Jarra is stuck on Earth while the rest of humanity portals around the universe. But can she prove to the norms that she’s more than just an Earth Girl? Only the handicapped live on Earth. While everyone else portals between worlds, 18-year-old Jarra is among the one in a thousand people born with an immune system that cannot survive on other planets. Sent to Earth at birth to save her life, she has been abandoned by her parents. She can’t travel to other worlds, but she can watch their vids, and she knows all the jokes they make. She’s an ‘ape’, a ‘throwback’, but this is one ape girl who won’t give in. Jarra invents a fake background for herself – as a normal child of Military parents – and joins a class of norms that is on Earth to excavate the ruins of the old cities. When an ancient skyscraper collapses, burying another research team, Jarra’s role in their rescue puts her in the spotlight. No hiding at back of class now. To make life more complicated, she finds herself falling in love with one of her classmates – a norm from another planet. Somehow, she has to keep the deception going. A freak solar storm strikes the atmosphere, and the class is ordered to portal off-world for safety – no problem for a real child of military parents, but fatal for Jarra. The storm is so bad that the crews of the orbiting solar arrays have to escape to planet below: the first landing from space in 600 years. And one is on collision course with their shelter.

In the twenty-third century pioneers have escaped the crowded earth for life in self-sustaining orbital colonies.   One of the colonies, Rotor, has broken away from the solar system to create its own renegade utopia around an unknown red star two light-years from Earth:  a star named Nemesis.   Now a fifteen-year-old Rotorian girl has learned of the dire threat that nemesis poses to Earth's people--but she is prevented from warning them.   Soon she will realize that Nemesis endangers Rotor as well.   And so it will be up to her alone to save both Earth and Rotor as--drawn inexorably by Nemesis, the death star--they hurtle toward certain disaster.

Selected Short Stories Featuring Cry Wolf features fifteen diverse short stories, subject matter including space travel, werewolves, cannibalism, and commitment issues. It includes The Dread Wolf's Bane, an exclusive short story set in the world of The Necromancer's Gambit.Selected Short Stories Featuring Cry Wolf features fifteen diverse short stories, subject matter including space travel, werewolves, cannibalism, and commitment issues. It includes The Dread Wolf's Bane, an exclusive short story set in the world of The Necromancer's Gambit.The Gambit: The Dread Wolf's Bane: Knight, a magical detective, intervenes when a young werewolf unable to remember who or what he is, is detained in juvenile hall on the night of a full moon.Canary: Miners struggle to maintain calm after a cave in.Lost In Space: A man prepares to meet his lover in orbit.Frankenstein Modern: A scientist attempts to give a new body to a terminally ill man.E-bort: A woman takes control of her future after she is raped.Undisciplined: A squad rescues a fellow soldier awaiting trial for his crimes, against their personal feelings.Ancestral Memory: Two buddies ponder the possibility of life as data storage, and the meaning of life.First Goodbye: A man searches for a woman he can't leave.Life Imprisonment: A homeless man looks for a way to get a comfortable home.Crickets: Four crickets cower from a spider.Hickbots: A man works alongside robots in the fields.I'm Sorry I Got Caught In Your House: A very awkward run-in at an ex's house.Space Beer: A disgraced pilot annoys his father, and works to develop space-proof beer.S'work: An unattractive man considers his reliance on female companionship-for-pay.Cry Wolf: After surviving the plane crash, a group of travellers ponders love, and resorts to cannibalism.

Amanda always expected that when she fell in love, it would be with a musician or an artist--at the very least a human. Then she meets an alien on the run from the FBI and shelters him. [This short story was made into a movie in 1995 starring Baywatch beauty Nicole Eggert and featuring Michael Dorn and Stacey Keach.]

On a beautiful summer's day, Elwood and Wingclipper search a planet for valuable coins scattered by a crashed ship, while Rodeena makes a sinister discovery on board the Chromium Bullet.A man of the written word, he has made himself a name in the literary community in the year 2035. But someone has dared to plagiarize his work. When he confronts the culprit, he learns that it was not a person but a computer programmed to replicate his identity. Trapped on all sides by an encroaching world of technology, he tires to escape in any way he can. When he can't do it, he acts out violently against the machines. They become the focus of his rage, and he tries to rally the world to his mission: to save humanity from itself.

With billions killed by a global swarm of voodoo-hexed ghosts, New Orleans paranormal expert Tyson Lynche is the only person left alive who can put an end to the genocide. But a local spirit - a chess grand master - steps in to stop the ghost hunter. When the deceased genius makes his move, will Lynche have what it takes to become the last man standing?Two half brothers, Peter and Jim in Sydney Australia discover the phenomenon of short selling equities or shares on the global stock markets and set out to make their fortunes. With a little early bending of the rules the crime spree that follows encompasses industries as diverse as agriculture to manufacturing, banking and finance to horse racing. Crime and betrayal are not just the prerogative of the central characters however as others are drawn from across the globe to join in the frenzy. Regulators who should be there to supervise and prevent errant behaviour are themselves subject to human frailty when vast amounts of money are involved. The crime spree expands to major markets and ensnares even some rich and powerful players. In the end blind greed leads to an unwelcome denouement for some of the players while others may perceive that a certain amount of crime does, in fact, pay.

In the far future, Earth is a worn-out backwater and humanity is spread across the galaxy on worlds that began as colonies, but now feel like home, each with its own long history of a thousand years or more, and each with its own unique culture. One of the strangest is on Borthan, where the founding settlers established the Covenant, which teaches that the self is to be despised, and forbids anyone to reveal his innermost thoughts or feelings to another. On Borthan, the filthiest obscenities imaginable are the words "I" and "me." For the heinous crime of "self-baring," apostates have always paid with exile or death, but after his eyes are opened by a visitor from Earth, Kinnall Darival, prince of Salla, risks everything to teach his people the real meaning of being human..

How would you raise yourself?Your cloned child is a mirror, simultaneously reflecting who you are and what you might have been. It's potential was your potential. Can your clone achieve those dreams that fell to the wayside in your own life, or is it doomed to repeat your mistakes?How would you raise yourself?Your cloned child is a mirror, simultaneously reflecting who you are and what you might have been. It's potential was your potential. Can your clone achieve those dreams that fell to the wayside in your own life, or is it doomed to repeat your mistakes?Clones is a collection of speculative short-stories exploring the relationship dynamics between parents and their cloned children. It inspires speculation as it entertains, probing issues we will face in our lifetimes.

Welcome to Kluskey's spacer hangout. Here, spacers swap yarns of ghost ships, space monsters, the weird and wonderful and the downright daft.In this story, spacer Pell tells of a mysterious encounter.Ten years ago, Pell Argood saw something that has haunted him ever since.Can he convince the cadets in Kluskey's bar to stay away from Sector 17?

When the apocalypse came it was not from the fires of nuclear war or unseen viral plagues, not from an unstoppable asteroid or even the machines rising up in defiance of their human overlords. The Last War, as later generations would come to remember it, was fought between fighter jets and dragons, between companies of sword wielding golems swarming over steel tanks in support of evil MagiciansWhen the apocalypse came it was not from the fires of nuclear war or unseen viral plagues, not from an unstoppable asteroid or even the machines rising up in defiance of their human overlords. The Last War, as later generations would come to remember it, was fought between fighter jets and dragons, between companies of sword wielding golems swarming over steel tanks in support of deadly Magicians wielding magical fireballs. It was a war of magic versus science and science lost. A thousand years later Duncan Cade is born without magical abilities into a dystopian world dominated by the Magical. As a young adult he’s a pariah and an outcast because of his condition, an unwanted reminder of a time when their forefather’s wiped non-magical humans from the face of the planet. His life is a constant struggle not only to fit in a society based on magic he doesn’t wield, but also to survive without the simplest of magical abilities. He thinks that he is alone, the only non-magical boy in the entire world. When the magic begins to fade from the world, Duncan is blamed and just escapes the wrath of the Magician police force into the wastelands surrounding the city of New Dallas. He sets out on a quest to find the origin of Magic and soon discovers that not only is he not alone, but the non-magical humans are finally fighting back. The Last War was only the beginning of the apocalypse and young Duncan Cade, a boy born without Magic, is thrust into the middle of the new war against the Magicians.

Dr. Bowles is putting together a team of talented research scientists. His company, Biotech, is developing a new technology that will become the ultimate tool in the game of espionage. What Dr. Bowles and his team do not know is the technology they are developing will be used against them. Somewhere along the line things go astray and the nuclear secrets of the United States come into jeopardy.What if we had the technology to tap into a person’s central nervous system? What if we could see what they see; hear what they hear? What if we could do this without them having knowledge of our invasion? What if this technology fell into the hands of the wrong people? What kinds of evil things might they pursue with this ability?Dr. Michael Bowles is putting together a team of talented research scientists. His company, Biotech, is attempting to develop a new technology that will become the ultimate tool in the game of espionage. What Dr. Bowles and his team do not know is the technology they are developing will be used against them. Somewhere along the line things go astray and the nuclear secrets of the United States come into jeopardy.This first book in the Hijacked series establishes the technology. While it opens up the doors for many future adventures, you can be assured this is a self contained novel with a unique ending. Join me now as we open up the world of...Hijacked!

A short story, about 3600 words.Dan Tippdale is a human among aliens on an unfamiliar world. A bar fight lands him in jail -- and he shot first. The charge might not be murder, but that might not matter -- from the looks of things, he might not live to stand trial. And then there's the matter of his lawyer, who has something big in common with the alien Dan shot...The Johns in life John Wayne John Gacy John Lennon John Beluchi We should be Christians