Showing results by narrator "Gabrielle de Cuir and Stefan Rudnicki" in All Categories

When tsarist soldiers fire at a group of peaceful village protestors and kill his young bride, Pavel dedicates his life to overthrowing the Romanovs. Pavel's underground group assassinates the Grand Duke, changing the life of the Grand Duchess Elisavyeta forever.

This second volume of The Long List Anthology is designed to recognize the short works that were nominated for the 2016 Hugo Awards but did not make it into the top five short list for the final ballot. Thus, voted into the Hugo Award's long list of works - the top 15 works nominated for each category - were these short stories and novelettes, now made available to a wider audience by award-winning narrators.

From the haunted hills of Roman Britain to the sewers of occupied Warsaw … in the bloodied streets of Revolutionary Paris, and the anarchy World War II Shanghai … out of the wilds of America, India, Africa and Europe … down the long savage darkness of the centuries, monsters have fed upon us. They are shapeshifters, vampires, sorcerers and spirits—things named only in myth, and things for which we have no name. They are our demons, our reflections, our desires and our nightmares. And all too often, they are … only human.

In Speculative Los Angeles, 14 of the city’s most prophetic voices reimagine the city in very different ways. In this audiobook, you’ll encounter 21st-century changelings, dirigibles plying the suburban skies, black holes and jacaranda men lurking in deep suburbia, beachfront property in Century City, walled-off canyons and coastlines reserved for the wealthy, psychic death cults, robot nursemaids, and an alternate LA where Spanish land grants never gave way to urbanization.

Civilization has an off switch. The Russians call it Lunnaya Pesnya. Moon Song. They bring the device aboard the International Space Station disguised as an experimental electromagnetic propulsion system. Just a harmless EmDrive prototype, ferried into space for testing in microgravity. But the device is not what it appears to be, and it’s far from harmless. When military cosmonauts hijack the ISS, Russia’s plans of global conquest are revealed. Moon Song is a game-changing electromagnetic pulse weapon, capable of attacking any location on Earth from orbit.

In this ninth volume of Glenn G. Thater’s Harbinger of Doom saga, Theta arrives at Jutenheim, hot on the heels of Korrgonn and the League of Shadows. Their fateful confrontation is fast approaching, if only they pass the Black Elf king and the ancient evils that lurk in his subterranean domain. But do the Black Elves serve the dark powers or the light?

The four stories in this compilation, not by James, are meant to serve as prime illustrations of the best work of a few of his contemporaries and immediate antecedents.

In this stylistically adventurous, brilliantly funny tour de force - the most highly acclaimed debut since Nathan Englander's - Aleksander Hemon writes of love and war, Sarajevo and America, with a skill and imagination that are breathtaking. A love affair is experienced in the blink of an eye as the Archduke Ferdinand watches his wife succumb to an assassin's bullet. An exiled writer, working in a sandwich shop in Chicago, adjusts to the absurdities of his life. Love letters from war-torn Sarajevo navigate the art of getting from point A to point B without being shot.

Science fiction dwells mostly in the realm of possibility, where mysteries proliferate nevertheless, meaning is never static, and “time and history have convinced us that things are not as they seem”. So, too, does all language, argues Samuel Delany, in his vigorous justification for the writing life. Chronicling his struggle with dyslexia, the evolution of his gay and Black identity during the AIDS crisis, and his experiences and relationships through five decades as a writer of fiction and nonfiction, Delany is a longtime observer of language’s inner workings.

It's been almost 2,000 years since the mer-shifter Skyla walked the streets of Athens - not since her heart was broken by a human man and she exchanged the land and sky for the ocean depths. Ever since, she has lived in the underwater ruins of Atlantis, studying with the priestesses of the goddess Amphitrite, refining her mermaid powers and ignoring her human half.

Lewis Dodd, a young, troubled composer, arrives at “Sanger’s Circus”, a wild gathering consisting of precocious children, a slovenly mistress, and an assortment of hangers-on in the Austrian Alps overseen by the eccentric Albert Sanger, a composer himself. Tessa, Sanger’s lively 14-year-old daughter, falls in love with their handsome visitor. After Albert’s death leaves Tessa and her siblings penniless, they must implore extended family members for assistance. Florence, Tessa’s 28-year-old cousin, graciously steps in to help and she falls in love with Lewis.

When the black elf king comes calling, / Hide your children and your gold, / When dead men hunger, outside, the bitter cold, / When trolls venture down from mountain peak, / Hold tightly your bones, for them they seek. / Beware they who thirst on island bleak, / The Regent to come and scourge your keep, / The Black Hand will stalk you, their ranks ever deep, / And Thetan will be there, of his wrath you will weep, / The Harbinger of Doom, your soul to reap.

Orlando is the extraordinary biography of a young nobleman in the court of Elizabeth I who transforms into a woman and lives for over three centuries. In his youth, Orlando is a passionate lover and poet. He dotes on the Queen, serves King James faithfully, falls deeply in love with a Russian princess, and becomes an ambassador to Constantinople, but at his heart all Orlando ever wants to be is a great writer (and living at the same time as Marlowe, Donne, and Shakespeare, this is no easy thing). But while living in Constantinople, one evening Orlando is transformed into woman.

Who is the Crimson Empress, and what does her conquest of the Named Lands really mean? Who holds the keys to the Moon Wizard’s Tower? The plots within plots are expanding as the characters seek their way out of the maze of intrigue. The world is expanding as they discover lands beyond their previous carefully controlled knowledge. Hidden truths reveal even deeper truths, and nothing is as it seemed to be.

These stories are set in the familiar quasi-medieval worlds to which modern listeners are accustomed, and also stories rooted in the authentic myth-constructs of high antiquity, along with several that depend for their power on the juxtaposition of fantastic situations and terribly contemporary aspects of modern life on Earth. Together these stories make up a collection which provides reassuring proof of fantasy's eternal power in this technological age.

From Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, here are the best stories of 2002, written by four of the most respected writers of our day: Robert Silverberg, James Patrick Kelly, Ian Watson, and Gregory Benford. Also try The Best of Analog Science Fiction and Fact Magazine and The Best of Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine 2002.

Do zombies scare the stuffing out of you? I'm not talking the slow ones that mindlessly stumble around moaning and tripping over their own feet. I'm talking fast zombies. Ones that will run you down, tear you to pieces, and eat you for supper. Ones that keep coming no matter what damage you do to them. Did any such creatures ever exist, except in people's imaginations? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. This seventh volume of the Harbinger of Doom saga reveals the truth about them.

Thirty original stories - each inspired by a Janis Ian song - from some of the biggest names in science fiction and fantasy, including: Tad Williams, Harry Turtledove, Orson Scott Card, Joe Haldeman, John Varley, Mercedes Lackey, Judith Tarr, Janis Ian, and others.

Here are 10 stories from the May and June 2003 issues of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, including a tribute to SF great Barry M. Malzberg.

During its heyday, the Chelsea Hotel in New York City was a home and safe haven for Bohemian artists, poets, and musicians such as Bob Dylan, Gregory Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Janis Joplin, and Dee Dee Ramone. This oral history of the famed hotel peers behind the iconic facade and delves into the mayhem, madness, and brilliance that stemmed from the hotel in the 1980s and 1990s.