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This sharp, modern tribute to Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 begins in 2041, after an obesity epidemic almost bankrupts California. Government-sanctioned vigilantes are destroying fattening food products, and a powerful nutraceutical company has the monopoly on dietetically enforced thinness. But as a wasting plague begins to spread, only an ex-liposuctionist can ensure humanity’s survival by saving his family heirloom: the mortal remains of Elvis Presley.
It is 1945. Inspired by the U.S. Army’s intention to build an atomic bomb, the Navy plans its own dramatic ending to World War II, the Knickerbocker Project. The goal is to produce the ultimate biological weapon – giant Godzilla-esque fire-breathing iguanas with a penchant for total destruction. Is Syms Thorley, B-movie star, ready to don a rubber monster-suit for the good of his country?
"Preposterous but somehow almost plausible, skillfully mingling real and imaginary characters with genuinely hilarious moments."
-Kirkus
These surreal, satiric stories by the late Thomas M. Disch pay a mesmerizing visit to the shadowy zone that lies between everyday life and a perilous near future that is frighteningly tangible. In "The Wall of America," the Department of Homeland Security and the NEA fight over a border wall between the U.S. and Canada. After the Rapture, working-class life for "A Family of the Post-Apocalypse" goes on as usual. A Somali schoolgirl living in post-WWIII Minneapolis goes on a bloody crusade against a familiar predator in "The White Man." Vivid, starkly imagined, and strikingly articulate, this book is a journey that skillfully moves between playful absurdity and pointed irony.
"...a worthy volume from a writer who we really needed to be alive today, skewering hypocrisy and sometimes unearthing the sunny side of suffering."
-Los Angeles Times
Hailed by Bruce Sterling as a "political activist, gizmo freak, junk collector, programmer, entrepreneur, and all-around Renaissance geek," Cory Doctorow is the Internet’s most celebrated hi-tech pop culture maven. Content is the first collection of Doctorow's infamous articles, essays, and polemics. Here's why Microsoft should stop treating their customers as criminals (through relentless digital rights management); how America chose copyright and Happy Meal toys over jobs; why Facebook is taking a faceplant; how Wikipedia is a poor cousin of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy; and of course, why free e-books kick ass.
"Doctorow uses science fiction as a kind of cultural WD-40, loosening hinges and dissolving adhesions to peer into some of society's unlighted corners."
-New York Times
"If you want to glimpse the future of copyright policing, video-game sweatshops, robotic intelligence, info war, and how computer geeks will survive the apocalypse.... Doctorow is rapidly emerging as the William Gibson of his generation."
-Entertainment Weekly
"The book is more than just insightful, brilliant, and to the point - it's also funny and fun to read."
-The Electronic Frontier Foundation
A terrified young doctor allies himself with the great Romantic poets to battle a malignant apparition seeking her ultimate pleasure in their ravaged bodies and imperiled souls. Told in the guise of a secret history, this dramatic, shocking novel of passion and terror skillfully recasts the tragic lives of the Romantic poets into a uniquely terrifying tale. Back in print for the first time since 1994, this long-awaited new edition of The Stress of Her Regard will thrill loyal Tim Powers fans as well as newcomers to this gripping Gothic tour de force.
"Good serious fantasy doesn't come much better than The Stress Of Her Regard"
—Oxford Times
"Powers orchestrates reality and fantasy so artfully that the reader is not allowed a moment's doubt."
-The New Yorker
In this compelling memoir, the first and hopefully the last of its kind, America's most divine author reveals the intimate and shocking details of His sudden elevation to the most coveted and least understood position in the universe. As controversial as it is incontrovertible, the moving true story of His awful transformation and its awesome aftermath reveals, at long last, the hidden web that links Disch, Philip K. Dick, Western wear, the Leamington Hotel, and Eternity itself. Read it in fear and trembling. But read it, or else.
"My faith was rewarded with a soul-satisfying reading experience."
-Denver Post
"Thomas M. Disch isn't afraid of backlash for what some might consider the writings of a heretic...extraordinarily funny..."
-Kirkus
"Disch's generosity as a writer, as well as the keenness and breadth of his intellect, shine forth in these pages to illuminate his life in a charming though at times almost unbearably poignant light. Here was a man of Proustian dimensions in an age of Paris Hiltons."
-Realms of Fantasy
Ex-FBI Agent Tessa Sanderson has moved to Tyler, the sleepy Maryland town where she is trying to forget the tragedy of her husband's death. But her peaceful new life will be shattered, as her new neighbors are suddenly and viciously attacked by their own beloved dogs. The dogs are infected with a mutated flu triggering the aggression center of their brains; the virus is highly transmissible and there is no known cure. Meanwhile Tessa is protecting two dark secrets, and she will have to go deep undercover in order to exonerate herself and expose a deadly conspiracy.
"...a spine-chilling, suspense-laden story of pets turned unwitting killers. Kress brings her thorough knowledge of genetics and biology to bear in this nicely creepy thriller."
-Publishers Weekly
"What could be more unsettling than the notion that your family pet might suddenly turn against you with deadly intentions?... delivers on the potential of its gripping premise."
-San Francisco Chronicle
The legendary editing team of David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer return with the much-anticipated eighth installment of their popular anthology series showcasing the bestselling authors and rising stars of fantasy fiction. This engaging volume collects the essential fantasy stories of 2007, a year of particularly outstanding and original offerings.
Steampunk is Victorian elegance and modern technology: steam-driven robots, souped-up stagecoaches, and space-faring dirigibles fueled by gaslight romance, mad scientists, and oh-so-trim waistcoats. It's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, 10,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Wizard of Oz, and The Golden Compass. From the editors of The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases and The New Weird, this is steampunk. Hang on tight.
"This is a superb introduction to one of the most popular and inventive subgenres in science fiction."
-Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Chock full of brass, steam, diabolical engines, villains, Victorian aesthetics, romance, and humour.... An essential primer!"
-Jake Von Slatt, The Steampunk Workshop
This avant-garde anthology that presents and defines the New Weird - a dark, entertaining, in-your-face fiction. Evocative of both the gritty exuberance of pulp fiction and the stylistic range of literary fiction, the New Weird is a new genre that is entirely unprecedented and utterly compelling. Edited by Ann VanderMeer, the award-winning publisher and editor of Buzzcity Press and Jeff VanderMeer, the coeditor of The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases and the founder and coeditor of the Ministry of Whimsy Press.
"This extremely ambitious anthology will define the New Weird much as Bruce Sterling's landmark Mirrorshades anthology defined cyberpunk."
-Publishers Weekly, starred review
"Highly recommended for all libraries interested in the latest in sf and fantasy as well as modern horror."
-Library Journal
Cyberpunk is dead. The revolution has been co-opted by fashionable sunglasses and CGI mayhem. Once radical, cyberpunk is nothing more than a brand.
Time to stop flipping the channel.
Bruce Sterling * Gwyneth Jones * Jonathan Lethem * Greg Egan * Pat Cadigan * William Gibson * David Marusek * Walter Jon Williams * Michael Swanwick * Charles Stross * Paul Di Filippo * Christopher Rowe * Elizabeth Bear * Paolo Bacigalupi * Mary Rosenblum * Cory Doctorow
"Editors James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel round up sixteen inspiring, mind-altering stories written since cyberpunk's heyday ended and the "post-cyberpunk" era began...and every story in the bunch is a knockout."
-Boing Boing
"This really is an excellent collection and a reminder that the short story is often the best venue for new ideas in the field."
-SF Crowsnest
Shatterday is a revolutionary classic from Harlan Ellison, science fiction's most controversial author. This collection of sixteen visionary stories remains as scathing and influential today as when it was initially published. Read as fanatically by intellectuals as by college students, these category-defying stories combine ironic humor, sardonic social criticism, and intense self-revelation.
Back in print for the first time since its stunning debut in the early 1980s, this incendiary collection is reestablishes its legendary author at the cutting-edge of the short story form.
"There have been only a few short story collections that have changed the course of literature in a profound way.... Shatterday is the heart of the heart of energy and insight that is Harlan Ellison.
-Dan Simmons, author, Hyperion and Ilium
"One of the greatest speculative fiction writers this country has ever produced..."
-Ron Moore, Executive Producer, Battlestar Galactica
Everything old is new again
The classics have never been like this before. Science fiction and fantasy's master of short fiction defies tradition in a new collection that includes time-traveling dinosaurs, a locked-room mystery set in Faerie, the ever-mischievous Coyote, the Tower of Babel, a peculiar bordello, and more. The Dog Said Bow-Wow contains all of the adventures to date of those strangely likeable Post-Utopian scoundrels and con men, Darger and Surplus, plus three Hugo Award-winning stories, and an original novelette of swashbuckling adventure, "The Skysailor's Tale."
"Every reader with a dollop of humanity will admire Michael Swanwick's rowdy good humor. His towering creativity seems so effortless that it is easily overlooked – so effortless, and so immense. You won't want to put this book down."
-Gene Wolfe
"Michael Swanwick is one of the most intellectually astute sf writers of his generation."
-Washington Post Book World
"A truly extraordinary sampler of tales.... Every piece in this superlative collection is a nugget of pure science fiction gold."
-Publishers Weekly, starred review
John Varley * Robert Silverberg * Octavia E. Butler * Bruce Sterling * Isaac Asimov * Kim Stanley Robinson * Connie Willis * Jonathan Lethem * Mike Resnick * Ursula K. LeGuin * Kelly Link * Michael Swanwick * James Patrick Kelly * Charles Stross * Lucius Shepard * Stephen Baxter * Robert Reed
This anniversary anthology presented in chronological order showcases 30 years of excellent stories published in the legendary magazine, Asimov's Science Fiction. Asimov's Science Fiction was founded in 1977. As one of science fiction's most influential and prolific writers, Isaac Asimov wanted to provide a home for new SF writers- a new magazine for young writers could break into. Asimov's Science Fiction remains that home, as well as the publisher of some of the field's best known authors.
"A gem, and a credit to editor Williams."
-Booklist
"This volume belongs in most sf or short fiction collections."
-Library Journal
Gene Wolfe * Charles Stross * Peter S. Beagle * Martha Wells * Howard Waldrop * Geoff Ryman * Greg van Eekhout * Gavin J. Grant * Nina Kiriki Hoffman * Diana Wynne Jones * Ian R. MacLeod * L. E. Modesitt, Jr. * M. Rickert * Michael Moorcock * Robert Reed * Lucius Shepard * Sharon Shinn * Laird Barron * Michael Swanwick
The legendary editing team of David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer return with the much-anticipated seventh installment of their popular anthology series showcasing the bestselling authors and rising stars of fantasy fiction. This engaging volume collects the essential fantasy stories of 2006, a year of particularly outstanding and original offerings.
"This volume is essential reading for any fantasy aficionado."
-Publishers Weekly
"a who's-who-and-cool in contemporary fantasy."
-Booklist
Conversing in a mausoleum with the dead, an eccentric recluse is tugged back into the world by a pair of ghostly lovers bearing an extraordinary gift - the final chance for his own happiness. When challenged by a faithless wife and aided by a talking raven, the lives of the living and the dead may be renewed by courage and passion, but only if not belatedly. Told with an elegiac wisdom, this first novel by Peter S. Beagle is a timeless work of fantasy imbued with hope and wonder. After multiple printings since 1960, and coming back into print again, this newest edition will contain the author's recent revisions, and will stand as the definitive version of an ageless classic.
"One of literature's most beautiful works about ghostly times and places...told with wit, charm, and a sense of individuality." -New York Times Book Review
"a wonderful work of literature...a gem of a novel." -BookLoons
"a sweet, sad, and smart novel about life, death and love...a book that has endured for a reason." -The Agony Column
"One of the great fantasy novels of all time." -ICCFA Magazine
"This delightful collection showcases the best of Klages"
-Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club
Skirting the border between childhood and adulthood this innovative collection offers a tantalizing glimpse of what lies hidden just beyond the ordinary. These multifaceted tales range from the origins of the Manhattan Project to a culinary object-lesson, from 1950s-era corruption to a slight glitch in Creation. From the publication of her first story, nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula awards, Ellen Klages has continued to entertain and inspire her readers. Collected here for the first time, and including the story that inspired her Scott O'Dell Award-winning first novel, The Green Glass Sea, this is short fiction at its best, emerging from a unique and powerful voice.
"Klages' superb first story collection.... strong emotional stories."
-Denver Post
"Her stories evoke all of the senses.... Klages has the true storyteller's gift."
Charles De Lint, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
"Consistently well written and emotionally stimulating, the book is one of the loveliest you'll find."
-School Library Journal Online
"Haunting and crystalline...there are 16 reasons why you should inspect Portable Childhoods. Buy it. Read it. Set it down. Then pick it up and read it again!"
-Tangent Online
"Highly recomended. I enjoyed each and every story in the collection."
-Sf Revu
"Ms. Emshwiller is so gifted"
-New York Times Book Review
This inventive adventure centers on a mysterious enclave protecting a lost culture, a hidden city in the wilderness where stranded aliens struggle to preserve their fragile society. Hoping for a better life many have fled the Secret City, trying to survive in the harsh human world; others remain concealed, living out a fading memory in hope of deliverance. When the mythical rescuers suddenly arrive, insisting on an immediate interplanetary return, these very-human aliens discover that neither world is truly their own. This highly original novel leads readers on a heroic journey, told with a subtle interplay of camaraderie and alienation, delving into the very essence of identity.
"Emshwiller's latest displays her incredible talent for writing naturalistic prose about unnatural situationsas well as her ability to create a compact level of intensity."
-The Agony Column
"This is a sweet and involving story.... The Secret City is yet another strong late work from one of our treasures."
-SF Site, featured review
"Highly recommended."
-Midwest Book Review
In this intimate story collection, families and friendships create their own realities, realms that can be as magical as any fairy tale and as terrifying as any horror tale. A wolf learns the perils of loving a man, a resurrected businessman struggles between beauty and redemption, and an IQ-enhanced mouse discovers the mazes that lie within mazes. Lyrically told with patience and humor, these are meditations on the very art of storytelling. Combining the wit of Joyce Carol Oates, the imagination of Ray Bradbury, and the emotional resonance of Alice Sebold, Susan Palwick casts an unflinching yet compassionate gaze on our lives.
"A potent brew of mystery and heartache...gracefully knotted, densely lyrical."
-Sci Fi Weekly/SciFi.com
"Embracing elements of both horror and speculative fiction, Palwick's unique and commanding fiction never fails to trigger an emotional response as it captures the imagination."
-Booklist
"Palwick provides dramatic commentary with innovative structure.... Masterful writing, magical realism, slipstream, and literary fiction are all descriptors that come to mind."
-Tangent
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