Bøger af Alex Shvartsman

H. G. Wells is a Victorian-era James Bond who must defend England and the world against time travelers, alien incursions and interdimensional threats (if he can learn quickly on the job, and survive the human foes he encounters, that is!) During his missions, Wells will team up with Anton Chekhov to foil an assassination plot against Prince Nicholas Romanov of Russia, oversee the construction of the giant antenna designed to detect alien invasion fleets (or, as we know it, the Eiffel Tower), rub shoulders with the likes of Arthur Conan Doyle, Marie Curie, Jules Verne and Annie Oakley, and risk everything to encourage cooperation among the world's most powerful intelligence agencies. This humorous steampunk novella is filled with Easter eggs and British pop-culture references, from The Beatles and Ian Fleming to Douglas Adams and Dr. Who.

This second volume of the Outliers of Speculative Fiction includes 11 stories from an array of authors and looks through their windows onto the universes of fantasy, science fiction, and horror. The Outliers are authors from diverse backgrounds at various stages in their careers and each with a distinct voice. The Outliers of Speculative Fiction once again offers a cross-section of authors and stories from beyond the current mainstream of genre fiction. Some are throwbacks to earlier eras, some are unique new visions, and some are departures from the authors' own style and subjects. Here are small stories of personal, if strange, relationships with outsized impact. Here too are stories that offer a window to the fall of civilizations, worlds, and entire races, brought to our level through their characters. These tales include fantastic scenarios overshadowed by human situations and actions that are all too real and other nightmare visions given humor by the simple addition of humanity. These are the Outliers of Speculative Fiction for 2016.

31 science fiction and fantasy short stories encompassing hard SF, fantasy humor, and everything in-between. * Refugees with a salvaged mech suit find that family ties are stronger than armor. * Two artificial intelligences in love turn the world into their playground. * Modern-day Dante is guided through hell by the ghost of Bob Marley. * Ancient gods and monsters stalk the halls of a 1920s night club. * A young woman must save her planet by committing an act of terror. * In the rekindled space race between the United States, Russia, and India, the winner might be the nation willing to sacrifice the most.

If you do it well, lying is every bit as effective as magic.Conrad Brent has no innate magic, so he bluffs a lot and uses a myriad of magical items to protect Brooklyn from monsters and arcane threats. As a member of the Watch, the group that protects the mundane humans from such dangers, he risks his life on a regular basis. Sometimes twice before lunch. Sometimes during lunch, when he dares order his food from a street cart. After regaining his position in the Watch which he’d temporarily lost due to the machinations of a variety of evil-doers, Conrad doesn’t want to take any risks he doesn’t have to. But now his boss is missing, there’s a totalitarian new regime in City Hall oppressing all magic users, and the mayor has aligned himself with a diabolical villain.In order to save the day, Conrad must team up with a recovering necromancer to mediate a dispute between two ancient enemy factions, solve a mystery of a warded house adjacent to a cemetery, and stand with his friends against tyranny.That is, if the interdimensional fae assassins don’t get him first.

GUARD BROOKLYN, FIGHT MONSTERS, TAUNT BAD GUYS.What would you do if you lost everything that mattered to you, as well as all means to protect yourself and others, but still had to save the day? Conrad Brent is about to find out.Conrad Brent protects the people of Brooklyn from monsters and magical threats. The snarky, wisecracking guardian also has a dangerous secret: he’s one in a million – literally.Magical ability comes to about one in every 30,000 and can manifest at any age. Conrad is rarer than this, however. He’s a middling, one of the half-gifted and totally despised. Most of the gifted community feels that middlings should be instantly killed. The few who don’t flat out hate them still aren’t excited to be around middlings. Meaning Conrad can’t tell anyone, not even his best friends, what he really is.Conrad hides in plain sight by being a part of the volunteer Watch, those magically gifted who protect their cities from dangerous, arcane threats. And, to pay the bills, Conrad moonlights as a private detective and monster hunter for the gifted community. Which helps him keep up his personal fiction – that he’s a magical version of Batman. Conrad does both jobs thanks to charms, artifacts, and his wits, along with copious amounts of coffee. But little does he know that events are about to change his life…forever.When Conrad discovers the Traveling Fair auction house has another middling who’s just manifested her so-called powers on the auction block, he’s determined to save her, regardless of risk. But what he finds out while doing so is even worse – the winning bidder works for a company that’s just created the most dangerous chemical weapon to ever hit the magical community.Before Conrad can convince anyone at the Watch of the danger, he’s exposed for what he really is. Now, stripped of rank, magical objects, friends and allies, Conrad has to try to save the world with only his wits. Thankfully though, no one’s taken away his coffee.