First edition hardcover -signed/ ltd
The Dispatcher: Murder by Other Means
Welcome to the new world, in which murder is all but a thing of the past. When someone kills you, 999 times out of 1,000, you instantly come back to life. In this world, there are dispatchers—licensed killers who step in when you’re at risk of a natural or unintentional death. They kill you—so you can live.
Tony Valdez is used to working his job as a dispatcher within the rules of the law and the state. But times are tough, and more and more Tony finds himself riding the line between what’s legal and what will pay his bills. After one of these shady gigs, and after being a witness to a crime gone horribly wrong, Tony discovers that people around him are dying, for reasons that make no sense...and which just may implicate him.
Tony is running out of time: to solve the mystery of these deaths, to keep others from dying, and to keep himself from being a victim of what looks like murder, by other means.
Limited: 2000 signed numbered hardcover copies
The Emperor and the Maula
Dust jacket illustration by Jim Burns.
Robert Silverberg’s The Emperor and the Maula was written in 1992 for an aborted publishing project and has been printed only once, in a radically abbreviated version. This deluxe new edition restores more than 15,000 words of missing text, allowing us to see, for the first time, the author’s original intent. The result is both a genuine publishing event and an unexpected gift for Silverberg’s legion of readers.
The Emperor and the Maula is Silverberg’s Scheherazade tale, the story of a woman telling a story in order to extend—and ultimately preserve—her life. The Scheherazade of this striking story is Laylah Walis, denizen of a far-future Earth which has been invaded and conquered by a star-faring race known as the Ansaarans. Laylah is a “maula,” a barbarian forbidden, under pain of death, to set foot on the sacred home worlds of the imperial conquerors. Knowing the risks, Laylah travels to Haraar, home of the galactic emperor himself. Once there, she delays her execution by telling the emperor a story—and telling it well.
That story, the tale within a tale that dominates this book, is, in fact, Laylah’s own story. It is also the story of the beleaguered planet Earth, of people struggling, often futilely, to oppose their alien masters and restore their lost independence. Colorful, seamlessly written, and always powerfully imagined, The Emperor and the Maula shows us Grandmaster Silverberg at his representative best.
The Hyperion Cantos:
The truly stunning Subterranean Press signed limited editions, oversize volumes, printed on 80# Finch, with a dust jackets and full-color endsheets (included below) by John Picacio. We loved the story and these editions are a great tribute.
First published in 1989, Dan Simmons’s Hugo Award-winning Hyperion is one of the undisputed classics of modern science fiction. The opening movement of a hugely ambitious multi-volume epic, it is both a masterpiece of pure storytelling and a visionary meditation on the future development of the human race.
The narrative takes place some seven hundred years from now, at a time when humanity has left Old Earth behind and has begun to colonize the worlds between the stars. At a critical moment, with interstellar war about to begin, seven travelers are summoned to a pilgrimage on a distant planet called Hyperion, where ancient mysteries are taking on a new and sudden urgency. At the heart of these mysteries are the Time Tombs, enigmatic artifacts that appear to be traveling backward in time, and the savage, barbed creature known as the Shrike.
Included among these seven pilgrims are a soldier, a poet, a scholar, a priest, and a private detective. As they make their way toward their destination, they tell each other stories, transforming the novel into a far-future version of The Canterbury Tales. These varied, highly personal tales form the heart of this extraordinary book. Individually, they offer highly developed examples of narrative art. Collectively, they set the stage for the wonders, terrors, and revelations to come. The result is a remarkable—and durable—accomplishment that remains fresh and exciting more than two decades after its initial appearance.
Hyperion, together with its successors, does what only the finest imaginative literature can do: It creates and populates a complex, extravagantly detailed universe more vivid, vital, and consistently enthralling than our own everyday world.
One of the signature horror novels of the 1990s, Dan Simmons’s magisterial Summer of Night is now twenty-five years old. In the course of that quarter century, it has firmly established itself as a classic of the genre, a book whose capacity to shock, amuse, move and horrify remains undiminished.
The story takes place in Elm Haven, Illinois in 1960 and begins at an iconic moment: the last day of school before the long summer vacation begins. But at Old Central School, soon due to close its doors forever, something ancient and implacable has begun to quicken, its hour come round at last. Soon, impossible figures, some of them long dead, are proliferating throughout Elm Haven, transforming what should be an idyllic summer into the crazed and bloody precursor to a new Dark Age.
Set against these horrific incursions is a wonderfully characterized band of adolescent boys – along with one unforgettable young girl – who alone understand the nature of the menace that threatens their hometown. Turning away from the standard pursuits of summer – baseball, treasure hunts, overnight camping trips – the youthful members of the Bike Patrol find themselves serving as the last line of defense against an apparently unbeatable enemy. The account of their struggle against impossible odds is one of the major accomplishments of modern horror fiction.
Summer of Night:
The intertwined narratives that comprise Ilum take place nearly 2,500 years from now, in the "post-human" universe of "The Ninth of Av."
On Earth, the eloi-like remnants of the "old style" human race pursue painless, pointless existences, largely unaware of the history of their species, or of the nature and geography of the planet they inhabit.
In Jupiter space, a pair of Moravecs -- partially organic robots with an affinity for Proust and Shakespeare -- agree to investigate a quantum anomaly recently discovered on the surface of Mars.
And on the Plains of Ilium, a scholic named Thomas Hockenberry observes what appear to be the gods of the Greek pantheon -- Zeus, Ares, Apollo, Athena, and literally hundreds more -- as they preside over the bloody spectacle of the Trojan War, a once familiar conflict that will evolve -- and escalate -- in unexpected ways.
First edition hardcover -signed/ ltd
First edition hardcover -signed/ ltd
Lovedeath
First published in 1993, Lovedeath remains one of Dan Simmons’s most significant accomplishments. In five stories—four novellas and an amazing short novel —Simmons explores the intertwined themes of love and death with wit, intelligence, and grace—and from an astonishing variety of perspectives.
The volume opens with the moving “Entropy’s Bed at Midnight,” a portrait of parental love and anxiety that broadens to become a meditation on the random, frequently absurd hazards of ordinary life. The award-winning “Dying in Bangkok” is a graphic, often deeply unsettling story of vengeance and erotic vampirism set against the flesh markets of Bangkok during the height of the AIDS crisis. “Sleeping with Teeth Women” is a tale of the Lakota Sioux and of a young brave—Hoka Ushte—who embarks on a vision quest that will alter both his own life and the lives of his people. “Flashback,” a precursor to the recent novel of the same name, examines the impact of the eponymous drug that allows its users to recapture—and relive—specific moments from the past. Finally, “The Great Lover” uses the wartime journals of a fictional British poet—James Edwin Rooke—as the basis for a hallucinatory recreation of the Battle of the Somme in 1916. The result is a profoundly imagined, meticulously researched narrative filled with horror, poetry, and indelible images. “The Great Lover” is, beyond doubt, one of Dan Simmons’s greatest creations. It is also one of the finest fictional portraits of the First World War ever put on paper, and it brings this masterful collection to a resonant, unforgettable conclusion.
Limited: 250 signed numbered copies, printed on 80# Finch, fully bound in cloth
First edition hardcover -signed/ ltd
Cryptonomicon
Cryptonomicon zooms all over the world, careening conspiratorially back and forth between two time periods--World War II and the present. Our 1940s heroes are the brilliant mathematician Lawrence Waterhouse, crypt analyst extraordinaire, and gung-ho, morphine-addicted marine Bobby Shaftoe.
They're part of Detachment 2702, an Allied group trying to break Axis communication codes while simultaneously preventing the enemy from figuring out that their codes have been broken. Their job boils down to layer upon layer of deception.
Dr. Alan Turing is also a member of 2702, and he explains the unit's strange workings to Waterhouse. "When we want to sink a convoy, we send out an observation plane first... Of course, to observe is not its real duty--we already know exactly where the convoy is. Its real duty is to be observed... Then, when we come round and sink them, the Germans will not find it suspicious."
All of this secrecy resonates in the present-day story line, in which the grandchildren of the WWII heroes--inimitable programming geek Randy Waterhouse and the lovely and powerful Amy Shaftoe--team up to help create an offshore data haven in Southeast Asia and maybe uncover some gold once destined for Nazi coffers.
To top off the paranoiac tone of the book, the mysterious Enoch Root, key member of Detachment 2702 and the Societas Eruditorum, pops up with an unbreakable encryption scheme left over from WWII to befuddle the 1990s protagonists with conspiratorial ties.
Ambergris
Dust jacket illustration for Ambergis by Armando Veve.
Dust jacket for Ambergris Appendix by Scott Eagle.
The signed limited edition of Jeff VanderMeer’s signature creation, Ambergris, with an array including the novels, stories, art, and found documents spread across two oversized volumes.
The Appendix includes a new, never before published, 10,000 word section, "The Zamilon File."
You have explored the Southern Reach, now walk the streets of a city like no other.
Between these covers, the cult classic works of Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris offer readers a tour de force of language and imagination. In a rich and heady mix of arcane words and unforgettable images, fantastic characters and startling events—in the collection, City of Saints and Madmen, and the novels, Shriek: an Afterword, and Finch—test, then shatter the limits of what speculative fiction can do.
The title city is a place of vivid, terrible beauty, exhibiting sophisticated cruelties and dangers experienced as something approaching art. Following, an afterword as epic, where secrets and obsessions play out on streets above a rising force of a people unlike any other in fantasy fiction.
And finally, in an Ambergris conquered and enslaved, a desperate man seeks the answers to both a crime that may be unsolvable and the troubling mystery of the future of the city itself.
New York Times bestselling author Jeff VanderMeer exhibits his masterful control over chaos and his unparalleled ability to render the bizarre and terrifying as things of beauty. Objects of desire simultaneously promise exaltation and damnation, and startlingly real people play out their fascinating lives in their fascinating city.
Widely recognized as one of the finest practitioners of the fantastic in contemporary fiction, VanderMeer is a three-time recipient of the World Fantasy Award, including one for “The Transformation of Martin Lake,” which forms part of the Ambergris saga presented here. His work found a wider readership with the publication of the Area X novels, and Annihilation was adapted into a major motion picture. But, here, in Ambergris, his boundless imagination is already on full display. Return to where it all began: the city of Ambergris.
Lettered: 52 signed, two volume sets, featuring Bradel bindings, housed in a custom traycase
Limited: 500 signed numbered two volume sets
Jeff VanderMeer
Hummingbird Salamander
In Hummingbird Salamander, a thriller that takes place ten seconds into the future, New York Times bestselling, World Fantasy Award-winning author Jeff VanderMeer turns his prodigious imagination to the project of posing that question across pages that are part spy drama, part eco-thriller, and all VanderMeer. Using the intimate knowledge of ecology he evinced in the Area X novels, VanderMeer here layers in incidents of high drama and truly disturbing possibility in language that is simultaneously clear and poetic, forceful and subtle.
The protagonist of Hummingbird Salamander, who protects herself—or tries to—behind the pseudonym “Jane Smith,” is a security agent who is thrust into a mystery when a barista hands her an envelope of mysterious provenance. She does what most of us would do. She opens it.
In the envelope is a key and an address, and when she visits the location she finds a locked storage room containing one puzzling item—a hummingbird preserved by taxidermy. From there, Jane follows each successive clue like a chain forging itself link by link, leading to secrets far bigger than she could have conceived. These secrets could spell the end of the world.
The Complete Borne
Dust jacket illustration by Vasily Polovtsev.
Bestiary illustrated by Eric Nyquist.
In 2017, he followed his groundbreaking Southern Reach Trilogy with the powerful dystopian fantasy, Borne. In The Complete Borne, VanderMeer expands that novel’s original vision through supplementary narratives that enlarge our understanding of his astonishing fictional world.
The centerpiece of this collection is the original novel itself. Borne offers a portrait of a broken, toxic future dominated by three elements: the immense flying bear known as Mord, an elusive figure called simply the Magician, and the remnants of a once powerful organization called The Company.
Into this dying world come Rachel, a woman who survives by scavenging food and discarded “biotech,” and Borne, a bizarre and protean figure unlike any you have ever encountered. Their evolving relationship forms the heart of the novel and leads to a conclusion you will never forget.
Borne is filled with strange, often misbegotten creatures, the products of unchecked Company experiments. In a heavily illustrated supplement called “Teem’s Bestiary,” we learn a great deal about the nature and history of such singular creatures as memory beetles, mudskippers, damsel flies and red salamanders. Of special note is the perhaps mythical creature known simply as “Strange Bird,” the title figure of the harrowing—and deeply affecting—novella that follows.
“Strange Bird” begins with the nameless bird’s escape from a sinister laboratory—the only home she has ever known—into a world of unaccustomed freedom. She is a purely innocent creature searching for love, a sense of purpose, and a place to call home. What she finds is something very different. Her journey through assorted hazards toward an unforeseen transformation has the feel of a tightly compressed epic. Like everything else in this volume, it is original, enthralling, and impossible to forget.
Taken individually, the pieces in this collection all offer their own self-contained pleasures. Taken together, they form a sort of narrative mosaic in which the whole truly is more than the sum of its dazzling parts. The Complete Borne takes us to a world that is grim, frequently frightening, and paradoxically beautiful. This is literary fantasy at its deepest and most developed. It doesn’t get better than this.
Limited: 500 signed numbered hardcover copies
Dead Astronauts by Jeff VanderMeer
Dust jacket and interior illustrations by Kathleen Neeley.
This signed, limited edition will reproduce the unique design elements of the trade hardcover essential to the telling of the story, and also be printed in two colors throughout to make those details further stand out. In addition to the dust jacket, the book will also feature a number of linocut illustrations by Kathleen Neeley tipped in.
“There shall come three humans across the burning sands…”
Grayson, Moss, and Chen are astronauts turned rebels, navigating version upon version of a nameless City created by the villainous, all-powerful Company, familiar to readers as part of the Borne universe. The City is overrun with the results of the Company’s ill-considered experiments. This is a world where a blue fox is an echo across space and time, prophetic. Where a fight in which the duck may or may not be on your side. A leviathan waits, as do other versions of yourself, and a mysterious former comrade known as Charlie X. This is not just one world, but many...and can these worlds be saved?
With Dead Astronauts, Jeff VanderMeer continues to expand and explore the mind-bending world of Borne at the top of his game. Demons, madmen, monsters, and endless twisted wonders await readers brave enough to take this miraculous dark journey.
This edition includes an exclusive bonus section that was trimmed and altered for inclusion in the novel. This is the only chance to see the section as originally written.
Limited: 500 signed numbered hardcover copies, printed in two colors throughout
With a stunningly illustrated dust jacket by Scott Eagle, Subterranean Press present a brand new novella (45,000 wordsl) by Jeff VanderMeer.
The Glass Drifters are musicians on tour in a nation that only recently completed a fifteen-year civil war. They are a trio, hopelessly intertwined with one another in terms of both history and romance. And they are headed down river to a big gig that might make or break them, but nobody, not even their mysterious local promoter, Bob-Henri—or possibly Henri-Bob—seems to have any details. This all happened a long time ago, “and in some other version of this story, the Glass Drifters never leave the fucking river.” In this version, they do.
In this startling new novella, Bliss, world-renowned, New York Times bestselling fantasist Jeff VanderMeer masterfully conceals and reveals, crafting a tale both intimate and far-reaching. Readers might feel unfooted, but they will never feel unsure, guided as they are by prose so assured it might turn the wind, or the tide, or a river’s current.
Bliss incorporates details of physical culture so vivid that they stir sense memories, and details of counter-factual history so specific that they threaten to undermine reality. At the same time, VanderMeer’s deep fascination with how humanity interacts with the environment is a constant during the Glass Drifters’ journey.
Right.
The Dying Earth
Earth’s Final Days…
"Once it was a tall world of cloudy mountains and bright rivers, and the sun was a white blazing ball. Ages of rain and wind have beaten and rounded the granite, and the sun is feeble and red. The continents have sunk and risen. A million cities have lifted towers, have fallen to dust. In place of the old peoples a few thousand souls live. There is evil on Earth, evil distilled by time…Earth is dying and in its twilight…"
—Pandelume of Embelyon
Set in a distant future when our sun is about to expire, the six marvellous adventures in this, Vance’s first ever book, originally published in 1950, take us to a world filled with strange lands and ancient wonders, where the moon has long-since left the sky and science has been all but replaced by magic, where hopes and dreams for a golden tomorrow have given way to a decadent grandeur, outrageous schemes and the most desperate and reckless acts of derring-do imaginable.
In this fascinating world, home to pelgranes, erbs and Deodands, Gauns, gids and Twk-men, we meet Turjan of Miir in his unswerving quest to create artificial life, watch the cruel Mazirian the Magician as he pursues his latest dark obsession, observe the beautiful T’sais as she learns to find beauty in Earth’s final days. We enjoy the antics of the foolish, unforgettable Liane the Wayfarer (and the even more unforgettable Chun the Unavoidable!) in that bandit-troubadour’s quest for a fabulous tapestry, follow Ulan Dhor as he seeks the lost spells of a great magician in far-off Ampridatvir, join Guyal of Sfere in his search for ancient knowledge in the Museum of Man.
But, most important of all, we meet the world itself, this vivid, wondrous setting at the end of time, at once doomed and magical, elusive and yet always fascinating.
First edition hardcover -signed/ ltd
First edition hardcover
First edition hardcover
First edition hardcover
Weir, Andy - The Martian
Dust jacket illustration by Daniel Dociu.
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars.
Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there.
After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he’s alive—and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue could arrive.
Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to kill him first.
But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills—and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit—he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?
The Subterranean Press edition is oversize, with an introduction by Dan Simmons.
Weir, Andy - Artemis
Dust jacket illustration by Daniel Dociu.
If you’re going to commit the perfect crime, you might as well shoot for the moon…
Jazz Bashara has been a resident of Artemis, the lone city on the moon, since she was six years old. Too bad for her, she’s not one of the wealthier inhabitants. Instead she lives fifteen levels down in a grungy coffin that’s only good for sleeping. Jazz barely makes ends meet as a porter delivering goods between Artemis’s five bubbles (Armstrong, Aldrin, Conrad, Bean, and Shepard). Of course, not everything she delivers is legal.
So when traffic in simple contraband leads to a potential heist with a major payday, how can Jazz resist? She doesn’t even want to. But as she lays and executes her plans, there’s a problem. The stakes of this gamble put her smack in the middle of a play for control of Artemis itself--a game she’ll be lucky to get out of alive.
Limited: 750 signed numbered hardcover copies
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
Designed for duty and destined for adventure, the secretly autonomous cyborg SecUnit with the self-awarded nom de guerre Murderbot really just wants to access media feeds and leave its human charges to their own devices. Unfortunately, Murderbot’s days of high-bandwidth soap opera viewing come to an end when an alien creature attacks the off world expedition it is assigned to guard. Here begins the award-winning and instantly beloved series The Murderbot Diaries, in which Murderbot investigates its own past and present, and ultimately rises to meet a threat to its former owner—and possibly friend—Dr. Mensah.
With Murderbot, New York Times bestselling author Martha Wells has created one of the most engaging characters to emerge from science fiction in decades. Witty observations, troubling memories, a sardonic voice, and the rendering of action-packed combat sequences with élan and panache combine for a virtuoso performance in all four of the novellas collected here: All Systems Red, Artificial Condition, Rogue Protocol, and Exit Strategy. This collection also includes an original short story appearing in print for the first time, “Home: Habitat Range Niche Territory.”
Across alien environments, corporate intrigue, and high tech adventure that reinvents and reenergizes genre staples like aliens, powered combat armor, and spaceships, Wells exhibits her mastery over an entire subgenre that stretches all the way back to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the awakening into independence of an artificial being created by humans.
The Murderbot Diaries have earned Wells rave reviews around the world, as well as Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards. But, most important of all, they’ve earned a legion of devoted and delighted fans.
The signed limited edition
Network Effect by Martha Wells
The first full-length novel about Martha Wells’ singular creation.
SubPress favorite Tommy Arnold has contributed a full-color dust jacket, black-and-white endpapers, and a five full-page black-and-white-illustrations.
You know that feeling when you’re at work, and you’ve had enough of people, and then the boss walks in with yet another job that needs to be done right this second or the world will end, but all you want to do is go home and binge your favorite shows? And you're a sentient murder machine programmed for destruction? Congratulations, you're Murderbot.
Come for the pew-pew space battles, stay for the most relatable A.I. you’ll read this century.
When Murderbot's human associates (not friends, never friends) are captured and another not-friend from its past requires urgent assistance, Murderbot must choose between inertia and drastic action.
Drastic action it is, then.
Everyone’s favorite security unit Murderbot would much rather be watching new episodes of Lineages of the Sun, but is burdened, as usual, with clients who don’t trust their SecUnit’s situation assessment. And the situation in Network Effect, the first full-length novel in Martha Wells’ acclaimed Murderbot Diaries, quickly becomes dire.
It’s hardly Murderbot’s fault that its human employers are captured in, shall we say, heightened circumstances, but, of course, it falls to Murderbot to save the day. Again. And then a third party from its past enters the picture, also in desperate need of help. Will Murderbot never get a break?
The signed limited edition
Witch King by Martha Wells
Dust jacket and interior illustrations by Rovina Cai
"I didn't know you were a... demon."
"You idiot. I'm the demon."
Kai's having a long day in Martha Wells' Witch King...
After being murdered, his consciousness dormant and unaware of the passing of time while confined in an elaborate water trap, Kai wakes to find a lesser mage attempting to harness Kai’s magic to his own advantage. That was never going to go well.
But why was Kai imprisoned in the first place? What has changed in the world since his assassination? And why does the Rising World Coalition appear to be growing in influence?
Kai will need to pull his allies close and draw on all his pain magic if he is to answer even the least of these questions.
He’s not going to like the answers.
Subterranean Press limited edition
Treecats, starships, dragons, alternate history, self-aware Bolo supertanks, wizards, sailing ships, ironclads...
For twenty years, David Weber has been taking readers to destinations strange and fantastical, from his best-selling Honor Harrington novels and short stories to the swords-and-sorcery of Norfressa and the shared universes of his own and other writers. If you haven’t already read these stories, you should.
Find out how Giles Habibula really joined Jack Williamson’s Legion of Space. Visit 17th-century Magdeburg for the creation of the United States Navy a hundred and fifty years early, and go with John Paul Jones as he wins the Revolutionary War...for George III. Fight dragons and demons with U.S. Marines in a most unexpected campaign, find out how humans and treecats first met, share Honor Harrington's very first battle, and discover the true cost of self-awareness for war machines who learn to care.
Open the door and peep inside, but be careful! Once you step into the worlds of Weber, you may not want to go home again.
Limited: 2000 copies, hardcover
Bob Eggleton Dust Jacket Art!
David Weber:
The Best of Walter Jon Williams
With the publication of his debut novel, The Privateer, in 1981, Walter Jon Williams began one of the most varied and prolific careers in contemporary popular fiction. His work encompasses cyberpunk (Hardwired), military SF (The Dread Empire’s Fall series), humor (The Crown Jewels), even disaster fiction (The Rift).
But much of Williams’s best work takes place in the shorter forms, as this generous volume, filled to overflowing with award-winning and award-nominated stories, clearly proves.
With one exception, The Best of Walter Jon Williams reflects its author’s affection for—and mastery of—the novella form. That exception is “The Millennium Party,” a brief, brilliant account of a virtual anniversary celebration unlike any you have ever imagined. Elsewhere in the collection, Williams offers us one brilliantly sustained creation after another. The Nebula Award-winning “Daddy’s World” takes us into a young boy’s private universe, a world of seeming miracles that conceals a tragic secret. “Dinosaurs” is the far future account of the incredibly destructive relationship between the star-faring human race and the less evolved inhabitants of the planet Shar.
“Diamonds from Tequila” is a lovingly crafted example of SF Noir in which a former child actor attempts a comeback that proves unexpectedly dangerous. “Surfacing” is a tale of alienation featuring a research scientist more at home with the foreign and unfamiliar than with the members of his own species. Finally, the magisterial “Wall, Stone, Craft” offers a brilliantly realized alternate take on a young Mary Godwin, future creator of Frankenstein, and her relationships with the poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, culminating in the creation of a monster who would “stalk through the hearts of all the world.”
These stories, together with half a dozen equally substantial tales, are the clear product of a master craftsman with a seemingly limitless imagination. The Best of Walter Jon Williams is the capstone of a truly remarkable career. It’s the rare sort of book that the reader can return to again and again, finding new and unexpected pleasures every time out.
Walter Jon Williams :
The Boolean Gate
Mark Twain was one of the greatest minds of his time, torn between the brilliant persona he had forged for himself and a life of wrenching tragedy. Nicola Tesla was an unworldly genius capable of insights that defied the wildest imaginations. Their secret history is rife with friendship and betrayal, human tragedy and unearthly danger.
Drawn by his curiosity, Samuel Clemens escapes the grinding toil of being Mark Twain by cultivating what seems an innocent friendship with the greatest scientist of the age. As he grows closer to the powerfully eccentric Tesla, he begins to sense another, stranger intelligence that may be coming into being. The inventions of Nicola Tesla--alternating current, wireless communications, death rays, robot weapons--become puzzle pieces that take shape under Mark Twain's eyes. Has Tesla somehow opened the gateway to a profoundly alien intelligence, or is it Tesla himself that will bring the world to Armageddon?
And with every tragedy in his family--buffeted by the deaths of his wife, daughter, brother, and son--Samuel Clemens is moved to ask the most important question of all: Why is the world worth saving?