2003 SF/Fantasy Award Winners (for 2002 books) part 1

In a parallel world in which Neanderthals, rather than homo sapiens, became the dominant intelligent species, a dangerous scientific experiment traps a Neanderthal physicist on Earth.

Shadow is a man with a past. But now he wants nothing more than to live a quiet life with his wife and stay out of trouble. Until he learns that she's been killed in a terrible accident. Flying home for the funeral, as a violent storm rocks the plane, a strange man in the seat next to him introduces himself. The man calls himself Mr. Wednesday, and he knows more about Shadow than is possible. He warns Shadow that a far bigger storm is coming. And from that moment on, nothing will ever he the same...

The death of Ombria's prince leads to chaos as light and dark factions compete for control and the fate of the city rests in the hands of untried forces. By the author of The Tower at Stony Wood. Reprint.

Sebold's mesmerizing and luminous first novel--a #1 national bestseller--builds a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, and even joy, following an unspeakable tragedy.

* Philip K. Dick Award Winner * Best of the Year:Locus, Village Voice, San Francisco Chronicle, Book Magazine * Nominated for the Impac Award Charley is an athlete. He wants to grow up to be the fastest runner in the world, like his father. He wants to be painted crossing the finishing line, in his racing silks, with a medal around his neck. Charley lives in a stable. He isn''t a runner, he''s a mount. He belongs to a Hoot: The Hoots are alien invaders. Charley hasn''t seen his mother for years, and his father is hiding out in the mountains somewhere, with the other Free Humans. The Hoots own the world, but the humans want it back. Charley knows how to be a good mount, but now he''s going to have to learn how to be a human being. "I''ve been a fan of Carol Emshwiller''s since the wonderfulCarmen Dog. The Mount is a terrific novel, at once an adventure story and a meditation on the psychology of freedom and slavery. It''s literally haunting (days after finishing it, I still think about all the terrible poetry of the Hoot/Sam relationship) and hypnotic. I''m honored to have gotten an early look at it." --Glen David Gold "Carol Emshwiller''sThe Mount is a wicked book. Like Harlan Ellison''s darkest visions, Emshwiller writes in a voice that reminds us of the golden season when speculative fiction was daring and unsettling. Dystopian, weird, comedic as if the Marquis de Sade had joined Monty Python, and ultimately scary,The Mounttakes us deep into another reality. Our world suddenly seems wrought with terrible ironies and a severe kind of beauty. When we are the mounts, who--or what--is riding us? --Luis Alberto Urrea "We are all Mounts and so should read this book like an instruction manual that could help save our lives. That it is also a beautiful funny novel is the usual bonus you get by reading Carol Emshwiller. She always writes them that way." --Kim Stanley Robinson "This novel is like a tesseract, I started it and thought, ah, I see what she''s doing. But then the dimensions unfolded and somehow it ended up being about so much more." --Maureen F. McHugh "The Mount is so extraordinary as to be unpraiseable by a mortal such as I. I had to keep putting it down because it was so disturbing then picking it up because it was so amazing. A postmodernist would call it The Eros of Hegemony, but I''m no postmodernist. Nearly every sentence is simultaneously hilarious, prophetic, and disturbing. This person needs to be really, really famous." --Paul Ingram, Prairie Lights Bookstore "Brilliantly conceived and painfully acute in its delineation of the complex relationships between masters and slaves, pets and owners, the served and the serving, this poetic, funny and above all humane novel deserves to be read and cherished as a fundamental fable for our material-minded times." --Publishers Weekly "Adult/High School - This veteran science-fiction writer is known for original plots and characters, and her latest novel does not disappoint, offering an extraordinary, utterly alien, and thoroughly convincing culture set in the not-too-distant future. Emshwiller brings readers immediately into the action, gradually revealing the takeover of Earth by the Hoots, otherworldly beings with superior intelligence and technology. Humans have become the Hoots'' "mounts," and, in the case of the superior Seattle bloodline, valuable racing stock. Most mounts are well off, as the Hoots constantly remind them, and treated kindly by affectionate owners who use punishment poles as rarely as possible. No one agrees more than principal narrator Charley, a privileged young Seattle whose rider-in-training will someday rule the world. The adolescent mount''s dream is of bringing honor to his beloved Little Master by becoming a great champion like Beauty, his sire, whose portrait decorates many Hoot walls. When Charley learns that his father now leads the renegade bands called Wilds, he and Little Master flee. This complex and compelling blend of tantalizing themes offers numerous possibilities for speculation and discussion, whether among friends or in the classroom." --School Library Journal "Emshwiller''s prose is beautiful" --Laura Miller,Salon "The Mountis a brilliant book. But be warned: It takes root in the mind and unleashes aftershocks at inopportune moments." --The Women''s Review of Books "Carol Emshwiller has been writing fantasy, speculative and science fiction for many years; she has a dedicated cult following and has been an influence on a number of today''s top writers.... it is very easy to fall into the rhythm of Emshwiller''s poetic and smooth sentences." --Review of Contemporary Fiction "Emshwiller''s themes--the allure of submission, the temptations of complicity, the perverse nature of compassion--are not usual fare in novels of resistance and revolt, and her strikingly imaginative novel continues to surpass our expectations to the very last page." --The Philadelphia Inquirer "Both fantastical and unnerving in its familiarity. And like her work in romance and westerns, its genre-twisting plot resists easy classification." --The Village Voice "Emshwiller uses a deceptively simple narrative voice that givesThe Mount the style of a young-adult novel. But there''s much going on beneath the surface of this narrative, including oblique flashes of humor and artfully articulated moments of psychological insight. The Mount emerges as one of the season''s unexpected small pleasures." --San Francisco Chronicle "A memorable alien-invasion scenario, a wild adventure, and a reflection on the dynamics of freedom and slavery." --Booklist "A brilliant piece of work." --Bookslut "...a beautifully written allegorical tale full of hope that even the most unenlightened souls can shrug off the bonds of internalized oppression and finally see the light." --BookPage "A fable/fantasy/cautionary tale along the lines of, say,Animal Farm. It''s the story of Charlie, a preadolescent human who''s being used as a horse by shoulder-riding alien invaders known as Hoots. Charlie wants nothing more than to become a great Mount, a loyal slave and servant, until his father, a renegade Mount who has fled from the Hoots and now lives in the mountains, comes to take him away. Like so much of Emshwiller''s work,The Mount asks difficult questions--in this case, What is freedom? The issue is particularly appropriate at a time when "freedom" in America is increasingly defined as "security"--freedom from uncertainty, freedom from fear, freedom from want. All of which is, in the end, not really freedom at all."--Time Out New York "In a recent interview withScience Fiction Weekly, Ursula Le Guin called Emshwiller "the most unappreciated great writer we''ve got."The Mount proves Le Guin right.... If Emshwiller is not already on your top bookshelf,The Mount will put her there." --Rambles Carol Emshwiller''s stories have appeared inThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Century, Scifiction, Lady Churchill''s Rosebud Wristlet, TriQuarterly, Transatlantic Review, New Directions, Orbit, Epoch, The Voice Literary Supplement, Omni, Crank!, Confrontation, Trampoline, McSweeney''s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, and many other anthologies and magazines. Carol is a MacDowell Colony Fellow and has been awarded an NEA grant, a New York State Creative Artists Public Service grant, a New York State

With the same unique vision that brought his now classic Mars trilogy to vivid life, bestselling author Kim Stanley Robinson boldly imagines an alternate history of the last seven hundred years. In his grandest work yet, the acclaimed storyteller constructs a world vastly different from the one we know. . . . “A thoughtful, magisterial alternate history from one of science fiction’s most important writers.”—The New York Times Book Review It is the fourteenth century and one of the most apocalyptic events in human history is set to occur—the coming of the Black Death. History teaches us that a third of Europe’s population was destroyed. But what if the plague had killed 99 percent of the population instead? How would the world have changed? This is a look at the history that could have been—one that stretches across centuries, sees dynasties and nations rise and crumble, and spans horrible famine and magnificent innovation. Through the eyes of soldiers and kings, explorers and philosophers, slaves and scholars, Robinson navigates a world where Buddhism and Islam are the most influential and practiced religions, while Christianity is merely a historical footnote. Probing the most profound questions as only he can, Robinson shines his extraordinary light on the place of religion, culture, power—and even love—in this bold New World. “Exceptional and engrossing.”—New York Post “Ambitious . . . ingenious.”—Newsday

A mythmaker of the highest order, China Miéville has emblazoned the fantasy novel with fresh language, startling images, and stunning originality. Set in the same sprawling world of Miéville’s Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning novel, Perdido Street Station, this latest epic introduces a whole new cast of intriguing characters and dazzling creations. Aboard a vast seafaring vessel, a band of prisoners and slaves, their bodies remade into grotesque biological oddities, is being transported to the fledgling colony of New Crobuzon. But the journey is not theirs alone. They are joined by a handful of travelers, each with a reason for fleeing the city. Among them is Bellis Coldwine, a renowned linguist whose services as an interpreter grant her passage—and escape from horrific punishment. For she is linked to Isaac Dan der Grimnebulin, the brilliant renegade scientist who has unwittingly unleashed a nightmare upon New Crobuzon. For Bellis, the plan is clear: live among the new frontiersmen of the colony until it is safe to return home. But when the ship is besieged by pirates on the Swollen Ocean, the senior officers are summarily executed. The surviving passengers are brought to Armada, a city constructed from the hulls of pirated ships, a floating, landless mass ruled by the bizarre duality called the Lovers. On Armada, everyone is given work, and even Remades live as equals to humans, Cactae, and Cray. Yet no one may ever leave. Lonely and embittered in her captivity, Bellis knows that to show dissent is a death sentence. Instead, she must furtively seek information about Armada’s agenda. The answer lies in the dark, amorphous shapes that float undetected miles below the waters—terrifying entities with a singular, chilling mission. . . . China Miéville is a writer for a new era—and The Scar is a luminous, brilliantly imagined novel that is nothing short of spectacular.

No summary available.

In a world where humans and aliens co-exist, where murder is sanctioned, and where no one can find safe haven, one group of private detectives is willing to help the "Disappeared" find their way home. Meet the Retrieval Artists

A retired Los Angeles homicide detective living in the rural Wisconsin hamlet of Tamarack, Jack Sawyer is called in to assist the local police chief in solving a gruesome series of murders that causes Jack to experience inexplicable waking nightmares and draws him back to the Territories and an encounter with his own hidden past, in the long-awaited sequel to The Talisman. Reprint.

In a future where most people have computer implants in their heads to control their environment, a boy meets an unusual girl who is in serious trouble.