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The Blade Itself | Joe Abercrombie—Read an excerpt:
"Logen plunged through the trees, bare feet slipping and sliding on the wet earth, the slush, the wet pine needles, breath rasping in his chest, blood thumping in his head. ....the Shanka were all around. He could feel them moving between the trees, his nose was full of the smell of them.... A twig snapped and he whipped round.
"There was a spear coming at him. A cruel-looking spear, coming at him fast with a Shanka on the other end of it...."
The Blood Debt | Sean Williams —Read an excerpt:
“The Void Beneath is a horrible place. A ringing emptiness infuses it, an endless hum that scrubs the soul clean. Imprinted on this eternal drone are the minds of the lost, clinging to their memories like life rafts. Despairing and desperate, the Lost Minds smother new arrivals with pleas to hear their stories—for if they are forgotten, they inevitably die.
“Among the Lost Minds is one they call the Oldest. The Oldest One bade me listen to his story, and I did. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t...."
Brasyl | Ian McDonald—Read an excerpt:
"Through the sun-shiver the endless towers of São Paulo recede into half-believed spirits of architecture, their summits orbited by advertisements. Helicopters itch and fidget between rooftop landing pads....But higher still are the Angels of Perpetual Surveillance.... like angels, they see into the hearts and intentions of man. They monitor and track the two billion arfids—radio frequency identity chips—seeded through the cars, clothes, consumer electronics...."
Breakaway | Joel Shepherd—Read an excerpt:
“'Look at the size of that,' Ayako breathed, gazing down at the seething mass of people along central Patterson. 'Looks like eighty thousand plus.'... Everyone hoping the mob stayed quiet this time, no one wanted a repeat of the Velan protest with its two hundred and fifty comatose rioters still filling space in the nearby hospital. But what option did police with no riot gear have but neuralisers when confronting rioters? Tanusha, the apolitical city, was woefully unprepared for such events...."
Bright of the Sky | Kay Kenyon—Read an excerpt:
"After the ship broke apart in the Kardashev tunnel, Titus put his wife and daughter in an escape capsule, and the forty other survivors in numerous small pods, and sent them off. Then, at the last moment...he found that Johanna had kept her own capsule attached to the ship. He boarded and they launched just in time to watch the Vesta blow apart. The next thing Minerva knew, ...Titus showed up on the planet Lyra, disoriented and his memory gone. Hair gone white. Tales of a barely remembered world.... "
The Crooked Letter | Sean Williams—Read an excerpt:
"Hadrian forced his eyes open. The world shimmered in front of him. Seth was an indistinct shape moving arrow-straight between leafless trees, out of the frigid park. Hadrian made a sound like a growl and got his legs working. His balance was shot. Staggering a little at first, then with more determination, he resumed his chase.... He didn’t know what he planned to do once he caught up with his brother, but that he did catch up was vitally important....."
Crossover | Joel Shepherd—Read an excerpt:
"Sunlight lay across the bare floor of the hotel room, falling rich and golden upon the smooth white sheets of the single bed, and the exposed pale arm of its occupant. Sun-dappled sheets shifted as she stirred sleepily, pulling smoothly to the pronounced curve of a hip.
"Eyes blinked softly open.... Another aircar passed with a sound like a throaty sigh. It moved on past the window, sunlight flashing from sleek, angular lines.This was the city of Tanusha in the morning light...."
Fast Forward 1 | Edited by Lou Anders—Read an excerpt:
"Russ Reynolds, that’s me. You probably remember my name from when I ran the country for three days. Wasn’t that a wild time? I’m sorry I started a trade war with several countries around the globe. I bet you’re all grateful things didn’t ramp up to the shooting stage. I know I am....
"And now that things have quieted down, I figured people would be calm enough to want to listen to the whole story behind those frighteningly exciting events. So here it is...."
Gradisil | Adam Roberts—Read an excerpt:
"Take this printed page, the very one you are looking at now. Take away all the letters, and all the commas and the dashes, and take away the apostrophes, and leave only the full stops, the colons, the dots over the 'i's. You will have a star map, cartography that describes precisely the sky of my imagination.... it comes to a person, one cold blank morning, that if they do not scatter the words upon the blank sheet, ... then they will leave no harvest at all except their own nerveless body to be decomposed...."
The Hanging Mountains | Sean Williams—Read an excerpt:
"'What’s wrong?' he asked, shaken by her reaction.
'I don’t want to see,' she said, shaking her head. Her voice quavered. 'It’s too close!'
'What’s too close?'
'The darkness!' She took a deep, shaky breath. 'I’ve seen it before, but never so near. Your shadow stretches before you, blacker than night. You’re walking to the end of the world and do not know it.'....”
Hurricane Moon | Alexis Glynn Latner—Read an excerpt:
"Earth and the Moon looked the same size from here. Catharin Gault hovered close to the glass in the middle of the long window that framed Earth in one end, the Moon in the other.... The Moon’s pale face was marked by faint spider-lines of settlement. Very soon, human civilization would reach toward a better world than the Moon, across a vastly greater, purifying, distance. And she would have a role in that. Her breath caught in her throat at the familiar but never comfortable thought...."
Killswitch | Joel Shepherd—Read an excerpt:
"Sandy gazed at the Presidential convoy, strung out before them in single file above the vast, sprawling cityscape of Tanusha. Gabone’s view, she knew, would be overlaid with target highlights and trajectory-prediction graphics, time-accelerated in the pilot and weapon officers’ brains by the fancy interface with the flyer’s computer systems. About her, the A-9’s cramped, streamlined hull packed enough precision weaponry to take out the entire convoy in several seconds, had its crew chosen to...."
The Man Who Melted | Jack Dann—Read an excerpt:
"Raymond Mantle took a flyer to Naples, the fallen city....a woman fitting Josiane’s description had been located here. He couldn’t be sure, of course, because his informatore had mysteriously disappeared....
But Mantle had to find his wife, Josiane. Nothing else was important.
He had lost her during the Great Scream, when the screaming mobs tore New York City apart, leaving thousands dead and countless others roving about like the mind-deadened victims of a concentration camp...."
The Martian General's Daughter | T. Judson—Read an excerpt:
"When the word of Pretext’s fall came to Peter Black’s camp the general was ... watching a sales presentation made by the scrap men of Antioch Station. Many hundreds of workmen in small electric carts were parading past General Black and his staff officers....the old veteran remained seated, his eyes held straight ahead and his body rigid. 'He is an example to us all,' said the young man. Not until the messengers came with the letter from Garden City did he realize that the general had gone to sleep...."
Selling Out | Justina Robson—Read an excerpt:
"Lila Black sat in the office of her psychologist, Dr. Williams. Her memory of her last mission was downloading through one of her WiFi outlet channels; key features streamlined for Williams’s analysis by her AI-self, statistics ready-packaged for the medical teams ..., cybertronic readouts tabulated for the engineering experts, weapons and armour performance playing back for her master-at-arms.... It had been two days since she’d returned from the near total disaster of her first assignment...."
Starship: Mercenary | Mike Resnick—Read an excerpt:
“....an odd-looking creature of vaguely human proportions, but dressed like a Victorian dandy, stepped out into the corridor. His eyes were set at the sides of his elongated head, his large triangular ears were capable of independent movement, his mouth was absolutely circular and had no lips at all, and his neck was long and incredibly flexible. ...His skin may have possessed a greenish tint, but his bearing and manner were properly upper-class British at all times...."
Starship: Mutiny | Mike Resnick—Read an excerpt:
"The ship hung in space, all but motionless, a dull gray in color. There was no rust on it, of course, but it looked like there should have been....The shuttle approached the ship’s hatch, and when it was close enough a section extended and bonded to it. Then the hatch irised and the officer boarded the ship. He offered the uniformed woman who greeted him a lazy salute. She snapped off a smart salute in return. 'Welcome aboard the Theodore Roosevelt, sir!' she said as he surveyed his surroundings unenthusiastically...."
Starship: Pirate | Mike Resnick—Read an excerpt:
"The broad, burly, three-legged alien spun slowly down the battered, shopworn corridor, muttering to himself. He growled at a junior officer who didn’t get out of his way fast enough, glared at another who quickly stepped into a room to let him pass in the narrow corridor, and finally reached the small, cramped mess hall of the Theodore Roosevelt. He spotted his captain sitting at an oft-repaired table, nursing a beer...."
A World Too Near | Kay Kenyon—Read an excerpt:
"Above the fortress the sky dimmed to lavender, a time that passed for night in this world. Here every creature knew by their internal clock what time of night or day it was, all but Johanna Quinn, a woman of Earth. Between this universe and the next only a thin wall intervened, a permanent storm that forbade contact between Earth and the Entire. Or so most believed....few sentients lived here—a measure of Tarig confidence regarding assault and their preference for solitary lives. However, they had not reckoned what havoc a lone woman could wreak.
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