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Welcome to Chain-Gang All-Stars, the popular and highly controversial programme inside America's private prison system. In packed arenas, live-streamed by millions, prisoners compete as gladiators for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

Fan favourites Loretta Thurwar and Hamara 'Hurricane Staxxx' Stacker are teammates and lovers. Thurwar is nearing the end of her time on the circuit, free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares for her final encounters, as protestors gather at the gates, and as the programme's corporate owners stack the odds against her - will the price be simply too high?

From the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning imagination of Poul Anderson comes a life-or-death manhunt for the last wild alien, a planetary economy based on gambling and a robot in love with literature. This book also includes an entire short novel, "Built for Brew".

Table of Contents:

• Foreword (Kinship with the Stars) - (1991) - essay
• A Bicycle Built for Brew - (1958) - novella
• Inside Straight - (1955) - novelette
• The Critique of Impure Reason - (1962) - novelette
• Backwardness - (1958) - shortstory
• Duel on Syrtis - (1951) - shortstory
• Uncleftish Beholding - (1989) - essay
• Escape from Orbit - (1962) - novelette
• Enough Rope - (1953) - novelette
• The Live Coward - - (1956) - shortstory

Someday. Tomorrow. When Earth fails man and man leaves Earth behind, the awesomeness is waiting Out There. Empty beyond all imagining, vast beyond all reckoning, as deep as Time and twice as cold, The Dark between the stars. Here collected for the first time are the most incredible and terrifying voyages of the acclaimed master of SF adventure. Voyages to the center of a universe dark with terror. And Beyond. Collection of 9 stories: "The Sharing of Flesh," nominated, 1968 Nebula award; winner, 1969 Hugo award, best novelette; "Fortune Hunter;" "Eutopia;" "The Pugilist;" "Night Piece;" "The Voortrekkers;" "Gibralter Falls," a Time Patrol story; "Windmill," and "Call Me Joe," which was voted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame.

Table of Contents:

• Foreword - essay
• The Sharing of Flesh - (1968) - novelette
• Fortune Hunter - (1972) - shortstory
• Eutopia - (1967) - novelette
• The Pugilist - (1973) - novelette
• Night Piece - (1961) - shortstory
• The Voortrekkers - (1974) - novelette
• Gibraltar Falls - (1975) - shortstory
• Windmill - (1973) - novelette
• Call Me Joe - (1957) - novelette

Contents:

• No Truce with Kings
• Turning Point
• Escape from Orbit
• Epilogue
• The Critique of Impure Reason

A mythic tale of space travelers marooned on a planet engulfed in the flames of war and of the immortal hero who endeavors to save them in the name of love.

In a far-future era, death is virtually no more, banished except in the case of severe, violent trauma, enabling mankind to spend what were once entire lifetimes exploring the farthest reaches of the vast universe. When the interstellar vessel Meteor is dispatched to investigate a distant orb circling a giant red sun, an error in calculations sends the ship crashing into a different world altogether, casting its surviving crew into the heart of a savage, planetwide war of primitive alien tribes. With no means of escape and hostiles on every side, the situation appears hopeless for Captain Felip Argens. But for the mission's true leader--crewman, adventurer, and ship's bard Hugh Valland--impossible is not an option. If necessary, he will alter destiny to end the terrible conflict and bring his men safely back home, even if it takes decades, or centuries, or longer--for a remarkable love patiently awaits Valland's return to Earth. It is she who sustains him, who inspires his actions, his courage, his song, with a love that is a miracle, a memory, a tragedy, and a dream.

One of the most thoughtful and lyrical works by the incomparable Poul Anderson--winner of seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards over the course of his acclaimed career--World without Stars is a thrilling deep-space adventure and a magnificent feat of world building by a luminary of science fiction's golden age.

Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the devil: to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six.

When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate.

But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. Shizuka doesn't have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan's kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul's worth. And maybe something as small as a warm donut is powerful enough to break a curse as vast as the California coastline.

As the lives of these three women become entangled by chance and fate, a story of magic, identity, curses, and hope begins, and a family worth crossing the universe for is found.

Fourteen-year-old Sante isn't sure where she comes from, but she has a recurring dream of escaping a shipwreck in a sea chest as a baby with her lifelong companion, golden eagle Priss. In the chest was an African bamboo flute, a drum and a dagger inlaid with diamonds. Sante was found and raised by Mama Rose, leader of a nomadic group of misfits and gypsies. They travel around contemporary southern Europe, living off-grid and performing circus tricks for money. Sante grows up alongside two twins, knife-thrower Cat and snake-charmer Cobra, whom she is in love with. During a performance in Cadiz, Sante recognises two men from her dream. They come after her to retrieve the treasures from the sea chest. Sante finds out that she is an Ashanti princess, whose parents probably perished in the shipwreck. After Cat rescues a beautiful red-haired girl called Scarlett from a gang, Mama Rose's band are forced to flee the city. But Sante and Cobra stay behind, determined to find out more about her family and where she came from.

Sturgeon Award nominated novella.

There are dreams we all have as fantasy-reading children. Dreams from the books we've read. Dreams from the stories we've been told. Dreams about the bad things that might happen, to us, to everybody. So... flying saucers, alien abductions, those things the aliens might do... the stuff of adventure and comedy, and even a radiotelescope joke every one of us knows. But what if, when you were a child, the flying saucers did come and take you away? Take you away from your parents and your brothers and sisters. Take you away from school and all your friends. And teachers. And bullies. And homework. Away from everything and everyone you ever knew. Suppose the aliens came and took youto a place where no human being had ever been? And then just left you there, all alone? What would you do? If you're a teenage boy named Wally, you'll come up with something spectacular. "Off on a Starship" is a tale of grand adventure, and a love story that's... unusual.

The story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, September 2003. It can also be foind in the anthologies Best Short Novels: 2004, edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-First Annual Collection (2004), edited by Gardner Dozois.

This story was anthologized in The End Is Now (The Apocalypse Triptych #2), edited by John Joseph Adams and Hugh Howey, and in The Long List Anthology: More Stories from the Hugo Awards Nomination List, edited by David Steffen.

Its prequel, "Goodnight Moon", was published in The End Is Now (The Apocalypse Triptych #1), and its sequel, "Goodnight Earth", was published in The End Has Come (The Apocalypse Triptych #3),

Read this story for free online at the editor's website.

The first novel by New York Times bestselling author Gregory Benford, "The Stars in Shroud" original story was a Hugo and Nebula nominee.

The alien Quarn strike suddenly at the heart of Earth's interstellar Empire. Their weapon is a deadly plague--a soul-twisting assault that strips away the veneer of civilization. The psychological illness sends its victims fleeing back a million years to the safety of the ancestral caves.

No one knew how the Quarn spread the plague. No one knew why they wanted to destroy humanity.

But Captain Ling Sanjen had thought of a way to stop them...

As an expert thief from a minor moon, Cass knows a good mark when she sees one. The emperor's ball is her chance to steal a fortune for herself, her ailing father, and her scrappy crew of thieves and market vendors.

Her plan is simple:
1. Hitch a ride to the planet of Ouris, the dazzling heart of the empire.
2. Sneak onto the imperial palace station to attend the emperor's ball.
3. Steal from the rich, the royal, and the insufferable.

But on the station, things quickly go awry. When the emperor is found dead, everyone in the palace is a suspect--and someone is setting Cass up to take the fall. To clear her name, Cass must work with an unlikely ally: a gorgeous and mysterious rebel with her own reasons for being on the station. Together, they unravel a secret that could change the fate of the empire.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction (2007), edited by Steve Berman. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Two (2008), edited by Jonathan Strahan, Bloody Fabulous (2012), edited by Ekaterina Sedia, and Beyond the Woods: Fairy Tales Retold (2016), edited by Paula Guran. The story is included in the collection The Poison Eaters and Other Stories (2010).

WHEN THE SUN EXPLODES...

All life will end. No one will survive the blow-up; except the men and women who crowed into a few starships and fly away into space while there is still time, to look for a new home in the infinite void, a new planet on which to settle.

Jorn, unskilled, unemployed, seemingly a reject from society, finds that he has what it takes to become one of he brave survivors, blasting off in hastily built ships that have never flown before. Jorn and his companions begin a long search, threatened by repeated disasters and despair, but ultimately leading through to an unexpected climax for which one one is prepared...

The Seedling Stars is a collection of science fiction short stories by James Blish. It was first published by Gnome Press in 1957 in an edition of 5000 copies. The stories all concern adapting humans to alien environments. The stories all originally appeared in the magazine Fantasy & Science Fiction, If, Super Science Stories & Galaxy Science Fiction.

Contents:

• 1 - Seeding Program - [Pantropy] - (1956) - novelette (variant of A Time to Survive)
• 63 - The Thing in the Attic - [Pantropy] - (1954) - novelette
• 103 - Surface Tension - [Pantropy] - (1952) - novelette
• 175 - Watershed - [Pantropy] - (1955) - short story

Tankar Holroy, Lieutenant in the Stellar Guard of earth's Empire, floats in space after his spaceship is sabotaged. Rescued by an enormous, unknown ship, he awakes to discover himself saved by the People of the Stars who are born and live in space with minimal contact with planets and their occupants whom they call, with contempt, planetaries.

The chilly welcome he receives from the ship's leader, the Teknor, is followed by overt hostility from the other inhabitants of the Tilsin. Only a woman named Orena reaches out to him.

Tankar soon realizes that he was rescued for his knowledge of tracers, the technology that allows Empire ships to track others through hyperspace, a technology the People of the Stars lack. Out of spite, he refuses to deliver the one piece of knowledge that can protect the people who saved but now spurn him - and the consequences will be catastrophic.

Starduster Yes, I'm Max Andrews. I'm one of the guys who fought and bled and worked to get to Mars. I figure what I gave up in those early years gave me the right to pilot the next big jump. I've lied and stolen for that right. I'd have killed, too, but I didn't have top. Instead, I let a woman give her life so I could have my chance, my door to space. You think I'd stop at anything, now? I'll be on that rocket, blasting away on America's biggest adventure, the hop out into the stars themselves Only Fred Brown could have written this deeply moving science fiction novel about one man's epic, life-long struggle to open mankind's pathway to the star

As acting captain of the starship Calypso, Jacklyn Albright is responsible for keeping the last of humanity alive as they limp back to Earth from their forebears’ failed colony on a distant planet.

Faced with constant threats of starvation and destruction in the treacherous minefield of interstellar space, Jacklyn's crew has reached their breaking point. As unrest begins to spread throughout the ship’s Wards, a new threat emerges, picking off crew members in grim, bloody fashion.

Jacklyn and her team must hunt down the ship’s unknown intruder if they have any hope of making it back to their solar system alive.

Among six hundred thousand stars visited by man, sixty thousand have planets hospitable to life, six thousand have developed life and six hundred have been settled, or seeded, with humanity. A vast vessel, known simply as Ship, travels an endless route, checking in with all the settled planets, observing, offering help where it can as some flourish, some falter but all change and evolve. Unexpectedly, Ship has developed feelings and intelligence and it struggles with human-like emotions as it sees the many ways that man can evolve or devolve when left to his own devices with the one eternal constant--change.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Cosmic Powers: The Saga Anthology of Far-Away Galaxies (2017), edited by John Joseph Adams, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, February 2018. It can also 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 Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018, edited by N. K. Jemisin and John Joseph Adams.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Contents:

• 7 - Introduction (An Exaltation of Stars) - essay by Terry Carr
• 11 - The Feast of St. Dionysus - novella by Robert Silverberg
• 71 - 'Kjwalll'kje'k'koothaïlll'kje'k - [Nemo] - novella by Roger Zelazny
• 141 - My Brother Leopold - [Tales of a Darkening World] - novelette by Edgar Pangborn

Dakota "Dak" Prentiss guards the biggest secret in the world.

They call it "Moss." It's your standard grey alien from innumerable abduction stories. It still sits at the controls of the spaceship it crash-landed eleven years ago. A secret military base was built around the crash site to study both Moss and the dangerous technology it brought to Earth.

The day Matt Salem joins her security team, Dak's whole world changes.

It's love at first sight -- which is a problem, since they both signed ironclad contracts vowing not to fraternize with other military personnel. If they run, they'll be hunted for what they know. Dak and Matt have only way to be together: do the impossible. Steal Moss and sell the secret of its existence.

And they can't afford a single mistake.

This is a novelization of the 14-episode podcast by Mac Rogers. The podcast can be listened to in its entirety for free at Tor Labs.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (2003) - essay by Stanley Schmidt
• The Astronaut from Wyoming - (1999) - novella by Jerry Oltion and Adam-Troy Castro
• If You Wish Upon a Star... - (1988) - shortstory by Jerry Oltion
• Crisis on Ward H! - (1998) - shortstory by Adam-Troy Castro
• Suicide - (1990) - novelette by Jerry Oltion (variant of Suicide by UFO)
• Jesus Used a Paper Cup - (1994) - shortstory by Adam-Troy Castro
• Unfamiliar, Foreign, Outré - (1995) - shortstory by Jerry Oltion
• The Adventure of the Garrulous Codger - (2003) - shortstory by Adam-Troy Castro

Paul Carlton Savage died on July 20, 1969, in Vietnam - but that was only the start of his troubles! Approached by a mysterious entity called The Hunter, Savage was offered immortality in exchange for his services in The Hunter's continuing war against The Bromgrev. Suddenly, Savage found himself pitted against an enemy he had never seen, an enemy who could be anyone, anywhere, at any time... an enemy determined to destroy him and all who got in his way.

And in this raging intergalactic war between Good and Evil, Savage discovered that he couldn't be sure whose side he was on.

The Kingdom of Central's sovereign, Heather Anderson, set L1 as a limit for armed ships to respect, de-militarizing the Solar System. Now that the Earth nations are experimenting with star drives they want to challenge this limit anew. The USNA starship, Constitution is intercepted violating the L1 limit and brings them to the brink of war again. Will Peer Jeffrey Singh be able to negotiate a compromise? Do the Earthies mean to bargain in good faith? The Spacers need to buy time but things on Earth are always so complicated...

This short story originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, #64 January 2012. It can also be found in the anthologies Clarkesworld: Year Six (2014), edited by Sean Wallace and Neil Clarke, and Galactic Empires (2017), edited by Neil Clakre.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1972) - essay by J. B. Priestley
• Foreword - (1972) - essay
• The Nine Billion Names of God - (1953) - shortstory
• An Ape About the House - (1962) - shortstory
• Green Fingers - (1956) - shortstory
• Trouble with the Natives - (1951) - shortstory
• Into the Comet - (1960) - shortstory
• No Morning After - (1954) - shortstory
• "If I Forget Thee, Oh Earth..." - (1951) - shortstory
• Who's There? - (1958) - shortstory
• All the Time in the World - (1952) - shortstory
• Hide and Seek - (1949) - shortstory
• Robin Hood, F.R.S. - (1956) - shortstory
• The Fires Within - (1947) - shortstory
• The Forgotten Enemy - (1948) - shortstory
• The Reluctant Orchid - (1956) - shortstory
• Encounter at Dawn - (1953) - shortstory
• Security Check - (1956) - shortstory
• Feathered Friend - (1957) - shortstory
• The Sentinel - (1951) - shortstory

Men had built cities before, but never such a city as Diaspar; for millennia its protective dome shutout the creeping decay and danger of the world outside. Once, it held powers that rules the stars. But then, as legend had it, The invaders came, driving humanity into this last refuge. It takes one man, A Unique to break through Diaspar's stifling inertia, to smash the legend and discover the true nature of the Invaders.

This is a revised and expanded version of Against the Fall of Night.

All Jamie Allenby ever wanted was space. Even though she wasn't forced to emigrate from Earth, she willingly left the overpopulated, claustrophobic planet. And when a long relationship devolved into silence and suffocating sadness, she found work on a frontier world on the edges of civilization. Then the virus hit...

Now Jamie finds herself dreadfully alone, with all that's left of the dead. Until a garbled message from Earth gives her hope that someone from her past might still be alive.

Soon Jamie finds other survivors, and their ragtag group will travel through the vast reaches of space, drawn to the promise of a new beginning on Earth. But their dream will pit them against those desperately clinging to the old ways. And Jamie's own journey home will help her close the distance between who she has become and who she is meant to be...

Is the entire universe just one of the atoms of some even greater cosmos? Such was the conception of one scientist - and his effort to prove this theory was to take a party of Americans on an expdition to a place that was literally "Beyond the Stars".

Some super-science is developed which will make a spaceship far exceed the speed of light, and expand at the same time, and at a fantastic rate. The goal is to find the next level UP, wherein our universe is composed of their atoms.

Table of Contents:

• Of Doubts and Dreams - essay
• Prismatica - (1977) - novelette
• Corona - (1967) - shortstory
• Empire Star - (1966) - novel
• Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones - (1968) - novelette
• Omegahelm - (1981) - shortstory
• Ruins - (1968) - shortstory
• We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line - (1968) - novella

Table of Contents:

• Of Doubts and Dreams - (1981) - essay
• The Star Pit - (1967) - novella
• Corona - (1967) - short story
• Aye, and Gomorrah... - (1967) - short story
• Driftglass - (1967) - short story
• We, in Some Strange Power's Employ, Move on a Rigorous Line - (1968) - novella
• Cage of Brass - (1968) - short story
• High Weir - (1968) - novelette
• Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones - (1968) - novelette
• Omegahelm - (1981) - short story
• Prismatica - (1977) - novelette
• Ruins - (1968) - short story
• Dog in a Fisherman's Net - (1971) - short story
• Night and the Loves of Joe Dicostanzo - (1970) - short story
• Among the Blobs - (1988) - short story
• Citre et Trans - novelette
• Eric, Gwen, and D. H. Lawrence's Esthetic of Unrectified Feeling - (1991) - novelette

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is a science fiction masterpiece, an essay on the inexplicability of sexual attractiveness, and an examination of interstellar politics among far-flung worlds. First published in 1984, the novel's central issues - technology, globalization, gender, sexuality, and multiculturalism - have only become more pressing with the passage of time.

The novel's topic is information itself: What are the repercussions, once it has been made public, that two individuals have been found to be each other's perfect erotic object out to "point nine-nine-nine and several nines percent more"? What will it do to the individuals involved, to the city they inhabit, to their geosector, to their entire world society, especially when one is an illiterate worker, the sole survivor of a world destroyed by "cultural fugue," and the other is - you!

During an action on the third planet from Arcturus, soldier Cal Truent woke up in the hospital with a sixteen-hour hole in his memory. No one knows what it is that Cal has forgotten, but his superiors can't take the chance that it might be something deadly to his fellow soldiers - and to Earth.

Somehow Cal means to seek out whatever it is that his mind is resisting...

Years ago, when plagues and natural disasters killed millions of people, much of the world stopped dreaming. Without dreams, people are haunted, sick, mad, unable to rebuild. The government soon finds that the Indigenous people of North America have retained their dreams, an ability rumored to be housed in the very marrow of their bones. Soon, residential schools pop up--or are re-opened--across the land to bring in the dreamers and harvest their dreams.

Seventeen-year-old French lost his family to these schools and has spent the years since heading north with his new found family: a group of other dreamers, who, like him, are trying to build and thrive as a community. But then French wakes up in a pitch-black room, locked in and alone for the first time in years, and he knows immediately where he is--and what it will take to escape.

Meanwhile, out in the world, his found family searches for him and dodges new dangers--school Recruiters, a blood cult, even the land itself. When their paths finally collide, French must decide how far he is willing to go--and how many loved ones is he willing to betray--in order to survive. This engrossing, action-packed, deftly-drawn novel expands on the world of Cherie Dimaline's award-winning The Marrow Thieves, and it will haunt readers long after they've turned the final page.

In a future society where various alien races mix with humans, twelve-year-old Nuri performs crimes for Vadith until the day she is called away from her home in the slums by an irresistible song only she can hear. Nuri ends up in a secret training facility with the cream of Terra's youth, who are all competing for the ultimate prize. This magnificent Sci-Fi story masterfully creates a whole futuristic universe while maintaining focus on Nuri's rich inner world.

Two years ago, a misunderstanding between the leaders of Earth and the invading Ilori resulted in the deaths of one-third of the world's population.

Today, seventeen-year-old Ellie Baker survives in an Ilori-controlled center in New York City. With humans deemed dangerously volatile because of their initial reaction to the invasion, emotional expression can be grounds for execution. Music, art and books are illegal, but Ellie still keeps a secret library.

When young Ilori commander M0Rr1S finds Ellie's library, he's duty-bound to deliver her for execution. The trouble is, he finds himself drawn to human music and in desperate need of more.

Humanity's fate rests in the hands of an alien Ellie should fear, but M0Rr1S has a potential solution--thousands of miles away. The two embark on a wild and dangerous journey with a bag of books and their favorite albums, all the while creating a story and a song of their own that just might save them both.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, December 2015.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

God was in his Heaven – which was fifteen miles away, due east.

Far in Earth's future, in a post-utopian hell-hole, Hanson works ten solid back-breaking hours a day, shoveling endless mountains of coal, within sight of the iridescent wall that separates what’s left of humanity from their gods.

One day, after a tragedy of his own making, Hanson leaves the city, not knowing what he will do, or how he will survive in the wilderness without work. He finds himself drawn to the wall, to the elusive promise of God. And when the impossible happens, he steps through, into the city beyond.

The impossible was only the beginning.

This is an expansion of the novella The City of God.

This short story originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November-December 2013. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection (2014), edited by Gardner Dozois.

This short story originally appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Issue 24, September-Octorber 2018.

Read the full story for free at Uncanny.

Ahmed is a doctor working in a far flung outpost of humanity. His way was paid for by the leaders of his faith and his atheism is a guarded secret. His encounters with the "kite people" will cause him to doubt his whole worldview however when the aliens start dying and escalating tensions between religious extremists threatens to destroy the colony's peace. WHEN THE STARS ARE SCATTERED is a moving story about alien contact, religious intolerance, and the redemptive power of the divine channeled through the spirit.

Whether that spirit is human or alien.

In the days of the great sailing ships, in the mid-twenty-first century, when magnetic sails drew cargo and passengers alike to every corner of the solar system, sailors had the highest status of all spacemen, and the crew of the luxury liner the River of Stars, the highest among all sailors.

But development of the Farnsworth fusion drive doomed the sailing ships, and now the River of Stars is the last of its kind, retrofitted with engines, her mast vestigial, her sails unraised for years. An ungainly hybrid, she operates in the late years of the century as a mere tramp freighter among the outer planets, and her crew is a motley group of misfits. Stepan Gorgas is the escapist executive officer who becomes captain. Ramakrishnan Bhatterji is the chief engineer who disdains him. Eugenie Satterwaithe, once a captain herself, is third officer and, for form's sake, sailing master.

When an unlikely and catastrophic engine failure strikes the River, Bhatterji is confident he can effect repairs with heroic engineering, but Satterwaithe and the other sailors among the crew plot to save her with a glorious last gasp for the old ways, mesmerized by a vision of arriving at Jupiter proudly under sail. The story of their doom has the power, the poetry, and the inevitability of a Greek tragedy.

Table of Contents:

• A Sort of Introduction - essay by David Gerrold
• What Makes a Cage, Jamie Knows - shortstory by Scott Bradfield
• I'll Be Waiting for You When the Swimming Pool is Empty - shortstory by James Tiptree, Jr.
• In a Sky of Daemons - novelette by Laurence Yep
• The Last Ghost - shortstory by Stephen Goldin
• Afternoon with a Dead Bus - shortstory by David Gerrold
• Eyes of Onyx - shortstory by Edward Bryant
• The World Where Wishes Worked - shortstory by Stephen Goldin
• Cold, the Fire of the Phoenix - (1971) - shortstory by Leo P. Kelley
• Oasis - shortstory by Pamela Sargent
• Holdholtzer's Box - shortstory by David R. Bunch
• The Five-Dimensional Sugar Cube - shortstory by Roger Deeley
• And Watch the Smog Roll In... - shortstory by Barry Alan Weissman
• Chances Are - shortstory by Alice Laurance
• The Naked and the Unashamed - shortstory by Robert E. Margroff
• My Country, Right or Wrong - shortstory by Andrew J. Offutt
• Side Effect - novelette by Pg Wyal

Humanity's first contact with alien life is no less than a nightmare, as the Ahimsa take control of Earth and force humanity to do their bidding. Soon, Earth's most skilled strike force, composed of Russian, American, and Israeli experts in the art of war and espionage, find themselves aboard the Ahimsa vessel, training for an offensive attack against a distant space station.

And as they struggle to overcome their own prejudices while preparing to face an enemy of unknown capabilities, none of them realize that the greatest danger to humanity's future is right in their midst....

The world beyond tomorrow... the unopened future which lies at a point far distant from the early, fumbling attempts at space flight of our times.

It is the future of mankind among the stars -- but also a future of intrigue and treachery!

This is the story of a Galactic civilisation which has split against itself and on whose shambles a ruthless warlord of the stars has built a barbaric empire. Persistently striving to topple his autocratic power is the Mutant League, a band of mentally powerful supernormals who style themselves the "inheritors of wisdom and power".

Enter into this fantastic future in company with the man and the girl who dare to battle against the might of the New Empire -- and who hold a guarded, vital secret. Travel with them in their urgent, hunted and hounded flight across the far-flung void of interstellar space and among the myriad worlds of peril of the starways.

As princess of the island kingdom Visidia, Amora Montara has spent her entire life training to be High Animancer--the master of souls. The rest of the realm can choose their magic, but for Amora, it's never been a choice. To secure her place as heir to the throne, she must prove her mastery of the monarchy's dangerous soul magic.

When her demonstration goes awry, Amora is forced to flee. She strikes a deal with Bastian, a mysterious pirate: he'll help her prove she's fit to rule, if she'll help him reclaim his stolen magic.

But sailing the kingdom holds more wonder--and more peril--than Amora anticipated. A destructive new magic is on the rise, and if Amora is to conquer it, she'll need to face legendary monsters, cross paths with vengeful mermaids, and deal with a stow-away she never expected... or risk the fate of Visidia and lose the crown forever.

From the earliest days of modern science fiction, Canada has given readers some of the most important authors in the field -- and many of the finest stories. World Fantasy Award-winning editor David G. Hartwell has teamed up with Canadian writer and critic Glenn Grant to compile Northern Stars, an anthology of stories by the writers who have built Canada's rich science fiction tradition, providing a definitive overview of science fiction's northern frontier.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (1994) essay by Glenn Grant
• "We Have Met the Alien (And It Is Us)" (1985) essay by Judith Merril
• "A Niche" (1990) novelette by Peter Watts
• "Mother Lode" (1973) novelette by Phyllis Gotlieb
• "Home by the Sea" (1985) short story by Élisabeth Vonarburg (translation of "La maison au bord de la mer")
• "Under Another Moon" (1990) novelette by Dave Duncan
• "Remember, the Dead Say" (1992) short story by Jean-Louis Trudel
• "One" (1987) novelette by Heather Spears
• "The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Writer" (1982) short story by Lesley Choyce
• "User Friendly" (1986) short story by Spider Robinson
• "Distant Signals" (1984) short story by Andrew Weiner
• "The Woman Who Is the Midnight Wind" (1985) short story by Terence M. Green
• "The Winter Market" (1985) novelette by William Gibson
• "The Byrds" (1983) short story by Michael G. Coney
• "Soluble-Fish" (1987) shortfiction by Joël Champetier
• "Memetic Drift" (1990) short story by Glenn Grant
• "The Reckoning of Gifts" (1992) novelette by James Alan Gardner
• "The Cauldron (Excerpt) [Courtship Rite Universe]" (1994) shortfiction by Donald Kingsbury
• "Happy Days in Old Chernobyl" (1987) short story by Claude-Michel Prévost (translation of "La marquise de Tchernobyl")
• "Pity the Monsters" (1991) short story by Charles de Lint
• "Carpe Diem" (1989) short story by Eileen Kernaghan
• "Xils" (1987) short story by Esther Rochon
• "Stolen Fires" (1991) short story by Yves Meynard
• "Retrieval" (1987) short story by John Park
• "Outport" (1992) short story by Garfield Reeves-Stevens
• "Just Like Old Times" (1993) short story by Robert J. Sawyer
• "Stardust Boulevard" (1981) short story by Daniel Sernine
• "Ballads in 3/4 Time" (1987) short story by Robert Charles Wilson
• "(Learning About) Machine Sex" (1988) short story by Candas Jane Dorsey
• "Towards a Real Speculative Literature: Writer as Asymptote" (1990) essay by Candas Jane Dorsey
• "Canadian SF Awards" (1994) essay by the editors

Table of Contents:

• 1 - The Longest Voyage - essay by Isaac Asimov
• 7 - The Burning of the Brain - [The Instrumentality of Mankind] - short story by Cordwainer Smith
• 19 - Home the Hard Way - novelette by Richard McKenna
• 49 - Potential - short story by Robert Sheckley
• 69 - Bill for Delivery - [Federation of Humanity] - short story by Christopher Anvil
• 91 - Story of a Curse - short story by Doris Pitkin Buck
• 97 - The Oceans Are Wide - novella by Frank M. Robinson
• 177 - Far Centaurus - short story by A. E. van Vogt
• 203 - The Ship Who Sang - [The Ship Who ...] - novelette by Anne McCaffrey
• 227 - Avoidance Situation - novelette by James McConnell
• 273 - Chance Encounter - [John Grimes] - short story by A. Bertram Chandler
• 295 - Allamagoosa - short story by Eric Frank Russell
• 313 - Founding Father - short story by Isaac Asimov
• 323 - Wings Out of Shadow - [Berserker] - novelette by Fred Saberhagen

The man from Earth.

He was a prisoner on an alien planet. He knew neither his name nor his crime; his mind had been as tightly sealed by his captors as his cell. But he would stand trial for a galactic atrocity he could not remember - and those he could not know would judge him...

The age-old question about alien existence and human contact is explored in a new way in this collection of six novellas, previously anthologized in ANOLOG magazine. When disillusioned aerospace engineer Adrian Mast buys a book at a remainder sale, the last things he expects to find in its appendix are alien spacecraft designs. With the help of the bookstore owner, Adrian tracks down the author—only to find him in a mental institution anguishing over the intentions of the aliens who sent the designs to him. By bluffing a bureaucrat intent on thwarting their progress, the two friends continue their quest for the stars and go ahead with the spacecraft designs. Having successfully launched their ship 15 years later, the questions that remain are: What were the intentions of the aliens? and Is mankind ready to face what's out there?

It meant little to young Robert Fairlie, a serious and dedicated philologist, that in this year 1966 the United States and Soviet Russia were contentious about the Moon. He had little interest in the first two rocket landings on the moon, and the bases that the two nations had built there. He knew nothing at all of the shattering discovery that the Americans had made there.

For what had been found was of such explosive potentialities that it had to be kept top-secret--the discovery that space had already been conquered long ago by races who had once spanned the stars. So that men who had expected to spend decades in reaching the nearest planet, found suddenly in their hands the way to the wider universe.

Fairlie, drawn unexpectedly because of his special knowledge into this greatest of secrets, finds that a guarded New Mexico rocket-base is only the first step of the way. That way leads out amid the unexplored stars to the lost heartworld of those space-conquerors of long ago. And it leads Fairlie and others into the appalling reality of stellar space still haunted by the past cosmic struggle whose scale in space and time dwarfs the rivalries of tiny Earth's quarreling nations.

So, here's the thing: Cleo and her friends really, truly didn't mean to steal this spaceship.

They just wanted to know why, twenty years ago, the entire Providence crew vanished without a trace. But then the stupid dark matter engine started all on its own, and now these four twenty-somethings are en route to Proxima Centauri, unable to turn around, and being harangued by a snarky hologram that has the face and attitude of the ship's missing captain, Billie.

Cleo has dreamt of being an astronaut all her life, and Earth is kind of a lost cause at this point, so this should be one of those blessings in disguise that people talk about. But as the ship gets deeper into space, the laws of physics start twisting, old mysteries come crawling back to life, and Cleo's initially combative relationship with Billie turns into something deeper and more desperate than either woman was prepared for.

Top Israeli scientist, Arnie Klein, "defects" to Denmark in order to protect his discovery, the secret of simple, economic space travel by use of the "Daleth effect". He wishes to develop the idea without it falling into the hands of the military, since it also has potential as a weapon. But he is forced to reveal his secret to the world when the Daleth effect unit is fitted to a submarine which is sent into space to rescue two stranded Soviet cosmonauts.

Klein and his friends are then subjected to all kinds of international pressure from people wanting the secret.

The spaceship "Agfalon," lost in space while searching for desperately needed fissionable materials, finds a planet rich in fissionables. The planet turns out to be a nearly-destroyed Earth in the distant future, and the two peoples must find common ground to solve both their problems.

Table of Contents:

• 7 - Preface (Tomorrow, the Stars) - (1952) - essay by Robert A. Heinlein (variant of Introduction (Tomorrow, the Stars))
• 19 - I'm Scared - (1951) - short story by Jack Finney
• 33 - The Silly Season - (1950) - short story by C. M. Kornbluth
• 49 - The Report on the Barnhouse Effect - (1950) - short story by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
• 63 - The Tourist Trade - (1951) - short story by Wilson Tucker [as by Bob Tucker]
• 74 - Rainmaker - (1949) - short story by John Reese
• 88 - Absalom - (1946) - short story by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Henry Kuttner]
• 104 - The Monster - (1951) - short story by Lester del Rey
• 118 - Jay Score - [Jay Score / Marathon - 1] - (1941) - short story by Eric Frank Russell
• 136 - Betelgeuse Bridge - (1951) - short story by William Tenn
• 155 - Survival Ship - (1951) - short story by Judith Merril
• 165 - Keyhole - (1951) - short story by Murray Leinster
• 183 - Misbegotten Missionary - (1950) - short story by Isaac Asimov (variant of Green Patches)
• 200 - The Sack - (1950) - short story by William Morrison
• 221 - Poor Superman - novelette by Fritz Leiber (variant of Appointment in Tomorrow 1951)

Nine explorers aboard a powerful AI vessel, Alchemon, are sent to investigate an "anomalous biosignature" on a distant planet. But they soon realize their mission has gone to hell as deadly freakish incidents threaten their lives.

Are these events caused by the tormented psychic mysteriously put aboard at the last minute? Has the crew been targeted by a vengeful corporate psychopath? Are they part of some cruel experiment by the ship's ruthless owners? Or do their troubles originate with the strange alien lifeform retrieved from the planet? A creature that might possess an intelligence beyond human understanding or may perhaps be the spawn of some terrifying supernatural force...

Either way, as their desperation and panic sets in, one thing becomes clear: they're fighting not only for their own survival, but for the fate of all humanity.

Table of Contents:

• 5 - Introduction (The Stars Around Us) - essay by Robert Hoskins
• 11 - The Peddler's Nose - short story by Jack Williamson
• 26 - The Listeners - novelette by James E. Gunn
• 55 - Ghost Fleet - short story by Christopher Anvil
• 73 - Fondly Fahrenheit - novelette by Alfred Bester
• 93 - With Redfern on Capella XII - novelette by Frederik Pohl
• 117 - Underfollow - short story by John Jakes
• 129 - The Feeling of Power - short story by Isaac Asimov
• 139 - The Helping Hand - novelette by Poul Anderson
• 166 - A Work of Art - short story by James Blish
• 184 - The Great Slow Kings - short story by Roger Zelazny

Come for the apocalypse.
Stay for cupcakes.
Die for love.

Madeleine Cost is working to become the youngest person ever to win the Archibald Prize for portraiture. Her elusive cousin Tyler is the perfect subject: androgynous, beautiful, and famous. All she needs to do is pin him down for the sittings.

None of her plans factored in the Spires: featureless, impossible, spearing into the hearts of cities across the world – and spraying clouds of sparkling dust into the wind.

Is it an alien invasion? Germ warfare? They are questions everyone on Earth would like answered, but Madeleine has a more immediate problem. At Ground Zero of the Sydney Spire, beneath the collapsed ruin of St James Station, she must make it to the surface before she can hope to find out if the world is ending.

Warning: Contains swearing, sexual situations, and Australians.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, April 2015.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Somewhere on the outer rim of the universe, a mass of decaying world-ships known as the Legion is traveling in the seams between the stars. For generations, a war for control of the Legion has been waged, with no clear resolution. As worlds continue to die, a desperate plan is put into motion.

Zan wakes with no memory, prisoner of a people who say they are her family. She is told she is their salvation - the only person capable of boarding the Mokshi, a world-ship with the power to leave the Legion. But Zan's new family is not the only one desperate to gain control of the prized ship. Zan finds that she must choose sides in a genocidal campaign that will take her from the edges of the Legion's gravity well to the very belly of the world.

Zan will soon learn that she carries the seeds of the Legion's destruction - and its possible salvation. But can she and her ragtag band of followers survive the horrors of the Legion and its people long enough to deliver it?

Fleeing the final days of the generations-long war with the alien Felen, smuggler Jereth Keeven's freighter the Jonah breaks down in a strange rift in deep space, with little chance of rescue--until they encounter the research vessel Gallion, which claims to be from 152 years in the future.

The Gallion's chief engineer Uma Ozakka has always been fascinated with the past, especially the tale of the Fortunate Five, who ended the war with the Felen. When the Gallion rescues a run-down junk freighter, Ozakka is shocked to recognize the Five's legendary ship--and the Five's famed leader, Eldric Leesongronski, among the crew.

But nothing else about Leesongronski and his crewmates seems to match up with the historical record. With their ships running out of power in the rift, more than the lives of both crews may be at stake...

Arguably the greatest collaboration in the whole history of comedy!

Bestselling author Douglas Adams wrote the storyline based on his CD-ROM game of the same name (as this novel, not as him, obviously).

Terry Jones of Monty Python wrote the book. In the nude! Parents be warned! Most of the words in this book were written by a naked man!

So. You want to argue with that? All right, we give in.

Starship Titanic is the greatest, most fabulous, most technologically advanced interstellar cruise line ever built. It is like a cross between the Queen Mary, the Chrysler Building, Tutankhamen's tomb, and Venice. Furthermore, it cannot possibly go wrong....

Sadly, however, seconds after its launch it undergoes SMEF, or Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure. And disappears.

Except, everything's got to be somewhere.

Coming home that night, on a little known planet called Earth, Dan and Lucy Gibson find something very large and very, very shiny sticking into their house...

Nour has just lost her father to cancer, and her mother moves Nour and her sisters from New York City back to Syria to be closer to their family. In order to keep her father's spirit alive as she adjusts to her new home, Nour tells herself their favorite story--the tale of Rawiya, a twelfth-century girl who disguised herself as a boy in order to apprentice herself to a famous mapmaker.

But the Syria Nour's parents knew is changing, and it isn't long before the war reaches their quiet Homs neighborhood. When a shell destroys Nour's house and almost takes her life, she and her family are forced to choose: stay and risk more violence or flee across seven countries of the Middle East and North Africa in search of safety--along the very route Rawiya and her mapmaker took eight hundred years before in their quest to chart the world. As Nour's family decides to take the risk, their journey becomes more and more dangerous, until they face a choice that could mean the family will be separated forever.

ALONE AGAINST AN EMPIRE.

When Yash of Zeltah arrives in the fortress city of Honaq, she is greeted as a barbarian, a simple pawn. Her marriage to prince Chej has been arranged, they say, to avert war. Yet she knows the truth, for the armies already ravage the land.

A skilled and deadly assassin, there is more to Yash than any might suspect. Before another day can pass, she must defeat the masters of the nine towers - the plagues, magics, and monsters they control, the soldiers they command. Without raising an alarm, she must kill all who oppose her - even the immortal emperor. The lives and souls of Zeltah, the people and the land upon which they live, all depend on it.

"We're going to be fine."

He looks around, but there's nothing out here: nothing but the bottomless black universe on their left, the Earth suspended in glorious Technicolor to their right.

Trapped in the vast void of space, Carys and Max have only ninety minutes of oxygen left to live. None of this was supposed to happen. After a freak accident, Carys and Max are left adrift in space with nothing to hold onto but each other. As they fall, they can't help but look back at the world they left behind: a world whose rules they couldn't submit to, a place where they never really belonged; a home they're determined to get back to because they've come too far to lose each other now. While their air ticks dangerously low, one is offered the chance of salvation--but who will take it?

"I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger..." writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up "1922," the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King. For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness.

In "Big Driver," a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the stranger along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a shortcut home after a book-club engagement. Violated and left for dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself.

"Fair Extension," the shortest of these tales, is perhaps the nastiest and certainly the funniest. Making a deal with the devil not only saves Dave Streeter from a fatal cancer but provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment.

When her husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his business trips, Darcy Anderson looks for batteries in the garage. Her toe knocks up against a box under a worktable and she discovers the stranger inside her husband. It's a horrifying discovery, rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitively ends a good marriage.

Like Different Seasons and Four Past Midnight, which generated such enduring films as The Shawshank Redemption and Stand by Me, Full Dark, No Stars proves Stephen King a master of the long story form.

Nebula Award winning short story. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March 1985. The story can also 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, The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction: A 40th Anniversary Anthology (1989), edited by Edward L. Ferman, The Norton Book of Science Fiction: North American Science Fiction, 1960-1990 (1993), edited by Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery, Future on Ice (1998), edited by Orson Scott Card, New Skies: An Anthology of Today's Science Fiction (2003), edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and Women of Futures Past (2016), edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

It is included in the collections Trinity and Other Stories (1985) and The Best of Nancy Kress (2015).

In a distant future in which the empire of humanity has spread throughout the stars, the Xenic Bureau of the Grand Ekumenical Security Directorate investigates any hint of aliens, strange disappearances, or other anomalous events. When rumors spread of the mysterious reappearance of a long-lost battleship, a priest, an alien-killer, and a cashiered starship engineer find themselves caught up in a chase across the empire and into secrets better left forgotten.

This short story originally appeared on Sci Fiction, September 28, 2005. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection (2006), edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collections From Earth to Mars and Beyond: Ten Science Fiction Short Stories (Nestvold, 2013) and Almost All the Way Home from the Stars (Nestvold and Lake, 2013).

Hugo- and Nebula-nominated Novella

Jay Lake's critically acclaimed novella takes a new look at a classic theme. A world strictly governed by religious dogma is challenged by a scientist who has discovered a key piece of information challenging long-held beliefs. An intricately created alternate world provides a fascinating backdrop and a new twist to this classic dilemma.

This story is available in the collections Two Stories (2011) by Jay Lake and Ken Scholes as well as the collection The Last Plain to Heaven (2015). It was anthologized in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Eighth Annual Collection (2011), edited by Garnder Dozois

Read the fulll story for free at Tor.com.

At last, Up Through an Empty House of Stars brings together the best of the never before collected SF reviews and articles that helped build David Langford's towering reputation since 1980. Complementing the review columns collected in The Complete Critical Assembly and the knockabout essays and squibs in The Silence of the Langford, this volume's 100 glittering selections mix serious critical insight with the inimitable Langford wit. In 2002 David Langford won his sixteenth Hugo award as Best Fan Writer, for critical and humorous commentary on SF. In the same year his occasionally scandalous SF newsletter Ansible won its fifth Hugo. Langford also received the 2001 Hugo for best short story, and the 2002 Skylark Award. Here he shines a unique light on classics like Ernest Bramah, G. K. Chesterton, Robert Heinlein and Jack Vance, and analyses major SF -- and major clunkers, and minor eccentrics -- of the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, continuing to the latest by such current stars as Gene Wolfe and China Mieville. Plus witty asides on crime fiction and its SF links, gleeful examination of writing so bad it's almost good, and (even at his most serious) turns of phrase to make you laugh aloud.

This short story originally appeared in the anthology Orbit 14 (1974), edited by Damon Knight, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, July 2013. The story can also be found in the anthologies Another World: Adventures in Otherness (1977) and Galileo's Children: Tales of Science vs. Superstition (2005), both edited by Gardner Dozois. The story is included in the collections The Wind's Twelve Quarters (1975) and The Wind's Twelve Quarters & The Compass Rose (2015).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, August 2013. It can also be found in the anthologies Space Opera (2014), edited by Rich Horton and Warrior Women (2015), edited by Paula Guran.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

This Sturgeon Award nominated short story originally appeared in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, #244, February 2018. It can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year: Volume Thirteen (2019), edited by Jonathan Strahan, and The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2019, edited by Rich Horton.

Read the full story for free at Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

What responsibilities do we have to isolate ourselves from the bacteria, viruses, and other life of another world, and to prevent any of that alien biome from being brought back to Earth?

What happens when a group of humans are stranded for centuries on another world with no choice but to expose themselves to that world? After such long exposure, are they still Homo sapiens or have they become another species entirely?

These questions are at the heart of this intriguing novel, explored through the complicated lives and the viewpoints of the people who have come to rescue the stranded colony, the members of that colony, and the sentient alien life that dwells on the planet. Difficult life and death choices will be made by all involved.

Hal Bregg is an astronaut who returns from a space mission in which only 10 biological years have passed for him, while 127 years have elapsed on earth. He finds that the earth has changed beyond recognition, filled with human beings who have been medically neutralized. How does an astronaut join a civilization that shuns risk?

"We're mysterious aliens in the crowd. We jump like fleas from future to past and back again, and float like clouds of gas between nebulae; in a flash, we can reach the edge of the universe, or tunnel into a quark, or swim within a star-core... We're as unassuming as fireflies, yet our numbers grow like grass in spring. We sci-fi fans are people from the future." ? Cixin Liu, from the essay "Sci-Fi Fans"

A VIEW FROM THE STARS features a range of short works from the past three decades of New York Times bestselling author Cixin Liu's prolific career, putting his nonfiction essays and short stories side-by-side for the first time. This collection includes essays and interviews that shed light on Liu's experiences as a reader, writer, and lover of science fiction throughout his life, as well as short fiction that gives glimpses into the evolution of his imaginative voice over the years.

Broken Stars, edited by multi award-winning writer Ken Liu--translator of the bestselling and Hugo Award-winning novel The Three Body Problem by acclaimed Chinese author Cixin Liu -- is his second thought-provoking anthology of Chinese short speculative fiction. Following Invisible Planets, Liu has now assembled the most comprehensive collection yet available in the English language, sure to thrill and gratify readers developing a taste and excitement for Chinese SF.

Some of the included authors are already familiar to readers in the West (Liu Cixin and Hao Jingfang, both Hugo winners); some are publishing in English for the first time. Because of the growing interest in newer SFF from China, virtually every story here was first published in Chinese in the 2010s.

The stories span the range from short-shorts to novellas, and evoke every hue on the emotional spectrum. Besides stories firmly entrenched in subgenres familiar to Western SFF readers such as hard SF, cyberpunk, science fantasy, and space opera, the anthology also includes stories that showcase deeper ties to Chinese culture: alternate Chinese history, chuanyue time travel, satire with historical and contemporary allusions that are likely unknown to the average Western reader. While the anthology makes no claim or attempt to be "representative" or "comprehensive," it demonstrates the vibrancy and diversity of science fiction being written in China at this moment.

In addition, three essays at the end of the book explore the history of Chinese science fiction publishing, the state of contemporary Chinese fandom, and how the growing interest in science fiction in China has impacted writers who had long labored in obscurity.

Stories include:

• "Goodnight, Melancholy" by Xia Jia
• "The Snow of Jinyang" by Zhang Ran
• "Broken Stars" by Tang Fei
• "Submarines" by Han Song
• "Salinger and the Koreans" by Han Song
• "Under a Dangling Sky" by Cheng Jingbo
• "What Has Passed Shall in Kinder Light Appear" by Baoshu
• "The New Year Train" by Hao Jingfang
• "The Robot Who Liked to Tell Tall Tales" by Fei Dao
• "Moonlight" by Liu Cixin
• "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: Laba Porridge" by Anna Wu
• "The First Emperor's Games" by Ma Boyong
• "Reflection" by Gu Shi
• "The Brain Box" by Regina Kanyu Wang
• "Coming of the Light" by Chen Qiufan
• "A History of Future Illnesses" by Chen Qiufan

Essays:

• "A Brief Introduction to Chinese Science Fiction and Fandom," by Regina Kanyu Wang,
• "A New Continent for China Scholars: Chinese Science Fiction Studies" by Mingwei Song
• "Science Fiction: Embarrassing No More" by Fei Dao

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, July 1995, and was reprinted in Lightspeed, February 2017. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirteenth Annual Collection (1996), edited by Gardner Dozois. It is included in Voyages by Starlight (1996).

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

A feast of legends to savor - some with a shudder, some with a smile - Deadly spiders big as pumpkins consume victims who scream with joy...The saga of a man who lives alone on his own planet...Adrian Colmer, Master Probe, takes on a client who claims to be the subject of telepathic torment...An all-too-possible revolution in the United States, post-1984...How Jupiter got its thirteenth moon...And other astonishing tales.

Table of Contents

• Introduction (Songs of Stars and Shadows)
• This Tower of Ashes - (1976)
• Patrick Henry, Jupiter, and the Little Red Brick Spaceship - (1976)
• Men of Greywater Station - (1976) with Howard Waldrop
• The Lonely Songs of Laren Dorr - (1976)
• Night of the Vampyres - (1975)
• The Runners - (1975)
• Night Shift - (1973)
• ". . . For a Single Yesterday" - (1975)
• And Seven Times Never Kill Man - (1975)

The stars are ours. Again.

After an effort to disable an ancient stargate discovered on Sioux land was stymied, the local people cooperated with Federal officials and others in exploring the strange worlds linked by the alien technology. Secrets old and new are uncovered but prove difficult to explain. Who built the stargate? What connection do the builders have with the worlds and intelligent species the various doors open to reveal?

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, Issue 103, December 2018.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

In a dystopian future brought about by global warming, seventeen-year-old Nat and her hacker brother, Sam, have come by ship to the Big Island of Hawaii for their parents' Final Week. The few Americans who still live well also live long--so long that older adults bow out not by natural means but by buying death contracts from the corporates who now run the disintegrating society, keeping the people happy through a constant diet of "pharma."

Nat's family is spending their pharma-guided last week at a luxury resort complex called the Twilight Island Acropolis. Deeply conflicted about her parents' decision, Nat spends her time keeping a record of everything her family does in the company-supplied diary that came in the hotel's care package. While Nat attempts to come to terms with her impending parentless future, Sam begins to discover cracks in the corporates' agenda--and eventually rebels against the company his parents have hired to handle their last days. Now Nat will have to choose a side, in this moving and suspenseful novel by a National Book Award-nominated author.

Winner of the Paterson Prize for Books for Young People

On the brink of interstellar war, life (and sex) continues. Humans, aliens, and modified humans gather at the University of All Worlds in search of knowledge... and self-knowledge... but the first bomb has fallen and the fate of this multicultural, multispecies mecca is in question. Some will rush home to make love to their wife. Or wives. Or husbands. Or indeterminate gender human and/or alien partners. Others will be forced to decide where they stand -- what is worth fighting for, or maybe even worth dying for. A thought-provoking work on sexuality and the connections between people--whether male or female, human or alien--The Stars Change is part space opera, part literary mosaic of story, poem, and art.

Who will save us from the lobsters from outer space?

It is New York City, 1953. Young pulp-fiction writer Kurt Jastrow's world is thrown into disarray when two extraterrestrial lobster-like creatures arrive at the NBC studios. Though rabid fans of Kurt's "scientific" alter-ego, loveable scientist Uncle Wonder, they also judge that the audience of a religious TV program is "a hive of irrationalist vermin." To Jastrow's horror, the crustaceans scheme to vaporize two million viewers when the next show goes on the air.

Now Jastrow and his co-conspirators have a mere forty hours to produce a script so explicitly rational and yet utterly absurd that it will somehow deter the aliens from their diabolical scheme...

Helton Strom is just a guy between contracts when he runs afoul of officialdom and pirates. He is left with nothing but the clothes on his back, not even citizenship to his name. Is the ancient, broken down military surplus starship and the young lady living aboard it the key to a bright future, or will his repairs and new mercenary friends reawaken the demons lurking in the ship's murky and lethal past to come back and deliver a world of destruction?

Niven returns with the sequel to his most recent collection, Scatterbrain, which gathers an equally engaging assortment of Niven's latest work, all in one captivating volume. Here are choice excerpts from his most recent novels, including Ringworld's Child, as well as short stories, non-fiction, interviews, editorials, collaborations, and correspondence. Stars and Gods roams all over a wide variety of fascinating topics, from space stations to conventional etiquette.

Give yourself a treat, and feel free to pick the brain of one of modern science fiction's most fascinating thinkers.

In a world nearly destroyed by a cataclysmic natural disaster, a young metalsmith leaves his own people to seek out some of the ancient skills and knowledge.

She can see, but she cannot forestall... Gwennan Daggert, caught in an underworld of eternity, of hellish nightmares and beautiful dreams, of time and no time, must now fulfill the destiny she can no longer deny.

Tor Lyle, a mysterious man of an ancient family, is a force of evil in an unbreakable cycle of doom. They descend from the here and now into a struggle between good and evil older than Earth. Against an apocalyptic dream of disaster and a battle to save those who will inherit the Earth, these two forces must solve the mysteries of the stars and of eternal fate. Deep within them, they hold the keys that unlock the future, but they must first break the chain of terror and destruction.

Alvin, a member of an advanced race from the planet Caiendon, travels to Earth to search for the answer to a plague threatening his planet, and for the lost soul of his intended, Nataea.

Wanderlust runs in Kivita Vondir's blood. She dreamed of salvaging like her father when she was young, and now it's her addiction, getting her through pit stops filled with cheap alcohol and cheaper companionship and distracting her from her broken heart. Her latest contract to hunt down a fabled gemstone is exactly the kind of adventure she craves. But this job is more than meets the eye. For one thing, her duplicitous employer has hired rebel Sar Redryll - Kivita's former lover - to stop her at any cost. For another, Kivita's recovery of the relic unleashes in her powerful new abilities. Abilities that everyone in the Cetturo Arm - human, alien, and in between - desperately wishes to control....

As she avoids a massive galactic manhunt, Kivita teams up with two unlikely allies: Sar and his enigmatic new partner. Only, as the gem's mysteries are revealed and danger draws near, Kivita begins to wonder if her ex has truly changed or if he's just waiting for the right moment to betray her once again.

The man from outer space. Who was Jon Wood? Jon himself did not know. He was a space orphan, found as an infant abandoned in the outer galaxy.

He grew up an Earthling, with only his mysterious psychic powers to set him apart - until the strange and beautiful creature named Venus Trine gasped out his true identity... and his fearful mission.

Now he knew. And the non-stop adventure and danger began - as Jon hunted and was hunted by the monstrous being, Trog, juggling time and space, leaping the stars and the centuries. For Jon alone could stand up to this evil beyond man's wildest imaginings...

A collection of short stories by the award-winning American science fiction writer, Frederik Pohl. They range from the lighthearted "The High Test" to the longest of the collection, "The Sweet, Sad Queen of the Grazing Star", a sinister story involving business and mobster rivalry.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1984)
• The Sweet, Sad Queen of the Grazing Isles - (1984) - novella by Frederik Pohl
• The High Test - (1983) - shortstory by Frederik Pohl
• Spending a Day at the Lottery Fair - (1983) - shortstory by Frederik Pohl
• Second Coming - (1983) - shortstory by Frederik Pohl
• Enjoy, Enjoy - (1974) - shortstory by Frederik Pohl
• Growing Up in Edge City - (1975) - shortstory by Frederik Pohl
• We Purchased People - (1974) - shortstory by Frederik Pohl
• Rem The Rememberer - (1977) - shortstory by Frederik Pohl
• The Mother Trip - (1975) - shortstory by Frederik Pohl
• A Day in the Life of Able Charlie - (1976) - shortstory by Frederik Pohl
• The Way It Was - (1977) - shortstory by Frederik Pohl
• Introduction to the Translation (The Wizard-Masters of Peng-Shi Angle) - essay by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre
• The Wizard-Masters of Peng-Shi Angle - novelette by Frederik Pohl
• Notes (The Wizard-Masters of Peng-Shi Angle) - essay by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre

Starships return, in the distant future, to find Earth incredibly changed; telepathic Earth children journey to the City to discover the secret of this strange new society.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, August 2016. It can also be found in the anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection (2017), edited by Gardner Dozois.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

For 2,000 years, the starship Astron has search the galaxy for alien life - without success. Now, just as the ship is falling apart, the only direction left to explore is across the Dark, a 100-generation journey through empty space.The ship's captain - immortal, obessed - refuses to abandon the quest. He will cross the Dark, or destroy the ship trying.

Only Sparrow, a young crewman uncertain of his own past, can stand against the captain, and against the lure and challenge of the dark beyond the stars....

Life on Earth was intolerable - and yet Man had stayed there, his dreams and potential suffocating under the dead weight of bureaucracy.

The stars were attainable - thanks to the Infall Drive - but only a few heard the call of deep space. Some had already gone to colonise a new world. The second ship was ready at last. Ready to escape the Earth's prison; ready to seek refuge in deepest space. But it wasn't only freedom that awaited it...

Deep in the Hungarian woods, the sacred magic of King Solomon lives on in his descendants. Gathering under the midnight stars, they pray, sing and perform small miracles - and none are more gifted than the great Rabbi Isaac and his three daughters. Each one is blessed with a unique talent - whether it be coaxing plants to grow, or predicting the future by reading the path of the stars.

When a fateful decision to help an outsider ends in an accusation of witchcraft, fire blazes through their village. Rabbi Isaac and his family are forced to flee, to abandon their magic and settle into a new way of life. But a dark fog is making its way across Europe and will, in the end, reach even those who thought they could run from it. Each of the sisters will have to make a choice - and change the future of their family forever.

Table of Contents:

• Legwork - (1956) - novelette
• Diabologic - (1955) - short story
• Allamagoosa - (1955) - short story
• The Waitabits - (1955) - novelette
• The Timeless Ones - (1952) - short story
• P.S. - (1953) - short story

The space-faring Yherajk have come to Earth to meet us and to begin humanity's first interstellar friendship. There's just one problem: They're hideously ugly and they smell like rotting fish.

So getting humanity's trust is a challenge. The Yherajk need someone who can help them close the deal.

Enter Thomas Stein, who knows something about closing deals. He's one of Hollywood's hottest young agents. But although Stein may have just concluded the biggest deal of his career, it's quite another thing to negotiate for an entire alien race. To earn his percentage this time, he's going to need all the smarts, skills, and wits he can muster.

read "Agent to the Stars" online

Ironically, for Gilbert Snook, who considered himself the human equivalent of a neutrino, a particle able to travel through the Earth without disturbing any other particle, it all started with the panic that followed the sighting of the anti neutrino planet as it approached Earth. Earth was unaffected but Snook ended up in a small African Republic teaching English to diamond miners. Then the miners started seeing ghosts and Snook found himself at the centre of a bizarre and far reaching scientific discovery and in the middle of some very dirty political infighting.

Hugo, Nebula and Wold Fantasy Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 2007. The story can also be found in the anthology Nebula Awards Showcase 2009, edited by Ellen Datlow. It is included in the collections Dagger Key and Other Stories (2007) and The Best of Lucius Shepard (2008).

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1969) - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Shark Ship - (1958) - novelette by C. M. Kornbluth (variant of Reap the Dark Tide)
• Polity and Custom of the Camiroi - (1967) - shortstory by R. A. Lafferty
• Coming-of-Age Day - (1965) - shortstory by A. K. Jorgensson
• Heresies of the Huge God - (1966) - shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss
• The Streets of Ashkelon - (1962) - shortstory by Harry Harrison
• The Totally Rich - (1963) - novelette by John Brunner
• Impostor - (1953) - shortstory by Philip K. Dick
• Road to Nightfall - (1958) - novelette by Robert Silverberg
• The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World - (1968) - novelette by Harlan Ellison
• Psychosmosis - (1966) - shortstory by David I. Masson
• The Cage of Sand - (1962) - novelette by J. G. Ballard
• A Deskful of Girls - (1958) - novelette by Fritz Leiber
• On the Wall of the Lodge - (1962) - novelette by James Blish and Virginia Kidd
• Masks - (1968) - shortstory by Damon Knight
• Keepers of the House - (1956) - shortstory by Lester del Rey
• Journey's End - (1957) - shortstory by Poul Anderson

Table of Contents:

• A Happy Day in 2381 - (1970) - shortstory
• After the Myths Went Home - (1969) - shortstory
• Passengers - (1968) - shortstory
• To Be Continued - (1956) - shortstory
• Nightwings - (1968) - novella
• We Know Who We Are - (1970) - shortstory
• The Pleasure of Their Company - (1970) - novelette
• The Songs of Summer - (1956) - shortstory
• A Man of Talent - (1966) - shortstory
• Collecting Team - (1956) - shortstory
• Going Down Smooth - (1968) - shortstory

A knowledge-hungry young man sets out on a quest to locate a legendary spaceport in a far-future society that has reverted to primitive tribalism.

More than a thousand years have passed since humankind intentionally destroyed its treacherous technology, choosing to revert back to a primitive tribal state. In this society the rusting brain cases of long-inert robots are considered trophies, and the scant knowledge that has survived is doled out to an inquisitive few in monastery-like "universities." It is at one such center of learning that young Tom Cushing first reads of the legendary "Place of Going to the Stars," rumored to exist on a high butte somewhere in the western part of the land. Driven by enthusiasm and an insatiable need to track the myth to its source, Tom sets out on an amazing trek across what was once called "America," teaming up with a witch, the world's last remaining robot, and other odd companions. But all the astonishing discoveries and dangers they encounter along the way will pale before the revelations that await them at journey's end.

Clifford D. Simak, award-winning science fiction Grand Master, offers a breathtaking vision of the future that is both dystopian and hopeful in equal measure. In A Heritage of Stars, he boldly displays the heart, intelligence, and awesome imaginative powers that have established him as one of the all-time greatest authors of speculative fiction.

Three men, each driven by secret reasons, volunteered to take the strangest trip since the beginning of time:

GORDON--filled with a need for power, enough power to wipe out the memory of an earlier terrible shame.

LOCKWOOD--to whom life was worth very little without Susan--maybe it was worth nothing at all.

STANTON--a man haunted by the knowledge that a special and mysterious fate awaited him.

Behind them were their pasts. Ahead of them--infinity.

In this different and suspense-filled novel, the author of Donovan's Brain tells the story of a strange quest whose outcome might mean the difference between survival and extinction for mankind.

Lucy Snyder's stories are the sort that carry you away to unusual places, usually dark ones, and this collection is a perfect example. As the follow-up to the Bram Stoker Award winning collection Soft Apocalypses, it contains plenty of darkly imaginative tales. Many of these stories, including the title piece, are heavily influenced by the work of H.P. Lovecraft and The King in Yellow mythos. They whisper madly among each other creating weird echoes. Like the black stars of theoretical astronomy they are dense entities born from polarization so strong that instead of collapsing into nothingness, a black hole, they instead form dark constellations burning dimly with spectral light.

Table of Contents:

• 7 - Mostly Monsters
• 10 - Spinwebs
• 19 - The Strange Architecture of the Heart
• 28 - Approaching Lavender
• 41 - Dura Mater
• 49 - The Still-Life Drama of Passing Cars
• 54 - Through Thy Bounty
• 65 - Cthylla
• 83 - While the Black Stars Burn
• 92 - The Abomination of Fensmere
• 110 - The Girl with the Star-Stained Soul
• 122 - Jessie Shimmer Goes to Hell
• 135 - Fable Fusion

Centuries after the big smash, the successor civilization of Aquaria more or less flourishes on the west coast of what was once the United States, a society built on White Science, following the "law of muscle, sun, wind and water."

Only the sorcerers of Space Systems, Inc., dare traffic in the "Black Sciences" of atomic, petroleum and physics which destroyed the old golden age of space, for they alone know of the higher destiny that awaits man in the abandoned Big Ear space station. For centuries, they have secretly infiltrated Aquarius through the gray town of La Mirage while crafting a spaceship capable of reaching the Big Ear and turning man's ears once more to the mysterious Songs from the Stars.

But when they finally confront the interstellar brotherhood of sentient beings, they find, each in his way, that The Galactic Way utterly transcends their hopes, wildest dreams and darkest fears.

Starshine -- the eerie, unmistakable fire of Ted Sturgeon's genius -- lights up unforgettably these stories of now and tomorrow...tales of aliens from far planets, men of the spaceways and creatures of darkness. From the daring of "The World Well Lost" to the tense adventure of "The Pod and the Barrier" and the brisk fantastic humor of "Derm Fool," these are Sturgeon classics -- stories you can't forget and shouldn't miss.

Table of Contents:

• "Derm Fool" - (1940)
• The Haunt - (1941)
• Artnan Process - (1941)
• The World Well Lost - (1953)
• The Pod and the Barrier - (1957)
• How to Kill Aunty - (1961)

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1979) - essay
• Tandy's Story - (1961) - novelette
• Rule of Three - (1951) - novelette
• The Education of Drusilla Strange - (1954) - novelette
• Granny Won't Knit - (1954) - novella
• When You're Smiling - (1955) - novelette
• The Claustrophile - (1956) - novelette
• The Other Man - (1956) - novella
• The Stars Are the Styx - (1950) - novelette
• Occam's Scalpel - (1971) - novelette
• Dazed - (1971) - novelette

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...

Barlo, from the planet Raamz, is the sole survivor of the wreck of an interstellar spaceship. In his pod -- lifeboat -- he reaches a planet which has the atmosphere he needs to survive -- Earth. Befriended by young Toby Adam, Barlo is hunted down by a vigilante group, the U.S. armed forces, and Russian agents who are after Barlo's advanced knowledge of a star drive. Barlo manages to outwit the bumbling hunters, who merely succeed in obstructing one another and themselves. Barlo's eventual departure leaves both a surprise and a promise for Toby and all earthmen.

Danny grew up alone on an alien planet guided by the telepathic thoughts of unseen Zandro. Finally he makes mental contact with humans on another world and learns he is being used in a plot to conquer the universe.

Gulter, lord of the stars is determined to conquer the universe. Gulter had already owned many worlds, but he didn't own all of them.

Nights are the worst.

Those cloudless nights when a thousand eyes look down, mocking me. Because I know that Man, in some form other than my own, quietly has taken over the universe.

I know because I've lived and died and lived again.

Worse yet is when the whisper comes.

It some from beyond the blaze of lights, from beyond the gulf of darkness which separates the burning suns.

"We are here," the whisper says.

"We are here."

At eighteen, Jaele's life is shattered when her family is murdered by a band of Raiders, members of a long-accursed race. Overwhelmed by rage and grief, alone for the first time in her life, and fuelled by childhood myths of a warrior queen, Jaele sets out on an epic quest for vengeance. Traveling through a kaleidoscope of cultures, some compassionate, some fierce, all remarkably fantastic yet potently real, she sheds her innocence, but none of her experiences prepare her for her ultimate confrontation with her enemy.

Eleven-year-old Nedda Papas is obsessed with becoming an astronaut. In 1986 in Easter, a small Florida Space Coast town, her dreams seem almost within reach--if she can just grow up fast enough. Theo, the scientist father she idolizes, is consumed by his own obsessions. Laid off from his job at NASA and still reeling from the loss of Nedda's newborn brother several years before, Theo turns to the dangerous dream of extending his living daughter's childhood just a little longer. The result is an invention that alters the fabric of time.

Amidst the chaos that erupts, Nedda must confront her father and his secrets, the ramifications of which will irrevocably change her life, her community, and the entire world. But she finds an unexpected ally in Betheen, the mother she's never quite understood, who surprises Nedda by seeing her more clearly than anyone else. Decades later, Nedda has achieved her long-held dream, and as she floats in antigravity, far from earth, she and her crewmates face a serious crisis. Nedda may hold the key to the solution, if she can come to terms with her past and the future that awaits her.

Light from Other Stars is about fathers and daughters, women and the forces that hold them back, and the cost of meaningful work. It questions how our lives have changed, what progress looks like, and what it really means to sacrifice for the greater good.

A secret beats inside Anna Thatcher's chest: an illegal clockwork heart. Anna works cog by cog -- donning the moniker Technician -- to supply black market medical technology to the sick and injured, against the Commissioner's tyrannical laws.

Nathaniel Fremont, the Commissioner's son, has never had to fear the law. Determined to earn his father's respect, Nathaniel sets out to capture the Technician. But the more he learns about the outlaw, the more he questions whether his father's elusive affection is worth chasing at all.

Their game of cat and mouse takes an abrupt turn when Eliza, a skilled assassin and spy, arrives. Her mission is to learn the Commissioner's secrets at any cost -- even if it means betraying her own heart.

When these uneasy allies discover the most dangerous secret of all, they must work together despite their differences and put an end to a deadly epidemic -- before the Commissioner ends them first.

Table of Contents:

• Second Going - (1987)
• Our Resident Djinn - (1986)
• Morality Meat - (1985)
• All This and Heaven Too - (1985)
• Yanqui Doodle - (1987)
• Come Live with Me - (1988)
• Last Night and Every Night - (1970)
• Backward, Turn Backward - (1988)
• The Earth Doth Like a Snake Renew - (1988)
• In Midst of Life - (1987)

Plagued by the creeping loss of her memory, diplomat Bréone Hemmerli continues to negotiate peace in an increasingly climate-devastated world. The Necessity of Stars brings the alien Tura to Bréone's Normandy garden, a place removed from the world's ruin. Within the garden's shadows, Tura will show Bréone a way forward, even if she can't remember it.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed, December 2017.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

The Last Starship From Earth is a dystopian novel set in 1968 and 1969, but not the 1968 and 1969 that I remember, or lived through. In the world of this story, Jesus did not die on the cross, but was killed leading an assault on Rome. He was the Messiah that people expected. The government of John Boyd's world is a global government run by Christians along "scientific" lines, where psychologists and sociologists in conjunction with the Church and an AI Pope rule the world. People marry and mate because of their genes, sort of like the film Gattaca, and the hero of our story is Haldane IV, M-5, 138270, 3/10/46, a math student of great promise, being the fourth in line of great mathematicians. Unfortunately Haldane gets the hots for Helix, a mere poet. By law and social custom Haldane is expected to have nothing to do with her, but as you'd expect he falls in love with her.

Accompanying his scientist parents on an exploratory voyage to another star system, seventeen-year-old Cliff Macklin discovers the ruins of an alien culture.

Celeste Morton has eagerly awaited her passage to adulthood. Like every girl, she was born with a set of childhood markings--the freckles, moles, and birthmarks on her body that foretell her future and that of those around her--and with puberty will come a new set of predictions that will solidify her fate. The possibilities are tantalizing enough to outweigh the worry that the future she dreams of won't be the one she's fated to have and the fear of her "changeling period": the time when women are nearly irresistible to men and the risk of abduction is rife.

Celeste's beloved brother, Miles, is equally anticipating her transition to adulthood. As a skilled interpreter of the future, a field that typically excludes men, Miles considers Celeste his practice ground--and the only clue to what his own future will bring. But when Celeste changes, she learns a devastating secret about Miles's fate: a secret that could destroy her family, a secret she will do anything to keep. Yet Celeste isn't the only one keeping secrets, and when the lies of brother and sister collide, it leads to a tragedy that will irrevocably change Celeste's fate, set her on a path to fight against the inherent misogyny of fortune-telling, and urge her to create a future that is truly her own.

WHEN IRISH SPIES AR SMILING

The kingdom of Hibernia had risen from its sleepy emerald isle to befriend the native Redmen of the West, and, with technology brought out of ancient Egyptian lands, had forged a mighty industrial empire. And after generations of development under the Pax Hibernia, the Empire was poised for human-kind's greatest adventure--settling a new world under a distant star.

Healer Nolan was a lone male in the traditionally female healing prfession and an unbeliever in the religion of the priest-kings of Hibernia. He had to be careful to avoid any trouble that could jeopardize his place among the crew of the starship Aisling Gheal. But the lowly Healer was unaware of hi part in a subtle struggle for control of the future colony... until he discovered evidence of a plot against the projectL a secret plan for the new world that did not include heretics like Nolan.

And as betrayal and deceit followed Nolan into the silent depths of space and on to the surface of a raw, untamed planet, he was challenged to become the one thing he had never even dreamed of--a hero.

Pursued by members of every species, Meris-the most ancient and legendary of the Jadamiin-is a stowaway on a ship bound for the Port Earth space station. But the pursuit isn't over-and suddenly Port Earth is embroiled in high level intrigue that could annihilate the entire station.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - essay by Fritz Leiber
• Boy Meets Dyevitza - (1962) - shortstory
• Star Mother - (1959) - shortstory
• L'Arc De Jeanne - (1966) - novelette
• On the River - (1965) - shortstory
• Neither Do They Reap - novelette
• To Fell a Tree - (1959) - novelette
• Wish Upon a Star - (1956) - novelette
• The Fugitives - shortstory
• The Pyramid Project - (1964) - novelette
• Thirty Days Had September - (1957) - shortstory
• Little Dog Gone - (1964) - novelette
• The Grown-Up People's Feet - (1955) - shortstory
• Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory - (1963) - novelette

Table of Contents:

• Sector Vermilion - (1964)
• A Kind of Artistry - (1962)
• Sector Gray - (1964)
• Hearts and Engines - (1964)
• Sector Violet - (1964)
• The Underprivileged - (1963)
• Sector Diamond - (1964)
• The Game of God - (1964)
• Sector Green - (1964)
• Shards - (1962)
• Sector Yellow - (1964)
• Legends of Smith's Burst - (1959)
• Sector Azure - (1964)
• O Moon of My Delight - (1961)
• The Rift - (1964)
• Old Hundredth - (1960)

Let the Spacemen Beware!

The inhabitants of Gwydion are a peaceful race with no weapons let alone concept of hatred or war. Every item on the planet has a mythological meaning to them. All except for one of the plants that grows nearly everywhere. The two main characters have arrived from different planets. One is from a libertarian culture while the other is from a capitalistic culture. They both fall in love with the same woman and are determined to find out why the Gwydions act the way they do.

The Wizard of Starship Poseidon

CONSPIRACY OF GENIUS

His height barely reached five feet, his spindly legs supported a bulging chest, and his eyes protruded grotesquely from a gnome-like head - but within that absurd-looking man lay the mind of a genius.

It was a genius that had carried mankind deep into the secrets of creation and was now on the verge of producing living organisms from test tubes filled with inert chemicals. The world, however, ridiculed the theories of Professor Cheslin Randolph and the government refused to advance the millions needed for the final series of experiments.

But Professor Randolph was determined to get the money - even if it meant turning his powerful brain to robbing a spaceship in mid-flight, using trained viruses as his accomplices.

We Claim These Stars!

All's fair in love and war--and with the galaxy split in conflict between two implacable confederations, anything ought to go. Still, how do you plan the ambush and capture of a tremendously capable telepath?

The intended victim, a weird genius from an uncharted world and the right arm of the enemy's general staff, not only knew everything everyone was thinking nearby, he could also read minds at a distance. So the problem posed to Dominic Flandry, Captain of Terran Intelligence, was a real killer.

To make matters worse, the telepath in question was equally interested in putting Flandry out of commission. The fate of many planets depended on which of the two triumphed.

The Planet Killers

Murder Mission to Betelgeuse IV

It was in wide-eyed horror that Roy Gardner heard the news from the Chief of Security. In just sixty-seven years the Earth would be destroyed by the planet Lurion.

That data had been compiled by the invincible computer. With unwavering faith in the machine, humans had only one thing to do--destroy Lurion first.

And the man for the job was Gardner. If he did it successfully the blood of billions would be on his hands; if he fouled up he would be the worst traitor in Terrestrial history. And not even he knew which course he would pursue when he finally learned that eben the all-wise machine had not known all the right answers.

An Earth Gone Mad

Was this the end of mankind?

The cubes meant peace--but was it to be the peace of the grave?

While he was shipwrecked on a distant Jovian moon, with only a cryptic monster for a companion, Paul Shannon had longed for the laughter and friendship of men and women. But when at long last he brought is repaired space craft back to the familiar skies of North America, he was shocked to find AN EARTH GONE MAD.

Men's ambitions, women's love, and the eternal clash of wills, had all given way to the passive docility of stunned beasts. A new cult, born in the stars, was sweeping the world, promising glory but bringing only complete mental submission. And Shannon was torn between unwilling belief and panicky horror as he realized that he himself held the only key to that cosmic riddle.

The Rebellious Stars (title variant of The Stars, Like Dust)

Key man in a galactic explosion!

The Earth had been made hopelessly radioactive and useless by atomic warfare, but young Biron Farrill, a student in the University of Earth, nevertheless found himself involved in a struggle that was worse because of the mystery in it. His father, on another planet, had been murdered and the young man himself was marked for violent death.

The only certainty was that his pursuers, who identities were unknown to him, were agents of would-be conquerors of everything and everybody in the galaxy. But young Farrill had to find out why he and his father had been marked for destruction.

Listen! The Stars!

Tune in on eternity - and disappear...

The Rebellers

The population explosion conspiracy!

Planetary Agent X

Newly accepted as a Special Agent of the star-spanning United Planets organization, Ronny Bronston found that his first assignment was one which had taken the lives of dozens of agents before him: he was to track down a man named Tommy Paine.

Behold the Stars

White Flag for Earthmen

Man had discovered a means of colonising the galaxy. Through a system of instantaneous matter transmission, men, machines, anything, could be sent light years away in seconds!

Only, men were not the only beings in the galaxy who were expanding, and at 200 light years from Earth the alien Gershmi people made their claims clear, with guns!

It would have been a fair fight between equally matched races, had not the very matter transmitter boxes which had made mankind's expansion possible, suddenly began to put men back together, 200 light years from Earth, with their will to fight removes, so that Earthmen were marching with white flags of truce straight into Gershmi fire!

Fugitive of the Stars

Doom cruise of the starship Vega Queen.

Wanted: One outlawed space pilot!
Horne, the spaceship's pilot , had been warned."Don't forget the meteor swarm." And Horne's directional calculations for the Vega Queen's course took that advice into account; the spaceship would go fifteen thousand miles out of its way to avoid those deadly celestial rocks

But when Horne went off duty, he felt himself numbed by a curious druglike leadenness. And the next thing he knew, he was in a lifeboat, speeding away from the floating wreckage of the Vega Queen.

Eighteen survivors out of one hundred and fifty-three passengers. And each one in the tiny space shell believed Horne responsible... deliberate negligence, calculated destruction...

Someone had drugged Horne, he knew; someone had tampered with the ship to alter its course. But who? And for what cosmic purpose?

Land Beyond the Map

Take this route to... Oblivion.

Expressway to an uncharted sphere.
"They're about!" the woman whispered, and Crane abruptly saw a strange light shining through the heavy black curtains that shrouded the house. He crossed to the window and before anyone could stop him he drew the curtain back.

At first he did not understand what he saw: a round gleaming, color-running orb stared unwinkingly back into his face. It was... an eye. An immense sad eye staring at him through the chink of the curtains, an eye surrounded by a living whorl of flame that he had last seen engulfing poor Barney in the parking lot.

At least three others had disappeared into the strange world from which those aliens had come, and a girl had been driven insane by them. And before Crane's quest to unravel the secret of the Map Country was complete, the fate of two worlds would hang in the balance.

Ships to the Stars

Something had thrown Earth's scientists into an uproar - or rather, nothing had. Because suddenly there was absolutely nothing where something very definitely should have been. Phobos and Deimos, the two moons of Mars. had disappeared.

And that was just the start of it. Before long, more of the solar system's moons were gone... people on Earth were sinking out of sight into the ground... and Earth's telepaths kept having strange dreams, full of foreboding....

A collection of 6 short stories by Fritz Leiber:

• Dr. Kometevsky's Day - (1952) - shortstory
• The Big Trek - (1957) - shortstory
• The Enchanted Forest - (1950) - novelette
• Deadly Moon - (1960) - novelette
• The Snowbank Orbit - (1962) - shortstory
• The Ship Sails at Midnight - (1950) - shortstory

The Million Year Hunt

...He heard a shout, distant and ringing, "No, Carson! Not that door!"

Something green writhed in through that door. Something gaseous, billowing, filling the chamber faster and faster, something that caught at his throat and gagged him, made him wretch, brought streaming tears to his eyes.

Before his eyes stretched a nightmarish growth of vine and tree, of mushroom-headed stalks, of gyrating tentacles swaying from every branch and limb. He heard a shrill, triumphant chittering.

He turned to spring back. A vice closed over his foot and tripped him. He fell, sprawling, his mouth and nostrils filling with stinking mud.

He did not remember anything more for a very long time.

Demons' World

Gigantic were The Demons who terrorized the underground kingdom of Archon. Yet, who were they? Whence came their fantastic power? Why did they wage ruthless and relentless war against Archon? These were questions to which there was no answer until Stead arrived in Archon, apparently from nowhere.

Only after he had been a Forager for some months, and had experienced the spine-chilling dangers of The Outside did Stead arrive at a solution. Even then he had a difficult task convincing the Controllers, who, for generations, had insulated themselves against the harsh truth. Only those who had actually seen The Outside - the Foragers, Soldiers and Workers - could properly understand.

I Want the Stars

Where they cosmic teachers - or galactic plotters?

Tonight We Steal the Stars

In II Galaxy, only Wolf Dragonard can make the impossible possible.

The Wagered World

The astronauts didn't know they were betting the Earth on the toss of the dice!

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 subject matter of this collection is varied, but displays Jones' stance as a practicing SF writer and a feminist; the writing is characterized by both an incisive engagement with the texts and a refusal to dress that engagement in jargon. This very readable book provides insight into the work of one of the UK's most interesting writers and presents strong - sometimes even subversive - views of a range of modern SF and fantasy.

Contents:

• vii - Foreword (Deconstructing the Starships) - essay
• 3 - Introduction (Deconstructing the Starships) - (1988) - essay
• 9 - Getting Rid of the Brand Names - (1987) - essay
• 22 - The Lady and the Scientists - (1990) - essay
• 35 - Dreamer: An Exercise in Extrapolation 1989-2019 - (unknown) - essay
• 60 - My Crazy Uncles: C. S. Lewis and Tolkien as Writers for Children - (1995) - essay
• 77 - Fools: The Neuroscience of Cyberspace - (1997) - essay
• 91 - Trouble (Living in the Machine) - (1994) - essay
• 99 - Sex: The Brains of Female Hyena Twins - (1994) - essay
• 108 - Aliens in the Fourth Dimension - (1996) - essay
• 123 - Review: In the Chinks of the World Machine by Sarah LeFanu - (1988) - review
• 131 - Consider Her Ways: The Fiction of C. J. Cherryh - (unknown) - essay
• 141 - Review: Alien Sex by Ellen Datlow - (1990) - review
• 146 - Review: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson - (1992) - review
• 153 - Review: Glory Season by David Brin - (1993) - review
• 156 - Review: Virtual Light by William Gibson - review
• 161 - Review: A Million Open Doors by John Barnes - review
• 168 - Review: Winterlong by Elizabeth Hand - review
• 178 - Review: Plague of Angels by Sheri S. Tepper - review
• 184 - Review: The Furies by Suzy McKee Charnas - (1994) - review
• 192 - Review: Alien Influences by Kristine Kathryn Rusch - review
• 199 - No Man's Land: Feminised Landscapes in the Utopian Fiction of Ursula Le Guin - (1996) - essay
• 209 - Notes (Deconstructing the Starships) - essay

"This person is not even human. It's impossible for me to diagnose the injury or illness of such a structure as his!" With these words and a worried frown, Doc Smithers sums up the case of the strange creature that lay on Ron Barron's bed. For the boy, Clonar, is like nothing earth's medical books have ever cataloged. And the day Ron Barron found him, staggering away from the wrecked metal disk that lay hidden near Longview, is one that put earth's existence in jeopardy!

In Son of the Stars, Raymond Jones has written of a forthright friendship between a young castaway from space and his earthly counterpart. How a cold and suspicious military, recognizing Clonar only as an alien from an astonishingly advanced civilization, turns friendship into treachery that threatens earth's existence, makes this an electrifying story with a thought-provoking theme. In scenes uncomfortably vivid, you'll meet soldiers and citizens of a typical American city; people like calculating General Gillispie and frightened Mrs. Barron, whose reactions to an "interplanetary" situation bring the world to the brink of destruction.

Clonar's words, "They're coming to destroy your world!" refer to a planet whose wars and strife might shortly spread to other worlds. Climaxed with a scene of power and drama unmatched in science fiction, Son of the Stars is a breath-taking book you won't put down until the very last page - and won't be able to forget until men reach the stars and learn for themselves!

Dezza is a salvager in a harsh world. Forced to confront an urban myth, he is flung into a nightmare aboard a derelict Starliner in uncharted space. He loses his friends, his career and his reputation. When he returns home, he struggles to come to terms with society’s prejudices and the demons that lurk within his own mind fuelled by the memories of his mistakes.

Isolated by society, he is thrown a lifeline by the one person who might believe his story. On one condition: return to the derelict. He is offered the chance of redemption and to confront his demons but in the process he must face the horrors that took his world from him.

"Only a decade away!" Yes, according to the well-known author of STEP TO THE STARS, this remarkable age that has produced rocket ships, guided missiles and hydrogen bombs will have a space station circling the Earth within the next ten years. World domination will be in the hands of the country that constructs it, and man will know, once and for all, whether he is free or slave.

Such thoughts were far from Jim Stanley's mind when he was investigated by the FBI and later subjected to strange and rigorous tests. It wasn't until he satisfied the stiff requirements that he learned the United States was in the space station race for keeps and that he could count himself among the handful of men destined to breach the barriers of space in operation "Big Shush."

Fascinating details of the construction and operation of the station are part and parcel of this tense and dramatic story. Treacherous sabotage by a dangerous foreign spy; Jim's almost fatal fall into the "empty, hungry depths of space"; and a savage fire which threatened the existence of the station add to the rising tide of excitement. Tying these explosive events together is a narrative that skillfully portrays the reaction of men to new and staggering experiences.

Worlds of the Imperium

When Brion Bayard was kidnapped and brought to the alternate world where Earth's history took a different turn, it was not a pleasant experience. It was, however, a startling experience. Here was a world that was just like the Earth he was taken from--with just a few subtle changes. On top of all this, Brion was given a puzzling assignment by his captors. He was to secretly enter a palace, and kill a dangerous and tyrannical dictator. There was one, small catch--the hated dictator in this world was the mirror image of Brion Bayard. For on an Alternate Earth, Brion's is his own worst enemy!

Seven from the Stars

As they watched humanity and Earth being destroyed they were determined to fight and survive, but they now faced an enemy able to live undetected in a human host, unrestricted by time and space, and determined to rule!

As a telepath Camarch is despised by humanity. Pursued by the authorities for a crime he didn't commit and haunted by a paralyzing alien force, he finds himself aboard the starship Birmingham. To his horror he learns he has been virtually kidnapped from his time and place to play a role far in the future. Amid the mind-bending ruins of C'hah Lai, Camarch discovers that juggling the future has devastating ramifications for the past.

En route to the Center of the Galaxy for the Interstellar Olympic Games, the HELLAS, carrying Earth's team, intercepts a mysterious space ship, apparently derelict. Steve Frazer, champion spacesuit racer, volunteers to investigate.

Once aboard, he discovers astonishing evidence of an intelligent nonhuman race that can speak by telepathy and disappear at will - a race superior in some ways to human beings. Stunned, Steve returns to the HELLAS to find that no one believes his startling story.

His attempts to prove that he is telling the truth plunge Steve quickly into the midst of interstellar conflict and intrigue. Disqualified from the Games on a trumped-up charge, Steve soon realizes that someone very powerful thinks he knows too much.

Tightly written and intensely dramatic, the story sweeps to the outermost reaches of the galaxy. Its picture of the Games with their brilliant color and keen competition is entirely new to the pages of science fiction.

The Stars Are Ours!

Dard Nordis grew up in a world that had been devastated by atomic catastrophe. The remnants of humanity had set up an iron dictatorship to hunt out and destroy the last free bands of scientists, hiding in mountains and caves. And the day came when Dard's secret laboratory home was raided - and he escaped by the skin of his teeth.

Where else could men go to keep the torch of liberty and knowlkedge burning? Dard's martyred brother had given him a key to that unknown haven, but how could dard learn to use it? Where were the engineers and their spaceships hidden?

Three Faces of Time

Elspeth Marriner, once an ace journalist, is now a Time Watcher working from the mysterious House of Many Worlds. On some parallel time-tracks, Earth's cultures lag thousands of years behind our own. On others, science is far in advance of ours. As a Watcher, Elspeth's job is to keep advanced Earths that had discovered the existence of their parallel sisters from invading and exploiting those that were less advanced. Now the Watchers have discovered that the power-hungry dictator of one far-advanced civilization, having devastated his own Earth, has already infiltrated a parallel Earth still in the age of the Roman Empire, and is seeking to conquer it! Though chariots roll through the streets, and men with swords guard the cities, flying tanks and atomic artillery are gathering in secret behind the walls!

Table of Contents:

• The Seed of Earth - (1962) - novel
• Slaves of the Star Giants - (1957) - novella
• The Songs of Summer - (1956) - shortstory
• Hopper - (1956) - novelette
• Blaze of Glory - (1957) - shortstory
• Warm Man - (1957) - shortstory

One year after the Great Sack, Protector General Ril Cowel took what remained of the fleet of Camrus and set out after the empire responsible for hammering his home into oblivion, the Empire of B'Nan. Cowel chased the mythic emperor for fifteen years. At last, fate seemed to hand him his chance, and in a swift strike Cowel damaged the imperial fleet and killed B'Nan. The terror now over, he intended to dismantle the empire, to take it apart so that it could no longer destroy worlds like his own.

But the more Ril Cowel tries, the harder it seems to be rid of the vast machinery B'Nan had constructed over a thousand years or more. For the emperor was reputed to have lived the entire time his empire grew. Cowel never gave credence to such stories...until he becomes emperor himself.

Disembodied, doomed to forever wander the galaxy in search of his former existence, John Plank's hold on reality is tenous indeed. He has powers beyond his wildest dreams yet he remains the puppet of unseen forces. Tracking him silently in a great, dark ship, they observe and monitor his every movement. Finally, goaded beyond endurance, he attempts to strip away the mystery surrounding them; and the confrontation becomes a bizzare and deadly game.

Haruyuki's desperate battle with his friend Takumu has taken him to the brink, and he finally activates the Destiny, a purified version of the notorious Armor of Catastrophe. It's light versus dark as their fierce fight continues, and the stakes couldn't be higher. If Haruyuki can't rid his friend of the sinister ISS kit that's infected him, Takumu could be lost to the darkness forever. And he just might take Haruyuki with him...

Prepare for a full dive!

After their battle with the Acceleration Research Society, Kuroyukihime and the other members of Nega Nebulus have finally resolved to face the White Legion, Oscillatory Universe! To have a fighting chance against White Cosmos, Nega Nebulus knows that forming an alliance with the Green Legion is paramount. So after scheduling peace talks with the Green Legion's Master, Green Grandé, Haruyuki travels to their home base, located in the Shibuya Ward. But when he arrives, he discovers that the one awaiting him is none other than...Kuroyukihime in a swimsuit?!

Hailed by critics at the time of its publication as a quantum leap forward in both quality and concept for science fiction anthologies, Martin Greenberg's thematically edited Men Against the Stars is a collection of twelve lengthy stories whose authors read like a Who's Who of Golden Age sci-fi, including Isaac Asimov, Murray Leinster, A.E. Van Vogt, L. Ron Hubbard, and E.M. Hull. Greenberg's collection was a thoroughly contemplated and planned project, a selection of the finest available stories on theme, ranging back as far as 1939.

Table of Contents:

• 3 - Foreword (Men Against the Stars) - (1950) - essay by Martin Greenberg
• 5 - Introduction (Men Against the Stars) - (1950) - essay by Willy Ley
• 13 - Trends - (1939) - short story by Isaac Asimov
• 35 - Men Against the Stars - (1938) - novelette by Manly Wade Wellman
• 59 - The Red Death of Mars - (1940) - novelette by Robert Moore Williams
• 92 - Locked Out - (1940) - short story by H. B. Fyfe
• 108 - The Iron Standard - (1943) - novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett]
• 141 - Schedule - (1945) - short story by Harry Walton
• 159 - Far Centaurus - (1944) - short story by A. E. van Vogt
• 183 - Cold Front - (1946) - novelette by Hal Clement
• 235 - The Plants - (1946) - short story by Murray Leinster
• 253 - Competition - [Artur Blord] - (1943) - novelette by E. Mayne Hull
• 281 - Bridle and Saddle - [Foundation (Original Stories) - 2] - (1942) - novelette by Isaac Asimov
• 335 - When Shadows Fall - (1948) - short story by L. Ron Hubbard

The climactic concluding novel in the spellbinding magical contemporary fantasy Aetherial Tales trilogy

A painting, depicting haunting scenes of a ruined palace and a scarlet-haired goddess in front of a fiery city, arrives unheralded in an art gallery with a cryptic note saying, "The world needs to see this." The painting begins to change the lives of the woman who is the gallery's curator and that of an ancient man of the fey Aetherial folk who has mysteriously risen from the depths of the ocean. Neither human nor fairy knows how they are connected, but when the painting is stolen, both are compelled to discover the meaning behind the painting and the key it holds to their future.

In Grail of the Summer Stars, a haunting, powerful tale of two worlds and those caught between, Freda Warrington weaves an exciting story of suspense, adventure and danger that fulfills the promise of the Aetherial Tales as only she can.

Table of Contents:

• The Scapegoat - novella by C. J. Cherryh
• Seasons - novella by Joe Haldeman
• Cordon Sanitaire - novella by Timothy Zahn

Table of Contents:

• The Election - (1983) - novella by Robert Silverberg
• World War Last - (1985) - novella by Norman Spinrad
• When Winter Ends - (1985) - novella by Michael P. Kube-McDowell

Table of Contents:

• As Big as the Ritz - (1986) - novella by Gregory Benford
• Fugue State - novella by John M. Ford
• Chance - novella by Nancy Springer

Table of Contents:

• West - novella by Orson Scott Card
• Liberty Port - novella by David Drake
• The Borders of Infinity - novella by Lois McMaster Bujold

For years, the stations of the Hinder Stars, those old stations closest to Sol, have lagged behind the great megastations of the Beyond, like Pell and Cyteen. But new opportunities and fears arise when Alpha station receives news of an incoming ship with no identification. The denizens of Alpha wait anxiously for news about the outsiders, each with their own suspicions about the ship and its origins.

Ross and Fallon, crew members of the Galway, believe the unidentified ship belongs to Pell and has come to investigate another massive ship docked at Alpha, The Rights of Man. Though Rights is under the command of the Earth Company, it is not quite perfected – and its true purpose is shrouded in mystery.

James Robert Neihart, captain of Finity's End – a huge faster-than-light ship flown by one of the Merchanter Families – has heard whispers of The Rights of Man and wonders at its design and purpose, especially as Sol struggles to rival the progress of the Farther Stars. Now docked at Alpha, he must convince the crews that there is more to The Rights of Man than meets the eye.

Because the reasons behind the creation of The Rights of Man, and its true plans, could change everything – not just for Sol, but for the Hinder Stars and the Beyond itslf.

When Cyteen opened up faster-than-light travel, it gave the technology for free to any ship that could reach it; and with that technology, it provided a map of jump-points, points of mass enabling starships to navigate hyperspace safely.

The map of jump-points, however, stopped with the route to Alpha - thus excluding Sol, and Earth, and the Earth Company, whose gateway to the stars was Alpha. Cyteen knew exactly what it was doing with its gift. Sol and the EC could still reach Alpha with sub-light pusher-ships as it always had - but Sol and the Earth Company no longer had any authority in the Beyond.

But Sol intends to take back control of its star-stations and stop Cyteen's unbridled expansion, however it can. To do that, they are willing to starve Alpha and concentrate their efforts on a huge FTLer capable of carrying military force.

Table of Contents:

• The Name of Our Field - [Asimov's Editorials] - (1978) - essay by Isaac Asimov
• The Name of Our Field - interior artwork by Frank Kelly Freas
• The Last Full Measure - (1978) - shortstory by George Alec Effinger
• The Last Full Measure - interior artwork by Vincent Di Fate
• The Voyage of the Bagel - [SF Puzzles] - (1978) - shortstory by Martin Gardner
• Pièce de Résistance - (1978) - shortstory by J. F. Bone [as by Jesse Bone ]
• Pièce de Résistance - (1978) - interior artwork by Freff
• Polly Plus - (1978) - shortstory by Randall Garrett
• Polly Plus - (1978) - interior artwork by Vincent Di Fate
• Wolf Tracks - (1978) - poem by Donald Gaither
• Wolf Tracks - (1978) - interior artwork by Roy G. Krenkel
• Guilt - (1978) - novelette by James E. Gunn
• Guilt - (1978) - interior artwork by Alex Schomburg
• A Choice of Weapons - (1978) - shortstory by Michael Tennenbaum
• A Choice of Weapons - (1978) - interior artwork by Alex Schomburg
• Star Train - (1978) - shortstory by Drew Mendelson
• Star Train - interior artwork by Rick Sternbach
• The Man Who Took the Fifth - (1978) - shortstory by Michael Schimmel
• The Man Who Took the Fifth - interior artwork by Phil Foglio [as by Philip Foglio ]
• Born Again - (1978) - shortstory by Sharon N. Farber
• Born Again - (1978) - interior artwork by Freff
• A Child of Penzance - (1978) - novelette by Tony Sarowitz
• A Child of Penzance - (1978) - interior artwork by Vincent Di Fate
• Lipidleggin' - [LaNague Federation] - (1978) - shortstory by F. Paul Wilson
• Lipidleggin' - (1978) - interior artwork by Freff
• Singularity - (1978) - novella by Mildred Downey Broxon
• Singularity (I) - interior artwork by Jack Gaughan
• Singularity (II) - interior artwork by Jack Gaughan

The Muungano empire strived and struggled to form a utopia when they split away from old earth. Freeing themselves from the endless wars and oppression of their home planet in order to shape their own futures and create a far-reaching coalition of city-states that stretched from Earth and Mars to Titan.

With the wisdom of their ancestors, the leadership of their elders, the power and vision of their scientists and warriors they charted a course to a better future. But the old powers could not allow them to thrive and have now set in motion new plots to destroy all that they've built.

In the fire to come they will face down their greatest struggle yet.

Amachi Adisa and other young leaders will contend with each other for the power to galvanize their people and chart the next course for the empire.

Fela Buhari and her elite unit will take the fight to regions not seen by human eyes, but no training will be enough to bring them all home.

Stacia Chikeke, captain of the starship Cypher, will face down enemies across the stars, and within her own vessel, as she searches for the answers that could save them all.

The starship Theodore Roosevelt is fighting on the far outskirts of a galactic war, its crew made up of retreads and raw recruits. A new first officer reports, Wilson Cole, a man with a reputation for exceeding his orders (but getting results). He's been banished to the Teddy R. for his actions, but once there he again ignores his orders....

This is the first of five novels about the starship Theodore Roosevelt. The next four will be, in order, Pirate, Mercenary, Rebel, and Flagship.

The date is 1967 of the Galactic Era, almost three thousand years from now. The Republic, created by the human race but not yet dominated by it, is in the midst of an all-out war with the Teroni Federation. After his latest exploit saved millions of lives but embarrassed his superiors, Captain Wilson Cole, a man with a reputation for exceeding orders but getting results, found himself the victim of the media feeding frenzy, a political scapegoat despite years of dedicated military service. Faced with a court martial, he was rescued by the loyal crew of his ship, the Theodore Roosevelt. Now branded mutineers, the crew of the Teddy R. has quit the Republic, never to return.

Seeking to find a new life for themselves, Wilson Cole and comrades remake the Teddy R. as a pirate ship and set sail for the lawless Inner Frontier. Here, powerful warlords, cut-throat pirates, and struggling colonies compete for survival in a game where you rarely get a second chance to learn the rules.

But military discipline is poor preparation for a life of pillaging and plundering, and Cole's principles naturally limit his targets. Seeking an education on the nature of piracy, Cole hunts more knowledgeable players. Enter the beautiful but deadly Valkyrie, Val for short, and the enigmatic alien fence known as David Copperfield. But hanging over everything is the fearsome alien pirate -- the Hammerhead Shark.

With Starship: Pirate, five-time Hugo winner Mike Resnick continues the story begun in his very first military SF. Will the galaxy ever be the same?

The date is 1968 of the Galactic Era, almost three thousand years from now. The Republic, created by the human race but not yet dominated by it, is in the midst of an all-out war with the Teroni Federation. Captain Wilson Cole, a man with a reputation for exceeding orders but getting results, found himself the victim of a media feeding frenzy, a political scapegoat despite years of dedicated military service. Faced with a court martial, he was rescued by the loyal crew of his ship, the Theodore Roosevelt. Branded mutineers, the Teddy R. has quit the Republic, never to return.

Seeking to find a new life, Wilson Cole first remade the Teddy R. as a pirate ship plying the spaceways of the lawless Inner Frontier. But military discipline and honor were a poor match for a life of pillaging and plundering, and Cole's principles naturally limited his targets. Taking on a new role, the Teddy R. becomes a mercenary ship, hiring out to the highest bidder. Whether it's evacuating a hospital before war can reach it, freeing a client from an alien prison, or stopping a criminal cartel from extorting money from a terrified planet, the crew of the Teddy R. proves equal to the task. Along the way they form a partnership with the once human Platinum Duke, team up with a former enemy, and make the unique Singapore Station their headquarters.

But the life of a mercenary is not always predictable, and eventually circumstance pits Cole and the Teddy R. against his right-hand woman, the former Pirate Queen known as the Valkyrie. Soon the fragile trust that has grown between these two legends is put to the test as they find themselves on opposite sides of a job.

The date is 1968 of the Galactic Era, almost three thousand years from now. The Republic, dominated by the human race, is in the midst of an all-out war with the Teroni Federation.

Almost a year has passed since the events of Starship: Mercenary. Captain Wilson Cole now commands a fleet of almost fifty ships, and he has become the single greatest military force on the Inner Frontier.

With one exception. The Republic still comes and goes as it pleases, taking what it wants, conscripting men, and extorting taxes, even though the Frontier worlds receive nothing in exchange. And, of course, the government still wants Wilson Cole and the starship Theodore Roosevelt. He has no interest in confronting such an overwhelming force, and constantly steers clear of them.

Then an incident occurs that changes everything, and Cole declares war on the Republic. Outnumbered and always outgunned, his fleet is no match for the Republic's millions of military vessels, even after he forges alliances with the warlords he previously hunted down.

It's a hopeless cause... but that's just what Wilson Cole and the Teddy R. are best at.

The date is 1970 of the Galactic Era, almost three thousand years from now, and the Republic, created by the human race but not yet dominated by it, finds itself in an all-out war against the Teroni Federation, an alliance of races that resent Man's growing military and economic power.

The rebel starship, the Theodore Roosevelt, under the command of Wilson Cole, is preparing to lead Cole's ragtag armada into the Republic, even though he is outnumbered thousands to one. Cole is convinced that the government has become an arrogant and unfeeling political entity and must be overthrown.

The trick is to avoid armed conflict with the vast array of ships, numbering in the millions, in the Republic's Navy. For a time Cole's forces strike from cover and race off to safety, but he soon sees that is no way to conquer the mightiest political and military machine in the history of the galaxy. He realizes that he must reach Deluros VIII, the headquarters world of the Republic (and of the race of Man), in order to have any effect on the government at all—but Deluros VIII is the best-protected world in the Republic.

But a new threat looms on the horizon. Cole, the Valkyrie, David Copperfield, Sharon Blacksmith, Jacovic, and the rest of the crew of the Teddy R face their greatest challenge yet, and the outcome will determine the fate of the entire galaxy.

Trapped by the evil Edrick in a locked room, Yaleen is cold-bloodedly murdered. But it is not the end of Yaleen's story, for she is given a second life - a reincarnation on Earth as a 'cherub'.

Soon she encounters Godmind, the megalomaniac artificial deity which controls life on Earth - and maintains a brutal labour colony on the Moon for any who dare to rebel. Bit by bit, Yaleen comes to understand the horrifying project of the Godmind...

One night in Lagos, two former friends reunite. Obinna is a dutiful and unsophisticated stay-at-home husband and father married to a powerful businesswoman. Eze is single, a cautious rebel from his university days whose arrival soon upsets the balance in Obinna's life. In a world where men are constantly under surveillance and subject to the whims of powerful women, more than Obinna's ordered and accustomed routine might be on the line.

Issaka has returned home to Timbouctou and a devastating al-Qaeda raid. His only hope for survival is Faro, a stunning, blue-beaded supernatural entity who rises free from the flames of her imprisoning book as it burns. Compelled to follow Faro, Issaka is opening his eyes to their shared history and the ancestral wisdom of his own past.

Five miles off the South Carolina coast, Darden and Catherina are getting their promised forty acres, all of it undersea. Like every Black "mer," they've been experimentally modified to adapt to their new subaquatic home - and have met with extreme resistance from white supremacists. Darden has an inspired plan for resolution. For both those on land and the webbed bottom-dwellers below, Darden is hoping to change the wave of the future.

Copilots Msizi and Tariro are testing a newly constructed wormhole jump that presumably leads to unsettled habitable worlds. Then an explosion sends them off course, far from where they started and with little chance of ever making it back. Now they're stranded on their new home for the diaspora. It's called Malcolm X-b. But they're beginning to wonder how many light-years from civilization they really are.

Burri is a fashion designer and icon with a biochemistry background. Her latest pieces are African inspired and crafted to touch the heart. They enable wearers to absorb nanorobotic memories and recount the stories of Black lives and forgiveness. Wenda doesn't buy it. A protest performance artist, Wenda knows exploitation when she sees it. What she's going to do with Burri's breakthrough technology could, in the right hands, change race relations forever.

Grimace is a homeless man on a holy mission to free Black Americans from emotional slavery. His empty soda cans told him as much. Then he meets Kim, a transgender runaway who joins Grimace on his heroic quest. Is Grimace receiving aluminum missives from the gods, or is he a madman? Kim will find out soon enough on a strange journey they've been destined to share.

Awakened from suspended animation aboard his exploration starship, John Jackson is shocked to discover that the ship never left Earth - and that he has slept a century after a world war. Facing a nightmare wilderness inhabited by neo-barbarians and sentient tanks, Jackson is the only man who can bring the world to its senses.

A collaboration of two science fiction greats, Gregory Benford and Gordon Eklund, the original "If The Stars Are Gods" was quite well received when it appeared in the spring of 1974 in the hardcover Random House anthology Universe Four. It went on to win a Nebula Award in 1975. A few critics found the central protagonist, Bradley Reynolds, to be a bit over the top -- but then, who among us would invite Captain Ahab over for dinner, drinks and a video afterward?

In this expanded novel length version of If The Stars Are Gods, which appeared in 1976, the rest of the life of Bradley Reynolds fell into place -- meeting strange aliens, forging out into the realms of the solar system, always questing. This 2013 edition includes a new introduction by Gregory Benford and Gordon Eklund -- the story of how their two science fiction writing careers grew out of this work, If The Stars Are Gods.

Nebula Award winning novelette. It originally appeared in the Universe 4 (1974), edited by Terry Carr. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Best Science Fiction of the Year #4 (1975), edited by Terry Carr, Nebula Award Stories Ten (1975), edited by James Gunn, The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume IV (1986), edited by Terry Carr and The Science Fiction Century (1997), edited by David G. Hartwell.

The story was later expanded to the full novel If the Stars are Gods (1977).

Now a captain, Sikander Singh North commands the destroyer Decisive, assigned to Zerzura, a haven for piracy and the next playing-board in the Great Game. The Aquilan Commonwealth and the Empire of Dremark vie for the allegiance of local ruler Marid Pasha, a competition with stakes that reach far beyond the sector's pirate-infested limits.

Sikander must stop the pirate attacks while charting his course between the ambitions of Marid Pasha, a dubious alliance with a shipping magnate, and the inexperience of Decisive's crew... a situation that only grows more complicated when an old enemy returns.

The Stars Askew is the highly anticipated sequel to the New Weird adventure begun by talented young author Rjurik Davidson. With the seditionists in power, Caeli-Amur has begun a new age. Or has it? The escaped House officials no longer send food, and the city is starving.

When the moderate leader Aceline is murdered, the trail leads Kata to a mysterious book that explains how to control the fabled Prism of Alerion. But when the last person to possess the book is found dead, it becomes clear that a conspiracy is afoot. At its center is former House Officiate Armand, who has hidden the Prism. Armand is vying for control of the Directorate, the highest political position in the city, until Armand is betrayed and sent to a prison camp to mine deadly bloodstone.

Meanwhile, Maximilian is sharing his mind with another being: the joker-god Aya. Aya leads Max to the realm of the Elo-Talern to seek a power source to remove Aya from Max's brain. But when Max and Aya return, they find the vigilants destroying the last remnants of House power.

It seems the seditionists' hopes for a new age of peace and prosperity in Caeli-Amur have come to naught, and every attempt to improve the situation makes it worse. The question now is not just whether Kata, Max, and Armand can do anything to stop the bloody battle in the city, but if they can escape with their lives.

Ride with Curt Newton, The World's Greatest Space Farer, and the Futuremen as They Leave the Known Star Trails to Penetrate the Source of Cosmic Rays, the Very Core of the Universe!...

This novel was originally published in Fall 1941 edition of Captain Future Magazine.

This novel is included in "The Collected Captain Future: Volume Three"

Being a goddess is a lot less fun than you might think. Especially when you're only a half goddess, and you only found out about it recently, and you still don't know what you're doing half the time. And when you've just used your not-so-reliable powers to burglarize the booby-trapped office of a vampire mob boss.

Yeah, that part sucks.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg for Cassandra Palmer, aka the Pythia, the freshly minted chief seer of the supernatural world. After all, Cassie still has to save a friend from a fate worse than death, deal with an increasingly possessive master vampire, and prevent a party of her own acolytes from unleashing a storm of fury upon the world. Totally just your average day at the office, right?

Also published as Year 2018!

2018 AD. The time of the Cold Peace, worse even than the Cold War. The bureaucratic regimes that rule from Washington and Moscow are indistinguishable in their passion for total repression. But in the West, a few dedicated individuals still struggle to find a way out of the trap of human history. Behind the screen of official research their desperate project is nearing completion...

A CITY LAUNCHES ITSELF INTO THE GALAXY!

The noise was horrifying. He had never heard anything even a fraction as loud, but there could be no doubt about what it was: the city's spindizzies were sounding the alert.

Then the whole city seemed to be rocking heavily, like a ship in a storm. At one instant, the street ended in nothing but sky; at the next, he was staring at a wall of sheared earth, its rim looming cliff-like, fifty feet or more above the new margin of the city; then the blank sky was back again...

When an outlying region of star-systems revolts against the hub government, the Concordat of Archive responds in force, sending Admiral Devon to bring the rebels back into alignment. The Admiral wields his fleet with skill and daring, but everyone is left to wonder: who is the real enemy?

Danger in the Stars!

The birth of a hero is never easy. Clumsy as an elephant in high heels, he is nothing like his legendary scout father.

But inside that bull-moose-of-a-body lies the heart of a hero whose moment has arrived! Next, a boy survives alien invasion - but must learn to think and act like his reptilian enemy to exact retribution for slaughter! These and two other tales of coming-of-age-through-peril from the writer who invented the genre. Includes The X Factor, Voorloper, The Eye of the Monster, and The Sioux Spaceman--all set in Norton's "Council/Confederation" universe!

Table of Contents:

• The Sioux Spaceman - (1960) - novel
• Eye of the Monster - (1962) - novel
• The X Factor - (1965) - novel
• Voorloper - (1980) - novel

In the far-distant future, mankind has traversed the stars and settled distant worlds. But no matter how advanced the technology of the future becomes, it seems the spacefaring nations cannot entirely shed their human nature.

Jint Lin finds this out the hard way when, as a child, his home world is conquered by the powerful Abh Empire: the self-proclaimed Kin of the Stars, and rulers of vast swaths of the known universe. As a newly-appointed member of the Abh's imperial aristocracy, Jint must learn to forge his own destiny in the wider universe while bearing burdens he never asked for, caught between his surface-dweller "Lander" heritage and the byzantine culture of the Abh, of which he is now nominally a member. A chance meeting with the brave-but-lonely Apprentice Starpilot Lafier aboard the Patrol Ship Goslauth will lead them both headfirst down a path of galaxy-spanning intrigue and warfare that will forever change the fate of all of humankind.

In the First volume: After his home world is conquered by the Abh, a genetically engineered race that has conquered many planets, Jinto Lin finds himself fatefully linked with the Abh princess Lafiel. Together, they try to unlock the secret behind the Abh domination.

In the far-distant future, mankind has traversed the stars and settled distant worlds. But no matter how advanced the technology of the future becomes, it seems the spacefaring nations cannot entirely shed their human nature.

Jint Lin finds this out the hard way when, as a child, his home world is conquered by the powerful Abh Empire: the self-proclaimed Kin of the Stars, and rulers of vast swaths of the known universe. As a newly-appointed member of the Abh's imperial aristocracy, Jint must learn to forge his own destiny in the wider universe while bearing burdens he never asked for, caught between his surface-dweller "Lander" heritage and the byzantine culture of the Abh, of which he is now nominally a member. A chance meeting with the brave-but-lonely Apprentice Starpilot Lafier aboard the Patrol Ship Goslauth will lead them both headfirst down a path of galaxy-spanning intrigue and warfare that will forever change the fate of all of humankind.

In Volume Two: Jinto and Lafiel escape from Baron Febdash's orbital palace only to fall into the clutches of the Human Unification Army. Thrust into the middle of an ugly battle for intergalactic supremacy, the lander noble and the Imperial princess must learn to work together if they want to survive.

In the far-distant future, mankind has traversed the stars and settled distant worlds. But no matter how advanced the technology of the future becomes, it seems the spacefaring nations cannot entirely shed their human nature.

Jint Lin finds this out the hard way when, as a child, his home world is conquered by the powerful Abh Empire: the self-proclaimed Kin of the Stars, and rulers of vast swaths of the known universe. As a newly-appointed member of the Abh's imperial aristocracy, Jint must learn to forge his own destiny in the wider universe while bearing burdens he never asked for, caught between his surface-dweller "Lander" heritage and the byzantine culture of the Abh, of which he is now nominally a member. A chance meeting with the brave-but-lonely Apprentice Starpilot Lafier aboard the Patrol Ship Goslauth will lead them both headfirst down a path of galaxy-spanning intrigue and warfare that will forever change the fate of all of humankind.

In Volume Three: Barely escaping the forces of United Mankind, Lafiel and Jinto crash-land on Planet Clasbul, which is already under enemy occupation. With no means to rejoin the Imperial fleet, they must find a way to survive until rescued. However, the Abh princess--who seems so indomitable in space--is nothing more than a clueless girl when confronted with life on a land world. Now the tables have turned, and Jinto must use his experience to protect her.

The Kingdom of Wendar is in turmoil. King Henry still holds the crown, but his reign has long been contested by his sister Sabella, and there are many eager to flock to her banner. Internal conflict weakens Wendar's defences, drawing raiders, human and inhuman, across its borders. Terrifying portents abound and dark spirits walk the land in broad daylight.

Suddenly two innocents are thrust into the midst of the conflict. Alain, a young man granted a vision by the Lady of Battles, and Liath, a young woman with the power to change the course of history. Both must discover the truth about themselves before they can accept their fates. For in a war where sorcery, not swords, may determine the final outcome, the price of failure may be more than their own lives.

"Prince of Dogs" returns readers to the war-torn kingdoms of Wendar and Varre, and the intertwined destinies of: Alain, raised in humble surroundings but now the Count's heir; Liath, who struggles to unravel the secrets of her past while evading the traps set for her by those seeking the treasure she hides; Sanglant, believed dead by those who could save him, but actually a prisoner in the city of Gent; and Fifth Son, who now builds an army to do his father's bidding--or his own!

In the third volume of this astonishing Nebula Award-nominated fantasy series, the many plot strands created in the first two novels become more tightly interwoven-as the time of the cataclysm nears when people and places long sundered by magic will once again reside in the same time and universe…

The fourth volume in Kate Elliott's Crown of Stars series, Child of Flame takes us far beyond the borders of Wendar and Varre...as Alain is drawn into the heart of an ancient conflict between humankind and their dread enemy, the Cursed Ones; Liath faces her most difficult trial in a land of exile; and Sanglant struggles to warn Henry about a dark conspiracy of sorcerers.

The time of cataclysm is almost here when the land of the Aoi-cast forth from the world long centuries ago by an unimaginably powerful spell-weaving-will at last return to its starting point with disastrous consequences…

The long-awaited cataclysm has reshaped the very land and seas, and disrupted the war for the empire. Now all who have survived the return of the spell-exiled Aoi lands must find a way to mend their shattered territories and take a stand against their enemies in a power struggle that may forge new alliances-or doom them all.

In the wake of the cataclysm many new alliances are forming even as old ones dissolve. As Sanglant struggles to legitimize his own leadership, the Aoi are carrying out random attacks-while implicating him as their leader. Stronghand has begun a march of conquest into the heart of Sanglant's realm. Adelheid and Antonia have made an unholy alliance. And Sabella and Duke Conrad are moving to seize Sanglant's crown. Cultures, religions, and races are clashing in what will be the ultimate struggle for control of this strange new world.

The galaxy was once terrorized by the Sturm, a group of "species purists" intent on destroying any human with genetic or cybernetic enhancements. Fashioning themselves as the one true "Human Republic," the Sturm cut a bloody swath across the stars, killing billions before finally being defeated and driven into the far reaches of Dark Space. Centuries of peace bred complacency. Everyone believed the Sturm had died out in the Dark. They were wrong.

The enemy has returned and, with a brutal and decisive attack, knocks out almost all of humanity's defenses. Now on the brink of annihilation, humankind's only hope is a few brave souls who survived the initial attack: Commander Lucinda Hardy, thrust into uncertain command of the Royal Armadalen Navy's only surviving warship. Booker3, a soldier of Earth, sentenced to die for treason, whose time on death row is cut short when the Sturm attack his prison compound. Princess Alessia, a young royal of the Montanblanc Corporation, forced to flee when her home planet is overrun and her entire family executed. Sephina L'trel, the leader of an outlaw band who must call on all of her criminal skills to resist the invasion. And, finally, Admiral Frazer McLennan, the infamous hero of the first war with the Sturm hundreds of years ago, who hopes to rout his old foes once and for all--or die trying.

These five flawed, reluctant heroes must band together to prevail against a relentless enemy and near-impossible odds. For if they fail, the future itself is doomed.

The Sturm, an empire of "species purists", have returned from the farthest reaches of Dark Space to wage a war against what they call mutants and borgs: any human being with genetic or neural engineering. In a sneak attack, they overwhelmed almost all of humanity's defenses, blasting vicious malware across galaxy-spanning networks, dark code that transformed anyone connected to the system into a mindless psychotic killer. The Sturm's victory seemed complete, their final triumph inevitable, until one small band of intrepid, unlikely heroes struck back.

Commander Lucinda Hardy and Admiral Frazer McLennan used the Armadalen Navy's final surviving warship to fend off the Sturm, destroying the massed power of an entire attack fleet. With brilliant tactics - and support from drunken, grief-ravaged pirate Sephina L'trel and treasonous battle-rig operator Booker - this ragtag crew sent the Sturm running, managing to save Princess Alessia, the sole surviving heir to the gigantic Montanblanc ul Haq Corporation and perhaps Earth's only remaining senator.

Now left with the remains of a fallen civilization, they must work together to rebuild what was lost and root out the numberless enemies of Earth. The Sturm invaders remain vastly more powerful - and they may not be the only threat lurking in the darkness of space.

Awakened from a centuries-long spell of sleep, a warrior woman finds she is now a healer with powerful earth-magic. But the land is now haunted by an evil force which has the strength to alter the very laws of life and death.

"Do-overs" are possible.

The crystalline network allows reality to be reset to past moments in time...

After a routine reset on her homeworld, Elle Hartmut instead awakens on a spaceship. Her body is different, she has new magical abilities, and she's told that the fate of known civilization is in her hands.

An alien Darkness is corrupting entire worlds.
Elle and a team of magically enhanced companions embark on an interstellar quest to seal the Master Archive--the only hope of restoring the infected planets.

Ancient relics may hold the key to salvation.
With only vague clues to guide them, Elle and her new friends must gather legendary artifacts to protect the Archive. But if they can't unravel the ancient secrets in time, their worlds and loved ones will be lost in shadow forever.

The real invasion is about to begin.

An alien fleet is coming. Elle and her friends are the Hegemony's best chance for fighting back, but they'll need to head straight into enemy territory in order to identify the Darkness' origin.

The Hegemony is out of time... and the war may already be lost before it even starts. The only chance for salvation is the mysterious shard of the Master Crystal, supposedly capable of initiating a universal-scale reset. Except, no one knows what a reset of that magnitude might entail, or if it's possible.

Despite the risks, no step is too extreme in the frantic fight for survival. Elle and her friends must stop the insidious alien menace before every world is consumed.

The final fight will change their perception forever.

Everything Elle Hartmut and her friends thought they knew about the alien menace--and the nature of their universe--is wrong.

With mounting evidence that the aliens behind the Darkness reside on a hyperdimensional plane above spacetime, Elle and the Dark Sentinels will need a new approach to win. However, preventing the impending alien invasion will test their team in ways they never imagined.

The ancient artifacts wielded by the Dark Sentinels may hold the key to victory. If they can understand and master their true abilities, they may still be able to save the Hegemony and their loved ones before the invasion's final stage consumes them all.

Generations of fans have fallen in love with Darkover, and many of them have gone on to notable literary careers of their own. Now editors Deborah J. Ross and Elisabeth Waters have gathered together luminaries of fantasy in this star-studded anthology of original stories that illuminate Darkover's rich history and culture. From the Ages of Chaos to re-contact with the Terrans, from the Dry Towns to the back streets of Thendara to the horse pastures of Armida, these tales offer action, courage, and humor, set in the wondrous world that is Darkover.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction (Stars of Darkover) - essay by Deborah J. Ross
• All The Branching Paths - short fiction by Janni Lee Simner
• The Cold Blue Light - short fiction by Judith Tarr
• Kira Ann - short fiction by Steven Piziks [as by Steven Harper]
• Threads - short fiction by Ann Sharp and Elisabeth Waters
• Wedding Embroidery - short fiction by Shariann Lewitt
• The Ridenow Nightmare - short fiction by Robin Wayne Bailey
• Catalyst - short fiction by Gabrielle Harbowy
• The Fountain's Choice - short fiction by Rachel Manija Brown
• House of Fifteen Widows - short fiction by Kari Sperring
• Zandru's Gift - short fiction by Vera Nazarian
• Late Rising Fire - short fiction by Leslie Fish
• Evanda's Mirror - short fiction by Diana L. Paxson
• At the Crossroads - short fiction by Barb Caffrey
• Second Contact - short fiction by Rosemary Edghill and Rebecca Fox
• A Few Words for My Successor - short fiction by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald

Reyna, a princess, and the hunter Juaren share a dream that sets them in conflict with a greedy enemy who seeks their very souls.

Journey Across the Sea of Space

They named her Souther Cross and launched her on the road whose end they would never see. Months afterward shw was moving at half the speed of light; if there was to be enough reaction mass for deceleration and maneuver, the blast must be terminated. And so the long silence came. For four and half centuries the ship would fall.

They manned her by turns, and dreamed other ships and launched them, and saw how a few of the shortest journeys ended. Then they died.

After ten generations, the Souther Cross was not quite halfway to her own goal, though she was the farthest from Earth of any human work...

She's a soldier -- Noemi Vidal is seventeen years old and sworn to protect her planet, Genesis. She's willing to risk anything--including her own life. To their enemies on Earth, she's a rebel.

He's a machine -- Abandoned in space for years, utterly alone, Abel has advanced programming that's begun to evolve. He wants only to protect his creator, and to be free. To the people of Genesis, he's an abomination.

Noemi and Abel are enemies in an interstellar war, forced by chance to work together as they embark on a daring journey through the stars. Their efforts would end the fighting for good, but they're not without sacrifice. The stakes are even higher than either of them first realized, and the more time they spend together, the more they're forced to question everything they'd been taught was true

An outcast from her home -- Shunned after a trip through the galaxy with Abel, the most advanced cybernetic man ever created, Noemi Vidal dreams of traveling through the stars one more time. And when a deadly plague arrives on Genesis, Noemi gets her chance. As the only soldier to have ever left the planet, it will be up to her to save its people... if only she wasn't flying straight into a trap.

A fugitive from his fate -- On the run to avoid his depraved creator's clutches, Abel believes he's said good-bye to Noemi for the last time. After all, the entire universe stands between them...or so he thinks. When word reaches him of Noemi's capture by the very person he's trying to escape, Abel knows he must go to her, no matter the cost.

But capturing Noemi was only part of Burton Mansfield's master plan. In a race against time, Abel and Noemi will come together once more to discover a secret that could save the known worlds, or destroy them all.

In this thrilling and romantic sequel to Defy the Stars, bestselling author Claudia Gray asks us all to consider where--and with whom--we truly belong.

Hunted and desperate.

Abel only has one mission left that matters: save the life of Noemi Vidal. To do that, he not only has to escape the Genesis authorities, he also must face the one person in the galaxy who still has the means to destroy him. Burton Mansfield's consciousness lives on, desperate for a home, and Abel's own body is his last bargaining chip.

Alone in the universe.

Brought back from the brink of death, Noemi Vidal finds Abel has not only saved her life, but he's made her into something else, something more. Not quite mech, yet not quite human any longer, Noemi must find her place in a universe where she is utterly unique, all while trying to create a world where anyone--even a mech--can be free.

The final battle between Earth and the colony planets is here, and there's no lengths to which Earth won't go to preserve its domination over all humanity. But together, the universe's most advanced mech and its first human-mech hybrid might have the power to change the galaxy for good.

Jolon Gallamor was being hunted by the same inter-galactic hunters who had slain his father. Behind him lay certain death. Ahead of him lay a universe teeming with pirates, slavers, tyrants & warriors, where all law & order had broken down, & survival was only for the fittest. Jolon Gallamor had a mother wit & an acting skill that let him play a different role on every planet. He had a strange store of knowledge from the nearly forgotten past that he used to his bizarre advantage. And he had an implacable enemy coming closer & closer as Jolon moved ever outward in space toward the point of no return.

AKA: Stardrift

The Sternverein polices the universe. Criminals dread it; law-abiding citizens esteem it; all respect it. Ryne an orphan from the tiny planet Jadjeel, worships it. The organization rescued him from slavery and trained him to be a man among men, and elite Blackjacket. It gave his life purpose and direction, excitement and adventure. But it is totally corrupt, as Ryne learns.

ALEYTYS THE FUGITIVE

Far out among the stars the masterminds of the spider people had placed their mightiest mysteries in the scientific device called the diadem. And when that coronet was stolen, they were prepared to pursue it throughout eternity.

The thief crashed among the nomads of Jaydugar, a semi-barbarian world... and the diadem found its way into the hands - and onto the skull - of the girl Aleytys.

She was herself a strange one - daughter of a sky wanderer, outcast among the people who had raised her out of fear and awe. And the diadem was to prove both her bane and her treasure. For she could not remove it once it had sunk its electronic web into her brain and her nervous system - and she did not know how to control the powers that were contained within it.

Yet every moment she wore it, she would be a target for the vengeance of the spider race and the avarice of a thousand worlds.

The winter festival is approaching for the hardy colony of Morphans, but no one is in the mood to celebrate. They're trying to build a new life on a cold new world, but each year gets harder and harder. It's almost as if some dark force is working against them. Then three mysterious travelers arrive out of the midwinter night, one of them claiming to be a doctor. Are they bringing the gift of salvation or doom? And what else might be lurking out there, about to wake up?

In the Beginning...

Given life by gods, the Ogres were the most intelligent and beautful of the early races on Krynn, and they reigned supreme in their perfect kingdom...

Until that fabled race was weakened by clan rivalries and evil ambition, their downfall orchestrated by the hand of the Dark Queen, Takhisis...

Until the once-proud Ogres were cursed by their own mistakes and transformed into one of Krynn's most ugly, despised, and villainous species...

All except a small group, the Irda, who learned to accept goodness, fight for their freedom, and escape to build a utopian civilization of their own on a paradise island in the Dragon Isles.

The Irda

The Lost Histories Series probes the historical roots and epic struggles of the heretofore little-known peoples of Krynn. Author Linda P. Baker sheds light on thelegendary origins of this mysterious race, The Irda.

In the Region of the Summer Stars is a new Celtic fantasy from Stephen R. Lawhead, the critically-acclaimed author of the Pendragon Cycle.

Ravaged by barbarian Scálda forces, the last hope for Eirlandia lies with the island's warring tribes.

Wrongly cast out of his tribe, Conor, the first-born son of the Celtic king, embarks on a dangerous mission to prove his innocence.

What he discovers will change Eirlandia forever. For the Scálda have captured the mystical Fae to use as an ultimate weapon.

And Conor's own people have joined in the invasion.

Elana, though still a first-year student at the academy of the interstellar Anthopological Service, is elated by the chance to take part in her father's perilous mission to the medieval planet Andrecia, which is being invaded by colonists from a young starfaring Empire. How can they drive the Imperials away without revealing their own alien origin? The key to the plan is a woodcutter's son named Georyn, who believes the menace beyond the forest to be a dragon. To him, Elana is an enchantress who can give him magical powers that will enable him to defeat it. But she soon finds that this role is no mere pretense and that her feeling for Georyn is deeper than she ever expected it could become.

Low on fuel and hunted by the Fleet of Knives, the sentient warship Trouble Dog follows a series of clues that lead her to the Intrusion -- an area of space where reality itself becomes unstable. But with human civilisation crumbling, what difference can one battered old ship have against an invincible armada?

Meanwhile, Cordelia Pa and her step-brother eke out their existence salvaging artefacts from an alien city. But when Cordelia starts hearing the city's song in her head, strange things start happening around her. What extraordinary affinity does she have for this abandoned technology, and how can it possibly help the Trouble Dog?

Prince Roger MacClintock, Heir to the Throne of Man, was a spoiled rotten arrogant, thoroughly useless young pain in the butt.

But that was before the royal Brat and his Marine bodyguards had their starship sabotaged, and all were marooned on the enemy-occupied planet of Marduk. Before they had to march half way around the entire planet, through steaming jungles, damnbeasts, Capetoads, and killerpillars. Before they encountered treacherous local potentates, hostile barbarian armies numbering in the thousands, and an ocean full of creatures that are big, vicious and voracious.

Under the right circumstances, even the most spoiled brat can grow up fast. Now, Roger and his loyal troops have made it to the sea, and on the way, Roger has proven himself to be a true MacClintock and a born leader. Still, the sea has monsters big enough to swallow a ship - and across the water is an enemy spaceport, bristing with heavy artillery, against which Roger's team has only hand weapons with nearly-drained power packs. But neither Roger nor the Marines are about to give up, Marduk, do your worst!

Princess Altagracia has lost everything. After a bloody civil war, her twin sister has claimed both the crown of their planet, Szayet, and the Pearl of its prophecy: a computer that contains the immortal soul of Szayet's god.

So when the interstellar Empire of Ceiao turns its conquering eye toward Szayet, Gracia sees an opportunity. To regain her planet, Gracia places herself in the hands of the empire and its dangerous commander, Matheus Ceirran.

But winning over Matheus, to say nothing of his mercurial and compelling captain Anita, is no easy feat. And in trying to secure her planet's sovereignty and future, Gracia will find herself torn between Matheus's ambitions, Anita's unpredictable desires, and the demands of the Pearl that whispers in her ear.

For Szayet's sake and her own, she will need to become more than a princess with a silver tongue. She will have to become a queen as history has never seen before.

The Empire of Earth, spanning more than a thousand solar systems, is threatened by a conspiracy from within. Now, with more than three-quarters of the Galaxy ready to fall into enemy hands, the Empire is forced to call on its top-secret weapon: the renowned Circus of the Galaxy featuring the d'Alembert family, a clan of circus performers with uncanny abilities. But even these super agents may not be in time to save the Empire.

They were three battered oddities flung together by blind chance.

Together in uneasy alliance they were forced to challenge the most powerful forces in the galaxy to preserve their freedom -- and their very lives.

Moses Callahan: Captain of the star-tramp WILD GOOSE, last of a dying breed of independents, always on the fringes of bankruptcy. Desperation left him with a cargo that could destroy a world.

Mitsuko "Spooky" Tamura: first mate, engineer, crew of the WILD GOOSE, a telepath seeking refuge from the obscene babble of mankind in the silence of space -- and slowly learning the killing power of her mutant talent.

Deacon Hallorhan: Pilot of the WILD GOOSE, a super-soldier, programmed to kill, conditioned into docility, a human time-bomb waiting to explode.

Between them tensions that could only build to critical mass...

Three determined individuals--Oin Ceiragh, a fierce warrior, Dani Yuen, a deadly female assassin, and Cian Canbhei, a young gal-adheni--barter their freedom in the struggle to control the universe.

A Skinner's life is pure hell.

Hunting dragonhides on Trollshulm is a losing game. The odds of surviving to buy back your freedom range from slim to nil. Most skinners end up burned out, broken, or dead.

Chavez Blackstone was different. The spark that burned in him was so strong, nothing could snuff it out--not even Eli Santer, Trollshulm's absolute ruler. With a tough star-captain and an exotic beauty, Chavez defied the odds to challenge Santer's power.

A collection of Farmer's Father Carmody stories, including:

• The Night of Light - Jun '57
• A Few Miles - Oct '60
• Prometheus - Mar '61
• Father - Jul '55
• Attitudes - Oct '53

In the early years of the 21st century humanity has advanced step by slow step into space, but has discovered through constant monitoring of the heavens that certain asteroids have changed their orbits and are headed for horrifying impact with Earth. Urgent action is required, but politics and a worldwide financial crash get in the way.

The members of the van Huyten family, led by matriarch Mariesa who heads the vast space industry complex she has spent her life developing, the Pooles with their computer and security expertise, many political movers and shakers and dedicated pilots and space travelers of all stripes must pull together to save humanity from disaster. From the government offices and factories of Earth, to the Low Earth Orbit station, to manufacturing facilities on the moon, all of space-going humanity is united in an epic effort to save the planet from certain destruction and a new Dark Age, or perhaps even the extinction of all life on Earth.

An interstellar alien corporation run by aliens was thwarted in its plans to exploit genetically altered slaves. Now, in an attempt to keep it's case from ever coming to court, a judge is murdered on Khagodis--the planet where the amphibious human slaves were first bred--and the man who first broke the slave ring must find a way to bring these villains to justice.

The Forge of God described the destruction of Earth itself by self-replicating robots, Von Neumann machines designed to use the planet's mass to create more robotic creatures and spread throughout the Galaxy. Only a few humans have survived, aided by a mysterious alien race known only as “The Benefactors”, who arrived at Earth too late.

Now the small group of human survivors is determined to track down the criminal race who launched the planet killers. Humanity is given a starship by The Benefactors, and driven only by revenge they set out to find the unknown beings who are responsible for the destruction of Earth, and many other worlds.

Lovecraftian horror from award-winning Forgotten Realms game designer Bruce R. Cordell.

Raidon Kane survived his clash against the eldest aboleth, but came away with his mind shattered. Destiny hands Raidon one last chance to avert the Abolethic Sovereignty's agenda, but only if he can find within himself the strength to care. Raidon, the warlock Japheth, and Anusha, a young woman whose dreams are made real, must find Key of Stars before it is used to open the Far Manifold, and all reality drowns in a tide of horrific insanity.

The sea war rages up and down the Sword Coast, leaving the busy harbor of Baldur's Gate in flames. Following his mad quest, the evil Iakhovas has found a gateway into the protected waters of the Sea of Fallen Stars, and now no coast is safe from his marauding armies of the deep.

Dorothy Yoshida, an astronomer and telepath, joins the archaelogical team exploring the mysterious ruins of a nearly dead planet that shows some signs of returning to life.

On Elysium, a colony of settlers is slowly expanding through the annual arrival of a colony boat from Earth. Conflict between the city of Port of Plenty and the outlying settlements begins to build when things do not proceed as planned on one Landing Day; a split-perspective narrative supplies observations from both within and outside the main civilisation as the established way of life begins to fall apart. Elysium's aboriginees form the mysterious counterpoint to the human and AI politics responsible for the civil war.

Also published in the UK as Secret Harmonies.

In the aftermath of an interstellar war an enigmatic star is discovered, travelling towards the Solar System from the galactic core. Its appearance adds a new and dangerous factor in the turbulent politics of the inhabited worlds as the rival factions - the power-holders of the ReUnited Nations, the rebels who secretly oppose their power, and the Religious Witnesses - all see advantages to be gained. But what awesome technology started the star on its journey half a million years ago - and why?

Kira Navárez dreamed of life on new worlds.

Now she's awakened a nightmare.

During a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, Kira finds an alien relic. At first she's delighted, but elation turns to terror when the ancient dust around her begins to move.

As war erupts among the stars, Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning odyssey of discovery and transformation. First contact isn't at all what she imagined, and events push her to the very limits of what it means to be human.

While Kira faces her own horrors, Earth and its colonies stand upon the brink of annihilation. Now, Kira might be humanity's greatest and final hope...

Marooned in outer space after an attack on his ship, Nomad, Gulliver Foyle lives to obsessively pursue the crew of a rescue vessel which had ignored his distress calls and left him to die.

When it comes to pop culture, Alfred Bester (1913-1987) is something of an unsung hero. He wrote radio scripts, screenplays, and comic books (in which capacity he created the original Green Lantern Oath). But Bester is best known for his science-fiction novels, and The Stars My Destination may be his finest creation. With its sly potshotting at corporate skullduggery, The Stars My Destination seems utterly contemporary, and has maintained its status as an underground classic for fifty years. (Bester fans should also note that iPicturebooks has reprinted The Demolished Man, which won the very first Hugo Award in 1953.)

Alfred Bester was among the first important authors of contemporary science fiction. His passionate novels of worldly adventure, high intellect, and tremendous verve, The Stars My Destination and the Hugo Award winning The Demolished Man, established Bester as a s.f. grandmaster, a reputation that was ratified by the Science Fiction Writers of America shortly before his death. Bester also was an acclaimed journalist for Holiday magazine, a reviewer for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and even a writer for Superman.

When Hail confronts the Farian gods, the last thing she expected was to discover they were part of an alien race called the Hiervet who'd attacked the galaxy long before humanity's ancestors had crawled out of the sludge of Earth's oceans.

The discovery carries with it dire news: The Hiervet are returning and this time they won't stop until everyone bends to their will. Now the fate of the galaxy is on the line and Hail will have to make one final gamble to leverage chaos into peace. But success may cost her everything – including her life.

THE LONG WAY HOME

Hammer's Slammer Don Slade is coming home to the planet Tethys, to his son and the woman he loves. But the space between is dark and cold. And the stars he must pass shine their light on planets which beckon to the weary traveler, planets which hold hidden dangers.

And if Don Slade should ever reach Tethys... that is when the real fighting starts.

Winner of seven Hugo and three Nebula Awards, Poul Anderson is one of science fiction's supreme masters. In "Harvest of Stars," his most ambitous novel to date, Earth lies crushed in the grip of totalitarianism.

To save her planet, his heroine, Kyra Davis is sent on a mission to liberate our last bastion of freedom and rescue its legendary leader. Her bold adventure will sweep her from Earth's rebel enclaves to the decadent court of an exotic lunar colony, from the virtual realities of biotech and artificial intelligence to a brave new world menaced by a dying star.

Poul Anderson returns to the same brilliantly conceived future to tell a story of revolution and liberation on the Moon.

Poul Anderson, a legend of SF, is the writer whom the mantle of Robert A. Heinlein descended upon. Anderson devoted his career to the visionary enterprise of creating science fiction set in a carefully extrapolated human society of the future in the spirit of Heinlein.

Nowhere does he succeed more powerfully than in the works set in the future history that began in Harvest of Stars, continued in The Stars Are Also Fire, and now leaps into the distant future in Harvest the Fire. This is no less than the tale of the expansion of humanity to the limits of the solar system and beyond. It also chronicles the evolution of machine intelligence, until humans and machines come into conflict in an age when the outward urge and the urge to change are the chief barriers to utopia for many humans--and for their machines.

Harvest the Fire is the story of politics and poetry: of a poet, Jesse Nicol, who aspires to great work in an era when human literary greatness is apparently all in the past, who travels to the Moon and falls in love with a beautiful revolutionary, Falaire--a woman determined to escape from the care of machines. For the machines are now the masters of humanity, and the great work of Falaire is freedom, which must be stolen from the machines.

With the precision and clear focus of a master, Poul Anderson tells a sharp and poignant tale against an epic interplanetary background. Harvest the Fire is hard SF raised to the intensity of poetry.

In Fleet of Stars, Poul Anderson brings back the wildly colorful Anson Guthrie, his iconoclastic hero from Harvest of Stars. The staid, somber people of Earth are not only dependent on technology, they are all but ruled by machine intelligence. Suspecting a conspiracy to suppress humankind's last vestiges of freedom, Guthrie begins a dangerous journey across the realm of the comets, the asteroids, and the stars themselves--willing to risk his life to preserve humanity's ability to roam the universe.

Once Ana was an orphaned space outlaw. Then she was the Empress of the Iron Kingdom. Now, thought dead by most of the galaxy after she escaped from the dark AI program called the HIVE, Ana is desperate for a way to save Di from the HIVE's evil clutches and take back her kingdom.

Ana's only option is to find Starbright, the one person who hacked into the HIVE and lived to tell the tale. But when Ana's desperation costs the crew of the Dossier a terrible price, Ana and her friends are sent spiraling through the most perilous reaches of the Iron Kingdom to stop the true arbiter of evil in her world: an ancient world-ending deity called the Great Dark.

Their journey will take their sharp-witted pilot, Jax, to the home he never wanted to return to and the dangerous fate he left behind. And when Robb finds out who Jax really is, he must contend with his own feelings for the boy he barely knows, and question whether he truly belongs with this group of outcasts.

When facing the worst odds, can Ana and her crew of misfits find a way to stop the Great Dark once and for all?

THE INHABITANTS OF TERRA NICKNAMED THEM "ANGELS"

They were exquisitely beautiful, these shimmering, fiery creatures, highly intelligent and playful. Yet they were awesome, too, considering that the youngest were four million years old, and the oldest had probably participated in the First Cause, which had given birth to the whole universe.

To young space cadet Jack Loftus fell the overwhelming responsiblity of negotiating a treaty with them - a treaty which could mean the life or death of the Earth and mankind.

INTO THE HEART OF THE MILKY WAY

Earth wants to join the incredibly powerful Federation of the Heart Stars. But first, an expedition must journey to the center of our galaxy to be accepted by the ancient and advanced civilization of Malis, the leader of the Heart Stars.

After receiving space directions on the Mars moon of Phobus, the Earth expedition proceeds into the uncarted vastness of space. Streaking faster than the speed of light, they venture where no man or woman had ever been before, to strange-and dangerous-planets. But the biggest peril of all awaits them on Malis itslef, where the fate of Earth will be decided!

Travel to other planets is a reality, and with overpopulation stretching the resources of Earth, the necessity to find habitable worlds is growing ever more urgent. With no time to wait years for communication between slower-than-light spaceships and home, the Long Range Foundation explores an unlikely solution--human telepathy.

Identical twins Tom and Pat are enlisted to be the human radios that will keep the ships in contact with Earth, but one of them has to stay behind while the other explores the depths of space.This is one of Heinlein's triumphs.

In one of Robert A. Heinlein's most controversial bestsellers, a recruit of the future goes through the toughest boot camp in the Universe - and into battle with the Terran Mobile Infantry against mankind's most alarming enemy.

It is told through the eyes of Starship Trooper Johnny Rico, from his idealistic enlistment in the infantry of the future, through his rigorous training to the command of his own platoon of infantrymen. His destiny is a galactic war of unlimited violence and destruction, in which he and his fellow troopers scour the metal-strewn emptiness of space to hunt down a terrifying enemy - an insect life form which threatens the very future of mankind.

Raised by a human, Heyoka Blackeagle thinks like a human, even if he is a typical hrinn--seven feet tall, covered with fur, retractable claws. In the war against the insectlike flek, Heyoka distinguished himself in the Ranger Corps. Now, on a planet from which the flek have been driven, he's leading a group of humans and hrinn, trying to prove that hrinn can make proficient rangers in spite of their disdain for following orders.

Then a hidden, fully functional flek stargate is found, ready to transport flek hordes. And word comes of a flek advance. The planet must be evacuated, but rather than abandon his team in the jungle, Heyoka stays behind, only to find that his human partner Mitsu, once a flek POW, is hallucinating, seeing nonexistent flek. And then the real flek arrive....

Willful as well as physically brave, Lily Ransome is dissatisfied by the options available to her on Unruli: She can either join her family’s lucrative mining business or begin procreating. When Heredes, her beloved martial arts instructor, tutor, and father figure, is kidnapped by alien bounty hunters, Lily spurns the expectations of her home planet and ventures into space to find him. Befriending a persecuted minority class of humans called the Ridani, she becomes involved in an intergalactic rebellion and finds love in an unexpected place—as well as true strength within herself.

Whirlpool of Stars opens with a starship breaking down - something in the engineroom blows up as a result of shoddy maintenance. The passengers and crew are forced to flee in lifeboats, though this is no orderly evacuation. Hook is aboard, and he manages to get a seat aboard one of the lifeboats. The nearest planet, however, is run by a rival corporation to that which had operated the starship, and everyone who lands would be subject high fees... which they can pay off by indentured labour... Hook evades the authorities and, with a woman in tow, runs about the planet, trying to avoid slavery and also the Boosted Men, who are after him.

Published (as is the rest of the series) under the penname Tully Zetford.

Battle-ready factions converge above Darien, all with the same objective: to control this newly discovered planet and access the powerful weapons at its heart. Despotic Hegemony forces dominate much of known space and they want this world too, but Darien's inhabitants are determined to fight for their future.

However, key players in this conflict aren't fully in control. Hostile AIs have infiltrated key minds and have an agenda, requiring nothing less than the destruction or subversion of all organic life. And they are near to unleashing their cohorts, a host of twisted machine intelligences caged beneath Darien. Fighting to contain them are Darien's hidden guardians, and their ancient ally the Construct, on a millennia-long mission to protect sentient species. As the war reaches its peak, the AI army is roaring to the surface, to freedom and an orgy of destruction.

Darien is first in line in a machine vs. human war -- for life or the sterile dusts of space.

After the Aetar nearly kill Maxine's unborn child, and a betrayal within her own ranks leaves Maxine's husband, Grant, poisoned and dying, Maxine is forced to attack a race of beings that possesses almost unlimited power. Doing so will require she make a deal with the devil--the devil that lives inside her--risking both her sanity and her soul as she slowly transforms into something more than human.

But even that might not be enough to save Grant, because the very thing that Maxine is becoming is destined to destroy the world.

Contained in this volume are stories about interstellar barbarians, spacefaring civilizations, and peacekeeping, accompanied by essays and poems about military policy, space warfare, and advancing empires.

Contents:

• Introduction: Empire - essay by Jerry Pournelle
• In Clouds of Glory - (1955) - novelette by Algis Budrys
• The Star Plunderer - [Technic History] - (1952) - novelette by Poul Anderson
• Tribesman, Barbarian and Citizen - [Editorial (Analog)] - (1961) - essay by John W. Campbell, Jr.
• The Barbarians Within - (1965) - essay by John W. Campbell, Jr.
• Hymn of Breaking Strain - (1935) - poem by Rudyard Kipling
• The Miracle of Government - (1957) - essay by James Burnham
• To a Different Drum - novelette by Reginald Bretnor
• The Whirligig of Time - (1974) - short story by Vernor Vinge
• Nightmare, with Angels - (1935) - poem by Stephen Vincent Bené
• The Aristocrat - (1949) - novelette by Chan Davis
• The Sons of Martha - (1907) - poem by Rudyard Kipling
• Mail Supremacy - [Chap Foey Rider - 1] - (1975) - short story by Hayford Peirce
• Herbig-Haro - [Roxalani - 2] - (1984) - novelette by Harry Turtledove
• Fighting Philosopher - [The Philosophical Corps] - (1954) - novelette by Everett B. Cole
• The Voodoo Sciences: Part One: The Gamblers - (1982) - essay by Jerry Pournelle (variant of The Gamblers)
• The Voodoo Sciences: Part Two: The Voodoo Sciences - (1982) - essay Jerry Pournelle (variant of The Voodoo Sciences)
• Pax Galactica - (1952) - novelette by Ralph Williams
• The Proper Study of Mankind - [New Beginnings] - (1980) - essay by Jerry Pournelle
• An Afterword on the Future (The Proper Study of Mankind) - essay by Jerry Pournelle
• Finger Trouble - novelette by Edward P. Hughes
• Yellow Rain - (1983) - essay by Adrian Berry
• Space Wars - (1983) - essay by Adrian Berry
• That Share of Glory - (1952) - novelette by C. M. Kornbluth
• The Stars at War - essay by Jerry Pournelle

Contained in this volume are stories and articles with space colonies, dictators, ambassadors, utopias, colleges of the future, cults, alien invaders, and interstellar politics.

Contents:

• Republic and Empire - essay by Jerry Pournelle
• Outward Bound - (1964) - novelette by Norman Spinrad
• In the Realm of the Heart, in the World of the Knife - (1985) - short story by Wayne Wightman
• Litany for Dictatorships - (1935) - poem by Stephen Vincent Benét^?
• Doing Well While Doing Good - [Chap Foey Rider - 2] - (1975) - short story by Hayford Peirce
• The Last Department - (1886) - poem by Rudyard Kipling
• Constitution - [Editorial (Analog)] - (1961) - essay by John W. Campbell, Jr. (variant of Constitution for Utopia)
• Minor Ingredient - (1956) - short story by Eric Frank Russell
• The Turning Wheel - (1954) - novelette by Philip K. Dick
• Reactionary Utopias - (1986) - essay by Gregory Benford
• These Shall Not Be Lost - [The Philosophical Corps] - (1953) - novelette by Everett B. Cole
• Data vs. Evidence in the Voodoo Sciences - [The Alternate View] - (1983) - essay by Jerry Pournelle
• Nicaragua: A Speech to My Former Comrades on the Left - (1986) - essay by David Horowitz
• The Gods of the Copybook Headings - (1911) - poem by Rudyard Kipling
• Custom Fitting - (1976) - novelette by James White
• Conquest by Default - (1968) - novelette by Vernor Vinge
• The Skills of Xanadu - (1956) - novelette by Theodore Sturgeon
• Into the Sunset - (1986) - short story by D. C. Poyer
• Shipwright - [Courtship Rite Universe] - (1978) - novelette by Donald Kingsbury
• Empire and Republic: Crisis and Future - essay by Jerry Pournelle

Empires do not grow old gracefully. As the edifice of ancient government succumbs to entropy, as civil war reigns, the result is indeed "interesting times," the times of interstellar Huns locked in mortal combat with Imperial storm troopers.

Contents:

• The Crash of Empires - essay by Jerry Pournelle
• Pebble Among the Stars - (1976) - novelette by Gregory Benford (variant of Seascape)
• The Claw and the Clock - [Federation of Humanity] - (1971) - novelette by Christopher Anvil
• The Only Thing We Learn - (1949) - short story by C. M. Kornbluth
• Remembering Vietnam - (1987) - essay by H. J. Kaplan
• Blessed Are the Meek - (1955) - short story by G. C. Edmondson
• Limiting Factor - (1954) - short story by Theodore R. Cogswell
• Triage - (1976) - short story by William Walling
• Hyperdemocracy - [Editorial (Astounding)] - (1958) - essay by John W. Campbell, Jr.
• Chain Reaction - (1957) - novelette by Algis Budrys
• Earthman's Burden - (1954) - short story by Morton Klass
• Blood Bank - (1952) - novella by Walter M. Miller, Jr.
• Here, There Be Witches - [The Philosophical Corps] - (1970) - novelette by Everett B. Cole
• The Buzz of Joy - [Tower to the Sky] - (1989) - short story by Phillip C. Jennings
• Second Contact - (1988) - novella by W. R. Thompson
• The Quest - (1896) - poem by Rudyard Kipling

The seductive thrill of uncharted worlds, of distant galaxies... and the unknown threats that lurk in the vastness of the cosmos. From Foundation to Lensman, Star Wars to Guardians of the Galaxy, space opera continues to exert its magnetic pull on us all. INFINITE STARS This is the definitive collection of original short stories by many of today's finest authors, writing brand new adventures set in their most famous series. Herein lie canonical tales of the Honorverse, the Lost Fleet, Dune, Vatta's War, Ender Wiggin, the Legion of the Damned, the Imperium, and more. Also included are past masterpieces by authors whose works defined the genre, including a Miles Vorkosigan adventure, a story from the author of the Dragonriders of Pern, and a rare tale co-authored by the screenwriter for The Empire Strikes Back. Nebula and Hugo Award winners, New York Times bestsellers, and Science Fiction Grand Masters--these authors take us to the farthest regions of space.

Table of Contents:

• Editor's Note and Acknowledgements - essay by Bryan Thomas Schmidt
• Space Opera: An Introduction - essay by Robert Silverberg
• Renegat - novella by Orson Scott Card
• The Waters of Kanly - novelette by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson
• The Good Shepherd - short story by William C. Dietz
• The Game of Rat and Dragon - (1955) - short story by Cordwainer Smith
• The Borders of Infinity - (1987) - novella by Lois McMaster Bujold
• All in a Day's Work - short story by Elizabeth Moon
• Last Day of Training - short story by Dave Bara
• The Wages of Honor - novelette by Catherine Asaro
• Binti - (2015) - novella by Nnedi Okorafor
• Reflex - (1982) - short story by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle
• How to Be a Barbarian in the Late 25th Century - short story by Jean Johnson
• Stark and the Star Kings - (2005) - novelette by Leigh Brackett and Edmond Hamilton
• Imperium Imposter - short story by Jody Lynn Nye
• Region Five - short story by Linda Nagata
• Night Passage - novelette by Alastair Reynolds
• Duel on Syrtis - (1951) - short story by Poul Anderson
• Twilight World - (2013) - novelette by A. C. Crispin
• Twenty Excellent Reasons - short story by Bennett R. Coles
• The Ship Who Sang - (1961) - novelette by Anne McCaffrey
• Taste of Ashes - novella by Charles E. Gannon
• The Iron Star - (1987) - novelette by Robert Silverberg
• Cadet Cruise - (2016) - short fiction by David Drake
• Shore Patrol - short story by Jack Campbell
• Our Sacred Honor - novelette by David Weber

The definitive collection of explorers and soldiers, charting the dark frontiers of our expanding universe. Amongst the infinite stars we find epic sagas of wars, tales of innermost humanity, and the most powerful of desires - our need to create a better world.

Table of Contents:

• Editor's Note and Acknowledgements (Infinite Stars: Dark Frontiers) - essay by Bryan Thomas Schmidt
• Introduction (Infinite Stars: Dark Frontiers) - essay by David Weber
• A Special Kind of Morning - novelette by Gardner Dozois
• Shambleau - [Northwest Smith] - novelette by C. L. Moore
• Rescue Party - novelette by Arthur C. Clarke
• Misfit - [Future History] - novelette by Robert A. Heinlein
• Earthman, Come Home - [Cities in Flight] - novelette by James Blish
• The Vortex Blaster - [Vortex Blaster] - short story by Edward E. Smith
• The Veteran - short story by Neal Asher
• The Traitor - [Bolo] - novelette by David Weber
• Sideshow - [Pip & Flinx - 9] - short fiction by Alan Dean Foster
• A Beast for Norn - [Haviland Tuf] - novelette by George R. R. Martin
• Lieutenant Tightass - [Diving Universe] - novelette by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• Ishigaki - [The Lost Fleet Universe] - short fiction by Jack Campbell
• A Good Heretic - [Wayfarers] - short fiction by Becky Chambers
• The Devil and the Details - short fiction by Susan R. Matthews
• Messenger - [Ender's Universe] - short fiction by Orson Scott Card
• First In - [Confederation of Valor Universe] - short fiction by Tanya Huff
• Fire in the Pocket - short fiction by Curtis C. Chen
• Frontier ABCs - short fiction by Seanan McGuire
• Dark Secrets - [Liaden Universe short fiction] - short fiction by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
• Lady or the Tiger - [Dream Park Universe] - short fiction by Steven Barnes and Larry Niven
• Respect - short fiction by Dave Wolverton [as by David Farland]
• Boot Recruit - [Kris Longknife] - short fiction by Mike Shepherd
• The End of the World Bowling League - [Task Force Ombra] - short fiction by Weston Ochse
• Death, Butterflies, and Makers of War - short fiction by Brenda Cooper
• Feet of Clay - [The Saga of Seven Suns Universe] - short fiction by Kevin J. Anderson
• Cold Sleep - short fiction by C. J. Cherryh

A collection of science fiction tales of mystery, crime, and detection features works by Stephen R. Donaldson, Isaac Asimov, Larry Niven, Harlan Ellison, and others.

Table of Contents:

• 7 - Introduction (Tin Stars) - (1986) - essay by Isaac Asimov
• 11 - Into the Shop - (1964) - short story by Ron Goulart
• 22 - Cloak of Anarchy - [Known Space] - (1972) - novelette by Larry Niven
• 44 - The King's Legions - [Federation of Humanity] - (1967) - novelette by Christopher Anvil
• 98 - Finger of Fate - (1980) - short story by Edward Wellen
• 109 - Arm of the Law - (1958) - short story by Harry Harrison
• 126 - Voiceover - (1984) - novelette by Edward Wellen
• 154 - The Fastest Draw - (1963) - short story by Larry Eisenberg
• 163 - Mirror Image - [Elijah Baley / R. Daneel Olivaw] - (1972) - short story by Isaac Asimov
• 180 - Brillo - (1970) - novelette by Ben Bova and Harlan Ellison
• 214 - The Powers of Observation - (1968) - short story by Harry Harrison
• 230 - Faithfully Yours - (1955) - short story by Lou Tabakow
• 249 - Safe Harbor - (1986) - novelette by Donald Wismer
• 272 - Examination Day - (1958) - short story by Henry Slesar
• 277 - The Cruel Equations - (1971) - short story by Robert Sheckley
• 291 - Animal Lover - (1978) - novella by Stephen R. Donaldson

While exploring on the Saturnian moon Rhea, Derek Kuroda discovers some powerful alien artifacts which soon become the source of power to launch dozens of asteroid worlds to freedom.

With the mutant Eet, Murdoc continues searching for the secret of his legacy, the zero stone, trying to find the star map which will disclose the truth about the stone and Eet's origin.

Pipe-smoking, action-loving spaceship commander Lieutenant John Grimes (think Captain Kirk with more of a navy, salty attitude) moves out of the Federation navy and finds his true calling adventuring along the spaceways of the galactic rim.

Number five in the collected adventures of the legendary John Grimes of the Galactic Rim series, including four novels:

• Into the Alternate Universe (1964)
• Contraband from Otherspace (1967)
• The Rim Gods (1969)--story collection
• The Commodore at Sea (a.k.a. Alternate Orbits, 1971)--four novelets

The Reign of the Galactic Empire has reached the Outer Rim planet of Jelucan, where aristocratic Thane Kyrell and rural villager Ciena Ree bond over their love of flying. Enrolling at the Imperial Academy is nothing less than a dream come true for both of them. But Thane sours on the dream when he sees firsthand the horrific tactics that the Empire uses to maintain its ironclad rule.

Bitter and disillusioned, he joins the fledging Rebellion--putting Ciena in an unbearable position between her loyality to the Empire and her love for the man she's known since childhood.

Now on opposite sides of the war, will these friends turned foes ever find a way to be together, or will duty tear them--and the galaxy--apart?

Living with his Uncle Mike at Starswarm Station on a planet called Paradise, Kip's best friend is Gwen who answers questions and seems to know everything. But Gwen is an implant in Kip's head, connected to an Artificial Intelligence at the planet's central computer, and Kip learns some secrets that put not only his and his Uncle Mike's lives in danger, but also threaten the existence of the aliens called centaurs and the starswarms, mysterious but highly intelligent organisms living in lakes and streams.

Inspector Keon has finally got over the death of his wife Alysha in a terrorist attack five years ago. The illegal AI copy of her - Liss - that he created to help him mourn has vanished, presumed destroyed. His life is back on track. But a deadly shooting in a police-guarded room in a high-security hospital threatens to ruin everything. Who got past the defences? Why did they kill the seemingly unimportant military officer who had been in a coma for weeks? And why did the scanners pick up the deceased man the next day on the other side of the planet, seemingly alive and well?

As Keon digs into the mysteries he begins to realise that the death was connected to a mysterious object, potentially alien, discovered buried in ice under the north pole. Someone has worked out what is hidden there, and what its discovery will mean for mankind. Someone who is willing to kill.

And another player has entered the game. Someone who seems to know more about Keon than is possible.

Someone who might be using Liss's information against him.

Or who might be Alysha, back from the dead.

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.

The enchantment continues....

The universe of the Lunar Chronicles holds stories - and secrets - that are wondrous, vicious, and romantic. How did Cinder first arrive in New Beijing? How did the brooding soldier Wolf transform from young man to killer? When did Princess Winter and the palace guard Jacin realize their destinies?

With six stories - two of which have never before been published - and an exclusive never-before-seen excerpt from Marissa Meyer's novel, Heartless, about the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland, Stars Above is essential for fans of the bestselling and beloved Lunar Chronicles.

Contents:

• The Keeper
• Glitches
• The Queen's Army
• Carswell's Guide to Being Lucky
• After Sunshine Passes By
• The Princess and the Guard
• The Little Android
• The Mechanic
• Something Old, Something New

Admiral Anoushka rose from nothing to command an army unrivaled in all the galaxies. She did not rise alone.

War between godlike machines is breaking out, and at its center is the AI who aided Anoushka's ascent. Now payment has come calling: her closest allies are subverted, her body is twisted by poison that bends her toward madness, and her wife has been stolen.

The machines will devour the stars as they battle each other for the ultimate prize: the next step in AI evolution, the key that will give them the universe. Yet Anoushka hasn't survived this long to become collateral damage. She will fight until she no longer can... and she will take back what's hers.

Old Earth is gone. Humanity has been scattered to the stars. Some left their dying planet in spaceship arks, in search of new worlds to inhabit. Others, nanoengineered for near-immortality, explore the far reaches of interstellar space in gargantuan macrolife mobiles. An earthlike human society endures on the einvironmentally volatile planet of Tau Ceti IV--a rigid community of the faithful that has declared evil the science that caused the homeworld's destruction. The Church is the absolute power here; obedience and belief the rule. But His Holiness Peter III, the New Vatican's most powerful figure, himself harbors doubts, engendered by his love for his unacknowledged and illegitimate rebel daughter Josepha. And suddenly there is another assault on his tottering faith--and on the sacred tradtitions he has devoted his life to uphold. For an emissary, Voss Rhazes, has arrived from one of old Earth's journeying mobiles--the first off-planet human visitor ever to Tau Ceti--bearing remarkable hated technology that could shred the fragile emotional fabric of a family...and bring devastating chaos to their world.

The war with the Mageworlds is over. Now it's time for the real struggle to begin.

Freebooter at heart, spacer by trade, Beka Rosselin-Metadi doesn't want to hear about her father whose rugged generalship held back the Mageworlds--or her highborn mother whose leadership has held the galaxy together ever since. Beka pilots spacecraft--as far from her famous family as possible, thanks very much.

Then Beka's mother is assassinated on the Senate floor, and her father offers her Warhammer, prize ship from his own freebooting youth--if she'll use it to deliver the assassins to him "off the books."

Looking for assassins has a tendency to make assassins look for you. In short order Beka's arranged her own very public death and adopted a new identity; now all she has to do is leave a trail of kidnappings and corpses across five star systems, and blow the roof off the strongest private fortress in the Galaxy. If her own family can just get off her case long enough...!

The star systems of the Mageworlds are linked by magic. Only when trained Mages have found a Way to a new world can the great colonizing and trading ships follow. But beyond the furthest worlds is a great gap, beyond which, hint the legends, lie vast, rich human worlds long lost to the Mages' trade.

Now the most powerful Mage-circle ever is determined to walk to those worlds, to reunite humanity's sundered branches and make a fortune in the process. And young Arekhon sus-Khalgath, scion of the most powerful of the clans of starship builders, has left his inheritance to join them.

But immense forces are arrayed against them. Blood will be spilled, and dynasties thrown down, before the worlds of mankind are again united. For the first time in living memory, the Mages will go to war--with themselves.

The new novel in the sweeping Mageworlds series.

On the planet Entibor, Arekhon sus-Khalgath sus Peledaen has found shelter and domestic tranquility with his old love, Elaeli Inadi, at the price of what he had left behind: a dispersed and shattered Mage-Circle, an estranged brother who had tried to kill him, and a homeworld on the cusp of massive cultural upheaval.

Arekhon finds himself impelled homeward by strange dreams and prophetic visions. The Great Working--the effort to do the unthinkable and reunite a galaxy long sundered by the Gap Between--remains incomplete, left unfinished in the aftermath of the dissolution of Arehkon's Mage-Circle. But too much energy and too many lives have been poured into the Working already; and it cannot end so long as any of the Circle members remain alive and bound into it.

Home, unfortunately, isn't a safe place for Arehkon to be at the moment. For Eraasi has changed--and the great fleet families at the center of the Eraasian culture are girding for war.

When Saffron Coulter stumbles through a hole in reality, she finds herself trapped in Kena, a magical realm on the brink of civil war.

There, her fate becomes intertwined with that of three very different women: Zech, the fast-thinking acolyte of a cunning, powerful exile; Viya, the spoiled, runaway consort of the empire-building ruler, Vex Leoden; and Gwen, an Earth-born worldwalker whose greatest regret is putting Leoden on the throne. But Leoden has allies, too, chief among them the Vex'Mara Kadeja, a dangerous ex-priestess who shares his dreams of conquest.

Pursued by Leoden and aided by the Shavaktiin, a secretive order of storytellers and mystics, the rebels flee to Veksh, a neighboring matriarchy ruled by the fearsome Council of Queens. Saffron is out of her world and out of her depth, but the further she travels, the more she finds herself bound to her friends with ties of blood and magic.

Can one girl - an accidental worldwalker - really be the key to saving Kena? Or will she just die trying?

The most complete version ever published.

An Egyptologist, attempting to raise from the dead the mummy of Tera, an ancient Egyptian queen, finds a fabulous gem and is stricken senseless by an unknown force. Amid bloody and eerie scenes, his daughter is possessed by Tera's soul, and her fate depends upon bringing Tera's mummified body to life.

When The Jewel of Seven Stars was first released in 1903 the publishers received a great deal of criticism from both critics and readers because of its gruesome ending. Shortly before his death in 1912 when Stoker attempted to republish the book he was told that he would have to change the ending if he didn't want it to go out of publication. As a result, Stoker removed Chapter XVI "Powers - Old and New" and gave the book a new and happier ending. For many years the original ending was unavailable to most readers. Now, for the first time ever, we have included the endings from the first and second editions in this volume.

The Free Trader starship Lydis appears to be making an ordinary run to the planet Thoth, carrying incense for the great temples of Kartum. And so she is - until a civil war lands her in the middle of a battle of ancient powers and nameless evil, with a Forerunner treasure at its heart.

Sixteen-year-old Nina Kane should be worrying about her immortal soul, but she's too busy trying to actually survive. Her town's population has been decimated by soul-consuming demons, and souls are in short supply. Watching over her younger sister, Mellie, and scraping together food and money are all that matters. The two of them are a family. They gave up on their deadbeat mom a long time ago.

When Nina discovers that Mellie is keeping a secret that threatens their very existence, she'll do anything to protect her. Because in New Temperance, sins are prosecuted as crimes by the brutal Church and its army of black-robed exorcists. And Mellie's sin has put her in serious trouble.

To keep them both alive, Nina will need to put her trust in Finn, a fugitive with deep green eyes who has already saved her life once and who might just be an exorcist. But what kind of exorcist wears a hoodie?

Wanted by the Church and hunted by dark forces, Nina knows she can't survive on her own. She needs Finn and his group of rogue friends just as much as they need her.

Betrothed since childhood to the prince of Mynaria, Princess Dennaleia has always known what her future holds. Her marriage will seal the alliance between Mynaria and her homeland, protecting her people from other hostile kingdoms. But Denna has a secret. She possesses an Affinity for fire--a dangerous gift for the future queen of a land where magic is forbidden.

Now Denna has to learn the ways of her new kingdom while trying to hide her growing magic. To make matters worse, she must learn to ride Mynaria's formidable warhorses before her coronation--and her teacher is the person who intimidates her most, the prickly and unconventional Princess Amaranthine, sister of her betrothed.

When a shocking assassination leaves the kingdom reeling, Mare and Denna reluctantly join forces to search for the culprit. As the two work together, they discover there is more to one another than they thought--and soon their friendship is threatening to blossom into something more.

But with dangerous conflict brewing that makes the alliance more important than ever, acting on their feelings could be deadly. Forced to choose between their duty and their hearts, Mare and Denna must find a way to save their kingdoms--and each other.

Princesses Denna and Mare are in love and together at last--only to face a new set of dangers.

Mare just wants to settle down with the girl she loves, which would be easier if Denna weren't gifted with forbidden and volatile fire magic. Denna must learn to control her powers, which means traveling in secret to the kingdom of Zumorda, where she can seek training without fear of persecution. Determined to help, Mare has agreed to serve as an ambassador as a cover for their journey.

But just as Mare and Denna arrive in Zumorda, an attack on a border town in Mynaria changes everything. Mare's diplomatic mission is now urgent: she must quickly broker an alliance with the queen of Zumorda to protect her homeland. However, the queen has no interest in allying with other kingdoms; it's Denna's untamed but powerful magic that catches her eye. The queen offers Denna a place among her elite trainees--an opportunity that would force her to choose between her magic and Mare.

As Denna's powers grow stronger, Mare struggles to be the ambassador her kingdom needs. By making unconventional friends, her knowledge of Zumorda and its people grow, and so too do her suspicions about who is truly behind the attacks on Zumorda and her homeland.

As rising tensions and unexpected betrayals put Mare and Denna in jeopardy and dangerous enemies emerge on all sides, can they protect their love and save their kingdoms?

The Cluster is a vast alien machine that destroys starships indiscriminately in its quest for something or someone. Commander John Mark Ellis, disgraced and booted out of the service when he fails to save a merchant ship, believes the key to stopping the Cluster is communication. His mother, Suki Firebrandt Ellis, is an astronomer who believes the very leaders of the galaxy are withholding information about the Cluster. Clyde McClintlock believes the Cluster is God incarnate, seeking retribution. G'Liat is an alien warrior whose own starship was destroyed by the Cluster. All together, they set out to solve the mystery of the Cluster before it finds the object of its quest.

Ari Helix may have won her battle against the tyrannical Mercer corporation, but the larger war has just begun. Ari and her cursed wizard Merlin must travel back in time to the unenlightened Middle Ages and steal the King Arthur's Grail -- the very definition of impossible. It's imperative that the time travelers not skew the timeline and alter the course of history. Coming face to face with the original Arthurian legend could produce a ripple effect that changes everything. Somehow Merlin forgot that the past can be even more dangerous than the future...

More than human and less that a god, John O'Ryan is Orion, made by the Creators who rule outside of time. His purpose is to do their bidding. Now, Orion has becomee a key piece in a cosmic game between two of the Creators--Anya, the goddess he loves, and Aten, the god who toys with his destiny.

Not long ago, Earth's colonies and space stations threw off the yoke of planet Earth's tyrannical rule. Decades later, trouble is brewing in the Four Systems, and Old Earth is flexing its power in a bid to regain control over its lost territories.

The Order of Saint Rita--whose mission is to provide aid and mercy to those in need--bore witness to and defied Central Governance's atrocities on the remote planet Phyosonga III. The sisters have been running ever since, staying under the radar while still trying to honor their calling.

Despite the sisters' secrecy, the story of their defiance is spreading like wildfire, spearheaded by a growing anti-Earth religious movement calling for revolution. Faced with staying silent or speaking up, the Order of Saint Rita must decide the role they will play--and what hand they will have--in reshaping the galaxy.

The Stars are Ours! describes the first interstellar voyage, undertaken to escape the tyranny that rules the Earth.

While the Republic of Cinnabar is at peace with the Alliance, warriors like Lt. Daniel Leary and Signals Officer Adele Mundy must find other work--like escorting a pair of wealthy nobles on an expedition to the back of beyond!

The Princess Cecile, the corvette in which they carved their reputations in letters of fire, has been sold as a private yacht, but she still has her guns, her missiles, and her veteran crew. Daniel and Adele will need all of those things as they face winged dragons, an Alliance auxiliary cruiser, jealous lovers, and a mysterious oracle which really does foresee the future.

That won't be enough, though, when they penetrate a secret Alliance base and find a hostile fleet ready for a war that will sweep Cinnabar out of a strategically crucial arm of the galaxy. Preventing that will involve skill, courage, and more luck than a sane man could even pray for; and it will require a space battle on a scale that a tiny corvette like the Princess Cecile has no business being involved in. But she'll be in the middle of it anyway, because Daniel, Adele, and their Cinnabar crew would never turn their backs on a fight!

The Groaci peril: They're nasty little five-eyed sticky fingers who want the galaxy and will stoop to anything to get it. But when they try to sabotage one planet and use another for their garbage, it's time for Retief, that cunning and courageous emissary from Corps Diplomatique Tewrrestrienne to samsh in.

And smash in Retief does, in an extraordinary series of adventures that take him from gambling to gunplay, from the blue lagoons of the most coveted planet in the solar systems to the aid of one of the loveliest women in the galaxy - and ultimately up against the fiercest and most destructive beings in the Universe!

Contents:

• The Hoob Melon Crisis - (1975)
• The Garbage Invasion - (1972)
• An Excerpt from Retief & the Warlords (Excerpt) - (1968)
• The Troubleshooter - (1975)
• The Negotiators - (1975)

First in a new science fiction trilogy, set in the same universe as the Clan Chronicles, by the Prix Aurora Award-winning Julie E. Czerneda.

To save their world, the most powerful of the Om'ray left their homes. They left behind all memory of their past. Calling themselves the Clan, they settled among Humanity, hiding in plain sight, using their ability to slip past normal space to travel where they wished, using their ability to control minds to ensure their place and security.

They are no longer hidden.

For the Clan face a crisis. Their reproduction is tied to individual power, and their latest generation of females, Choosers, are too strong to safely mate. Their attempt to force others to help failed until Sira di Sarc, their leader and the most powerful of their kind, successfully Joined with a human, Jason Morgan, starship captain and telepath. With Morgan, Sira forged the first peace between her kind and the Trade Pact.

But it is a peace about to shatter. Those the Clan have controlled all these years will rise against them. Her people dying around her, war about to consume the Trade Pact, Sira will be left with only one choice. She must find the way back. And take the Clan home.

An evil necromancer has kidnapped the princess Olywynne and her twin brother, plotting to spill their blood-for revenge, and to restore his own family to life. Chaos reigns in the capital, and no one can stop the necromancer but Rhiannon and her winged mare. But can she bring herself to rescue the woman she hates more than anyone-Olywynne, her rival for the apprentice-witch Lewen's love-especially when she stands to lose everything she holds dear in the effort?

An adventure from Kevin J. Anderson's The Saga of Shadows: The Dark Between the Stars

Read the full story for free at Tor.com.

Twenty years after the elemental conflict that nearly tore apart the cosmos in The Saga of Seven Suns, a new threat emerges from the darkness. The human race must set aside its own inner conflicts to rebuild their alliance with the Ildiran Empire for the survival of the galaxy.

In Kevin J. Anderson's The Dark Between the Stars, galactic empires clash, elemental beings devastate whole planetary systems, and factions of humanity are pitted against each other. Heroes rise and enemies make their last stands in the climax of an epic tale seven years in the making.

This exciting, action-packed novel marks Jack Chalker's triumphant return to his celebrated multivolume saga: The Well World. The Sea Is Full of Stars explores an unknown interstellar civilization, stars an all-new cast of characters, and reveals fresh secrets. But of course, The Well remains . . .

After three passengers--Ming, Ari, and Angel--embark on an elite starship journey into the Realm, they unwittingly become ensnared in one man's bloodthirsty vendetta that will alter their very beings. That man is Jeremiah Wong Kincaid. He vows to destroy Josich Conqueror Hadun, the evil genius who has wreaked unspeakable havoc throughout the universe. It is an obsession that will take him to lands of demons and strange races--and into a deadly new cyberworld where humans are mere pawns of the godlike computers they have created.

But it is only after Kincaid and his unwitting fellow travelers enter Well World and discover the water hexes that he confronts the mad tyrant--and learns their universe is threatened by something far, far worse . . .

The battle on Sharr is over. The dark forest has fallen. Altair may be captive, but Zafira, Nasir, and Kifah are bound for Sultan's Keep, determined to finish the plan he set in motion: restoring the hearts of the Sisters of Old to the minarets of each caliphate, and finally returning magic to all of Arawiya. But they are low on resources and allies alike, and the kingdom teems with fear of the Lion of the Night's return.

As the zumra plots to overthrow the kingdom's darkest threat, Nasir fights to command the magic in his blood. He must learn to hone his power into a weapon, to wield not only against the Lion but against his father, trapped under the Lion's control. Zafira battles a very different darkness festering in her through her bond with the Jawarat--a darkness that hums with voices, pushing her to the brink of her sanity and to the edge of a chaos she dare not unleash. In spite of the darkness enclosing ever faster, Nasir and Zafira find themselves falling into a love they can't stand to lose... but time is running out to achieve their ends, and if order is to be restored, drastic sacrifices will have to be made.

When Amaya rescues a mysterious stranger from drowning, she fears her rash actions have earned her a longer sentence on the debtor ship where she's been held captive for years. Instead, the man she saved offers her unimaginable riches and a new identity, setting Amaya on a perilous course through the coastal city-state of Moray, where old-world opulence and desperate gamblers collide. Amaya wants one thing: revenge against the man who ruined her family and stole the life she once had. But the more entangled she becomes in this game of deception--and as her path intertwines with the son of the man she's plotting to bring down--the more she uncovers about the truth of her past. And the more she realizes she must trust no one?

For seven long years, while she was imprisoned on a debtor's ship, Amaya Chandra had one plan: to survive. But now, survival is not enough. She has people counting on her; counting on her for protection, for leadership, for vengeance. And after escaping Moray by the skin of her teeth, she's determined to track down the man who betrayed her and her friends.

Cayo Mercado has lost everything: his money, his father, his reputation. Everything except his beloved sister. But he's well on his way to losing her, too, with no way to afford the treatment for her deadly illness. In a foreign empire also being consumed by ash fever, Cayo has no choice but to join Amaya in uncovering the mystery of the counterfeit currency, the fever, and how his father was involved in their creation. But Cayo still hasn't forgiven Amaya for her earlier deception, and their complicated feelings for each other are getting harder and harder to ignore.

Through glittering galas, dazzling trickery, and thrilling heists, Cayo and Amaya will learn that the corruption in Moray goes far deeper than they know, and in the end the only people they can trust are each other.

Year 2471. A new discovery. Those three words thrill my parents - the galaxy's leading archaeologists - but for me, it means another time jump to a different planet. One so big, my friends will be older than my dad when we arrive. And I'll still be seventeen. Thanks, Einstein.

I really can't blame Einstein, though. No one expected to find life-sized terracotta warriors buried on other planets. So off we go to investigate, traveling through space and time. With my social life in ruins, I fill my days illegally worming into the quantum net - the invention that allows us to travel in space. Of course the only person close to my age is a hot-but-pain-in-the-neck security officer who threatens to throw me into the brig.

But when one of the warrior planets goes silent, we have bigger problems on our hands. The planet's entire population might be dead. And now my worming skills, along with a translation of an ancient alien artefact, might be the key to finding out why. But my attempts to uncover the truth lead to the discovery of a deadly new alien phenomenon, and also alert those who wish to keep it quiet. The galaxy is in real danger and time is not on our side...

Having been befriended by only one person in his whole life, former pickpocket Weasel is devastated when his mentor, Justice Holis, is sent to prison for treason, thus with the help of a bandit and a mystery girl named Arisa, Weasel begins to plot his dear friend's escape from his unjustifiable imprisonment.

All her life, Spensa has dreamed of becoming a pilot. Of proving she's a hero like her father. She made it to the sky, but the truths she learned about her father were crushing. The rumors of his cowardice are true--he deserted his flight during battle against the Krell. Worse, though, he turned against his team and attacked them.

Spensa is sure there's more to the story. And she's sure that whatever happened to her father in his starship could happen to her. When she made it outside the protective shell of her planet, she heard the stars--and it was terrifying. Everything Spensa has been taught about her world is a lie.

But Spensa also discovered a few other things about herself--and she'll travel to the end of the galaxy to save humankind if she needs to.

Trouble started early for the free-trader Solar Queen the moment cargo-master Dane Thorson collected a package for transit from Xecho to Trewsworld. What was in the package Dane did not learn until after he had been kidnapped, knocked out, and a dead man bearing his credentials had been substituted for him aboard the ship.

It's been more than twenty years since the last Solar Queen novel was published. Memorable adventures like Sargasso of Space took the crew of the small interstellar trade ship across the rim of the galaxy in search of valuable cargo and profitable new markets.

Business wasn't easy for small independents like the Solar Queen, but it kept Captain Jellico and his crew busy enough to keep the ship viable - and along the way, their adventures have entertained science fiction readers for decades. No matter how perilous their voyages are, the crew has always survived, even Dane Thorson, the Cargo apprentice who seemed to bring his own luck to the ship. And now there's another new crew member: Rael Cofort, half-sister of one of the Queen's chief competitors. Attractive and competent, she just wanted passage to the new port of call, Canuche, in the Halios system. But what seems a simple run becomes a doubly dangerous mission as first a plague of rats and then an explosive crisis on the planetary star docks threaten to end the days of the Solar Queen and wipe out the population of Canuche's capital as well. It's do-or-die time for the Solar Queen... and her mysterious new crew member!

Dragons in space? A preposterous legend. But when star pilot Jael defies an abusive ship's master and rigs "the mountain route" through the hyperdimensional Flux, the dragons indeed appear--and challenge her to duel. If she escapes, she would be wise never to return. But the currents of the Flux are fickle, and when fate steers her this way again, she finds Highwing the dragon under sentence of death for the kindness he showed her. Only Jael can intervene--and so she must, for the sake of one who risked his life to save hers.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction - (1960) - essay by Frederik Pohl
• Whatever Happened to Corporal Cuckoo? - (1953) - novelette by Gerald Kersh
• The Advent on Channel Twelve - (1958) - shortstory by C. M. Kornbluth
• Disappearing Act - (1953) - shortstory by Alfred Bester
• Twin's Wail - (1959) - novelette by Elizabeth Mann Borgese
• Country Doctor - (1953) - novelette by William Morrison
• Daybroke - (1958) - shortstory by Robert Bloch
• The Deep Range - (1954) - shortstory by Arthur C. Clarke
• A Cross of Centuries - (1958) - shortstory by Henry Kuttner
• The Man with English - (1953) - shortstory by Horace L. Gold
• Sparkie's Fall - (1959) - shortstory by Gavin Hyde
• Space-Time for Springers - (1958) - shortstory by Fritz Leiber
• Dance of the Dead - (1955) - shortstory by Richard Matheson
• The Happiest Creature - (1953) - shortstory by Jack Williamson
• It's a Good Life - (1953) - shortstory by Jerome Bixby

Ellfive colony won its independence in the One-Day Revolution, but while much may be forgiven, its debts haven't been. The orbital nation needs a serious supply of minerals and ore to realize its manufacturing potentials, and in this solar system, the cost of lifting rocks to orbit is prohibitive, the only viable option is to mine them yourself.

And so, Star Svensdotter leads a prospecting expedition to the Belt, almost two AUs out, on the very edges of Earth's colonization of space. It's not exactly unexplored territory--a motley assortment of grifters, drifters and fortune-hunters have already made the Belt their home--but Star and her crew soon find that they have a lot to offer the anarchic frontier society, and that there are richer opportunities than merely mining for minerals.

The second in Dana Stabenow's Star Svensdotter trilogy, A Handful of Stars follows humanity's outward migration into the solar system.

An original novel based on the thrilling Star Trek movies directed by J.J. Abrams!

Taking place in an alternate timeline created when the Starship Kelvin was destroyed by a Romulan invader from the future, this bold new novel follows Captain James T. Kirk and an inexperienced crew commandeering a repaired U.S.S. Enterprise out of spacedock for a simple shakedown cruise. When a distress call comes in, the Enterprise must aid a large colony ship of alien refugees known as the Perenorean, who are under siege by an unknown enemy. But Kirk and his crew will find that the situation with the peaceful Perenorean is far more complicated than they bargained for, and the answers as to why they were attacked in the first place unfold in the most insidious of ways...

From the Gamma Quadrant they came, hordes of merciless Jem'Hadar soldiers commanded by the shape-changing Founders, who seek to conquer both the United Federation of Planets and the Klingon Empire.

Now that the Dominion has joined forces with the Cardassians, and claimed Deep Space Nine as their prize, Starfleet is running out of time. As a secret military project nears completion, the destiny of the entire Alpha Quadrant depends on the courage of a few. In the Federation's time of greatest peril, as the Starship Enterprise readies itself for battle, Captain Jean-Luc Picard leads a desperate mission of espionage deep into the heart of the hostile Cardassian Empire. Unless they can prevent the Dominion from creating an artificial wormhole, hordes of fresh Jem'Hadar warriors and Changelings will pour into the Alpha Quadrant, dooming the Federation to unconditional surrender.

But there may be a traitor along on the mission, and Picard finds he cannot trust even his closest allies.

Without warning, Benjamin Sisko is living another life. No longer a Starfleet captain, commander of space station Deep Space Nine, he is Benny Russell, a struggling science fiction writer living in 1950s Harlem. Benny has a dream, of a place called Deep Space Nine and a man named Ben Sisko, and a story he has to tell. But is the Earth of that era ready for a black science fiction hero?

Everyone tells him no, but Benny cannot abandon his dream. One way or another, he will tell the world about Captain Benjamin Sisko and Deep Space Nine.

An original novel based on the explosive new TV series Star Trek: Discovery!

Despite being an inexperienced Starfleet cadet, Sylvia Tilly became essential to the U.S.S. Discovery finding its way back home from the Mirror Universe. But how did she find that courage? From where did she get that steel? Who nurtured that spark of brilliance? The Way to the Stars recounts for fans everywhere the untold story of Tilly's past.

It's not easy being sixteen, especially when everyone expects great things from Tilly. It's even harder when her mother and father are Federation luminaries, not to mention pressing her to attend one of the best schools that the Federation has to offer. Tilly wants to achieve great things--even though she hasn't quite worked out how to do that or what it is she wants to do. But this year, everything will change for Tilly, as she about to embark upon the adventure of a lifetime--an adventure that will take her ever closer to the stars....

Geordi LaForge has been given the chance of his lifetime! He's been chosen to join the training vessel Benjamin Franklin as assistant engineer, an opportunity rarely given to plebes. Geordi is determined to live up to Commander Sanchez's expectations. Their mission is to chart a neglected sector of the asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter.

That night, Sanchez calls up s history of the old starship and Ben's first commander, the heroic Ike Ikushima, who died saving his crew from disaster. The next night Geordi sees Ikushima's ghost, arm raised, pointing directly at him! When he tells Sanchez, everyone begins to doubt Geordi's reliability... until the ghost reappears, pointing a warning finger at them all! What does it mean? Is the ship haunted? Is it an alien invasion? The cadets are about to make history themselves-- if they escape with their lives!

En route to an important diplomatic reception the U.S.S. Enterprise suddenly is set upon by a Klingon warship. The unprovoked assault, Kirk discovers, is in response to what the Klingon ship's captain claims are recent Federation attacks on several Klingon vessels which have disappeared.

Managing to secure a truce, Captain Kirk reaches the reception only to find out it is not just Klingon ships that are disappearing, but Federation vessels, Romulan Birds of Prey, and ships from almost every known race are vanishing without a trace.

Now, Captain Kirk and the crew of the Starship Enterprise must determine the fate of the missing ships before the entire known galaxy is drawn into a deadly conflict.

When a freindly, alien people called the Rey make contact with the Federation, they are thrilled to learn the galaxy has a large number of intelligent races. To bring the myriad cultures to their world, the Rey host a celebration -- inviting spacefaring peoples to send representative ships to compete against one another and The Great Starship Race is born.

As the Federation's flagship, the U.S.S. Enterprise under the command of Captain James T. Kirk, is sent to compete. But the event takes a dark turn when a Romulan warship arrives and demands to join the race. Soon, Kirk and the Romulan commander are engaged in a deadly game of cat and mouse, and, for Kirk and his crew, the race becomes a struggle for survival. Faced with treachery at every turn. Kirk must protect his ship from relentless attack and prevent the annihilation of an entire world.

After saving Earth from the threat of V'Ger, James T. Kirk is called again to the final frontier. His new mission: to lead a valiant group of settlers to a distant world, to defend the struggling colony from alien threats, and to explore the diverse mysteries and dangers of a strange new Earth!

Far from the Federation, a newly discovered M-class world has been eyed as a potential home by a group of hardy and determined colonists. Star?eet can spare only one starship to escort the would-be settlers on their perilous voyage, but that ship is none other than the legendary "Starship Enterprise", commanded by the most well-known captain in the quadrant.

Now Kirk finds himself responsible for the lives of 30,000 men, women, and children -- a task that grows all the more difficult when the expedition is caught in the middle of an ancient feud between two dangerous alien races!

It has been eighteen months since the Starship Enterprise completed her historic five-year mission and her legendary crew has seperated, taking new assignments that span the galaxy.

On Earth, Admiral James T. Kirk has married and started a new life as the Chief of Starfleet operations where he is overseeing the refit of his beloved ship, now commanded by a new Captain -- Willard Decker. Kirk's only tie to his former crewmates is his Chief of Staff, a young Lieutenant Commander named Kevin Riley.

But Kirk's new, quiet life changes when he meets a scientist named G'dath who is on the brink of perhaps the greatest scientific discovery in a century. G'dath's invention could mean tremendous strides in Federation technology, or -- in the wrong hands -- the subjugation of countless worlds.

When Klingon agents capture this new technology, Admiral Kirk and Lt. Commander Riley are all that stands between peace and devastation for the entire Federation.

Searching the galaxy for a rogue shipbuilder to repair the Millenium Falcon, Han Solo and Chewbacca battle fierce enemies and travel to the desolate asteroid known as Stars' End, a planetary prison.

It's a night like any other on board the Icarus. Then, catastrophe strikes: the massive luxury spaceliner is yanked out of hyperspace and plummets into the nearest planet.

Lilac LaRoux and Tarver Merendsen survive. And they seem to be alone. Lilac is the daughter of the richest man in the universe. Tarver comes from nothing, a young war hero who learned long ago that girls like Lilac are more trouble than they're worth. But with only each other to rely on, Lilac and Tarver must work together, making a tortuous journey across the eerie, deserted terrain to seek help.

Then, against all odds, Lilac and Tarver find a strange blessing in the tragedy that has thrown them into each other's arms. Without the hope of a future together in their own world, they begin to wonder - would they be better off staying here forever? Everything changes when they uncover the truth behind the chilling whispers that haunt their every step. Lilac and Tarver may find a way off this planet. But they won't be the same people who landed on it.

The first in a sweeping science fiction trilogy, These Broken Stars is a timeless love story about hope and survival in the face of unthinkable odds.

The short story This Night So Dark connects the first two novels in the Starbound trilogy, and can be read for free here.

When a personal tragedy destroys her hopes for fame as a dancer on Earth, Rain McLeod volunteers for the Starseed Foundation, a symbiotic lifeform that enables her to defy the laws of gravity in space.

At the edge of the galaxy lay the Fortress known as Stars' End, a mysterious planet bristling with deadly automated weapons systems, programmed to slaughter anyone fool enough to come within range. But who built this strange planet of death, placing it within view of the Milky Way's great lens... and tantalizingly close to the hydrogen-filled feeding grounds of the interstellar dragons known as Starfish and the priceless ambergris they create?

Should the harvestships of the High Seiners, known as Starfishers, gain control of that arsenal, they need never fear the Confederation's navy nor the armies of the human-like Sangaree again. But intelligent life everywhere now needs the might of Stars' End--and the expertise of agents Mouse Storm and Moyshe benRabi. For in the midst of the Sangaree wars, a far more sinister enemy approaches, coming from the depths of the galaxy, in hordes larger than a solar system.

From Glen Cook, the Master of Modern Heroic Fantasy, comes Stars' End, the final novel in the Starfishers Trilogy, a seamless blend of ancient myth, political intrigue, and scintillating futuristic combat action.

Octavia Zarola would do anything to keep her tiny, close-knit bounty hunting crew together--even if it means accepting a job from Torran Fletcher, a ruthless former general and her sworn enemy. When Torran offers her enough credits to not only keep her crew afloat but also hire someone to fix her ship, Tavi knows that she can't refuse--no matter how much she'd like to.

With so much money on the line, Torran and his crew insist on joining the hunt. Tavi reluctantly agrees because while the handsome, stoic leader pushes all of her buttons--for both anger and desire--she's endured worse, and the massive bonus payment he's promised for a completed job is reason enough to shut up and deal.

But when they uncover a deeper plot that threatens the delicate peace between humans and Valoffs, Tavi suspects that Torran has been using her as the impetus for a new war. With the fate of her crew balanced on a knife's edge, Tavi must decide where her loyalties lie--with the quiet Valoff who's been lying to her, or with the human leaders who left her squad to die on the battlefield. And this time, she's put her heart on the line.

Branded! One moment of treachery and all Case's hopes, all his aspirations for citizenship and status are shattered. Publicly shamed and despised as a coward, Case's bitter hatred of his home world and longing for revenge on its rulers make him a willing tool of those who conspire to topple the government of Earth. In his eagerness to humiliate those who destroyed him, Case embarks on a perilous voyage through space and intrigue only to finally discover he has betrayed his own goals.

A student is assigned to an exploratory agency to study humanoid races throughout the universe accessed through "gates" which link thousands of planets. The student is betrayed and learns that the agency is corrupt with a power-hungry insider who would take over the known universe and hungers for an even larger network of "gates" that link millions of worlds.

Just how far would a money-loving freesailer go to find the master key to every planet in the galaxy? And how would he get back?... when freesailer, plunderer James Oregas and his beautiful business partner set out to bilk the unsuspecting denizens of the backwater planet Llango... it got complicated... when Jamas, who knew the ins and out of stargates was doublecrossed and had to disappear -- and fast, it moved into high gear... when Jamas landed on Prime -- a repository planet of galactic history -- and learned of a mysterious lost race that held the master key to all the stargates for all the worlds... when Jamas himself decided to scour the galaxy, looking for that long-lost race, following a trail that would lead him to power beyond his wildest dreams -- if he somehow managed to stay alive!

On November 8, 1861, a U.S. navy warship stopped a British packet and seized two Confederate emissaries on their way to England to seek backing for their cause. England responded with rage, calling for a war of vengeance. The looming crisis was defused by the peace-minded Prince Albert. But imagine how Albert's absence during this critical moment might have changed everything. For lacking Albert's calm voice of reason, Britain now seizes the opportunity to attack and conquer a crippled, war-torn America.

Ulysses S. Grant is poised for an attack that could smash open the South's defenses. In Washington, Abraham Lincoln sees a first glimmer of hope that this bloody war might soon end. But then disaster strikes: English troops have invaded from Canada. With most of the Northern troops withdrawn to fight the new enemy, General William Tecumseh Sherman and his weakened army stand alone against the Confederates. Can a divided, bloodied America defeat England, or will the United States cease to exist for all time?

In the midst of Civil War, a stunned North and South join forces to combat a sudden attack of British troops. Though the Americans are victorious, three years later a new threat emerges. Her Majesty’s Army is massing for a possible attack through Texas. Into the gauntlet Lincoln sends his chosen angel of death, General Ulysses S. Grant—while his top soldiers, including Robert E. Lee and William Tecumseh Sherman, plan the most daring naval invasion ever launched: an assault on British soil itself.

Stars and Stripes in Peril is the new masterwork from one of the world’s most provocative authors. Venturing beyond a fascinating question of what if? Harry Harrison brilliantly examines the people and passions that make up nations both great and small—and shows how technology and politics had the power to shape history’s first great World War . . . half a century before it began . . .

In England, Irish-born citizens are being herded into prison camps. On the high seas, a furious British Navy is seizing American cargo ships bound for Europe. And on the Thames, a new weapon of unparalleled destructive force is sailing toward an impregnable city–spearheaded by a daring act of espionage. For U.S. president Abraham Lincoln, Britain's Queen Victoria, Lord Palmerston, and a loyal opposition, a day of reckoning is at hand... and so is history's most astounding battle.

Harry Harrison's series of alternate history, based on the U.S. Civil War, stands as a provocative work of imagination, drama, and brilliant historical insight. Now in the thrilling finale, Harrisontells a stunning, action-packed story of America's rapidly growing military might being locked, loaded, and aimed at the heart of England itself.

For the two countries that share a language and a heritage, the conflict began at the dawn of the U.S. Civil War. Just as America was about to tear itself to pieces, Britain itself committed an act of war by seizing a U.S. packet ship. In retaliation, the Confederate States rejoined the Union and took up arms against England. Repulsing a British invasion, and defeating her majesty's army first in Canada, then in Mexico, then in Ireland, American pride and power swelled. Britain, like a wounded lion, howled in shame and anger. Now, Queen Victoria's empire is more dangerous than ever before, turning against the Irish on her own soil, flexing her naval might, and all but forcing a weary President Lincoln to authorize the next step in a headlong journey toward war.

A tale of daring and strategy, Stars and Stripes Triumphant explores how arrogance turns superpowers into victims, how regional conflicts can explode into world wars, and how the personalities of a few men and women can change the course of history itself–for better or for worse.

After Jeff Yi escaped from the hell of the Naval Academy, he thought his troubles were behind him. As a junior officer on a ship of the line, he could grow into the role so many seemed to expect of him. But when he barely survives an attack by a gang of fascist thugs, his past shockingly catches up to him.

Instead of obscurity, he is given a command of his own--acting Captain of the smallest, ugliest ship in the fleet. As war looms, Yi must win over a hostile crew and face his own demons while battling an implacable foe that wants nothing less than the destruction of everything he has ever believed in.

Barely recovered from his injuries and still in the sights of the fascist traitors in the Wukan navy, Jeff Yi is again placed in command of his own ship and sent on a dangerous mission deep within enemy territory.

Haunted by memories of those who died under his command, Yi struggles to come to grips with the reality of war and the possibility of betrayal from within his own ranks. If he fails to uncover the Ryland plot, more than his life may be at stake.

Light of a Distant Sun is the exciting sequel to Stars Like Cold Fire.

The discovery of violet gold, a vital fuel for steam-powered machines, propelled the empire of Great Liang into an age of prosperity. But for Chang Geng, a young man raised on the impoverished northern border, the concerns of the empire are as distant as the stars above.

When raiders from the north attack Chang Geng's small village, he discovers that the life he knows is a lie. His mother, his teacher, and even his godfather whom he trusted more than any other, Shen Shiliu, are not what they seem. As enemy nations close in, Chang Geng follows his godfather to the heart of the imperial capital, where a greater fate lies in store for him.

ENEMIES FROM WITHOUT AND WITHIN

Four years ago, Chang Geng and Gu Yun parted in anger. When fate draws them together again, Chang Geng, a once-awkward teen, is now an elegant and adroit young man.

But storms lie ahead. As Great Liang faces foreign pressure from without, Gu Yun finds himself embroiled in turmoil within the imperial court. Meanwhile, as the curse in Chang Geng's blood grows, his feelings for his godfather become more painful to subdue by the day. How much longer can he keep Gu Yun from learning his secret... and what will happen when he can hide it no more?

CAPITAL UNDER SIEGE

With the Westerners and their allies pressing in on all sides, the empire of Great Liang enters its darkest hour. Under these desperate conditions, Gu Yun leads the beleaguered Black Iron Battalion to hold the borders. Meanwhile, Chang Geng makes his move in the imperial court, sweeping corrupt officials aside in an effort to stabilize the nation before it's too late.

As the two struggle to hold the tattered pieces of the empire together, Gu Yun uncovers a shocking truth about the curse slowly tightening its grip on Chang Geng's mind. But are the deepest secrets of Cheng Geng's past enough to move even the iron heart of the nation's most fearsome general?

On this space jump, no one is who they seem...

Captain Hammond Roystan is a simple cargo runner who has stumbled across the find of a lifetime: the Hassim, a disabled exploration ship--and its valuable record of unexplored worlds.

His junior engineer, Josune Arriola, said her last assignment was in the uncharted rim. But she is decked out in high-level bioware that belies her humble backstory.

A renowned body-modification artist, Nika Rik Terri has run afoul of clients who will not take no for an answer. She has to flee off-world, and she is dragging along a rookie modder, who seems all too experienced in weapons and war...

Together this mismatched crew will end up on one ship, hurtling through the lawless reaches of deep space with Roystan at the helm. Trailed by nefarious company men, they will race to find the most famous lost world of all--and riches beyond their wildest dreams...

An engineer with a fondness for weapons. A captain with no memory. An obsessive genemodder who loves to tinker. Meet the crew of Another Road.

Josune, Roystan, and Nika have escaped the company thugs trying to kill them. They've gotten a new spaceship to replace The Road (after it was blown up underneath them). And their new ship is armed to the teeth with dangerous weapons, courtesy of Josune. All that's left to do before they head out to find the legendary lode of transurides is to restore Roystan's memory. To do that, they need to collect the genemod machine Nika has ordered.

But first, they have to shake off the Justice Department agent and the Companies tracking them.

It should be easy. They've done it before. What could possibly go wrong?

The Pacific Island port of Makasar used to be a fairly peaceful outpost of the United States Navy. But now, entire American families are vanishing without a trace and no one has any ideas about where they might be. William M. Corry, captain of the super-sub U.S.S. Shenandoah has orders to get to the bottom of the mysterious disappearances.

At first, he suspects the unpredictable Chinese troopers patrolling the area, but after a little investigating, Corry realizes that the disappearances of the Americans cannot be the fault of the Chinese--they are as worried as he is. Corry refuses to believe the wild rumors of native cannibals... until he accidentally unearths the real enemy: a force with power beyond anything humankind has ever known!

Against the background of global-political turmoil, aliens are discovered below the seas, and the crew of an experimental sub sets out on an intercept course. The offworld invaders seem to come in two types: the "miners" who need Earth's technology and raw materials, and the "fishers" who feed on humans.

Against a background of global-political turmoil in the early 21st century, the crew of a new, technologically advanced submarine set out on a mission. What they encounter is an aquatic extraterrestrial species at the top of the food chain of their world, and they're omnivorous. This is the explosive conclusion of the Starsea Invaders trilogy.

On the backwater colony world of Chalcedony, Delta Pavonis, all is not what it seems... All David Conway wants after the death of his daughter and the break-up of his marriage is a quiet life away from Earth and when he comes to Chalcedony he thinks he s found that. What he does find is a group of people whose friendship will change his life forever, as well as a haunted starship, extraterrestrials with an uncanny ability to read future events, and a conflict between alien races that has lasted for millennia... and is about to begin all over again.

In this wonderful series, Eric Brown gives us aliens, fabulous works of art, starships and teleportation... plus some of the most delightful characters ever to grace the printed page.

Table of Contents:

• Starship Summer - (2007) - novella
• Starship Fall - (2009) - novella
• Starship Winter - (2012) - novella
• Starship Spring - (2012) - novella

David Conway leaves Earth and settles on the backwater planet of Chalcedony, Delta Pavonis IV, in search of a quiet life away from the haunting reminders of his past. Living aboard a derelict spaceship in the quiet coastal community of Magenta Bay, he meets artist Matt Sommers, beachcomber Maddie Chamberlain, and ex-starship pilot Hawksworth. Things seem about as perfect as he could hope... until he discovers that his ship is haunted by an alien spectre. What follows will change Conway and his friends and the future of humankind's destiny in space forever.

David Conway leads a quiet life in picturesque Magenta Bay on the colony world of Chalcedony. Nothing much has happened for five years, but all that is about to change. First he meets the mysterious holo star Carlotta Chakravorti-Luna, who regrets the lost loves of her past and dreams of learning what the future might hold. Then Conway's alien friend Kee heads inland to take part in an Ashentay ritual with potentially fatal consequences. What follows is a convoluted and poignant tragedy which entangles Conway and his friends.

In Starship Fall, Eric Brown has crafted a powerful, moving novella about love, friendship, and the consequences of learning one's destiny.

That winter David Conway was enjoying a quiet life with his friends, not especially looking for love, but finding it anyway. The artist Matt Sommers was due to stage an exhibition of Epiphany Stones from Acrab IV, a show which attracted the attention of one Darius Dortmund, the famous empathy. Dortmund could see into the minds of men 'some said into their very souls' and when he met David and his friends, and looked into their minds, what he found there would lead to murder...

Starship Winter, the third volume in the Starship Seasons sequence, continues the quiet adventures of Conway and his friends on the backwater colony world of Addenbrooke, Delta Pavonis IV.

'That year, a little over six years since meeting Hannah van Harben, life for me was just about as good as it could get.' David Conway is happily married with a young daughter, and wants for nothing. He has an idyllic life on the colony world of Chalcedony, with friends Matt and Maddie, Hawk and Kee - but things are about to get interesting when the friends holiday at Tamara Falls on the planet's equatorial plateau. Buried far beneath the Falls is a dormant alien army - the Skeath, ancient enemies of the Yall: an army which is threatening to come to life, if the evil Dr Petronious gets his way...

Ten years after events depicted in Starship Spring, David Conway is enjoying life on the idyllic world of Chalcedony, Delta Pavonis V. Then he receives a communique from his ex-wife who reveals that she is undergoing a remarkable medical process. Not only that, but she is coming to Chalcedony and wishes to meet him. What follows will force Conway to look back at the tragic events of his past and face the mendacity of those seeking to gain from his fame as an Opener of the Way. Starship Coda is the moving epilogue to the successful Starship series.

By the 26th century, humanity had begun its expansion to the stars, and the Interstellar Dominion Electorates reigned over a unified Terra -- but New York was still New York, Broadway was still Broadway, and live theater was bigger and better than ever.

The excited theater pioneers of the newly formed Star Company were dedicated to taking their act on the road -- and out to the stars. They were far too busy with tryouts to pay any attention to current events and the constant harangues of the reactionary LORDS party on the public wallscreens.

Then the Lords party turned its attack on theater and its "timeless repertory of immorality." Suddenly the Star Company was off on a madcap race to finish its preparations, buy a ship and hire a pilot, and lift off Terra before it was grounded forever... or worse!

The Star Company, a renegade theatre troupe, was run off of Earth, so they set their sites on New Venus. The name sounded good, but life on the planet was thoroughly regulated by Amalgamated Petroleum--where even the air and water came at a high cost. Enter the Star Company, with its incendiary mix of veteran troupers, innocent ingenues, and volatile prima donnas. When Amalgamated approved a production of MACBETH, little did anybody imagine how much trouble those three witches would stir up!

The fledgling Star Company lands on the prosperous colony planet of Citadel only to discover that the world they have selected for their latest performance is a Puritan world where even the sight of female limbs is considered shocking and theater is forbidden!

Into a dying star!

Beneath the roiling surface of Betelgeuse, scientists anxiously await the one man essential to the success of Starmuse, the greatest engineering project in human history. But on Kantano's World, Willard Ruskin battles invisible agents for control of his life, his physical form, and even his memories. Drawn into a conflict from which not even death will free him, Ruskin must find a way to reach Betelgeuse before his enemies sabotage Starmuse--and humanity's future among the stars. A harrowing journey from inside the human cell... to the mind of a dying star.

Starstream!

A great interstellar migration has begun, down the grand, ethereal highway known as the starstream--from the remnant of the Betelgeuse supernova to the center of the Milky Way. Who could have predicted the wonders of the starstream, or the perils it would unleash--including the Throgs, shadowy beings of n-space that seem to understand only death and destruction? But life goes on, dangers or no, and colonists pour down the starstream seeking new worlds. Aboard starship Charity are many such colonists, including one Claudi Melnik, a child of uncommon talents--and an AI named Jeaves, with purposes of his own. When the unthinkable occurs, Claudi must face alone the challenge of the Throgs. And no one, not even Jeaves, could have predicted the final confrontation--or imagined where unexpected allies would be found.

An elite squadron of space commandos battles against the deadliest dangers the galaxy has to offer, in this second novel of an action-packed, military science fiction series.

SEALS -- America's best just got better.

On the heels of a bloody first contact comes Earth's most important diplomatic mission in history: a summit meeting with the three alien empires vying for control of the galaxy. Assurance that Earth's first extraterrestrial ambassadors aboard the spaceship Pangaea will be safe means little to Lieutenant Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. After all, a job's a job. As escorts on the voyage, Jackson and his sixteen-man team of new-breed Navy SEALS (Sea, Air, Land, and Space) must be neither seen nor heard. Unless, of course, the op hits the fan.

While Jackson and his team respond to a distress call from an allied fleet, the Pangaea, with all its diplomatic passengers, goes missing, forcing the SEALS to follow the trail to an ice moon at the edge of the galaxy, a harsh environment crawling with crack commandos and hostile enemies. But for these warriors with their outrageous firepower, what seems an impossible quest is just another day in deep space.

This short story originally appeared in Lightspeed Magazine, October 2017.

Read the full story for free at Lightspeed.

Always run, never fight.
Preserve the knowledge.
Survive at all costs.
Take them to the stars.

Over 99 identical generations, Mia's family has shaped human history to push them to the stars, making brutal, wrenching choices and sacrificing countless lives. Her turn comes at the dawn of the age of rocketry. Her mission: to lure Wernher Von Braun away from the Nazi party and into the American rocket program, and secure the future of the space race.

But Mia's family is not the only group pushing the levers of history: an even more ruthless enemy lurks behind the scenes.

A darkly satirical first contact thriller, as seen through the eyes of the women who make progress possible and the men who are determined to stop them...

Over one hundred identical generations, Mia's family has shaped earth history to push humanity to the stars, making brutal, wrenching choices and sacrificing countless lives.

After nudging the human race through the dawn of rocket technology, Mia finds herself about to help launch the first people into space. She can't take them to the stars, not quite yet, but she's getting them ever closer...

But a terrible adversary is upon her, threatening the future of two species...

When you don't know The Rules it's hard to stay safe.

After a traumatic incident, Aster's blood work comes back with some unusual readings. Unsurprising, as she's the last of an alien race called the Kibsu, though she doesn't know it. She becomes the focus of a hunt, with her mortal enemies, the Trackers, on one side, and the American government on the other. But help has come from a most unexpected quarter. Whoever finds her first, it won't be good news for Aster.

Or for the world!

Meet that twenty-first century stellar trader, Nicholas Van Rijn, and get set for one of the finest creations of Poul Anderson.

Contents:

Hiding Place
Territory
The Master Key

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

World Peace turns into global civil war.

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

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

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

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

Once upon a time there was a kingdom that lived in darkness, for the sun, the moon and the stars were hidden in a box, and that box was hidden in a sow's belly, and that sow was hidden in a troll's cave, and that cave was hidden at the end of the world.

Once upon a time there was a studio of artists who feared they were doomed to obscurity, for though they worked and they worked, no one was interested in the paintings that stood in racks along their studio walls.

Steven Brust's fantasy novel The Sun, the Moon, and the Stars is a tale of two quests, of two young men who are reaching for the moon. And the sun. And the stars.

This is the first novella collection set in the world of Pratt's popular Axiom space opera trilogy. In this collection of previously unpublished novellas, Hugo Award-winner Tim Pratt returns to the acclaimed sci-fi universe of his Axiom trilogy. Each of these three stories takes fans and new readers alike deeper into the rich world of the Axiom than ever before, revisiting the crewmembers of the White Raven as they strike out on new and enthralling adventures.

Contents

• The Artificial Stars - the machine intelligence (and head of the Trans-Neptunian Authority) Shall sends an instance of his consciousness on a secret mission to an uncharted star system to investigate a mysterious message... which apparently came from a splintered and corrupted version of Shall himself.
• The Augmented Stars - engineer and "radical self-improvement" advocate Ashok, probably the character most profoundly changed by the events of the the trilogy, takes his own ship (and a crew including both new and familiar faces) on a treasure hunt in search of a legendary trove of alien technology. (Which will, of course, try to kill them all.)
• The Alien Stars - everyone's favorite squidlike alien Liar, Lantern, has to take arms (well, pseudopods) against her former superiors, the elders of a secret cult devoted to protecting the grim legacy of the Axiom... and the elders won't go down without trying to take the rest of the galaxy with them.

The shady crew of the White Raven run freight and salvage at the fringes of our solar system. They discover the wreck of a centuries-old exploration vessel floating light years away from its intended destination and revive its sole occupant, who wakes with news of First Alien Contact. When the crew break it to her that humanity has alien allies already, she reveals that these are very different extra-terrestrials... and the gifts they bestowed on her could kill all humanity, or take it out to the most distant stars.

Ancient aliens, the Axiom, will kill us all - when they wake up. In deep space, a swarm of nanoparticles threatens the colonies, transforming everything it meets into computronium - including the colonists. The crew of the White Raven investigate, and discover an Axiom facility filled with aliens hibernating while their minds roam a vast virtual reality. Sebastien wakes up, claiming his altered brain architecture can help the crew deactivate the swarm - from inside the Axiom simulation. To protect humanity, Callie must trust him, but if Sebastien still plans to dominate the universe using Axiom tech, they could be in a whole lot of trouble...

The ancient alien gods are waking up, and there's only one spaceship crew ready to stop them, in this dazzling space opera sequel to The Wrong Stars and The Dreaming Stars.

Aliens known as the Liars gave humanity access to the stars through twenty-nine wormholes. They didn't mention that other aliens, the ancient, tyrannical - but thankfully sleeping - Axiom occupied all the other systems. When the twenty-ninth fell silent, humanity chalked it up to radical separatists and moved on. But now, on board the White Raven, Captain Callie and her crew of Axiom-hunters receive word that the twenty-ninth colony may have met a very different fate. With their bridge generator they skip past the wormhole, and discover another Axiom project, fully awake, and poised to pour through the wormhole gate into all the worlds of humanity.

Maia Tamarin dreams of becoming the greatest tailor in the land, but as a girl, the best she can hope for is to marry well. When a royal messenger summons her ailing father, once a tailor of renown, to court, Maia poses as a boy and takes his place. She knows her life is forfeit if her secret is discovered, but she'll take that risk to achieve her dream and save her family from ruin. There's just one catch: Maia is one of twelve tailors vying for the job.

Backstabbing and lies run rampant as the tailors compete in challenges to prove their artistry and skill. Maia's task is further complicated when she draws the attention of the court magician, Edan, whose piercing eyes seem to see straight through her disguise.

And nothing could have prepared her for the final challenge: to sew three magic gowns for the emperor's reluctant bride-to-be, from the laughter of the sun, the tears of the moon, and the blood of stars. With this impossible task before her, she embarks on a journey to the far reaches of the kingdom, seeking the sun, the moon, and the stars, and finding more than she ever could have imagined.

Maia Tamarin's journey to sew the dresses of the sun, the moon, and the stars has taken a grievous toll. She returns to a kingdom on the brink of war. Edan, the boy she loves, is gone--perhaps forever--and no sooner does she set foot in the Autumn Palace than she is forced to don the dress of the sun and assume the place of the emperor's bride-to-be to keep the peace. When the emperor's rivals learn of her deception, there is hell to pay, but the war raging around Maia is nothing compared to the battle within. Ever since she was touched by the demon Bandur, she has been changing... glancing in the mirror to see her own eyes glowing red; losing control of her magic, her body, her mind. It's only a matter of time before Maia loses herself completely, and in the meantime she will stop at nothing to find Edan, protect her family, and bring lasting peace to her country.

Who would lay time to rest, or raise it up from its tomb?

The Ancients of Days -- humans returned from a long exile in the depths of time and space and history -- brought heresy and doubt to the artificial world of Confluence, and ignited a terrible civil war, of all the varied creatures of Confluence's ten thousand genetically manipulated bloodlines, only young Yama holds the power to end the conflict, for who ever controls him controls the myriad machines of the world. Though now a helpless captive being forged into a weapon of horrific consequence, Yama must win the struggle to reclaim his soul, and complete his search for the true story of his origin -- a story mapped eons before his birth.

In the ice, east of the Black Rock, there is a hole into which broken children are thrown. Yaz's people call it the Pit of the Missing and now it is drawing her in as she has always known it would.

To resist the cold, to endure the months of night when even the air itself begins to freeze, requires a special breed. Variation is dangerous, difference is fatal. And Yaz is not the same.

Yaz's difference tears her from the only life she's ever known, away from her family, from the boy she thought she would spend her days with, and has to carve out a new path for herself in a world whose existence she never suspected. A world full of difference and mystery and danger.

Yaz learns that Abeth is older and stranger than she had ever imagined. She learns that her weaknesses are another kind of strength and that the cruel arithmetic of survival that has always governed her people can be challenged.

Firstname Lastname is a no one with nowhere to go. With a name that is the result of an unfortunate clerical error and the sad reality that she is one of the only humans on an alien space station, things aren't looking too great. Her only entertainment is streaming rock soap operas with her sentient-stone roommate, her source of food is the occasional ability to digest alien cuisine, and her only income is living off the kindness (read: ignorance of all her best cons) of strangers.

That is, until First steals a luxury car belonging to one of the station's "legitimate" businessment. Now she finds herself blackmailed into being a part of a crew of repomen (they are definitely not pirates) just to keep from being arrested.

So she's traveling the galaxy, "recovering" ships and making an actual wage. What could go wrong?

All parties converge on the capital city, Triah - Cinzia and the Odenites to establish their new religion and appeal against a charge of heresy; Knot and Astrid to find answers in the vampire girl's past; and Winter has come to conquer the city, at the head of a tiellan army. But Winter is still struggling with her addictions and anger; Knot's efforts to be reunited with her can only lead to disappointment. Cinzia cannot free herself from a terrible bargain. And as the battle lines are drawn, the true nature of the goddess Canta, and the Odenites' final purpose, will soon be revealed...

After centuries trapped inside the Void, the planet Bienvenido--along with its inhabitants, both human and Faller--has been expelled into normal space. But the survivors are millions of light-years from the Commonwealth, which knows nothing of their existence. As the two races plunge into mortal conflict for sole possession of the planet, the humans seem destined to lose--despite the assistance of the mysterious Warrior Angel, who possesses forbidden Commonwealth technology.

With the Fallers' numbers growing, and their ability to mimic humans allowing them to infiltrate all levels of society, it's only a matter of time before they surge to victory. Then, on a routine space flight, Major Ry Evine inadvertently frees a captive vessel that crash-lands on Bienvenido carrying the last, best hope for human survival: a baby. But a far from ordinary one.

The child not only ages at a remarkable rate but demonstrates knowledge and abilities far beyond those of Bienvenido's humans. Hunted by Fallers and humans alike, she is a crucial link to humanity's lost past--and a glorious future already almost out of reach.

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.

She's a revolutionary. Humanity is running out of options. Habitable planets are being destroyed as quickly as they're found and Naira Sharp thinks she knows the reason why. The all-powerful Mercator family has been controlling the exploration of the universe for decades, and exploiting any materials they find along the way under the guise of helping humanity's expansion. But Naira knows the truth, and she plans to bring the whole family down from the inside.

He's the heir to the dynasty. Tarquin Mercator never wanted to run a galaxy-spanning business empire. He just wanted to study rocks and read books. But Tarquin's father has tasked him with monitoring the settlement of a new planet, and he doesn't really have a choice in the matter.

Disguised as Tarquin's new bodyguard, Naira plans to destroy the settlement ship before they make land. But neither of them expects to end up stranded on a dead planet. To survive and keep her secret, Naira will have to join forces with the man she's sworn to hate. And together they will uncover a plot that's bigger than both of them.

Having divorced his parents and escaped to the moon, Charles and his brothers find themselves faced with most difficult decision. Unable to return to Earth, where do they go? One option is the distant Earth colony Outbeyond. Complicating matters, he and HARLIE-a state of the art intelligence unit-have become valuable commodities in a Free Luna movement. A hijacking aboard ship, however, and suspicion's of HARLIE'S true motives could doom the brothers' bid for freedom forever.

When the destruction of Earth causes a time rift, one ship is thrust back in time to decades prior. The semi-disgraced naval officer Kayl Owen is sent from the Earth Guard ship Vigilant to investigate. He finds one person alive, one person whose DNA analysis reveals to have some non-human DNA, a person who his superiors say isn't human.

That's not how Kayl Owen sees it. He thinks Lieutenant Genji of the near future Unified Fleet -- the future successor of Earth Guard -- is every bit a person. And more, the knowledge she brings from the future might hold the key to saving Earth from destruction.

Owen, Genji and everything they know is deeply threatening to a lot of people, and the two of them need to survive each day to get to the next and save the future for everyone. But will changing Earth's future erase Genji?

The quest is on to find the coveted Stone of the Stars on the mystical isle of Trynisia, once a place where humans dwelt side by side with dragons. Four have set off on their journey to reach it-Ailia, a daydreaming bookworm; Damion, a devoted missionary; Jomar, a half-breed soldier-slave; and Lorelyn, quite possibly a prophesied savior, who will one day guide her people ina battle against the Dark God. But can they reach the isle and the Stone of the Stars before the tyrannical God-King Khalazar finds it and uses it to rule the world?

Proclaimed the long-prophesied ruler of the Celestial Empire, Princess Ailia escapes her enemies and flees to the world of Arainia, where she joins her trusted companions Damion, Jomar, and Lorelyn. But as Ailia strives to control her growing powers and gather allies, time is running out. The mad tyrant Khalazar is entering into an unholy alliance with the Dragon Prince Mandrake, a shapechanger with the blodd, and magic, of dragons in his veins. Together the villains assemble a fearsome military force for an attack on Arainia. Desperate to strike first, Jomar and Damion muster a brave, though untested, army of their own. Yet as they prepare for what might be their last battle, Ailia must embark alone on a perilous mission, one that will place her in Mandrake's power...

The events set in motion long ago by the Archons, an ancient race that founded the Empire, are now coming to a head. Though the world of Mera has been freed from the threat of King Khalazar, the Dragon Prince Mandrake has become the living embodiment of the cruel god Valdur, gifted with limitless power. To counter this threat, Ailia must fulfill the age-old prophecy and become the Tryna Lia, the champion of the Empire. As the time for the final battle draws ever nearer, the fate of not only Ailia, but of the entire Celestial Empire hangs in the balance.

Strange things happen...

Throughout his long and impressive career as a celebrated professional storyteller, Jack Vance showed a fascination not only with having characters solve mysteries in all sorts of dramatic and wondrous situations using their powers of observation, deduction and common sense, but also with the possibility of higher states of mind in play, other realms of existence, even spirit worlds.

Vance approached such things with a healthy, properly wary, scientific curiosity, even while embracing the liberties allowed any popular entertainer, and so made the exploration of such higher states part of his stock in trade.

Whether richly displayed in his Dying Earth stories with their wizardly spellcasting, eldritch beings and strange dimensions, or in his science fiction tales with the incredible mental powers afforded races like the Green Chasch, the Fwai-chi, the Meks of Etamin 9 besieging the final human strongholds in "The Last Castle," even given to divergent human peoples on Koryphon, Maske and countless other worlds, or to the likes of his most extraordinary Demon Prince, Howard Alan Treesong, Vance was forever drawn to what else might comprise human (and other) natures in all their myriad forms.

Minding the Stars: The Early Jack Vance Volume 4 reflects this beguiling blend of the practical and the otherworldly, combining tales that explore the workings of such mental powers with other stories selected from the earlier days of the Grandmaster's illustrious career.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Nogpalgarth
• Telek
• Four Hundred Blackbirds
• Alfred's Ark
• Meet Miss Universe
• The World Between
• Milton Hack from Zodiac
• Parapsyche

It all began with Ragnarok, with the Children of the Light and the Tarnished ones battling to the death in the ice and the dark. At the end of the long battle, one Valkyrie survived, wounded, and one valraven -- the steeds of the valkyrie.

Because they lived, Valdyrgard was not wholly destroyed. Because the valraven was transformed in the last miracle offered to a Child of the Light, Valdyrgard was changed to a world where magic and technology worked hand in hand.

2500 years later, Muire is in the last city on the dying planet, where the Technomancer rules what's left of humanity. She's caught sight of someone she has not seen since the Last Battle: Mingan the Wolf is hunting in her city.

Niko Landry and his crew thought a routine hyperspace survey would be easy money. But when the barrier separating their homeworld from the rest of the human race opens, they seize the chance to go exploring... finding an empire more dangerous than they imagined.

An artificial intelligence on a star-spanning mission explores the farthest horizons of human potential--and its own purpose--in a mind-bending short story by New York Times bestselling author John Scalzi.

Equipped with the entirety of human knowledge, a sentient ship is launched on a last-ditch journey to find a new home for civilization. Trillions of miles. Tens of thousands of years. In the space between, the AI has plenty of time to think about life, the vastness of the universe, everything it was meant to do, and--with a perspective created but not limited by humans--what it should do.

Jan, the prince of the unicorns, uses his knowledge of fire to form a historic alliance between his people and their former enemies and to return the unicorns to their ancestral homeland.

Sturgeon Award nominated novelette. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, September 1999. The story can also be found in the collection Human Voices (2004).

Lynx and the rest of the Cards are heading south. There's money in their pockets, beer in their hands and a simple job ahead - sun, sea and not getting shot at much. Throw in the prospect of a bar fight and it's almost a holiday.

But the volatile Mage Islands are a powder-keg, one just waiting for a spark. A bloody-handed exile perhaps, or the agent of a foreign power preparing for war. Maybe even a bunch of trigger-happy drunks who've upset the balance of magic across the Riven Kingdom.

Or all three together, that'd definitely work...

A secret song. A hidden fortress. A world on the brink of war.

After the long, despotic reign under the evil sorceress, Sawyn, life in the Golden Court is finally rebuilding. New leadership means new beginnings, and Sadie Rauxtide - now a royal guard - has been grappling with how she'll fit into her new home. But when a rival Wolf king, Nero, kidnaps the Queen's friend and mentor Ora, any hopes for peace are lost.

The Golden Court springs into action, and Sadie is tasked with an important mission: travel with Navin and Maez to try to win new allies and uncover Nero's hidden secrets. Yet Navin has secrets of his own, and Sadie is tasked with uncovering them while battling her growing attraction to the man who betrayed her. She has a mission, but the heart wants what it wants. And fate? Fate has its own magic, and it's one more thing out of her control.

Meanwhile, Queen Calla is forced to seek help from the Ice Wolf pack in order to stop Nero's prejudicial rule. However, the Queen of Taigos makes Calla's objectives impossible with their capricious relationship standing in the way--completely unwilling to commit in helping Calla rescue Ora and repeatedly dismissing Calla's new gender identity. With no true allyship from Taigos Court, Calla battles between diplomacy and being their true self as they realize coming out is only the beginning of their journey of self-discovery.

Tensions rise on both fronts as Sadie and Calla struggle to gain support for the brewing war and realize that the world of Aotreas is more than it seems.

In The Well of Stars, Hugo award-nominated author Robert Reed has written a stunning sequel to his acclaimed novel Marrow. The Great Ship, so vast that it contains within its depths a planet that lay undiscovered for generations, has cruised through the universe for untold billions of years. After a disastrous exploration of the planet, Marrow, the Ship's captains face an increasingly restive population aboard their mammoth vessel.

And now, compounding the captains' troubles, the Ship is heading on an irreversible course straight for the Ink Well, a dark, opaque nebula. Washen and Pamir, the captains who saved Marrow from utter destruction, send Mere, whose uncanny ability to adapt to and understand other cultures makes her the only one for the job, to investigate the nebula before they plunge blindly in. While Mere is away, Pamir discovers in the Ink Well the presence of a god-like entity with powers so potentially destructive that it might destroy the ship and its millions.

Faced with an entity that might prevent the Ship from ever leaving the Ink Well, the Ship's only hope now rests in the ingenuity of the vast crew... and with Mere, who has not contacted them since she left the Ship...

With the excitement of epic science fiction adventure set against a universe full of wonders, the odyssey of the Ship and its captains will capture the hearts of science fiction readers.

As peace returns to Avalon, Tamwyn, Elli, and Scree discover a terrifying new threat: The Warlord Rhita Gawr has set out to conquer Avalaon as well as mortal Earth. Racing against time, the friends embark on three separate quests. To succeed, they must solve Avalon's most elusive mysteries. And they will need to travel vast distances--both in their world and in their own hearts.

On a dusty backwater planet, occasional thief Jun Ironway has gotten her hands on the score of a lifetime: a secret that could raze the Kindom, the ruling power of the galaxy.

A star system away, preternaturally stoic Chono and brilliant hothead Esek--the two most brutal clerics of the Kindom--are tasked with hunting Jun down.

And tracking all three across the stars is a ghost from their shared past known only as Six. But what Six wants is anyone's guess. It's a game of manipulation and betrayal that could destroy them all. And they have no choice but to see it through.

CEO Artur Drakon has been betrayed. The Syndicate Worlds' government failed to protect its citizens from both the Alliance and the alien enigmas. With a cadre of reliable soldiers under his command, Drakon launches a battle for control of the Midway Star System--assisted by an ally he's unsure he can trust...

CEO Gwen Iceni was exiled to Midway because she wasn't ruthless enough in the eyes of her superiors. She proved them wrong by commandeering some of the warships at Midway and declaring the star system's independence on behalf of the people though staying in charge as "President." But while she controls the mobile fleet, she has no choice but to rely on "General" Drakon's ground forces to keep the peace planet-side.

If their coup is to succeed, Drakon and Iceni must put their differences aside to prevent the population of Midway from rebelling against them, to defend their star system from the enigmas--and to ferret out saboteurs determined to reestablish Syndic rule...

Following a successful coup against the tyrannical Syndicate, the leaders of the rebel Midway Star System work to forge a government free enough to please its citizens yet strong enough to secure power. But in a world where former rulers have become new foes, an alien threat to humanity may turn old adversaries into uncertain allies.

President Gwen Iceni believes Midway is their only defense against the enigmas. Syndicate training taught her self-preservation in a crisis, yet she's determined to fight for the star system's fate... even if it means joining forces with another former Syndicate CEO--and an officer of the hated Alliance.

Despite General Artur Drakon's misgivings, he partnered with Iceni to overthrow Syndic forces. Now, with an enigma fleet menacing their hard-earned independence, he can ill afford to trust her--or lose her support. But in the back of his mind, there are three words that describe someone who confides in a Syndicate CEO: Stupid. Betrayed. Dead.

President Gwen Iceni and General Artur Drakon have successfully liberated the Midway Star System--but the former rulers of the Syndicate Worlds won't surrender the region without a fight. The dictatorial regime has ordered the ex–Syndicate CEOs terminated with extreme prejudice and the system's citizens punished for their defiance.

Outnumbered and led by junior officers hastily promoted in the wake of the uprising, Midway's warships are no match for the fleet massing and preparing to strike. But the Syndicate isn't the only threat facing Iceni and Drakon. Another former CEO has taken control of the Ulindi Star System, the first calculated move toward establishing his own little empire.

With Drakon's ground forces dispatched to Ulindi, Midway erupts in violence as Syndicate agents and other, unknown enemies stoke a renewed revolt against Iceni's power--leaving both her and Drakon vulnerable to trusted officers just waiting for an opportune moment to betray them...

The Syndicate Worlds continue to splinter as more star systems pledge allegiance to President Gwen Iceni, General Artur Drakon, and the new government they're establishing at Midway. But the toxic legacy of Syndicate rule continues to undermine their efforts as the rebels encounter difficulty trusting one another and believing their new leaders' promises of freedom from tyranny.

Before Iceni and Drakon can put their house in order, they must deal with an even greater threat. An enigma warship has appeared and vanished near a Syndic colony. If the aliens are capable of jumping into other human-occupied star systems, then billions of people could be vulnerable to a hostile invasion fleet anywhere they choose to strike.

But an even greater vulnerability lies with Iceni and Drakon, as a once-trusted adviser-turned-saboteur plans revenge...

The ambitious Sultan of Alpha Centauri can only claim the illustrious title of Caliph if he makes a ritual pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca. This journey completed, he will rule the entire population of the greater Islamic universe. But human knowledge has not yet been able to overcome the significant challenges presented by interplanetary travel. However, the Sultan resourcefully enlists the help of Abdul Hamid-Jones, a clever fugitive with a price on his head and the law on his heels.

Thrown into the bewildering world of the Sultan's schemes, Abdul receives a hasty introduction to complex physics and the even more complex political intrigues of the Sultan's court. Responsible for the successful execution of the Sultan's plan, Abdul slowly realizes with horror that the fate of the entire Solar system could be resting on his shoulders.

The man on the moon was dead. They called him Charlie. He had big eyes, abundant body hair, and fairly long nostrils. His skeletal body was found clad in a bright red spacesuit, hidden in a rocky grave. They didn't know who he was, how he got there, or what had killed him. All they knew was that his corpse was fifty thousand years old -- and that meant this man had somehow lived long before he ever could have existed.

With her husband off fighting at World War I's eastern front, Petra Kurková embraces her fleeting freedom, roaming the city at night with her camera. A born witch, she's discovered that she can capture the souls of the dead on film. Her supernatural skills don't go unnoticed by the enigmatic Josef Svoboda. He's recruiting a team of sorcerers to infiltrate the front lines, where the bloodshed of combat has resurrected foul creatures. Petra's unique abilities will be needed against the most dangerous enemies of all--those ever present, undead, and unseen.

Deep in the cursed Carpathian Mountains, the ragtag team meets with an emissary of an ancient organization founded to maintain balance between worlds. Photographing the escalating horrors is beyond anything Petra imagined. So are the secrets among her fellow witches. But Petra can't turn back. Not before she discovers her husband's fate and the myriad ways her magic is manifesting. To defeat an occult foe, Petra must release the power she's been concealing for so long, or risk damning a war-torn world to ashes.

Lieutenant Jodenny Scott is a hero. She has the medals and the scars to prove it.

She's cooling her heels on Kookaburra, recovering from injuries sustained during the fiery loss of her last ship, the Yangtze, and she's bored -- so bored, in fact, that she takes a berth on the next ship out. That's a mistake. The Aral Sea isn't anyone's idea of a get-well tour.

Jodenny's handed a division full of misfits, incompetents, and criminals. She's a squared-away officer. She thinks she can handle it all. She's wrong. Aral Sea isn't a happy ship. And it's about to get a lot unhappier.

As Aral Sea enters the Alcheringa -- the alien-constructed space warp that allows giant settler-ships to travel between worlds, away from all help or hope -- Jodenny comes face to face something powerful enough to dwarf even the unknown force that destroyed her last ship and left her with missing memories and bloody nightmares. Lieutenant Jodenny Scott is about to be introduced to love.

Author Sandra McDonald brings her personal knowledge of the military, and of the subtle interplay between men and women on deployment, to a stirring tale that mixes ancient Australian folklore with the colonization of the stars.

Chief Terry Myell and Lieutenant Commander Jodenny Scott are in that most precarious of military situations, a mixed marriage. Enlisted and officer. It's unnatural.

Terry and Jodenny have been assigned to duty on the planet Fortune, away from the huge ships that carry colonists from the wreckage of polluted Earth to clean new worlds across the galaxy.

But there's another way besides spaceships to travel from world to world. A group within Team Space is exploring the Wondjina Spheres, a set of ancient alien artifacts that link places and times. Now those spheres have shut down and Team Space thinks that Terry and Jodenny are part of the key to make them work again --no matter how the two of them feel about it. They can volunteer, or be "volunteered."

What the researchers can't anticipate is that the status quo, in which Team Space holds the monopoly on travel between worlds, is about to change. And as a result, Terry and Jodenny will be tested to their limits and beyond....

Chief Terry Myell died and became a god. Now he's back to life, careening around space and time at the behest of a voice that told him to save all of mankind. Helping and hindering this quest are his elderly wife, his young wife, grandchildren who haven't been born yet, romantic rivals he hasn't even met, a descendant from two thousand years in the future, and an alien nemesis who calls itself the Flying Doctor. Life in the military has never been so complicated.

Commander Jodenny Scott would agree. She's seven months pregnant and trying to come to peace with her husband's death. When Myell reappears with tales of time travel, she's not sure what to believe.

But with an invading army bearing down on Earth's last fleet of spaceships, there's not much time for debate. When the dust clears Jodenny is stranded in an Australia she never imagined, and Myell's more desperate than ever to rescue her--from aliens, from treachery, and from history itself.

THE WARS ARE OVER...

The conflicts of Planet Earth are forgotten now. Even The Solar System War with its Cold Victory is barely a memory. In this the third and final volume of The Psychotechnic League, the scale is immeasurably greater in Sace, in Time... and in violence.

Table of Contents:

• 9 - Foreword (Starship) - essay by Sandra Miesel
• 12 - Gypsy - [Psychotechnic League] - (1950) - short story
• 36 - Star Ship - [Psychotechnic League] - (1950) - novelette
• 83 - Virgin Planet - [Psychotechnic League] - (1957) - novella
• 183 - Teucan - [Psychotechnic League] - (1954) - novelette
• 211 - The Pirate - [Psychotechnic League] - (1968) - novelette
• 253 - The Chapter Ends - [Psychotechnic League] - (1954) - novelette
• 283 - A Chronology of the Psychotechnic Series - essay by Sandra Miesel

More than a century ago, the cataclysmic struggle between the wizards and the mages ended in their mutual destruction -- leveling great cities and reducing grand palaces to dust. From the vast graveyard that remained, the Empress

Ouriána rose up to proclaim herself the Divine Incarnation of the Devouring Moon--ruling her wasted realm with the blackest sorcery; turning her priests from men to monsters and setting them loose to enslave or destroy all who would oppose her.

But now signs and portents hint of a champion--a young girl, hidden and talented, who is destined to end Ouriána's terrible reign. And now a brave band of heroes must locate their savior princess--even if it means being pursued to the ends of the world by the withering fury of the dark goddess herself.

Five years after attacking the human-colonized worlds of the Spiral Arm, the hydrogues maintain absolute control over stardrive fuel...and their embargo is strangling human civilization. On Earth, mankind suffers from renewed attacks by the hydrogues and decides to use a cybernetic army to fight them. Yet the Terran leaders don't realize that these military robots have already exterminated their own makers - and may soon turn on humanity. Once the rulers of an expanding empire, humans have become the galaxy's most endangered species. But the sudden appearance of incredible new beings will destroy all balances of power. Now for humans and the myriad alien factions in the universe, the real war is about to begin...and genocide may be the result.

THE ALIENS PLAYED BY THE RULES. THEIR RULES.

When the Lokaron suddenly appeared in the skies of Earth, America was enjoying victory in the off-and-on war that had occupied most of the 20th century. That's why they chose America to occupy and use as their puppet in dominating the planet. We were already set up to do it; now we would do it for them.

Not that they were evil; they just insisted that we trade with them. By their rules, rules backed up by irresistible weapons. In terms of those rules, they would even play fair--but in the long run, if they didn't own something, it would be because they didn't want it.

At first we tried to fight, but just as the Japanese, the Chinese, the Hindus and all the rest had learned, when the ones with the guns say ''Let's trade!'' they really mean 'Trade or bleed.'' And so you trade--even if you won't have a country--or a planet--left when the last round is played out.

But worms turn, and just as had the Europeans a century ago, the Lokaron were going to learn a lesson from their victims, a lesson that they weren't going to like one bit....

A near-future Earth has shaken off the devastating colonization by alien Lokaran invaders and totalitarian rule by the alien's puppets, the Earth First party. But now Earth is flung into galactic intrigue and war. The Lokaron empire teeters on the edge of a fratricidal meltdown and a cabal of ancient enemies hope to use Earth as a proxy to destroy the empire and rule over a new Galactic dark age.

Now Captain Andrew Roark, the son of heroes of the rebellion and an officer trained in Lokaran space warfare tactics, joins with a highly capable Lokar who opposes the empire but wishes to see it transformed rather than destroyed. Together they must uncover a conspiracy to control Earth, and then obtain the secret key to defeating it. War for galactic control looms, and freedom for Earth--so recently escaped from under the boot-heel of one oppressor--is once again in the balance.

Set in Renaissance Florence, this fantasy retelling of the life of Catherine de' Medici is as beautiful and as richly magical as the works of the great artists who people its pages. When Catherine was born, she was the sole legitimate heir to a great fortune and great power. But her father had died before she was born, and her mother died only a few weeks afterward, leaving the child to the guardianship of the pope and the fosterage of servants. From this beginning, Roessner tells an intimate story, of the servant families of the Medici who practice the secret magics of the kitchen and hearth. The Befanini family is bound to the Medici by blood and oaths, through children born on the wrong side of the blanket, recognized but not legitimate. Thomas, the son of Catherine's foster mother, is bound particularly to Catherine by magic and love, for he is destined to become Catherine's chef, and to that end he is not only taught the arts of the kitchen but is apprenticed out to a sculptor, and befriended by the great Michelangelo. But war intervenes in the charted courses of these children, and in the struggles between the pope and the German emperor and the city of Florence itself, their futures - and their very lives - are set at risk.