Large retail chains have become the most powerful corporations in America and are rapidly transforming our economy, communities, and landscape. In this deft and revealing book, Stacy Mitchell illustrates how mega-retailers are fueling many of our most pressing problems, from the shrinking middle class to rising water pollution and diminished civic engagement.Mitchell's investigation takes us from the suburbs of Cleveland to a fruit farm in California, the stockroom of an Oregon Wal...

Two hearts, two souls. Devastated by loss, united through destiny.The rules: Communicate only through text messages and never reveal our real names or other personal details.My name is Ean Montgomery. After the drunk-driving accident that killed my wife, son, and unborn daughter, I was forced to see a grief counselor. In an unconventional move, she gave me a private cell phone and the first initial of the name of a woman who had been widowed by the same accident.I h...

What would you do if the most important people in your world were suddenly and violently taken away from you?Two cars demolished, two families destroyed.Dani Adams and Ean Montgomery were each forced to see the same grief counselor on a one-to-one basis after a drunk driver killed Dani's husband, and Ean's pregnant wife and six-year-old son.The rules: Communicate only through text messages, and never reveal our real names or other personal details.In an unco...

The collection of lectures and publications from the Schumacher Center for a New Economics represents some of the foremost voices on a new economics.Independent businesses in the United States have been under attack in recent decades. Large chains, or "big-box" stores, have dominated the market for nearly every product, in the process homogenizing our once unique Main Streets. Now local communities across the country are fighting back, and Stacy Mitchell is helping to shape the too...

The brand new anthology from multi-award winning editor Jonathan Strahan, featuring stories set in futures wracked by the deluge, from some the best writers in SF, including Kim Stanley Robinson, Ken Liu, Paul McAuley, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Charlie Jane Anders, Lavie Tidhar, Jeffrey Ford, and James Morrow. We stand at the beginning of one of the greatest ecological disasters in the time of Man. The world is warming and seas are rising. We may deny it, but we can't hide when the water comes....

The universe shifts and changes: suddenly you understand, you get it, and are filled with wonder. That moment of understanding drives the greatest science-fiction stories and lies at the heart of Engineering Infinity. Whether it's coming up hard against the speed of light - and, with it, the enormity of the universe - realizing that terraforming a distant world is harder and more dangerous than you'd ever thought, or simply realizing that a hitchhiker on a starship consumes fuel and oxygen...

In 2072 an object from outer space was discovered that threatened human civilization. A race against time began, and in 2080 the starship Exodus left Earth orbit, saving a small piece of humanity. This is the story of those left behind.

Those were Neil Armstrong's immortal words when he became the first human being to step onto another world. All at once, the horizon expanded; the human race was no longer Earthbound. Edge of Infinity is an exhilarating new SF anthology that looks at the next giant leap for humankind: the leap from our home world out into the Solar System. From the eerie transformations in Pat Cadigan's Hugo-award-winning "The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi" to the frontier spirit of Sandra McDonald and...

CONFLICT IS ETERNAL We have always fought. War is the furnace that forges new technologies and pushes humanity ever onward. We are the children of a battle that began with fists and sticks, and ended on the brink of atomic Armageddon. Beyond here lies another war, infinite in scope and scale. But who will fight the wars of tomorrow? Join Elizabeth Bear, Indrapramit Das, Aliette de Bodard, Garth Nix, An Owomoyela, Peter Watts, and many, many more in an exploration of the furthest extremes o...

Brian Duffy, aging soldier of fortune, had been hired in Venice by a strange old man who called himself Aurelianus Ambrosius. He was supposed to go to Vienna and act as bouncer at an inn where the fabulous Herzwesten beer was brewed. That was clear enough.But why was he guided and guarded on the trip by creatures from the ancient legends? Why should he be attacked by ifrits and saved by mythical dwarfs? What was so important about the Herzwesten beer to the Fisher King—whoever he w...

A mind-opening collection of short science fiction from one of the genre's most revered Grand Masters.Legendary author Robert A. Heinlein proclaimed, "To read science fiction is to read Simak. A reader who does not like Simak stories does not like science fiction at all." The remarkably talented Clifford D. Simak was able to ground his vast imagination in reality, and then introduce audiences to fantastical worlds and concepts they could instantly and completely di...

The latest volume in the Hugo award-winning Infinity Project series, showcasing all-original hard science fiction stories from the leading voices in genre fiction. Sense of wonder is the lifeblood of science fiction. When we encounter something on a truly staggering scale - metal spheres wrapped around stars, planets rebuilt and repurposed, landscapes transformed, starships bigger than worlds - we react viscerally. Fear, reverence, admiration - how else are we to react to something so gran...