★★★★★ "Funny, yet deep, this is definitely worth venturing into the multiverse for."Amazing Stories says: "Snarky as Pratchet, insightful as Stephenson, as full of scathing social commentary as Swift or Voltaire, and weirdly reminiscent of LeGuin, Alpha Max is the only multiverse novel you need this month, or maybe ever."Maximilian Tundra is about to have an existential crisis of cosmic proportions.When a physical duplicate of him appears in his liv...

Keelan Cavanaugh is fat. That's why the government put him in prison.They placed him in a Calorie Reduction Centre (CRC), where trained staff work to help him and many others slim down. Well, that was the intention, anyway. The powers that be had decided chubby citizens must either go there or lose their health care coverage.hen he meets Jacinda Williams, an activist lawyer researching this new system, Keelan is more determined than ever to slim down. But K...

Melon.This random and powerful thought turns the sun into a massive honeydew melon, destroying the Earth and ruining Dr. Maximilian Tundra's day.In another even more unlikely universe, an alternative Max discovers the mining colony on Callisto has disappeared. Not only has his new home vanished, so has every shred of human civilization in the entire system!These two Maxes (and a few more) must discover the cause of this decoherence and save other universes ...

Ever wondered what might happen if your therapist was replaced by a pirate? Or how disquieting it would be to receive postcards from your future self? If William Shatner was elected President of the United States, what would his inaugural address sound like? Mark A. Rayner tackles these and stranger questions in his collection of short stories, essays and flash fiction that thrum with the absurd and hum with alienation, all to a humorous beat.Jesus contends with dinosaurs. Marcel D...

Chill out. It's only the technological singularity.Blake Given's web-enabled fridge has pulled the plug on the Internet, turning its owner's life – and the whole world – upside down.Blake has modest ambitions for his life. He wants to have his job reclassified, so he can join the Creative Department of the advertising firm where he works. And he wants to go out with Daphne, one of the account execs at the same company. His fridge has other plans. All Blake knows is he's at ...

So hair is sprouting in unspeakable places and you can no longer carry a tune, but if you're a surrealistic artiste with an addiction to Freudian mythology and guilt-free sex, turning into a monkey has its upsides.Nick Motbot may be evolving as a novelist, but his friends aren't too sure about his DNA. At least, not since Gargantuan Enterprises started experimenting with it. Once they figure out what's happening to him, they decide to set things right. Marvellous Hairy is a satiric...

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart walks into the sex change clinic, determined to have his "sprouter" snipped off. So begins The Amadeus Net, a satirical novel set in the year 2028, which explores art, love, and identity at the end of the world. For more than two centuries, the one-time wunderkind has kept his existence secret while he tried to understand his immortality. Living in style through funds raised by selling "lost" Mozart works, he has also helped to create Ipolis, a utopian city-state, a...

"A delightful collection of stories ranging across genres, whose recurring motif is the distinction between what is real and unreal, a true and a false dream. What this in turn leads to is the raising, usually in a lighthearted way, of the sort of moral questions we'll soon be having to deal with more frequently.~ Alex Good, Toronto StarWhat happens when you're face-to-face with a truth that shakes you?Do you accept it, or pretend i...

This is a dystopian short story about a future in which machines do all the work.

Post-Apocalyptic TP Blues is the tale of a not particularly likeable fellow named Norman Joyner. A doomcryer from birth- Norman gets his wish when 94% of the population dies of the flu. When the dust clears- Norman has a plan to rule what remains of America- one little white square of TP at a time.

Uncle John's latest compendium of the most bizarre and entertaining information imaginable: a Worldwide Weird-opedia!Good news: It's not you, the world really is going crazy! And Uncle John is barely sane enough to guide you through it all in this whirlwind tour of all things strange and weird. Yes, loyal Throne Room readers, these 432 all-new pages of pure crazy will shock and confound you . . . and make your side split open from laughing. (Uncle John takes no leg...

In this all-new novella from the New York Times bestselling author of Midnight Marked, Merit, Ethan, and the rest of Cadogan House crew discover that not all undead creatures are kindred spirits…Vampires generally aren’t afraid of things that go bump in the night, but Merit and Ethan are extra jumpy after a recent attack by a dark sorcerer. So when they learn that someone is messing with graves in Chicago’s cemeteries, stealing skulls and snatchin...