Fantasy Adventure Short Stories

These 18 darkly complex short stories and novellas touch upon human nature and perception, metaphysics and epistemology, and gender and sexuality, foreshadowing a world in which biological tendencies bring about the downfall of humankind. The Nebula Award-winning short story "Love Is the Plan, the Plan Is Death", the Hugo Award-winning novella The Girl Who Was Plugged In, and the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novella Houston, Houston, Do You Read? are included.

Hank is walking home from the bar when the Model T pulls alongside him. It's been decades since he saw a car this old, and the sound of it takes him right back to his 20s. The door is open, and when he climbs in, the car takes off - without a driver. Before he knows what's happened, Hank is right back at Big Spring Pavilion, where he spent his youth drinking bootleg whiskey and chasing pretty girls. He will find the past is not quite as he remembered it, but still a lovely place to go for a drive.

A classic tale featuring two of the most-memorable characters in sword and sorcery, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Over a span of 50 years, the late Fritz Leiber wrote dozens of adventures, set in the fictional city of Lankhmar, featuring the seven-foot-tall barbarian and the diminuitive thief. The stories were recognized with both the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

This collection of Catherine Asaro's show fiction contains five stories, including the Nebula Award-winning novella, Spacetime Pool, the Hugo and Nebula nominated novella Aurora in Four Voices, and an essay on Asaro's use of mathematics in her fiction.

Follow a core group of characters known as the Trailblazers as they use alien technology and knowledge discovered in Antarctic ruins to obtain limited immortality and lead humanity out into the galaxy, encountering, befriending, and fighting hundreds of alien races all the while desperately trying to prepare Earth for the unbeatable threat at the core of the Milky Way that is destined to return and reclaim their lost colony...and their former human slaves.

The Origin series is empire building at its finest, with 100 episodes and over 2.5 million words in the military science fiction serial detailing the rise of Star Force from corporate entity into an interstellar empire over the course of more than a millennium. Follow a core group of characters known as the Trailblazers as they use alien technology and knowledge discovered in Antarctic ruins to obtain limited immortality and lead humanity out into the galaxy, encountering, befriending, and fighting hundreds of alien races.

Storytellers have long imagined what exists beyond the edges of the map. The need to seek and discover the unknown is embedded in who we are, no matter the culture or era. To celebrate this sense of wonder, award-winning editor John Joseph Adams has gathered together some of the best SF&F writers working today, collecting adventure and mystery in this spectacular anthology. Explore the rich tradition begun centuries ago with this all-new compilation full of imagination and delights. What lies beyond the edge of the unknown? Only you, brave listener, can find out.

Rhona and her paladin brother, Alastar, belong to a holy people who have waged war on witches and warlocks and their clans from the highlands. But when she uses magic to save his life, their world is thrown upside down. On the run, having left all they knew behind, they have to rely on those who hate paladins. All magic is evil, the high paladin taught.... But Alastar starts to understand that he might have been misled.

The war to end all wars - or so it is hoped. For generations battle broke the once-proud kingdom of Galifar. As nation fought nation, adventure was never far away from those eager to find it.

Hunters of evil, seekers of fortune, loyal soldiers, and those just trying to stay alive. These are their tales. The Tales of the Last War.

El sol se está muriendo, y la Tierra, consumida por los últimos suspiros de esta estrella, también desaparecerá. Pero la humanidad, en lugar de abandonar el planeta, construye doce mil grandiosos motores de fusión para desorbitar la Tierra y propulsarla hacia Próxima Centauri en un viaje que durará siglos....

Soft lips on smooth, supple skin, slender curves interlocking.... No wonder girl-on-girl action has never been more popular. From the US hit series the L Word to Sex In The City, sisters have been doing it for themselves.

This is a collection of the sixth six short stories in the Caverns and Creatures series...Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to 6d6 and experience the compelling world of dark humor and fantasy.

A colony survives among the icy rings of a planet, hiding from alien robots determined to destroy them … at a remote site on the edge of the Arctic Circle, a group of scientists, engineers, and physicians gather to gamble humanity’s future on one last-ditch experiment … a man who can’t feel pain has been bioengineered to be a killing machine, but he refuses to give in to his fate … a man is contacted by three future versions of himself, each trying to save their world from destruction.

In what many refer to as one of the first and greatest science fiction thrillers, a mysterious stranger wanders into an inn, wrapped head-to-toe in bandages. What lies beneath the bandages is something even more mysterious. As Wells tackles issues of identity, deception, and the deterioration of the human mind, listeners will be drawn into the story of the mysterious man, whose own mistakes end up whisking him into a whirlwind of deceit, terror, and even murder. In the end, the question will be asked: when your sense of self and identity vanish, who will you become?

Lady Dame Honor Harrington - starship captain, admiral, Steadholder, and Duchess - has spent decades defending the Star Kingdom of Manticore against all comers. Along the way, she has become the legend known as "the Salamander" from her habit of always being where the fire is hottest... and also a national best seller.

This invaluable collection of Avram Davidson's resonant, witty short stories describes some incidents in the career of many-times-Doctor Engelbert Eszterhazy, loyal subject of the Triune Monarchy of Scythia- Pannonia-Transbalkania, located in a 19th-century Europe whose political landscape will be, after a little reflection, familiar to most fantasy listeners. Enquire with Doctor Eszterhazy into curious matters: the lurley, the old woman who lived with a bear, gingerbread men, dancing goats, and more.

Join James, our intrepid adventurer, streamer, and bug hunter, as he jumps headfirst into the first true immersion VRMMORPG game and explores the digital reality that the dev's have kept under lock and key. No previews? No class or race info before launch? What could possibly go wrong? Especially starting in the empire inspired by ancient Egypt. Rolling a character reminiscent of an old-school D&D cleric, James takes on the world of Sosaku Online with spear, shield, and holy fire.

In the Hugo Award nominee Forty, Counting Down, computer genius Justin Kloster travels to the past to stop himself from making a terrible mistake. But all actions have their consequences. Then, in Twenty-One, Counting Up, Kloster's college life and romantic dreams are rudely interrupted when the 40-year-old Justin arrives from the future to save him from himself.

This collection of short stories and novelettes includes the previously published stories "The Potter's Daughter" (a prequel to the novel The Element of Fire), "Holy Places", "Rites of Passage", "Houses of the Dead", "Reflections" (the Giliead and Ilias stories, prequels to the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy), as well as "Night at the Opera" (a Nicholas and Reynard story original to this collection, set before the Nebula-nominated novel The Death of the Necromancer).

In the eight years since his first full-length novel, Gridlinked, was published by Pan Macmillan, Neal Asher has firmly established himself as one of the leading British writers of science fiction, and his novels are now translated in many languages. Most of his stories are set in a galactic future-scape called The Polity, and with this collection of marvellously inventive and action-packed short stories, he takes us further into the manifold diversities of that amazing universe.