Books published by Fantastic Books

It's the end of the world as we know it.What can you make of it but art?The colony world of Reis was once a prosperous, glittering center of manufacture and trade. But now, in the grip of planet-wide plague, Reis has been quarantined?cut off from the rest of the galaxy. Only electronic communication can cross the barrier.No one knew where the plague came from. No one knows how it is spread. And no one knows who will live or die. Which leaves one big question: What do you do in the meantime, while you're waiting to find out?Time is killing them, but the handful of disaffected artists who hang at Club Metz are past masters at killing time. Society is falling apart; the A.I. that runs everything is acting weirder every day?but they'll find ways to survive, or at least prevail.Editorial Reviews:"One of the most original portrayals of artificial intelligence since Arthur C. Clarke's duplicitous HAL." ?Booklist"A mature and insightful work of science fiction." ?The New York Review of Science Fiction"Marvelously told." ?Jack Womack, author of Let's Put the Future Behind Us"A truly marvelous book. The writing is skillful and stylish, and the science is cutting-edge?you can't really ask for a lot more." ?Absolute Magnitude

When tyrant fanatics long have commanded both government and institutions of religion, what can ordinary people do? People just trying to live a decent life, sometimes just trying to live at all. People of sincere faith, or of none.King Freedom is a tale of escape from oppression. Both an actual escape, and the story of how one young man so beaten down he has no personality at all can grow to be a full human being."If science fiction is the literature of outsiders, no one is better suited to writing it than Uncle River." ?Publishers Weekly"River's slow-paced perspective will challenge readers to stop and reflect on just what kinds of worlds are worth building." ?Publishers Weekly, reviewing Counting Tadpoles"River [has a] penchant for letting his quirky creativity guide each tale to its often surprising denouement, with mostly engaging results." ?Carl Hays, Booklist Citation and Review, about Counting Tadpoles"River's self-imposed isolation has undeniably nourished his fertile imagination to yield dreamlike tales that range widely across the speculative fiction universe." ?Stanley Schmidt, from his introduction to Counting Tadpoles

Maggie Roche is an out-of-work poet and single mother. Spied on by a cyborged rat, attacked, drugged into panic and rapture, seduced, drawn into conspiracy, she's flung four thousand years into her own future. In the alien world of the Ull- Upload Lifeform Lords who are human-machine hybrids of overwhelming power-she learns that she is history's first true time traveler, hunted by friend and foe to the end of time. The entire future of the cosmos will be reset by these terrifying events. The Judas Mandala introduced the terms "virtual reality" and "virtual matrix," anticipating Frank Tipler's influential Omega Point Theory, William Gibson's cyberpunk fiction, and The Matrix... A new Afterword describes the strange publishing history of this ground-breaking novel, and includes the full text of an omitted chapter."Experience an epic sense of immensity: an inkling of humanit's perhaps limitless possibilities within the strangeness of our universe." -Australian Book Review

Four long adventures by a master story-teller.Uncle BonesMedical research brings you back from death, but only just. Nanotech turns you into a Stinky, shunned by the world. And you're only 15 years old.The MagiThe Jesuit starship St. Ignatius Loyola, in exile from post-religion High Earth, finds a deserted city on a distant world. Have its people gone in search of their Redeemer?The Ballad of Bowsprit BearsteadWhat did cause the fall of the galactic empire? And why was it ruled by psychic Neanderthals? A time traveling scientist is shocked by the answer.The Game of Stars and SoulsSon is pitted against father for the love of a beautiful gifted woman in this classic space opera of galactic conquest and self-awakening. Will their conflict end by destroying the universe? "Our own trailblazing man of ideas." - Terry Dowling, editor, The Essential Ellison