Tackling genetic engineering, “Di Filippo’s effervescent prose can provoke both hilarity and haunting reflections on our species’ possible fate” (Publishers Weekly). Ribofunk contains eleven masterful and surprising works of imagination. In all of them, biology is the science that drives the engine of life and of story: the Protein Police patrol for renegade gene‐splicers; part‐human sea creatures live in the Great Lakes and clean up toxic spills; a river has become sentient; there is a bodyguard who is part wolverine and a thrill‐seeker climbs a skyscraper and gets stuck, literally.
Shock Pao is the best. In the virtual world the Slip there’s nothing he can’t steal for the right price. Outside the Slip, though, he’s a Fail – no degree, no job. So when his ex offers him a job, breaking into a corporate databank, he accepts—it’s either that, or find himself a nice bench to sleep under. Amiga works for psychotic crime lord Twist Calhoun so when Shock’s war comes to her, it’s her job to bring him to Twist, dead or alive.
With the fragile interspecies peace that followed the War With No Name under assault from land and sea, Sheba and Mort(e) have no choice but to take up their arms and enter once again into the conflict that threatened to tear them apart. “Repino's dog, cat, and beaver soldiers are nakedly real, as honest as any characters in modern fiction. As horrible as it may sound, may The War With No Name never end." —Corey Redekop, author of Husk In the aftermath of the War With No Name, the Colony has been defeated, its queen lies dead, and the world left behind will never be the same. In her madness, the queen used a strange technology to uplift the surface animals, turning dogs and cats, bats and bears, pigs and wolves into intelligent, highly evolved creatures who rise up and kill their oppressors. And now, after years of bloodshed, these sentient beasts must learn to live alongside their sworn enemies—humans. Far removed from this newly emerging civilization, a housecat turned war hero named Mort(e) lives a quiet life with the love he thought he had lost, a dog named Sheba. But before long, the chaos that they escaped comes crashing in around them. An unstoppable monster terrorizes a nearby settlement of beavers. A serial killer runs amok in the holy city of Hosanna. An apocalyptic cult threatens the fragile peace. And a mysterious race of amphibious creatures rises from the seas, intent on fulfilling the Colony’s destiny and ridding the world of all humans. No longer able to run away, Sheba and Mort(e) rush headlong into the conflict, ready to fight but unprepared for a world that seems hell-bent on tearing them apart. In the twilight of all life on Earth, love survives, but at a cost that only the desperate and the reckless are willing to pay.
A genre-bending collection of speculative fiction from the acclaimed author of the Steampunk Trilogy—with an introduction by Robert Silverberg. Horror, alternative history, science fiction, and fantasy—nothing is off limits when you possess an imagination as vast as Paul Di Filippo’s. In this collection of stories featuring ancient goddesses, the new social media elite, and hermetic cities, he’ll take you on a wild ride through plausible pasts and far-flung futures. In “Ghostless,” a medium learns that ghosts are drawn to—and can alleviate—sadness, so she becomes a matchmaker to both spirts and mortals in need. Flash fiction published in Nature magazine, “Wavehitcher” shows how surfing goes high-tech—and long-distance—with smartsuits that desalinate water, pulsed magnets to repel sharks, and seines that catch and processes krill into a nutritious paste. An expert in industrial metabolics focuses on blending his superior genepool with that of his fiancée’s to save the human race from idiocracy, until a kidnapping in Colombia shows him the folly of his arrogance in “Adventures in Cognitive Homogamy.” These stories will whet your appetite for more fantastical Di Filippo, and thankfully, Lost Among the Stars delivers. Praise for Paul Di Filippo “Di Filippo is like gourmet potato chips to me. I can never eat just one of his stories.” —Harlan Ellison “Di Filippo is the spin doctor of SF—and it is a powerful medicine he brews.” —Brian Aldiss, Hugo Award–winning author of Hothouse “Vibrant, nervy, and full of gloriously wiggy language, Ribofunk is anything but the same old stuff.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
The fast-growing field of Animal Studies is a varied and much contested domain. Engagement with animals has encouraged both collaboration and conflict between researchers within the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Animal Encounters comprises a series of meetings not only between diverse beasts, but also between distinct disciplinary methods, theoretical approaches, and ethical positions. The essays here collected come together from literary and cultural studies, sociology and anthropology, ecocriticism and art history, philosophy and feminism, science and technology studies, history and posthumanism, to study that most familiar and most foreign of creatures, a ~the animala (TM). These encounters between leading practitioners in the field highlight the promise and potential of interspecies exchange and mutual provocation.
“Full of storytelling that is untamed, writing that is superb, and tales that are expansive and suggestive . . . a wry romp worthy of your attention” (Strange Horizons). In these eleven stories, including Nebula Award finalist “Kid Charlemagne,” Paul Di Filippo applies his armamentarium of vastly varied literary skills to an examination and definition of the outer limits of an almost unbearably mundane-sounding subject: daily toil or, in a word, jobs. In “Spondulix,” Rory Honeyman, desperate to preserve the meager cash flow in his sandwich shop, starts offering store coupons that somehow take on a life of their own. “The Mill” is the only place in the universe where Luxcloth, treasured and worn by many, can be manufactured and only at the direction of one man. “The Boredom Factory” gives meaning to the phrase “living to work.” Keep reading—it will be the easiest job you’ve ever had. You can try to escape from the mundane, or with the help of Paul Di Filippo, you can take a brief, meaningful break from it. In the vein of George Saunders or Michael Chabon, Di Filippo uses the tools of science fiction and the surreal to take a deep, richly felt look at humanity. His brand of funny, quirky, thoughtful, fast‐moving, heart‐warming, brain‐bending stories exist across the entire spectrum of the fantastic from hard science fiction to satire to fantasy and on to horror, delivering a riotously entertaining string of modern fables and stories from tomorrow, now, and anytime. After you read Paul Di Filippo, you will no longer see everyday life quite the same. Strange Trades includes an introduction by Bruce Sterling.
Techno-heaven or techno-hell? If you believe many scientists working in the emerging fields of twenty-first-century technology, the future is blissfully bright. Initially, human bodies will be perfected through genetic manipulation and the fusion of human and machine; later, human beings will completely shed the shackles of pain, disease, and even death, as human minds are downloaded into death-free robots whereby they can live forever in a heavenly "posthuman" existence. In this techno-utopian future, humanity will be saved by the godlike power of technology. If you believe the authors of science fiction, however, posthuman evolution marks the beginning of the end of human freedom, values, and identity. Our dark future will be dominated by mad scientists, rampaging robots, killer clones, and uncontrollable viruses. In this timely new book, Daniel Dinello examines "the dramatic conflict between the techno-utopia promised by real-world scientists and the techno-dystopia predicted by science fiction." Organized into chapters devoted to robotics, bionics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and other significant scientific advancements, this book summarizes the current state of each technology, while presenting corresponding reactions in science fiction. Dinello draws on a rich range of material, including films, television, books, and computer games, and argues that science fiction functions as a valuable corrective to technological domination, countering techno-hype and reflecting the "weaponized, religiously rationalized, profit-fueled" motives of such science. By imaging a disastrous future of posthuman techno-totalitarianism, science fiction encourages us to construct ways to contain new technology, and asks its audience perhaps the most important question of the twenty-first century: is technology out of control?
Twelve short stories of speculative fiction from “an author who genuinely comes close to defying all attempts at description. A true original” (Infinity Plus). Enter the boundless realms of science fiction, fantasy, horror, the weird, the surreal, and the absurd with a dozen stories from acclaimed author Paul Di Filippo. Watch as a man tries to adapt when his intense connection with instinct and nature vanishes in “Before and After Science,” a long-lost story that appeared in a fanzine decades ago. Enjoy the flash fiction of “Domotica Berserker!” in which massive house printers get hacked and go on a rampage—painting the town pink. Get a glimpse of how LARPing and nowts (aka now-tweakers) don’t mix in “A Faster, Deeper Now.” And delve into the Lovecraftian mythos with “The Horror at Gancio Rosso,” in which retired New York City crimefighter Joseph Petrosino travels to Sicily to investigate new bodies appearing in a catacomb filled with ancient mummies. This mind-blowing collection is “an example of what makes Di Filippo, Di Filippo. Best part: it throws the taxonomy of genre out the window to be creative in a number of ways” (Speculiction). Praise for Paul Di Filippo “Di Filippo is like gourmet potato chips to me. I can never eat just one of his stories.” —Harlan Ellison “Di Filippo is the spin doctor of SF—and it is a powerful medicine he brews.” —Brian Aldiss, Hugo Award–winning author of Hothouse “Vibrant, nervy, and full of gloriously wiggy language, Ribofunk is anything but the same old stuff.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
Brain-scorching review hyperbole! Pithy critical commentary! Big-name blurb mongering! Hardcore buy-or-die sales pitch hysteria! You'll find none of that in Seeing Red, David J. Schow's very first collection of short stories, back in print for the first time in nearly ten years. It features the World Fantasy Award-winning story, "Red Light," the Twilight Zone Magazine prize-winner "Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You," plus eleven more tales as startling, as disturbing, as provocative and unnerving. Between these covers you'll also find an introduction by best-selling fantasist T.E.D. Klein, and "Crimson Hindsight," a brand-new Afterword written especially for this edition.
