Brian Stableford

A simple explanation of the process of evolution, from the first appearance of "almost alive things" to the development of the millions of life forms that exist today.

Contains: "Final Blackouts," an Introduction / Harlan Ellison -- The End of the World (1872) / Eugene Mouton -- The Comet (1920) / W.E.B. DuBois -- The Pedestrian (1951) / Ray Bradbury -- No Morning After (1954) / Arthur C. Clarke -- Upon the Dull Earth (1954) / Philip K. Dick -- 2 B R 0 2 B (1962) / Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. -- I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1967) / Harlan Ellison -- The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas (1973) / Ursula K. LeGuin -- The Engineer and the Executioner (1976) / Brian M. Stableford -- [The End of the Whole Mess (1986) / Stephen King]( Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's Back (1992) / Joe R. Lansdale -- Judgment Engine (1995) / Greg Bear -- Automatic (2007) / Erika T. Satifka -- The Black Mould (2011) / Mark Samuels -- The Pretence (2013) /Ramsey Campbell -- Inventory (2013) / Carmen Maria Machado.

The Dragon Man is the story of Sara, a teenager growing up in a post-Crash household, struggling with the burden of having eight parents and conducting the remainder of her personal life in virtual space. In a world in which everyone lives for hundreds of years, children are very scarce—but not as scarce as people who were born during the Crash, who grew old before biotechnology reached the pitch of sophistication required to keep them young.Sara’s first tentative attempt to assert her individuality, by equipping her artificial second skin with a purple rose, has unexpected side-effects. Her quest to correct the error brings her into contact with the two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old Dragon Man—an encounter that gives her the opportunity to put her life into a broader perspective, and to gain a better understanding of what e-mortality might mean for herself and the whole human world.