In these nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories, Ted Chiang tackles some of humanity's oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine. In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In "Anxiety...

"This beautiful, complex debut collection assembles some of Nebula winner Pinsker's best stories into a twisting journey that is by turns wild, melancholic, and unsettling." ― Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Pinsker has shot like a star across the firmament with Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea.

In this collection, Pinsker weaves music, memory, technology, history, mystery, love, loss, and even multiple

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"In Reconstruction, award-winning writer and musician Johnson delineates the lives of those trodden underfoot by the powerful, and how they rise up. Meet the humans who serve a coterie of vampires in Hawai'i, explore the taxonomy of anger with Black Union soldiers and the woman who travels with them during the American Civil War. Consider what you would give up for a better life in a place that you have never been. Johnson maps the people in these...

"From award-winning editorial team Sheree Renée Thomas, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and Zelda Knight comes an anthology of thirty-two original stories showcasing the breadth of fantasy and science fiction from Africa and the African Diaspora. A group of cabinet ministers query a supercomputer containing the minds of the country's ancestors. A child robot on a dying planet uncovers signs of fragile new life. A descendent of a rain goddess inherits...

When Star Wars: A New Hope was first released in 1977, part of its appeal was that the world it presented felt alive. Landspeeders and starships were dirty. Droids broke down. And it was filled with cool, weird, and really weird background characters. (Really, just take a look around the Mos Eisley cantina.) Never mind Han, Luke, Leia, Darth Vader, and Obi-Wan. Who were these other guys? What was their story? Just seeing them brought up questions...

"Drawing from both pop culture and science, Charles Yu is an observer of contemporary society, and in Sorry Please Thank You he fills his stories with equal parts humor and insight into the human condition. A big-box store employee is confronted by a zombie during the graveyard shift, a problem that pales in comparison to his inability to ask a coworker out on a date. A fighter leads his band of virtual warriors, thieves, and wizards across a deadly...

"We think we're all moving together through space and time at the same speed and in the same direction, yet the universe is far stranger than that. The stories in this collection explore and celebrate this world and others and characters who are trying to make sense of the people they meet, what they see, and the challenges they face"-- "In her first North American collection, Vandana Singh's deep humanism interplays with her scientific background...

"Jeffrey Ford's stories often start out as seemingly everyday realist and then the weird comes crashing in. Big Dark Hole is about the dark holes we might find ourselves in right now and maybe, too, those inside us"--

Beautifully crafted, unfailingly strange, and always moving, Susan Palwick's stories shift effortlessly between fantasy and science fiction, magical realism and horror. Here you will encounter aliens, ghosts, and robots, along with a colorful assortment of eccentric and vulnerable humans. You will see souls trapped in lucite, witness the operations of a magical measuring tape, and watch the oldest woman on a generation ship bequeath a precious Terran...

The author of such classic works as "Fahrenheit 451, The Illustrated Man", and "The Martian Chronicles", Ray Bradbury is one of this century's great sci-fi writers. This collection features 31 of Bradbury's most arresting tales, ranging from the farthest reaches of space to the innermost stirrings of the human heart.