This anthology of sardonic fiction emphasizes SF/fantasy tales sparkling with wit and edgy attitude. The stories, both originals and reprints, cover a wide range of satire. Writers include James Morrow, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Allen Steele, Paul Di Filippo, Robert Silverberg, and Pat Cadigan. Halpern, a 2001 World Fantasy Award Finalist, is the editor of the legendary Golden Gryphon Press.
* Late one night, Sir Charles Baskerville is attacked outside his home in Dartmoor, Devon. Residents say they've seen a monster in the area and heard its eerie howl in the moonlight. Could it be the Hound of the Baskervilles, a legendary creature that haunts the nearby moor? Sherlock Holmes is on the case.
DI Geraldine Steel knows people go missing all the time; often because they don't want to be found. So when her partner Ian asks her to look into the disappearance of his buddy's girlfriend, her first instinct is to reassure him there's no need for concern. Until she's called to a suspected murder, and all her instincts tell her she's right about the identity of the victim. The woman has earth and leaf mould and fragments of twigs in her hair, her nose, her mouth, under her nails, clinging to...
" 'It has begun,' he writes in the diary in which these things are recorded. 'It is not for me to reach out to consequences I cannot foresee. I am a part, not a whole; I am a little instrument in the armoury of Change. If I were to burn all these papers, before a score of years had passed, some other man would be doing this...' " H.G. Wells classic "The World Set Free", written in 1913 and originally published in 1914, predicting the atomic bomb. A true literary gem.
Harry Benson is a brilliant computer expert, who is also an epileptic given to increasingly severe black-outs in which he attacks the nearest person at hand. A team of doctors, including surgeons and an attractive woman psychiatrist, will implant in Harry, literally, a miniature computer aimed at controlling his seizures. There is only one major problem. Harry is also slipping further and further into insanity, convinced that "machines are taking over the world."
When the CIA discovers a connection between the legendary library and a bank account linked to terrorists, they bring in rare books curator Eva Blake. Soon an attempt is made on Eva's life - and she is on the run. Determined not only to survive but to uncover the truth, Eva turns to the only person she can trust: Judd Ryder, a former intelligence officer with a troubled past and an agenda of his own. Racing from London to Rome, Istanbul to Athens, it's up to Judd and Eva to track down the gold-c...
Alice is the last human. Street-smart and bad-ass. After discovering what appears to be an A.I. personality in an antique data core, Alice decides to locate its home somewhere in the stargate network. At the very least she wants to lay him to rest because, as it turns out, she’s stumbled upon the sentient control unit of a deadly ancient weapon system. Convincing the ghost of a raging warrior that the war is over is about as hard as it sounds, which is to say, it’s near-impossible. But, if Ali...