All-new stories of the wise, the wicked, and the wizards in between are collected from today's masters of modern fantasy, including Neil Gaiman, Eoin Colfer, and Garth Nix.

In a magnificent and daring new novel that triumphantly blends fact and fiction, Jack Dann offers his own thrilling secret history of a lost year in Leonardo da Vinci's life. He begins with a wildly imaginative bit of speculation: What if Leonardo, who was obsessed with flight and who conceived brilliant blueprints for the first flying machines, didn't stop with his designs? What if, during that missing year, he actually built and flew his marvelous machine... five hundred years before the Wright brothers legendary flight at Kitty Hawk?

This unforgettable, magical novel takes for its premise an inspired bit of speculation based firmly in history: Leonardo da Vinci's conception of a marvelous flying machine. Set against the colorful backdrop of Italy and Persia in the 1400s, The Memory Cathedral masterfully calls forth a dazzling era when magic and science were one and the same.

With The Rebel , acclaimed award-winning author Jack Dann pulls James Dean from the twisted wreckage and offers him a second chance to make an indelible mark on his art, his culture, and his time in an era of profound change and devastating social upheaval. Surviving the horrific crash that leaves him permanently scarred, both physically and emotionally, the haunted, brooding, and complex young star finds himself charged with a feeling of responsibility to do "something wonderful and important." Yet for Jimmy Dean, the glory road will be winding and broken, littered with the detritus of exploded dreams and destroyed love, as it passes through the holiest cultural sites of postwar twentieth-century America -- the genius-and-drug pumped world of the Beats, the protected inner sanctum of Graceland, the darkest shadows of Camelot. The lives and futures of Kerouac, Sinatra, Elvis, and the Kennedys will all be touched by him -- yet perhaps none so deeply as the fragile sex goddess who will always be his greatest burden and true soul mate, a dazzling and tragically lost phenomenon named Marilyn -- as he moves toward an astonishing destiny that will reconfigure the world. Ingeniously blending historical fact with brilliant invention, The Rebel is a hip, fast, and mesmerizing ride through the fifties and sixties -- an unforgettable road trip across a nation with an American legend at the wheel.

From the critically acclaimed author ofThe Memory Cathedralcomes perhaps the most powerful, haunting, and unforgettable novel of the Civil War--or any war--ever written. Provocative, poetic, and disturbing, it introduces us to a young narrator, Mundy McDowell, whose voice rivals any in literature, bringing poignantly to life the surreal horrors of battle and its spiritual cost to human survival. I was scarce twelve the day the damn Yankees invaded the valley. I seen a lot that day I ain't never gonna forget. Men blown apart, screamin' and dyin' all around me. I was wandering in the woods like I wasn't supposed to and wound up right in the middle of the battle. And that's what I suppose saved me. When I got back home the main house was burning to the ground. I saw two men wearin' bits and pieces of 'Federate and Yank uniforms. They killed Poppa right off, and Mother they dragged into the front yard before they killed her too. I reckon that was the day I first got the knack of being invisible. The spirit dog seen me right off, though. He was big and black and smelled like burning. His eyes were like red coals and everywhere he went, it seemed death followed. Him and me, we mostly traveled together after that. I passed through midnight fields of dead and dying soldiers, reeking makeshift field hospitals worse than hell itself; climbed into the mountains where the runaway slaves hid; and walked through towns shattered by the passage of the war. I met a lot of people, some of them living and some of them just memories. There was Jimmadasin, the slave who died on my account, and Mammy Jack, who taught me to see visions; the gallant Colonel Ashby, who let me ride by his side, and, of course, the mulatto whore Lucy, who saved my life twice. Last but not least, there was mad but brilliant General Jackson, who was probably responsible for putting more men in their graves than any other during the Shenandoah campaign. Whether he was a hero or a demon I never did determine, but I wish I had never met him at all. And through it all I remained silent. The power of speech left me the day my parents were killed and I first saw the spirit dog. You see, the whole time I was wandering through that valley of death I was deciding on whether to go back to being human or to become a spirit myself, and that's what this book is all about. From the Hardcover edition.

Imagine a technology that can change the structure and function of your own body...or that can devour an entire country. This is nanotechnology -- the creation of self-replicating machines with the capability to build or alter almost any structure, including the human form, by manipulating atoms or molecules -- and it has captured the imaginations of science fiction writers and readers everywhere. Now these, eleven short tales will capture you... Contents ix Preface (Nanotech) (1998) essay by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann 1 Blood Music (1983) novelette by Greg Bear 32 Margin of Error (1994) shortstory by Nancy Kress 40 Axiomatic (1990) shortstory by Greg Egan 58 Remember'd Kisses (1988) novelette by Michael F. Flynn 99 Recording Angel (1996) shortstory by Ian McDonald 117 Sunflowers (1995) shortstory by Kathleen Ann Goonan 153 The Logic Pool (1994) shortstory by Stephen Baxter 174 Any Major Dude (1991) shortstory by Paul Di Filippo 203 We Were Out of Our Minds with Joy [North American future] (1995) novella by David Marusek 274 Willy in the Nano-Lab (1998) poem by Geoffrey A. Landis [as by Geoffrey Landis ] 275 Further Reading (Nanotech) (1998) essay by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois

"In 1972, Jack Dann was a law school student and aspiring writer who had published stories in Worlds of If and Fantastic when a story he had sent to Damon Knight for his famed Orbit anthology series was published. These early stories eventually led to a Nebula Award for his novella “Da Vinci Rising” in 1997 and to increasing acclaim as one of science fiction and fantasy’s most original writers. Jack Dann’s imagined worlds are so rich in detail as to become hallucinatory; a reader doesn’t so much peruse a Dann story as experience it. In “The Dybbuk Dolls,” the owner of a sex shop in a future ghetto finds himself involved with weird customers, a political feud, alien dolls, and a number of complicated and often hilarious events. “Jumping the Road” and “Timetipping” also draw on Dann’s Jewish heritage and his gift for humor, while “Amnesia,” a darker tale in which a man searching for his dead wife plugs into a dying man’s mind, demonstrates Dann’s range, as does “Blind Shemmy,” a story of gamblers playing for the highest of stakes. In “Bad Medicine,” a man searching for meaning in his life embarks on a spiritual quest with a Native American shaman, while the Ditmar Award-winning “The Diamond Pit,” an homage to F. Scott Fitzgerald set in the 1920s, is an adventure story of an aviator shot down and confined by an eccentric millionaire in a luxurious prison from which he and other confined flyers must escape." --