New Releases by Ian R. Macleod

From furthest reaches of deep space in "The Memory Artist" to the jungles of Yucatan in "Lamagica," and from the strange suburbia of "Stuff" to a Vatican where a dying pope awaits deliverance in "Sin Eater," the worlds mapped out by these stories range far and wide. As, from the mythic ancient city of "The God of Nothing" to the post-human futures of "Ephemera" and "The Fall of the House of Kepler," via alternate pasts and some very twisted presents in such tales as "Selkie," "The Mrs Innocents" and "The Chronologist," do the times. What holds all these pieces together, including the gripping long new novelette "Downtime" and its vision of a near-future penal system, are vivid writing, strong characters and a sense of awe and surprise. On travels that will take you from cluttered attics and strange shorelines to star-flung civilisations and beyond, let Ian R. MacLeod be your guide. Ian R. MacLeod is the author of seven novels and five short story collections spanning the entire spectrum of fantastic fiction which have been critically acclaimed, widely anthologised and translated into many languages. His work has won the Arthur C Clarke award for the Year''s Best Novel, along with the Sidewise Award for Alternative-World Fiction (twice), the World Fantasy Award (again twice), the John W Campbell Memorial Award and the Locus Award for the Year''s Best First Novel. He lives in the riverside town of Bewdley in England.

Read stories that capture the complexity, tragedy, and hope of warfare and violence in human (and nonhuman) society. The Bullet Points anthology offers classic stories alongside stories from up-and-coming authors, including: Joe Haldeman, "Time Piece" David Drake, "But Loyal to His Own" Jenna Hanchey, "Far From Home" Eric Fomley, "Input: Memories" Tabitha Lord, "Quest Nine" Ian R. MacLeod, "Selkie" Rich Larson, "Ghost Girl" Shannon Fay, "Fight for the Stars" Pedro Iniguez, "The Last Great Film" And more... This is an anthology based on Bullet Points, a military fiction blog. Every year, the best stories from the blog are collected and published. Bullet Point Press publishes fiction that contributes to a deeper understanding of war and warfare and builds bridges between military professionals and civilians. We believe that fiction can contribute to a more just and peaceful world.

Ian R. Macleod''s fantasy short story "The Chronologist" is a Tor.com Original A boy, desperate to escape the drudgery of life in his small town, gets caught up in the machinations of a traveling time keeper, and slowly watches his town and his life unravel by the seams. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A cutting-edge anthology, published on the 100th anniversary of the word “Robot”, exploring the possibilities and place of robots in society going forwards. 100 years after Karel Capek coined the word, “robots” are an everyday idea, and the inspiration for countless stories in books, film, TV and games. They are often among the least privileged, most unfairly used of us, and the more robots are like humans, the more interesting they become. This collection of stories is where robots stand in for us, where both we and they are disadvantaged, and where hope and optimism shines through. Including stories by: Brooke Bolander · John Chu · Daryl Gregory · Peter F. Hamilton · Saad Z. Hossain · Rich Larson · Ken Liu · Ian R. Macleod · Annalee Newitz · Tochi Onyebuchi · Suzanne Palmer · Sarah Pinsker · Vina Jie-Min Prasad · Alastair Reynolds · Sofia Samatar · Peter Watts

Alternate histories. Alternate realities. It’s said that every choice creates multiple timelines, each one exploring what could have happened if a different decision had been made. Most of these alternate histories stem from different outcomes to a pivotal battle, or to an assassination attempt, or to the ending or escalation of a war. All violent, all bloody, all brutal. But what about those choices made during peacetime, when there was no monumental, ongoing conflict? After all, everyone knows how significant the flutter of a butterfly’s wings can be, how far-reaching its effects can be felt. In these pages you will find fifteen new branches of history written by some of today’s greatest science fiction and fantasy writers, including Elektra Hammond, Dale Cozort, Harry Turtledove, C.W. Briar, Rick Wilber, Juliet E. McKenna, Michael Robertson, Kat Otis, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Brian Hugenbruch, Stephen Leigh, Elizabeth Kite, Ian R. MacLeod, Mike Barretta, and Kari Sperring, all stemming from a peaceful divergence in our past. Join them as they wander down familiar paths...and then swerve down roads not taken.

“MacLeod is a brilliant writer.” —Tim Powers “Ian MacLeod writes like an angel. He strings together ideally chosen words into sentences that are variously lush, sparse, subtle, bold, joyous, mournful, comic and tragic.” —Paul Di Filippo Welcome to the second half of the collected worlds of one of fiction’s great myth-makers. Blending naturalistic settings with real—and unreal—histories, dark presents, strange pasts and star-flung futures, Ian R. MacLeod’s multi award-winning stories defy easy classification, but are always vividly elegant, compelling, and filled with wonder. In The Chop Girl, a young working at a World War Two RAF bomber airbase discovers the true meaning of luck, whilst The Discovered Country projects a world in which the dead enjoy an endless afterlife whilst the merely living struggle to survive, and The Visitor from Taured twists a modern urban myth into a tale of one man’s search for a Theory Of Everything, and Snodgrass tells a very different version of the Beatles’ rise to fame. Nothing in MacLeod’s visions is ever quite what it seems, yet they remain deeply real and involving. If you haven’t read MacLeod before, you can expect to be moved and surprised. If you have, then you need no further introduction other than to say that Nowhere—and its companion volume Everywhere, which features many of his best longer stories—represent a generous and wide-ranging summary of his work, along with many insights into the creative process which are provided by the fresh introductions and afterwords. Praise for Ian R. MacLeod “Ian R. MacLeod is rapidly becoming one of the contemporary stars of the genre.” —Brian Aldiss “MacLeod is set to become a writer of the magnitude of Dickens and Tolkien.” —G. P. Taylor “I have no idea what he looks like, but I picture an angle with polychrome wings, dirty hands and a well-chewed pencil.” —Gene Wolf “...in many ways the mature culmination of the New Wave’s aggressive appropriation of literary tropes and techniques and the skillful integration of them into subtle, penetrating fiction that, like all true and dangerous art, can pierce and transform the reader.” —Jack Dann “Stands beside the achievements of China Mieville.” —Jeff VanderMeer “There are moments when you see a life entire... in a moment. And you smile, because you recognise that smell of the world, that capsule of living.” —John Clute “Ian R. MacLeod is one hell of a writer—literary, inventive, always surprising. Pay attention: this guy is important.” —Michael Swanwick

“MacLeod is a brilliant writer.” —Tim Powers “Ian MacLeod writes like an angel. He strings together ideally chosen words into sentences that are variously lush, sparse, subtle, bold, joyous, mournful, comic and tragic.” —Paul Di Filippo Welcome to the first half of the collected worlds of one of fiction’s great myth-makers. Blending naturalistic settings with real—and unreal—histories, dark presents, strange pasts and star-flung futures, Ian R. MacLeod’s multi award-winning stories defy easy classification, but are always vividly elegant, compelling, and filled with wonder. In Grownups, a young boy discovers the strange facts of life in a very different—yet also alarmingly recognizable—world, whilst New Light on the Drake Equation focusses on one man’s quest to prove there is still a chance of intelligent life existing beyond Earth, and in Ephemera a very strange librarian has final charge of all the world’s knowledge and culture, and The Master Miller’s Tale tells of obsessive love as a bucolic past dissolves into the magics of industry, iron and steam. Nothing in MacLeod’s visions is ever quite what it seems, yet they remain deeply real and involving. If you haven’t read MacLeod before, you can expect to be moved and surprised. If you have, then you need no further introduction other than to say that Everywhere—and its companion volume Nowhere, which features many of his best shorter stories—represent a generous and wide-ranging summary of his work, along with many insights into the creative process which are provided by the fresh introductions and afterwords. Praise for Ian R. MacLeod “Ian R. MacLeod is rapidly becoming one of the contemporary stars of the genre.” —Brian Aldiss “MacLeod is set to become a writer of the magnitude of Dickens and Tolkien.” —G. P. Taylor “I have no idea what he looks like, but I picture an angle with polychrome wings, dirty hands and a well-chewed pencil.” —Gene Wolf “...in many ways the mature culmination of the New Wave’s aggressive appropriation of literary tropes and techniques and the skillful integration of them into subtle, penetrating fiction that, like all true and dangerous art, can pierce and transform the reader.” —Jack Dann “Stands beside the achievements of China Mieville.” —Jeff VanderMeer “There are moments when you see a life entire... in a moment. And you smile, because you recognize that smell of the world, that capsule of living.” —John Clute “Ian R. MacLeod is one hell of a writer—literary, inventive, always surprising. Pay attention: this guy is important.” —Michael Swanwick

“MacLeod is set to become a writer of the magnitude of Dickens or Tolkien.” —The Guardian Aether is industry, industry is magic and the Great Guilds rule the known world. Raised amid the smokestakes, terraced houses and endless subterranean pounding of the aether engines of the Yorkshire town of Bracebridge, Robert Borrows is nevertheless convinced that life holds a greater destiny than merely working endless shifts for one of the Lesser Guilds. Then, on a day out with his mother to the strange gardens and weirdly encrusted towers of a remote mansion, he encounters a wizened changeling, and the young girl in her charge called Anna, and glimpses a world of wonder, mystery and surprise. From then on, as he flees to London in the hope of escape and advancement, and explores its wide streets and dark alleys, and all the tiers of society from the lowest to the highest, he comes to realize that he holds the keys to secrets far bigger than even he imagined. A dazzling melange of Dickens and Peake, flavored with steampunk and magical realism, yet seen through a kaleidoscopically individual gaze, in The Light Ages, double World Fantasy Award winner Ian R MacLeod has created a novel for this and every age. Praise for The Light Ages: “MacLeod''s descriptive powers are so effective that you can visualize every detail... [He] skillfully incorporates literary influences ranging from William Blake to Dickens to 1984 and the working class novels of the 1950s—and arrives at something original. Magical, visionary and enthralling, The Light Ages is award-winning stuff.” —SFX “Totally convincing and vividly written, this book invests the dark streets of London with a magic the reader will never forget... a brilliant writer.” —Tim Powers “A haunting fantasy version of Victorian England... brought to life with compassionate characters and lyrical writing.” —The Denver Post “The novel''s industrial alternative London echoes Dickens in its rich bleakness and M. John Harrison''s Viriconium in its inventive Gothic complexity. A gripping page-turner. A hearty read. Rising star Ian R MacLeod offers an original political fable rivaling in ambition and execution the very best of today''s new science fantasies.” —Michael Moorcock

“A major work by a master writing at the top of his form.” —Publishers Weekly In the ninety-ninth year of the Age of Light, Alice Meynell has fought her way up to Greatgrandmistress of the Guild of Telegraphers, and is determined not to let even the consumption which is ravaging her son stand in the way. What follows, through a long, hot summer in the great house of Invercombe overlooking the Bristol Channel, changes not only their lives but those of everyone in England, and perhaps the whole known world. The House of Storms follows on from double World Fantasy Award-winner Ian R MacLeod''s The Light Ages in creating a vividly three-dimensional vision of a landscape and a society both very like, but also wonderfully different from, our own. Part fantasy and part history, and filled with compelling characters and a deep sense of place, the story he tells is uniquely powerful and strange. Praise for The House of Storms: “MacLeod is set to become a writer of the magnitude of Dickens or Tolkien.” —The Guardian “MacLeod''s ability to tell a tale that blends history-in-the-making with the stories of men and women who make that history renders this chronicle of love, war, and human aspiration a strong addition to any fantasy collection.” —Library Journal “In the end, as compelling as the plot may be, readers will find themselves slowing down, holding back, turning the pages with deliberate care. For the world MacLeod creates, the characters who live there, the schemes and terrors they find themselves involved in are so real, so beautifully rendered, that readers will not want to leave them behind.” —Interzone

Winner of the Sidewise Award for Alternate History All failed actor and unlicensed private eye Clark Gable has to do is impersonate a wealthy scriptwriter for a few hours, and sign a contract for the biopic of the inventor of a device which has transformed the world of entertainment. What could go wrong? True, he’s seeing ghosts, but so’s everyone else these days, at least when they go to the Feelies. And Europe is devastated by war, and America in sleep-walking toward Fascism. But what’s that got to do with him? A great deal, it turns out, as he stumbles into a world of glamour, danger, preternatural forces and political intrigue. A dazzling blend of mystery, fantasy and history, and by turns witty, eerie and romantic, Wake Up and Dream is film noir with Technicolor wraiths. Praise for Wake Up and Dream: “It’s 1940 and Hollywood is dominated by the feelies, movies that use the mysterious Bechmeir Field to transmit emotions into the minds of viewers. Clark Gable, a movie star turned private detective, is hired by April Lamotte to briefly impersonate her reclusive screenwriter husband, who’s about to sell a biopic based on the inventor of the Bechmeir Field. After everything is signed, someone tries to kill Gable and pass it off as suicide. Gable’s investigation into the incident draws him into a sordid conspiracy involving Hollywood’s elite, far too many of whom are turning up dead. It all leads back to something called Thrasis, and a secret worth killing for. MacLeod (Journeys) expertly hits all the hard-boiled beats, delivering the creepy, fascinating, strange, and wholly enjoyable story with a noir melancholy, a keen eye for detail, and plenty of snappy dialogue.” —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) “Set in an antisemitic US drifting towards collusion with Nazi Germany, Wake Up and Dream slowly picks at the artifice of Hollywood to reveal its morally rotten core. MacLeod won the Arthur C Clarke award in 2009, and on the strength of this novel should do so again.” —The Guardian

Winner of the Locus Award for Best First Novel This prescient and ground-breaking novel is set in a near-future where the privileged citizens of Europe shelter behind immense physical and biotechnical barriers from a world ravaged by climate change and disease. Beyond this safe existence of harvest fairs, uncomplicated religion and high tech crops lie the overcrowded souks, teeming streets and exotic religions of the vast sprawl of the Endless City which now encompasses most of North Africa. Father John, a doubting missionary from the futuristic yet bucolic shires of the Welsh Marches, finds he must leave his ministry and the clamour of the Endless City to search across the dangerous wastelands beyond for the source of a lethal radioactive pollutant. There, in the company of a witchwoman and a young Borderer, he confronts not only his faith but also his own past, and the near-death of Hal, his comatose brother. Lyrical and evocative, The Great Wheel tells the story of a half-wrecked Eden, and all too possible tomorrow. Praise for The Great Wheel: “A voyage into the midnight garden of the human soul, and a dangerous extrapolation of the days to come.” —Michael Swanwick “A smooth, sinuous trip in the hands of a writer who knows just about everything there is to know about giving joy, and telling the truth, too.” —John Clute “A beautiful book. It breathes, as a true novel of experience should. It''s expansive and layered and real... It transcends the genre.” —Jack Dann “A richly portrayed future world quite unlike any other, and yet, somehow, with the feeling of exotic familiarity.” —Norman Spinrad

Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke and the John W. Campbell Memorial awards for Best Science-Fiction Novel Song of Time begins with an old woman discovering a half-drowned man on a Cornish beach in the furthest days of this strange century. She, once a famous concert violinist, is close to death herself — or a new kind of life she can barely contemplate. Does death still exist at all, or has finally been extinguished? And who is this strange man she''s found? Is he a figure returned from her own past, a new messiah, or an empty vessel? Filled with love, music, death and life, and spanning the world from the prim English suburbs of Birmingham to the wild inventions of a new-Renaissance Paris to a post-apocalyptic India, Song of Time tells the story of this century, and confronts the ultimate leap into a new kind of existence, and whatever lies beyond... Praise for Song of Time: “MacLeod’s quiet, meditative novels and stories have been winning critical acclaim for years, and Song of Time sees him at the height of his powers. At the end of a long and eventful life, celebrated violinist Roushana Maitland orders her memories before she passes from the world of the flesh to a virtual afterlife. When she finds a mysterious stranger washed up on the beach of her Cornish retreat, he facilitates the process of remembrance. In flashback chapters we follow Roushana’s turbulent life through the cataclysmic events of the 21st century, taking in the deaths of loved ones, marriage to a conductor-entrepreneur, and a final heartbreaking revelation, Song of Time is a slow, sensitive first-person account of what it means to be human and vulnerable, and confirms MacLeod as one of the country’s very best literary SF writers.” —The Guardian

Winner of the World Fantasy Award and the Sidewise Award for Alternate History What would have happened if Britain and its allies had lost the Great War? From this premise, and through the compelling story of an outsider forever struggling to make sense of, or even change, the world, The Summer Isles takes a journey into the darker side of British nationalism. Geoffrey Brook, seemingly a successful and respected history don at a venerable Oxford college, feels his whole life is a fraud. Not only did he not go to the right schools, or attend university, but he cannot even understand Latin. That, and, in a country where intolerance and bigotry has become a national rallying cry, there''s the issue of his supposedly deviant sexuality. Which, if it was discovered, would probably see him sent to a labour camp — or worse still, to the Summer Isles. It all goes back to a boy he remembers from his youth, who has now become the country''s charismatic leader. But what can he do now, in a country that seems to be on the brink of cataclysm? Praise for The Summer Isles: “The Summer Isles is one of the most powerful, compelling and compassionate novels ever written in any genre.” —Gardner Dozois “The Summer Isles combines the profound melancholy of Orwell with the precise observance of Graham Green.” —Lucius Shepard “A poetic and fascinating alternate history that tells us much about how human beings think and act. At times, The Summer Isles reads like a political thriller, but, in the end, it is a story about the human heart told by a master of the form.” —Pat LoBrutto “Projecting Nazi Germany onto the England of the ‘30s is a most effective counterfactual device: and in the opposition of the narrator, historian Geoffrey Brook, and Britain''s Fuehrer, John Arthur, MacLeod sums up very neatly the division in the British psyche of the time, between Churchillian grit and abject appeasement.” —Locus

A 2018 LOCUS AWARD FINALIST FOR BEST HORROR NOVEL In the aftermath of the last great battle of the American Civil War, a disillusioned Union medic stumbles across a strange figure picking amid the corpses, and his life is changed forever . . . In the cathedral city of Strasbourg in the years before the French Revolution, a church restorer is commissioned to paint a series of portraits that chart the changing appearance of a beautiful woman over the course of her life, although the woman herself seems ageless . . . In Prohibition-era New York, an idealistic young Marxist is catapulted into the realms of elite society, and forced to assume the identity of someone who never existed . . . Red Snow is a novel of love and violence, ideas and dreams, and revolves around the mystery of a monster drawn from humanity''s darkest myths which still somehow survives, and thrives, and kills, in this modern age. Praise for Red Snow: “... always manages to take us somewhere unexpected... by turns western adventure, Renaissance horror, political intrigue, dysfunctional family drama, and more.” —Locus “By turns horrifying and hauntingly beautiful, this epic vampire story is the stuff of real nightmares.” —Tim Powers ‘A rich, beautifully written, deftly plotted vampire novel” —Goodreads “Red Snow brings new depth and history to some age-old myths. It resonates with the struggle between science and the supernatural, and between good and bad. Fed through a prism which combines the romance of Anne Rice with the vivid realism of Cormac McCarthy, it is a novel of universal questions and the triumph of the human spirit wrapped inside a dark and gripping tale.” —Risingshadow.net

An unabridged collection of the “best of the best” science fiction stories published in 2013 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster. In “Zero for Conduct,” by Greg Egan, an Afghani teenager, living in a near-future Iran with her exiled grandfather, makes a game-changing superconductor discovery. A young girl struggles to survive on a planet, with a stringent class structure, where Doors are used to go off-world in “Exit, Interrupted,” by C. W. Johnson. “Pathways” by Nancy Kress, follows a teenage girl from a small Kentucky mountain town, in a near-future U. S., struggling with her family and culture as she seeks treatment for Fatal Familial Insomnia. In “Entangled,” by Ian R. MacLeod, an Indian woman, in a Britain turned upside down by a disease that links people’s minds, searches for answers to her personal catastrophe. In “The Irish Astronaut,” by Val Nolan, a colleague brings the ashes of an astronaut, who died in the Aquariusdisaster, to Ireland for final burial. In “Among Us,” by Robert Reed, a government agency goes to extraordinary lengths to identify and track the aliens among us. “A Map of Mercury,” by Alastair Reynolds, showcases the plight of a failed artist dispatched to retrieve an artistic genius from a collective of cyborgs parading across the face of Mercury. In “Martian Blood,” by Allen M. Steele, a researcher from Earth goes on an expedition into the untamed regions of Mars to extract blood from its natives. “The She-Wolf’s Hidden Grin,” by Michael Swanwick, set in the same milieu as Gene Wolfe’s “The Fifth Head of Cerberus,” follows the childhoods of two sisters on a planet far from Earth. Finally, in “The Best We Can,” by Carrie Vaughn, a frustrated scientist pursues first contact among an apathetic populace.

"Road crossings on small streams typically alter stream hydrology and potentially fragment aquatic ecosystems. The Ouachita National Forest, Arkansas has thousands of road crossings which may hinder fish movement and contribute to genetic inbreeding or extirpation. To monitor the impacts of road crossings on fish movement I used stationary antenna arrays to detect and record radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, also known as PIT tags, in the Ouachita Mountains. In 2011-2013, I injected 12-mm, half-duplex, RFID tags in ~3,800 fish (nine species) 85 mm or greater total length. I installed remotely-powered RFID detection stations in two streams with road crossings and two reference streams without road crossings to continuously monitor fish movements. The RFID stations included two, pass-through antennas transecting the stream, with one antenna upstream of the road crossing or reference reach and the other located downstream. The two-part antenna array was designed to precisely record timing and movement direction of each fish passage. The antennas lacked rigid, in-stream structures, which may have affected fish movement. I developed a figure-eight crossover antenna design to improve tag detection efficiency. I monitored associated stream depths and velocities to characterize hydrological conditions and road crossing hydraulics. Fish passed at higher rates across reference reaches than road crossings and at higher rates across a box-culvert than a vented-ford, where fish utilized high water events to bypass high velocity and low swimming depth barriers. Stream intermittency caused extensive stream dryness and exacerbated the hydraulic obstacles at road crossings, which reduced passage rates. Fish species and length had little impact on passage rates. The RFID stations monitored fish passage more efficiently than electrofishing recapture methods and should enhance future studies of aquatic organism passage and road crossing permeability." --Abstract.

This collection of unabridged, unforgettable tales, written by some of science fiction’s most esteemed authors, pays homage to one of the genre’s most cherished story types. Whether time travel stories leap forward in time or slip into the past, they remain popular with fans. John Barnesspins a tale of intrigue as the principles of science are discovered centuries ahead of time while mankind is divided into classes (Com''n and Liejt) and the Irish people are slaves in “Things Undone.” Nancy KressAnne Boleyn and that of historians from a distant future to which pivotal historic figures are taken in order to prevent otherwise inevitable bloodshed in “And Wild for to Hold.” Ian R. MacLeodsends three time traveling historians from the future to rescue Captain Oatesfrom the doomed Scott party amidst the race to the South Pole in the early 20thcentury in “Home Time.” Tom Purdomsets historians from the future on a high seas adventure to document a 19thcentury British Admiralty anti-slavery patrol in “The Mists of Time.” Science fiction grand master, Robert Silverberg, slowly slides the fifty-seven year old owner of a Toyota dealership in the San Francisco Bay area backwards in time towards his birth in “Against the Current.” Allen M. Steeletells the story of how a U.S. Navy blimp crewmember happens upon time travelers while monitoring Soviet sea traffic around Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis in “The Observation Post.” Michael Swanwickfollows the director of a dinosaur research center holding a timeline-polluting fund raiser located in the late Cretaceous period in the Hugo award winning story, “Scherzo with Tyrannosaur.” Genevieve Valentineobserves the detrimental effects of time travel on the timeline through the eyes of a seamstress whose wealthy patrons are obsessed with their time period costumes in “Bespoke.”

An unabridged collection of the “best-of-the-best” science fiction stories published in 2010 by current and emerging masters of the genre. In “Under the Moons of Venus,” by Damien Broderick, a man, who has returned to a mostly deserted Earth from a terraformed Venus with Luna and Ganymede as moons, longs to go back to Venus. In “The Shipmaker,” the 2011 story winner of the British Science Fiction Association Award, by Aliette de Bodard, a maker of living spaceships has her career threatened by the birth of a sentient Mind that will come before the ship that will house it will be ready. In “Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain” by Yoon Ha Lee, a construct meets with an assassin that is the keeper of a gun that erases a victim’s entire lineage to secure the destruction of another gun made by the same gunsmith. In “Re-Crossing the Styx,” by Ian R. MacLeod, an entertainer aboard a cruise ship falls in love with a zombie husband’s Minder and schemes to free her from her marriage. In the steampunk story “Eight Miles,” by Sean McMullen, an English lord hires a balloonist to take him and a nonhuman female to a great height in order to learn the secrets of another world. In “Elegy for a Young Elk” by Hannu Rajaniemi, the gods use a real human to retrieve something important from a city that has become sentient and surrounded by a firewall that protects against gods. In “Alone” by Robert Reed, set in the author’s Marrowuniverse, a traveler aboard the Great Ship has eschewed contact and remained alone for far longer than seems possible. In the winner of the 2010 Asimov’s Readers’ Award for best novelette “The Emperor of Mars,” by Allen M. Steele, a contract worker on Mars becomes enamored with the science fiction retrieved from NASA’s Phoenix lander that arrived on the red planet back in 2008. In “A Letter from the Emperor,” by Steve Rasnic Tem, an imperial envoy visits an outlying colony where a retiring colonel, whose memory is suspect for security reasons, claims to have fought alongside the emperor. Finally, the 2010 Shirley Jackson Award winner for best short story, “The Things,” by Peter Watts, is a retelling of John Carpenter’s classic movie, The Thing, from the perspective of the shape-shifting alien confronting a group of scientists in Antarctica.

This collection of literary short fiction combines fantasy, science fiction, and horror in vivid settings, peopled with ordinary humans with normal relationships, and the interaction of the mundane with the fantastic. In "Breathmoss," a young girl must cope with the relationship with her family, love, and a community set in rigid custom, where males are a rarity. In "Verglas," a man must decide to leave his humanity by going native on an ice world or abandon his family. The events leading to the formation of the current government, the repression of Jews and homosexuals, and the horrors of being a closet homosexual in such a regime are examined in "The Summer Isles." Other stories encompass a scientist who searches for extraterrestrial intelligence; a rigid, aged man finding magic by a pool; and an 18-year-old girl who gains the reputation of being a death flower during WWII.

A collection of stories ranging from fantasy to horror. The story, Ellen O''Hara, is on the Irish struggle for independence, while Grownup is on a world where there are three sexes.