Showing results by author "Lavie Tidhar" in Science Fiction

In Rip-Off!, 13 of today’s best and most honored writers of speculative fiction face a challenge even they would be hard-pressed to conceive: Pick your favorite opening line from a classic piece of fiction (or even non-fiction) - then use it as the first sentence of an entirely original short story.

Short novels are movie-length narratives that may well be the perfect length for science fiction stories. This audio collection, nearly 16 hours long, presents the best-of-the-best science fiction novellas published in 2016 by current and emerging masters of this vibrant form of storytelling.

When pulp-fiction writer Lior Tirosh returns to his homeland in East Africa, much has changed. Palestina - a Jewish state established in the early 20th century - is constructing a massive border wall to keep out African refugees. Unrest in the capital, Ararat, is at fever pitch. While searching for his missing niece, Tirosh begins to act as though he is a detective from one of his own novels. He is pursued by ruthless members of the state's security apparatus while unearthing deadly conspiracies and impossible realities.

In a 19th century unlike our own, the shadowy assassin known as the Bookman moves unseen. His weapons are books; his enemies are many. And when Orphan, a young man with a mysterious past, loses his love to the sinister machinations of the Bookman, Orphan would stop at nothing to bring her back from the dead.

A worldwide diaspora has left a quarter of a million people at the foot of a space station. Cultures collide in real life and virtual reality. The city is literally a weed, its growth left unchecked. Life is cheap, and data is cheaper. When Boris Chong returns to Tel Aviv from Mars, much has changed. Boris' ex-lover is raising a strangely familiar child who can tap in to the datastream of a mind with the touch of a finger. His cousin is infatuated with a robotnik - a damaged cyborg soldier who might as well be begging for parts.

1939: Adolf Hitler, fallen from power, seeks refuge in a London engulfed in the throes of a very British fascism. Now eking a miserable living as a down-at-heels private eye and calling himself Wolf, he has no choice but to take on the case of a glamorous Jewish heiress whose sister went missing. It's a decision Wolf will very shortly regret. For in another time and place a man lies dreaming: Shomer, once a Yiddish pulp writer, who dreams lurid tales of revenge in the hell that is Auschwitz.

A private detective is hired by a mysterious woman to find a man. The quarry? An obscure author of pulp fiction novels featuring one Osama Bin Laden: vigilante. Our detective pursues his quarry from the backwaters of Asia to the Capitals of Europe, the New World and into a realm of shadows. Here he finds the refugees, ghostly entities haunting reality. Where do they come from? And what do they want?

A bold experiment has mutated a small fraction of humanity. Nations race to harness the gifted, putting them to increasingly dark ends. At the dawn of global war, flashy American superheroes square off against sinister Germans and dissolute Russians. Increasingly depraved scientists conduct despicable research in the name of victory. British agents Fogg and Oblivion, recalled to the Retirement Bureau, have kept a treacherous secret for over 40 years. But all heroes must choose when to join the fray, and to whom their allegiance is owed - even for just one perfect summer's day.

Caught between realities, a mathematician, a book dealer, and a mobster desperately seek a notorious book that disappears upon being read. Only the author, a rakish sci-fi writer, knows whether his popular novel is truthful or a hoax. In a story that is cosmic, inventive, and sly, multi-award-winning author Lavie Tidhar (Central Station) travels from the emergence of life to the very ends of the universe.

The mysterious and glamorous Lady De Winter is one of their most valuable agents. A despicable murder inside a locked and bolted room on the Rue Morgue in Paris is just the start. This whirlwind adventure will take Milady to the highest and lowest parts of that great city—and cause her to question the very nature of reality itself.

The Unidentified Funny Objects series delivers an annual dose of funny, zany, and unusual science fiction and fantasy stories. All-new fiction from the genre's top voices!

1941. An hour before the attack on Pearl Harbour, a man from the future materializes in President Roosevelt's office. His offer of military aid may cut the war and its pending atrocities short and alter the course of the future. The future. Welcome to Mars, where the lives of three ordinary people become entwined in one dingy smokesbar the moment an assassin opens fire. The target: the mysterious Bill Glimmung. But is Glimmung even real?

The city known as Neom is many things to many beings, human or otherwise. Neom is a tech wonderland for the rich and beautiful, an urban sprawl along the Red Sea, and a port of call between Earth and the stars. In the desert, young orphan Elias has joined a caravan, hoping to earn his passage off-world from Central Station. But the desert is full of mechanical artefacts, some unexplained and some unexploded. Recently, a wry unnamed robot has unearthed one of the region’s biggest mysteries: the vestiges of a golden man.

When Mycroft Holmes is murdered in London, it is up to retired shadow executive Smith to track down his killer—and stumble on the greatest conspiracy of his life. Strange forces are stirring into life around the globe, and in the shadow game of spies nothing is certain. Fresh from liberating a strange alien object in Abyssinia—which might just be the mythical Ark of the Covenant—young Lucy Westerna, Holmes' protégé, must follow her own path to the truth while, on the other side of the world, a young Harry Houdini must face his greatest feat of escape—death itself.

In a 19th century unlike our own, the shadowy assassin known as the Bookman moves unseen. His weapons are books; his enemies are many. And when Orphan, a young man with a mysterious past, loses his love to the sinister machinations of the Bookman, Orphan would stop at nothing to bring her back from the dead.

Behind the Mask is a multi-author collection with stories by award-winning authors Kelly Link, Cat Rambo, Carrie Vaughn, Seanan McGuire, Lavie Tidhar, Sarah Pinsker, Keith Rosson, Kate Marshall, Chris Large, and others. It is partially a prose nod to the comic world - the bombast, the larger-than-life, the save-the-worlds and the calls-to-adventure. But it’s also a spotlight on the more intimate side of the genre. The hopes and dreams of our cape-clad heroes. The regrets and longings of our cowled villains. That poignant, solitary view of the world that can be experienced only from behind the mask.

An unabridged audio collection spotlighting the "best of the best" science fiction stories published in 2016 by current and emerging masters of the genre, edited by Allan Kaster, as narrated by top voice talents.

Pym fa il ricordatore e tutte le sue esperienze vengono registrate e trasmesse ai suoi follower. La "Storia di Pym", seguita da milioni di persone, è un'avventura nel sistema solare, fino alle lune di Plutone, e anche una fiction con affetti e amori interrotti... Ma forse è tutto troppo simile a un Truman Show spaziale.

Mulan Rouge è un'ex mercenaria e adesso guardia del corpo del Boss Gui, capo dei Rospi di Kunming. Quando lui deve partire in treno, Mulan è incaricata di controllare che nessun passeggero costituisca un pericolo per lui: un compito molto pericoloso anche per un'esperta come lei.

Le storie di Lavie Tidhar si possono leggere sia come racconti di fantascienza sia come estratti – emozionanti ed evocativi – della vita di personaggi ai margini di una società in espansione verso lo spazio. Storie di persone che, con poco o nulla da perdere, s'imbarcano su “carrette spaziali” per un viaggio dall'esito incerto. E poi c'è chi resta, chi spera di partire un giorno dal “Terminale Terra” e chi farebbe qualunque cosa – il killer, la webstar o il clonatore – pur di realizzare il sogno di riuscire ad andarsene per sempre.