Take a trip through the imaginations of 18 visionary writers as they explore the future of trucking in this new science fiction anthology! There's something for every genre fiction fan in this follow-up to the hit "18 wheels of Horror - a Trailer Full of Trucking Terrors." From the back cover: An alien fuel additive shows just how fast a big rig can go... A disembodied driver wages war on self-driving trucks... A haul through time takes an unexpected turn... Reality shatters for a trucker using an experimental delivery device... Stargazing gives an overweight driver a new lease on life... A young girl risks her life to hitch a ride out of an apocalyptic wasteland... The highways of the universe will never be the same!
Take a trip through the imaginations of 18 visionary writers as they explore the future of trucking in this new science fiction anthology! There's something for every genre fiction fan in this follow-up to the hit "18 wheels of Horror - a Trailer Full of Trucking Terrors." From the back cover: An alien fuel additive shows just how fast a big rig can go... A disembodied driver wages war on self-driving trucks... A haul through time takes an unexpected turn... Reality shatters for a trucker using an experimental delivery device... Stargazing gives an overweight driver a new lease on life... A young girl risks her life to hitch a ride out of an apocalyptic wasteland... The highways of the universe will never be the same!
Psychotic killers, devious ghosts, alien monsters, howling storms, undead creatures, and other dark forces haunt the highways and the truckers who drive them in these 18 chilling tales! Contains the Bram Stoker Award winning story "Happy Joe's Rest Stop" by John Palisano. A ghostly voice on a trucker’s CB radio knows more about his life than it should… Two drivers find their cargo gives them inhuman appetites… A boy in a truck stop encounters a supernatural force that threatens to destroy the world… The hypnotic singing lulling a driver to sleep might not be coming from the tires… A fender-bender between a big rig and a four wheeler is not as accidental as it seems… The sinister cargo lurking in a rock and roll band’s fleet of trucks is unleashed at their final show... Hit the road with this anthology of trucking horror fiction!
Despite the growing importance of economics in our lives, literary scholars have long been reluctant to consider economic issues as they examine key texts. This volume seeks to fill one of these conspicuous gaps in the critical literature by focusing on various connections between science fiction and economics, with some attention to related fields such as politics and government. Its seventeen contributors include five award-winning scholars, five science fiction writers, and a widely published economist. Three topics are covered: what noted science fiction writers like Robert A. Heinlein, Frank Herbert, and Kim Stanley Robinson have had to say about our economic and political future; how the competitive and ever-changing publishing marketplace has affected the growth and development of science fiction from the nineteenth century to today; and how the scholars who examine science fiction have themselves been influenced by the economics of academia. Although the essays focus primarily on American science fiction, the traditions of Russian and Chinese science fiction are also examined. A comprehensive bibliography of works related to science fiction and economics will assist other readers and critics who are interested in this subject.
In Karl Schroeder's sci-fi thriller, Hayden Griffin has come to the city of Rush with one thing in mind: to take murderous revenge for his parents' deaths. It is the distant future. The world known as Virga is a fullerene balloon three thousand kilometers in diameter, filled with air, water, and aimlessly floating chunks of rock. The humans who live in this vast environment must build their own fusion suns and "towns" that are in the shape of enormous wood and rope wheels that are spun for gravity. Young, fit, bitter, and friendless, Hayden Griffin is a very dangerous man. He's come to the city of Rush in the nation of Slipstream with one thing in mind: to take murderous revenge for the deaths of his parents six years ago. His target is Admiral Chaison Fanning, head of the fleet of Slipstream, which conquered Hayden's nation of Aerie years ago. And the fact that Hayden's spent his adolescence living with pirates doesn't bode well for Fanning's chances . . . At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
A troubled mother commits an unspeakable act to banish the demon that lurks in her root cellar. Ghosts from the past won’t release their hold on a young woman. A girl in search of a new job as a nanny finds herself in charge of a mysterious package that requires much more care than any child. Lady Bits collects sixteen tales from Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson award nominated author Kate Jonez that explores the horror nestled in the female heart. Vividly realized protagonists engage with an often-hostile world to deliver justice, lower a vengeance hammer, or to simply revel in evil. Prepare to be unsettled, disturbed, and terrified.
Once again, the finest SF short stories of the year have been collected in a single volume. With Year's Best SF 18, acclaimed, award-winning editor and anthologist David G. Hartwell demonstrates the amazing depth and power of contemporary speculative fiction, showcasing astonishing short stories from some of science fiction's most respected names as well as exciting new writers to watch. In this anthology, prepare to travel light years from the ordinary into a tomorrow at once breathtaking, frightening, and possible with some of the greatest tales of wonder published in 2012.
Kay Kenyon, noted for her science fiction world-building, has in this new series created her most vivid and compelling society, the Universe Entire. In a land-locked galaxy that tunnels through our own, the Entire is a bizarre and seductive mix of long-lived quasi-human and alien beings gathered under a sky of fire, called the bright. A land of wonders, the Entire is sustained by monumental storm walls and an exotic, never-ending river. Over all, the elegant and cruel Tarig rule supreme. Into this rich milieu is thrust Titus Quinn, former star pilot, bereft of his beloved wife and daughter who are assumed dead by everyone on earth except Quinn. Believing them trapped in a parallel universe—one where he himself may have been imprisoned—he returns to the Entire without resources, language, or his memories of that former life. He is assisted by Anzi, a woman of the Chalin people, a Chinese culture copied from our own universe and transformed by the kingdom of the bright. Learning of his daughter’s dreadful slavery, Quinn swears to free her. To do so, he must cross the unimaginable distances of the Entire in disguise, for the Tarig are lying in wait for him. As Quinn’s memories return, he discovers why. Quinn’s goal is to penetrate the exotic culture of the Entire—to the heart of Tarig power, the fabulous city of the Ascendancy, to steal the key to his family’s redemption. But will his daughter and wife welcome rescue? Ten years of brutality have forced compromises on everyone. What Quinn will learn to his dismay is what his own choices were, long ago, in the Universe Entire. He will also discover why a fearful multiverse destiny is converging on him and what he must sacrifice to oppose the coming storm. This is high-concept SF written on the scale of Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld, Roger Zelazny’s Amber Chronicles, and Dan Simmons’s Hyperion.
Interviews with Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Chalres L. Grant, Tanith Lee, Thomas Ligotti, Brian Lumley, William F. Nolan, F. Paul Wilson, and more.
