Who Can Save Us Now? - Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories

Superheroes have come a long way since the “Man of Steel” was introduced in 1938. This brilliant new collection features original stories and novellas from some of today’s most exciting voices in comics, science fiction, and fantasy. Each marvelously inventive tale shows us just how far our classic crusaders have evolved—and how the greatest of heroes are, much like ourselves, all too human.

In “Call Her Savage,” MARJORIE M. LIU enters the dark heart of a fierce mythic heroine who is forced, by war, to live up to her own terrible legend.

In “A to Z in the Ultimate Big Company Superhero Universe (Villains Too),” BILL WILLINGHAM presents a fully-realized vision of a universe where epic feats and tragic flaws have transformed the human race.

In “Vacuum Lad,” STEPHEN BAXTER unveils the secret origins of the first true child of the space age—and disproves the theory that “nothing exists in a vacuum.”

In “Head Cases,” PETER DAVID and KATHLEEN DAVID blast through the blogosphere to expose the secret longings of a Lonely Superhero Wife.

In “The Non-Event,” MIKE CAREY removes the gag order on a super-thief named Lockjaw . . . and pries out a confession of life-altering events.

Experience the cultural side of Canadian speculative fiction...

Tesseracts Sixteen: Parnassus Unbound is a speculative fiction anthology inspired by literature, music, art and culture.

Featuring short stories and poems by: Neil Peart & Kevin J. Anderson, Robert J. Sawyer, Ryan Oakley, Steve Vernon, Hugh A. D. Spencer, Sandra Kasturi, Michael Kelly, Rebecca Senese, Randy McCharles, Chadwick Ginther, Stephen Kotowych, Carolyn Clink, J. J. Steinfeld, David Clink, Robert H. Beer, L. T. Getty, Scott Overton, Sean Costello, Virginia O'Dine, Melissa Yuan-Innes, Derwin Mak, Kimberly Foottit, Matthew Jordan Schmidt, Adria Laycraft, Jeff Hughes.

About the editor:

Mark Leslie is a writer, editor and bookseller. In addition tho his fiction writing Mark occasionally writes reviews, conducts interviews and regularly posts to his blog. He was the series editor for the North of Infinity science fiction anthology series. Mark sits on the board of directors for BookNet Canada, is the president of Canadian Booksellers Association and is the Director of Self Publishing and Author Relations for KOBO. As an active member of the book industry, Mark regularly speaks at conferences, conventions and workshops about books, writing, and publishing.

Each year Tesseract Books chooses a team of editors from amongst the best of Canada’s writers, publishers and critics to select innovative and futuristic fiction and poetry from the leaders and emerging voices in Canadian speculative fiction.

Tesseracts Nine: New Canadian Speculative Fiction expands the dimensions of speculative fiction experientially, with startling visions of the future by new and established Canadian authors.

Featuring twenty-three stories and poems by: Timothy J. Anderson, Sylvie Bérard, René Beaulieu, E. L. Chen, Candas Jane Dorsey, Pat Forde, Marg Gilks, Sandra Kasturi, Nancy Kilpatrick, Claude Lalumière, Anthony MacDonald, Jason Mehmel, Yves Meynard, Derryl Murphy, Rhea Rose, Dan Rubin, Daniel Sernine, Steve Stanton, Jerome Stueart, Sarah Totton, Élisabeth Vonarburg, Peter Watts, Allan Weiss, Alette J. Willis and Casey June Wolf.

Edited by Sunburst and World Fantasy Award winning authors Nalo Hopkinson and Geoff Ryman, Tesseracts Nine: New Canadian Speculative Fiction showcases the very best in Canadian speculative fiction literature (including English translations of works by French-Canadian authors).

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About the editors:

Nalo Hopkinson is the author of three novels (Brown Girl in the Ring, Midnight Robber and The Salt Roads) and a short story collection (Skin Folk). She has edited two anthologies of fiction and co-edited two more. She is the recipient of the Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic, the World Fantasy Award, and the Gaylactic Spectrum Award, and at this writing is currently short listed for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Black Writing. She thinks plurality rocks.

Geoff Ryman is an award winning author who has received a number of awards including the World Fantasy Award and the British Science Fiction Association Award for his novella "Unconquered Country", the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for "The Child Garden", the Eastercon Award for "Was" and the Philip K Dick Award for "253 - the Print Remix".

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Aurora Award WINNER.
Book of the Year Award FINALIST.
LOCUS Magazine Recommended reading list.

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Praise:

"A stranded research team spends their time in the Arctic interviewing a group of lemmings who, in turn, are studying their predators in Jerome Stueart's eerie "Lemmings in the Third Year," while a young woman purchases a figure of a Madonna from a street waif and finds that her life begins changing in Nancy Kilpatrick's "Our Lady of the Snows." Edited by World Fantasy Award-winning authors Hopkinson and Ryman, this ninth collection of speculative and futuristic fiction and poetry by Canadian authors (Ryman, Sandra Kasturi, Sarah Totton, and others) features a wide variety of subjects and style. For most libraries." - Library Journal

"On the whole Tesseracts Nine is a steady collection of stories. It has lots of decent work ... and the stories cover an impressive range of ideas and subgenres." - Rich Horton, Locus

"Particularly touching is Newfoundland musician Dan Rubin’s “The Singing,” a beautiful and vivid account of an elderly woman inadvertently saving the planet by drumming and singing as she nears death. Aliens, poised to demolish much of the Earth to make it fit for colonization, are so moved by the song that they leave peacefully, while broadcasting it to all known frequencies in the universe. I wish no less a hearing for the Canadian writing presented in this delectable anthology." - Tracey Thomas, Quill and Quire