The Children of the Sky Twenty years in the making, this much-anticipated sequel to Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep explodes with action and speculation. A lonely community of humans, marooned on a planet full of hostile dog-like telepathic aliens, must find allies, establish their security, and fight internal dissension—all while anticipating the arrival of a killer starship fleet from a Singularity god. Vinge does world-building right!

A Pleasure to Burn Ninety-one-years old, Ray Bradbury no longer produces fiction at the youthfully energetic pace he once set himself. But he remains a living treasure and inspiration on the sci-fi scene, popping up now with a new collection of short stories that gathers for the first time all the seminal work that thematically preceded his classic Fahrenheit 451. In this age of "rage against the machine," Bradbury's anti-authoritarian stories hold a place of honor.

Home Fires Gene Wolfe does Joe Haldeman's The Forever War? Improbable as it might seem, the Grand Master of subtle, enigmatic, sensitive science-fantasies such as The Book of the New Sun now turns his hand to an examination of interstellar battles in a relativistic arena, where galactic soldiers return young to an Earth where all they love has aged.

Among Others How do you explain to a mundane soul what it means to be a proud and noble geek? Simply hand them a copy of Jo Walton's Among Others. On its surface, it seems a quiet mainstream novel about a young girl's path to adulthood. That unassuming surface narrative will lure in the reluctant. But underneath, fairies exist. And, more crucially, our heroine is an uber-nerd, fixated on science fiction and fantasy books. The namechecking of real authors contributes to the verisimilitude, and the ultimate portrait of a species is attained.

The Silent Land Nobody does elegantly unsettling and creepy fantastical stories better than Graham Joyce, all without a drop of gore. This talented English writer remains a cult object and secret flavor, but perhaps not for much longer. His latest breakout tale tracks a married couple who experience a cataclysm while at a remote mountain resort. Is this the end of the world, or the creation of a pocket universe? You'll be in suspense till the astonishing conclusion.

Goliath The inventive Scott Westerfeld shows that the steampunk genre holds infinite capacity for surprise, once we move beyond the cliches of brass goggles and mad scientists. In his alternate timeline, World War I—itself an underused fictional milieu—is being fought with weird machines and biotech. Our youthful protagonists seek an end to hostilities, as well as their own personal growth. The books from this best-selling YA author are invariably snatched up quickly by savvy adults!

Spectrum 18: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art It seems like only yesterday that readers were handling Volume 1 of this brilliant annual compilation of the best in fantastical artwork, and wondering if the innovative series could be sustained. Now, Spectrum is approaching its twentieth anniversary, thanks to the wide-ranging good taste, energy and vast connections of Cathy and Arnie Fenner. With more than 300 pieces by such artists as James Gurney and Michael Whelan, this latest installment provides the ultimate sci-fi and fantasy eye candy.

Creeping Death From Neptune There was never another comics artist like Basil Wolverton. Madcap, goofy and perverse hardly begin to describe his idiosyncratic drawing and scripting. He illustrated everything from Bible stories to Mad magazine features. But he seems to have reserved his best powers for works of science fiction, including the heroic exploits of the interplanetary explorer Spacehawk. This ground-breaking volume offers a comprehensive survey of Wolverton's sci-fi output, serving as the perfect entry point for a newbie or reaffirmation for veteran reader.

At the Human Limit The amazing, astounding, thrilling, seven-decade-plus career of Jack Williamson will likely never be achieved again. Participating as a young man in the birth of genre science fiction, he remained spry and insightful right up into the age of Singularity fiction, working at both novel and story lengths. Haffner Press has lovingly assembled all his short fiction in eight volumes, of which this is the concluding entry. From 1959 to his death in 2006, Williamson produced three dozen masterful tales, showing that at best, old SF writers never die—they just keep getting better and better!

Monsters of Men The conclusion to this disturbing and uncompromising YA trilogy—dark as any Cormac McCarthy prose—amply rewards all that has gone before. On a harsh alien world, a small human settlement struggles against an uncontrollable telepathy-producing virus that brings on "the Noise," a barrage of public thought broadcasts. But this impediment doesn't hinder a mad evangelist from waging war against both his fellow humans and the aliens dubbed "Spackles." Our heroes, Todd Hewitt and Viola Eade, struggle to restore sanity to the world, while putting their love for each other on frustrating hold. But Ness makes no guarantees they will ever live happily ever after.

The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller Like Ray Bradbury, Carol Emshwiller remains a potent force of nature into her late senior years, turning out one unclassifiably weird and polished story after another. This essential volume allows the lucky reader to sample the best of her output from her debut in 1955 right up to the present. Whether dealing unpredictably with alien sex, the cruelties of war, or feminist parables, Emshwiller never fails to astound and delight.

Doctor Who: The Coming of the Terraphiles When Grand Master Michael Moorcock turns his hand to franchise fiction, as he so rarely does, we can surely expect a brilliant romp. Does Doctor Who meet Elric of Melniboné or perhaps Mod Anarchist Jerry Cornelius? You'll have to grab this new adventure of the Time Lord to discover just how wildly New Wave maven Moorcock has applied his ineffable stamp to a favorite character.

The Steampunk Bible With an assist from S.J. Chambers, Jeff VanderMeer, expert anthologist and fantasist, has plumbed the submarine depths and airship heights of the steampunk phenomenon, providing a lushly illustrated volume that tracks and explains the fiction, the crafts, the costumes, the music and the philosophies of this joyfully burgeoning movement. Sure to provoke exclamations of "We are indeed amused!" from any lucky recipient, however regally stuffy.

Rule 34 Brainy and witty posthumanist writer Charles Stross returns to his near-future scenario from Halting State to conjure up a day-after-tomorrow scenario that is wilder than some space opera outings. Since this novel's title refers to a famous internet meme regarding weird porn, you can imagine Stross has included plenty of sexy bits, and you won't be wrong. Police work in a future Scotland that embodies all of our era's worst excesses ramped up to eleven will captivate and amaze.

Embassytown China Miéville, the Wizard of the New Weird, leaves behind the decrepit alleys of New Crobuzon for interstellar venues, producing a hardcore space opera that brings to mind the classic work of Samuel Delany, such as Nova and Babel-17. Fusing philosophy and action across exotic landscapes, Miéville produces work that can stand comparison to that of Iain Banks or M. John Harrison: galaxy-wide matters that nonetheless boast real human scale and empathy.

Fuzzy Nation A true labor of love and a genuine pay-forward gesture, this reboot of H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy franchise finds John Scalzi reveling in the tropes and themes and characters of an earlier era of sci-fi, adapting them for twenty-first-century sensibilities. When human mining operations on a distant planet are threatened by the discovery of a sentient race of cute yet formidable critters, only one man will go to bat for their rights, fighting corporations and prejudices to assert Fuzzy Power!

The Magician King Lev Grossman has told the world that he never meant to write a sequel to his best-seller The Magicians, which showed a school for wizards in a highly sophisticated and complex light. But the ending to that book, bespeaking wide-open horizons of magic, called forth this sequel, in which our hero Quentin, now ruler of a eldritch kingdom with his three pals, learns the meaning of responsibility and sacrifice—while having kickass adventures in spades!

Ready Player One The search for the Great Novel about Videogames—a sparse and generally fruitless quest so far—might have reached its satisfying victory with this seductive and funny debut novel. Cline's future posits a global and universally played online game named OASIS, and shows us how the virtual world and the deadly real world of power struggles and greed intersect, stymie and complement each other.