In a razor-edged 22nd-century newsroom, Darius McLeod learns that newspapers don't merely predict the future—they help manufacture it. When Mayor Spurgess fears a rival paper's forecast of corruption and disgrace, McLeod is pulled into a vicious media war where every story is an assignment, every assignment a possible death sentence, and rival editors treat reality like something to be edited. As City Editor Overman calmly explains the rules, McLeod faces a brutal choice: protect the paper...

Steve Cantwell returns to the desert colony of his childhood on Sirius' brutal second planet and finds only silence: the village abandoned, the well poisoned, and death already at work. In the ruins, an old Kumaji man tells him the settlers have fled after the water turned deadly, with the Kumaji in pursuit, and that the survivors are now staggering across five hundred miles of merciless desert with children, camels, and almost no water left. Caught between anger at the tribesmen and loyal...

Thirty-three-year-old Matilda Penshaws has spent years chasing the ideal husband, surviving broken engagements and her mother's sensible advice to simply date. A devoted romantic, she ignores ordinary courtship and instead hunts for love in pen pal columns, convinced that the right correspondence will reveal her perfect mate. When a striking ad in a literary magazine introduces the worldly, confident Haron Gorka, Matilda is certain she has found the sophisticated, egotistical man she has a...

A routine distress signal from deep space exposes a nightmare aboard the gleaming starship Glory of the Galaxy: the vessel is locked on a collision course with the sun, and aboard it are the President of the Galactic Federation and his cabinet. In the secretive Hub of the Galaxy, officials scramble for an answer no ordinary system can provide, and the crisis is routed to Johnny Mayhem, a mysterious man whose "elan" can inhabit other bodies. At the same time, lounge flirtation turns to drea...

On Mars, Alan Tremaine stands before a jubilant crowd as the Outworlds celebrate their long-awaited sovereignty from Earth, honoring the legacy of his father, Richard Tremaine, the movement's revered leader. Alan feels unworthy beside that legend, yet he accepts the Declaration of Sovereignty and speaks of freedom won without bloodshed—only to watch the dream shatter moments later as broadcasts from Venus, Titan, and the Jovian moons erupt with atomic violence, militant secession, and open...

In a brutal postwar city where even execution squads treat death as a racket, Hardesty waits with a firing party as a condemned man is due to be shot. When a woman kills the prisoner early, he lingers to loot the body while the others pursue her, exposing his own role in the profiteering scam of "jumping the gun." The encounter opens a world ruled by scavenging, betrayal, and survival through cheating first. Hardesty is then confronted by an armed woman claiming to be the dead man's widow,...

In a near-future world ruled by fear, propaganda, and ritual, young people are drafted into the mysterious Nowhere Journey, a one-way disappearance disguised as patriotic duty. Kit Temple faces selection day with his girlfriend Stephanie, knowing that the broadcasted ceremony may tear them apart forever, while the system's cold normality makes the terror even worse. When his brother's fate and his own name are finally sealed, Kit is forced into a life defined by secrecy, loss, and the poss...

Adam Slade has nothing left to lose when he kills a prison guard and takes reporter Marcia Lawrence hostage, forcing a desperate escape beyond the prison dome. What waits outside is not freedom but a savage, prehistoric Earth: a barren world of rock, steam, storm, and a distant sea, where survival seems as impossible as escape. As Slade reveals his true plan—to return to the dome and seize the time machine—Marcia begins to grasp the prison's cruel design. Built on the infant Earth, it is a...

Danny Jones, a skeptical college sophomore, is publicly humiliated in history class for questioning the heroic legend of Columbus and the reliability of "facts." When he learns that his eccentric Uncle Averill has died and left him an unnamed inheritance, Danny begins to see a pattern: his uncle, too, distrusted official history and lived by strange, secretive convictions. Traveling to Florida, Danny discovers that Averill's legacy is not money or land, but a sealed steamer trunk and a fin...

On a vast ship drifting through space, Rikud begins to feel what no one else around him seems to notice: change. As he watches the stars, the engines, and the mysterious routines that govern every meal, sleep, and waking hour, his unease grows into a dangerous curiosity about the world he has always accepted. When a strange shift in the viewport reveals a blue-white star and then a vast green-brown-blue sphere beyond the ship, Rikud realizes that his world may not be fixed at all, but movi...

On the eve of the great asteroid claim rush, Jerry finds himself reunited with his spirited wife Clair and his irrepressible grandfather, Gramps, in a crowded Martian fairground where hope and desperation mingle. But their chance at a new life already looks shaky: Gramps has spent nearly all their savings on an ancient Karden Cruiser and even squandered money on a Martian guitar, leaving Jerry exasperated and uncertain. Yet beneath the comic frustration lies a fiercely loyal family bound b...

Hector Finch has always believed in the power of a good sale, but a mysterious stranger with a small head and an impossible proposition turns that talent into something far stranger. Suddenly chosen to build a business that can sell anything to anyone, anywhere, at the exact moment it is needed, Hector is drawn into a world of teleportation, secret leverage, and a company that seems to exist beyond ordinary law or logic. What begins as comic shock soon becomes a frantic scramble to protect...