An eerie and offbeat mystery by a Kafka Prize–winning author.The case confronting Lieutenant Gregory is not one that a man of Scotland Yard would expect. In fact, it is not one any sane man would care to entertain. Bodies are disappearing. The initial assumption is that a grave robber is roaming London and defiling local morgues. But upon further examination, it seems the deceased are, in fact, resurrecting.As Gregory stumbles his way through the tangled clu...

By the time this present group of stories was written I had passed through the cultural turbulence that engulfed nearly everyone’s life in the wild, stormy period we know as “the Sixties,” which for me had actually lasted from 1968 to 1974 or 1975. I had come through my own angry four-year-long retirement from writing in the middle 1970s, and was working again at a steady pace, though not with the frenetic prolificacy of the pre-retirement years. At the beginning of this period my personal...

Ulrich von Bek, a facet of The Eternal Champion, makes a deal with the devil in this exciting adventure story from one of the greatest authors of our time.This is the story of Ulrich von Bek, a cynical mercenary who sells his skills as a soldier in the wars taking place all over Europe. After the particularly horrific destruction of a city in which he played a role, von Bek decides to desert the military company he was working for and travel alone for awhile before...

The stories here, all of them written between March of 1972 and November of 1973, mark a critical turning point in my career. Those who know the three earlier volumes have traced my evolution from a capable journeyman, very young and as much concerned with paying the rent as he was to advancing the state of the art, into a serious, dedicated craftsman now seeking to leave his mark on science fiction in some significant way. Throughout the decade of the 1960s I had attempted to grow and evo...

Somehow, for all my outward pretence of cold-eyed professionalism, all my insistence that writing is simply a job like any other, I've discovered to my surprise and chagrin that there's more than that going on around here, that I write as much out of karmic necessity and some inescapable inner need to rededicate my own skills constantly to my—what? My craft? My art? My profession? I wrote these stories because the only way of earning a living I have ever had has been by writing, but mainly...

It's here at last—the first comprehensive overview of the extraordinary career of master storyteller Michael Swanwick. Covering over a quarter of a century, from his first two published stories—both of them Nebula finalists—to his most recent, these works bear witness to one of the most vivid and far-ranging imaginations in contemporary fiction. From the hardest of hard science fiction to the purest of core fantasy, from the heartwarming to the despairing, these are works incandescent with...

The world that these stories sprang from was the troubled, bewildering, dangerous, and very exciting world of those weird years when the barriers were down and the future was rushing into the present with the force of a river unleashed. But of course I think these stories speak to our times, too, and that most of them will remain valid as we go staggering onward through the brave new world of the twenty-first century. I am not one of those who believes that all is lost and the end is nigh....

This story, "To See the Invisible Man," written in June of 1962, marks the beginning of my real career as a science-fiction writer, I think. The 1953-58 stories collected in To Be Continued, the first of this series of volumes, are respectable professional work, some better than others but all of them at least minimally acceptable--but most of them could have been written by just about anyone. Aside from a few particularly ambitious items, they were designed to slip unobtrusively ...

First in a projected eight volumes collecting all of the short stories and novellas SF Grandmaster Silverberg wants to take their place on the permanent shelf. Each volume will be roughly 150,000-200,000 words, with classics and lesser known gems alike. Mr. Silverberg has also graced us with a lengthy introduction and extensive story notes for each tale.The Subterranean Collected Silverberg will vary greatly from the UK trade paperback series published in the 1990s. Due to the publ...

Experience a sci-fi master at his finest in this collection of 12 science fiction short stories from 1956 to 1993—many now presented in English for the very first time!“A brilliant introduction to Lem’s science fiction.” —Wall Street JournalDiscover the full range of Stanislaw Lem’s intense curiosity about scientific ideas—and his sardonic approach to human nature—in this unforgettable collection of 12 short stories.In “The...

Meet Ijon Tichy—a space age adventurer who encounters faulty time machines, intelligent washing machines, and other puzzling phenomena—in this collection from a science fiction legend.Memoirs of a Space Traveler follows the adventures of Ijon Tichy, a Gulliver of the space age, who leads readers through strange experiments involving, among other puzzling phenomena, faulty time machines, intelligent washing machines, and suicidal potatoes. The scientists Ti...

In this novel, the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning Grand Master of Science Fiction explores how far four friends will go to achieve immortality."Robert Silverberg at his very best." —George R. R. MartinAfter Eli, a scholarly college student, finds and translates an ancient manuscript called The Book of Skulls, he and his friends embark on a cross-country trip to Arizona in search of a legendary monastery where they hope to find the secret of ...