"In a language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, the language contains neither ideas nor sounds that pre-exist the linguistic system, but only conceptual differences and phonic differences issuing from this system." (From the posthumous Course in General Linguistics, 1916.) No one becomes as famous as Saussure without both admirers and detractors reducing them to a paragraph's worth of ideas that can be readily quote...

Where is language? Answers to this have attempted to 'incorporate' language in an 'extended mind', through cognition that is 'embodied', 'distributed', 'situated' or 'ecological'. Behind these concepts is a long history that this book is the first to trace. Extending across linguistics, philosophy, psychology and medicine, as well as literary and religious dimensions of the question of what language is, and where it is located, this book challenges mainstream, mind-based accounts of langua...

“Here be dragons . . . and a lot of stories that would make a dragon blink. A fascinating kaleidoscope of people and places and Things That Might Have Been—or Might Be.” —Diana Gabaldon, New York Times bestselling authorFrom Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea to Journey to the Center of the Earth, from the fabled island of Avalon to the lost oasis of Zerzura, from The Land That Time Forgot to the golden city of El Dorado, storytellers have long imagined...

Nightmare is an online horror and dark fantasy magazine. In Nightmare‘s pages, you will find all kinds of horror fiction, from zombie stories and haunted house tales, to visceral psychological horror. In our debut issue, we have four all-new, never before published horror stories: “Property Condemned” by Jonathan Maberry “Frontier Death Song” by Laird Barron “Good Fences” by Genevieve Valentine “Afterlife” by Sarah Langan. We ...

“Short stories have to accomplish a nearly impossible magic trick: to introduce a world often much stranger than our own and make you care about it in a matter of pages,” writes R. F. Kuang in her introduction. “The most important part of this magic trick is just a willingness to get weird.” The stories in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2023 are brimming with bizarre and otherworldly premises. Women can’t lie or fall in love. Fathers feed their children ghost preser...

HOW THE WEST WAS WEIRD!From a kill-or-be-killed gunfight with a vampire to an encounter in a steampunk bordello, the weird western is a dark, gritty tale where the protagonist might be playing poker with a sorcerous deck of cards, or facing an alien on the streets of a dusty frontier town.Here are twenty-three original tales—stories of the Old West infused with elements of the fantastic—produced specifically for this volume by many of today’s finest writers. Included are Or...

A STELLAR RANGE OF FANTASY AUTHORS. ELEVEN STORIES YOU WON’T FIND ANYWHERE ELSE.The world of Underrealm has become a new landmark in epic fantasy, with legions of avid readers hungering for more.Contained within these pages are the first eleven Chronicles of Underrealm, short stories penned in this expansive world. Written by a wide array of incredible authors, these tales will reveal secrets of Underrealm that avid readers won’t find anywhere else—and in...

The 1950s were a golden age of science fiction, a decade when writers imagined alien worlds, strange technologies, and futures both thrilling and terrifying. In this collection of 22 classic short stories, you’ll encounter some of the era’s most creative minds, including five unforgettable tales by Philip K. Dick.Step into worlds where reality itself can’t be trusted. In The Hanging Stranger, an ordinary man discovers something impossible hanging from a lamppost—and no one...

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice.Step into Whisker and Crumb, where the coffee is warm, the cats are watchful, and one fallen photograph is about to expose a deadly secret.When café owner Grace Hart’s orange cat, Marmalade, keeps knocking the same old picture from the wall, it seems like ordinary feline mischief — until a stolen bracelet, a mislabeled biscuit, and a village charity tea turn cozy routine into murder.With rain on the windows, cardamom bun...

LIGHTSPEED is an online science fiction and fantasy magazine. In its pages, you will find science fiction: from near-future, sociological soft SF, to far-future, star-spanning hard SF--and fantasy: from epic fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, and contemporary urban tales, to magical realism, science-fantasy, and folktales.This month, our cover art comes from Reiko Murakami, illustrating a brand-new short story set in A. Merc Rustad's Sun Lords of the Principality series: "With Teeth Unmak...

50 Vintage Sci-Fi Short Stories from the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. More than 27 hours of vintage science fiction. These science fiction short stories were written by some of the most influential authors of the time including, Philip K. Dick, Ray Bradbury, Winston Marks, Damon Knight, Mack Reynolds, Frank M. Robinson, Russ Winterbotham, Alan E. Nourse, Charles E. Fritch, Milton Lesser, Evan Hunter, William Morrison, John Massie Davis, Irving Cox Jr., Malcolm B. Morehart Jr., Richard O. Lewis,...

A lifetime of great literature in one extraordinary volume. 50 Masterpieces You Have to Read Before You Die – Volume 1 is a carefully curated collection of the most influential, powerful, and unforgettable works ever written. Spanning genres, eras, and literary movements, this anthology brings together stories that have shaped world literature and inspired generations of readers. Inside this remarkable collection, you will discover: Timeless novels that defined literary history Profound ph...