Their future depends on ours…

Here, some of the most advanced carbon-based minds in science fiction offer their own unique perspectives on the complex and conflicted future relationships between mankind and his most brilliant creations--some funny, some sad, some bizarre, some terrifying, and all beyond anything ever imagined.

“Itsy Bitsy Spider” by James Patrick Kelly
“Robots Don't Cry” by Mike Resnick
“London, Paris, Banana . . . “ by Howard Waldrop
“La Macchina” by Chris Beckett
“Warmth” by Geoff Ryman
“Ancient Engines” by Michael Swanwick
“Jimmy Guang's House of Gladmech” by Alexander C. Irvine
“Droplet” by Benjamin Rosenbaum
“Counting Cats in Zanzibar” by Gene Wolfe
“The Birds of Isla Mujeres” by Steven Popkes
“Heirs of the Perisphere” by Howard Waldrop
“The Robot's Twilight Companion” by Tony Daniel

Nine visions of the future of war . . . 

In this explosive anthology, ten of science fiction's best new and classic writers imagine the soldiers who will one day fight and die on distant worlds.

“The Gardens of Saturn” by Paul J. McAuley
“Soldiers Home” by William Barton
“Legacies” by Tom Purdom
“Mood Duel” by Fritz Leiber
“Savior” by Robert Reed
“ Galactic North” by Alastair Reynolds
“ Masque of the Red Shift” by Fred Saberhagen
“Time Piece” by Joe Haldeman
“On the Orion Line” by Stephen Baxter

Eighteen exotic tales of the sea’s most seductive mystery.

“The Prevalence of Mermaids” by Avram Davidson

“Nothing in the Rules” by L. Sprague de Camp

“She Sells Sea Shells” by Paul Darcy Boles

“The Soul Cages” by Thomas Crofton Croker

“Sweetly the Waves Call to Me” by Pat Murphy

“Driftglass” by Samuel R. Delany

“Mrs. Pigafetta Swims Well” by Reginald Bretnor

“The Nebraskan and the Nereid” by Gene Wolfe

“The Lady and the Mereman” by Jane Yolen

“The Fisherman’s Wife” by Jane Yolen

“Till Human Voices Wake Us” by Lewis Shiner

“A Touch of Strange” by Randall Garrett and Avram Davidson

“The Crest of Thirty-six” by Davis Grubb

“The Shannon Merrow” by Cooper McLauglin

“Fish Story” by Leslie Charteris

“In the Islands” by Pat Murphy

Fascinating tales of the small beings in our midst

Elves, pixies, sprites, fairies, gremlins, leprechauns... they are the creatures who inhabit a world just beyond the edges of our dreams. When they enter our conscious lives, they can be delightful and charming--or menacing and frightening. Now, meet these elusive beings--venture into the realms of the... LITTLE PEOPLE!

“United Imp” by L. Sprague de Camp
“A Cabin on the Coast” by Gene Wolfe
“Cargo” by Theodore Sturgeon
“Housing Problem” by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore
“The Goobers” by Avram Davidson
“Fairy Tale” by Jack Dann
“A Gift of the People” by Robert Sampson
“Trouble with Water” by H. L. Gold
“Send No Money” by Gardner Dozois and Susan Casper
“The Hob” by Judith Moffett

Proud and powerful, fast and free…twelve tales starring fantasy’s most majestic animals…

With the potent combination of power, speed, and grace, the horse is fantasy's most majestic creature. They are mysterious warriors, racers, magnificent friends. Here are twelve unforgettable tales celebrating the horse from Ursula K. Le Guin, Judith Tarr, Lisa Tuttle, Howard Waldrop, and Jane Yolen.

“Classical Horses” by Judith Tarr
“The Wonder Horse” b George Byram
“On the Gem Planet” b Cordwainer Smith
“The Thunder of the Captains” by Garry Kilworth
“Brothers of the Wind” by Jane Yolen
“ Aunt Millicent at the Races” by Len Guttridge
“The Circus Horse” by Amy Bechtel
“Riding the Nightmare” by Lisa Tuttle
“Wild, Wild Horses” by Howard Waldrop
“The Boy Who Plaited Manes” by Nancy Springer
“Horse Camp” by Ursula K. Le Guin
“His Coat So Gay” by Sterling E. Lanier

In the tradition of Mirrorshades—stories from the virtual frontier…

A collection of short stories from the virtual frontier follows the exploits of the world's most notorious hackers and includes contributions from Greg Bear, William Gibson, Robert Silverberg, and Bruce Sterling. This wide-ranging collection of cyberspace tales, featuring the most cutting-edge writers in science fiction, goes beyond the stereotypes of computer rogues and delves into the true heart--and art--of hackerdom.

“Burning Chrome” by William Gibson
“Spirit of the Night” by Tom Maddox
“Blood Sisters” by Greg Egan
“Rock On” by Pat Cadigan
“The Pardoner’s Tale” by Robert Silverberg
“Living Will” by Alexander Jablokov
“Dogfight” by Michael Swanwick and Willia Gibson
“Our Neural Chernobyl” by Bruce Sterling
“(Learning about) Machine Sex” by Candas Jane Dorsey
“Conversations with Michael” by Daniel Marcus
“Gene Wars” by Paul J. McAuley
“Spew” by Neal Stephenson
“Tangents” by Greg Bear

Eleven fictional experiments in genetic engineering...

In this thought-provoking anthology, eleven cutting-edge science fiction writers explore both the promise and peril of genetic engineering.

"The Invisible Country" by Paul J. McAuley
"The Kindly Isle" by Frederik Pohl
"Chaff" by Greg Egan
"Stable Strategies for Middle Management" by Eileen Gunn
"Good With Rice" by John Brunner
"Sunken Gardens" by Bruce Sterling
"The Other Shore" by J. R. Dunn
"Written in Blood" by Chris Lawson
"The Pipes of Pan" by Brian Stableford
"Whiptail" by Robert Reed
"A Planet Named Shayol" by Cordwainer Smith

Fierce, fiery, fascinating . . . ten tales of fantasy’s most powerful creatures.

A collection of dragon stories from some of the masters of the fantasy genre includes contributions from James P. Blaylock, Avram Davidson, Tanith Lee, Lucius Shepard, and L. Sprague De Camp.

“Draco, Draco” by Tanith Lee
“Two Yards of Dragon” by L. Sprague de Camp
“Mrs. Byres and the Dragon” by Keith Roberts
“A Handful of Hatchlings” by Mark Sumner
“Covenant With a Dragon” by Susan Casper
“Paper Dragons” by James P. Blaylock
“Up the Wall” by Esther M. Friesner
“Lan Lung” by M. Lucie Chin
“Climacteric” by Avram Davidson
“The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule” by Lucius Shepard

Eric Flint and David Carrico serve up the latest entry in the best‑selling alternate history saga of them all, the Ring of Fire!

It is the year 1636. The United States of Europe, the new nation formed by an alliance between the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus and the West Virginians hurled back in time by a cosmic accident, is on the verge of civil war.  His brain injured in the war with Poland, the USE's emperor Gustavus Adolphus is no longer in command. Enter Swedish chancellor Oxenstierna, a leader of aristocratic reaction against democracy.  His goal:  to assemble the forces of the hidebound ruling class in Berlin and drown the revolution in a bloodbath.

In Magdeburg, the capital of the USE, Mike Stearns' wife Rebecca Abrabanel is organizing popular resistance to Oxenstierna's plot. As part of the resistance, the American musician Marla Linder and her company of down‑time musical partners are staging an opera that will celebrate the struggle against oppression. Princess Kristina, the heir to the USE's throne, is now residing in Magdeburg and is giving them her support and encouragement.

But another plot is underway‑‑this one right in the heart of the capital itself, and with murder as its method. The only people standing in the way are a crippled boy and the boxing champion who befriended him, and an unlikely pair of policemen. Can the American detective Byron Chieske and his down‑timer partner Gotthilf Hoch thwart the killers before they succeed in their goal?

Carrera. Relentless. Machiavellian. Without compunction. Victorious. Pity his enemies. Be thankful he is on the side of freedom from totalitarian domination.

On the colony planet of Terra Nova, soldier turned political leader Carrera has achieved his revenge, destroying those who killed his wife and children in a terrorist strike, and helping to establish a free country. But Carrera’s fight is not over.

War with the Tauran Union is inevitable. Carrera has been preparing his new country for this all-out conflict for years, intending to drive out the last vestige of foreign imperialism in Balboa, the Tauran Union Security Force. He doesn’t care that he’s outnumbered one hundred to one. He doesn’t care that the Taurans are one thousand times wealthier. A true Machiavellian, Carrera is convinced that gold cannot always find good soldiers, but that good soldiers can always find gold. After all, his good soldiers have already found quite a bit. Moreover, he’s been preparing for the war he intends to start and fight on his own terms, while the TU has been preparing for a progressive fantasy.

But then his own government calls a halt even as the commander of the United Earth Peace Fleet, High Admiral Marguerite Wallenstein, injects a dose of realism and spine into the Tauran Union. Any other government, giving similar orders, Carrera would overthrow without hesitation. But this is his own creation; he must follow these orders.

But the Taurans are provoking Balboa mercilessly, and Carrera knows that sooner or later, he must fight—only now the task will be more difficult and more bloody. No matter. When that time comes, Carerra knows he will do whatever it takes to win. He is, after all, Carrera.

In a frigate stolen from his own navy, Captain Favian Markham races to New Orleans with the dispatches he's captured from a British warship- dispatches making it clear that the city will soon be the target of a British fleet and an invading army.

But Favian finds New Orleans a city of intrigue, where Creoles conspire against the Americans, where streetfighters cloak their murders under the Code Duello, the pirate Jean Laffite battles the Navy, and a cabal of elite soldiers conspire to hand the city to the enemy— and where two sensuous Creole women, Eugenie and Campaspe, vie for his favor.

In order to resist the coming invasion, Favian must fight his way clear of conspiracy and unite the divided city, and soon discovers that in order to buy time for the defenders, he must sacrifice his own ship, and his own career, in a hopeless fight against an overwhelming power . . .

Walter Williams Privateers and Gentlemen Bundle

To Glory Arise

by Walter Jon Williams

The Tern Schooner

by Walter Jon Williams

Brig of War

by Walter Jon Williams

The Macedonian

by Walter Jon Williams

Cat Island

by Walter Jon Williams

Captain Favian Markham, USN, is a man surrounded by secrets. Secrets that will be revealed when he is court-martialed for losing his ship. Secrets held by his mistress Caroline. And the greatest secret of the War of 1812, a secret which will be revealed once Favian breaks the enemy blockade in The Macedonian, a frigate stolen from his own government . . .

Favian Markham is a rising young American officer in during the War of 1812. As commander of the small, slow brig Experiment, he must break the British blockade and take his outgunned vessel on a daring raid into the Narrow Seas of England. On his desperate journey he faces duels, rivalries, ambitious politicians, yardarm-to-yardarm combat, and the deadly beauty of a foreign courtesan. Yet his greatest battle is not with the enemy, but with his own divided nature . . .

Brig of War (originally published as The Raider) is one of the historical novels with which Walter Jon Williams began his career.

Devastated by the loss of his family, Gideon Markham has retreated to his ship and the life of the sea. Heir to a privateering tradition, he brings his schooner into the Gulf of Mexico to wage unremitting war on the British who threaten America's freedom.

But the puritanical Gideon finds the Gulf a strange and threatening place, and soon he must face Jean Laffite's pirates, a mutiny, an attack by Red Stick Creeks, and a British invasion . . . none of which he finds as baffling and alarming as Maria-Anna de Suarez, an attractive widow who gambles at cards, brandishes a pair of pistols, and plans to lead an expedition into the heart of enemy territory, with Gideon as her guide and pawn.

Originally published as The Yankee, this is one of the action-packed historical novels with which Walter Jon Williams began his career.

This is Walter Jon Williams’ first published work, one of the historical novels with which he began his career.

The American Revolution is throwing up a new breed of hero, Yankee privateers who dare the might of the Royal Navy to slash at British commerce. Foremost among them are the three Markham brothers, Jehu, Josiah, and Malachi, who link their destiny to that of their young nation, and seek their fortune in the cannon’s mouth.

From the author of the New York Times bestselling Monster Hunter series and an Air Force weapons expert, an edge-of-your-seat military-political thriller. A master thief and a hardhitting mercenary team up to defeat a Central Asian warlord with world-wide destruction on his mind.

On the far side of the world, deep in former Soviet Central Asia, lies a stronghold called the Crossroads. It is run with an iron fist by a brutal warlord calling himself Sala Jihan. He is far more than a petty dictator, for Jihan holds the fate of nations in his grasp. To save a world slipping into chaos, Jihan must either fall or be controlled.

One secret military organization called Exodus plans to see that this happens. For this mission, they need the best of the best. Unfortunately the man they need is rotting in an almost unassailable foreign prison.

Enter Lorenzo, thief extraordinaire. Lorenzo is now retired, happily married and living in paradise. His Achilles heel: an FBI-agent brother who has gone missing—disappeared into the stronghold of warlord Jihan. Exodus promises to give Lorenzo his chance to rescue his brother if and only if Lorenzo will perform one service for them: break Michael Valentine out of a captivity from which no one has ever emerged alive.

And if Lorenzo can accomplish that—well then, the Crossroads awaits the sword of Exodus.

W201310 October 2013 Monthly Baen Bundle (Last date to buy September 15, 2013)

1636: The Devil's Opera

by Eric Flint and David Carrico

Treecat Wars

by David Weber and Jane Lindskold

Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs

by Mike Resnick and Robert T. Garcia

In Space No One Can Hear You Scream

edited by Hank Davis

Swords of Exodus

by Larry Correia and Mike Kupari

Phoenix Rising

by Ryk E. Spoor

Eleven new tales set in the legendary worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Most people don’t know it, but the best‑selling American writer of the 1920s wasn’t Hemingway or Fitzgerald, but Edgar Rice Burroughs. Everyone knows that he created Tarzan, but he wasn’t limited to that one classic creation.  There was John Carter, Warlord of Mars.  There was Pellucidar, the wondrous world that exists at the center of the Earth, and  Carson of Venus, the Wrong‑Way Corrigan of space, who set off for Mars and wound up on Venus for four novels and part of a fifth.

Many top science fiction and fantasy writers of today grew up reading Burroughs, and this anthology is their way of “paying back” and thanking him for stirring their imaginations. Join their celebration with these all new tales set in the astounding worlds that Edgar Rice Burroughs brought to life: giving their own spin on the unforgettable characters conceived by one of the great masters of science fiction, adventure, and fantasy.

Listen to the Edgar Rich Burroughs Roundtable Discussion featuring Mike Resnick, and Robert T. Garcia here on the Baen Free Radio Hour.

The fires are out, but the trouble’s just beginning for the treecats.

On pioneer planet Sphinx, ruined lands and the approach of winter force the now Landless Clan to seek new territory.  They have one big problem—there’s nowhere to go.  Worse, their efforts to find a new home awaken the enmity of the closest treecat clan—a stronger group who’s not giving up a single branch without a fight.

Stephanie Harrington, the treecats’ greatest advocate, is off to Manticore for extensive training—and up to her ears in challenges there.  That leaves only Stephanie’s best friends, Jessica and Anders, to save the treecats from themselves.  And now a group of xenoanthropologists is once again after the great secret of the treecats—that they are intelligent, empathic telepaths—and their agenda will lead to nothing less that treecat exploitation.

Finally, Jessica and Anders face problems of their own, including  their growing attraction to one another.  It is an attraction that seems a betrayal of Stephanie Harrington, the best friend either of them have ever had. 

Download the comprehensive Teacher’s Guide here.

Listen to the authors discuss the book on the Baen Free Radio Hour: Part 1 | Part 2.

Lexile Score: 1000