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Seventeen of writer Michael Bishop’s favorite stories were handpicked from his previously uncollected works to create this compelling collection, providing an excellent overview of a career that includes award-winning science fiction, horror, fantasy, satire, space opera, and mystery. In “A Tapestry of Little Murders, ” a murderer attempts to escape along a literal road to self-destruction. A medical missionary, tortured by government thugs, reveals her dying wish in “With a Little Help from Her Friends.” In “The Procedure, ” an operation to remove a tumorous growth will hopefully excise from the patient’s mind and body all tendencies toward faith and superstition. From futuristic mystery and Vietnam-era dark fantasy to theological speculation on Christ’s death, a variety of lyrical voices speak through these haunting stories. An essay by the author divulges the genesis of each story.

For something like two hundred and fifty years Earth had been dominated by humanoid aliens from the star world of Alishang. But man’s spirit refused to be conquered. There was a world-wide underground planning for the day of final liberation. And there were four leaders who knew the secret that would guarantee victory – the secret of ZI.

Rupert Clinton, intelligence man for this underground, was not one of those four; yet somewhere deep in the recesses of his subconscious mind, he knew ZI’s secret.

The answers behind the mind-bending origins of Riverworld lie at last within reach, as the remarkable gathering of Earthlings – including Sir Richard Burton, Samuel Clemens, Alice Liddell Hargreaves (the real-life Alice in Wonderland) and the Chinese poet Li Po – finally breaches the stronghold of Riverworld’s extraordinary super-race.

But answers would lead to more mind-bending questions. Who is the Mysterious Stranger who taunted the Riverworld resurrectees with hints of the truth? What is the key to the gargantuan computer that wields the power of life and death?

The astonishing secrets lie within the Dark Tower – but only for those brave enough to seek them and wise enough to decipher them .

THE DAUGHTER OF KAIFENG

The world was haunted. Every sunset the natives went home, locked their doors, and pulled down the window blinds. Ghosts didn’t scare Kennedy. As an agent of FATE, it took more than superstition to shake him. But Epidoris was the real thing. Monsters did appear in the darkness, people did vanish at night – a whole MALACA barracks had vanished, garrison, weapons and building.

That’s what brought Kennedy to Epidoris. That and one thing more – a creature of the infamous Dr. Kaifeng had turned up. A beautiful woman, a princess she called herself – but Kennedy had seen her before – lying in a processing vat on a Kaifeng planetoid of warped genetics. Between the scientific machinations of the galaxy’s most perverted mind and the spectral realities of a disputed world there had to be a meaning that boded no good for Terra – and that’s where Kennedy came in.

It is the 21st century, and a man can journey through time in the form of disembodied consciousness. Now Roy Colton is about to leap 20,000 years into the past. His mission: to observe the fabled city-island of Atlantis through the mind of its royal heir, Prince Ram. But Roy is soon worried by Ram’s dark dreams. Do they presage the island’s legendary destruction? And how can Atlantis be so technologically brilliant during a barbaric ice age? Boldly, Roy seeks the truth, yet nothing can prepare him for the strange secret of Atlantis’s past…and future.

THREE AGAINST THE STARS!

A sky pirate armed with superior weapons of his own invention…

First contact with an alien race dangerous enough to threaten the safety of two planets…

The arrival of an unseen dark sun whose attendant marauders aimed at the very end of civilization in this Solar System…

These were the three challenges that tested the skill and minds of the brilliant team of scientist-astronauts Arcot, Wade, and Morey. Their initial adventures are a classic of science fiction which first brought the name of their author, John W. Campbell, Jr., into prominence as a master of the inventive imagination – long before he became the editor of Astounding/Analog and changed the field of science fiction forever!

Predictably unpredictable, normally abnormal.

Watson combines science fiction and fantasy into an eclectic mix that includes stories about fallen angels in Hell rebelling and mounting a breakout, about the inconvenience of keeping aging parents in your brain instead of a nursing home, about Jesus’ immortal brother as solo passenger on the first starship, about alien coffins bombarding the solar system, about right-wing U.S. militias stealing a quantum computer to commit nuclear blackmail, about a computer games designer haunted by the cyber-ghost of his murdered wife, about frozen heads and strange mind-changes, and how a cake decorator defeats a vampire with a sweet tooth. De-evolution, treasure-hunting via hang glider, dark animal fantasies, humanity as hive-entity, Hercules Poirot on a starship – Watson takes the strange, the eerie the weird, mixes his seasoned writing skills, and produces a potpourri of the fantastic. These nineteen stories are sure to amuse, bemuse and entertain.