Gardner Dozois once again proves himself to be among the best editors in science fiction with The Year's Best Science Fiction Sixteenth Annual Collection. Whether you like your SF hard or soft, with a twist or straight, you'll find something to love in here. Dozois picked perfect 1998 stories from the likes of Greg Egan, Bruce Sterling and Ursula K. Le Guin for celebrity sparkle, but he didn't overlook relative newcomers either. It's hard to pick favourites from such a varied and delightful bunch. Paul J. McAuley's "Sea Change, With Monsters" is a thriller that takes place in the icy seas of Europa, where genetically engineered weapon-creatures battle humans for survival. Cory Doctorow weighs in with the funny and poignant "Craphound", a tale of two second-hand junk entrepreneurs who find out that the love of good kitsch transcends all barriers. Liz Williams's "Voivodoi" explores one family's anguish and triumph in an Eastern Europe scarred by mutagens. And as usual, Dozois provides a stylish wrap-up of the previous year in science fiction, fantasy and horror publishing. It speaks well for the health of the genre that Dozois picked these winners from hundreds of stellar nominees (he lists them in the back). And it's a rare treat to enjoy every single story in a collection. —Therese Littleton, Amazon.com

Although none of the stories in this anthology take place in the future, they qualify as science fiction (or perhaps speculative fiction would be more accurate) because at the heart of each one lies the question "What if...?" Only in this case, instead of a question like "What if we had faster-than-light travel?" all the questions revolve around alternative historical events. What if the Chinese had colonized America before the Europeans? What if Joseph McCarthy had become president? As in science fiction, the question is the seed from which the author extrapolates a future and a narrative.

The stories in this anthology cover a wide range of other pasts and presents. Highlights include "Must and Shall" by Harry Turtledove, the modern master of alternative history. His fictional present stems from an alternative Civil War, one that the North still won, but in a very different manner. Gene Wolfe presents a timeline in which World War II is settled by an automobile race, and Robert Silverberg looks at a modern-day world in which the Roman Empire never fell. This anthology will definitely appeal to those who enjoy the curious mental frisson that comes from exploring worlds that are in many ways similar to our own, but also quite different. —Brooks Peck

In this book, David Ewing Duncan traces the development of our modern-day calendar and describes how people's experiences are shaped by their conception of time. Duncan postulates that all this concern with time started when a Cro-Magnon man decided to mark off the days of the lunar cycle on an eagle bone. After recounting the slow evolution of the calendar through the centuries, the author laments how time oriented our society has become: "There are moments when I am hopelessly late, or cannot possibly fit anything else into my schedule, when I sigh and wish that Cro-Magnon man 13,000 years ago in the Dordogne Valley had set aside his eagle bone and gone to bed."

The book is organised in chronological order and focuses mainly on the centuries leading up to the adoption of the Gregorian calendar (our modern calendar) by the Catholic Church in 1582. Along the way, Duncan describes the ancient calendars of many cultures all over the globe, from India to Egypt to the Mayan empire. During the Middle Ages, Christian churches discouraged scientific inquiry on the theory that it was wrong to question the nature of God's creation. This severely hampered the refinement of the calendar and the advancement of many academic pursuits. By the 16th century, Europe's calendars were 11 days out of sync with the solar year, which meant Easter was being celebrated on the wrong day. An infusion of knowledge from India and the Middle East helped Europeans get back on track. Duncan profiles the many mathematicians, philosophers, and monks who made organising time their life's work. This book honours the efforts of those scholars and examines the way politics and religion influenced societal perceptions of time through the ages. —Jill Marquis, Amazon.com

mass market reprint of the original book. classic fantasy.

Most newspapers and magazines issue their contributors with a style guide. Writers, be they on staff or freelance, then know whether a publication's house style requires % or per cent or commas in dates. Sometimes it's just a tatty sheet of typed A4 but since 1986 The Economist has developed its stylish Style Guide, through six editions, into a full length reference book.

Because English is such a vast and continuously evolving language—its vocabulary is double that of French and more than three times larger than German—it is open to multifarious use and all the old arguments about correctness or lack of it. The Economist unequivocally sets out its version of what is acceptable and why, usually conforming to Fowler's Modern English Usage and other good guides to getting it right. It also refutes dozens of common errors, stating firmly, for example, that "Data are plural" and that "Any one refers to a number; anyone to anybody."

Since its style guide is set out in such detail, it makes sense to publish it for the rest of the world, most of whom are not writers for The Economist but who simply want a succinctly witty guide to writing accurately. The first section focuses on minutiae such as distinguishing between a "little-used car" and a "little used-car". It also insists that "to never split an infinitive is quite easy" and, in English so impeccable that you have to read it twice to be sure, that "Frankenstein was not a monster, but his creator." After a section setting out rules governing American and British English this handy reference book provides a miscellany of useful information including abbreviations, currencies, calendars and conversions for metric and imperial measurements. —Susan Elkin

Doctor, watch out! As Dore stood by, he saw the Doctor backing slowly into the corner where he would meet his fate. Initially defending himself with a torch, the Doctor searched frantically for a new method of defense. The crimson mass is lunging forward using long, tentacle-like attachments: what is that thing? Slowly the subhuman blob comes in to focus, and Dore realizes . . . it's a colossal radish! This is a monster never before wrestled with; what are they going to do? After reading this vegetative tale, you won't look at your garden the same way again..

Marid Audran has become everything he once despised. Not so long ago, he was a hustler in the Budayeen, an Arabian ghetto in a Balkanized future Earth. Back then, as often as not, he didn’t have the money to buy himself a drink. But he had his independence.

Now Marid works for Friedlander Bey, “godfather” of the Budayeen, a man whose power stretches across a shattered, crumbling world. During the day, Marid is a policeman…and Bey’s personal envoy to the police. His new position has brought him money and power which he would abandon in a moment if he could return to a life of neither owning nor being owned. Which, unfortunately, isn’t one of his options.

It’s also not an issue. For something dark is afoot. Something that is sending the city into chaos. Helping a child-mutilator to avoid arrest. Sending a killer to murder Marid’s partner. Murdering prostitutes and savaging their remains. Signs point to the hand of Abu Adil—the one man in the city whose power rivals Friedlander Bey’s. Whatever happens next, it’s not going to be good news for Marid Audran…

Greg Egan, an Australian, is a master of intellectual dazzle who can still amaze hard-SF readers who know all the tricks and demand to be shown a new one. Quarantine (1992) was his first novel, though his short stories in Britain's SF magazine Interzone had already caused a stir. The quarantine of the title is a gigantic space-time bubble placed around Earth's orbit by unknown hands in 2034, making the stars and outer planets invisible and unreachable. Why? Investigating a pointless kidnapping, a resourceful cyber sleuth with a head full of computer add-ons stumbles on—and is forcibly recruited into—a technological conspiracy whose researches hint at the reason for the Bubble. It's there to protect the universe, or rather an infinite multiplicity of universes, from the destructive effects of human minds. In a ferociously intellectual argument Egan tackles the central weirdness of Quantum Mechanics, which is both the most successful and worryingly inexplicable theory of modern physics. Suppose it were possible for a thinking being to be consciously "smeared out" over the countless simultaneous probability states that according to QM are "collapsed" into a single reality when observed or measured? This happens to our hero, and the results are very strange indeed. Dizzying concepts and hardware overshadow the slightly flat characters, but it's a terrifically impressive book. - -David Langford

What would happen if you could copy your memories and personality into a computer generated universe, live there, and return? Greg Egan, author of Quarantine explores the possibilities in this suspenseful book. Battles rage on different levels as computer personalities on a locked chip fight to escape. Meanwhile sticky legal questions are raised in the real world. Think about the copyright laws, and what about the legal rights of computer programs?

Australian writer Greg Egan presents 18 of his short stories from the early 1990s in this collection. The blurb on the cover says "Science fiction for people who like science fiction," and experienced and new sci-fi fans alike will agree. The ideas and world-building are light years ahead of the pack.

Highlights include: "The Hundred Light-Year Diary", in which society deals with the mixed blessing of diaries sent back in time to earlier selves; "Eugene", in which a working-class couple decide if, and then to what degree, they should genetically enhance their baby; "The Caress", a science fiction detective story that will leave you feeling disturbed; "The Safe-Deposit Box", in which the narrator seeks to know why he has spent his life waking up every day in a new body; "A Kidnapping", which throws a new light on avatar crime; "Learning To Be Me", a story that recalls some of the Mind's I essays; "Appropriate Love", in which insurance companies pressure a couple in need of medical care; "The Moral Virologist", a tale of a deranged geneticist attempting to redeem the world through a computer virus; and "Closer", about a happy couple who enjoy using the latest technological gadgetry to learn more about each other ... although sometimes they learn too much.

Greg Egan is an Australian with a worldwide perspective—seven of the ten stories in this fine and thoughtful collection appeared in Britain's premier SF magazine Interzone and the rest in America's Asimov's SF Magazine. In a time when it's frequently claimed that SF holds no more surprises Egan casts a coldly innovative eye on old themes like the problem of consciousness: where in the human brain's intricate mess does the "I" actually live? He delivers shocking body-blows to received ideas in thought- experiment stories that like Jorge Luis Borges's philosophical squibs are booby- trapped with terrible truths and paradoxes. Standouts here include the title piece where a supercomputer built from pure light explores a defect in known mathematics that could smash not only the theoretical but the physical universe; "Silver Fire", an unspeakably bleak examination of our need for superstition, however irrational; "Reasons To Be Cheerful", exploring with chilling logic the implications of the likelihood that human emotions are "only" chemical states; "Cocoon", testing liberal sentiments to destruction with a biotechnology that might let parents choose only heterosexual kids; and "The Planck Dive", a one-way trip into a black hole that makes most previous SF versions of this ultimate bungee-jump seem naive. Egan's visions of the future glow with gloomy intellectual fire. Luminous indeed. —David Langford

Early next century Prabhir spends his childhood on a small Indonesian island where his biologist parents are investigating anomalous butterflies:

"The butterfly—a female twenty centimetres across, with black and iridescent-green wings— clearly belonged to some species of swallowtail: the two hind wings were tipped with long, narrow 'tails' or 'streamers'. But there were puzzling quirks... the pattern of veins in the wings... and the position of the genital openings... How could this one species of swallowtail been isolated longer than any other butterfly in the world?"

A childish prank leads to Prabhir's blaming himself for the violent deaths of his parents, and he devotes the rest of his life to protecting his young sister. At the age of nine he sails with her to safety and later abandons his education to give her a home. Maddie becomes a biologist and takes an interest in the strange creatures now proliferating in the islands; when she goes on a field trip, Prabhir feels obliged to follow... Greg Egan's recent books and short stories of the near future— Distress and Luminous—have combined their intellectually challenging scientific speculations with a good deal of human drama, and Teranesia continues this trend in his work. Prabhir's irrational guilt and obsessive protectiveness make him a memorable flawed protagonist. In the end, though, the point is the wonders. Egan comes up with some fascinating speculation on mechanisms whereby evolution could suddenly go into overdrive and has the good sense not to push conclusions too far; the reader's informed imagination continues well beyond the book's end. All this, and some scathing satire on Critical Theory and Cultural Studies too. —Roz Kaveney

Greg Egan's ability to imagine wonders of cosmic scale is shown again in his SF novel Schild's Ladder, with future galactic society confronting a disaster of almost unimaginable vastness—or is it a springboard to new hope?

The fatal experiment was right at the edge of theoretical physics. Could there be an alternative structure for vacuum itself, the void underlying our cosmos? Unfortunately, yes. Once created, this artificial "novo-vacuum" successfully competes with normal space, expanding at half the speed of light in an all-consuming sphere. Inside, physics is radically, incomprehensibly different...

Six centuries later, thousands of inhabited solar systems have been gobbled. Scientists investigating the novo-vacuum from starship Rindler are split between trying to destroy it with tailored spatial viruses ("Planck worms") and hoping to understand the teeming richness beyond that deadly interface.

In a lonely galaxy where only humans are intelligent, whole planets have been evacuated to give microscopic alien organisms their chance to evolve. The novo-vacuum may be bursting with new orders of life, so that killing it would be a monstrous act of genocide. But frightened people dare dreadful things. Violence erupts on the Rindler.

Building up from ideas of human intelligence in disembodied storage or artificial bodies, Egan finally takes his lead characters on a mind-boggling joyride through novo-vacuum, mapping them into a space where a tense eight-hour flight from deadly predators covers just one millimetre. There's a lot of room in there.

Schild's Ladder makes easy reading out of terrifying physics, generating a real sense of wonder even as your jaw drops at the immensity of its implications. —David Langford

Layers of mystery wrap Planetary: All over the World like rice candy. Follow the enigmatic heroes Jakita Wagner, Elijah Snow, and the Drummer as they excavate the secret history of the world from its wealth of bizarre happenings. Though the characterization isn't sparklingly brilliant—the "insane" Drummer behaves more like the A-Team's Murdock than a believable madman—the stories are both broad and deep, exploring a web of conspiracies and shadowy superheroes that manipulate and "protect" our world. Clever retellings of primal comics myths are interlaced with X-Files-esque secret government tales, and they drive the reader back and forth to collate evidence; the characters can't do all the work. Illustrator John Cassaday mirrors Warren Ellis's script from circumspect to sublime, befitting the best successor yet to the pulp comics of the 1940s. —Rob Lightner

Are we ready for yet another take on superhero morality? Let's hope so, because The Authority: Relentless retools old ideas for a new century. Warren Ellis has his heroes think globally as they kick butt locally, stopping or slowing down to consider how they can use their powers to "make the world a better place." How he can pull this off in our oh-so-ironic age is an artistic mystery, but the results are clear: superheroes with believable personalities and community spirit. Two story arcs, each encompassing terror and evil on a global scale, pit the group of seven against armies of superhumans dispatched in scenes reminiscent of the best action movies. Many of the characters from the older Stormwatch series reappear here, and fans will be pleased to learn that Ellis has, if anything, improved his depth and storytelling prowess. Bryan Hitch's penciling, Paul Neary's inking, and Laura Depuy's coloring are all equally responsible for the gloriously lovely artwork—from interdimensional spaceships to dismembered spinal cords, they make saving the world beautiful. —Rob Lightner

It's no wonder he hates it here. Spider Jerusalem, journalist and hero of sorts in Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan, wades through a sewer of poverty and high-tech despair daily in his efforts to understand and report on America. In The New Scum, Ellis contrasts the powerful, in the form of presidential candidates, with the powerless, who are begging and hustling on the streets. The satire is savage and rarely subtle, but the author takes care to show some human warmth lest the comic descend into the nihilism it warns against. The plot, largely secondary to the characters and background events, focuses loosely on Jerusalem's assignment to interview the two candidates, each psychotic and unfit for any office. His bodyguard and personal assistant, meanwhile, discover the terrors of pleasure in a post-nanotech world with unlimited credit. The election-eve climax fully captures the anxiety and depression that come from having no real choice in matters of great importance. Either Ellis or his creation deserves a Pulitzer. —Rob Lightner

Are we ready for yet another take on superhero morality? Let's hope so, because The Authority: Relentless retools old ideas for a new century. Warren Ellis has his heroes think globally as they kick butt locally, stopping or slowing down to consider how they can use their powers to "make the world a better place." How he can pull this off in our oh-so-ironic age is an artistic mystery, but the results are clear: superheroes with believable personalities and community spirit. Two story arcs, each encompassing terror and evil on a global scale, pit the group of seven against armies of superhumans dispatched in scenes reminiscent of the best action movies. Many of the characters from the older Stormwatch series reappear here, and fans will be pleased to learn that Ellis has, if anything, improved his depth and storytelling prowess. Bryan Hitch's penciling, Paul Neary's inking, and Laura Depuy's coloring are all equally responsible for the gloriously lovely artwork—from interdimensional spaceships to dismembered spinal cords, they make saving the world beautiful. —Rob Lightner

Nobody ever accused Warren Ellis of lacking imagination. The latest collection of the Spider Jerusalem saga, Transmetropolitan: Lonely City, is packed with laser-guided satire and neo-adolescent wish fulfillment in the form of a bowel disruptor. Sliding his story of government manipulation and counter-manipulation between moments of reflection and observation makes Ellis's downbeat ending a bit less nihilistic than it could have been. Despite the gulf separating us from Jerusalem's City, it's not hard to draw parallels between his milieu of police-run riots and state-maintained misery and our own less colorful environment. Lonely City drags the man who's more "anti" than "hero" out into the world he professes to hate and forces him to do something about it, while never descending into the boring comic-book morality he fights daily. —Rob Lightner

Warren Ellis improves on his already outstanding stories and characters in the second collection of Planetary: The Fourth Man. While scraping their way through their investigations, the three archaeologists of mystery, enigmatic themselves, deal with their own past and learn more about the creepy metahumans lurking behind practically every oddity on the planet. Ellis seems to take pleasure in turning superheroic icons inside out. Fans will find references and deconstructions from the Golden Age to the post-postmodern comics world. John Cassaday's penciling adapts itself well to the stories, giving intimate barroom chats and epic battles against giant ants equal credibility. While reading Planetary, one gets the sense that superhero comics really do have somewhere to go after being so thoroughly demolished in the '80s and '90s—and that we'd do well to keep reading. —Rob Lightner

Warren Ellis' searing and satirical socio-political adventures of Spider Jerusalem, the freelance, drug-addled, brain-damaged, anarchic investigative journalist, finally reach their awesome climax - and with gusto! Spider is close to finally nailing US President Callahan, whose attempts to hide his 'unusual' passions have left a bloody trail in his wake. But time is short: the President has declared martial law and his death squads are closing in on Spider - though they may be saved the trouble if terminal illness gets him first! Swamped with awards and accolades, this is an acclaimed creative team delivering one ending that won't leave you disappointed! Worning: Adults only!