Geoffrey A. Landis

Assembled from the second year of the digital journal Mythic Delirium and recast in an artfully arranged anthology, this latest offering from editors Mike and Anita Allen will introduce you to harrowing deserts and vengeful waters, to quantum mythology and edible religion, to slipstream explorations of love and identity. Publisher and editor Mike Allen writers in his introduction, “If you’re on a quest for the weird, lowercase, here is a book where you can find it. And likely The Weird as well.”

Speculative poetry travels winding roads leading to wondrous worlds, regions never traversed by mainstream verse. Fantastic poems range in the material they treat from the strange but explainable to the utterly fanciful, from horror to wonder, and from the rigidly verisimilitudinous to the purely surrealist. They may utilize traditional prosody or may avail themselves of the discontinuities and fragmentation of modernist free verse. They may use as setting the primary world, a secondary world, or a combination of the two. With roots planted firmly in the mythic and folkloric epics and ballads of yore, and branches reaching high into the endless skies of modern fantasy, science fiction, and horror, speculative poetry is a historic and vital poetic genre, the source of the most thoughtful, imaginative verse being written today. Red Sky features over 100 years' worth of speculative poetry from yesterday's masters, modern award winners, and emerging stars. Filled with luminous ideas, otherworldly adventures, metaphysical encounters and startling futuristic speculations, these poems will appeal to all readers as they chart the emergence and evolution of speculative poetry.

A Sherlockiana primer / Christopher Roden -- [The doctor's case / Stephen King]-- The horror of the many faces / Tim Lebbon -- The case of the bloodless sock / Anne Perry -- The adventure of the other detective / Bradley H. Sinor -- A scandal in Montreal / Edward D. Hoch -- The adventure of the field theorems / Vonda N. McIntyre -- The adventure of the death-fetch / Darrell Schweitzer -- The shocking affair of the Dutch Steamship Friesland / Mary Robinette Kowal -- The adventure of the mummy's curse / H. Paul Jeffers -- The things that shall come upon them / Barbara Roden -- Murder to music / Anthony Burgess -- The adventure of the inertial adjustor / Stephen Baxter -- Mrs. Hudson's case / Laurie R. King -- The singular habits of wasps / Geoffrey A. Landis -- The affair of the 46th birthday / Amy Myers -- The Specter of Tullyfane Abbey / Peter Tremayne -- The vale of the white horse / Sharyn McCrumb -- The adventure of the Dorset Street lodger / Michael Moorcock -- The adventure of the lost world / Dominic Green -- The adventure of the antiquarian's niece / Barbara Hambly -- Dynamics of a hanging / Tony Pi -- Merridew of abominable memory / Chris Roberson -- Commonplaces / Naomi Novik -- The adventure of the Pirates of Devil's Cape / Rob Rogers -- The adventure of the Green Skull / Mark Valentine -- The human mystery / Tanith Lee -- A study in emerald / Neil Gaiman -- You see but you do not observe / Robert J. Sawyer.

A Walk in the Sun - short story by Geoffrey A. Landis Gold - novelette by Isaac Asimov Beggars in Spain - novella by Nancy Kress Even the Queen - short story by Connie Willis The Nutcracker Coup - novelette by Janet Kagan Barnacle Bill the Spacer - novella by Lucius Shepard Death on the Nile - novelette by Connie Willis Georgia on My Mind - novelette by Charles Sheffield Down in the Bottomlands - novella by Harry Turtledove

Rider by Andrew Weiner Dinosaurs by Walter Jon Williams The Little Magic Shop by Bruce Sterling The Peacemaker by Gardner Dozois Many Mansions by Alexander Jablokov Vacuum States by Geoffrey A. Landis [as by Geoffrey Landis] Yanqui Doodle by James Tiptree, Jr.

Waging Good - novelette by Robert Reed The Shadow Knows - novelette by Terry Bisson A Walk in the Sun - short story by Geoffrey A. Landis The Lunatics - novelette by Kim Stanley Robinson John Harper Wilson - short story by Allen Steele Life on the Moon - short story by Tony Daniel Werewolves of Luna - novella by R. Garcia y Robertson

"It's a Cherokee Rose. The story is that when American soldiers were moving Indians off their land on the Trail of Tears, the Cherokee mothers were grieving and crying so much 'cause they were losing their little ones along the way from exposure and disease and starvation. A lot of them just disappeared. So the elders, they said a prayer; asked for a sign to uplift the mothers' spirits, give them strength and hope. The next day this rose started to grow where the mothers' tears fell. I'm not fool enough to think there's any flowers blooming for my brother. But I believe this one bloomed for your little girl." --Daryl Dixon (Norman Reedus), The Walking Dead, 2011, "The Cherokee Rose" Celebrating the strange and unusual, some of the best-known authors of the fantastic explore the myths and legends surrounding a creature both dead and undead...the zombie! From Anne Rice's chilling portrait of a woman more dead than alive to Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's future where nobody dies forever, from Nina Kiriki Hoffman's powerful story of the dead returned for love to Gene Wolfe's tale of computer-driven corpses-here are the spectacular undead tales of the modern age! Including stories by: Kevin J. Anderson, John Brunner, Matthew J. Costello, Don D'Ammassa, Harlan Ellison, Lionel Fenn Karen Haber, Rick Hautala, Brian Hodge, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Geoffrey A. Landis, D.F. Lewis Frances A. McMahan, A.R. Morlan, William Relling, Jr., Anne Rice, Alan Rodgers Robert Silverberg, S.P. Somtow, Larry Tritten, Lawrence Watt-Evans Robert Weinberg, Gene Wolfe, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

Dead men working in the cane fields / W. B. Seabrook After nightfall / David A. Riley Mission to Margal / Hugh B. Cave The Cairnwell horror / Chet Williamson Crawling madness / Arthur Leo Zagat Treading the maze / Lisa Tuttle Red angels / Karen Haber Later / Michael Marshall Smith White Zombie / Vivian Meik Was it a dream? / Guy de Maupassant Bodies and heads / Steve Rasnic Tem Death and suffrage / Dale Bailey The Graveyard rats / Henry Kuttner The Facts in the case of M. Valdemar / Edgar Allen Poe Feeding the dead inside / Yvonne Navarro Ballet Negre / Charles Birkin Dead right / Geoffrey A. Landis The Taking of Mr. Bill / Graham Masterton The Grave gives up / Jack D'Arcy Herbert West-Reanimator / H.P. Lovecraft Pickman's model / H.P. Lovecraft Maternal instinct / Robert Bloch Bringing the family / Kevin J. Anderson Mess hall / Richard Laymon Schalken the painter / Sheridan Le Fanu While zombies walked / Thorp McClusky April flowers, November harvest / Mary A. Turzillo The Old man and the dead / Mort Castle Jumbee / Henry S. Whitehead Marbh bheo / Peter Tremayne The Hollow man / Thomas Burke They bite / Anthony Boucher Come one, come all / Gahan Wilson It helps if you sing / Ramsey Campbell The Ghouls / R. Chetwynd-Hayes The Corpse-Master / Seabury Quinn The Upper berth / F. Marion Crawford Vengeance of the living dead / Ralston Shields The Song the zombie sang / Harlan Ellison and Robert Silverberg Men without blood / John H. Knox The Broken fang / Uel Key It / Theodore Sturgeon League of the Grateful Dead / Day Keene Love child / Garry Kilworth Corpses on parade / Edith and Ejler Jacobson Where there's a will / Richard and Christian Matheson The Dead / Michael Swanwick The Song of the slaves / Manly Wade Wellman The Outsider / H.P. Lovecraft Eat me / Robert McCammon Deadman's road / Joe R. Lansdale Pigeons from hell / Robert E. Howard Live people don't understand / Scott Edelman The House in the Magnolias / August Derleth and Mark Schorer [Home delivery]( / Stephen King Dance of the damned / Arthur J. Burks Z is for zombie / Theodore Roscoe

Before writing "Mars Crossing," his first novel, Geoffrey A. Landis had written and published short stories in all of the major science fiction magazines-- about 60 stories in all-- and had won both the Nebula and the Hugo awards for best science fiction story. In addition to being a science fiction writer, Landis is also a scientist, working for the Ohio Aerospace Institute at the NASA John Glenn Research Center. Volume 1 of Geoffrey A Landis: Short Stories contains the Hugo Award Nominee "Elemental" and more excellent short science fiction.