A plot to take over the galaxy by unscrupulous police officers employing microscopic nanotechnology robots as nerve stimulators reaches a surprisingly explosive climax. The massacre of an entire colony of defenseless settlers by an elite squad of heavily-armed police officers heralds the start of a fiendish conspiracy.  Two police officials have devised a plan to gain control of the civilized worlds of the galaxy, and the plundered wealth of the murd...

A pair of highly-prized Platinum Treasury discs with an enigmatic clue scratched onto the back of one of them initiates a mystery. Rumors of a vast treasure prompt a crew of space adventurers to try and decipher the cryptic message in order to find it, but it leads them only to another pair of the discs with yet another clue etched onto them. Conquering overwhelming obstacles, they travel from star system to star system, chasing down the mysterious hints in the hopes of finding the hidden ...

THE WAR IS OVER. THE TREATY IS SIGNED.AND ALL IS WELL IN THE GALAXY…Izzy Umboto is a hero of the conflict between the Society of Humanity and the Unity Party. Instead of retiring and living out her days quietly, she’s wrangled command of her very own warship. Unfortunately, that ship is the less-than-state-of-the-art Patton.Lieutenant Terrence Tordon, called “Trouble” by both his enemies and his friends, and even himself, is a career...

In the year 2010, computers are the new superpowers. Those who control them control the world. To enforce the Net Laws, Congress creates the ultimate computer security agency within the FBP the Net Force.When web service is disrupted across the world, a new nation makes its presence known. Terrorists from a virtual country called CyberNation have taken the web hostage. Their demands: worldwide recognition and rights for their "citizens." Though there are millions of CyberNation symp...

This latest volume of The Year's Best Science Fiction carries on the proud tradition, with stories by Lucius Shepard, Orson Scott Card, Damon Knight, Pat Cadigan, Robert Silverberg, Somtown Sucharitkul, Tanith Lee, Scott Baker, Michael Swanwick, John Kessel, Richard Kearns, Greg Bear, Bruce Sterling, Jack Dann, Tim Powers, James Patrick Kelly, Connie Willis, Harry Turtledove, Howard Waldrop, Walter Jon Williams, Neal Barret, Jr., Lewis Shiner, Judith Moffett, Kim Stanley Robinson,...

Cyborgs have been used to thrill, frighten, inspire, and educate us about just what it is to be human. Since the term was first coined in 1960—by Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline—the science has finally caught up with the theory. There are cyborgs among us. Hugo Award-winning editor and cyborg, Neil Clarke has assembled here twenty-six of their stories as imagined by some of the best and brightest science fiction writers today. Among them are winners and nominees of the Hugo, Nebula, Wor...

Geoff and his friends live in Phocaea, a distant asteroid colony on the Solar System's frontier. They're your basic high-spirited young adults, enjoying such pastimes as hacking matter compilers to produce dancing skeletons that prance through the low-gee communal areas, using their rocket-bikes to salvage methane ice shrapnel that flies away when the colony brings in a big (and vital) rock of the stuff, and figuring out how to avoid the ubiquitous surveillance motes that are the million e...

Best known for her New York Times bestselling urban fantasy novels, Carrie Vaughn has also written dozens of short stories for Talebones, Realms of Fantasy, and many other magazines and anthologies. Collected here for the first time are ten of her favorite hard-to-classify stories covering the full range of speculative fiction - science fiction, fantasy, horror - sometimes all in the same story. Read about Emily Dickinson's dog, women pilots in WWII, future Hollywood, a haunted Eur...

He's coming. From across the galaxy, he's coming.In a future where government is virtually galaxy wide and dominated by the Bureaus, an emergency team, responding to a beacon from an outpost in another sector of the known, makes a grisly discovery: All five hundred people on board the station have been killed. And it looks like they were tortured.An Unclassified has escaped and is on the rampage again. This time it will end a galaxy away with one man and his family.Thi...

A man is marooned on a government base on the far side of Earth's moon. It doesn't appear as if anyone is coming back...ever. There is food, shelter, air, and water enough to allow him to live for a long time. But the man doesn't want to just continue existing. He needs a goal--a reason to survive.

The ship came down hard. Simon could see the wreckage strewn out across a wide swath of the alien landscape. Both of them made it, but Samantha was still trapped inside.They have one hope. Simon has to make the aid station before sunset. He is exposed and hurt. He has nothing to protect him from the sub-zero temperatures Samantha says are coming.He is their only chance.

Who is Fantomas? He is the first super-villain, the Lord of Terror with 100 faces. For years, he has committed the most diabolical crimes imaginable and escaped justice every time. But now, on a cold, dark Halloween night, he has set his eyes on the sleepy town of Summer's End, where a new, horrifying plot is hatching. Only one person stands between him and his infernal aims. Her name is Eve, All Hallows Eve.