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At ten-thirty in the morning the skies over London were clear. Then an arrow formation of five bright points became visible. They appeared to be moving at an amazing speed in tight circles. They were spiralling down to about five thousand feet, and at that altitude their nature was easily discernable. They were the tings most of us had discussed and dismissed at one time o another. Flying Saucers. Giant saucers, smooth and lustrous and blinding, more than a hundred yards in diameter. They hung over the city in a neat formation.

Millennia in the future, Earth has become a backwater planet, ignored by others in the galaxy. Its one jewel is Cirque – the city on the Abyss, a city of love and harmony, with inspiring religious rites.

But in the Abyss there lives the Beast, formed from the castoff hates of the Cirquians: a beast whose body is refuse, whose mind is black as sin. Feeble weapons are no match for the Beast.

And now, after centuries, it’s climbing out of the Abyss to claim its own…

The Great Tyrant rules the solar system with absolute terror. Only one man dares to fight back.

The time is the 24th century. Humankind populates the entire solar system from icy Pluto to boiling Mercury. Great domed cities, humming factories, hordes of workers, all feed the power of the dictatorship that controls all life. Only a small group among the cowed population dares rebel in a struggle that pits democracy against tyranny.

But there is a third force at work as well. A mysterious band of assassins whose final solution to the problem of humanity’s fate is as terrifying as it is irresistible – one of them is known as the AGENT OF CHAOS.

The Plague’s origins were mysterious, but its consequences were all too obvious: quarantined cities, safe-sex machines, Sex Police, the outlawing of old-fashioned love. Four people hold the fate of humanity in their hands…A sexual mercenary condemned to death as a foot soldier in the Army of the Living Dead; a scientist who’s devoted his whole life to destroying the virus and now discovers he has only ten weeks to succeed; a God-fearing fundamentalist on his way to the presidency before he accepts a higher calling; and a young infected coed from Berkeley on a bizarre crusade to save the world with a new religion of carnal abandon. Each will discover that the only thing more dangerous than the Plague is the cure.

Spinrad examines one of his most compelling obsessions – the possible “futures” of America.
Street Meat: In New York City, streeties, zonies and subway cannibals are locked in a nighmarish scrabble for rat meat, sex – and survival.
The Lost Continent: group of African tourists visit the ruins of Space Age America – a surreal landscape of abandoned skyscrapers, empty streets and dead, rusted machinery.
World War Last: The hashish-smoking Sheik of Koram has a plan to trick America and Russia into war.
La Vie Continue: In Paris exiled science-fiction author Norman Spinrad ignores a lucrative – but dangerous – bidding war between the KGB and the CIA for the film rights to his story “Riding the Torch”.

A secluded Pacific Northwest cottage becomes a door to the past for Tom Winter, who travels back to the New York City of 1962, followed by a human killing machine that he alone must stop.

Scott Warden is a man haunted by the past – and soon to be haunted by the future.
In early twenty-first-century Thailand, Scott is an expatriate slacker. Then, one day, he inadvertently witnesses an impossible event: the violent appearance of a 200-foot stone pillar in the forested interior. Its arrival collapses trees for a quarter mile around its base, freezing ice out of the air and emitting a burst of ionizing radiation. It appears to be composed of an exotic form of matter. And the inscription chiseled into it commemorates a military victory…sixteen years in the future.
Shortly afterwards, another, larger pillar arrives in the center of Bangkok – obliterating the city and killing thousands. Over the next several years, human society is transformed by these mysterious arrivals from, seemingly, our own near future. Who is the warlord “Kuin” whose victories they note?
Scott wants only to rebuild his life. But some strange look of causality keeps drawing him in, to the central mystery and a final battle with the future.

Robert Charles Wilson, says The New York Times, “writes superior science fiction thrillers.” His Darwinia won Canada’s Aurora Award; his most recent novel, The Chronoliths, won the prestigious John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Now he tells a gripping tale of alien contact and human love in a mysterious but hopeful universe.

At Blind Lake, a large federal research installation in northern Minnesota, scientists are using a technology they barely understand to watch everyday life in a city of lobster like aliens upon a distant planet. They can’t contact the aliens in any way or understand their language. All they can do is watch.

Then, without warning, a military cordon is imposed on the Blind Lake site. All communication with the outside world is cut off. Food and other vital supplies are delivered by remote control. No one knows why.

The scientists, nevertheless, go on with their research. Among them are Nerissa Iverson and the man she recently divorced, Raymond Scutter. They continue to work together despite the difficult conditions and the bitterness between them. Ray believes their efforts are doomed; that culture is arbitrary, and the aliens will forever be an enigma.

Nerissa believes there is a commonality of sentient thought, and that our failure to understand is our own ignorance, not a fact of nature. The behavior of the alien she has been tracking seems to be developing an elusive narrative logic–and she comes to feel that the alien is somehow, impossibly, aware of the project’s observers.

But her time is running out. Ray is turning hostile, stalking her. The military cordon is tightening. Understanding had better come soon….

Blind Lake is a 2004 Hugo Award Nominee for Best Novel.

From the Hugo-winning author of Spin, an exuberant adventure in a post-climate-change America

In the reign of President Deklan Comstock, a reborn United States is struggling back to prosperity. Over a century after the Efflorescence of Oil, after the Fall of the Cities, after the Plague of Infertility, after the False Tribulation, after the days of the Pious Presidents, the sixty stars and thirteen stripes wave from the plains of Athabaska to the national capital in New York City. In Colorado Springs, the Dominion sees to the nation’s spiritual needs. In Labrador, the Army wages war on the Dutch. America, unified, is rising once again.

Then out of Labrador come tales of a new Ajax-Captain Commongold, the Youthful Hero of the Saguenay. The ordinary people follow his adventures in the popular press. The Army adores him. The President is…troubled. Especially when the dashing Captain turns out to be his nephew Julian, son of the falsely accused and executed Bryce.

Treachery and intrigue dog Julian’s footsteps. Hairsbreadth escapes and daring rescues fill his days. Stern resolve and tender sentiment dice for Julian’s soul, while his admiration for the works of the Secular Ancients, and his adherence to the evolutionary doctrines of the heretical Darwin, set him at fatal odds with the hierarchy of the Dominion. Plague and fire swirl around the Presidential palace when at last he arrives with the acclamation of the mob.

As told by Julian’s best friend and faithful companion, a rustic yet observant lad from the west, this tale of the 22nd Century asks- and answers-the age-old question: “Do you want to tell the truth, or do you want to tell a story?”

In his first story collection, Robert Charles Wilson, one of the most distinguished SF authors of his generation, weaves a tapestry of tales set in and around the city of Toronto – a haunted, numinous Toronto of past, present and future, buzzing with strangeness.


In “The Fields of Abraham”, one of three stories written especially for this collection, an impoverished immigrant boy is trained in strange disciplines by a bookseller who is more than he seems. In “The Perseids”, winner of Canada’s national SF award, love and amateur astronomy weave in and out of a terrifying tale of forced human evolution. In “The Observers”, an awkward young Canadian girl who sees extra-human presences has an extraordinary encounter in 1950s California with Edwin Hubble. In “Plato’s Mirror”, a professional New Age charlatan has a genuine and terrible encounter with the extraordinary. And in the Hugo-nominated “Divide by Infinity”, an aging Toronto book-lover finds himself becoming, literally, increasingly unlikely.


Throughout are showcased Wilson’s suppleness and storytelling strength: bravura ideas, scientific rigor and living, breathing human beings facing choices that matter in a universe stranger than we can imagine.

In a time when Earth’s interplanetary Empire is crumbling . . .

On a world where technology has begun to fail . . .

When the rightful ruler of the planet has been deposed by renegades . . .

One young man embodies the spirit of survival.

Frank Rovzar has seen his father murdered most foully in a palace coup. Escaping the deadly Transports he flees to the only safe place he can think of, Munson Underground, the city beneath the surface of the planet, den of thieves and haven of the damned.

Rovzar has only two goals. The first is survival. The second is vengeance. He will have both, he vows, and he embarks on a course that will see him rise from the dregs of society to the very pinnacle of power.

Welcome to the holy city.

Gregorio Rivas was a redeemer, one of the courageous men who snatched converts from the sinister cult of Norton Jaybush.

Currency brandy was what they used for money in post-nuclear L.A. Ten thousand fifths was the price Rivas set to retrieve the only girl he ever loved.

But when a hemogoblin whispered Come to me from the shadows, it looked like Gregorio Rivas would be leaving by the Dog Town gate.

Unless the genial host of Deviant’s Palace would swop an apostle for a hemogoblin. Norton Jaybush needed a new High Priest – and Rivas had been shortlisted for the job…

Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award for best novel, 1985

As Jack Eskridge sped through the night toward Chicago, the sky was suddenly lit with a flash of brilliance.

Jack stopped the car and ran toward the light. He was greeted by a fantastic sight: a huge, weirdly glowing arch, through which were pouring strange-looking tanks, airships and metallic-clad soldiers carrying sinister weapons.

Jack knew he had to get away and warn the country of the invasion. But before he could reach Chicago all the major cities in the United States had been conquered by the aliens.

No one knew where they came from or what their evil purpose was. Only one thing was certain – they had to be stopped before the whole of mankind fell under their domination.

One minute I was in New York . . . walking down Sixth Avenue, a private eye on a two-bit job . . .
Next minute I was in New York . . . a crazy town I almost recognised – but Goebbels was speaking in Union square, Hitler invited me to a cocktail party, and aliens from outer space were running the whole show. Fun City it wasn’t . . .

Plucked from his own “time”, a pawn in a Galactic power play, Ron Archer fights his way through a deadly maze of intrigue and conspiracy to an incredible destiny at the end of the star lanes!

An ideal agrarian community run by women and ruled by love and harmony. A city-state that mirrored history’s most famous utopian vision. a society aglow with the wit and style that only Regency England had briefly achieved. All were real, all were flourishing. All were waiting to astound and entrap four space voyagers from Earth who had violated all odds by landing on this unknown planet.

In the near future, the super-modern city of Gloucester has been transformed – completely redesigned and rebuilt to the principles of ‘scientific city planning’. This gleaming city is threatened with extinction by a mysterious spore from space that brings mankind’s proud structures crashing to the ground . . .

The palace was several hundred years old, a sort of haphazard medieval city containing church buildings, stables, army barracks – and the offices and homes of the ministers of the Revolutionary Government, in a Communist satellite country somewhere in Europe. The palace rose starkly and threateningly out of the marshes, its three great gilt domes reminding observers of the glittering monarchies that once resided there. But all was changed, all was forbidding.

“We stand too high to be human, Katarin”, says the President of the country to his tempestuous, unloving wife. The revolution, which made him absolute ruler, has also taken him away from Katarin, dehumanizing him and his power-ridden ministers. Katarin, in defiance of the restrictions that bind her life, takes a lover, finding herself liberated even as she senses that the consequences are sure to be disastrous.

In a governmental Punishment and Protection centre, Charge Nurse Landon is wondering why one of the new inductees seems familiar. Meanwhile Chief Inspector Duncan is driving home from a stakeout in Liverpool. When the two men’s destinies meet, the result is a complex mystery with a political edge.

The Empire of Toromon had finally declared war. The attacks on its planes had been nothing compared to the final insult – the kidnapping of the Crown Prince.

But how would the members of this civilisation – one of the few that survived the Great Fire – get beyond the deadly radiation barrier, behind which the enemy lay? And assuming they got beyond the barrier, how would they deal with that enemy – the Lord of the Flames – whose very presence was unknown to the people among whom he lived?

The war was over. The great computer which had arranged and directed the complex military operations of that future nation was to be dismantled. But the computer had become expert in the science of self-defence…and it resisted.
The government buildings were blasted. Rockets rained on the great city, and the Empire of Toromon, the first great hope of humanity after the millennia of radiation wreckage, faced disaster at the hands of a super-scientific monster of its own creation.
But, unknown even to Toromon’s desperate leaders, was the fact that behind the berserk computer lurked the unearthly mind of a real enemy – a foe from the most distant realm of space, intent on making the Earth the first victim of galactic conquest.

Enter the magical realm of the most fascinating empire ever created.

In the ancient, fabled land of Nevèrÿon, they tell of a gleaming golden city, driven deep beneath the waves of history – the city whose whispered name is Neveryóna.

For Pryn, a young girl fleeing her village on the back of a dragon, Neveryóna is the shining symbol of all that is out of reach. It leads her to the exotic port city of Kolhari, where she talks with the wealthy merchant Madame Keyne, walks with Gorgik the Liberator as he schemes against the Court of Eagles – and crosses the Bridge of Lost Desire in search of her destiny.

Under Eddie Burton’s management the ambitious starlet Lorna Maxwell seemed headed for the top of Broadway’s glamorous world of make-believe. And then she vanished – through a wall where there was no door. Eddie found himself plunging after her into a city beyond reality.

In that weird twin city to New York, Eddie became a hunted fugitive while his girl friend turned up as an ever-present face and all-pervading voice that awed and mystified the inhabitants. And Eddie learned that between him and return to his natural home stood her new manager, a mysterious figure who ruled by a tyrannical combination of super-scientific miracle and brute force.

Earth was finally entering the galaxy…

The ‘Allies’ had arrived, sweeping down from the stars to offer a jaded Earth the marvels of the cosmos.

And Earth had gone crazy. Farmers sat back to wait for Vita Flakes to fall from the sky. New York City drank itself into a permanent starstruck stupor. Blissed-out teenagers wandered into the Great Mexican Defoliation Desert to wait for the New Gods to bear them off to the astral plane…

But the ‘Allies’ weren’t in the business of trading something for nothing. This impertinent little marketworld might fetch a nice price on the interstellar auction block… particularly if a runaway wondergirl named Golden Vanity was tossed into the bargain!

“My lover, my protector, my friend, my doctor, my brother – they’re all killing me.”
Peter Roos cannot help knowing the thoughts of those around him. A rare physical condition has given him that power. Now he has “heard” about the government’s secret plan to give up control of America to the military – to build an underground city for themselves in the event of a nuclear attack. Unfortunately for Roos, the government knows he knows. And the project’s sponsors – including his senator brother – have no choice.
They must get him out of the way – permanently!