In Walter Jon Williams' classic cyberpunk novel, the remnants of a war-ravaged America endure in scattered, heavily armed colonies, while the wealthy Orbital Corporations now control the world. Cowboy, an ex–fighter pilot who has become "hardwired" via skull sockets directly to his lethal electronic hardware, is now a panzerboy, a hi-tech smuggler riding armored hovertanks through the balkanized countryside. He teams up with Sarah, an equally cyborized gun-for-hire, to make a last stab at ...

All humanity is at peace. The Diamond Library contains all wisdom, and has incarnated itself as the Treasured King. But now the peace is threatened by the alien Sang, a species bent on conquest, and humanity’s response is fatally divided.At the height of the crisis, the Treasured King is found dead, and a dangerous new incarnation is born— beautiful, seductive, erratic, and very possibly mad.Walter Jon Williams combines cutting-edge science, Tibetan Buddhism, and hard-nosed...

Steward is a Beta— a clone. In his memories, he’s an elite commando for an orbital policorp— but because his Alpha never did a brain-scan update, Steward’s memories are fifteen years out of date . . . and in those fifteen years, everything has changed. An interstellar war destroyed the company that held his allegiance. His wife has divorced him, along with the second wife that he can’t even remember. Most of his comrades died in a useless battle on a world called Sheol, and those...

Blending fast-paced military science fiction and space opera, the first volume in a dynamic trilogy from the New York Times bestselling author of The Praxis, set in the universe of his popular and critically acclaimed Dread Empire’s Fall series—a tale of blood, courage, adventure and battle in which the fate of an empire rests in the hands of a cadre of desperate exiles.It’s been seven years since the end of the Naxid War. Sidelined for their unorthodox tactics by...

After years of struggle, Drake Maijstral has been rated Number One Burglar by the Imperial Sporting Commission. Surely by now he deserves a vacation— and he fully intends to take one, on Earth. But valuable items keep disappearing, and it’s clear that Maijstral, the master thief to end all master thieves, is being preyed upon by another expert burglar. Maijstral would very much like to solve this mystery, but unfortunately people keep challenging him to duels, and he’s become enmeshed in ...

Blending fast-paced military science fiction and space opera, the first volume in a dynamic trilogy from the New York Times bestselling author of The Praxis, set in the universe of his popular and critically acclaimed Dread Empire’s Fall series—a tale of blood, courage, adventure and battle in which the fate of an empire rests in the hands of a cadre of desperate exiles.It’s been seven years since the end of the Naxid War. Sidelined for their unorthodox tactics by...

“Space opera the way it ought to be…Bujold and Weber, bend the knee; interstellar adventure has a new king, and his name is Walter Jon Williams.” —George R. R. MartinAt last, the climactic final episode of the Dread Empire’s Fall trilogy—what started with The Praxis and The Sundering comes to a brilliant conclusion in Walter Jon Williams’s epic space adventure.Working on opposite sides of the galaxy—one in deep space, the other undercover ...

""Space opera the way it ought to be . . . Bujold and Weber, bend the knee; interstellar adventure has a new king, and his name is Walter Jon Williams.""—George R. R. MartinFollowing The Accidental War, the second book of a brand-new series set in the Praxis—an epic mix of space opera and military science fiction, from a grand master of science fiction, Walter Jon Williams.The Praxis, the empire of now extinct Shaa, has again falle...

Favian Markham is a rising young American officer during the War of 1812. As commander of the small, slow brig Experiment, he must break the British blockade and take his outgunned vessel on a daring raid into the Narrow Seas of England. On his desperate journey he faces duels, rivalries, ambitious politicians, yardarm-to-yardarm combat, and the deadly beauty of a foreign courtesan. Yet his greatest battle is not with the enemy, but with his own divided nature …Brig of...

Nebula Award-winning author Walter Jon Williams serves up a glorious novelette-sized mashup of intrigue, cutting-edge biotech, Aymara Indian spies, a Chinese cruise ship, ninjas, Andean folk music, and a tetrahedal menace from beneath the sea.But the greatest threat to our heroes comes in the form of a water ballet company, whose director insists on Total Artistic Control.“...A rapid, imaginative, and at times hilarious story, packed with action and great characters...[Will...

After years of civil war, the genius of Edgar Allan Poe is nearing the breaking point.  Poe has devoted himself to the Confederacy, but his dreams of honor and glory are drowned in blood and slaughter far more vast than the terrors of his imagination.  Anguished, tortured by memories of his dead wife and his dead hopes, Poe finds himself holding a key position against Grant's assault, and must decide whether or not to sacrifice all that he still loves in service to a dying cause....

A Magazine of Science Fiction and FantasyISSUE 46: September 2020Lezli Robyn, EditorMartin Shoemaker, Assistant EditorTaylor Morris, CopyeditorShahid Mahmud, PublisherStories by: Errick A. Nunnally, Mike Resnick, K. A. Teryna (translation by Alex Shvartsman), Nancy Kress, Edward M. Lerner, Michael Swanwick, Marina J. Lostetter, Alvaro Zinos-AmaroSerialization: Midnight at the Well of Souls by Jack L. ChalkerColumns by: Gregory...