Winner of the Hugo, Nebula, World Fantasy, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards, Michael Swanwick is one of science fiction's best authors and a master of short fiction. Tales of Old Earth collects 19 of his acclaimed stories, including one ("The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O") that is original to this volume.

"The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O" is a mythic, Zelazny-tinged tale of time-transcending, world-hopping humans, monsters, and gods. In the Hugo Award winner "The Very Pulse of the Machine," the stranded surviving member of a Jupiter mission may have discovered the secret of the moon Io--or may be going mad. In "The Dead," the corporate mania for profit reaches a shocking nadir of exploitation. "Mother Grasshopper" explores a planet that might be the weirdest ever to appear in science fiction (a huge claim, but true). In the World Fantasy Award winner "Radio Waves," a peculiar science-fictional ghost in a strange and frightening afterlife recovers his memory, and regrets it.

Tales of Old Earth has one minor but potentially annoying problem: it doesn't give copyright information for the individual stories, so you can't see where, or when, they first appeared. Other books by Michael Swanwick include the novels In the Drift, Vacuum Flowers, Griffin's Egg, Stations of the Tide (a Nebula Award winner), and The Iron Dragon's Daughter (a New York Times Notable Book); and the collections Gravity's Angels and A Geography of Unknown Lands. --Cynthia Ward


Book Description
Nineteen of Michael Swanwick's rich, sardonic tales are gathered here for the first time. The collection features The Raggle Taggle Gypsy-O, written for this volume, the 1999 Hugo Award winner The Very Pulse of the Machine," and includes the 2000 Hugo Award winner Scherzo with Tyrannosaur.

FROM THE PUBLISHER