Martin Harry Greenberg - Love and Rockets

Table of Contents

Haunted, Loren thought. The man haunts me. She sat up in her bunk and turned on the console, then pulled up the entertainment files. Old stories, she liked; the oldest, ones that took place on Earth.

A planet she had never seen. A planet no one she knew had ever seen.

The Consort probably knew Earthlings among the senior Crew... Stop it, she whispered, and continued searching through her files.

Of course, everything was backward, just all wrong, here in the real world. Nothing like the stories. For it to be true romance, the Consort should have offered to carry the carryall today, not sent Loren on her way with a sharp word.

And she should be a stolen child of aristocracya princess in disguise, or hidden, through some astonishing mix-up of fortune. Awaiting discovery of her rightful place... and the hand of her price.

But no. Loren was already in her rightful place, and lucky to have it. Her workshift was not onerous, her teammates were decent and engaging, and Gramma Francesca was a benevolent work gang boss. Shed heard stories, knew how it could be.

So why did she feel as though her life was being wasted, one unendurable sliver at a time?

from If This Were A Romance...
by Shannon Page and Jay Lake

Here are thirteen tales of strong women, armed with weapons they are not afraid to use, as well as fists and feet of fury, from authors such as Tanya Huff, Mickey Zucker Reichert, Jane Lindskold, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, P.R. Frost, and others. These are urban and paranormal stories certain to appeal to all readers of this most popular genre. So sit back and enjoy as these empowered women take on all challenges with weapons, wit, and skilland pity the poor monsters and bad guys wholl need rescuing from them!

This unique anthology of science fiction and fantasy tales includes stories by authors of Chinese ancestry, who make their homes in places as varied as the United States, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Philippines. The eighteen talented authors included here, such as Tony Pi, Derwin Mak, Eric Choi, Brenda W. Clough, Urania Fung and Ken Liu have drawn upon Chinas rich and venerable heritage as well as the traditions and cultures of their current homelands to create imaginative and fascinating stories. From the tale of a murder that can only be solved by spirit possession to a fortune cookie that offers an uncertain future... from a man who believes his wife has become a Chinese dragon to an inventive army officer in the Ming conflict with Japan... from a young womans fateful encounter with a Chinatown shopkeeper to a Chinese rocket scientist caught in the perils of 1950s America...

Some of the darkest hints in all of H.P. Lovecrafts Cthulhu Mythos relate to what will happen after the Old Ones return and take over the Earth. What happens when the Stars Are Right, the sunken city of Rlyeh rises from beneath the waves, and Cthulhu is unleashed upon the world for the last time? What happens when the other Old Ones, long since banished from our universe, break through and descend from the stars? What would the reign of Cthulhu be like, on a totally transformed planet where mankind is no longer the master? It wont be simply the end of everything. It will be a time of new horrors and of utter strangeness. It will be a time when humans with a taint of unearthly blood in their ancestry may come into their own. It will be a time foreseen only by authors with the kind of finely honed imaginative visions as Ian Watson, Brian Stableford, Will Murray, Gregory Frost, Richard Lupoff, and the others of Cthulhus Reign.

Science fiction is the literature of what if, and steampunk takes the what if along a particular time stream. What if steam power was the prime force in the Victorian era? How would that era change, and how would it change the future? From a Franco-British race for Kentucky coal to one womans determination to let no man come between her and her inventions... from machine whisperers to a Thomas Edison experiment gone awry, here are fourteen original tales of what might have been had steam powered the world in an earlier age, from Michael A. Stackpole, Donald J., Bingle, Robert Vardeman, Paul Genesse, Jody Lynn Nye, and others.

SFRNot Just Science Fiction Research Anymore, copyright 2010 by Lois McMaster Bujold

Second Shift, copyright 2010 by Brenda Cooper

Gateway Night, copyright 2010 by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

The Women Who Ate Stone Squid, copyright 2010 by Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

Wanted, copyright 2010 by Anita Ensal

An Offer You Couldnt Refuse, copyright 2010 by Sylvia Kelso and Lillian Stewart Carl

In The Night, copyright 2010 by Steven H Silver

F Isnt For Freefall, copyright 2010 by Donald J. Bingle

If This Were A Romance, copyright 2010 by Shannon Page and Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

The Business of Love, copyright 2010 by Kelly Swails

Music In Time, copyright 2010 by Dean Wesley Smith

Dance of Life, copyright 2010 by Jody Lynn Nye

Old Times Sake, copyright 2010 by Tim Waggoner

Drinking Games, copyright 2010 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Romance and science fiction as literary genres have both traditionally been hard to define. One senior practitioner of the SF form finally and famously defaulted to, Science fiction is what I mean when I point to it. Romance, the older term, has passed through multiple meanings over the centuries, many of which still linger in formal academic discourse. But if one stands in a bookstore today and points to each, one will definitely find oneself pointing in two different directions, at two different populations of books and browsers. Yet in science, its a truism that boundary conditions are always the most interesting, and that also tends to be true of literature. And the two sets of readers turn out to not be nearly as immiscible as had formerly been thought.

I have a science-fictional definition for romance stories: they are tales of the promulgation of human evolution through sexual selection. Since a recent theory among the evolutionary biologists is that human intelligence is itself a result of sexual selection, this isnt as much of a joke as it might appear. But many romance stories stop short of the reproduction part. So whats really going on, here?

The romances Ive read, as constituted in the modern genre sense, actually seem to be stories of the power negotiation in a sexual relationship, in which the womans agenda wins. The details of the agenda vary with the tastes of the writers and readers, but almost invariably a permanent pair-bond results with a hero capable of holding up his side. (In the case of same-sex romances, a permanent bond also results, and the holding up his or her side likewise persists.) The story is over when the deal has been proposed, testedthe tested part is where the plot goesand sealed.