The Terminal Experiment

First published in the anthology Sherlock Holmes in Orbit, edited by Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg (DAW, 1995); authorized by Dame Jean Conan Doyle.

Winner of both the CompuServe Science Fiction and Fantasy Forum’s Sixth Annual HOMer Award for Best Short Story of the Year and Le Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire, France’s top SF award, for Best Foreign Short Story of the Year.

First published in the anthology , edited by Peter Crowther and Edward E. Kramer (White Wolf, February 1996). In 2008 was included in  collection (1 edition Quarry Press, January 2002).

Winner of the CompuServe Science Fiction and Fantasy Forum’s Sixth Annual HOMer Award for Best Short Story of the Year.

An anthology of stories

Sherlock Holmes is back!

Sherlock Holmes, the world’s first-and most famous-consulting detective, came to the world’s attention more than 120 years ago through Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels and stories. But Conan Doyle didn’t reveal all of the Great Detective’s adventures…

Here are some of the best Holmes pastiches of the last 30 years, twenty-eight tales of mystery and the imagination detailing Holmes’s further exploits, as told by many of today’s greatest storytellers, including Stephen King, Anne Perry, Anthony Burgess, Neil Gaiman, Naomi Novik, Stephen Baxter, Tanith Lee, Michael Moorcock, and many more.

These are the improbable adventures of Sherlock Holmes, where nothing is impossible, and nothing can be ruled out. In these cases, Holmes investigates ghosts, curses, aliens, dinosaurs, shapeshifters, and evil gods. But is it the supernatural, or is there a perfectly rational explanation?

You won’t be sure, and neither will Holmes and Watson as they match wits with pirates, assassins, con artists, and criminal masterminds of all stripes, including some familiar foes, such as their old nemesis, Professor Moriarty.

In these pages you’ll also find our heroes crossing paths with H. G. Wells, Lewis Carroll, and even Arthur Conan Doyle himself, and you’ll be astounded to learn the truth behind cases previously alluded to by Watson but never before documented until now. These are tales that take us from the familiar quarters at 221B Baker Street to alternate realities, from the gaslit streets of London to the far future and beyond.

Whether it’s mystery, fantasy, horror, or science fiction, no puzzle is too challenging for the Great Detective. The game is afoot!

В началото на 21 век е засечен неразгадаем сигнал от космоса. След десетгодишни изследвания Хедър успява да проникне в тайните на съобщението. То разкрива смайваща нова технология, която събаря бариерите на времето и пространството като дава надежди за нов етап в човешката еволюция. Ключът към неограничените възможности се оказва съвсем наблизо, но той може да се превърне и в края на човешката раса.

«Четвъртото измерение» е най-завладяващия роман на Робърт Дж. Сойер, който му носи най-високата парична награда за научна фантастика — Premio UPC.

First published in the anthology , edited by Brad Linaweaver and Edward E. Kramer (Tor, 1997). This is the author’s preferred text as published in the anthology , edited by Robert J. Sawyer David Skene-Melvin (Pottersfield, 1999)

Nominated for Hugo Award for Best Short Story in 1998.

Nominated for Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award in 1998

Commissioned for the anthology , edited by Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg (DAW, 1993); first published in On Spec: The Canadian Magazine of Speculative Writing, Summer 1993.

 Later it was reprinted in several anthologies including On Spec: , , and . In 2008 it was included in  collection (1 edition Quarry Press, January 2002).

Winner of both the Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Award (“the Aurora”) for Best English-Language Short Story of 1993 and the Crime Writers of Canada’s Arthur Ellis Award for Best Short Story of 1993.

Caitlin was born blind, and when, newly arrived in tenth grade, she is offered a chance at an experimental procedure to give her sight, she leaps at it, despite previous disappointments. When she returns from the Tokyo hospital in which she underwent the procedure, it seems a failure. Soon enough, though, she discovers that, instead of reality, she is perceiving the Web. What’s particularly interesting is the background noise. Something strange is floating around behind the nodes of normal Webspace; a closer look reveals that, whatever it is, it’s not just meaningless noise. Caitlin’s story alternates with those of Hobo, a chimp whose claim to fame is being one of the first two apes to video-chat online; an entity of mysterious provenance; and a Chinese dissident blogger who is quite curious about why everything from outside China is blocked. Sawyer’s take on theories about the origin of consciousness, generated within the framework of an engaging story, is fascinating, and his approach to machine consciousness and the Internet is surprisingly fresh.

Nominated for Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2010.

Aliens, Tosoks, have finally made contact with Earth, but there are only seven of them, and they’ve arrived in a disabled spaceship. The Tosoks are intelligent and surprisingly easy to communicate with, and are happy to tour Earth and see what humans have to offer. But during a stop in Los Angeles, one of the human scientists traveling with the Tosoks is gruesomely murdered, and all evidence points to the alien Hask. The Los Angeles Police Department is determined to indict Hask for the crime, even though the aliens have little concept of laws or crime as we understand them. The only thing the U.S. government can do is secretly procure the services of Dale Rice, a leading civil rights lawyer, and hope he can clear Hask of the charges. But as the trial progresses, evidence indicates a cover-up by one or more of the aliens. Humanity’s survival — not just Hask’s fate — might hinge on the jury’s verdict.

Canadian author Robert J. Sawyer offers an epic hard-science space adventure full of technical descriptions of starships and physics tempered by human concerns. In the twenty-first century, the human race has both developed faster-than-light travel and contacted nonhuman intelligent races. , under the command of Keith Lansing, is one of the contact makers. Lansing faces hostile crew members, the personal and cultural idiosyncracies of nonhumans, the problems of first contact, and a marriage that may be deteriorating. Scientists on the Starplex study the mysterious artificial wormholes that make space travel routine and convenient. Then the wormholes' creators appear, and the scientists must understand and communicate with them to save the galaxy.

Nominated for Nebula Award for Best Novella in 2005

A slower-than-light starship that was launched in the beginning of 21 century to Tau Ceti, after more than a thousand years of flight is nearing its destination. But technical progress did not stand still back on Earth through all those years, and Tau Ceti has already been populated by humans for centuries…