woman left for every ten men, the landscape that the midwife travels is fraught with danger. She must reach safety -- but is it safer to go it alone or take a chance on humanity? The friends she makes along the way will force her to choose what's more important. Civilization stirs from the ruins, taking new and experimental forms. The midwife must help a new world come into being, but birth is always dangerous... and what comes of it is beyond anyone's control.

The Book of Etta

The Road to Nowhere: Book 2

Meg Elison

In the gripping sequel to the Philip K. Dick Award-winning novel The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, one woman undertakes a desperate journey to rescue the future.

Etta comes from Nowhere, a village of survivors of the great plague that wiped away the world that was. In the world that is, women are scarce and childbearing is dangerous... yet desperately necessary for humankind's future. Mothers and midwives are sacred, but Etta has a different calling. As a scavenger. Loyal to the village but living on her own terms, Etta roams the desolate territory beyond: salvaging useful relics of the ruined past and braving the threat of brutal slave traders, who are seeking women and girls to sell and subjugate.

When slavers seize those she loves, Etta vows to release and avenge them. But her mission will lead her to the stronghold of the Lion--a tyrant who dominates the innocent with terror and violence. There, with no allies and few weapons besides her wits and will, she will risk both body and spirit not only to save lives but also to liberate a new world's destiny.

The Book of Flora

The Road to Nowhere: Book 3

Meg Elison

In this Philip K. Dick Award-winning series, one woman's unknowable destiny depends on a bold new step in human evolution.

In the wake of the apocalypse, Flora has come of age in a highly gendered post-plague society where females have become a precious, coveted, hunted, and endangered commodity. But Flora does not participate in the economy that trades in bodies. An anathema in a world that prizes procreation above all else, she is an outsider everywhere she goes, including the thriving all-female city of Shy.

Now navigating a blighted landscape, Flora, her friends, and a sullen young slave she adopts as her own child leave their oppressive pasts behind to find their place in the world. They seek refuge aboard a ship where gender is fluid, where the dynamic is uneasy, and where rumors flow of a bold new reproductive strategy.

When the promise of a miraculous hope for humanity's future tears Flora's makeshift family asunder, she must choose: protect the safe haven she's built or risk everything to defy oppression, whatever its provenance.

The Sky Inside

The Sky Inside: Book 1

Clare B. Dunkle

Martin lives in a perfect world.

Every year a new generation of genetically-engineered children is shipped out to meet their parents. Every spring the residents of his town take down the snow they've stuck to their windows and put up flowers. Every morning his family gathers around their television and votes, like everyone else, for whatever matter of national importance the president has on the table. Today, it is the color of his drapes. It's business as usual under the protective dome of suburb HM1.

And it's all about to come crashing down.

Because a stranger has come to take away all the little children, including Martin's sister, Cassie, and no one wants to talk about where she has gone. The way Martin sees it, he has a choice. He can remain in the dubious safety of HM1, with danger that no one wants to talk about lurking just beneath the surface, or he can actually break out of the suburb, into the mysterious land outside, rumored to be nothing but blowing sand for miles upon miles.

The Walls Have Eyes

The Sky Inside: Book 2

Clare B. Dunkle

Martin may have seen his sister, Cassie, to safety at the end of The Sky Inside, but his adventure is far from over. There's still a totalitarian regime in place, murderous game shows on the air, and a couple of government agents on Martin's tail. When Martin and his AllDog, Chip, go back to his old suburbs to check up on Mom, they get a lot more than they bargained for when they end up escaping with both parents. But the biggest surprise is yet to come--the heart of the government's central power is closer to Martin than he ever suspected.

Spin

The Spin Sequence: Book 1

Robert Charles Wilson

One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives.

The effect is worldwide. The sun is now a featureless disk--a heat source, rather than an astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. Not only have the world's artificial satellites fallen out of orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as though they'd been in space far longer than their known lifespans. As Tyler, Jason, and Diane grow up, space probe reveals a bizarre truth: The barrier is artificial, generated by huge alien artifacts. Time is passing faster outside the barrier than inside--more than a hundred million years per day on Earth. At this rate, the death throes of the sun are only about forty years in our future.

Jason, now a promising young scientist, devotes his life to working against this slow-moving apocalypse. Diane throws herself into hedonism, marrying a sinister cult leader who's forged a new religion out of the fears of the masses.

Earth sends terraforming machines to Mars to let the onrush of time do its work, turning the planet green. Next they send humans...and immediately get back an emissary with thousands of years of stories to tell about the settling of Mars. Then Earth's probes reveal that an identical barrier has appeared around Mars. Jason, desperate, seeds near space with self-replicating machines that will scatter copies of themselves outward from the sun--and report back on what they find.

Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger.

Vortex

The Spin Sequence: Book 3

Robert Charles Wilson

Vortex tells the story of Turk Findley, the protagonist introduced in Axis, who is transported ten thousand years into the future by the mysterious entities called "the Hypotheticals." In this future humanity exists on a chain of planets connected by Hypothetical gateways; but Earth itself is a dying world, effectively quarantined.

Turk and his young friend Isaac Dvali are taken up by a community of fanatics who use them to enable a passage to the dying Earth, where they believe a prophecy of human/Hypothetical contact will be fulfilled. The prophecy is only partly true, however, and Turk must unravel the truth about the nature and purpose of the Hypotheticals before they carry him on a journey through warped time to the end of the universe itself.

When The Blue Shift Comes

The Stellar Guild: Book 4

Robert Silverberg
Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

Life has spread across the stars, and everyone enjoys a long life. However, only those who are Earth-born are truly immortal.

But what happens when the immortals of Earth are suddenly faced with their ultimate destruction?

"The Song of Last Things" by Robert Silverberg introduces Hanosz Prime, a near-immortal (though not truly so, not being of true Earth stock) planetary ruler who abdicates his throne and travels to humanity's ancient home to meet the legendarily-beautiful Kaivilda and discover the ultimate answer to humanity's imminent end.

"The Last Mandala Sweeps" by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro comes in as a relationship is developing between Hanosz and Kaivilda. But then someone attempts to kill him. Is Kaivilda his soulmate, or a would-be murderer? And the Oracles of Earth, issuing conflicting prophecies, seem to think that he is destined to save Earth and humanity from the looming cataclysm. Can Hanosz Prime, with Kaivilda's help, avert disaster and save them all?

The Lost Puzzler

The Tarakan Chronicles: Book 1

Eyal Kless

A brilliantly written, page-turning, post-dystopian debut from Eyal Kless, about a society hoping to salvage the technology of a lost generation, a mysterious missing boy who can open doors no one else can, and a scribe who must piece together the past to determine humanity's future.

More than a hundred years have passed since the Catastrophe brought humanity to the brink of extinction. Those who survived are changed. The Wildeners have reverted to the old ways--but with new Gods--while others place their faith in the technology that once powered their lost civilization.

In the mysterious City of Towers, the center of the destroyed Tarakan empire, a lowly scribe of the Guild of Historians is charged with a dangerous assignment. He must venture into the wilds beyond the glass and steel towers to discover the fate of a child who mysteriously disappeared more than a decade before. Born of a rare breed of marked people, the child, Rafik--known as "The Key"--was one of a special few with the power to restore this lost civilization to glory once again.

In a world riven by fear and violence, where tattooed mutants, manic truckers, warring guilds and greedy mercenaries battle for survival, this one boy may have singlehandedly destroyed humanity's only chance for salvation--unless the scribe can figure out what happened to him.

The Puzzler's War

The Tarakan Chronicles: Book 2

Eyal Kless

There is nothing out of the ordinary in waking up... unless you're dead.

Sent on a dangerous mission with little hope of succeeding, the man known as "Twinkle Eyes" has beaten the odds and found the key that could save civilization: Rafik, a teenage boy with the power to unlock the invaluable Tarakan technology that can restart their world. But the world might not be ready for what is unleashed, and now Twinkle Eyes must find a needle in a haystack in order to save himself... and perhaps the world.

This time, though, he will not go it alone. And while his companions--from the fiery Vincha to the laconic Galinak--have their own motivations, each will be vital in solving the last grand puzzle. One that could bring prosperity and progress to the world or destroy humanity's last hope for ascension.

Now, a lone assassin from another era, two old friends, a dead man, a ruthless rogue mercenary, and a vicious warlord are all hunting for the ultimate prize. But what will happen when the final secret is unlocked, and technology long since buried once again finds its way into the hands of mankind?

A Town Called Dust

The Territory: Book 1

Justin Woolley

Stranded in the desert, the last of mankind is kept safe by a large border fence... Until the fence falls.

Squid is a young orphan living under the oppressive rule of his uncle in the outskirts of the Territory. Lynn is a headstrong girl with an influential father who has spent her entire life within the walled city of Alice.

When the border fence is breached, the Territory is invaded by the largest horde of undead ghouls seen in two hundred years. Squid is soon conscripted into the Diggers-the armed forces of the Territory. And after Lynn finds herself at odds with the Territory's powerful church, she too escapes to join the Diggers.

Together Squid and Lynn form an unlikely friendship as they march to battle against the ghouls. Their journey will take them further than they ever imagined, leading them closer to discovering secrets about themselves, their world, and a conspiracy that may spell the end of the Territory as they know it.

A City Called Smoke

The Territory: Book 2

Justin Woolley

The battle was only the beginning; the real danger is beyond the fence...

The Diggers have been destroyed, a horde of ghouls is moving inland and the High Priestess has seized control of the Central Territory. Together with Nim, a Nomad boy seeking vengeance against the ghouls, Squid and Lynn begin their long journey toward the city of Big Smoke, a city that may not even exist.

Pursued by forces that wish to see them fail, facing threats on all sides and conflict from within, Squid, Lynn and Nim search for a weapon against the ghouls. It is a search that will lead them into forbidden lands where long-held beliefs about their world are tested and Squid may finally unravel the truth of his identity.

But even if they survive their journey, the teenagers on whom the fate of the Territory now rests have no idea what dangers await them beyond the fence.

The Testing Guide

The Testing

Joelle Charbonneau

The Testing is a New-York-Times bestselling trilogy which will have fans of The Hunger Games buzzing. Set in a chilling, war-ravaged future, Cia Vale must battle her fellow classmates to survive The Testing, and face whatever the United Commonwealth has in store for her next. In this free prequel chapter, Cia's older brother Zeen learns whether he has been accepted for The Testing. Read on for a free extract from the first book.

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

The White Mountains

The Tripods: Book 1

John Christopher

Long ago, the Tripods--huge, three-legged machines--descended upon Earth and took control. Now people unquestioningly accept the Tripods' power. They have no control over their thoughts or their lives. But for a brief time in each person's life--in childhood--he is not a slave. For Will, his time of freedom is about to end--unless he can escape to the White Mountains, where the possibility of freedom still exists. The Tripods trilogy follows the adventures of Will and his cohorts, as they try to evade the Tripods and maintian their freedom and ultimately do battle against them. The prequel, When the Tripods Came, explains how the Tripods first invaded and gained control of the planet.

The City of Gold and Lead

The Tripods: Book 2

The Tripods: Book 3

The Voices: Book 1

In a world where long drinks are in short supply, it's dangerous to listen to your inner voice. Those who do, keep it quiet.

But one man listens to the voice in his head telling him to buy a lemonade from the girl sitting on a dusty road.

There is a reason why Pilgrim and Lacey must cross paths. They just don't know it yet...

Sunset, Water City

The Water City Trilogy: Book 3

Chris McKinney

Faith, power, and tech clash when our nameless protagonist passes the responsibility of saving the world to his teenage daughter...

Year 2160: It's been ten years since the cataclysmic events of Eventide, Water City, where 99.97 percent of the human population was possessed or obliterated by Akira Kimura, Water City's renowned scientist and Earth's former savior.

Our nameless antihero, a synesthete and former detective, and his daughter, Ascalon, navigate through a post-apocalyptic landscape populated by barbaric Zeroes--the permanent residents of the continent's biggest landfill, The Great Leachate--who cling to the ways of the old world. They live in opposition to Akira's godlike domination of the planet--she has taken control of the population that viewed her as a god and converted them into her Gardeners, zombie-like humans who plod along to build her vision of a new world.

What that world exactly entails, Ascalon is not entirely sure, but intends to find out. Now nineteen, she, a synesthete herself, takes over this story while her father succumbs to grief and decades of Akira's manipulation. Tasked with the impossible, Ascalon must find a way to free what's left of the human race.

Eon

The Way Series: Book 1

The 21st century was on the brink of nuclear confrontation when the 300 kilometer-long stone flashed out of nothingness and into Earth's orbit. NASA, NATO, and the UN sent explorers to the asteroid's surface...and discovered marvels and mysteries to drive researchers mad.

For the Stone was from space--but perhaps not our space; it came from the future--but perhaps not our future; and within the hollowed asteroid was Thistledown. The remains of a vanished civilization. A human--English, Russian, and Chinese-speaking--civilization. Seven vast chambers containing forests, lakes, rivers, hanging cities...

And museums describing the Death; the catastrophic war that was about to occur; the horror and the long winter that would follow. But while scientists and politicians bickered about how to use the information to stop the Death, the Stone yielded a secret that made even Earth's survival pale into insignificance.

Eternity

The Way Series: Book 2

Multiple Nebula and Hugo Award-winner Greg Bear returns to the Earth of his acclaimed novel Eon—a world devastated by nuclear war. The crew of the asteroid-starship Thistledown has thwarted an attack by the Jarts by severing their link to the Way, an endless corridor that spans universes. The asteroid settled into orbit around Earth and the tunnel snaked away, forming a contained universe of its own.

Forty years later, on Gaia, Rhita Vaskayza recklessly pursues her legacy, seeking an Earth once again threatened by forces from within and without. For physicist Konrad Korzenowski, murdered for creating The Way, and resurrected, is compelled by a faction determined to see it opened once more. And humankind will discover just how entirely they have underestimated their ancient adversaries.

The Windup Girl

The Windup Universe

David Fitzgerald
Dana Fredsti

What Happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits? And what happens when said bio-terrorism forces humanity to the cusp of post-human evolution? In The Windup Girl, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi returns to the world of "The Calorie Man" (Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award-winner, Hugo Award nominee, 2006) and "Yellow Card Man" (Hugo Award nominee, 2007) in order to address these questions.

The Wild Shore

Three Californias: Book 1

Kim Stanley Robinson

2047: For the small Pacific Coast community of San Onofre, life in the aftermath of a devastating nuclear attack is a matter of survival, a day-to-day struggle to stay alive. But young Hank Fletcher dreams of the world that might have been, and might yet be--and dreams of playing a crucial role in America's rebirth.

Time Salvager

Time Salvager: Book 1

Wesley Chu

In a future when Earth is a toxic, abandoned world and humanity has spread into the outer solar system to survive, the tightly controlled use of time travel holds the key maintaining a fragile existence among the other planets and their moons. James Griffin-Mars is a chronman -- a convicted criminal recruited for his unique psychological makeup to undertake the most dangerous job there is: missions into Earth's past to recover resources and treasure without altering the timeline. Most chronmen never reach old age, and James is reaching his breaking point.

On a final mission that is to secure his retirement, James meets an intriguing woman from a previous century, scientist Elise Kim, who is fated to die during the destruction of an oceanic rig. Against his training and his common sense, James brings her back to the future with him, saving her life, but turning them both into fugitives. Remaining free means losing themselves in the wild and poisonous wastes of Earth, and discovering what hope may yet remain for humanity's home world.

Time Siege

Time Salvager: Book 2

Wesley Chu

Having been haunted by the past and enslaved by the present, James Griffin-Mars is taking control of the future.

Earth is a toxic, sparsely inhabited wasteland -- the perfect place for a fugitive ex-chronman to hide from the authorities.

James has allies, scientists he rescued from previous centuries: Elise Kim, who believes she can renew Earth, given time; Grace Priestly, the venerated inventor of time travel herself; Levin, James's mentor and former pursuer, now disgraced; and the Elfreth, a population of downtrodden humans who want desperately to believe that James and his friends will heal their ailing home world.

James also has enemies. They include the full military might of benighted solar system ruled by corporate greed and a desperate fear of what James will do next. At the forefront of their efforts to stop him is Kuo, the ruthless security head, who wants James's head on a pike and will stop at nothing to obtain it.

Time Shards

Time Shards: Book 1

IT'S CALLED "THE EVENT," AN UNIMAGINABLE CATACLYSM THAT SHATTERS 600 MILLION YEARS OF THE EARTH'S TIMELINE.

Our world is gone, instantly replaced by a new one made of scattered remnants of the past, present, and future, dropped alongside one another in a patchwork of "shards". Monsters from Jurassic prehistory, ancient armies, and high-tech robots all coexist in this deadly post-apocalyptic landscape.

A desperate group of survivors sets out to locate the source of the disaster. They include 21st century Californian Amber Richardson, Cam, a young Celtic warrior from Roman Britannia, Alex Brice, a policewoman from 1985, and Blake, a British soldier from World War II. With other refugees from across time, they must learn the truth behind the Event, if they are to survive.

Tor Double #5: No Truce With Kings / Ship of Shadows

Tor Double: Book 5

Fritz Leiber
Poul Anderson

No Truce With Kings:

Anderson's tale follows Colonel Mackenzie of the Army of the Pacific States of America as civil war breaks out in the wake of the President usurping power. Decades after a nuclear war, the inheritors of the United States of America - rather like the European kingdoms after Rome's fall - are feudal, vie for power, and hope to recapture the technological and, perhaps, political glories of the past.

But, with the Espers, a religion that promises the development of man's latent psychic powers, something new in human history may have been brought into the mix.

Ship of Shadows:

The setting is a spaceship; Spar is just a man who wants some teeth and better eyes. Old Doc says he may be able to use some old technology to give those to him. But then Spar gets involved with Crown, the local gangster. Oh, and people keep disappearing - maybe due to vampires.

Tor Double #10: Sailing to Byzantium / Seven American Nights

Tor Double: Book 10

Gene Wolfe
Robert Silverberg

Sailing To Byzantium:

An Eternal party with the people of the future... in the cities of the past.

Seven American Nights:

The story unfolds with a diary of an Iranian visitor to the ruins of a future United States. The diary tells a story of an adventure in a land of mutants and ruined treasure for the taking.

Tor Double #15: The Last Castle / Nightwings

Tor Double: Book 15

Jack Vance
Robert Silverberg

The Last Castle:

For 700 years the Meks served without complaint; they were indispensable, for no gentleman would demean himself with toil. But now they turn against the strongholds of civilization--Castle Halcyon, then Sea Island, Morninglight, and Maraval--one by one the proud castles of Earth fall; last standing is Castle Hagedorn.

Winner Nebula Award 1966, Hugo award 1967.

Nightwings:

A Time to Die

Turning Point: Book 1

Mark Wandrey

They came from the night sky, lighting the heavens like the promise of salvation. But they didn't bring deliverance... they brought something far, far worse. Something that turns people into mindless, cannibalistic monsters. And it's spreading. A reporter follows her story of unspeakable horror south of the border and finds it's worse than she imagined. A wounded fighter pilot finally gets his chance to return to duty but is faced with a mission that could cost him his wings, or his country its chance. A billionaire with dreams of space finds a crashed alien spacecraft unlike anything mankind has ever seen. A brilliant geneticist conducting outlawed research comes face to face with the nightmare consuming the world faster than anyone can comprehend... or stop in time. The government can't contain it. The military can't fight it. This is A Time To Die.

A Time to Run

Turning Point: Book 2

Mark Wandrey

A month has passed since the Strain Delta plague was unleashed on Earth, and most of mankind has already succumbed. All animals are carriers, all food is suspect, and nowhere is safe. Yet small groups still struggle to survive. In Texas, Vance Cartwright and his band of survivalists try to ride out the swarm of infected while Colonel Cobb Pendleton and his men fight to cross 2,000 miles of badlands to reach safety. In the Pacific, Air Force Lieutenant Andrew Tobin is a helpless bystander aboard a flotilla of civilian and navy vessels as survivors try to hold together the last vestiges of civilization.

Food and fuel are running low, and more survivors join the group every day. Lieutenant Pearl Grange, commander of Coast Guard Cutter Boutwell, heads north, searching for a haven in which the flotilla survivors can find respite, only to find armed aggressors willing to do anything to stop her mission, including killing her if necessary. Just when all hope seems lost, a beacon shines forth.

The President of the United States is alive and stranded aboard an E-4 doomsday plane. She could unite the survivors and give them direction if they could save her... but how many lives is it worth to save the president, when so few remain? Mankind is on the ropes, fleeing from extinction. This is A Time To Run.

A Time to Live

Turning Point: Book 3

Mark Wandrey

Civilization is gone, buried in the rubble and bodies of a thousand cities. The mindless zombie hordes number in the millions, roaming the earth, hunting, killing, looking for the last few survivors.

Off the coast of California, a group of survivors desperately clings to life in a small flotilla, which is slowly getting smaller as they are beset from the inside as well as out. Another squadron of ships seeks to rendezvous with them, but they are being hunted by a wolf pack of Russian submarines, and it is unlikely they will make it in time.

There are other groups trying to live as well. While most are trying to help each other, one is going in its own direction. They were prepared for the alien Strain Delta and have been working toward a secret goal all along.

Time is running out for humanity as the clock slowly ticks down to midnight. If we are to have any chance of surviving, we must decide if it is A Time to Live.

Opalite Moon

Ty Merrick: Book 2

Denise Vitola

When three members of a secret sect called the Opalite are found murdered, Ty Merrick, a female detective and lycanthrope, must venture into the dark fringes of a corrupt society, a place where the normal and the supernatural collide, to uncover the truth.

A Boy and His Dog

Vic and Blood: Book 2

Harlan Ellison

Nebula Award winning and Hugo Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in New Worlds,#189 April 1969. Most subsequent publications include an expanded edition of the original. The story can be found in the anthologies:

World's Best Science Fiction: 1970, edited by Terry Carr and Donald A. Wollheim
Nebula Award Stories Five (1970), edited by James Blish
As Tomorrow Becomes Today (1974) edited by Charles W. Sullivan
They Came from Outer Space (1981) edited by Jim Wynorski
The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume III (1981), edited by Arthur C. Clarke and George W. Proctor
Beyond Armageddon: Twenty-One Sermons to the Dead (1985) edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Walter M. Miller, Jr.
Dogtales! (1988) edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois
The Best of the Nebulas (1989), edited by Ben Bova

It is included in the collections:

The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World (1969)
The Essential Ellison: A 35-Year Retrospective (1987)
Vic and Blood (2009)
The Top of the Volcano: The Award-Winning Stories of Harlan Ellison (2015)

Wanderers

Wanderers: Book 1

Chuck Wendig

Shana wakes up one morning to discover her little sister in the grip of a strange malady. She appears to be sleepwalking. She cannot talk and cannot be woken up. And she is heading with inexorable determination to a destination that only she knows. But Shana and her sister are not alone. Soon they are joined by a flock of sleepwalkers from across America, on the same mysterious journey. And like Shana, there are other "shepherds" who follow the flock to protect their friends and family on the long dark road ahead.

For on their journey, they will discover an America convulsed with terror and violence, where this apocalyptic epidemic proves less dangerous than the fear of it. As the rest of society collapses all around them--and an ultraviolent milita threatens to exterminate them--the fate of the sleepwalkers depends on unraveling the mystery behind the epidemic. The terrifying secret will either tear the nation apart--or bring the survivors together to remake a shattered world.

Revelations

War for the Planet of the Apes: Book 1

Greg Keyes

Driven from their woodland home, Caesar and his apes are still recovering from the takeover by renegade ape Koba. Caesar is desperate to avoid war with the humans, but this is a faint hope, as his enemies are about to receive military reinforcements headed by the ruthless Colonel McCullough.

War for the Planet of the Apes

War for the Planet of the Apes: Book 2

Greg Cox

Caesar and his apes are forced into a deadly conflict with an army of humans led by a ruthless Colonel. After the apes suffer unimaginable losses, Caesar wrestles with his darker instincts and begins his own mythic quest to avenge his kind. As the journey finally brings them face to face, Caesar and the Colonel are pitted against each other in an epic battle that will determine the fate of both their species and the future of the planet.

Mort(e)

War with No Name: Book 1

Robert Repino

The "war with no name" has begun, with human extinction as its goal. The instigator of this war is the Colony, a race of intelligent ants who, for thousands of years, have been silently building an army that would forever eradicate the destructive, oppressive humans. Under the Colony's watchful eye, this utopia will be free of the humans' penchant for violence, exploitation and religious superstition. The final step in the Colony's war effort is transforming the surface animals into high-functioning two-legged beings who rise up to kill their masters.

Former housecat turned war hero, Mort(e) is famous for taking on the most dangerous missions and fighting the dreaded human bio-weapon EMSAH. But the true motivation behind his recklessness is his ongoing search for a pre-transformation friend--a dog named Sheba. When he receives a mysterious message from the dwindling human resistance claiming Sheba is alive, he begins a journey that will take him from the remaining human strongholds to the heart of the Colony, where he will discover the source of EMSAH and the ultimate fate of all of earth's creatures.

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse

Wastelands: Book 1

John Joseph Adams

An anthology of post-apocalyptic short fiction from some of the biggest names in science fiction and speculative fiction - including Stephen King, George R. R. Martin and Orson Scott Card

Famine, Death, War, and Pestilence: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the harbingers of Armageddon - these are our guides through the Wastelands... From the Book of Revelations to The Road Warrior; from A Canticle for Leibowitz to The Road, storytellers have long imagined the end of the world, weaving tales of catastrophe, chaos, and calamity.

Gathering together the best post-apocalyptic literature of the last two decades from many of today's most renowned authors of speculative fiction, including George R.R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, Orson Scott Card, Carol Emshwiller, Jonathan Lethem, Octavia E. Butler, and Stephen King, Wastelands explores the scientific, psychological, and philosophical questions of what it means to remain human in the wake of Armageddon.3

Table of Contents:

Introduction (Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse) - (2008) - essay by John Joseph Adams
The End of the Whole Mess - (1986) - novelette by Stephen King
Salvage - (1986) - novelette by Orson Scott Card
The People of Sand and Slag - (2004) - novelette by Paolo Bacigalupi
Bread and Bombs - (2003) - shortstory by M. Rickert
How We Got In Town and Out Again - (1996) - novelette by Jonathan Lethem
Dark, Dark Were the Tunnels - (1973) - shortstory by George R. R. Martin
Waiting for the Zephyr - (2002) - shortstory by Tobias S. Buckell
Never Despair - (1997) - shortstory by Jack McDevitt
When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth - (2006) - novelette by Cory Doctorow
The Last of the O-Forms - (2002) - shortstory by James Van Pelt
Still Life with Apocalypse - (2002) - shortstory by Richard Kadrey
Artie's Angels - (2001) - shortstory by Catherine Wells
Judgment Passed - (2008) - novelette by Jerry Oltion
Mute - (2002) - shortstory by Gene Wolfe
Inertia - (1990) - novelette by Nancy Kress
And the Deep Blue Sea - (2005) - novelette by Elizabeth Bear
Speech Sounds - (1983) - shortstory by Octavia E. Butler
Killers - (2006) - shortstory by Carol Emshwiller
Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus - (1988) - novelette by Neal Barrett, Jr.
The End of the World as We Know It - (2004) - shortstory by Dale Bailey
A Song Before Sunset - (1976) - shortstory by David Grigg
Episode Seven: Last Stand Against the Pack in the Kingdom of Purple Flowers - (2007) - novelette by John Langan
For Further Reading - (2008) - essay by John Joseph Adams

Wastelands: The New Apocalypse

Wastelands: Book 3

John Joseph Adams

In WASTELANDS: THE NEW APOCALYPSE, veteran anthology editor John Joseph Adams is once again our guide through the wastelands using his genre and editorial expertise to curate his finest collection of post-apocalyptic short fiction yet. Whether the end comes via nuclear war, pandemic, climate change, or cosmological disaster, these stories explore the extraordinary trials and tribulations of those who survive.

Featuring never-before-published tales by: Veronica Roth, Hugh Howey, Jonathan Maberry, Seanan McGuire, Tananarive Due, Richard Kadrey, Scott Sigler, Elizabeth Bear, Tobias S. Buckell, Meg Elison, Greg van Eekhout, Wendy N. Wagner, Jeremiah Tolbert, and Violet Allen--plus, recent reprints by: Carmen Maria Machado, Carrie Vaughn, Ken Liu, Paolo Bacigalupi, Kami Garcia, Charlie Jane Anders, Catherynne M. Valente, Jack Skillingstead, Sofia Samatar, Maureen F. McHugh, Nisi Shawl, Adam-Troy Castro, Dale Bailey, Susan Jane Bigelow, Corinne Duyvis, Shaenon K. Garrity, Nicole Kornher-Stace, Darcie Little Badger, Timothy Mudie, and Emma Osborne.

Pines

Wayward Pines: Book 1

Secret service agent Ethan Burke arrives in Wayward Pines, Idaho, with a clear mission: locate and recover two federal agents who went missing in the bucolic town one month earlier. But within minutes of his arrival, Ethan is involved in a violent accident. He comes to in a hospital, with no ID, no cell phone, and no briefcase. The medical staff seems friendly enough, but something feels...off.

As the days pass, Ethan's investigation into the disappearance of his colleagues turns up more questions than answers. Why can't he get any phone calls through to his wife and son in the outside world? Why doesn't anyone believe he is who he says he is? And what is the purpose of the electrified fences surrounding the town? Are they meant to keep the residents in? Or something else out?

Each step closer to the truth takes Ethan further from the world he thought he knew, from the man he thought he was, until he must face a horrifying fact--he may never get out of Wayward Pines alive.

Wayward

Wayward Pines: Book 2

Welcome to Wayward Pines, population 461. Nestled amidst picture-perfect mountains, the idyllic town is a modern-day Eden...except for the electrified fence and razor wire, snipers scoping everything 24/7, and the relentless surveillance tracking each word and gesture.

None of the residents know how they got here. They are told where to work, how to live, and who to marry. Some believe they are dead. Others think they're trapped in an unfathomable experiment. Everyone secretly dreams of leaving, but those who dare face a terrifying surprise.

Ethan Burke has seen the world beyond. He's sheriff, and one of the few who knows the truth--Wayward Pines isn't just a town. And what lies on the other side of the fence is a nightmare beyond anyone's imagining.

The Last Town

Wayward Pines: Book 3

Edwin Balmer
Philip Wylie

Welcome to Wayward Pines, the last town.

Secret Service agent Ethan Burke arrived in Wayward Pines, Idaho, three weeks ago. In this town, people are told who to marry, where to live, where to work. Their children are taught that David Pilcher, the town's creator, is god. No one is allowed to leave; even asking questions can get you killed.

But Ethan has discovered the astonishing secret of what lies beyond the electrified fence that surrounds Wayward Pines and protects it from the terrifying world beyond. It is a secret that has the entire population completely under the control of a madman and his army of followers, a secret that is about to come storming through the fence to wipe out this last, fragile remnant of humanity.

When Worlds Collide

When Worlds Collide: Book 1

A runaway planet hurtles toward the earth. As it draws near, massive tidal waves, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions wrack our planet, devastating continents, drowning cities, and wiping out millions. In central North America, a team of scientists race to build a spacecraft powerful enough to escape the doomed earth. Their greatest threat, they soon discover, comes not from the skies but from other humans.

A crackling plot and sizzling, cataclysmic vision have made When Worlds Collide one of the most popular and influential end-of-the-world novels of all time. This Bison Frontiers of Imagination edition features the original story and its sequel, After Worlds Collide.

After Worlds Collide

When Worlds Collide: Book 2

Philip Wylie
Edwin Balmer

After Worlds Collide (1934) was a sequel to the 1933 science fiction novel, When Worlds Collide, both of which were co-written by Philip Gordon Wylie and Edwin Balmer. After Worlds Collide first appeared as a six-part monthly serial (November 1933 - April 1934) in Blue Book magazine.

Much shorter and less florid than the original novel, this one tells the story of the survivors' progress on their new world, Bronson Beta, after the destruction of the Earth.

The Road to Corlay

White Bird of Kinship: Book 1

Richard Cowper

On the Eve of the Fourth Millennium a slowly-building civilization, struggling out of the rubble of the Drowning, was crushed beneath the sceptor of a powerful and repressive Church. But on the Eve of the Fourth Millennium the sound of a magical pipe was heard, and the air was filled with songs of freedom and enlightenment.

And on the Eve of the Fourth Millennium the Boy appeared, bringing the gift of sacrilege, a harbinger of the future, heralding the arrival of the White Bird of Dawning. It is the coming of a New Age. A glorious future bearing the presents of the past.

White Horse

White Horse: Book 1

Alex Adams

White Horse is the first book in an absolutely unique debut trilogy--a post-apocalyptic thriller chronicling one woman's quest to nurture those she holds dear against the backdrop of a shocking, new world.

The world has ended, but her journey has just begun.

Thirty-year-old Zoe leads an ordinary life until the end of the world arrives. She is cleaning cages and floors at Pope Pharmaceuticals when the president of the United States announces that human beings are no longer a viable species. When Zoe realizes that everyone she loves is disappearing, she starts running. Scared and alone in a shockingly changed world, she embarks on a remarkable journey of survival and redemption. Along the way, Zoe comes to see that humans are defined not by their genetic code, but rather by their actions and choices. White Horse offers hope for a broken world, where love can lead to the most unexpected places.

Worlds Apart

Worlds: Book 2

The war that destroyed everything lasted a single day. After an initial nuclear strike, the Earth's population was further devastated by an insidious bioweapon targeting anyone above the age of puberty. Now most of what's left of human civilization gathers on New New York, one of the few orbiting Worlds that remain.

Monitoring the Earth below from the floating habitat, Marianne O'Hara searches for signs of life - and, in particular, for Jeff Hawking, her former lover, who survived the viral nightmare thanks to a biological anomaly that rendered him immune. But Jeff is not the sole surviving adult in this landscape of death, ruin, and feral children, and those who fled to safety underground are being seduced by a terrible new religion preaching blood and vengeance. The last war, it seems, is not over - and the last hope for preventing the final holocaust may be Marianne O'Hara.

Worlds Enough and Time

Worlds: Book 3

The Earth is no more, an uninhabitable shell following the one-day war that obliterated the population. In the decades that followed, the surviving Worlds orbiting the dead planet have become the last refuge of humankind. With the discovery of a possibly habitable planet in a distant star system, ten thousand brave colonists are preparing to depart from New New York aboard the interstellar vessel Newhome. Among them is Marianne O'Hara, who will ultimately control the fate of what remains of the human race.

The momentous voyage is plagued from the start by ignorance and sabotage, and by the dark tenets of a nihilistic religion dedicated to ultimate destruction. But despite the many trials and tragedies, the spacefarers - and particularly Marianne and her loved ones - will be forced to endure. There is no turning back once the journey begins... for soon there will be nowhere left to return to.

Coalescent

Xeelee: Destiny's Children: Book 1

George Poole isn't sure whether his life has reached a turning point or a dead end. At forty-five, he is divorced and childless, with a career that is going nowhere fast. Then, when his father dies suddenly, George stumbles onto a family secret: a sister he never knew existed. A twin named Rosa, raised in Rome by an enigmatic cult. Hoping to find the answers to the missing pieces of his life, George sets out for the ancient city.

Once in Rome, he learns from Rosa the enthralling story of their distant ancestor, Regina, an iron-willed genius determined to preserve her family as the empire disintegrates around her. It was Regina who founded the cult, which has mysteriously survived and prospered below the streets of Rome for almost two millennia. The Order, says Rosa, is her real family and, even if he doesn't realize it yet, it is George's family, too. When she takes him into the vast underground city that is the Order's secret home, he feels a strong sense of belonging, yet there is something oddly disturbing about the women he meets. They are all so young and so very much alike.

Stephen Baxter possesses one of the most brilliant minds in modern science fiction. His vivid storytelling skills have earned him comparison to the giants of the past: Clarke, Asimov, Stapledon. Like his great predecessors, Baxter thinks on a cosmic scale, spinning cutting-edge scientific speculation into pure, page-turning gold. Now Baxter is back with a breathtaking adventure that begins during the catastrophic collapse of Roman Britain and stretches forward into an unimaginably distant, war-torn future, where the fate of humanity lies waiting at the center of the galaxy....

Transcendent

Xeelee: Destiny's Children: Book 3

It is the year 2047, and nuclear engineer Michael Poole is still in the throes of grief. His beloved wife, Morag, died seventeen years ago, along with their second child. Yet Michael is haunted by more than just the memory of Morag. On a beach in Miami, he sees his dead wife. But she vanishes as suddenly as she appears, leaving no clue as to her mysterious purpose.

Alia was born on a starship, fifteen thousand light years from Earth, five hundred thousand years after the death of Michael Poole. Yet she knows him intimately. In this distant future, when humanity has diversified as a species and spread across the galaxy, every person is entrusted with the duty of Witnessing the life of one man, woman, or child from the past, recovered by means of a technology able to traverse time itself. Alia's subject is Michael Poole.

When his surviving, estranged son is injured, Michael tries to reconnect with him–and to stave off a looming catastrophe. Vast reservoirs of toxic gases lie buried beneath the poles, trapped in crystals of ice. Now that ice is melting. Once it goes, the poisons released will threaten all life on Earth. A bold solution is within reach, if only Michael can convince a doubting world. Yet as Morag's ghostly visitations continue, Michael begins to doubt his own sanity.

In the future, Alia is chosen to become a Transcendent, an undying member of the group mind that is shepherding humanity toward an evolutionary apotheosis. The Witnessings are an integral part of their design, for only by redeeming the pain of every human who has lived and died can true Transcendence be achieved. Yet Alia discovers a dark side to the Transcendents' plans, a vein of madness that may lead to an unthinkable renunciation.

Somehow, Michael Poole holds the fate of the future in his hands. Now, to save that future, Alia must undertake a desperate journey into the past....

Lilith's Brood

Xenogenesis

Butler’s acclaimed Xenogenesis trilogy about humanity’s struggle for survival after nuclear apocalypse, and the alien race that could save the world—or destroy it.

The newest stage in human evolution begins in outer space. Survivors of a cataclysmic nuclear war awake to find themselves being studied by the Oankali, tentacle-covered galactic travelers whose benevolent appearance hides their surprising plan for the future of mankind. The Oankali arrive not just to save humanity, but to bond with it—crossbreeding to form a hybrid species that can survive in the place of its human forebears, who were so intent on self-destruction. Some people resist, forming pocket communities of purebred rebellion, but many realize they have no choice. The human species inevitably expands into something stranger, stronger, and undeniably alien.

Dawn

Xenogenesis: Book 1

Rescued from Earth's destruction, one woman is called upon to revive mankind.

Lilith Iyapo has just lost her husband and son when atomic fire consumes Earth-the last stage of the planet's final war. Hundreds of years later Lilith awakes, deep in the hold of a massive alien spacecraft piloted by the Oankali-who arrived just in time to save humanity from extinction. They have kept Lilith and other survivors asleep for centuries, as they learned whatever they could about Earth. Now it is time for Lilith to lead them back to her home world, but life among the Oankali on the newly resettled planet will be nothing like it was before.

The Oankali survive by genetically merging with primitive civilizations-whether their new hosts like it or not. For the first time since the nuclear holocaust, Earth will be inhabited. Grass will grow, animals will run, and people will learn to survive the planet's untamed wilderness. But their children will not be human. Not exactly.

Adulthood Rites

Xenogenesis: Book 2

As humans and Oankali struggle to live together, the future of both species rests in the hands of Lilith's hybrid son.

Nuclear war had nearly destroyed mankind when the Oankali came to the rescue, saving humanity - but at a price. The Oankali survive by mixing their DNA with that of other species, and now on Earth they have permitted no child to be born without an Oankali parent. The first true hybrid is a boy named Akin - son of Lilith Iyapo -and to the naked eye he looks human, for now.

He is born with extraordinary sensory powers, understanding speech at birth, speaking in sentences at two months old, and soon developing the ability to see at the molecular level. More powerful than any human or Oankali, he will be the architect of both races' intergalactic future. But before he can carry this new species into the stars, Akin must decide which unlucky souls will stay behind.

Imago

Xenogenesis: Book 3

Child of two species, but part of neither, a new being must find his way.

Human and Oankali have been mating since the aliens first came to Earth to rescue the few survivors of an annihilating nuclear war. The Oankali began a massive breeding project, guided by the ooloi, a sexless subspecies capable of manipulating DNA, in the hope of eventually creating a perfect starfaring race.

Jodahs is supposed to be just another hybrid of human and Oankali, but as he begins his transformation to adulthood he finds himself becoming ooloi-the first ever born to a human mother. As his body changes, Jodahs develops the ability to shapeshift, manipulate matter, and cure or create disease at will. If this frightened young man is able to master his new identity, Jodahs could prove the savior of what's left of mankind. Or, if he is not careful, he could become a plague that will destroy this new race once and for all.

Y: The Last Man, Book 1

Y: The Last Man: Book 1

Brian K. Vaughan

Y: THE LAST MAN, winner of three Eisner Awards and one of the most critically acclaimed, best-selling comic books series of the last decade, is that rare example of a page-turner that is at once humorous, socially relevant and endlessly surprising.

Written by Brian K. Vaughan (LOST, PRIDE OF BAGHDAD, EX MACHINA) and with art by Pia Guerra, this is the saga of Yorick Brown--the only human survivor of a planet-wide plague that instantly kills every mammal possessing a Y chromosome. Accompanied by a mysterious government agent, a brilliant young geneticist and his pet monkey, Ampersand, Yorick travels the world in search of his lost love and the answer to why he's the last man on earth.

Tomorrow's Kin

Yesterday's Kin: Book 1