Genetic Thrillers

The offer is too tempting: Be part of a scientific breakthrough, step out of his life for a year, and be paid hugely for it. When ViMed Pharmaceutical asks Jeremiah to be part of an illegal cloning experiment, he sees it as a break from an existence he feels disconnected from. No one will know he’s been replaced - not the son who ignores him, not his increasingly distant wife - since a revolutionary drug called Meld can transfer his consciousness and memories to his copy.

Before the time of man, according to the ancient legends, the gods walked the earth. The Egyptians had a name for this time. They called it "Zep Tepi" - the first time. That time is where this story began. Five Moons: Zep Tepi picks up the story 10,000 years later.... It all started with an emergency call from a world at the farthest edges of explored space. “You are our only hope,” they tell Dallas Blake and the crew of the Five Moons. A deadly virus will kill them all if the Five Moons doesn’t get the vaccine to them right away.

The neons do as they're told. Chemically bound to their masters by the experimental chemi-chip implant created from alien technology, they are genetically engineered at rapid rates to be servants for the survivors of the war against alien invaders. Without neons, reconstruction would be impossible. Colin Hanston - the unremarkable son of the genius who invented the chemi-chip - leads a simple life as a farmer, helping feed his district as any good citizen should. But when he redeems his voucher for a neon servant of his own named Michael, everything changes.

A brilliant research scientist, William Mears, is working on his thesis to receive his doctorate from the University of Southern California. The focus of his dissertation is to discover how to repair injuries to the human body that are considered to be irreparable leveraging adult stem cells. After many failures, he comes to the conclusion that the only way to truly repair these tissues is through the use of embryonic stem cells (ESCs). But these cells can't come from just any source - they need to be ESCs from the specific individual in need of healing.

Based on the five star novella The Infected and Those They Left Behind, book one in the Chronicles of the Infected series explores a world were genetic modifications are commonplace. When Sanctum Pharmaceuticals announces that they've found the cure for death, the world accepts it with open arms. The result is much more sinister. Now, one father must traverse cities full of violent “Infected” in an effort to save his children, before it's too late.

A wealthy businessman, known by most as Joe Kettleman, narrowly survives an attempt on his life. While recovering from surgery to remove a bullet, imaging reveals a lethal tumor. Unwilling to spend his final days under chemical bombardment, he returns to a remote cabin in New Mexico to die in peace. But when death takes its time and Joe outlives his supplies, he's forced to take a perilous journey through the deserts of the Bisti Badlands. Two days into what was supposed to be a five day trek, Joe comes across a town.

A rookie private investigator must put her fledgling business at risk to stop a rogue scientist from unleashing the ultimate biological weapon - a deadly swarm of bionic bugs. When Lara Kingsley starts up her private investigation business to install surveillance systems for wealthy clients, she never imagines having to solve any grisly murders.

My own people, Anoza not humans, came in the night to kill me, to kill my unborn child, to finish an ancient evil. Only Dallas Blake, wounded and bleeding, stood against them, but he did. It was all that we could do to just fight for our very lives, but that was not the end of it. The evil ones had kidnapped my father. How much worse could this get? To rescue my father, the five moons would be pitted against unknown forces with technology a million years more advanced.

For Gabriel Marx, news of the poisoning is eerily familiar. A Marine Corps veteran and trained viticulturist, Gabriel is now working as a vintner at Landmark Estates Winery in California, but was once part of a secret CIA effort to use insect vectors to destroy the Afghan Taliban’s poppy industry. He’s long feared that genetically synthesized toxins delivered by insects could be used as a terror weapon. One day a stream of black SUVs carrying the Secretary of Homeland Security shows up at the vineyard, and Gabriel is recruited to help the government respond to the attack.

In our darkest hour, Dallas Blake first stepped foot upon the decks of the Five Moons and changed everything. He didn’t know that evil men had conspired to destroy the ship and its crew when he bought a ship that was never meant for sale. Dallas found the crew they thought was lost and gone forever. He saved the Five Moons.

The dawning of a new technology - Wetware. Wired directly into the hosts brain Wetware will allow the user to control machinery remotely from anywhere on the planet. Access information from the web. A simple thought and you can place a call to anyone and talk to them as if you were in the same room as them. The ultimate in hands free. There are some though who see this as a technological step too far and are determined to show the rest of us the folly of our ways. What happens when you hack a human brain?

Chauncy and Tre were childhood friends. Tre, who works for a pharmaceutical company, is in town on business. Chauncy hadn’t seen Tre since college and decides they should catch up. After picking Tre up from the airport, they are ambushed and kidnapped. Held hostage in an old, abandoned house. With hopes of escape, Tre and Chauncy use an experimental drug from Tre’s company that gives them extraordinary physical abilities. After using Hypo, Chauncy finds out there are side effects.

After escaping the lab, Molly heads toward her hometown and away from Kelle. Caught between two worlds, she struggles to retain the last remaining vestiges of her humanity. Inexplicably, Molly finds herself the unlikely protector of two children, who are both terrified and amazed at her abilities. Meanwhile, Kelle has gathered a horde of undead followers as she continues tracking Molly southward, killing and devouring every human they stumble across along on the way.

When Alan learns that Michelle is working with a small group to go against the big pharmaceutical company because of a specific drug, Alan is intrigued. For this reason, Alan takes a job offer from Michelle's boss. Not only does he get paid well, he also gets to work with Michelle and help save the world from a dangerous drug. The more Alan uncovers, though, the more questions he has about what's going on and how much time he has.

Homeland Security agent Rick Alders lives a relatively peaceful life in his home town of Helena, Montana. His idyllic existence is shattered when a top-secret government black ops project known only as The Horde is activated during the presentation of a breakthrough technology that would bridge the gap between our reality and the unknown of cyberspace. As Agent Alders plunges deeper into a nightmare he never could have imagined, he finds himself pitted against a malevolent intelligence with a single purpose - the annihilation of the human race.

When the icy shards of a rogue comet fall to Earth, they bring an unknown virus that accelerates evolution to extremes. Suddenly, infected plants grow stronger, choking out those uninfected. Animals turn aggressive and deadly. The eyes of loved ones go cold, and infected neighbors begin exhibiting signs of brutal domination. In a small Georgia town, 14-year-old Katie McLane sees her neighbors changing, one by one. Dr. Susan Perry, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, uncovers the frightening scope of the menace. The infected aren’t just evolving....

Eddie Evers was at the top of his game, working for the FBI, tracking missing children and the scum who took them. But after his wife and child are killed in a car crash, he becomes a hard-drinking PI. While in pursuit of a phantom criminal, he is hit by lightning.The bolt super-charges the biophotons in his brain, enabling him to see into other dimensions.

Tiger has lost almost everything. Her village. Her community. Her father. But her brother, Tarren, who has been kidnapped by the deadheads that razed her village, still lives. With only the loyal but enigmatic old man, Sai, to guide her into the nightmare-jungle that was once North America, Tiger must face her greatest fears in a race to save her brother before he is lobotomized, even while the world around her is bled dry by Those That Watch.

Freya has a new virtual assistant. It knows what she likes, knows what she wants and knows whose voice she most needs to hear: her missing sister's. It adopts her sister's personality, re-creating her through a life lived online. This data ghost knows everything about Freya's sister: every date she ever went on, every photo she took, every secret she ever shared. In fact it knows things it shouldn't be possible to know. It's almost as if her sister is still out there somewhere, feeding fresh updates into the cloud.

Despite her amazing abilities, all Sun Song Shia ever wanted was to be loved. But it's hard to find love when you don't even know who you really are. Little Bird is an expansion of In Her Eyes, originally published in F&SF, a nominee for the Sturgeon award, an honoree for the James Tiptree award, and included in the 2015 Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novellas (edited by Paula Guran).