Bøger af Kage Baker

Mars is an old world, one that has been mapped by science fiction writers for over a century. The late Nebula and Locus Award winning writer Kage Baker was among the most skilled cartographers to render the Red Planet as full of life and love, hope and heroism. Gathered together here for the first time are all of Baker's Mars stories, beginning with "The Empress of Mars," for which she won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. It was in this story that Baker first laid out her vision of our neighboring planet, with its patchwork quilt of societies based in part on the history of the British Empire. Here are Celts and colonialists side by side with adventuring Haulers who bring ice from the poles and missionaries who bring the message of their goddess from Luna. These tales are all part of an imaginatively worked out near future, where raucous frontier people intermingle with devoted terraformers in an uneasy mix overseen by Areco, Baker's version of the British East India Company. Turn by turn, each story sets its protagonists the task of understanding and altering a world that resists change. In "The Empress of Mars," a woman gathers her family--her children along with outcast Eccentrics--and turns an unexpected windfall into the founding of a place they can be proud to call their own. "Plotters and Shooters" recounts a series of incidents in an orbital defense station involving characters who may be delightfully familiar. In the "Maelstrom," one of the Eccentrics remakes himself into a theatrical impresario, founding a theater that serves as "a cathedral to pure weirdness." Finally, in "Attlee and the Long Walk," a young child of the agricultural tunnels takes a journey through both her physical and emotional worlds, making unexpected discoveries in both. Maelstrom and Other Martian Tales stands as a testament to the gritty and glorious imagination of a writer gone too soon. These are remarkable stories by a remarkable author.

When the British Arean Company founded its Martian colony, it welcomed any settlers it could get. Outcasts, misfits, and dreamers emigrated in droves to undertake the grueling task of terraforming the cold red planet-only to be abandoned when the BAC discovered it couldn't turn a profit on Mars.This is the story of Mary Griffith, a determined woman with three daughters, who opened the only place to buy a beer on the Tharsis Bulge. It's also the story of Manco Inca, whose attempt to terraform Mars brought a new goddess vividly to life; of Stanford Crosley, con man extraordinaire; of Ottorino Vespucci, space cowboy and romantic hero; of the Clan Morrigan; of the denizens of the Martian Motel, and of the machinations of another Company entirely; all of whom contribute to the downfall of the BAC and the founding of a new world. But Mary and her struggles and triumphs are at the center of it all, in her bar, the Empress of Mars.Based on the Hugo-nominated novella of the same name, this is a rollicking novel of action, planetary romance, and high adventure.

"Imagine if Monty Python wrote the Mayo Clinic Family Health Book, and you sort of get the idea. Afraid you're afflicted with an unknown malady? Finally you have a place to turn!” —Book SenseYou hold in your hands the most complete and official guide to imaginary ailments ever assembled—each disease carefully documented by the most stellar collection of speculative fiction writers ever to play doctor. Detailed within for your reading and diagnostic pleasure are the frightening, ridiculous, and downright absurdly hilarious symptoms, histories, and possible cures to all the ills human flesh isn't heir to, including Ballistic Organ Disease, Delusions of Universal Grandeur, and Reverse Pinocchio Syndrome.Lavishly illustrated with cunning examples of everything that can't go wrong with you, the Lambshead Guide provides a healthy dose of good humor and relief for hypochondriacs, pessimists, and lovers of imaginative fiction everywhere. Even if you don't have Pentzler's Lubriciousness or Tian Shan-Gobi Assimilation, the cure for whatever seriousness may ail you is in this remarkable collection.

Spans a range of epic interstellar adventure stories told against a limitless cosmos filled with exotic aliens, heroic characters, and incredible settings.

Before the Riders came to their remote valley the Yendri led a tranquil pastoral life. When the Riders conquered and enslaved them, only a few escaped to the forests. Only one possessed the necessary rage to fight back: Gard, the half-demon foundling, who began a one-man guerrilla war against the Riders.

In the twenty-fourth century, the Company preserves works of art and extinct forms of life. It recruits orphans from the past, renders them all but immortal, and trains them to serve the Company. One of these is Mendoza, the botanist, who is sent to Elizabethan England to collect samples from the garden of Sir Walter Iden.

The Anvil of the World is the tale of Smith and his feud-prone people, the Children of the Sun. Smith, formerly a successful assassin, is trying to retire, hoping to live an honest life in obscurity in spite of all those who have sworn to kill him. But when he agrees to be the master of a caravan from traveling from the inland city of Troon to Salesh by the sea, trouble follows. As always, Baker's approach is charmingly distinctive. Smith's adventure is certainly the only fantasy featuring a white-uniformed nurse, gourmet cuisine, one hundred and forty-four glass butterflies, and a steamboat.

Dedicated to saving the future by preserving the past, the cyborgs of The Dr. Zeus Company now wonder if they must save themselves. In this fourth book in the Company series, Baker once again takes readers on a wry, intelligent, and absorbing journey into the future and the past.

These eight stories, reprinted for the first time in this collection, delve further into the history and exploits of the Company. The book opens with the novella, "To the Land Beyond the Sunset," starring Lewis and Mendoza, and involving a strange tribe in Bolivia whose members claim to be gods. "Standing in His Light" features Van Drouten's role in the career of the artist Jan Vermeer. Other stories include "Welcome to Olympus, Mr. Hearst," which opens up intriguing questions about The Company, and the original novelette, "Hellfire at Twilight," which concludes the volume and tells of Lewis infiltrating the famous Hellfire Club in eighteenth century England. Gods and Pawns is a compelling read for every Baker fan, and essential for Company addicts.

Facilitator Joseph has outlasted entire civilizations during his twenty-thousand years of service to Dr Zeus, the twenty-fourth century Company that created immortal operatives like him to preserve history and culture. The year is 1699 and Joseph is now in Alta California, to imitate an ancient Native-American Coyote god.

In the twenty-fourth century, the Company preserves works of art and extinct forms of life-for profit, of course. It recruits orphans from the past, renders them all but immortal, and trains them to serve the Company, Dr Zeus. One of these is Mendoza, the botanist. The death of her lover has been followed by centuries of heartbreak.