From award-winning author Lynda Clark come sixteen engrossing stories weaving together elements of folklore, fantasy and speculative fiction, all of them in Clark's darkly humorous style. In ' Ghillie's Mum', shortlisted for the BBC Short Story Award, a shape-shifting mother needs to decide whether to compromise and stay in her human form, or lose her son. In ' Total Transparency', the protagonist is learning how to live with a gradually disappearing wife. In ' Blanks', people are paying to create clones of themselves so they will never die. And in ' Dreaming in Quantum', there's a murder to be solved which echoes through dimensions only accessible in dreams.
''Utterly absorbing and standout tales... Baal's witty and unconventional prose will hook you in right from the start.' – Cosmopolitan Man Hating Psycho is the caustic new collection of stories from visionary writer Iphgenia Baal. Interrogating the disconnect between our public identities and real-life selves, Baal exposes the inherent duplicity of online communication. Text messages relaying deep personal crisis are nothing more than an annoyance, WhatsApp takedowns of wide-eyed left-wingers unfold at breakneck speed, friendships that seem set in stone disintegrate at the first hint of sex, the language of love degraded as life becomes more and more transactional. With black and disquieting humour, thirteen playful texts disparage the highly-profitable superstitions that are the scaffolding of our current social order. Man Hating Psycho lays bare the trappings of modern life, whilst putting the short story form through a literary mincer.. 'An extraordinary voice, and if you want to understand what happens next in modern writing, you'd do well to listen to it. A revelation.' – Alan Moore
The Industrial Revolution meets the quantum-technology revolution! A steampunk adventure guide to how mind-blowing quantum physics is transforming our understanding of information and energy. Victorian era steam engines and particle physics may seem worlds (as well as centuries) apart, yet a new branch of science, quantum thermodynamics, reenvisions the scientific underpinnings of the Industrial Revolution through the lens of today's roaring quantum information revolution. Classical thermodynamics, understood as the study of engines, energy, and efficiency, needs reimagining to take advantage of quantum mechanics, the basic framework that explores the nature of reality by peering at minute matters, down to the momentum of a single particle. In her exciting new book, intrepid Harvard-trained physicist Dr. Nicole Yunger Halpern introduces these concepts to the uninitiated with what she calls "quantum steampunk," after the fantastical genre that pairs futuristic technologies with Victorian sensibilities. While readers follow the adventures of a rag-tag steampunk crew on trains, dirigibles, and automobiles, they explore questions such as, "Can quantum physics revolutionize engines?" and "What deeper secrets can quantum information reveal about the trajectory of time?" Yunger Halpern also describes her own adventures in the quantum universe and provides an insider's look at the work of the scientists obsessed with its technological promise. Moving from fundamental physics to cutting-edge experimental applications, Quantum Steampunk explores the field's aesthetic, shares its whimsy, and gazes into the potential of a quantum future. The result is a blast for fans of science, science fiction, and fantasy.
The clock is ticking and Nola's time is almost up... It is the thirty-ninth century. Humankind has been forced to escape planet Earth and settle in other new worlds across all corners of the galaxy. Smart monkeys, enhanced dogs, and artificial brains allow for a comfortable and carefree existence, but this life of leisure and pleasure comes at a heavy price. The human race becomes atrophied and sinks into a life of delusions and idleness. In one world, life is conducted without all the modern comforts. In this agricultural society humans grow crops in large nests, populated by genetically engineered insect. Each nest is ruled by a queen who is served by a human representative responsible for the administration of her realm. Nola is a young woman, native of the planet, whose entire life has been devoted to this purpose. Now, the queen of her nest is about to die, and her destiny must also herald Nola's demise. However, other parties of whom existence she was not aware, make her an offer that is hard to refuse. Her life may be spared, but at what cost?
S. M. Stirling presents his first Novel of the Change, the start of the New York Times bestselling postapocalyptic saga set in a world where all technology has been rendered useless. The Change occurred when an electrical storm centered over the island of Nantucket produced a blinding white flash that rendered all electronic devices and fuels inoperable—and plunged the world into a dark age humanity was unprepared to face... Michael Pound was flying over Idaho en route to the holiday home of his passengers when the plane’s engines inexplicably died, forcing a less than perfect landing in the wilderness. And as Michael leads his charges to safety, he begins to realize that the engine failure was not an isolated incident. Juniper McKenzie was singing and playing guitar in a pub when her small Oregon town was thrust into darkness. Now, taking refuge in her family’s cabin with her daughter and a growing circle of friends, Juniper is determined to create a farming community to benefit the survivors of this crisis. But even as people band together to help one another, others are building armies for conquest...
*Winner of the Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction* A Heartland Booksellers Award Nominee An NPR Best Book of the Year A BookPage Best Book of the Year A Library Journal Best Winter/Spring Debut of 2020 A Most Anticipated Book of 2020 from the Boston Globe and The Millions A Best Book of February 2020 at Salon, The Millions, LitHub and Vol 1. Brooklyn “A stunner—equal parts epic and intimate, thrilling and elegiac.”—Laura Van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel The mesmerizing story of a Latin American science fiction writer and the lives her lost manuscript unites decades later in post-Katrina New Orleans In 1929 in New Orleans, a Dominican immigrant named Adana Moreau writes a science fiction novel. The novel earns rave reviews, and Adana begins a sequel. Then she falls gravely ill. Just before she dies, she destroys the only copy of the manuscript. Decades later in Chicago, Saul Drower is cleaning out his dead grandfather’s home when he discovers a mysterious manuscript written by none other than Adana Moreau. With the help of his friend Javier, Saul tracks down an address for Adana’s son in New Orleans, but as Hurricane Katrina strikes they must head to the storm-ravaged city for answers. What results is a brilliantly layered masterpiece—an ode to home, storytelling and the possibility of parallel worlds.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A modern classic explores the connections between science and art, the process of creativity, and ultimately the fragility of human existence. “A magical, metaphysical realm ... Captivating, enchanting, delightful.” —The New York Times Einstein’s Dreams is a fictional collage of stories dreamed by Albert Einstein in 1905, about time, relativity and physics. As the defiant but sensitive young genius is creating his theory of relativity, a new conception of time, he imagines many possible worlds. In one, time is circular, so that people are fated to repeat triumphs and failures over and over. In another, there is a place where time stands still, visited by lovers and parents clinging to their children. In another, time is a nightingale, sometimes trapped by a bell jar. Now translated into thirty languages, Einstein’s Dreams has inspired playwrights, dancers, musicians, and painters all over the world. In poetic vignettes, it explores the connections between science and art, the process of creativity, and ultimately the fragility of human existence.
Each story in this book can also be described as fable, urban legend, fairy tale, or all of the above. This book is a collection of stories that are part fable, part urban legend, part fairy tale. They will make you laugh. They will make you think. They will make you read them again. The stories included in this book are: Blue Jack Down Swank and Toxy Space Garbage Man Cross My Heart Heurist Blues Charlatan's Green Blueberry Moon over POW The Joker's Smile Ruffian's Gold Unnecessary Beauty The Incredible Sunshine Lady The Girl in Orange Dress A Cup of Tea for My Coyote Five Takes the Island Divide by True Stranger in Blue Coco Quantum Chariots of Rainbow Breakable Hearts at Five and Dime Mabelline Freedom Truth Does Not Entertain
When magic and superpowers emerge in the masses, Wendy Deere is contracted by the government to bag and snag supervillains in Hugo Award-winning author Charles Stross' Dead Lies Dreaming: A Laundry Files Novel. As Wendy hunts down Imp—the cyberpunk head of a band calling themselves “The Lost Boys”— she is dragged into the schemes of louche billionaire Rupert de Montfort Bigge. Rupert has discovered that the sole surviving copy of the long-lost concordance to the one true Necronomicon is up for underground auction in London. He hires Imp’s sister, Eve, to procure it by any means necessary, and in the process, he encounters Wendy Deere. In a tale of corruption, assassination, thievery, and magic, Wendy Deere must navigate rotting mansions that lead to distant pasts, evil tycoons, corrupt government officials, lethal curses, and her own moral qualms in order to make it out of this chase alive. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
