Florence in the year 1518 is riven by scientific and sociological change caused b the wonderful devices of the Great Engineer, Leonardo da Vinci. Now he is old and lives as a recluse working behind the walls of his castle. The Raphaelites, artists and anti-technologists led by Raphael of Urbino, call for his excommunication. Pasquale di Cione fiesole, an apprentice painter witnesses an assassination attempt on Raphael at a Cathedral service. The weapon falls into his hands, and he is soon on the run from engineers and artists, desperate to prove his innocence.

In the new millennium, what secrets lay beyond the far reaches of the universe? What mysteries belie the truths we once held to be self evident? The world of science fiction has long been a porthole into the realities of tomorrow, blurring the line between life and art. Now, in The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection the very best SF authors explore ideas of a new world in the year's best short stories. This venerable collection brings together award winning authors and masters of the field such as Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Damien Broderick, Elizabeth Bear, Paul McAuley and John Barnes. And with an extensive recommended reading guide and a summation of the year in science fiction, this annual compilation has become the definitive must-read anthology for all science fiction fans and readers interested in breaking into the genre.

Confluence - a long, narrow man-made world, half fertile river valley, half crater-strewn desert. It is a world at the end of its time, a place of savagery, bureaucracy and war, inhabited by countless flying micro-machines and ten thousand bloodlines ruled by devotion to absent gods. It is the home of a singular young man named Yama. An infant who was discovered in a bier on the river, he was raised by the prelate of Aeolis until it was learned that his ancestry was unique. Yama appeared to be the last remaining scion of the Builders, closest of all races to the worshipped architects of Confluence. Now, awed and fearful of his increasing ability to awaken the machines the Builders left behind, Yama searches for his identity and a history that is both his and his world's.

A World Fantasy Award-winning editor brings together the works of today’s most talented Lovecraftian writers in this horror anthology inspired by The Shadow Over Innsmouth For decades, H. P. Lovecraft's masterpiece of terror has inspired writers with its gripping account of a village whose inhabitants have surrendered to an ancient and hideous evil. In this companion to the acclaimed anthology Shadows Over Innsmouth, World Fantasy Award-winning editor Stephen Jones has assembled eleven of today's most prominent and well-respected horror authors—the finest of the Lovecraftian acolytes. Included is Lovecraft's own unpublished draft of The Shadow Over Innsmouth. "Introduction: Weird Shadows..." by Stephen Jones "Discarded Draft of 'The Shadows Over Innsmouth'" by H. P. Lovecraft "The Quest for Y'ha-nthlei" by John Glasby "Brackish Waters" by Richard A. Lupoff "Voices in the Water" by Basil Copper "Another Fish Story" by Kim Newman "Take Me to the River" by Paul McAuley "The Coming" by Hugh B. Cave "Eggs" by Steve Rasnic Tem "From Cabinet 34, Drawer 6" by Caitlín R. Kiernan "Raised by the Moon" by Ramsey Campbell "Fair Exchange" by Michael Marshall Smith "The Taint" by Brian Lumley

Frankenstein . . . his very name conjures up images of plundered graves, secret laboratories, electrical experiments and reviving the dead. Within these pages, the maddest doctor of them all and his demented disciples once again delve into the Secrets of Life, as science fiction meets horror when the world's most famous creature lives again! The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein collects together for the first time twenty-fourelectrifying tales of cursed creation that are guaranteed to spark your interest - with classics from the pulp magazines by Robert Bloch and Manly Wade Wellman, modern masterpieces from Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Karl Edward Wagner, David J. Schow and R. Chetwynd-Hayes, and contributions from Graham Masterson, Basil Copper, John Brunner, Guy N. Smith, Kim Newman, Paul J. McAuley, Roberta Lannes, Michael Marshall Smith, Daniel Fox, Adrian Cole, Nancy Kilpatrick, Brian Mooney and Lisa Morton. Plus you're sure to get a charge from three complete novels: The Hound of Frankenstein by Peter Tremayne, The Dead End by David Case, and Mary W. Shelley's original masterpiece Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. As an electrical storm rages overhead, the generators are charged up, and beneath the sheet a cold form awaits its miraculous rebirth. Now it's time to throw that switch and discover all that Man Was Never Meant to Know.

The world of science fiction has been a porthole into the realities of tomorrow blurring the line-between life and art. This book explores ideas of a new world. It includes an extensive recommended reading guide and a summation of the year in science fiction. It is useful for science fiction fans and readers interested in delving into the genre.

In the new millennium, what secrets lay beyond the far reaches of the universe? What mysteries belie the truths we once held to be self-evident? The world of science fiction has long been a porthole into the realities of tomorrow, blurring the line between life and art. Now, in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fourth Annual Collection, the very best SF authors explore ideas of a new world. This venerable collection brings together award-winning authors and masters of the field. With an extensive recommended reading guide and a summation of the year in science fiction, this annual compilation has become the definitive must-read anthology for all science fiction fans and readers interested in breaking into the genre.