New Releases by Charles Wilson

In October 2000, The Canberra Times broke a story about the misuse of Liberal MP Peter Reith’s government funded Telecard. The card was for member’s personal use to have access to a public telephone when no other telephone was available. Mobile phones at the time were not in common use. Unauthorized calls to the tune of $50,000 had been rung up on the Workplace Relations Minister’s Telecard after he had given his son, Paul Reith, the card’s PIN in contravention of the Remuneration Tribunal’s guidelines. For more than two weeks the media was in uproar, smelling the blood of a hardnose conservative politician. Editorial writers, political commentators, and radio talkback hosts charged Reith with the Telecard’s misuse. This was another case, they said, of a rorting politician coming to grief over his all too frequent nose in the trough. The author took a different view. In the opening chapter of The Telecard Affair: Diary of a Media Lynching Second Edition, he writes: ‘While the media and the Labor Party had Peter Reith battered and strung up as a public warning, I will argue that the Telecard Affair is not about former Workplace Relations Minister, Peter Reith. It is not about MPs’ rorts. It is not about the usual ‘snouts in the trough.’ It is essentially about the media as the sharpest corrupting influence in our social and political life. It is about those media groups who function as amoral commercial enterprises. It is about journalists who betray their calling and are seduced, or coerced, by people who rule themselves according to their materialist objectives. It is about the slow death of public justice.’ The Telecard Affair was a paradigm case of the media’s irresponsible and ideologically driven misuse of their disproportionate power in the state. The author’s analysis of the media’s reporting of the Telecard Affair is unrelenting and targets some well-known media figures. He has undertaken a thorough revision of the text and added further comment to the political uproar of twenty-three years ago.

This title is part of UC Press''s Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1976.

Although humankind today can peer far deeper into the universe than ever before, we still find ourselves surrounded by the unknown and perhaps the unknowable. All great science fiction has used the human imagination to explore that realm beyond the known, just as theistic religions have done since long before the genre existed. As Hugo Award-winning author Robert Charles Wilson argues in Owning the Unknown, the genre''s freewheeling speculation and systematic world-building make it it a unique lens for understanding, examining, and assessing the truth claims of religions in general and Christianity in particular. Drawing on his personal experience, his work as a science fiction writer, and his deep knowledge of the classics of the genre, he makes the case for what he calls intuitive atheism— an atheism drawn from everyday personal knowledge that doesn''t depend on familiarity with the scholarly debate about theology and metaphysics, any more than a robust personal Christianity does. And as he reminds us, the secrets that remain hidden beyond the borders of the known universe— should we ever discover them— will probably not resemble anything currently found in our most prized philosophies, our most sacred texts, or our most imaginative science fiction.

La vie de Scott Warden bascule le jour où il est témoin de l''apparition du premier Chronolithe à Chumphon, en Thaïlande. Ce monument hors du commun célèbre la victoire du seigneur de la guerre Kuin. Mais cette victoire n''aura lieu que dans vingt ans et trois mois. Qui peut bien être ce Kuin dont on ignore tout ? Et comment ce monument a-t-il pu venir quasi instantanément du futur ? Autant de questions auxquelles vont tenter de répondre Scott et son ancien professeur de physique, Sulamith Chopra, pendant qu''autour d''eux le monde semble s''écrouler, dans l''attente de l''avènement de Kuin. Un grand roman de science-fiction aux allures de thriller scientifique empreint, comme souvent chez Robert Charles Wilson, d''humanisme et de mélancolie.

This title is part of UC Press''s Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1970.

MYSTERY AND SUSPENSE Revised 2022 It is 1975. GERDA VROUWENDIJK, under the name of Edith Bicknell, arrives in the isolated rural town of Binawarra to take up a teaching position in the local high school. Ms. Vrouwendijk is confident she can keep her disguise and purpose hidden, as well as her sinister connections. But she has not reckoned on Florence Barker. Independent Miss Barker, of mature age, outwardly severe, and feared by the townspeople (‘you will call me Miss Barker’), is not at all what she seems. Nor has the memory of a brief meeting fifteen years earlier in Middelburg, Holland, with the crippled local priest, Fr van Engelen, come back to Ms. Vrouwendijk. These slips in her otherwise meticulous planning will prove critical. Canny Miss Barker and Fr van Engelen set about discovering what Edith Bicknell is doing in their obscure little country town, and why she has an interest in the beautiful, outwardly aloof Estella Winterbine. Her motivations appear ideological but what the ideology is exactly is a mystery. A tense game of cat and mouse follows as Ms. Vrouwendijk’s manipulation of people and events becomes ever more complex. When a senior teacher is found dead at the bottom of a peak (called Death Rock by the local youth), and the local newspaper begins attacking staid Bill Huckerby, the principal of Binawarra High School, Ms. Vrouwendijk’s plans – whatever their aim – seem to have an unstoppable momentum. Then Estella goes missing. Former SAS captain and Vietnam veteran, Geoffrey Shawcross, sets off in a pursuit that takes him across the world to France and then to the Castle of Heavenly Bliss in the Dutch province of Zeeland. Mystery and thrill go together as Geoff searches for the girl he has fallen in love with. The CONCILIAR SERIES consists of eight connected but stand-alone stories. The themes of the ‘Goddess’, neo-paganism, the occult, and Gnosticism are threads through the stories. The Second Vatican Council and the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 1970s (1965-1975) form the background. The author strives to recreate the atmosphere of the times. The first book in the series was TIMES OF DISTRESS, the Second book, FEELINGS DIE NOT IN SILENCE, and the third DESCENT IN TO HADES: A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY, then comes COUNTERCULTURE DREAMS, book 4, due late 2022, followed by THE END OF HOPE, book 5, due early 2023. Extensively revised THE CASTLE OF HEAVENLY BLISS book 6 is republished August 2022.

Building effective state institutions before introducing democracy is widely presumed to improve different development outcomes. Conversely, proponents of this “stateness-first” argument anticipate that democratization before state building yields poor development outcomes. In this Element, we discuss several strong assumptions that (different versions of) this argument rests upon and critically evaluate the existing evidence base. In extension, we specify various observable implications. We then subject the stateness-first argument to multiple tests, focusing on economic growth as an outcome. First, we conduct historical case studies of two countries with different institutional sequencing histories, Denmark and Greece, and assess the stateness-first argument (e.g., by using a synthetic control approach). Thereafter, we draw on an extensive global sample of about 180 countries, measured across 1789–2019 and leverage panel regressions, preparametric matching, and sequence analysis to test a number of observable implications. Overall, we find little evidence to support the stateness-first argument.

2021 REVISED EDITION The author intertwines three themes: the character of former Prime Minister Tony Abbott as displayed in his fearless no-holds battle with the far-left radicals at Sydney University (1976-1980); what it means to be a philosophical conservative in a leftist world; and the author’s critique of the student rebellion and the radicalism driving it. The author lived through the tumultuous years of the 1960s and 1970s revolution. Tony Abbott becomes a vehicle through which he expresses his scathing critique of the student rebellion. In 2012, a passage in David Marr’s book POLITICAL ANIMAL: THE MAKING OF TONY ABBOTT caused uproar across Australia. Leftist Marr is an out-and-proud passionate critic of Abbott’s. Barbara Ramjan, wife of a top-gun criminal lawyer and hitherto unknown to the public, accused Abbott of subjecting her to an act of violence that (allegedly) occurred in 1977 when they were students at Sydney University. Marr made Ramjan’s accusation public thirty-five years later. Abbott’s many critics in politics and the media swallowed the accusation and treated the alleged violence as more evidence for the views they had long held about him. The scenario they propagate is that Abbott is sexist and hates women; claims men are the natural leaders of society; and in politics he is brutal and insensitive. Above all this, is the irrational discriminatory religion that motivates him. Abbott has no place in politics. Indeed, feminist Susan Mitchell strove to make the case in her book TONY ABBOTT; A MAN’S MAN that Abbott was ‘dangerous’. But how well do the many books and reports attacking Abbott stand up to scrutiny? How well does their judgment of Abbott bear close investigation? How much is a caricature for political purposes, and how much is supported by the evidence? What is the evidence for Ramjan’s accusation? In TONY ABBOTT AND THE TIMES OF REVOLUTION, the author investigates. He traces Abbott’s political development from school through to the end of his time at Sydney University (1963-1980). A contemporary of Abbott’s and sharing a similar background, the author draws on his experiences and reactions to the tumultuous times of the 1960s and 1970s in addition to the documentary research. The book is in four parts: the school years and the 1960s revolution; student radicalism at Sydney University 1973-1975, the prelude to Abbott’s arrival on campus; Abbott’s engagement with the far left (1976-1980); and the media and Abbott. What emerges from the author’s tracing of Abbott’s combat with the far left on campus is the waging of a heroic battle on behalf of Western Civilisation against the combined forces of Marxism in its multiple manifestations. In the final chapter, the author reviews the evidence in Marr’s book for the alleged violence and finds none of it makes sense. There are holes through which a herd of African elephants could pass without touching the sides. The book contains endnotes and an index of names. Available in paperback.

A social history of Australia, not of the famous and heroic, but of the small people, the anonymous people who were the heartbeat of a growing nation What did kids do in the 1950s when there were no smartphones, tablets, and computers? They roamed the neighbourhood on scooters and bikes. They went on bush hikes. They went to Saturday matinees where the theatres were packed to the rafters, and kids yelled at hero-action and booed kissing. Most of their pleasures were self-made. Besides roaming the streets free of risk, kids enjoyed trips to the beach and zoo. They took a double-decker bus town to see the Christmas displays. Christmas in the city was a wonderland of toys and amusements. The decade of the 1950s now seems idyllic to many now in their seventies and eighties. It was so different from the first decades of the 21st century that those years now seem like another world, an impossible world of social and moral values. In today’s atmosphere, it seems hard to imagine it possessed any legitimate social and moral coherence. The author looks back on those years, telling the story as much about the world he grew up in as about himself. He starts from his birth in July 1946 and goes to the end of his second year at primary school, 1953, when he turned six and learnt to read. It was also the year that Princess Elizabeth was crowned Queen of England, a super-nova event for Australia. The author’s story involves his lifelong friend, Pete, a rubella baby, a condition which tragically took his already poor sight in his teenage years. Pete’s story, told as an adult without sight, is fascinating. The year 1946 was the year after the Second World War had ended. Despite an optimistic outlook, Australia was full of talk of the war – of the threat of war, of the suffering, of the shocking cruelty of the Japanese army, and of lost loved ones. The author’s upbeat father, just discharged from the navy with the rank of Chief Petty Officer, put it all behind him and began building the family’s first house in Lane Cove, a suburb on the north side of Sydney Harbour, and the scene of his childhood. Their new three-bedroom, double-brick home was like a palace. For a boy, who according to his mother had ants in his pants, the author remembers much about the social and political events that provoked his father into long and loud comment. He has clear memories of the Korean War, the activities of the communist-controlled unions, Prime Minister Menzies’ measures against them, and so much more. The local convent under the regime of the Mercy Sisters is an unmissable part of his story. He recalls with affection the sisters’ teaching methods and their strict regimentation of their pupils. He thinks some of their disciplinary methods, now condemned by many, are rather amusing to look back on. He regards that class of 1953 as the end of a phase in his development when he learnt to read. The following year, 1954, was rich in social and political events and will start the fourth book in the family history series, COMMUNISTS, BILLYCARTS AND TWO WHEELERS.

A history of colonial Australia, not of the famous and heroic, but of the small people, the anonymous people who were the heartbeat of a growing nation In this first book of his social history series, the author sets out on a journey through Australia’s colonial history with his ancestors from British Isles. All arrived by the 1830s, two on the First Fleet in 1788. Most are from central and southern England. Four are from two little villages close by each other in Wiltshire: Semley and Donhead St Mary. In addition, two convicts and one free settler came from Dublin, Monaghan, and Donegal in Ireland, and a farming family of four came from Aberdeen in Scotland. It is surprising how much he finds out about them all—joys, successes, and tragedies. Their lives are anything but dull. James Joseph Wilson, who narrowly escaped the gallows and was surprisingly literate for a man thrice convicted of burglary, arrived in Port Jackson on board the Prince Regent in 1827. The colonial authorities assigned him to Robert Lowe, one of the Colony’s early landholders. Lowe sent him to Mudgee in north-western New South Wales to shepherd his flocks. Young 18-year-old hutkeeper James Joseph was one of the first inhabitants in the Mudgee area. He teamed up with fellow convict Michael Jones to look for land. They married sisters Jane and Elizabeth Harris, daughters of free settlers, and travelled northwest to the Coonamble area, 330 miles from Sydney, to set up their farms. The two freed convicts and the Harris sisters became his great-great-grandparents. Nine convicts are in the direct line of his ancestors. He traces their lives against the social and historical background of colonial Australia, presenting a very different picture from the view usually found in school history books. They all thrive, taking advantage of their second chance. This book is the story of their redemption. Besides offering the reader an interesting, sometimes gripping family story, he reveals the cultural continuities in which his ancestors acted and how they responded to those continuities in a totally different physical environment. He seeks to discover to what extent the outlook, culture and character of his ancestors worked to make his extended family and him what they are. Naming his family Catholic is not gratuitous. Religion, as a social and political force, always plays an important role in a nation. It is emphatically the case in Australia where the national establishment threw together a sizable underclass of (Irish) Catholics with the Protestant Ascendancy. How was that to work out in a democratic order where there was no legal disqualification based on religion? He deals with that. Second, of my original ancestors only three were Catholic. The rest were a mixture of Protestants, from the Church of England to Scottish Wesleyans, to dissenters. How the Wilsons ended up Catholic makes an interesting story. And, finally, perhaps most importantly, he sketches a picture of the way Australia developed as a new people and a new nation. In 1950, most Australians had an ancestry like his.

A fictionalized account of a past life experience that has no bearing on people or places in the 20th century. The book is to entertain with ideas and concepts. These ideas and concepts are made up.

A discounted ebundle of author Robert Charles Wilson''s Hugo Award-winning and critically-acclaimed Spin Saga Trilogy, which includes: Spin, Axis, and Vortex “Robert Charles Wilson is a hell of a storyteller.” —Stephen King on Spin “Wilson does so many fine things, it’s hard to know where to begin to praise him.” —The Washington Post on Spin Spin One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives... Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger. Axis Visit the "world next door"—the planet engineered by the mysterious Hypotheticals to support human life, and connected to Earth by way of the Arch that towers hundreds of miles over the Indian Ocean. Humans are colonizing this new world—and, predictably, fiercely exploiting its resources, chiefly large deposits of oil in the western deserts of the continent of Equatoria. Vortex Turk and his young friend Isaac Dvali are taken up by a community of fanatics who use them to enable a passage to the dying Earth, where they believe a prophecy of human/Hypothetical contact will be fulfilled. The prophecy is only partly true, however, and Turk must unravel the truth about the nature and purpose of the Hypotheticals before they carry him on a journey through warped time to the end of the universe itself. Tor books by Robert Charles Wilson Last Year The Affinities Burning Paradise Julian Comstock Blind Lake The Chronoliths The Perseids and Other Stories Bios Darwinia Mysterium A Bridge of Years A Hidden Place At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Golgotha and the Holy Sepulchre. 250 pages

The Hugo Award–winning author of Spin, praised as “a hell of a storyteller” by Stephen King, gives time travel his own mind-bending twist . . . Two events made September 1st a memorable day for Jesse Cullum. First, he lost a pair of Oakley sunglasses. Second, he saved the life of President Ulysses S. Grant. In the near future of Robert Charles Wilson’s Last Year, the technology exists to open doorways into the past—but not our past, not exactly. Each “past” is effectively an alternate world, identical to ours but only up to the date on which we access it. And a given “past” can only be reached once. After a passageway is open, it’s the only road to that particular past; once closed, it can’t be reopened. A passageway has been opened to a version of late 19th-century Ohio. It’s been in operation for most of a decade, but it’s no secret, on either side of time. A small city has grown up around it to entertain visitors from our time, and many locals earn a good living catering to them. But like all such operations, it has a shelf life; as the “natives” become more sophisticated, their version of the “past” grows less attractive as a destination. Jesse Cullum is a native. And he knows the passageway will be closing soon. He’s fallen in love with a woman from our time, and he means to follow her back—no matter whose secrets he has to expose in order to do it. “Wilson’s prose is beautifully constructed in this intelligent and gripping novel.” —Chicago Review of Books

Kids love fast food. And the fast food industry definitely loves kids. It couldn''t survive without them. Did you know that the biggest toy company in the world is McDonald''s? It''s true. In fact, one out of every three toys given to a child in the United States each year is from a fast food restaurant. When Eric Schlosser''s best-selling book, Fast Food Nation, was published for adults in 2001, many called for his groundbreaking insight to be shared with young people. Now Schlosser, along with co-writer Charles Wilson, has investigated the subject further, uncovering new facts children need to know. In Chew On This, they share with kids the fascinating and sometimes frightening truth about what lurks between those sesame seed buns, what a chicken ''nugget'' really is, and how the fast food industry has been feeding off children for generations. This edition features a new introduction by Eric Schlosser.

Young ER doctor Michael Sims feels too many of his patients are dying without cause. Shannon Donnelly, the Congressman''s beautiful daughter, believes the police are wrong in ruling her father''s death a suicide. Now they''re teaming up uncover the truth about a terrifying medical experiment involving nerve regeneration and organ transplants. It''s backed by millions of dollars. It''s protected at the highest levels of government. But there are no volunteers, no donors. There are only ordinary people who check into this Mississippi hospital...and discover that death isn''t he worst thing they have to fear. Getting "chosen" is....

The South Louisiana Sleep Disorders Institute promises to let you live out your dreams in your sleep—to experience them so strongly that afterwards you won''t be able to tell the difference between them and real memories. The Institute Director claims to use these lucid dreams only as therapy for her clients. But when one of the clinic''s clients and two of its neighbors are murdered, Detective Mark French finds that the institute also has more sinister purposes.

A team of scientists explore an uncharted region of the Amazon, seeking exotic plants that may yield cures for the diseases afflicting humanity. But their mission goes horribly wrong when the party is attacked by the area''s mysterious natives, and when they learn too late that they''ve landed in the cauldron of a deadly, unknown virus.

National bestselling author Charles Wilson delivers a cutting-edge thriller based on real-life experiments at improving human intelligence currently underway in both government and private circles. Imagine a computer chip no bigger than the tip of a pencil. This chip, if implanted in a human brain, could give someone encyclopedic knowledge, lightning-fast reflexes and superior learning skills. In a remote military hospital in Montana, an experiment is being performed: implant the chip into the brains of five volunteers. These volunteers, four men and one woman, are all serving life sentences in prison. The experiment works...but the five criminals escape. One young doctor is pulled into the intrigue by the baffling murder of his medical school mentor. Can this one doctor stop the conspiracy of five powerful opponents...whose driving desire is absolute and total control?

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"Cassie [Iverson], eighteen years old, lives in the United States in the year 2014--but it''s not our United States and it''s not our 2014. Cassie''s world has been at peace since the Great Armistice of 1914. But Cassie knows the world isn''t what it seems. Her parents were part of a group who gradually discovered the awful truth: that for decades--back to the dawn of radio communications--human progress has been interfered with, made more peaceful and benign, by an extraterrestrial entity"--

The First Peace; My Search for the Better Angels is a spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and perhaps educational memoir that spans fifty-plus years, eleven states, three countries, military and seminary, birth and death, marriage and divorce, three Christian denominations, and a monastery. This memoir is a journey through faith and knowledge, hope and reality, love and experience. The author attempts to reconcile what he has been taught, what he believes, what he experiences, what he knows, what he wants, and what he perceives. His unacknowledged question: What do we do when we evolve beyond the faith of our fathers (and/or mothers)? After a life of seeking to understand through the lens of Christianity (and other religions), the author comes to understand that religious beliefs and dogma may become a barrier to faith and understanding. The author learns that liberty entails responsibility, faith requires self-reliance, and enlightenment is found within. Liberty and freedom entail responsibility, responsibly that no other person or institution can assume for use. We remain responsible for our actions and inactions. No person, government, or religious institution can assume or remove our responsibility for our actions, for our lives. The First Peace; My Search for the Better Angels is an attempt to weave a tapestry of stories, ideas and ideals, ethics, experiences, and expressions with the goal (and hope) to entertain, inform, educate, persuade, stimulate, and even challenge. Perhaps The First Peace; My Search for the Better Angels will remind you of your own experiences, thoughts, and feelings that provide some measure of contentment, but also some measure of challenge, even conflict. The silence beyond those reminders is where we find the first peace and where we are at liberty to be real and where the better angels of our nature touch us.

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?"

"Vortex" tells the story of Turk Findley, the protagonist introduced in "Axis," who is transported 10,000 years into the future by the mysterious entities called "the Hypotheticals."

From the Hugo Award–winning author of Spin, an early classic of time-travel and human transformation. Originally published in 1991, we are bringing this back as a reprint.

Paul Martin is not sure what he is, where he is going, and who he is going with – until he meets Persephone Stickx with whom he falls in love. Super confident modern Persephone is determined to lead Paul to inner enlightenment through the divine feminine. Paul meets Persephone when friend property dealer Brad brings Persephone and her partner Hayden to Paul’s house in the pristine hinterland, a haven for environmentalists and counterculture enthusiasts. Persephone and Hayden show a keen interest in an old religious picture Paul bought at the local market. They say the picture represents bondage for Paul. They want to help Paul break that bondage. Their enthusiasm to help intensifies when they learn Paul knows Fr Robbie Pleasance, who is before the courts for the sexual abuse of a minor. Paul was in a relationship with the priest, and he needs to act. They enlist brilliant lawyer Aleta Broadbent. To lead a reluctant Paul to inner enlightenment, Persephone and Hayden expose him to a ritual that aims to expose the divine feminine. But it does not go as Persephone plans. The ritual fails. Instead of Persephone leading Paul to the divine feminine, she finds her growing affection for Paul leading her away from her salvific task. Hayden sees the relationship sabotaging their enterprise and breaks it up. Paul is despairing. By this time, a band of media people and lawyers pursuing clerical sexual abuse is circling Paul. What can he do to escape Aleta’s manipulation and the media’s attention and have Persephone with him again? The barriers seem invincible as he drawn farther into a vortex of a national media frenzy over the alleged abuse of a minor by the city’s Catholic archbishop.

A collection of the “best of the best” science fiction stories published in 2009 by current and emerging masters of the genre. In “Erosion,” by Ian Creasey, a man tests the limits of his exo-suit prior to leaving a dying Earth. In “As Women Fight,” by Sara Genge, a hunter, in a society of body-switchers, has no time to train for a fight to inhabit his wife’s body. In “A Story, with Beans,” by Steven Gould, the role of religion in a dystopian future plagued with metal-eating bugs is considered. In “Events Preceding the Helvetican Renaissance,” by John Kessel, a monk, in the far future, steals the only copy of a set of plays from a repressive regime and uses this loot to free his people. In “On the Human Plan,” by Jay Lake, a mysterious alien visits a far-future, dying Earth in search of the death of Death. Set in the Jackaroo sequence, “Crimes and Glory,” by Paul McAuley, a detective chases a thief to recover alien technology that both aliens and humanity are desperate to recover. Set in the Lovecraftian “Boojum” universe, “Mongoose” by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear, a vermin hunter and his tentacled assistant come on board a space station to hunt toves and raths. In “Before My Last Breath,” by Robert Reed, a geologist discovers a strange fossil in a coal mine that leads to the discovery of a peculiar graveyard. In the Hugo Award winning novelette “The Island,” by Peter Watts, a woman on a spaceship must decide whether to place a stargate near an alien society that will ultimately destroy it. Finally, “This Peaceable Land; or, The Unbearable Vision of Harriet Beecher Stowe,” by Robert Charles Wilson, is an alternate American Civil War history in which the war was never fought, slavery gradually disappeared, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin was never published.

From Robert Charles Wilson, the Hugo Award-winning author of Spin, comes Julian Comstock, 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 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. 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 the war hero "Captain Commongold." The masses 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 President''s late brother Bryce—a popular general who challenged the President''s power, and paid the ultimate price. As Julian ascends to the pinnacle of power, his admiration for the works of the Secular Ancients sets him at fatal odds with the Dominion. Treachery and intrigue will dog him as he closes in on the accomplishment of his lifelong ambition: to make a film about the life of Charles Darwin. At the Publisher''s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

In an altered America where machines no longer work and magic holds sway, former lawyer-turned-visionary leader Cal Griffin guides his small band on a quest toward the Source of the Change -- following a trail he hopes will reunite him with his abducted sister, Christina, transformed into one of the powerful, enigmatic beings called "flares." Armed with little more than compassion and a determination to heal the world, Cal, the warrior Colleen Brooks, Russian physician Doc Lysenko, and bipolar street wizard Herman "Goldie" Goldman encounter old foes and new friends in a landscape of unimaginable beauties and magnificent horrors -- forced to confront the frightful secrets of an emissary from a dread region and to trust in a brilliant triumvirate of grad students who could get things running again ... at a terrible cost—as the final moves in humankind''s ultimate nightmare are played out in the depths of the Ghostlands.