In Blue Kansas Sky,” Sonny Peacock comes of age in this poignant tale set in the Kansas heartland of the early 1960s. Apartheid, Superstrings, and Mordecai Thubana” is set in 1980s Pretoria, South Africa, where a black man’s quest for the Theory of Everything” is juxtaposed against the inhumanity of apartheid. In Cri de Coeur,” aboard a 21st century generation wheelship, agrogeologist and poet Dr. Abel Gwiazda and his Down’s-syndrome son Dean travel on course for a new home in Epsilon Eridani. In the final novella, Death and Designation Among the Asadi,” reprinted here for the first time in 20 years, ethnologist Egan Chaney’s private journals of his studies of the alien Asadi are the centerpiece of the story.

Blue Kansas Sky

Literature & Fiction

BISHOP, Michael

United States

Golden Gryphon Press

This collection of Joe R. Lansdale stories represents the best of the Lansdale” genrea strange mixture of dark crime, even darker humor, and adventure tales. Though varied in setting and theme, all the stories are pure Lansdaleeerie, amusing, and occasionally horrific. In The Pit,” modern gladiators square off against one another using Roman methods. An alternate-history tale called Trains Not Taken” shows Buffalo Bill as an ambassador and Wild Bill Hickok as a clerk. Lansdale’s love of large lizards and humor are evident in the stories Godzilla’s Twelve Step Program” and Bob the Dinosaur Goes to Disneyland.”

High Cotton: Selected Stories of Joe R. Lansdale

LANSDALE, Joe R.

Science Fiction & Fantasy

Richard Paul Russo is known for his dark and sinister views of the future and the human spirit. In his first collection of short fiction, Russo presents a wide variety of talesMore Than Night” and In the Season of the Rains,” tales of gritty alien encounters, and the ultimate road story, Just Drive, She Said.” In other stories, the hopelessness of the human condition is examinedon Earth in Cities in Dust,” in space in The Open Boat,” and in an alternate reality in Prayers of a Rain God.” Of the 14 tales, 11 are set on Earthand Russo’s Earth can be far more alien than other worlds.

Terminal Visions

Russo, Richard Paul

The work of novelist and short-story writer Neal Barrett, Jr., runs the gamut from science fiction, westerns, and historical novels to off-the-wall but well-received mainstream fiction, and this collection brings together 11 previously uncollected short stories, many of which first appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Best of the West, and The New Frontier. It also features the novella Ginny Sweethips’ Flying Circus” and presents the reader with a distinct mix of science fiction and western, which is Barrett at his offbeat best. Here readers will discover Billy the Kid, Erwin Rommel, and the Wright brothers all sharing a dilapidated hotel on the edge of nowhere in Sallie C,” see how business is done with art-loving extraterrestrials in the Trading Post,” and meet Maggie McKenna, a country girl whose auctorial aspirations are aided by an alien temporarily stranded on Earth, in Perpetuity Blues.”

Perpetuity Blues and Other Stories

Barrett Jr., Neal

This collection of award-winning science fiction includes a story that was a finalist for the Hugo Awards and one that was voted one of the 10 greatest science fiction stories to appear during the 1990s. In the title piece, a geologist has downloaded the memories of his deceased mentor into a robot’s electronic brain. Together, they bore through the crust and mantle to the very core of the planet Earth. Their work is complicated by a mysterious intelligence deep within the Earth and by the robot’s own emergent humanity. The remaining stories comprise a variety of tales including a story about climbing in the Chilean Andes in which the protagonist is haunted by a ghost, and a tale about a battle-weary veteran who returns from a high-tech future to face his most sinister challenge at home.

The Robot's Twilight Companion

Daniel, Tony

In the title story of this first-rate science fiction collection, a renegade misfit conquers the dragons and renews the threat of nuclear chaos aboard Springplace, a man-made repository for old reactor cores, dirty plutonium, and dismantled bombs. Another story is a sprawling intergalactic epic that takes place aboard a starship. Salvaged and commandeered by humans, the massive generation starship becomes the setting for a titanic struggle between two alien entities who engage in a monumental battle for survival. The tale Chrysalis” explores not just an alien milieu but the nature of man himself when another ancient starship lands and investigates an icy unknown planet inhabited by humans millions of years earlier.

The Dragons of Springplace

REED, Robert

This short story collection is from the bestselling author well known for his novels based on Star Wars and The X-Files. The title story is a gritty tale of the ultimate use of nanotechnologyimmortality. Human, MartianOne, Two, Three” is a novella-length story about the terraforming of Mars. In addition to Anderson’s original fiction, this collection features his shared writing, including the first new Dune fiction, the story A Whisper of Caladan Seas,” cowritten with Brian Herbert. Also included are the horrific tale Drumbeats,” written with drummer Neal Peart of the band Rush, and Prisoner of War,” a sequel to Harlan Ellison’s classic Outer Limits teleplay, Soldier.”

Dogged Persistence

Kevin J.Anderson

Revolving around the inescapable process of earning a living, these 11 stories present a welcome and refreshing change of pace from more typical science fiction. Speculating about future lifestyles and how to function as a member of the new global economy, these tales emphasize the moral and spiritual dimensions of employment and examine the practical and ethical quandaries that possible future occupations may provide. Though written primarily about jobs, careers, and professions, these narratives are filled with suspense and adventure, romance, and laughter.

Strange Trades

Di Filippo, Paul

Reading more like a news report from the future than contemporary fiction, this collection of short stories combines hard science with rich emotionalism to explore myriad realities. Stories in this collection include Into the Blue Abyss,” where the seas of Uranus are explored. There are stories detailing a space freighter and its encounter with space pirates, the marsforming” of Mars, mathematical theorems from a very unlikely source, how Sherlock Holmes deals with a parasitic alien, the horrors of a hopeless war, and a voyage into a black hole.

Impact Parameter: And Other Quantum Realities

Landis, Geoffrey A.

Offers fourteen stories exploring the world of Dr. Zeus, Inc., known to its employees as "The Company," and the exploits of its field agents--once human, now immortal time-traveling cyborgs.

Black Projects, White Knights: The Company Dossiers

Baker, Kage

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Books by Golden Gryphon Press