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The landmark alternate history novel by "one of the best American writers" (Ray Bradbury). In the world of this novel, said to be an inspiration for Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, the Confederacy has triumphed and become an imperialist nation. What is left of the United States has been drained of its resources and is trapped in a depression. Hodge, a young man living in a village in rural New York with his parents, decides to head to the city to escape his otherwise inevitable future of poverty and indentured servitude.

A young man must fight-literally-for the opportunity to escape his backwater home planet and journey to the stars. A towering young giant growing up on a high-gravity world of perilous plants and savage creatures, Carl Bok is thrilled when he's offered a one-year scholarship to Starschool. As a new student aboard the space-traveling institution, Carl will get the opportunity to visit and learn from sixteen colonized worlds. Best of all, he'll finally escape the dangerous and grueling life of his home planet.

As if 17-year-old Alexandra Lucas' anxiety disorder isn't enough, mysterious holograms suddenly appear, heralding the end of the world. They bring an ultimatum: heed the warning and step through a portal-like vertex to safety, or stay and be destroyed by a comet that is on a collision course with Earth. The holograms,claiming to be humans from the future, bring the promise of safety. But without the ability to verify their story, Alex is forced to consider what is best for her friends, her family, and herself. To stay or to go. A decision must be made.

The holograms lied to everyone on Earth and only Alexandra Lucas knows the truth. Now she's trapped in the year 2359 without family or friends-worse, without her anxiety medication. Alex attempts to reconcile the marvelous scenery, technological advances, and luxurious living with the knowledge that the holograms weren't being completely honest-what else are they lying about' With a secret that could shatter her society, Alex tries to find her place among strangers, convicts, and a rebellion striving to bring the holograms down.

Silence is safe. Fate is not. When Sovern Briggs survives a car crash, she stops talking in order to seal in the memory of the final sounds of her mother's life. As conflict with her father builds and failure in school looms, Sovern seeks relief in a dangerous boyfriend and in speed's adrenaline edge. These needs collide, leading Sovern to a snowboarding accident that changes her future...'nd perhaps that of our universe. Life at the Speed of Us weaves dyslexia, math, cutting-edge science, genius, and love into a young woman's reluctant journey toward grace.

For Henry Franks, Death is Everywhere. It claimed his mother a year ago, in an accident that robbed him of his memory and left him covered with horrific scars. It's in his skin, leaving him numb to pain no matter how hard he tries to hurt himself. It obsesses his distant father, who buries himself in his work at the morgue. And it's stalking the streets, where a serial killer's path of destruction reveals the dark truth of Henry's past.

Solo_Lobo is a gamer who prefers to play by himself. But then he winds up in a virtual game set aboard an alien space station with a know-it-all robot named Spec. Spec is supposed to help him find the rest of his crewmates who've also been captured by the aliens. Seems like a piece of cake until Solo_Lobo learns the catch: he can't be seen by the aliens or he'll risk getting caught in their disanimator eye beams, which will send him right back to Level 1. Can he rescue his crew in time to win the game' And is there more to Spec than what she seems'

The Stories Behind the Series Though perhaps most famous as a novelist, Philip K. Dick wrote more than one hundred short stories over the course of his career, each as mind-bending and genre-defining as his longer works. Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams collects ten of the best. In "Autofac," Dick shows us one of the earliest examples (and warnings) in science fiction of self-replicating machines.

The international team at the Mars Endeavour colony is prepared for every eventuality except one-what happens when disaster strikes Earth' Mankind has long dreamed of reaching out to live on other planets, and with the establishment of the Mars Endeavour colony, that dream has become reality. The fledgling colony consists of 120 scientists, astronauts, medical staff, and engineers. Buried deep underground, they're protected from the harsh radiation that sterilizes the surface of the planet.

"This volume showcases the nuanced, playful, ever-expanding definitions of the genre and celebrates its current renaissance." -Washington Post Science fiction and fantasy can encompass so much, from far-future deep-space sagas to quiet contemporary tales to unreal kingdoms and beasts. But what the best of these stories do is the same across the genres-they illuminate the whole gamut of the human experience, interrogating our hopes and our fears.