Showing results by author "James Patrick Kelly" in All Categories

In a hard-edged cyberpunk future, a courier has stolen a load of the most dangerous, most dazzling drug ever invented and is smuggling it into New York City. Pursued by a hired hit woman disguised as a young girl and a federally-appointed vigilante, he must find his way through the mean streets of Manhattan to his lair. He is ruthless, amoral, and a rat. Not just figuratively, but literally: a two-foot-long, walking, talking rat. Hearing is believing.

In this wild and funny tale, a sentient television show is struggling to survive the death of her main character. Her ratings are plummeting, her live audience is comatose, her new star has stage fright, and her guest star is gleefully upstaging her entire cast. What's a show to do? Maybe cut a deal with the devil?

The circus is in town, and on the planet Boon, that’s big - potentially riotous - news. The delicate, decaying political balance maintained by the cloned human grands at the expense of the uplifted dog and cat populations is in danger of toppling under the influence of mysterious forces both outer and inner.

Chairman Jack Winter hoped to found a utopia on a planet he called Walden, a refuge where the last true humans could escape the rampant post-human technologies of the Thousand Worlds. But the native people never gave their permission for his social experiment - or to take over their world - and now they are setting forest fires in protest.