Fourteen-year-old Stark McClellan (nicknamed Stick because he's tall and thin) is bullied for being "deformed" – he was born with only one ear. His older brother Bosten is always there to defend Stick. But the boys can't defend one another from their abusive parents. When Stick realizes Bosten is gay, he knows that to survive his father's anger, Bosten must leave home. Stick has to find his brother, or he will never feel whole again. In his search, he will encounter good people, bad people, and people who are simply indifferent to kids from the wrong side of the tracks. But he never loses hope of finding love – and his brother. Views: 673
In the 1890s, a generation before Hugo Gernsback, Louis Figuier, editor of the French popular science magazine La Science Illustrée, made a concerted effort to define and delimit the genre of roman scientifique, using that term to head a series of feuilletons that ran in his magazine from 1888 to 1905. This is a new collection of eight French proto-science fiction stories taken from the pages of La Science Illustrée, translated and annotated by renowned science fiction writer and scholar Brian Stableford. Included here are Vernian romances, tall tales featuring the dramatic extrapolation of natural phenomena, stories highlighting the scientific obsessions of geniuses with its social and psychological costs, and stories of everyday life in which scientific knowledge comes to play a significant role. Views: 673
Sometimes weird things happen to people. Ask Jake. He may tell you about the night he and his friends saw a strange light in the sky. He may even tell you about what happened when they realised the 'light' was only a plane - from another planet. Here's where Jake's story gets a little weird. It's where they're told that the human race is under attack - and given the chance to fight back.
Now Jake, Rachel, Cassie, Tobias and Marco have the power to morph into any animal they choose. And they must use that power to outsmart an evil that is greater than anything the world has ever seen.... Views: 673
-a Future Night Stalkers romance story- "An introspective account of the narrator's meditations on love and war (like) Theodore Sturgeon's story The Man Who Lost the Sea." – Tangent Review Magazine Shot down in war on Luna. Crashed in the depths of Cauchy crater where no rescue will ever come. A warrior faces the one, final truth—a truth that the Army psych trainers got all wrong. Views: 673
The Twin Novae battle had been one of the last of the Idiran war, one of the most horrific. Desperate to avert defeat, the Idirans had induced not one but two suns to explode, snuffing out worlds & biospheres teeming with sentient life. They were attacks of incredible proportion--gigadeathcrimes. But the war ended & life went on. Now, 800 years later, light from the 1st explosion is about to reach the Masaq' Orbital, home to the Culture's most adventurous & decadent souls. There it will fall upon Masaq's 50 billion inhabitants, gathered to commemorate the deaths of the innocent & to reflect, if only for a moment, on what some call the Culture's own complicity in the terrible event. Also journeying to Masaq' is Major Quilan, an emissary from the war-ravaged world of Chel. In the aftermath of the conflict that split his world apart, most believe he has come to Masaq' to bring home Chel's most brilliant star & self-exiled dissident, the honored Composer Ziller. Ziller claims he will do anything to avoid a meeting with Quilan, who he suspects has come to murder him. But the Major's true assignment will have far greater consequences than the death of a mere political dissident, as part of a conspiracy more ambitious than even he can know--a mission his superiors have buried so deeply in his mind that even he can't remember it.
Hailed by SFX magazine as "an excellent hopping-on point if you've never read a Banks SF novel before," Look to Windward is an awe-inspiring immersion into the wildly original, vividly realized civilization Banks calls the Culture. Views: 673
It’s something every writer fears and many face: the dreaded writer's block. However, sometimes the cause is not lack of inspiration, but something much more sinister...It’s something every writer fears and many face: the dreaded writer's block. But sometimes the cause is not lack of inspiration, but something much more sinister... Views: 673
If you could have an injection that would make you age much slower and live much longer, would you do it? Would you have everybody do it? Are you sure? Read this story, and you may be surprised at the potential consequences!A legion of demons and imps overrun the city of Trebridge. But Gillen, leader of the four gargoyle guardians, has more problems than the invading demons. One of his squad plots to usurp his command. With St. Edmund's church--the sanctuary that guards the only known portal from the demon world into city-- scheduled for destruction to make way for high-rise condos, Gillen must decide whom to fight. The demons or his rival.Dare he ask the angel commanders for reinforcements and prove his incompetence? A short story set in the world of Andor and the inspiration for the book, There Be Demons, to be published by The Grumpy Dragon in 2014. If you enjoy this free story, please review it. Even a couple of sentences will do. Thanx. Views: 672
In this highly anticipated conclusion to New York Times best-selling author Amy Tintera's All These Monsters duology, Clara and Team Seven's quest to expose the truth behind the scrab menace has them facing their biggest threat yet: their own demons. Perfect for fans of Warcross and Renegades. Views: 672
