By Ian McDonald First Published: 1994 It is a few decades after a revolutionary technology has given humans the ability to resurrect the dead. The ever-increasing population of the risen dead is segregated into areas called necrovilles. Here they have created a wild culture, untouched by the restrictions of the law – except that the dead cannot stray into the realm of the living, nor…
By Ian McDonald First Published:1994 It’s the Second of November 2063. It’s the Day of the Dead. In the 21st Century, nanotechnology has revolutionized the laws of birth and death. The resurrected dead account for almost one third of the human population, and the backbone of its workplace. They have their own culture and their own ghettos, the Necrovilles. And the Day of the Dead…
By Garth Nix First Published: 1997 Rating: Excellent. “If you’re lucky, you live to fight another day.” In a futuristic urban wasteland, evil Overlords have decreed that no human shall live a day past their 14th birthday. On that Sad Birthday, the children of the Dorms are taken to the Meat Factory, where they will be made into creatures whose sole purpose is to kill.…
By Scott Westerfeld First Published: 1991 Lee can change her gender and ethnicity at will, allowing her to slip freely through New York society. She thought she was the only “polymorph”… until a chance encounter with another of her kind. Now it’s up to Lee to stop the renegade shapeshifter who is plotting to control the information technology in a postindustrial world, where illusion wear…
By KC Alexander First Published: 2017 Being a mercenary isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Especially when Riko’s hard-won reputation has taken a hard dive into fucked. Now she’s fair game for every Tom, Dick and Blow looking to score some cred. In this city, credibility means everything — there’s no room for excuses. She still doesn’t know what she did to screw up…
By KC Alexander First Published: 2016 Street thug Riko has some serious issues—memories wiped, reputation tanked, girlfriend turned into a tech-fueled zombie. After street thug Riko escapes from a lab she doesn’t remember entering, abandoning her tech-corrupted girlfriend, she’s got some serious issues to handle. First, how did she and her girlfriend get there? Second, how can she convince her team to help her find…
By Jeff Noon First Published: 2012 Welcome to the new interface. Channel SK1N tells the story of Nola Blue: pop prodigy, the girl every teen wants to be, or be with. She has talent, hit tunes, international fame, everything she could possibly want. But when she begins to pick up TV signals on her skin, Nola is forced on a journey far beyond the boundaries…
By Richard Paul Russo First Published: 1995 “A chilling scenario of the bleak urban landscape that is 21st-century San Francisco, and the return of Lt. Frank Carlucci.” In the San Francisco of the future, technology advances while society declines. Against a vividly realized urban backdrop, one of the police force’s last honest cops, Detective Frank Carlucci, is trying to trace the connection between a series…
By Jason Werbeloff First Published: 2016 Defragmenting Daniel is a three novel series that forms the first three books in Werbeloff’s The Bubble series. Defragmenting Daniel: The Organ Scrubber Rating: Good. In a world where orphans are discarded… One young man must take up the fight. The Gutter Orphanage, 2064. As a child, Daniel had no choice but to trade his body parts for room…
By Jason Werbeloff First Published: 2015 At Life Extensions Ltd we guarantee that your death will be painless, or your money back when you’re thawed. And the Cryo Bureau? They won’t suspect a thing… The Cryo Killer is a thrilling sci-fi short that will convince you not to step into the freezer quite yet.
By Jason Werbeloff First Published: 2015 Twice an hour. Twenty hours a day. Two hundred and eighty johns a week. Standard working hours for a sex bot. I don’t want to sound ungrateful. Someone has to keep the human men happy. Since The Drought, there are no women left to satisfy them – the Ministry decided women make good meat. Anyway, I have two years…
By Jason Werbeloff First Published: 2017 In the Bubble, marriage is the literal merging of two bodies. So when Geppetto receives an invitation to his daughter’s wedding, he’s devastated. He must find a way to stop the ceremony, or lose her forever. And if the wedding goes ahead … He doesn’t want to think about that, but Geppetto has his scalpel on hand. Just in…
By Jason Werbeloff First Published: 2017 Paul Sanders is a desperate man. He and his daughter, Isobella, are weeks away from living in the Gutter. Enter Jono Falanges, a greasy stockbroker who promises Paul all the money he needs, and more. The only catch is, Paul must invest Isobella’s health on the stock market. Plunge down the slippery slope of morality with Investing Isobella, a horrifying…
By Jason Werbeloff First Published: 2015 The skullcap sits to one side of the chair. Its snaking wires and sensors throw a Medusa shadow against the basement wall. I touch its plastic. Stroke its wiry hair. The Machine gives me everything I want. Or the one thing I want. Life in a woman’s body, under the tangerine glow of the Spiral Arm Nebula. But nothing…
By Garth Nix First Published: 2012 Rating: Excellent. Imagine a world where your fourteenth birthday is your last and where even your protector may not be trusted…. In a futuristic urban wasteland, evil Overlords have decreed that no human shall live a day past their fourteenth birthday. On that Sad Birthday, the children of the Dorms are taken to the Meat Factory, where they will…
By Chet Williamson First Published: 1995 Gideon Eshanti and Rachel Braque were loyal Artificial Reality Containment Investigators—until a lethal “scrub team” paid them an unexpected visit one night. After they decorated the walls with scrub team entrails, returning to the office Monday morning just wasn’t an option. With the underground world of mobsters, techie subersives, and treacherous demons their only hope, Gideon and Rachel must…
By Dean Koonz First Published: 1973 Susan Harris lived in self-imposed seclusion, in a mansion featuring numerous automated systems controlled by a state-of-the-art computer. Every comfort was provided, and in this often unsafe world of ours, her security was absolute. But now her security system has been breached, her sanctuary from the outside world violated by an insidious artificial intelligence, which has taken control of…
Editors: Jeffrey Thomas First Published: 2012 A HELLISH TOUR DE FORCE OF THE IMAGINATION! A young woman emerges from a catatonic state to find herself naked and devoid of memory, a centuries-long prisoner of an apocalyptic battle between formerly human avenging Angels, rebel bands of the Damned, and monstrous Demons of every description. With only a sentient, talking gun for a companion, she sets out…
Editors: Jeffrey Thomas First Published: 2012 Private detective and mutant shapeshifter Jeremy Stake (hero of the novels Deadstock and Blue War) has fallen on hard times in the far-future city of Punktown. When he is offered an opportunity to masquerade as another man to do his prison sentence for him, Stake agrees, but this is a new type of penitentiary – existing in its own…
Editors: Jeffrey Thomas First Published: 2005 It is a jungle of blue vegetation, on a world in another dimension. Here, over a decade earlier, Earth’s Colonial Forces battled against the blue-skinned Ha Jiin people, in order to help support the autonomy of the Jin Haa people. Now, an attempt to grow an apartment village from an organic material has strangely led to the Earth colony…
Editors: Jeffrey Thomas First Published: 2005 Punktown is considered by many critics and readers to be one of the new classics of SF short story collections. In the nightmarish city they call Punktown, on a planet where countless sentient species collide, you can become a creator of clones. You can become a piece of performance art. You might even become a library of sorrows. All…
Editors: Jeffrey Thomas First Published: 2007 Punktown, crime-ridden metropolis on the colony world, Oasis, is home to countless alien races. Among those stalking its mean streets is Jeremy Stake, a private detective with chameleon-like abilities he does not want and can’t always control. There’s his wealthy client, Fukuda, whose company makes synthetic life forms as playthings for the rich. Then there’s Fukuda’s beautiful teenage daughter,…
Editors: Jeffrey Thomas First Published: 2019 Three stories of dark obsession, set in the nightmarish future city its inhabitants call Punktown. DRAPED IN FLESH – An alienated young woman develops a strange bond with the wreckage of an organic space vessel that has come to rest on the roof of her apartment building. OUT OF NOTHING – Ex nihilo is the latest must-have toy, so…
Editors: Jeffrey Thomas First Published: 2019 Three stories, originally published separately, brought together for the first time…to detail the summoning of a god-like entity from beyond space and time into the vulnerable realm of humans. DRAWING NO. 8 In the far-future colony of Punktown, inhabited by countless sentient races, an artist desperate for recognition is hired by worshipers of a god they call Ugghiutu to…
Editors: Jeffrey Thomas First Published: 2019 Three weird fiction stories that peel back the skin to reveal the darkness beyond. UNCANNY VALLEY – A salesman is given a tour of a sex doll factory, where the products may be more than simply life-like. STRANGER IN THE HOUSE – A factory worker whose mother is dying begins to truly understand the impermanence of all human flesh,…
Editors: Jeffrey Thomas First Published: 2019 Three stories of body modification and genetic engineering in the nightmarish future city its citizens call Punktown. OPEN MINDED – H. P. Lovecraft’s “Mi-Go” feature in this story about a secretive alien race and the conscience-stricken human technician who’s working for them. TRANSFORMATION – A young woman working in a brothel that caters to jaded rich people with extreme…
Editors: Jeffrey Thomas First Published: 2012 Now, in PUNKTOWN: SHADES OF GREY — a brand new collection of stories — Jeffrey Thomas is joined by brother Scott Thomas in giving voices to the citizens of this futuristic urban hell. In its dangerously alluring streets, you will meet: extra-dimensional monsters, murderous aliens, vampiric mutants, coffee-loving robots, confused clones, and war vets looking for one last, bloody…
Editor: Weldon Burge First Published: 2017 What horror anthology on body enhancements wouldn’t include gross-out fiction? This book has it in spades. But, this collection of stories goes far beyond that. Here you will also find science fiction, surreal fiction, fantasy, and even a full serving of dark humor. Disturbing, perverse, often gut-wrenching (pun intended) stories—all between the covers of this anthology! Nineteen chilling tales…
Editor: Weldon Burge First Published: 2013 So, you loved the first ZIPPERED FLESH anthology? Well, here are yet more tales of body enhancements that have gone horribly wrong! Steroids from Hell. Horrendous piercings. Bizarre brain modifications. Obscene amputations. Facial reconstruction. Self-mutilation. Implants. Chilling tales by some of the best horror and suspense writers today, determined to keep you fearful all night (and skittish during the…
Editors: Weldon Burge First Published: 2012 Monstrous transplants. Appalling amputations. Bizarre implants. Nightmarish forms of body enhancements. Disturbing, perverse, often gut-wrenching stories–all between the covers of this anthology. Here are 20 tales by some of today’s best horror, suspense, and science fiction writers. The stories are not for those who are faint of heart or squeamish, or who are easily offended by nasty language, bloody…