TACHYON PUBLICATIONS – serie

Nesi is desperate to earn the patronage of one of the Ninety-Nine Pillars of Heaven. Without the protection of a divine animal, she will never be allowed to leave her temple home. But after she fails ninety-six auditions, Nesi makes a risky prayer to T'sidaan, the Fox of Tricks. In folk tales, the Fox is a loveable prankster. But despite their humour and charm, T'sidaan, and their audition, is no joke. They throw Nesi back in time three hundred years, when her homeland is occupied by the brutal Wolfhounds of Zemin. Now, Nesi must ally with her besieged people and learn a trickster's guile to snatch a fortress from the disgraced and exiled 100th Pillar: The Wolf of the Hunt.

Jules McShultz was promised a dog. Supposedly, she'd get one once her family moved from the city to the suburbs. But then her parents decided it still wasn't the right time. So Jules does what any intelligent girl would do. Instead of sulking, she enters an essay contest and wins first prize: A purebred Collie. And no one - not even Jules' parents - can resist Penny, who is clearly Jules's perfect new canine pal. Jules and Penny are ready to spend the summer exploring the woods by the house. But the woods are not at all what they seem to be. Magic and adventure await them just on the other side of an old stone wall.

In this classic fantasy novel from the late World Fantasy Award-winning author Patricia A. McKillip (The Forgotten Beasts of Eld), the human world and the realm of faerie dangerously intertwine through chaotic magic. Told in McKillip's stunning prose, The Book of Atrix Wolfe is the spellbinding legend of a reluctant mage, a powerful wizard, a beleaguered heir, fae royalty, and a nearly invisible scullery-maid. When the White Wolf descends upon the battlefield, the results are disastrous. His fateful decision to end a war with powerful magic changes the destiny of four kingdoms: warlike Kardeth, resilient Pelucir, idyllic Chaumenard, and the mysterious Elven realm. Twenty years later, Prince Talis, orphaned heir to Pelucir, is meant to be the savior of the realm. However, the prince is neither interested in ruling nor a particularly skilled mage. Further, he is obsessed with a corrupted spellbook, and he is haunted by visions from the woods. The legendary mage Atrix Wolfe has forsaken magic and the world of men. But the Queen of the Wood, whose fae lands overlap Pelucir's bloody battlefield, is calling Wolfe back. Her consort and her daughter have been missing since the siege, and if Wolfe cannot intervene, the Queen will keep a sacrifice for her own.

In these highly-candid radio interviews, more than fifty legendary, larger than life personalities trade anecdotes about the Golden Age of science fiction. Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison, Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov, Margaret Atwood, Fritz Leiber, Frank Herbert, Frank Kelly Freas, and many more, depict the wild personalities, sparks of contention, and vivid imagination that made science fiction thrive. Today, depictions of aliens, rocket ships, and awe-inspiring, futuristic space operas are everywhere. Why is there so much science fiction, and where did it come from anyway? Radio producer and author Richard Wolinsky has found answers in the Golden Age of science fiction, between 1920 and 1960. Wolinsky and his fellow writers and co-hosts Richard A. Lupoff and Lawrence Davidson, interviewed a veritable who's who of famous (and infamous) science-fiction publishers, pulp magazines, editors, cover artists, and fans. The interviews themselves, which aired on the public radio, Probabilities, span over twenty years, from just before the release of Star Wars through the dawn of Y2K. Probabilities was the home of a vivid cross-section of the early science fiction world, with radio guests offering a wide range of tales, opinions, theory, and gossip. It speaks to how, in the early days, they were free to define science fiction for themselves and push the genre to explore new ideas and new tropes in creative (and sometimes questionable) ways. SPACE SHIPS! RAY GUNS! MARTIAN OCTOPODS! is ultimately a love letter to fandom.

Discover the vast worlds and pocket universes of Michael Swanwick (Stations of the Tide), the only author to win science fiction's most prestigious award five times in six years. In his dazzling new collection, the master of speculative short stories returns with tales in which magic and science improbably coexist with myth and legend. With two stories original to this collection, Swanwick aptly demonstrates with poignant humor why he is widely respected as a master of imaginative storytelling. In engaging stories, Mischling the thief races through time to defeat three trolls before the sun rises for the first time and turns the inhabitants of her city into stone. A scientist is on the run from assassins, because her research in merging human intelligence with sentient AI is too dangerous. An aging veteran obtains a military weapon from his past: a VR robotic leopard in which he rediscovers the consequences of the hunt. In the biggest heist in the history of the universe, a loser Trickster (and the girlfriend who is better than he deserves), sets out to violate every trope and expectation of fiction possible.

When a radical think tank clones America's founding fathers, The Boys from Brazil meets the bicentennial in this ingeniously satirical mashup of U.S.history, cloning, and technocracy gone terribly wrong. The trouble starts when a curious teenager, Benjamin, finds an iPhone in his privy. The problem is, it's supposed to be 1750. Ben takes his discovery to his brothers - Thomas, John, and George. The boys have been raised in isolation on an island plantation by a firm but kind woman, Mary Libertas. All four of them chafe at Mary's restrictions upon them - especially Thomas, who has impregnated yet another servant. Meanwhile, their de facto father figure, Jeff Hancock, complains to the shadowy Antediluvian Society that it is past the time to explain to the boys where they come from and what they must do: Run America the way it used to be run. In this more-than-slightly-absurdist novella, Philip K. Dick Award winning author Meg Elison (Find Layla) skewers those looking to an idyllic past to solve the problems they continue to create.

This long-awaited sequel to the bestselling anthology Lovecraft's Monsters is once again presided over by expert horror editor Ellen Datlow (FEARS, Body Shocks). Lovecraft's Brood is a must-add to any horror fan's library... or else. 'Superstar editor Datlow makes no missteps.' - Publishers Weekly. A prison guard and a convict have an affair fuelled by the hallucinations of fungal spores. Squatters arrive in a weird train station, where they unearth a strange idol. Researchers discover skin thieves instead of normal turtles. A mezcal-tasting tour turns utterly terrifying. An old woman stitches a portal that is disrupted by a nameless cat. Discover the Mythos as you've never experienced it before. These dizzying new spins on classic Lovecraftian themes will leave you disoriented, but sane (we hope we make no promises).

A wealthy family trying to cheat death is overmatched - by a stubborn teenager hiding in a body that looks just like their son. In this taut tale of genetics and entitlement, nature vs. nurture goes horrifically wrong. Dina Blake's fourteen-year-old son, Geoff, has just died for the second time. But everything will be okay. The Blake family's wealth has bought them thousands of clones of each of their children. These children are farmed out to loving families, but with the caveat that the bodies are always available to the Blakes. After Geoff dies, the Blakes upload their son's memories into Nathan, who is unwilling but unable to stay with the family who loved him. Dina's younger daughter, Di, is terrified because she knows something her parents don't - the memory transfer doesn't always go as planned. The Geoff who's been living with them since his first death isn't the person her mother thinks he is, and the families of the bodies the Blakes steal aren't all innocent. When Geoff returns to life in Nathan's body, he has to contend with Nathan's frustrating desire to live and his unexpected ability to fight for his life. For some children to live, others must die. Dina must decide how far she'll go to protect her children, and Geoff must find out if, and who, he's willing to kill.

Science fiction award-winner, flesh-eating bacteria survivor, and somewhat questionably convicted felon Peter Watts returns with this long-awaited short fiction collection. Including an unpublished work, Watts posits unlimited brain-computer interfaces, the possibility of life existing inside stars, the hacking of human behaviour, and ecological collapse. (Also, the healing power of revenge.) What if a weaponised water supply reprograms pattern recognition in the brain, provoking violent rage at the sight of the Google logo. Or an accidental hive-mind creates a global agenda to resurrect itself in the scant seconds between its emergence and dissolution? A steroidal jump gate-building ship attempts to survive passage through a red-giant sun by hiding inside an ice-giant planet. When something is trying to colonise the sun, humans try to stop it. Spoiler alert: Nobody comes off very well. In his newest short fiction, alongside an introduction by Richard Morgan, Watts (The Freeze-Frame Revolution) reserves whatever hope he has for whatever comes after humans. In light of his stories and recent events, it is difficult to fault that assessment.

A young man with a tragic past finds an unlikely protector in a strangely altered enforcer of his backwater town. In his immutable style, Edgar Award winner David Liss (The Peculiarites) incorporates the elements of a crime novel within a satirical combination of sci-fi, justice, and mercy in 21st-century America. Who is Iliana Marek? Is she the bully who alongside her foster father police chief Bryce Hillard, controls and terrorizes Tylor, Florida? Or is she the reborn guardian angel of Dan Gibson, a social pariah responsible for the suicide of Faye Kristic, a death that he cannot remember ten years later? Dan's once-promising future is in tatters. He lives in an apartment on his estranged parents' property, works at a convenience store with a terrible boss, and is addicted to prescription drugs. But ten years after Faye's death, Iliana suddenly takes Dan's side, and a lot of bad people start dying fast. As Dan becomes entangled in the ensuing chaos, he needs to finally discover what part he played in the death of Faye Kristic, and why the changes to Iliana make her no longer entirely human. In a novel as though Carl Hiaasen had collaborated with Michael Crichton, David Liss's newest work is a powerfully astute, entertaining allegory right out of today's headlines.