Early Science Fiction

Living off the land and adapting to a changing environment takes a special individual with the unique skills, training, and determination necessary to survive. Gus Berry is not that individual. The former house painter barely made it out of Annapolis as its population underwent a violent transformation, leaving everyone he knew or loved dead—or undead. Now, Gus needs food and booze, weapons and armor, clothing that fits, and above all, toilet paper, preferably two-ply.

This volume covers H.P. Lovecraft's "apprentice years" - roughly the first half of his literary career, the half written before his return to Providence in 1926. Every story written for publication under his own name is included in this volume, from 1917 through 1925.

The Montoyas are used to a life without explanations. They know better than to ask why the pantry never seems to run low, or why their matriarch won’t ever leave their home in Four Rivers - not for graduations, weddings, or baptisms. But when Orquídea Divina invites them to her funeral and to collect their inheritance, they hope to learn the secrets that she has held onto so tightly their whole lives. Instead, Orquídea is transformed into a ceiba tree, leaving them with more questions than answers.

When the former Baron Morgarath escaped to avoid punishment for treason, an uneasy peace fell on Araluen. But Morgarath, now in hiding, is already planning his next move, recruiting an army of savage, overpowering beasts known as Wargals. Newly crowned King Duncan knows he must assemble his troops for battle.

From the end of the 18th century, Americans traveled west to find new homes and new lands. They brought with them the magics of plain people. It is from these roots of the American dream that award-winning writer Orson Scott Card has crafted what the Charlotte Observer called "a uniquely American fantasy." Using the lore and the folk magic of the men and women who settled a continent, and the beliefs of the tribes who were here before them, Card has created an alternate frontier America.

Vril, the Power of the Coming Race (1870) by Edward Bulwer-Lytton is an early science fiction novel. The setting is a strange subterranean world inhabited by beautiful entities that resemble the angels described in scripture. The advanced beings known as Vril-ya live underground - using the mysterious "Vril" as an energy source - but intend to reclaim the surface of the earth as their own. The narrator ends up deep inside the Earth via a natural chasm in a mine shaft.

Since half-vampire Cat Crawfield and her undead lover Bones met six years ago, they’ve fought against the rogue undead, battled a vengeful Master vampire, and pledged their devotion with a blood bond. Now it’s time for a vacation. But their hopes for a perfect Paris holiday are dashed when Cat awakes one night in terror. She’s having visions of a vampire named Gregor, who’s more powerful than Bones and has ties to her past that even Cat herself didn’t know about.

When NBC decided to move Jay Leno into prime time to make room for Conan O'Brien to host the Tonight show - a job he had been promised five years earlier - skeptics anticipated a train wreck for the ages. It took, in fact, only a few months for the dire predictions to come true. Leno's show, panned by critics, dragged down the ratings - and the profits - of NBC's affiliates, while ratings for Conan's new Tonight show plummeted to the lowest levels in history.

“Can I save my daughter . . . and them?” Time traveler Tom Cook has settled into his prehistoric life among the Neanderthals, but it’s not without its challenges that include a burning desire to see his future-dwelling daughter, Pook, again. When a growing threat from hostile neighbors turns into an attack, an old contact from another world comes to the rescue and leads both Tom and his Neanderthal wife, Brassy, back to that future through an increasingly unstable time portal. Now, after traveling to and from two different worlds, Tom must find a way to defeat his enemies in both, ...

What if mankind's "missing link", the apelike Homo erectus, had survived to dominate a North American continent where woolly mammoths and saber-toothed tigers still prowled while the more advanced Homo sapiens built their civilizations elsewhere? Now imagine that the Europeans arriving in the New World had chanced on these primitive creatures and seized the opportunity to establish a hierarchy in which the sapiens were masters and the "sims" were their slaves.

Does time heal all wounds? Or do some last forever? Pennsylvania, 1971: Graham Davidson is a young man with survivor’s guilt after the death of three siblings. Estranged from his father and seeking a direction in his life, Graham learns about vision quests from a Crow Indian. He secures seasonal employment in Yellowstone National Park and embarks on a spiritual journey. Wyoming Territory, 1871: Under a full moon at a sacred thermal area, Graham finds himself in Yellowstone a century earlier - one year before it was established as a national park.

After a desperate escape from the Blue Stone Island, Skree and his faithful companion Zuka must find a new home for Priestess and the last of the Kobold race. Joining the fiery Captain Fenna Lis and her no-nonsense first mate Hawkins, Skree finds plenty of opportunities to grow in skill and strength. With few options available to him, Skree must provide a haven for his friends and the last survivors of the Kobold race. Luckily, Captain Fenna knows just the right guy to solve their problem, but it won't be easy. Or cheap.

The best of the year's science fiction and fantasy stories as selected by the multiple award-winning editor Jonathan Strahan. Distant worlds, time travel, epic adventure, unseen wonders, and much more! The best, most original and brightest science fiction and fantasy stories from around the globe from the past 12 months are brought together in one collection by multiple award winning editor Jonathan Strahan.

If you've never read a Repairman Jack novel, this is the place to begin. It's 1990. A twenty-one-year-old named Jack has dropped out of college, leaving his old life behind to build a new one in New York City. Manhattan's rough edges are jagged enough to shred any unwary newcomer, but perhaps not one who is determined to stay off the grid, at any cost, in the busiest metropolis on earth. And to do so, he'll have to take jobs of a less than legal nature.

David Fisher pushes paper for the EPA in a world that's a lot like ours...only different. In this California - and throughout the alternate United States - all gods are real, science doesn't exist, and magic rules everything, running imp-driven computers and creating anxiety-inducing bumper-to-bumper flying-carpet rush hours. Unfortunately, unchecked magic use can leave dangerous residues, creating hours of mind-numbing deskwork for David and his fellow bureaucrats at the Environmental Perfection Agency.

Watch out - the Earth just fell into a dark sun's orbit! Or maybe you'd rather visit a theme park called Hell? These are just two of the strange and unnerving tales you'll find in this collection of great science fiction and fantasy stories.

"Early Adopter" is a collection of short stories from the edge of human progress. Eight stories hold dark mirrors to our own world—experience thought-provoking sci-fi, technologic tragedy, and pulse-pounding thrillers. To Run Again: Dr. Laura Brandie is ready to change the world. She's the lead researcher behind the KSE, a revolutionary cure for paralysis and neurodegenerative conditions. And now, by good fortune, she's found the perfect candidate for her first human trial: a man who suffers from locked-in syndrome.

Jack and Annie travel back to the morning of the great San Francisco earthquake. While they are there, they meet a reporter and help get some kids to safety.

The saga of Sword Art Online continues with three side stories set during the Aincrad and Alfheim eras. The game of death took its toll on every player in a different way—when one turns up dead on the fifty-seventh floor, the game's afoot, and it's up to Asuna and Kirito to crack the case. There's also the story of how Kirito got his Excalibur sword in Alfheim (with a little help from his friends). And when the game of death first began, Kirito learned a difficult lesson—one he would never forget.

"What kind of world is this?" It’s five years later, and Tom Cook is living a “normal” life with his Neanderthal family 40,000 years ago. But when a life-threatening crisis strikes his daughter, Tom decides to carry her to the future for the medical help she desperately needs. And in the process, he’s entangled in a modern world very different from the one he left behind. Now, caught up in a secret plan to exploit his daughter’s unique Neanderthal DNA, Tom must find a way to save everything he loves and cherishes. If you're a fan of the time travel novels of Jack Finney (Time and ...