Collections

 
A farm boy knows that if you plant sweet potatoes just right, you’ll grow zombies that can work your fields.

A would-be suicide ascends a volcano as part of corporate geomancy spectacle.

A four-slice toaster muses on the meaning of life.

A professor visits an oracle/prostitute to secure tenture at his university.

A trickster god offers an old man new hope and an unusual beverage.

A novice vampire struggles with how to survive the barest of powers.

The last survivor of Atlantis redefines what’s important in life.

And that’s just the beginning.

Hugo, Nebula, and Astounding Award nominee, Lawrence M. Schoen, long known for his light and humorous tales of science fiction, steps away from aliens and other worlds to explore the fantastic, giving a twist to some well-worn tropes, and conjuring up fresh surrealities for your delight. From academia to zombies, with some vampires, household pets, and fast food thrown in for good measure, this collection will have you coming back for seconds, because at the end of the day, it’s all about the pie.

 
PRAISE FOR SWEET POTATO PIE AND OTHER STORIES:

Schoen has perfected an unusual art form:
the lo-cal snack of speculative fiction.
—Publishers Weekly

Smuggler.

Billionaire.

Now he’s even more Amazing !

When not running the company he accidentally founded, Conroy travels the galaxy with his buffalito companion animal, Reggie, hypnotizing aliens and searching for the next great meal.

And yet, at every stop, he finds his life, his love, or his fortune on the line.

Because he’s Amazing, Conroy must match wits and test his hypnotic abilities against a host of aliens with mental powers of their own.

The Amazing Conroy series is an interstellar adventure by a six-time Nebula Award-nominated author. Mind control, manipulation, and mayhem abound in a collection that will keep you brilliantly entertained.

 
PRAISE FOR TALES OF THE AMAZING CONROY:

There’s a pleasant preposterousness to the whole thing,
like a series of good-natured tall tales that end too soon.
—Publishers Weekly

12 cautionary poems of public education.

Monsters and creatures that have fled the lands of myth and taken up residence in local schools, disguised as teachers and principals, janitors and lunch ladies, P.E. coaches and bus drivers.

By turns ghastly and silly, you’ll never look at school quite the same.

Lavishly illustrated by Rachael M. Mayo.

How can one person (and his newborn clone) convince an alien not to end the world?

Does the planet Mars really need baby seals?

Across 30 tales of Science Fiction spanning more than 20 years, former professor of psychology Lawrence M. Schoen explores ideas and metaphors of alien encounters, artificial intelligence, and human psychology, blending wit and charm and old-fashioned story telling (and even the occasional atrocious pun).

If science fiction is the mirror we use to look at ourselves, if aliens and A.I.s are the allegories that let us challenge who we are, then this collection by a multiple Hugo, Nebula, and Astounding Award nominee will open your eyes to the wonder that is the human race even as it amuses and entertains.

From extinct languages to projecting human consciousness into the bodies of polar bears, from bridging alien communication through art and literature to flim-flamming the creators of time machines, from the joke that created the universe to a pen that writes new worlds, Schoen spins tales that amaze and delight even as they tell us about who we are at the end of the day.
 
 
 
 
 
 

A good story, novella, or novel ;has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The beginning hooks you, with an engaging idea, or interesting and sympathetic characters, or a compelling setting, or some combination of these.

But that’s not this book.

This book is an experiment: a collection of forty beginnings with neither middles nor ends. Forty openings where the author has started his tale, assembled the players, presented the crux or central theme or mcguffin, wound it all up but stopped short of pressing “go.”

You will find science fiction and fantasy and horror here. Bizarre aliens, long bearded dwarfs, even demons. Humor and philosophy, hope and despair. In short, you will encounter the full range of the human condition presented through the lens of genre fiction.

But you won’t find any closure.

You’ll be left to ponder “what happens next?” and “how might it all end?” and even “is the author ever going to come back and finish writing this?”

As for that last question, the answer is a definite maybe. It all depends on which of these openings readers like best.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Since 2011, Lawrence M. Schoen has featured hundreds of science fiction and fantasy writers on a weekly blog, asking each of them a single question:

What’s your most memorable meal?

Their answers have provided readers with glimpses into the lives and minds of the authors and insights into their books.

To commemorate ten years of these essays, Schoen has compiled 100 of the best meals for this book, producing a feast of incredible locations and events, unusual circumstances, delicious surprises, unlikely meal companions, and improbable selections.

Bring a hearty appetite, it’s a very full menu!

Carrie Vaughn • Dan Wells • Lauren Beukes • Daniel Abraham • Walter Jon Williams • Bud Sparhawk • Sheila Finch • Gregory Frost • Aliette de Bodard • Allen Steele • Mark W. Tiedemann • Myke Cole • Howard V. Hendrix • Karl Schroeder • Gail Carriger • Laura Anne Gilman • Alastair Reynolds • Tobias S. Buckell • Tina Connolly • Walter H. Hunt • David Walton • Charles E. Gannon • David Brin • Gregory Benford • Jack McDevitt • Max Gladstone • Jonathan Maberry • Liz Williams • Michael Swanwick • Faith Hunter • James L. Cambias • Harry Turtledove • Joe Haldeman • Daryl Gregory • Tom Doyle • Alethea Kontis • Michael A. Ventrella • Anna Kashina • Sally Wiener Grotta • Tim W. Burke • James Morrow • Sharon Lee • Natania Barron • Alan Smale • Ferrett Steinmetz • Fran Wilde • L. E. Modesitt, Jr. • Daniel Polanski • Eric James Stone • Lawrence M. Schoen • Charlie Jane Anders • Kevin Hearne • Fonda Lee • Jennifer Foehner Wells • Ada Palmer • Naomi Novik • Todd J. Mccaffrey • Marguerite Reed • Rick Wilber • Travis Heermann • Becky Chambers • Jacqueline Carey • Sarah Gailey • Malka Older • Steven Barnes • Michael Johnston • Spencer Ellsworth • Nicky Drayden • Russell Davis • Tracy Townsend • Catherine Schaff-Stump • Jane Lindskold • Michael Anderle • Kate Heartfield • Craig Martelle • Peng Shepherd • Delilah S. Dawson • Derek Künsken • Josiah Bancroft • S. L. Saboviec • Martin L. Shoemaker • R. R. Virdi • E.M. Foner • Maurice Broaddus • Yudhanjaya Wijeratne • Chen Qiufan • Barry J. Hutchison • Wil McCarthy • Terry Mixon • Julia Huni • Bre Lockhart • Gini Koch • Dave Walsh • John P. Murphy • James Alan Gardner • Steven H Silver • Darcie Little Badger • Robert J. Sawyer • Alex Shvartsman • Kate Pickford