Book Preview View but his picture in this tragic glass, And then applaud his fortunes as you please. —Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine the Great, Part 1 II 7-8 The light gleamed pewter under gracious, bowering trees; a liver-chestnut gelding stamped one white hoof on the road. His rider stood in his stirrups to see through wreaths … Read more
Book Preview Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette (http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/bear/bear1.html). After Wiscon that year, we were sitting around a table in one of Madison’s more psychedelic delis, talking about Marlowe and the Elizabethan theatrical scene and, inevitably, the Master of Revels, Sir Edmund Tylney. Elizabeth’s state censor. And we imagined how frustrated he must have been by … Read more
Book Preview Cully sees the fin whale as he’s leaving Nantucket Harbor. A mother with calf; seventy-foot whale, and a forty-foot boat. She’s gray as Wellington rubber, lined with long parallel lines. She rolls on her side to show him an eye big as his hand, dark and sweet. Dreaming. Looking back at him. Her … Read more
Book Preview Elizabeth Bear is the 2005 John W. Campbell Award winner. Her most recent novel, Dust (Bantam Spectra), is the first in a series she describes as “Amber: Gormenghast, Upstairs: Downstairs. In space!” The author lives near Hartford with a presumptuous cat. Her New England heritage is apparent in this skilful evocation of… “Well, … Read more
Book Preview Orm the Beautiful sang in his sleep, to his brothers and sisters, as the sea sings to itself. He would never die. But neither could he live much longer. Dreaming on jewels, hearing their ancestor-song, he did not think that he would mind. The men were coming; Orm the Beautiful knew it with … Read more
Book Preview You cannot really keep a princess in a tower. Not if she has no brothers and must learn statecraft and dancing and riding and poisons and potions and the passage of arms, so that she may eventually rule. But you can do the next best thing. In the land of the shining empire, … Read more
Book Preview Remarkably, Christian Whittaker went to bed sober one cold Wednesday night, the last day of February, in 1976. Whittaker was a big, blunt man, broken-veined, with a habitual drunk’s coarseness of skin and voice. He wasn’t astoundingly fat, but he had an astounding ring of fat around his neck: jowls and a double … Read more
Book Preview Pinky Gilman limped. He wore braces on both legs, shining metal and black washable foam spoiling the line of his off-the-rack suits, what line there was to spoil. He heaved himself about on a pair of elbow-cuff crutches. I used to be able to hear him clattering along the tiled, echoing halls of … Read more
Book Preview This was proofed by the scanner and called (v1.0). The OCR program that I use interfaces with MS Word. My scans are done so I can read the books on my smart phone. There are a few spelling mistakes that were made by the author/typesetter that I left as is. This is not … Read more
Book Preview MICHELANGELO OSIRIS LEARY KUSANAGI-JONES HAD BEEN drinking since fourteen hundred. He didn’t plan on stopping soon. He occupied a bubbleport on the current observation deck of Kaiwo Maru, where he had been since he started drinking, watching a yellow main-sequence star grow. The sun had the look of a dancer swirling in veils, … Read more
Book Preview Black is the color of my true love’s hair His lips are like a rose so fair The kindest face and the gentlest hands I love the ground whereon he stands Sunrise light glazed the oblong cobbles along the north bank of the River Clyde. The thump of music from a barge-turned nightclub … Read more
Book Preview The end of the world had come and gone. It turned out not to matter much in the long run. The mail still had to get through. Harrie signed yesterday’s paperwork, checked the dates against the calendar, contemplated her signature for a moment, and capped her pen. She weighed the metal barrel in … Read more
Book Preview Captain, d’ye see the banners brave Floating on the wind? Fire and folly fear, me boys, Hail and hell they’ll send. Riordan limped down the parapet to the next guard post, the soft sole of his left boot hissing on black granite as he hitched along in pursuit of the High-King. A cloak … Read more
Book Preview Suddenly Rodrone understood why the scene before his eyes held such fascination for him, and why he returned again and again to worlds like this one. Lurid, offbeat and infernal, it offered the exaggerated symbolism of a painting rendered by a schizophrenic; and so drew him to that attractive realm of mental aberration … Read more
Book Preview There was a concave stripper in the game. Cheyne Scame, as he shuffled the deck preparatory to dealing, covertly sized up the player sitting opposite him across the green baize table. The stripper was not much over twenty-five years of age; with his pale face and thin nose, he had an icy sort … Read more
Book Preview We have a suspicion that there are more original ideas tossed into this one novelette than one is likely to encounter in entire issues of some sf magazines. Bayley does not write as much as he ought to, but when he does he comes up with some surprising premises. This tale, for instance, … Read more
Book Preview Histrina scarcely dared raise her head once she was in the chapel. Eyes downcast, she followed the tonsured acolyte across the tiled floor, walking between slanting slats of hard white light which entered through narrow openings high in the walls. They were like arrows picking out stone recesses and elaborate wood carvings in … Read more
Book Preview Strangers are a nuisance. Few people have anything new to say to a man once he’s settled down in life. But occasionally someone turns up whose chance words stir up vivid memories, and set me thinking again. A man like that turned up at a small party my wife and I gave. He … Read more