Mostrando resultados por autor "Stephen Huff" en Todas las categorías

Matriculating across that stage, nothing betrayed the Texas sand behind his ears, though his stiff, high collar hid a neck roasted red by long hours spent laboring beneath August sunshine. Indeed, years of careful study and patient attention had polished away the roughest facets of his country-born demeanor with a doctoral degree, but he would always be Charles Ray McCormick, white trash. Learning from the invariably negative example set forth by his errant, wayward siblings, Ray avoided the pitfalls of youth via intervention of a well-meaning mentor and pursuit of an academic career. ...

Simian Wynwood opened Simian’s Gate by recording first contact with alien intelligence. Within weeks, civilization rapidly changed. Renewable energy, resolved. Global pollution, remediated. Cancer, cured. Eighteen months later, six-and-a-half billion people lay withered in death, victims of a technological Trojan horse. In the aftermath, survivors divide, hunter and hunted. Extinction looms. No one will survive Simian’s Way unscathed.

The worst of the worst, he is notorious even within a notorious system. When the most violent prison riot in the history of human corrections threatens to bring down a prison’s walls, this consummate gangster will trade inside information for removal of his tattoos, one image at a time. Afterward, he will become a different man. Only a clean skin can provide the key to his cages.

His nickname at work, where his colleagues avoid him like a plague, is "Mr. Accident". Alongside a lonely stretch of road on his way home one evening, he earns his reputation once again. While he sits with a dying youth trapped inside an overturned and crumpled automobile, Mr. Accident tells the boy how he earned his reputation. His is a sordid tale of endless cacophony and disaster, and death follows Mr. Accident like a shadow. Today, he earns his nickname with flare. If you should cross paths with Mr. Accident, beware.

One of the most pivotal waterborne engagements in history would not be fought ship-to-ship in the traditional fashion of naval warfare, a brutal duel between massive battleships. This titanic contest would be decided without either commander sighting the other, for victory would ultimately be claimed in the skies, aircraft to aircraft. Its outcome directly determined the future of the individual sailor and aviator, but it also indirectly decided the fates of their homelands, as well. For the combatants, Midway was not merely an isolated battle in the larger conflict, rather it would decide ...

A marauding legion of starving aliens arrive on Earth for a brief but terrifying raid on the planet. For a few unbelievably deadly days they will hunt humankind to fill their larder before they can continue on their indeterminate journey. Though the invaders are impervious to most human defenses, one man finds safety with a household pet! They are many and they are hungry. Human beings are defenseless. You never needed a cat so badly!

Dire questions inevitably linger when someone disappears from a troubled marriage… from a troubled life… from the entire world. When Efren Sinclair’s wife takes a permanent vacation from their comfortable existence, all eyes turn to him, accusatory and condemning. Everyone is certain he murdered her. Nobody believes the ‘woman’ calling his children each night before bedtime is Leah Sinclair. Instead, his family and friends suspect her husband has alibied himself with an industrial grade Live-Jack, an artificially intelligent system capable of passing the forensic Turing Test for ...

Corporate lobotomies. Psychotically amorous semi-sentient bots. Endless corridors. Countless unlabeled doors, all viciously locked. A lethally dysfunctional social infrastructure rife with corruption, inefficiency, and crime. Spiraling homicide rates… Welcome to your corpulent, overpopulated future! Here, everyone loves you, because everyone wants to screw you before they sell your living body to illegal pharmaceutical tumor-farms, which are also a popular method of suicide, because death-by-tumor is not as bad as many (though it is also worse than some). In this world, a much-hated ...

Somebody has to do it, and his mind is sufficiently perverse to qualify for the job. It's the age-old conundrum of time travel. It's the ultimate experiment. He packs a handgun before he steps into the time machine. What happens when a young man travels into the past to kill his own parents? Hello, father. Hello, mother. Good-bye, Thaddeus.

Lucky to survive the circumstances of his birth, he learned to make the most of a life that might have killed a lesser person. In fact, he learned to thrive. Via crime, he improved himself to the point of obtaining a college education, an enormous bank account, and a veritable army of minions. He proves the road to hell is not always paved with the best of intentions. This is the story of his downfall and ultimate fate. Nobody escapes.

Denizens of Watami are more human than human. Though ‘normal’ citizens hysterically fear them as obscene chimeras, the pastoral Nascosi way of life embraces principles of passivity and altruism to selfless - some would say ‘suicidal’ - extremes. When a deviant dictator determines to exploit these deep-seated genocidal animosities for political gain, he finds the peace-loving Nascosi ‘morphs’ to be easy targets and convenient scapegoats in promotion of his sinister designs. Since Nascosi refuse to defend themselves, they will ultimately disappear into the vaporous anonymity of ...

Declared missing-in-action while serving in Afghanistan, her eldest son's disappearance left a massive whole in this mother's life. Her misery cannot be assuaged by human sympathy or the keepsakes of memories. Although he is certainly dead, she refuses to speak of it and insists he is still alive somewhere out there in the world. On her deathbed, she reveals to her family that he has been calling her every Friday when it rains. A mother's love for her children may transcend time. When it does, who can determine where reality ends and desperate fantasy begins? Only she and her son know the ...

Black eyeliner. Black lashes. Black lips. Black hair. Through it all, peers the white cake face of Darling Girl Jones, orphan. From time to time, she awakens in her academy dorm room to find an ethereal spirit haunting her bed. Never disturbing, always intriguing, such an event is a certain promise of ghoulish adventure and mortal danger. Although today is a special day at her Academy because today is Christmas Eve - and that means all-you-can-eat pancakes with real maple syrup - Darling Girl's holidays are never so easy and a ghost with a serious problem is certain to spoil her fun!

On the verge of a bloody and catastrophic defeat, a lone surviving robot tech risks life and limb to maneuver to the frontlines and activate an army of machines. Though these metallic monsters have failed in the past, this time their success would be utter and complete. Too complete. These machines are harbingers of global apocalypse and genocide. Be careful what you wish for, because not all is fair in love and war.

In the limitless expanse of the cosmos, intelligence need not be confined to water-filled flesh. For every form of imagination, there is an embodiment of it out there in the void. On this world in this system, everything may be uniquely alive, from the rocks to the sandstorms. How does one conquer the wind? It is an alien intellect in the shifting sands of a waterless planet. Journey here to die. Or be reborn.

During the summer of 1968, the Nightland, Incorporated carnival stopped in suburban Pecan Groves, Texas to stage a one-week show. Its performances paralleled a three-man prison escape, the miraculous resurrection of a cherished young boy, and the mysterious appearance of a young lady with a potent pedigree. If the squalor of its Freak Show and the rigged games of its midway are now known only within the faded archives of history, then contemporary society is its primary benefactor and direct ancestor. We see its shadows and hear its echoes everywhere. Welcome to the Freak Show. We are it.

He is the scourge of the night, every bachelorette's worst nightmare. He has already killed many single young ladies, and he will certainly kill again. Tonight, he lingers outside the house of his next intended victim. Watching. Waiting. When he sees her climb the stairs to her bedroom, he knows her time has come. Demonstrating expert skill and terrible discipline, he steals into her home to rouse her from her dreams. This victim will not go as easily as all the rest, however, much to his sinister delight. Every matchmaker claims there is someone for everyone. This old adage is never truer ...

Every day, we confront ourselves in mirrors of various shapes and sizes. We stare into them and our reflection stares back. Within these visions, everything about our reflection is backward, opposite, and reversed. Laws of physics prevent one side from emerging into the other, but we all wonder how far those renditions of reality might go. We wonder about life on the other side. How far does our mirror's reflection imitate reality? If we could crossover to the other side, what might happen when in the twain we and our reflections meet?

A ravaged, remnant human population claims the Earth's dismal daylight hours, while bloodthirsty savages rule the night. One aging warrior struggles to take back the darkness. He fights bloodlust with bloodlust, but his most powerful weapon is a terrible one that might turn on him at any moment. He knows his one-sided war is a fragile thing, because he understands his victory will be decided as a desperate race against time. Yet history leaves him no option but to fight. In a bleak post-apocalyptic future, monster confronts monster for ultimate control of the planet. One man and one beast ...

Like an onion, his plan for her conquest is multi-layered and complex. First, he must educate himself, then he must use that education to accumulate wealth. Finally, he must find a way to enter into her life as an equal. In the meantime, he can always jog alongside her in the park, just another stranger on the trail. In truth, he loved her from first sight and determined to have her despite his poverty and her wealth. Fortunately, he is a very clever young man.