Welcome to this week’s Free Book Friday, wherein we give you the best titles in indie publishing for the low low price of nothing. Congrats to last week’s winner Mary Ann for getting free copies of The Word of God and The Wall of America by Thomas M. Disch.
This week, we are giving away THREE books (holy crap!) thanks to the good folks over at Tachyon Publications. They are: Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, and The Secret History of Science Fiction, all edited by James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel.
In Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, sixteen extreme stories reveal a government ninja routed by a bicycle repairman, the inventor of digitized paper hijacked by his college crush, a dead boy trapped in a warped storybook paradise, and the Queen of England attacked with the deadliest of forbidden technology: a working modem. You’ll meet Manfred Macx, renegade meme-broker, Red Sonja, virtual reality sex-goddess, and Felix, humble sysadmin and post-apocalyptic hero. Editors James Patrick Kelly and John Kessel have united cyberpunk visionaries William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Pat Cadigan with the new post-cyberpunk vanguard including Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross, and Jonathan Lethem. Including a canon-establishing introduction and excerpts from a hotly-contested online debate, Rewired is the first anthology to define and capture the crackling excitement of the post-cyberpunks.
If it is true that the test of a first-rate mind is its ability to hold two contradictory ideas at the same time, then we live in a century when it takes a first-rate mind just to get through the day. We have unprecedented access to information; cognitive dissonance is a banner headline in our morning papers and radiates silently from our computer screens. Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, poised between literature and popular culture, embraces the dissonance. These ambitious stories of visionary strangeness defy the conventions of science fiction. Tales by Michael Chabon, Karen Joy Fowler, Jonathan Lethem, Carol Emshwiller, Aimee Bender, Kelly Link, George Saunders, and others pull the reader into a vivid dreamspace and embrace the knowledge that life today is increasingly surreal.
Exploring an alternate history of science fiction, The Secret History of Science Fiction showcases eighteen brilliant authors leading the way to a new literature of the future. These award-winning stories defy trends, cross genres, and prove great fiction cannot be categorized. Two strangely-detached astronauts orbit Earth while a third world war rages on. A primatologist’s lover suspects her of obsession with one of her simian charges. The horrors of trench warfare dovetail with the theoretical workings of black holes. A dissolving marriage and bitter custody dispute are overshadowed by the arrival of time travelers. An astonishing invention that records the sense of touch is far too dangerous for Thomas Edison to reveal. The Secret History of Science Fiction includes stories by Margaret Atwood, T. C. Boyle, Don DeLillo, Jonathan Lethem, and George Saunders.
This week’s Free Book Friday is sponsored by Tachyon Publications. 
Tachyon is an independent publisher of science fiction and fantasy for grown-ups. Their books are unique, challenging, and have high literary value. Their books are also a lot of fun. Tachyon is known for their canonic anthologies that redefine everything from the Victorian whimsies of Steampunk to the “lit-fi” world of Slipstream. In publishing risky story collections they’ve helped to spark a short fiction renaissance. They’ve commissioned innovative original novels and brought out-of-print classics to a new generation of readers. Their award-winning authors include Peter S. Beagle, Charles de Lint, Michael Moorcock, Kage Baker, James Morrow, Tim Powers, Nancy Kress, Cory Doctorow, Carol Emshwiller, Thomas M. Disch, and many more. In 2010, Tachyon is celebrating fifteen years of publishing smart science fiction and fantasy. Stick around, they’re just getting started.
To enter the giveaway, all you have to do is comment in the space below. Make sure to tell us your email address so we can contact you if you win! We also recommend doing the following:
- Sign up for Tachyon Publications’ mailing list
- Subscribe to the Tachyon Publications blog
- Become a fan of Tachyon Publications’ on Facebook
- Sign up for our newsletter
- Become our friend on Twitter & Facebook
Winner will be chosen randomly at 12pm on Friday, August 6 and notified via email. The winner must respond to our email within 48 hours, or a new winner will be randomly selected.
Good luck!
EDIT: Giveaway now closed. Congrats to this week’s winner ARP. Check out the new Free Book Friday, featuring a pair of books of short-short fiction by Michael Swanwick.
