Alexander Jablokov

Bernal Haydon-Rumi, executive assistant to a funder of eccentric projects, drops by his boss’s house on the way home from a business trip. By the next morning, he’s been knocked out, his wealthy socialite boss Muriel has stolen a car and vanished, and the AI designed for planetary exploration that she’s been funding turns out to be odder than it should be. In figuring out what’s going on, Bernal has to deal with an anti-AI activist toting a handmade electronic arsenal, a local serial killer, a drug dealer with a business problem, a cryonic therapist stalked by past mistakes—and someone who specifically wants Bernal dead. Brain Thief is a fun, literate speculative fiction adventure, sort of New England cyberpunk noir, set a year or ten from now, somewhere between the Berkshires and Boston, and includes, at no extra charge, a 30-foot-tall fiberglass cowgirl.

Brain Thief

In the year 2015, a dolphin researcher with dubious motives removes the barriers impeding human/delphine communications and transforms the ocean-dwelling creatures into cybernetic weapons of destruction. Reprint.

A Deeper Sea

In a future solar system inhabited by eleven alien races, one refugee, Ripi, is attracting the attention of various government and private factions who want access to his vast technological knowledge. Reprint.

Deepdrive

Returning to Mars after a long visit to Earth, a politician learns that his younger brother has become involved in a dangerous underground cult movement that is responsible for a governor's assassination. Reprint. PW.

River of Dust

Stephen Baxter

Nancy Kress

Michael Blumlein

Robert Reed

Martin L. Shoemaker

Vylar Kaftan

Short novels are movie length narratives that may well be the perfect length for science fiction stories. This unabridged collection presents the best-of-the-best short science fiction novels published in 2013 by current and emerging masters of this vibrant form of story-telling. In “Earth I,” by Stephen Baxter, asearch among the stars to ferret out the origins of mankind amidst the Xaian normalization digs up many surprises. In “Success,” by Michael Blumlein, a brilliant but erratic biologist studying epigenetics struggles to hang on to his grip on everyday life as he writes his ground-breaking tome. In “Feral Moon,” by Alexander Jablokov, the Alliance military is invading Phobos to retrieve dead bodies for later repatriation, but the stiff resistance is putting the operation in serious doubt. In “The Weight of the Sunrise,” by Vylar Kaftan, winner of both the Nebula Award and the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, the Incan empire is offered a vaccine, to contain a smallpox out-break, by a Virginian raising funds for the American war against the British. In “One,” by Nancy Kress, a boxer down on his luck gains the ability to read minds and grapples round-after-round with the consequences. In the Great Shipstory “Precious Mental,” by Robert Reed, an immortal captain who has been living incognito for hundreds of years is kidnaped to help salvage an ancient derelict spaceship. Finally, in the Poirot-like mystery “Murder on the AldrinExpress,” by Martin L. Shoemaker, murder is suspected in the death of the leader of a Mars expedition when evidence of sabotage is uncovered.

Alexander Jablokov

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