by George Mann
Paul Di Filippo is one of the most prolific - and unclassifiable - authors working in the genre today. His short stories have won him much critical acclaim and he has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, BSFA, Philip K. Dick, and World Fantasy awards. His short story collections include: The Steampunk Trilogy, Ribofunk, Little Doors, Lost Pages, and Harsh Oases (to name but a few). His novels include: Ciphers, Joe’s Liver, Fuzzy Dice, A Mouthful of Tongues, Spon-dulix, and Cosmocopia. He lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
Denver author Warren Hammond is known for his gritty, futuristic detective novels, KOP, and sequel Ex-KOP. By taking the best of classic crime noir, and reinventing it on a destitute colony world, Warren has created these uniquely dark tales of murder, corruption and redemption.
An avid traveler, Warren and his wife are always up for a new adventure. Whether it’s trekking in the Himalayas or camping in the game reserves of Botswana, Warren finds much inspiration for his writing in the world’s most remote corners.
Currently, Warren is writing KOP Killer, the third book in the KOP series.
Ian Whates’s love of SF first manifested at school, perplexing his English teacher when he submitted an SF murder/mystery as homework having been set the essay title “The Language of Shakespeare”. Ian’s short fiction has appeared in various venues, including the science journal Nature, and has been shortlisted for the BSFA Award. Ian is editor of the BSFA’s Matrix magazine and also edits and publishes fiction via his independent press imprint NewCon Press, whose anthologies have garnered several awards and •honours. He lives in an idyllic Cambridgeshire village with long-suffering partner Helen and assorted pets, including a manic cocker spaniel and a tailless black cat.
Scott Edelman (the writer) has published more than 75 short stories in magazines such as PostScripts, The Twilight Zone, Absolute Magnitude, The Journal of Pulse-Pounding Narratives, Science Fiction Review and Fantasy Book, and anthologies such as Crossroads: Southern Tales of the Fantastic, Men Writing SF as Women, MetaHorror, Once Upon a Galaxy, Moon Shots, Mars Probes, Summer Chills, and Forbidden Planets. Upcoming stories will appear in the anthologies Nation of Ash and Aim For the Head. He has been nominated three times as a Stoker Award finalist in the category of Short Story.
Scott Edelman (the editor) currently edits both Science Fiction Weekly (www.scifi.com/sfw/), the internet magazine of news, reviews and interviews, and SCI FI, the official print magazine of the SCI FI Channel. He was the founding editor of Science Fiction Age, which he edited during its entire eight-year run from 1992 through 2000.
He also edited Sci-Fi Entertainment for almost four years, as well as two other sf media magazines, Sci-Fi Universe and Sci-Fi Flix. He has been a four-time Hugo Award finalist for Best Editor.
Paul Cornell is a writer of novels, comics and television. He’s written Doctor Who for the BBC, and Captain Britain for Marvel Comics. He’s been twice Hugo-nominated and shares a Writer’s Guild Award. “One of Our Bastards is Missing” is the second story in his Jonathan Hamilton series.
One of the most literary authors working in the science fiction field today, Adam Roberts is also a doctor in nineteenth century literature. He has published an array of studies and literary criticism, including The Palgrave History of Science Fiction, and his novels include Salt, On, Stone, Polystom, The Snow, Gradisil, Splinter and Swiftly. He lives in London with his wife and daughter.
Jennifer Pelland lives just outside Boston with an Andy, three cats, and an impractical amount of books. She’s published over two dozen stories, including “Captive Girl,” which was nominated for a Nebula award, and her first short story collection, Unwelcome Bodies, was released by Apex Publications in early 2008. She maintains a website at http://www.jenniferpelland.com/.
Daniel Abraham has had stories published in the Vanishing Acts, Bones of the World and The Dark anthologies, and has been included in Gardner Dozois’s Year’s Best Science Fiction anthology as well. His story “Flat Diane” won the International Horror Guild award for mid-length fiction. He lives in New Mexico with his wife and daughter.
Ian Watson is the muti-award winning author of nearly fifty books, including The Embedding, Hard Questions, The Jonah Kit, Mockeymen, The Flies of Memory and The Butterlies of Memory. He wrote the Screen Story for the Stephen Spielberg movie A.I. Artificial Intelligence and is now recognized as one of the established masters of the field. He lives in a village in Northamptonshire, UK.
Tim Akers lives in suburban Chicago, and splits his time equally between fountain pens and relational databases. His work has previously appeared in Interzone and Electric Velocipede, and his first novel is due from Solaris next year.
Ken MacLeod was born in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Scotland, on August 2, 1954. He is married with two children and lives in West Lothian. He has an Honours and Masters degree in biological subjects and worked for some years in the IT industry. Since 1997 he has been a full-time writer. He is the author of eleven novels, from The Star Fraction to The Night Sessions, and many articles and short stories. His novels have received one BSFA award and three Prometheus Awards, and several have been short-listed for the Clarke and Hugo Awards.
Ken MacLeod’s weblog is The Early Days of a Better Nation at http://kenmacleod.blogspot.com.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Rescue Mission
The Fixation
Artifacts
Necroflux Day
Providence
Carnival Night
The Assistant
Glitch
One of our Bastards is Missing
Woodpunk
Minya’s Astral Angels
The Best Monkey
Long Stay
A Soul Stitched to Iron
iThink, therefore I am
About the Authors