In Old Earth's penultimate age, humanity's collective unconscious has long since been fully explored and mapped by the noönaut scholars of the Institute for Historical Inquiry. But something is threatening the integrity - perhaps even the very existence - of the noösphere, and aspiring academic Guth Bandar finds his career plans diverted by a collective unconscious that appears to be waking up. The Compleat Guth Bandar brings together the full series of Bandar stories originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and later assembled into a "fix-up" novel: The Commons.
What do you do when you have to choose between saving a life or saving yourself? Renowned cardiac surgeon Dr. Athan Carras’s first concern has always been the welfare of his patients. Then he’s approached by the very wealthy and even more powerful Terry Flynnt—a man who is used to getting what he wants, no matter what. Flynnt’s son is dying, and his only chance of survival is to receive a donor heart—one that Terry intends to obtain by whatever means necessary. Athan is immediately opposed to performing an illegal and immoral operation, but Flynnt is not about to let that stop him. Now, caught in the crosshairs of a man with unlimited means and influence, Athan finds his own life—and the lives of those he loves—being torn apart. And he will have to decide how far he’s willing to go, and what he is willing to sacrifice…
"Hughes serves up equal measures of wit, intrigue, and seat-of-the-pants action and even dabbles a little in Jungian psychology...Irresistibly good reading."--Booklist Boro Harkless has devoted his life to the service of the Archonite Bureau of Security, the force tasked with keeping the peace among and within the city-states of Old Earth. An idealist driven by the memory of his heroic father, he comes to the city of Sherit, seeking the notorious Luff Imbry. Luff Imbry has devoted his life to the enjoyment of wealth. A gourmet, a charmer, and an ever-so-stylish fop, he has come to the city of Sherit to pursue a new fortune. Not, mind you, his own, for Luff is also a mountebank, swindler, and forger of the first water. Tossed together by circumstance, they form an uneasy truce when they discover a common goal: capturing the grandest con-man of them all, Horselan Gebbling. Gebbling, who made off with Imbry's previous fortune, is posing as Father Olwyn, Sacerdotal Eminence of the Assembly of Tangible Unity, and has chosen as his prey the victims of the first new disease in millennia, the invariably fatal ailment known as the lassitude. Dangled in front of the victims is the fabled relic of past glories, the gemstone called black brillion. About black brillion, learned men agree on only two things: it can do anything, and it doesn't exist. But Gebbling boasts of having it, and its effects on the lassitude are nothing short of magical. Riding a landship across the unnatural prairie known as the Swept, Boro and Luff get caught up in an ever-growing tangle of mysteries. Nonsense chants lead to miracle cures. Guests end up crushed beneath the ship's giant wheels. The crew have secrets of their own. The dangers are not merely physical. On the ship is a noönaut, an explorer of the Commons, the dream realm which contains the memories and emotions of hundreds of thousands of years of human existence. Something in the Commons is calling to Boro to claim him for its own. What lurks beneath the Swept? What hides within the Commons, eager to come out? And exactly what game is Gebbing playing? Filled with dollops of drollery and an ancient evil, Black Brillion is a science fantasy caper that grows into a metaphysical exploration of the human psyche. Matt Hughes has crossed Jack Vance with Carl Jung to come up with a bold new novel of life on an Earth grown older by millions of years. This is the third novel in the Archonate series, following Fools Errant and Fool Me Twice. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Meet Lucifer Box: Equal parts James Bond and Sherlock Holmes, with a twist of Monty Python and a dash of Austin Powers, Lucifer has a charming countenance and rapier wit that make him the guest all hostesses must have. And most do. But few of his conquests know that Lucifer is also His Majesty's most daring secret agent, at home in both London's Imperial grandeur and in its underworld of despicable vice. So when Britain's most prominent scientists begin turning up dead, there is only one man his country can turn to for help. Following a dinnertime assassination, Lucifer is dispatched to uncover the whereabouts of missing agent Jocelyn Poop. Along the way he will give art lessons, be attacked by a poisonous centipede, bed a few choice specimens, and travel to Italy on business and pleasure. Aided by his henchwoman Delilah; the beautiful, mysterious, and Dutch Miss Bella Pok; his boss, a dwarf who takes meetings in a lavatory; grizzled vulcanologist Emmanuel Quibble; and the impertinent, delicious, right-hand-boy Charlie Jackpot, Lucifer Box deduces and seduces his way from his elegant townhouse at Number 9 Downing Street (somebody has to live there) to the ruined city of Pompeii, to infiltrate a highly dangerous secret society that may hold the fate of the world in its clawlike grip--the Vesuvius Club.
With the military seizing overt power in Egypt, Cairo’s grand and dramatic urban reshaping during and after 2011 is reflected upon under the lens of a smaller story narrating everyday interactions of a middle-class building in the neighbourhood of Doqi.
676 updated and verified listings of children's magazines that are currently accepting freelance material, with articles featuring interviews with top editors, and more on multicultural writing, early reader fiction and nonfiction, and fresh takes on holiday content.
