Description:

Sixteen all-new stories by science fiction’s top talents, collected by bestselling author George R. R. Martin and multiple-award-winning editor Gardner Dozois  From pulp adventures such as Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Carson of Venus to classic short stories such as Ray Bradbury’s “The Long Rain” to visionary novels such as C. S. Lewis’s Perelandra, the planet Venus has loomed almost as large in the imaginations of science fiction writers as Earth’s next-nearest neighbor, Mars. But while the Red Planet conjured up in Golden Age science fiction stories was a place of vast deserts and ruined cities, bright blue Venus was its polar opposite: a steamy, swampy jungle world with strange creatures lurking amidst the dripping vegetation. Alas, just as the last century’s space probes exploded our dreams of Mars, so, too, did they shatter our romantic visions of Venus, revealing, instead of a lush paradise, a hellish world inimical to all life.   But don’t despair! This new anthology of sixteen original stories by some of science fiction’s best writers—edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author George R. R. Martin and award-winning editor Gardner Dozois—turns back the clock to that more innocent time, before the hard-won knowledge of science vanquished the infinite possibilities of the imagination.   Join our cast of award-winning contributors—including Elizabeth Bear, David Brin, Joe Haldeman, Gwyneth Jones, Mike Resnick, Eleanor Arnason, Allen M. Steele, and more—as we travel back in time to a planet that never was but should have been: a young, rain-drenched world of fabulous monsters and seductive mysteries.   Contents xi • Introduction: Return to Venusport • (2015) • essay by Gardner Dozois 4 • Frogheads • (2015) • novelette by Allen Steele [as by Allen M. Steele] 38 • The Drowned Celestial • (2015) • novelette by Lavie Tidhar 72 • Planet of Fear • (2015) • novelette by Paul J. McAuley [as by Paul McAuley] 104 • Greeves and the Evening Star • (2015) • novelette by Matthew Hughes 136 • A Planet Called Desire • (2015) • novelette by Gwyneth Jones 171 • Living Hell • (2015) • short story by Joe Haldeman 192 • Bones of Air, Bones of Stone • (2015) • novelette by Stephen Leigh 224 • Ruins • (2015) • novelette by Eleanor Arnason 266 • The Tumbledowns of Cleopatra Abyss • (2015) • novelette by David Brin 310 • By Frogsled and Lizardback to Outcast Venusian Lepers • (2015) • novelette by Garth Nix 358 • The Sunset of Time • (2015) • novelette by Michael Cassutt 398 • Pale Blue Memories • (2015) • novelette by Tobias S. Buckell 432 • The Heart's Filthy Lesson • (2015) • novelette by Elizabeth Bear 463 • The Wizard of the Trees • (2015) • novelette by Joe R. Lansdale 504 • The Godstone of Venus • (2015) • novelette by Mike Resnick 544 • Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathangan • (2015) • novelette by Ian McDonald