Showing results by author "Patrick James" in All Categories

The aliens have made contact with us, and they're very alien indeed. What's worse, they bring news that will shake the world's religions to their core. Who will stand up to them? Saint Theresa believes God has called her to do so in this novelette, a Nebula Award finalist.

As humankind's first starship accelerates past the speed of light, an astronaut wakes up and finds that he is all alone. The crew is gone, the sensors give no readings, and he is trapped. Alone? Not quite. His imaginary wife keeps him company and helps him keep a tenuous hold on his sanity.

An alien has crash landed in a sleepy country town, and its ship stands guard over the fallen spaceman. When some unlikely townsfolk happen upon the site of the tragedy, what began as a game turns into a deadly first contact - with consequences for all humankind.

Imagine a race of marsupial-like aliens who have not two, but three sexes: father, birth-mother, and nurture-mother. The difficulties of married life are further complicated by adding another partner, but this culture has worked out its own unique solution. The arrival of a new race of space-faring aliens, however, will change everything.

A revolutionary young woman and her sentient spaceship have the technology to travel through time. In the aftermath of a space battle they are hurled 20 million years into their future and stranded there. When they find that civilization has all but vanished, they set out to learn why. This pyrotechnic space opera was nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula awards.

The intelligent starship Godspeed has been exploring the galaxy for centuries, seeking out new homes for humankind. In that time, many crews have come and gone. Now, young Adel Santos comes aboard and discovers that all is not right, either with the Godspeed or his fellow crew members.

Where did all the men go? When aliens make all men disappear from Earth, the women left behind struggle to rebuild the shattered human culture. Years later, private investigator Fay Hardaway is hired by a grieving mother to investigate the mysterious suicide of her daughter. The aliens take an interest in the case as well, as does a religious cult bent on breaking the aliens' stranglehold on Earth.

Les hates the artificial baby that Birth Control has given her, but she tries to take care of it because she wants to have a real baby of her own. But now the baby is sick and needs a doctor, and Les is broke and on the run. She has a gun but no ammunition. Yet.

Phillip Wing is the architect of one of the Seven New Wonders of the World: the Glass Cloud. But construction has fallen behind schedule, costs have skyrocketed, and the project is suddenly in danger of being canceled. The mysterious alien Messengers step in to save the Glass Cloud but at a terrible cost to Wing and his wife, Daisy.

In the future people will live for a very long time; but they must periodically "recast" themselves to maintain their sanity. They might change their sex, add another head, or re-engineer themselves to live in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter.

In this wild and funny tale, a sentient television show is struggling to survive the death of her main character. Her ratings are plummeting, her live audience is comatose, her new star has stage fright, and her guest star is gleefully upstaging her entire cast. What's a show to do? Maybe cut a deal with the devil?

Where did all the people go? In a bizarre outpost perched on top of a mountain, the survivors of some cyber-cataclysm ponder the fate of humanity. Although all their needs are taken care of, their memories have been so compromised that they question their very reality. When one of them begins a project that will change everything, the mysterious keepers arrive to restore order.

Bernardo has gone and his intelligent house misses him desperately. Designed to meet all her master's needs, she is his cook, maid, secretary, lover, and secret refuge from the world. Now she struggles to cope with his loss. On the edge of madness, she is saved by the arrival of a damaged young girl, who will teach her what it means to be human.

A man in a bar has a headache, but it's not from drink. Rather, it is because in the distant future, a collective consciousness is experimenting with his cryogenically-preserved corpse. What's the cure for being dead?

Talisha is shocked when she finds mechdream pills in the bottom of her husband's underwear drawer. Designed to create a unique virtual reality based on his wildest fantasies, they will allow him to plumb the depths of his pleasure centers. The only problem is, he's spending the rent money building his virtual paradise. Just what are her husband's deepest desires? Talisha isn't sure she wants to know.

Chip's luck has run out. He's been on the dole for most of his life and now the government wants to ship him off to fight in the never-ending war in Mexico. But he has two things going for him: a cocky attitude and his thinkmate, an all-knowing personal digital assistant named Mr. Jimmy. Maybe the way to escape is to get in line to step through the mysterious door down the alley. Hundreds of people have passed through, but no one has come out.

Children fighting on the front lines? Maybe in some other country. But things have gone from bad to worse in the U.S. as the South American war drags on. Now the government has hatched a scheme to attract teens and even preteens into the army: they are offering kids a chance to be the star of The Johnny America Show, a reality show set on the battlefront. In a country wracked by shortages and draft sweeps and despair, maybe picking up a gun isn't such a bad idea after all.

Here's a cautionary tale about a day in the life of a baby boomer in the not-so-distant future. Climate change has led to economic collapse and social unrest, and yet Ruth lives comfortably enough. But when she sets off on a simple trip across town to visit her friend Matt, she comes face to face with the grim reality of the world she has helped to create.

Murph lives on an ocean liner which has been set down in the corn fields of Kansas. He works as a security op and plays dangerous games in a virtual reality called Way Out. But Murph is lonely and wants to meet his online lover, Cat, in person. But who is Cat, exactly, and what secret is she keeping from Murph?

Stonehenge is possibly the most mystical place on Earth. Its call has echoed through the ages and will continue as long as the stones continue to stand. The drug artist Tony Cage is almost as obsessed with Stonehenge as he is with his offspring Wynne, whom he had cloned from his own cells but then tweaked her sex chromosome from XY to XX. Is she his daughter or something entirely different? Tony will find the answer at Stonehenge on the Solstice Day.