Michael is a gamer. And like most gamers, he almost spends more time on the VirtNet than in the actual world. The VirtNet offers total mind and body immersion, and it's addictive. Thanks to technology, anyone with enough money can experience fantasy worlds, risk their life without the chance of death, or just hang around with Virt-friends. And the more hacking skills you have, the more fun. Why bother following the rules when most of them are dumb,...

Zoe Baxter finds unexpected love with a younger woman after she and her husband divorce, and when the couple wants to use the embryos Zoe and her ex-husband had frozen when they were trying to get pregnant, it sparks a legal battle over the rights of gay couples and whether an embryo is considered a life or a piece of property.

When a twelve-year-old evil genius tries to restore his family fortune by capturing a fairy and demanding a ransom in gold, the fairies fight back with magic, technology, and a particularly nasty troll.

"Thiel starts from the bold premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we're too distracted by our new mobile devices to notice. Progress has stalled in every industry except computers, and globalization is hardly the revolution people think it is. It's true that the world can get marginally richer by building new copies of old inventions, making horizontal progress from "1 to n." But true innovators have nothing to copy....

Combining complex science with skillfully executed prose, these edgy, award-winning tales explore the shifting border between the known and the alien. The beauty and peril of technology and the passion and penalties of conviction merge in narratives that are by turns dark, satiric, and introspective. Among these bold storylines: a seemingly humanized monster from John Carpenter's The Thing reveals the true villains in an Antarctic showdown; an artificial...

"America's first line of defense--Brad McLanahan and the heroes of the Iron Wolf Squadron--must counter a dangerous Russian strike from within the homeland in this cutting-edge tale from the New York Times master of the high-tech military thriller, Dale Brown. On a remote island estate, a billionaire investor sells his air freight company to a mysterious new owner. The purchaser is none other than the President of Russia, Gennadiy Gryzlov. The Russians...

A Massachusetts D. A. who is running for governor looks for a way to employ cutting-edge DNA technology to fight crime, but when a shocking piece of violence intervenes, her state investigator is not so sure it is a random event.

"During a time of political instability in the highest echelons of the imperial court, Ambassador Mahit Dzmare arrives in the center of the multi-system Teixcalaanli Empire only to discover that her predecessor, the previous ambassador from their small but fiercely independent mining Station, has died. But no one will admit that his death wasn't an accident--or that Mahit might be next to die. Now Mahit must discover who is behind the murder, rescue...

Once again, Tucker Pierce and friends must fight for their lives against the better-equipped SYLO, and they will risk nearly everything to keep each other safe the battle's climax nears. While on the run from the SYLO team, Tucker, Tori and Kent are driven directly into another base of the invaders. They become prisoners, destined be conditioned to forget their old lives and turn on one another to survive. Drawn to a mysterious dome unguarded in...