Two assassination attempts, one successful. The three Americans, and their two smuggler friends are caught in events that could lead to war...a war provoked by powers beyond their comprehension.

If you've wondered what it's like to:*Bite a horse while you're riding it*Jump from an airplane and try to swim back*Find humor in the Book of Genesis*Make a quilt from 4,000 1-9nch squares*Write and publish your own books...And go through life with a grinThis book was written for you. Welcome to the mind of David J. Steele. It's a strange and wonderful world. It should be enjoyed in bursts.

Fifteen all-new stories by science fiction’s top talents, collected by bestselling author George R. R. Martin and multiple-award winning editor Gardner Dozois Burroughs’s A Princess of Mars. Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. Heinlein’s Red Planet. These and so many more inspired generations of readers with a sense that science fiction’s greatest wonders did not necessarily lie far in the future or light-years across the galaxy but were to be found right now on a nearby world tantalizingly similar to our own—a red planet that burned like an ember in our night sky . . . and in our imaginations. This new anthology of fifteen all-original science fiction stories, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, celebrates the Golden Age of Science Fiction, an era filled with tales of interplanetary colonization and derring-do. Before the advent of powerful telescopes and space probes, our solar system could be imagined as teeming with strange life-forms and ancient civilizations—by no means always friendly to the dominant species of Earth. And of all the planets orbiting that G-class star we call the Sun, none was so steeped in an aura of romantic decadence, thrilling mystery, and gung-ho adventure as Mars. Join such seminal contributors as Michael Moorcock, Mike Resnick, Joe R. Lansdale, S. M. Stirling, Mary Rosenblum, Ian McDonald, Liz Williams, James S. A. Corey, and others in this brilliant retro anthology that turns its back on the cold, all-but-airless Mars of the Mariner probes and instead embraces an older, more welcoming, more exotic Mars: a planet of ancient canals cutting through red deserts studded with the ruined cities of dying races. FEATURING ALL-NEW STORIES BY James S. A. Corey • Phyllis Eisenstein • Matthew Hughes • Joe R. Lansdale • David D. Levine • Ian McDonald • Michael Moorcock • Mike Resnick • Chris Roberson • Mary Rosenblum • Melinda Snodgrass • Allen M. Steele • S. M. Stirling • Howard Waldrop • Liz Williams And an Introduction by George R. R. Martin! Praise for Old Mars “Strong, fun and evocative.”—Tordotcom “A fantastic anthology . . . Pulp magic lives in these pages.”—Bookhound

The author has explored the deeper insights of psychology with those of his unique relationship with religion and religious experience; as in Jung he believes no experience absent these two elements of experiential learning rises to the level of subject worth of being evaluated; it will merely fall among the discarded indexes of the court docket. But with the advent of psychic experiences and events as well as the living characters that play their parts in the 'psychic drama' then we are looking at something on the level of art that can rise to of Jung's 'artist' plateau; and Millers and Matthew Arnold'reach the latitude of experiences that are worthy of being written about. I have endeavored to be as faithful to reality as possible when events are not always what they seem, where insight and knowledge of both intuition and sensation is necessary data to describe what is rising to the level of drama rather than the false reality we have been trained to react within; this story is a reflections of true experience and therefore has value as art.

The Knot Garden by Marjorie Bowen is about intelligent and capable Princess Sophia Magdalena as she goes about her daily duties and searches for a suitor despite having an ugly face. Excerpt: "WHEN I was a child," said Princess Sophia Magdalena thoughtfully, "I used to dream of escaping into the woods and of living there forever. I thought that I could exist on wild strawberries, that the moss would make a very pleasant bed at night, that the dew, caught in the cups of the lily leaves, would make a delicious drink."