Most Popular Books by Michael Swanwick

From pure fantasy to hard science fiction, this finely crafted offering by one of the greatest science fiction writers of his generation promises to stretch readers'' minds far beyond ordinary limits. Nineteen tales from Michael Swanwick''s best short fiction of the past decade are gathered here for the first time, including the 1999 Hugo Award-nominated "Radiant Doors" and "Wild Minds" and this year''s winning story, "The Very Pulse of the Machine." The collection also features "The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O," written especially for this volume.

The Nebula Award-wining novel from Michael Swanwick—one of the most brilliantly assured and darkly inventive writers of contemporary fiction—a masterwork of radically altered realities and world-shattering seductions. The Jubilee Tides will drown the continents of the planet Miranda beneath the weight of her own oceans. But as the once-in-two-centuries cataclysm approaches, an even greater catastrophe threatens this dark and dangerous planet of tale-spinners, conjurers, and shapechangers. A man from the Bureau of Proscribed Technologies has been sent to investigate. For Gregorian has come, a genius renegade scientist and charismatic bush wizard. With magic and forbidden technology, he plans to remake the rotting, dying world in his own evil image—and to force whom or whatever remains on its diminishing surface toward a terrifying and astonishing confrontation with death and transcendence. This novel of surreal hard SF was compared to the fiction of Gene Wolfe when it was first published, and the author has gone on in the two decades since to become recognized as one of the finest living SF and fantasy writers. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A New York Times Notable Book: "Combining cyberpunk''s grit with dystopic fantasy, this iconoclastic hybrid is a standout piece of storytelling" ( Library Journal). Jane is trapped as a changeling in an industrialized Faerie ruled by aristocratic high elves and populated by ogres, dwarves, night-gaunts, and hags. She is the only human in a factory where underage forced labor builds cybernetic, magical dragons that are weaponized and sent off to war. When the damaged dragon Melanchthon tempts Jane with promises of freedom, the stage is set for a daring escape that will shake the foundations of existence. Combining alchemy and technology, a coming-of-age story like no other, The Iron Dragon''s Daughter takes place against a dystopic mindscape of dark challenges and class struggles that force Jane to make costly decisions at every turn. A finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and the 1994 Locus Award, The Iron Dragon''s Daughter a is one-of-a-kind melding of grimdark fantasy and cyberpunk grit from the Nebula Award–winning author of Stations of the Tide. It engages the reader in a nihilistic world in which nothing is as it seems and everything comes at a steep and often horrific price.

A fantasy masterpiece from a five-time Hugo Award winner! A war-dragon of Babel crashes in the idyllic fields of a post-industrialized Faerie and, dragging himself into the nearest village, declares himself king and makes young Will his lieutenant. Nightly, he crawls inside the young fey''s brain to get a measure of what his subjects think. Forced out of his village, Will travels with female centaur soldiers, witnesses the violent clash of giants, and acquires a surrogate daughter, Esme, who has no knowledge of the past and may be immortal. Evacuated to the Tower of Babel -- infinitely high, infinitely vulgar, very much like New York City -- Will meets the confidence trickster Nat Whilk. Inside the Dread Tower, Will becomes a hero to the homeless living in the tunnels under the city, rises as an underling to a politician, and meets his one true love–a high-elven woman he dare not aspire to. You''ve heard of hard SF: This is hard fantasy from a master of the form.

An alternate-history reimagining of the Faust legend from the Nebula Award–winning author of Stations of the Tide Taking as his canvas the classic tale of the temptation of Faust—made famous by such literary luminaries as Goethe, Marlowe, and Mann—author Michael Swanwick paints a fresh vision of the dangers posed by the pursuit of knowledge. Set in Old World Germany, this tale of science and damnation begins with the great scholar Dr. Johannes Faust burning his books, having concluded that all his knowledge is nothing compared to the vast sea of ignorance surrounding him. Out of his despair, he inadvertently summons the tempter spirit, Mephistopheles, who is the projection of a dying alien race determined to make the destruction of humankind its final deed. Their weapon is knowledge—of science and technology, the mechanics of flight, the nature of the atom, and the secrets of economics. When, in an act of defiance, Faust nails the Periodic Table of the Elements to a church door in Wittenberg, he ushers in a golden age of prosperity for Germany that will make him the most powerful man in the world. But the love of the beautiful Margarete will be his downfall. What happens when the greed for knowledge and glory goes unchecked? Has a demon ever made a bad deal yet? Nominated for the Hugo Award, the Locus Award, and the British Science Fiction Award, Jack Faust is a masterful retelling of legend by one of science fiction''s finest craftsmen.

A cyberpunk thriller from Nebula Award winner Michael Swanwick that explores bioengineering, wetware, and the riddle of personality Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark is a recorded personality owned by corporate giant Deutsche Nakasone. When Rebel''s personality is uploaded to persona tester Eucrasia Walsh and burned into her brain, Rebel escapes the corporation and takes off across an exotically transformed solar system, hijacking Eucrasia''s body and becoming the most wanted fugitive in existence. A fast-paced technological thriller, Vacuum Flowers allows the reader to consider the implications of bioengineering while providing an entertaining and dynamic story. Reminiscent of the innovative work of Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, and Bruce Sterling, this high-tech work of science fiction carves out a niche all its own with themes as relevant today as when it was first published.

Modern technology is pitted against ancient dinosaurs in this scientific thriller James Rollins calls " Jurassic Park set amid the paradox of time travel." Paleontologist Richard Leyster is perfectly content in his position with the Smithsonian excavating dinosaur fossil sites and publishing his findings . . . until the mysterious Harry Griffin appears in his office with a cooler containing the head of a freshly killed Stegosaurus. The enigmatic stranger offers Leyster the opportunity to travel back in time to study living dinosaurs in their original habitats—but with strings attached. Soon, the paleontologist finds himself, along with a select team of colleagues—including his chief rival, the ambitious and often ruthless Dr. Gertrude Salley—making discoveries that would prove impossible working from fossils alone. But when Leyster and his team are stranded in the Cretaceous, they must learn to survive while still keeping alive the joy of scientific discovery. This shocking novel spans hundreds of millions of years and deals with the ultimate fate not only of the dinosaurs but also of all humankind. Nominated for the Locus Award, the Hugo Award, and the Nebula Award for Best Novel, Bones of the Earth cements author Michael Swanwick as an author who "proves that sci-fi has plenty of room for wonder and literary values" ( San Francisco Chronicle).

The master of literary science fiction returns with this dazzling new collection. Michael Swanwick takes us on a whirlwind journey across the globe and across time and space, where magic and science exist in possibilities that are not of this world. These tales are intimate in their telling, galactic in their scope, and delightfully sesquipedalian in their verbiage. Join the caravan through Swanwick''s worlds and into the playground of his mind. Travel from Norway to Russia and America to Ancient Gehenna. Discover a calculus problem that rocks the ages and robots who both nurture and kill. Meet a magical horse who protects the innocent, a semi-repentant troll, a savvy teenager who takes on the Devil, and time travelers from the Mesozoic who party till the end of time...

"A tough, keen-edged blade of a story … powerful and moving!" ― Roger Zelazny "This episodic tale of life, war, and survival in post-meltdown Pennsylvania builds a potent new myth from the grim reality of radioactive waste. Swanwick''s clean, strong prose makes the story compulsively readable." ― George R. R. Martin "A vivid, fast-paced and evocative story by one of science fiction''s best new writers. A generation-spanning saga of the fight for power and survival in a chillingly possible alternate future America … one which could still yet come to pass, tomorrow or today." ― Gardner Dozois In this dystopic world, radiation from the 1979 Three Mile Island accident has contaminated all of central Pennsylvania. A century after the disaster, the fallout zone ― known as the Drift ― harbors two-headed monsters, mutated vampires, and other outcasts. In the Drift chronicles the struggles of those on both sides of the divide as they fight to survive and transcend their shattered world.

A collection of sixteen stories from the Hugo-winner features such situations as time-traveling dinosaurs wreaking havoc on a quiet town in Vermont to a locked room murder of an ogre.

"[A] witty, supple, artfully humorous, and vastly engaging yarn . . . Swanwick''s approaching top form, and this one''s just too good to miss." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review) In the distant future, Surplus arrives in China dressed as a Mongolian shaman, leading a yak which carries the corpse of his friend, Darger. The old high-tech world has long since collapsed, and the artificial intelligences that ran it are outlawed and destroyed. Or so it seems . . . Darger and Surplus, a human and a genetically engineered dog with human intelligence who walks upright, are a pair of con men and the heroes of a series of prior Swanwick stories. They travel to what was once China and invent a scam to become rich and powerful. Pretending to have limited superpowers, they aid an ambitious local warlord who dreams of conquest and once again reuniting China under one ruler. And, against all odds, it begins to work, but it seems as if there are other forces at work behind the scenes. Chasing the Phoenix is a sharp, slick, witty science fiction adventure that is hugely entertaining from Michael Swanwick, one of the best SF writers alive. "Veteran fantasy readers will recognize Swanwick''s duo as descendants of, and a tribute to, Fritz Leiber''s beloved old sword and sorcery stories of an equally larcenous duo named Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, but Swanwick''s snappy dialogue and satirical barbs are entirely his own." ― Chicago Tribune "This book is like a breath of fresh air, witty and imaginative and just plain goofy fun." ― Booklist

Short stories from the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning author. "One of the best science fiction collections I''ve ever read." — The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction Though written in the last decades of the twentieth-century, these tales are timeless and prophetic visions created by Michael Swanwick''s wide-ranging imagination. Through stories of talking alien beasts, eco-fiction, and post-apocalyptic survival, this collection shows that humanity is something worth clinging to, even as technology and circumstances drastically change around us. Swanwick''s first-published short story, "The Feast of Saint Janus," takes us to an America after the Worldwide Collapse, where a woman is surgically enhanced to look and sound like Janis Joplin—with horrific consequences. In the award-winning "The Edge of the World" a group of teenagers explore the graffiti-ridden stairway at the precipice of a flat earth. While in "The Dragon Line," Merlin and Mordred reunite in a dim and disenchanted future to join forces and save the world. With thirteen stories in all, Gravity''s Angels "chronicles the career of one of the most impressive science fiction writers of the ''80s . . . Swanwick''s work illustrates the power and potential of contemporary science fiction" ( Publishers Weekly). "The stories collected here are luminous with the promise of his ambition, smart and allusive, dense with ideas and images, sacred and profane." — Interzone "An extremely impressive collection . . . If there is any justice in the world, Gravity''s Angels will bring Swanwick whatever recognition he has not had thus far." — Locus "This is a book that merits a place on any serious science fiction reader''s shelf." — The New York Review of Science Fiction

Discover the vast worlds and pocket universes of Michael Swanwick (Stations of the Tide), the only author to win science fiction''s most prestigious award five times in six years. In his dazzling new collection, the master of speculative short stories returns with tales in which magic and science improbably coexist with myth and legend. With two stories original to this collection, Swanwick aptly demonstrates with poignant humor why he is widely respected as a master of imaginative storytelling. "Swanwick''s wildly imaginative and beautifully written short stories have been, for several years, one of the primary joys of the field." --Washington Post Book World In engaging stories, Mischling the thief races through time to defeat three trolls before the sun rises for the first time and turns the inhabitants of her city into stone. A scientist is on the run from assassins, because her research in merging human intelligence with sentient AI is too dangerous. An aging veteran obtains a military weapon from his past: a VR robotic leopard in which he rediscovers the consequences of the hunt. In the biggest heist in the history of the universe, a loser Trickster (and the girlfriend who is better than he deserves) sets out to violate every trope and expectation of fiction possible. Table of Contents Starlight Express The Last Days of Old Night The Year of the Three Monarchs Ghost Ships The White Leopard Dragon Slayer The Warm Equations Requiem for a White Rabbit Dreadnaught Grandmother Dimetrodon The Star-Bear Nirvana or Bust The Beast of Tara Reservoir Ice Artificial People Huginn and Muninn and What Came After Cloud The New Prometheus Timothy: An Oral History Annie Without Crow Universe Box

The award-winning author returns to the gritty, post-industrial faerie world of his New York Times Notable Book The Iron Dragon''s Daughter . A Kirkus Reviews Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Book of the Year A Locus Award Finalist Caitlin of House Sans Merci is the young half-human pilot of a sentient mechanical dragon. Returning from her first soul-stealing raid, she discovers an unwanted hitchhiker. When Caitlin is framed for the murder of her brother, to save herself she must disappear into Industrialized Faerie, looking for the one person who can clear her. Unfortunately, the stakes are higher than she knows. Her deeds will change her world forever. "Michael Swanwick''s twisty tale of a half-human changeling warrior is the third work to be set in his ''Industrialized Faërie'' world, the most thoroughly imagined fictional realm since that of J.R.R. Tolkien." ― The Wall Street Journal "Swanwick''s final Faerie novel [is] a thoroughly fascinating meditation on the Nietzschean adventures of his earlier novels." ― Los Angeles Review of Books "Twisted in the right way, with tart and tricksy language you can swirl around in your mouth like good wine, it is a perfect, perfect book." ―Jane Yolen, World Fantasy Award–winning author "Discworld meets Faust. They do not like each other. Philip Pullman picks up the pieces." ― Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Often humorous, sometimes chilling, always entertaining, this collection of award-winning author Michael Swanwick''s short-short fiction is a work of masterfully sustained whimsy for adults. Cigar-Box Faust contains more than seventy fantastical stories in fewer than a hundred pages. The title piece is a five-minute condensation of a classic of Western literature, featuring a cigar-cutter as Mephistopheles; a box of matches in the roles of Helen of Troy, an Angel of the Lord, and the Light of Ontology; and a cigar as Faust himself. Although it has previously been performed live by the author, this is its first appearance in print. There is also an abecedary showcasing Swanwick''s bravura imagination with a separate story for every letter of the alphabet, another set of tales for every planet in the solar system, and a series of pieces that the author literally wrote in his sleep! To say nothing of a clutch of alternate autobiographies, a novella of decadence and corporate politics in a future Venice that has been boiled down to 416 words, Picasso and Philip K. Dick as existential heroes...and a rhyme for orange.

Three excursions through time, outer space, and imaginary worlds from "one of the most intellectually astute SF writers of his generation" ( The Washington Post). Michael Swanwick is a legend in the science fiction and fantasy universe, having won five Hugos, a Nebula, a World Fantasy Award, and many more honors for his mind-bending work. This trio of acclaimed sci-fi thrillers showcases the versatility of an author who can build a world, foresee a future, and alter reality. Bones of the Earth: A remarkable scientific breakthrough presented to humankind by an enigmatic future race enables a team of paleontologists to travel back in time to study dinosaurs in their natural prehistoric habitat. But the greatest discovery in history threatens to foment terrorism and create dangerous time paradoxes that could alter tomorrow''s world in this Hugo and Nebula Award–nominated novel. In the Drift: On an alternate Earth, the meltdown at Pennsylvania''s Three Mile Island nuclear power plant created a radioactive wasteland and caused the collapse of the US government. A century later, the mutants, monsters, and untouchables of the no-man''s-land called "the Drift" are descending on the city of Philadelphia. Vacuum Flowers: In this futuristic cyberpunk thriller, Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark is a recorded personality owned by a corporate giant. When Rebel''s personality is uploaded to an unsuspecting persona tester and burned into her brain, she escapes the corporation by hijacking her host''s body and embarking on a mad dash to freedom across the solar system.

Ritter grapples with a cunning adversary in this new Mongolian Wizard story . . . At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Michael Swanwick''s "Annie Without Crow" is a historial fantasy short story--a Tor.com Original An act of indiscretion from her immortal trickster companion sends Annie and her league of ladies-in-waiting on a time-defying adventure that becomes the inspiration for William Shakespeare. An act of indiscretion from her immortal trickster companion sends Annie and her league of ladies-in-waiting on a time-defying adventure that becomes the inspiration for William Shakespeare. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

A Russian émigré poet living in Paris is visited by a mysterious bear with an agenda... At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.