Any interesting scheme will have more than a single motivation. Were they pawns in the power games of gods or players in a no-spells-barred contest between mortals and masters?
Hugo nominated in 1962, originally published in Analog Science Fact-Science Fiction as "Sense of Obligation." Brion has just won the Twenties, a global competition to test achievements in 20 categories of human...
As Maximillian the Vaguely Disreputable comes close to solving the laws of conserving magic and tapping the gods' power base, the Creeping Sword is drawn more deeply into the fight between warring deities.
Spyder Lee is a happy man who lives in San Francisco and owns a tattoo shop. One night an angry demon tries to bite his head off before he's saved by a stranger. The demon infected Spyder with something awful...
The kingdom of Ile-Rien is in peril, menaced by magical threats and court intrigue. As the weak King Roland, misled by treacherous companions, rules the country, only his ruthless mother, the Dowager Queen Ravenna,...
Ten thousand years after nuclear holocaust, Earth has reverted to the savage garden, and Man to his Neanderthal roots. Yet a man-child is born, fully human, and a young woman wakes to find the world she knew...
The chartered Zarathustra Company had it all their way. Their charter was for a Class III uninhabited planet, which Zarathustra was, and it meant they owned the planet lock stock and barrel. They exploited it,...
The cars on high-speed highways must follow each other like sheep. And they need shepherds. The highway police cruiser of tomorrow however must be massively different-as different as the highways themselves!
In nineteen-fourteen, it was enemy aliens. In nineteen-thirty, it was Wobblies. In nineteen-fifty-seven, it was fellow-travelers. And, in nineteen seventy-one, Kenneth J. Malone rolled wearily out of bed wondering...
Link's engaging and funny second collection -- call it kitchen-sink magical realism -- riffs on haunted convenience stores, husbands and wives, rabbits, zombies, weekly apocalyptic poker parties, witches, superheroes,...