Songs ​of the Dying Earth Stories ​in Honour of Jack Vance

Iain M. Banks - The ​State of the Art
The ​first ever collection of Iain M. Banks's short fiction, this volume includes the acclaimed novella, The State of the Art. This is a striking addition to the growing body of Culture lore, and adds definition and scale to the previous works by using the Earth of 1977 as contrast. The other stories in the collection range from science fiction to horror, dark-coated fantasy to morality tale. All bear the indefinable stamp of Iain Banks's staggering talent.

Ismeretlen szerző - Wastelands
Famine, ​Death, War, and Pestilence: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the harbingers of Armageddon - these are our guides through the Wastelands... From the Book of Revelations to The Road Warrior; from A Canticle for Leibowitz to The Road, storytellers have long imagined the end of the world, weaving tales of catastrophe, chaos, and calamity. Gathering together the best post-apocalyptic literature of the last two decades from many of today's most renowned authors of speculative fiction, including George R.R. Martin, Gene Wolfe, Orson Scott Card, Carol Emshwiller, Jonathan Lethem, Octavia E. Butler, and Stephen King, Wastelands explores the scientific, psychological, and philosophical questions of what it means to remain human in the wake of Armageddon.

Robert W. Chambers - The ​King in Yellow
With ​its strange, imaginative blend of horror, science fiction, romance and lyrical prose, Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow is a classic masterpiece of weird fiction. This series of vaguely connected stories is linked by the presence of a monstrous and suppressed book which brings fright, madness and spectral tragedy to all those who read it. An air of futility and doom pervade these pages like a sweet insidious poison. Dare you read it? This collection has been called the most important book in American supernatural fiction between Poe and the moderns. H. P. Lovecraft, creator of the famed Cthulu mythos, whose own fiction was greatly influenced by this book stated that The King in Yellow ‘achieves notable heights of cosmic fear’.

H. P. Lovecraft - The ​Call of Cthulhu
H.P. ​Lovecraft reinvented the horror genre for the 20th century, discarding witches and ghosts and envisaging mankind as an outpost of dwindling sanity in a chaotic and malevolent universe.

Ismeretlen szerző - The ​Locus Awards
Now, ​for the first time, the best of the Locus Awards for short fiction are gathered in one volume. Spanning the absolute finest in science fiction and fantasy short fiction for the last thirty years, this anthology is an indispensable guide to speculative fiction from the classic to the outrageous by the leaders of the field.

Frank Herbert - Bill Ransom - The ​Lazarus Effect
Despite ​malevolent lifeforms and the implacable hostility of Ship, the self-styled God demanding human WorShip, Mankind's struggle to colonise the bleak ocean planet Pandora has been at least partially successful. But at what cost! Genetic mutation has evolved two seperate societies, human subspecies: the technologically advanced Mermen, who live in sophisticated undersea habitats and dream of plundering Ship itself;and the Islanders, who inhabit huge organic raft cities, and whose way of life depends on biological engineering. Their uneasy coexistence is always imperilled, but the results of one Merman project threatens to precipitate open conflict, and human extinction.

Ismeretlen szerző - Izéhordák
Ha ​akad olyan olvasó, aki azt hiszi, hogy a sci-fi és fantasy történetek csakis és kizárólag gigantikus, az egész emberiség sorsát eldöntő űrháborúkról, elgondolkodtató, az életet gyökeresen megváltoztató találmányokról, izmos hősök és dús keblű hősnők halált megvető bátorsággal vívott harcáról szólnak - nos, ez az olvasó téved. Méghozzá óriásit! A fantasztikummal foglalkozó mesélők is emberek, nekik is megvannak a saját hibáik és erényeik. A hibáikról most ne ejtsünk szót, az erények közül is csak kettővel foglalkozzunk: a humorérzékkel és az öniróniával. Csak a legjobbak, a legnagyobbak lehetnek képesek arra, hogy ne vegyék véresen komolyan magukat. Csak a legjelentősebb írók tudják és hajlandóak megtenni azt, hogy kifigurázzák azt a műfajt, amellyel egész életükben foglalkoztak, és amiből élnek. Ebben a kötetben olyan novellákat gyűjtöttünk össze, amelyek szerzői több "komoly", de legalábbis jelentős művel álltak már az olvasók elé, most azonban a sci-fi és a fantasy talán éppen általuk megteremtett elemeit teszik élcelődéseik céltáblájává.

Lissa Price - Starters
Callie ​lost her parents when the Spore Wars wiped out everyone between the ages of twenty and sixty. She and her little brother, Tyler, go on the run, living as squatters with their friend Michael and fighting off renegades who would kill them for a cookie. Callie's only hope is Prime Destinations, a disturbing place in Beverly Hills run by a mysterious figure known as the Old Man. He hires teens to rent their bodies to Enders—seniors who want to be young again. Callie, desperate for the money that will keep her, Tyler, and Michael alive, agrees to be a donor. But the neurochip they place in Callie's head malfunctions and she wakes up in the life of her renter, living in her mansion, driving her cars, and going out with a senator's grandson. It feels almost like a fairy tale, until Callie discovers that her renter intends to do more than party—and that Prime Destinations' plans are more evil than Callie could ever have imagined. . . .

Ray Bradbury - The ​October Country
The ​October Country is a 1955 collection of twenty macabre short stories by Ray Bradbury. It reprints fifteen of the twenty-seven stories of his 1947 collection Dark Carnival, and adds four more of his stories previously published elsewhere.

Ursula K. Le Guin - The ​Birthday of the World
The ​recipient of numerous literary prizes, including the National Book Award, the Kafka Award, five Hugo Awards and five Nebula Awards, the renowned writer Ursula K. Le Guin has, in each story and novel, created a provocative, ever-evolving universe filled with diverse worlds and rich characters reminiscent of our earthly selves. Now, in _The Birthday of the World_, this gifted artist returns to these worlds in eight brilliant short works, including a never-before-published novella, each of which probes the essence of humanity.

J. G. Ballard - The ​Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard
“More ​than one thousand compelling pages from one of the most haunting, cogent, and individual imaginations in contemporary literature.”—William Boyd The American publication of The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard is a landmark event. Increasingly recognized as one of the greatest and most prophetic novelists, J. G. Ballard was a “writer of enormous inventive powers,” who, in the words of Malcolm Bradbury, possessed, “like Calvino, a remarkable gift for filling the empty deprived spaces of modern life with the invisible cities and the wonder worlds of imagination.” Best known for his novels, such as Empire of the Sun and Crash, Ballard rose to fame as the “ideal chronicler of disturbed modernity” (The Observer). Perhaps less known, though equally brilliant, were his devastatingly original short stories, which span nearly fifty years and reveal an unparalleled prescience so unique that a new word—Ballardian—had to be invented. Ballard, who wrote that “short stories are the loose change in the treasury of fiction, easily ignored beside the wealth of novels available,” regretted the fact that the public had increasingly lost its ability to appreciate them. With 98 pulse-quickening stories, this volume helps restore the very art form that Ballard feared was comatose. Ballard’s inimitable style was already present in his early stories, most of them published in science fiction magazines. These stories are surreal, richly atmospheric and splendidly elliptical, featuring an assortment of psychotropic houses, time-traveling assassins, and cities without clocks. Over the next fifty years, his fierce imaginative energy propelled him to explore new topics, including the dehumanization of technology, the brutality of the corporation, and nuclear Armageddon. Depicting the human soul as “being enervated and corrupted by the modern world” (New York Times), Ballard began to examine themes like overpopulation, as in “Billenium,” a claustrophobic imagining of a world of 20 billion people crammed into four-square-meter rooms, or the false realities of modern media, as in the classic “Why I Want to Fuck Ronald Reagan,” a faux-psychological study of the sexual and violent reactions elicited by viewing Reagan’s face on television, in which Ballard predicted the unholy fusion of pop culture and sound-bite politics thirteen years before Reagan became president. Given Ballard’s heightened powers of perception, it is astonishing that the dehumanized world that he apprehended so acutely neither diminished his own febrile imagination nor his engagement with mankind, evident in every story, including two new ones for this American edition. So eerily prophetic is his vision, so commanding are his literary gifts, the import and insight of J. G. Ballard’s deeply humanistic and transcendent works can only grow in years to come.

Ismeretlen szerző - Galaktika ​45.
A ​kötetben Kuczka Péter a fantasy-irodalom néhány jól sikerült példányát gyűjtötte össze: Az ún. "kard és boszorkányság" vagy másképpen "hősi fantasztikus" történetek a science fiction közvetlen közelében, annak egyik irányzataként születtek. (...) A szórakoztatóipar termékeihez tartoznak tehát, nem akarnak nagy igazságokat mondani az emberről és életéről, de azért, ha jobban megnézzük őket, azt látjuk, hogy néha - talán szerzőik szándékával ellentétben - groteszk és túlzó vonásokat találunk bennük, már-már az önkritika fintorát.

Ismeretlen szerző - Talisman
In ​this special anthology, here are stories of heroism and courage as human, dwarf, troll and elf battle the insidious Horrors. It is a world before time, before the magic went away; a realm where only decisive action and strength of character allow one to survive another day against the magic-wielding invaders.

Ismeretlen szerző - The ​Reign of Istar
Open ​the door to the magic and wonder of the Dragonlance world... Meet an irrepressible kender determined to become a Solamnic knight. A bounty-hunter of heretics. An unlikely ogre savior of the dwarven race. And a black-robed mage juggling the fate of the world in the Tower of High Sorcery. Poetry and short stories by well-known Dragonlance authors, topped by a Raistlin novella by original creators Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. All set in the faraway time of the Kingpriest.

Ismeretlen szerző - Machine ​of Death
The ​machine had been invented a few years ago: a machine that could tell, from just a sample of your blood, how you were going to die. No dates, no details. Just a slip of paper with a few words spelling out your ultimate fate -- at once all-too specific and maddeningly vague. A top ten Amazon Customer Favorite in Science Fiction & Fantasy for 2010, The Machine of Death is an anthology of original stories bound together by a central premise. From the humorous to the adventurous to the mind-bending to the touching, the writers explore what the world would be like if a blood test could predict your death. But don't think for a moment this is a book entirely composed of stories about people meeting their ironic dooms. There is some of that, of course. But more than that, this is a genre-hopping collection of tales about people who have learned more about themselves then perhaps they should have, and how that knowledge affects their relationships, their perception of the world, and how they feel about themselves. Features thirty-four stories by Randall Munroe, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, Tom Francis, Camille Alexa, Erin McKean, James L. Sutter, David Malki !, Ryan North, and many others Features illustrations by Kate Beaton, Kazu Kibuishi, Aaron Diaz, Jeffrey Brown, Scott C., Roger Langridge, Karl Kershl, Cameron Stewart, and many others

Ismeretlen szerző - Monsters
Here ​are future nighmares - the enemies that await us both within and outside our world, from a small town in Kansas to the seas of Venus. Fantastic and thrilling short novels and stories by science fiction's bestselling authors.

John Scalzi - The ​Dog King
CDF ​Lieutenant Harry Wilson has one simple task: Watch an ambassador’s dog while the diplomat is conducting sensitive negotiations with an alien race. But you know dogs - always getting into something. And when this dog gets into something that could launch an alien civil war, Wilson has to find a way to solve the conflict, fast, or be the one in the Colonial Union’s doghouse.

Gini Koch - Alien ​Research
When ​rumors of a new super-drug surface, the FBI comes to Jeff and Kitty Katt-Martini for help. It becomes quickly apparent that the drug is merely the tip of a deadly iceberg and a much more insidious plan is underway involving Titan Security, Gaultier Enterprises, and YatesCorp. As newly discovered A-Cs and hybrids begin to surface, each with expanded and deadly talents, more and more signs point to a new evil genius who’s using the A-Cs and their enemies both as guinea pigs. Then Area 51 and the Dulce Science Center go silent while Alpha Team, Airborne, and most of the worldwide A-C Security team are there for training. And if that’s not bad enough, Centaurion Division is hit with more bad, and deadly, news: Chernobog the Ultimate, isn’t a hacker myth, he’s a real person -- and he’s on the bad guys’ side. Now Kitty and company must find the real Dr. Feelgood and stop him or her before the latest version of Surcenthumain hits the streets and more people they love are harmed, or worse. But when the inconceivable happens, Kitty’s focused on two things only: reviving the ACE entity before their enemies realize Earth’s best protection isn’t actually active…and revenge.

Mike Resnick - The ​Doctor and the Rough Rider
It's ​August 19, 1884. The consumptive Doc Holliday is preparing to await his end in a sanitarium in Leadville, Colorado, when the medicine man Geronimo enlists him on a mission. The time the great chief has predicted has come, the one white man with whom he's willing to treat has crossed the Mississippi and is heading to Tombstone - a young man named Theodore Roosevelt. The various tribes know that Geronimo is willing to end the spell that has kept the United States from expanding west of the Mississippi. In response, they have created a huge, monstrous medicine man named War Bonnet, whose function is to kill Roosevelt and Geronimo and keep the United States east of the river forever. And War Bonnet has enlisted the master shootist John Wesley Hardin. So the battle lines are drawn: Roosevelt and Geronimo against the most powerful of the medicine men, a supernatural creature that seemingly nothing can harm; and Holliday against the man with more credited kills than any gunfighter in history. It does not promise to be a tranquil summer.

Mike Resnick - The ​Buntline Special
Welcome ​to a West like you've never seen before, where electric lights shine down on the streets of Tombstone, while horseless stagecoaches carry passengers to and fro, and where death is no obstacle to The Thing That Was Once Johnny Ringo. Think you know the story of the O.K. Corral? Think again, as five-time Hugo winner Mike Resnick takes on his first steampunk western tale, and the West will never be the same.