By Kerry Nietz First Published: 2018 Debuggers have one purpose, to obey their masters. The implants in their heads ensure they can’t forge their own path, can’t disobey or even fall in love. But after ThreadBare’s master is assassinated, his implant goes haywire, terrorizing his mind with unpredictable pain. He’s in love despite the implant, with Damali–a woman who’s disappeared from his life. In addition,…
By Chris Moriarty First Published: 2013 The Age of Man is ending. The UN’s sprawling interstellar empire is failing as its quantum teleportation network collapses, turning once-viable colonies into doomed island outposts. Humanity’s only hope of survival is the Drift: a mysterious region of space where faster-than-light travel—or something far stranger—seems possible. As mercenaries and pirates flock to the Drift, the cold war between the…
By John Varley First Published: 2018 Christopher Bach was a policeman in one of the largest Lunar cities when the A.I. Lunar Central Computer had a breakdown. Known as the Big Glitch, the problem turned out to be a larger war than anyone expected. When order was restored, Chris’s life could never be the same. Now he’s a private detective, assisted by his genetically altered…
By Wilhelmina Baird First Published: 1996 The human race has reached the next level of thought transference development in a world where reality can be easily manipulated and turmoil is a way of life. A place where symbiotes have delivered humankind to the next phase of telepathic evolution. A place where reality is flexible. And chaos is the norm.
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 Ian McDonald First Published: 2010 Another day, another tram bomb. It seems everyone is after a piece of Turkey. But the shock waves from this random act of twenty-first-century terrorism will ripple far beyond Necatibey Cadessi. Welcome to the world of The Dervish House—the great, ancient, paradoxical city of Istanbul, divided like a human brain, in the great, ancient, equally paradoxical nation of Turkey. With…
By Ian McDonald First Published: 2007 A collection of eight stories, “Cyberabad Days” is a triumphant return to the India of 2047 (the India of River of Gods); a new, muscular superpower in an age of artificial intelligences, climate-change induced drought, strange new genders, and genetically improved children. Featured Stories: • America is Not the Only Planet (2009) essay by Paul McAuley • Sanjeev and…
By Syne Mitchell First Published: 2006 In the twenty-fourth century, nano-designed biology has turned the world into humanity’s playground. And entrepreneur Lucius Sterling has created a trillion-dollar empire solving the world’s problems: poverty, disease, war, and even death. But when a new technology attacks the fundamental building blocks of nano-biology, the survival of humanity is at stake.And only Sterling’s estranged grandson, Jack, can stop the…
By Jeff Somers First Published: 2014 Avery Cates is a bad man. Wandering the ruins of The System, he thinks he’s done fighting, done killing—but the world hasn’t quite ended yet. When Cates is trapped in an old System prison, he encounters evidence that he’s still a person of interest, and this leads him on a journey of revenge and discovery that pits him against…
By Jeff Somers First Published: 2011 The world is dying. With avatars replacing humans and the birth rate non-existent, the human race is almost extinct. In the end, it comes down to Canny Orel; Avery’s long sought after nemesis — transformed now into something other than human. Orel might hold the secret to humanity’s salvation, if he can be convinced — or forced — to…
By Jeff Somers First Published: 2010 Avery Cates is an army man. Between the army’s new dental plan and a set of first class augments, he’s been given a second chance — albeit a quick one. When a corrupt officer decides to make some money on the side by selling new recruits, Cates finds himself in uncharted territory. Sold to the highest bidder, his visions…
By Jeff Somers First Published: 2009 Avery Cates is a wanted man. After surviving the worst bioengineered disaster in history, Cates finds himself incarcerated — in Chengara Penitentiary. As Chengara has a survival rate of exactly zero, the system’s most famous gunner must do some serious plotting. And a betrayal or so later, he achieves his goal. At a price. All he has to do…
By Hannu Rajaniemi First Published: 2011 Jean le Flambeur is a post-human criminal, mind burglar, confidence artist, and trickster. His origins are shrouded in mystery, but his exploits are known throughout the Heterarchy- from breaking into the vast Zeusbrains of the Inner System to stealing rare Earth antiques from the aristocrats of Mars. Now he’s confined inside the Dilemma Prison, where every day he has…
By Andrew Swann First Published: 1999 Nohar Rajasthan, a private eye descended from genetically manipulated tiger stock, retired from the PI business ten years ago. As a moreau (someone descended from genetically manipulated animal stock) the human world treated as a second-class citizen. He’d had enough. Now her just wants to spend his remaining years in the peace and quiet of his wilderness homestead. That…
By Andrew Swann First Published: 1994 It is 21st-century and Angelica Lopez is a Moreau, a genetically-engineered individual who is half-human, half-animal. Descended from genetically alter rabbit stock, Angel gets by in the most unlikely of career choices. She’s a street fighter. That is until she finds refuge and a new life in San Francisco working as a waitress. All is well until Byron, fox-hybrid,…
By Andrew Swann First Published: 1994 New York City, sixty years in the future. It’s an age when squads of assassins are ready and willing to send an entire skyscraper up in flames just to take out one special operative. Her name–Evi Isham. Her species–Frankenstein. She is one step beyond human, her physiology bio-engineered to make her the best in the business–where she is taking…
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 Anne Harris First Published: 1996 “The Outrageous Novel Of One Tough Riot Grrl Against The World!” Running away from her dysfunctional family, Cid flees Ohio to New York City. There she meeta Magnolia, who is enmeshed in the lethal schemes of brilliant megalomaniac Rahul. With the help of Cid and a biophysicist, Magnolia is able to escape a deadly fate and remake the world.…
By Anne Harris First Published: 1998 Anne Harris returns with an outstanding look at the near future. Never before has her technological insight been so acute, or her portrayal of sex and gender issues more startling or insightful. A bio-technology corporation has created a new species, intelligent, four-armed, humanoid “tetras” who can live in the vats in which “the company” grows biopolymers. Both the tetras…
By Harmon Cooper First Published: 2015 Rating: Excellent Life is a Beautiful Thing is a violent, hallucinatory thrill-ride in the vein of Hunter S. Thompson, William Gibson, and Phillip K. Dick, with a side order of Clockwork Orange. Expect heavy hallucinogen usage, sexual relations with transgender androids, pitched together ramblings of a madman a la William S. Burroughs, graphic violence and murder, political satire, drug…
By Edward Ashton First Published: 2020 Drew Bergen is an Engineer. He builds living things, one gene at a time. He’s also kind of a doofus. Six years after the Stupid War—a bloody, inconclusive clash between the Engineered and the UnAltered—that’s a dangerous combination. Hannah is Drew’s greatest project, modified in utero to be just a bit more than human. She’s also his daughter. Drew’s…
By Edward Ashton First Published: 2020 Rating: Good, but flawed. Anders Jensen is having a bad month. His roommate is a data thief, his girlfriend picks fights in bars, and his best friend is a cyborg…and a lousy tipper. When everything is spiraling out of control, though, maybe those are exactly the kind of friends you need. In a world divided between the genetically engineered…
By Peter Watts First Published: 2004 Lenie Clarke-amphibious cyborg, Meltdown Madonna, agent of the Apocalypse-has grown sick to death of her own cowardice. For five years (since the events recounted in Maelstrom), she and her bionic brethren (modified to work in the rift valleys of the ocean floor) have hidden in the mountains of the deep Atlantic. The facility they commandeered was more than a secret…
By Peter Watts First Published: 2001 This is the way the world ends: A nuclear strike on a deep sea vent. The target was an ancient microbe—voracious enough to drive the whole biosphere to extinction—and a handful of amphibious humans called rifters who’d inadvertently released it from three billion years of solitary confinement. The resulting tsunami killed millions. It’s not as through there was a…
By Peter Watts First Published: 1999 A huge international corporation has developed a facility along the Juan de Fuca Ridge at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean to exploit geothermal power. They send a bio-engineered crew–people who have been altered to withstand the pressure and breathe the seawater–down to live and work in this weird, fertile undersea darkness. Unfortunately the only people suitable for long-term…
By Amy Thomson First Published: 2000 One of the many charms of planet Lyndir is the Between-World, home to the licensed entertainers of the Sa’adani Empire. There, at a palatial house of domination called Tryst, professional dominatrix Kes has become a celebrity attraction whose fame and exclusivity draws a rarified clientele. Her most devoted client is Janus, a major crime boss on Lyndir and elsewhere.…
By Deborah Teramis Christian First Published: 1996 Reva is an assassin for hire, using her ability to navigate different versions of “now” to do her hits. When she chooses a singular timeline, other possibilities fade, and the reality she has chosen becomes her “mainline”. She is a deadly ghost, untraceable and uncatchable. But don’t tell that to Yavobo: a bounty hunter from a fearsome alien…
By Thomas T. Thomas First Published: 1992 In the year 2020 global warming has made the world a warmer, wetter place, but technological developments have run on apace. One of the hottest such areas is medicine, where organ transplants and gene therapy have introduced infinite new vistas to what was once the staid old human condition. A dazzling creature, Crygender: the world’s first surgical hermaphrodite,…
By Rudy Rucker First Published: 2000 It’s 2054, and Phil Gottner doesn’t know where his life is. His girlfriend is hooked on merge, a drug used in “bacteria-style” sex. His father has just been swallowed by a hyperspatial anomaly that materialized from a piece of art designed to project images of four-dimensional objects into three-dimensional space. Then, at the funeral, Phil meets and falls in…