Elizabeth

If you were big and ugly, had a ton of sharp teeth, and a truly enormous appetite, you wouldn't need the "magic word" either! These stories for kids, from acclaimed storytelling songster Bill Harley, center around the theme of being small.

From early stories like "Breaking Strain," to classics like "The Nine Billion Names of God" and "The Sentinel" (kernel of the later novel and movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey), all the way to later groundbreaking works such as "The Hammer of God" and "Transit to Earth," this volume encapsulates one of the great science fiction writing careers of all time.

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction has submitted ten of its best of 2002. Although the collection is a veritable cornucopia of styles and subjects, each story is somehow notable for its compassion and humanity.

Analog Science Fiction & Fact Magazine has provided four edgy stories about heroism, each exploring emotional dimensions uncommon in this or any other genre.

Frank Herbert's Dune is one of the grandest epics in the annals of imaginative literature. Now Herbert's son, Brian, working with Kevin J. Anderson and using Frank Herbert's own notes, reveals a pivotal epoch in the history of the Dune universe: the Butlerian Jihad, the war that was fought ten thousand years before the events of Dune - the war in which humans wrested their freedom from "thinking machines."

Enter the fantastical world of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Trilogy, one of the undisputed fantasy classics of all time. Novelist C.S. Lewis called Peake's books "actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience."

Ex-confederate army captain John Carter finds himself unwittingly transported to Mars, while fleeing Apache Indians. This new world is populated by a race of monstrous Martians, whose culture is based on the ability to fight for their race. John must fight for survival on this hostile planet...This is the first in Burroughs' 11-volume Mars series, a blend of sci-fi and romantic adventure.

Johnny Appleseed's real name was John Chapman, a native of Massachusetts who lived from 1774 to 1845. It is known that he wandered for 40 years through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana sowing apple seeds, staying one step ahead of the pioneer movement in order to sell seedlings to those who traveled through. Chapman was known for his humanitarian values: his cheerfulness, generosity, and most of all, his respect for, and nearly mystical relationship with, nature.