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From ancient Japan's most enduring tale, the epic 47 Ronin is born.

Kai, an outcast, joins Oishi, the leader of the 47 Ronin. Together they seek vengeance upon the treacherous overlord who killed their master and banished their kind. To restore honor to their homeland, the warriors embark upon a quest that challenges them with a series of trials that would destroy ordinary warriors.

Hugo Award winning novelette. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, June 1977. The story can also be found in the anthologies The New Women of Wonder (1978), edited by Pamela Sargent, The 1978 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha, The Analog Anthology #2 (1982), edited by Stanley Schmidt and The Hugo Winners, Volume 4: (1976-79) (1985), edited by Isaac Asimov. It is included in the collection Eyes of Amber and Other Stories (1979).

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: Joan Vinge: The Turing Criterion - essay by Ben Bova
• Eyes of Amber - (1977) - novelette
• Afterword (Eyes of Amber) - essay
• To Bell the Cat - (1977) - novelette
• Afterword (To Bell the Cat) - essay
• View from a Height - (1978) - shortstory
• Afterword (View from a Height) - essay
• Media Man - (1976) - novella
• Afterword (Media Man) - essay
• The Crystal Ship - (1976) - novella
• Afterword (The Crystal Ship) - essay
• Tin Soldier - (1974) - novella
• Afterword (Tin Soldier) - essay

Hugo and Nebula Award nominated novella. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, December 1978. The story can aslo be found in the anthology The Best Science Fiction Novellas of the Year #1 (1979), edited by Terry Carr and the collection Fireship (1978).

Contains:

• Fireship
• Mother and Child

Lovers cursed for all eternity: What magic could free them from their evil enchantment?

Based on a thirteenth-century legend of love and witchcraft...

>Captain Etienne Navarre is a man on whose shoulders lie a cruel curse. Punished for loving each other, Navarre must become a wolf by night whilst his lover, Lady Isabeau, takes the form of a hawk by day. Together, with the thief Philippe Gaston, they must try to overthrow the corrupt Bishop and in doing so break the spell.

Visions - Visions of love and conflict, anguish and Tomorrow. Of outcasts who must bridge the obsessions of two post Holocaust worlds; and an astronaut who finds her life's quest betrayed by a device from a alien past. A prince who became a beggar, with the power of the dragon; and a feudal serf who met a high tech lord, with he magic of a peddler. A Cat how had lost his mind powers and a Dreamweaver who had lost her mind. A barbarian priestess whose beauty challenged the world and whose child could melt the heart of an aliern God-on a crippled Earth that swam beneath a vast Cyclopean eye. The visions of Joan D Vinge.

Table of Contents:

• Phoenix in the Ashes - (1978) - novelette
• Afterword - Phoenix in the Ashes - essay
• Voices from the Dust - (1980) - shortstory
• Afterword - Voices from the Dust - essay
• The Storm King - (1980) - novelette
• Afterword - The Storm King - essay
• The Peddler's Apprentice - (1975) - novelette and Vernor Vinge
• Afterword - The Peddler's Apprentice - essay
• Psiren - (1981) - novella
• Afterword - Psiren - essay
• Mother & Child - novella
• Afterword - Mother and Child - essay

This novelette originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, August 1975. It can also be found in the anthologies Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Fifth Annual Collection (1975), edited by Lester del Rey, and The 1976 Annual World's Best SF, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha. It is included in the collections Phoenix in the Ashes (Joan D. Vinge, 1975), True Names ...and Other Dangers (Vernor Vinge, 1987) and The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge (Vernor Vinge, 2001).

Hugo Award nominated short story. It originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, June 1978. The story can also be found in the anthologies Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Eighth Annual Collection (1979), edited by Gardner Dozois, The Best Science Fiction of the Year #8 (1978), edited by Terry Carr, The Road to Science Fiction 4: From Here to Forever (1982), edited by James Gunn, and Women of Wonder: The Classic Years: SF by Women from the 1940s to the 1970s (1995), edited by Pamela Sargent. It is included in the collection Eyes of Amber and Other Stories (1979).

Table of Contents:

• Legacy - interior artwork by Jack Gaughan
• The Janus Equation - interior artwork by Jack Gaughan
• 5 - Introduction (Binary Star No. 4) - essay by James R. Frenkel
• 13 - Legacy - [Heaven Chronicles - 2] - novella by Joan D. Vinge
• 140 - Afterword (Legacy) - essay by Steven Spruill [as by Steven G. Spruill]
• 147 - The Janus Equation - novella by Steven Spruill [as by Steven G. Spruill]
• 282 - Afterword (The Janus Equation) - essay by Joan D. Vinge

When first published, readers young and old eagerly devoured the tale of a street-hardened survivor named Cat, a half-human, half-alien orphan telepath. Named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, Cat's story has been continued by Hugo-award winning and international best-selling author Joan D. Vinge with the very popular Catspaw and Dreamfall. Now, 25 years later, this special anniversary edition of Psion contains a new introduction by the author and "Psiren," a story never before included in any trade edition of Psion. This tough, gritty tale of an outsider whose only chance for redemption is as an undercover agent for an interstellar government that by turns punishes and helps him, is as fresh and powerful today as it was in 1982.

CAT: Street Punk, Psion, Telepath, Survivor. . .

Kidnapped by an interstellar corporation and dragged to Earth, Cat is forced to use his skills to protect those he most hates, those who most hate him . . . .

The taMings. A cyber-augmented, DNA-incestuous clan of such wealth and power that their family arguments change the destiny of worlds. Now one taMing is a killer's target. But which? And who would dare?

Seeking answers, Cat finds lies and savagery, passion and atrocity--trails that lead from crystal valleys to clubs for silver-skinned beauties. From the homicidal enclaves of drug kings to a fanatic's pulpit. From the halls of the Assembly to a cyberspace hell. Seeking assassins, Cat discovers a mystery that could cost him his future. His sanity. His life.

Because Cat is no longer a bodyguard . . .

Cat, the halfbreed telepath hero of Catspaw and Psion, joins a research team on Refuge, homeworld of his mother's people, the Hydrans. Immediately, he finds trouble when he helps a Hydran woman escape human pursuers.

The decimated Hydran population of Refuge is confined to a bleak "homeland," by a huge corporate state, Tau Biotech. Tau also controls Refuge's one unique natural resource, "Dreamfall." The tangible residue of cast-off thoughts from beautiful, enigmatic "cloud whales," dreamfall forms vast reefs, sacred to the Hydrans, but mere exploitable data to Tau.

Caught between Tau and desperate Hydrans who fight to reclaim their world, Cat must somehow forge the ruins of the past into a means to defeat Tau's brutality to save his people--and himself.

Table of Contents:

• Legacy - (1980) - novella
• The Outcasts of Heaven Belt - (1978) - novel

This novel tells of a future where interstellar travel is a reality, but just barely. No galaxy-spanning empire, just a set of planets, some marginally habitable, full of colonists trying to survive, and sometimes to get ahead.

The system was called Heaven, because it contained resources enough to sustain life and maybe even more. But when an outside starship fell into the system on a trade and contact mission, the crew discover how easily people can make a hell out of heaven. Civil war has reduced the once-great civilization of Heaven's Belt to a set of struggling, isolated societies, each too intent on their own survival to help the others.

The crew of the starship Ranger must find a way out of the system before their ship is taken and used as the last weapon for the last war. I enjoyed the differentness of this novel. Life in the future may not be as easy as most S/F tales portray it. What would our culture turn into if we ran out of resources?

The imperious Winter colonists have ruled the planet Tiamat for 150 years, deriving wealth from the slaughter of the sea mers. But soon the galactic stargate will close, isolating Tiamat, and the 150-year reign of the Summer primitives will begin. Their only chance at surviving the change is if Arienrhod, the ageless, corrupt Snow Queen, can destroy destiny with an act of genocide. Arienrhod is not without competition as Moon, a young Summer-tribe sibyl, and the nemesis of the Snow Queen, battles to break a conspiracy that spans space.

Hot on the heels of The Summer Queen, this novel is a must-read for fans of Vinge's Hugo Award-winning series. BZ Gundhalinu, a policeman who became an outcast after saving the future Summer Queen, quits his job to follow his ne'er-do-well brothers into the godforsaken waste, World's End, to prospect. BZ's odyssey will set the stage for The Summer Queen.

Sequel To The Hugo Award-Winning Bestseller The Snow Queen

The Summer Queen is the extraordinary sequel to one of science fiction's most celebrated novels, The Snow Queen. Set in a fully realized universe of wonders, this spectacular space epic, itself a finalist for the Hugo Award, is one of the most remarkable novels in the field.

A story that spans millennia, from the ruins of an ancient interstellar empire to the planets of the Hegemony that rules human space, The Summer Queen is the multi-layered story of Tiamat, a world where the dolphin-like mers are harvested for the youth-prolonging serum extracted from their blood. But Tiamat is much more, for beneath Carbuncle, its capital, lies the old empire's greatest secret: an enormous forgotten technology which, though decaying, continues to affect the fates of the fallen empire's remnant cultures via the sybil-network--a data bank that binds the past and the future in its web of knowledge, As the Smith, genius mastermind of the hidden interstellar Brotherhood, tries feverishly to unlock its secrets, BZ Gundhalinu desperately strives to save the Hegemony, while the Summer Queen herself dares to create a new future for her people and her planet. And though each is acting alone, their fates will entwine in an astonishing climax that will change the universe forever.

Joan D. Vinge returns to Tiamat, the world of her Hugo Award-winning novel The Snow Queen and its bestselling sequel The Summer Queen...

Set during the time of The Snow Queen, BZ Gundhalinu is a by-the-book "Blue" on the trail of high corruption within the force. When a police raid goes horribly awry, BZ finds himself teamed up with Nyx LaisTree, a hard-nosed cop with no respect for the rules, and Devony Seaward, a beautiful hooker with a heart of gold. Together these three must fight the corruption of Tiamat and try to expose it before they all end up dead.

This novel marks the exciting return to the much-loved Snow Queen Universe. While taking place during events in The Snow Queen, this novel is a stand-alone masterpiece of noir suspense--taking a story you think you know, and showing you just how deep and vast the waters really run.

Riding The Torch:

Jofe D'mahl, a senso producer, is one of the chief entertainers aboard the generation torchship Brigadoon. Ego to the brim and the ship's main socialite, he has no time for the voidsuckers--the sullen men and women who go beyond the massive ship's hydrogen umbra to seek out new planets for its passengers to settle. Goaded into taking one such trip after a voidsucker news bulletin upstages his latest senso, however, D'mahl has the experience of his life. Cut off from all technology and social affairs of the Brigadoon, he is offered a new perspective on existence. Problem is, he also comes upon knowledge that unhinges his mindset regarding the Brigadoon's mission.

The Tin Soldier:

Can human love survive the distance between the Stars?

"Tin Soldier" tells the story of Maris, an ex-soldier who, following wounds sustained in battle, has received cybernetic implants that, as a side effect, slow his aging to "about five years for every hundred" (he is 115 years old as the story begins, though physically he looks "about twenty-five"), and Brandy (short for Branduin), a female starship crew member.

The novella follows the relationship that develops between these two people who fall in love, but through circumstances can only see each other for a few days every 25 years.