Life above ground is something Lilith has never experienced. When she gets the chance to visit the outside world, to see, firsthand, the monsters that roam the surface, she’s understandably ecstatic. But the infected have a reputation for being dangerous for a reason, and Lilith is about to find out why . . . . This is the story of Lilith, and her . . .
The day Daniel Harper inherited his uncle’s old farm, he also inherited a strange key. When he used that key on the cellar door, he found himself not on the rotting wooden steps, but in the path of an oncoming car on a dark city street. He’s just stepped into Ether, a world of steam powered cars and wooden . . .
The stories here are short (some very short) and are mostly sf – that is, speculative fiction: fantasies, myths, science fiction, slipstream . . . all the flavors of fabulation except, I hope, for the mundane. Many were written with the audience of the Usenet newsgroup talk.bizarre in mind, back when text was the thing. —APS . . .
Mortimer Scott is dreadfully average. A devout member of the Church of Lopt, Mortimer spends his days praying, fumbling through social interactions, and dreaming of the day that his life would change. As if by some miracle of the gods themselves, it does. Talbot, the wanted heretic of the Church, wrenches Mortimer from worship and ritual and into . . .
Nothing interesting ever happens in the small town of Pitt Creek. Even when magic suddenly becomes a tangible force—and hundreds of thousands of people worldwide transform into animals and mythological creatures—the Changes’ closest approach is as dramatic video footage on the 6 o’clock news. Kevin MacArthur and his friends want to be a part of that—to have their lives . . .
Malika’s life in medieval Baghdad seems perfect. Then the rumours start surfacing—that her three husbands are (gasp!) literate. She’s pushed from her happy bubble to discover a world of murder, fanaticism, female eunuchs, genocide and spiced tea. . . .
The beginning of Maggots of Heresy has the voice of a history text. After that, we’re introduced to the scenes of a grisly murder depicted that is described as art.
This bothers me. Perhaps the author or the characters can find beauty in its feces covered ugliness, but I, as a [more . . .]
I’m not a huge fan of fantasy stories, and have a habit of shying away from vampire and werewolf tales, especially since there has been such a glut of these stories in commercial publishing lately. HOWEVER, Above Ground is no simple fantasy story, instead melding elements of science fiction and steampunk alchemy into a richly detailed landscape where the fish [more . . .]