The Wild existed in beautiful and ruthless perfection—until the people came. Generations past, disaster drove the people to seek a new home on a wild continent that had never before known a human presence. Spirits of wind, stream, forest, and mist inhabit this land, but these beings care nothing for the people, and some are cruel and hostile. Siddél is a power among these spirits. He is thunder and lightning, he is the storm—and he despises all people. He has resolved to drive them from the land and for this purpose he created the arowl—mad, ravening beasts with an unquenchable hunger. Arowl are abominations. They hunt all creatures, while craving human flesh above all else. Bennek is a young warrior, skilled at hunting arowl and eager to slay any that dare venture into the Protected Lands. But he longs for greater deeds. One morning, in the cold blue hour before sunrise, an owl spirit visits, urging Bennek, along with his...

A Lost Ship – A New World Urban is no longer master of the fearsome starship Dragon. Driven out by the hostile, godlike entity, Lezuri, he has taken refuge aboard the most distant vessel in his outrider fleet. Though Lezuri remains formidable, he is a broken god, commanding only a fragment of the knowledge that once was his. He is desperate to return home to the ring-shaped artificial world he created at the height of his power, where he can recover the memory of forgotten technologies. Urban is desperate to stop him. He races to reach the ring-shaped world first, only to find himself stranded in a remote desert, imperiled by a strange flood of glowing “silver” that rises in the night like fog—a lethal fog that randomly rewrites the austere, Earthlike landscape. He has only a little time to decipher the mystery of the silver and to master its secrets. Lezuri is coming—and Urban must level up before he can hope to vanquish the broken god.

An end must be made—and soon. The future of the people hangs in the balance as Lanyon continues her journey north. She must find the Storm Lair, home of the Inyomere Siddél, where she’ll have one more chance to slay the great spirit of storm. But her journey grows ever more perilous and strange, and even her devoted companions cannot keep her safe. Bennek, meanwhile, has been taken south to Habaddon. Through Lanyon’s magic he has survived terrible injury, yet he still needs time to heal. But time is short—and Siddél is resolved to destroy Habaddon. As the great Inyomere sends ever more arowl south towards the city, Bennek finds himself swept up in a relentlessly brutal war.

"VAST lives up to its name — big, important, yet written to a human scale so the perspectives of science emerge all the more strongly. Among hard sf writers, Linda Nagata is a pearl, able to render her complex landscapes in moving, quick-paced stories that linger in the mind." —Gregory Benford Aboard Null Boundary, a giant starship thousands of years old, four survivors of an ancient alien war are making a desperate journey: Lot, son of a fiery prophet and carrier of an insidious virus that spreads a cult-like religious mania among those it infects; Urban, Lot's boyhood friend from the city of Silk, and a man in search of challenge and adventure; Clemantine, cast adrift when her world was destroyed and yearning for revenge; and Nikko, sometimes a living man, but always, the ship's disembodied mind. They are bound into unknown territory. Ahead of them loom vast, lightless clouds of dust and gas where stars are born, and where the...

An end must be made—and soon. The future of the people hangs in the balance as Lanyon continues her journey north. She must find the Storm Lair, home of the Inyomere Siddél, where she’ll have one more chance to slay the great spirit of storm. But her journey grows ever more perilous and strange, and even her devoted companions cannot keep her safe. Bennek, meanwhile, has been taken south to Habaddon. Through Lanyon’s magic he has survived terrible injury, yet he still needs time to heal. But time is short—and Siddél is resolved to destroy Habaddon. As the great Inyomere sends ever more arowl south towards the city, Bennek finds himself swept up in a relentlessly brutal war.

Never before have the people warred against the people. Bennek senses change flooding the world. Dread weighs on him, and he fears what is to come. But Jahallon sees hope. Gifted with foresight, Jahallon is certain it won’t be much longer before Lanyon returns, bringing the talisman with her. Determined to distract and weaken Lanyon’s enemies before they have a chance to waylay her, he launches a great offensive against both the Inyomere Siddél and the sorcerer Édan. With his growing skills, Bennek serves at Jahallon’s side, directing Habaddon’s army—but his skills are not enough to contend against Édan, while Siddél remains an even greater enemy. All the while, time is running short. Days of Storm is the riveting conclusion to The Wild Trilogy.

Ten science fiction stories by acclaimed author Linda Nagata, including the Nebula Award winning novella "Goddesses." This collection brings together for the first time Nagata's short fiction, originally published in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, More Amazing Stories, and SciFi.com. Story list: Spectral Expectations (Analog 1987) Career Decision (Analog 1988) In the Tide (Analog 1989) Small Victories (Analog 1993) Liberator (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction 1993) Old Mother (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction 1995) The Bird Catcher's Children (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction 1997) Hooks, Nets, and Time (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction 1997) The Flood (More Amazing Stories 1998) Goddesses (Sci-Fi.com 2000)

From the Edge of Apocalypse: Deception Well is a world on the edge, home to an isolated remnant surviving at the farthest reach of human expansion. All across the frontier, other worlds have succumbed to the relentless attacks of robotic alien warships, while hundreds of light years away, the core of human civilization—those star systems closest to Earth, known as the Hallowed Vasties—have all fallen to ruins. Powerful telescopes can see only dust and debris where once there were orbital mega-structures so huge they eclipsed the light of their parent stars. No one knows for sure what caused the Hallowed Vasties to fail, but a hardened adventurer named Urban intends to find out. He has the resources to do it. He commands a captive alien starship fully capable of facing the dangers that lie beyond Deception Well. With a ship’s company of explorers and scientists, Urban is embarking on a voyage of re-discovery. They will be the first in centuries to confront the hazards of an inverted frontier as they venture back along the path of human migration. Their goal: to unravel the mystery of the Hallowed Vasties and to discover what monstrous life might have grown up among the ruins. Edges is a new entry point into the classic story world of Linda Nagata’s The Nanotech Succession. From Karl Schroeder, New York Times Notable author of Ventus , and of Stealing Worlds : "In the Nanotech Succession, Linda Nagata crafted one of the great sagas of galactic-scale science fiction. Yet for every revelation and discovery we found another mystery—none so great as what destroyed the supposedly omnipotent, star-spanning civilization of the Hallowed Vasties. At last, in Edges , Nagata teases at an answer, while simultaneously upping the stakes. Edges is a taut story that asks how far you might push yourself, and how much of your own humanity you might have to sacrifice to save those you love. Edges bursts with ideas and proves once again that Nagata is one of SF's great worldbuilders." " Edges runs on a lot of brain power, and it's an intellectually stimulating read that posits some truly intriguing questions and ethical dilemmas [...] While the bulk of Edges is interested in more heady affairs and the nature of mankind's place in the cosmos, Nagata's proficiency in writing action beats is certainly on strong and regular display [...] as this book ramps up to its dizzying, frenetic climax...." —High Fever Books **Review Edges is "a masterful effort, operating both at a slow burn and with a ratcheting intensity that comes to a stunning climax. Linda Nagata has once again given us a future that dances along a razor's edge--entertaining, thrilling, humbling... and hopeful, despite the threat, despite the danger, despite the sacrifice." -- Sharon Browning, LitStack "In the imaginary coffee-house of my mind, Nagata's Succession novels are hanging out with thematic and subgeneric cousins by Neal Asher, Iain M. Banks, Greg Bear, Greg Benford, Greg Egan, Kathleen Ann Goonan, and Robert Reed, discussing the post-human condition, how many nanotechnologies can fit on the head of a pin, the nature and place of sentience in the universe, and whether there is a Long Game in which humankind can play and survive. There's a portrait of Olaf Stapledon hanging over the mantelpiece, along with a long-barreled raygun. Both are icons of the tradition." -- Russell Letson, Locus

A Lost Ship – A New World Urban is no longer master of the fearsome starship Dragon. Driven out by the hostile, godlike entity, Lezuri, he has taken refuge aboard the most distant vessel in his outrider fleet. Though Lezuri remains formidable, he is a broken god, commanding only a fragment of the knowledge that once was his. He is desperate to return home to the ring-shaped artificial world he created at the height of his power, where he can recover the memory of forgotten technologies. Urban is desperate to stop him. He races to reach the ring-shaped world first, only to find himself stranded in a remote desert, imperiled by a strange flood of glowing "silver" that rises in the night like fog—a lethal fog that randomly rewrites the austere, Earthlike landscape. He has only a little time to decipher the mystery of the silver and to master its secrets. Lezuri is coming—and Urban must level up before he can hope to vanquish the broken god.

[A] kick ass big idea, hard SF novel...Yes, I'm raving. But I seriously love this book. –Tobias Buckell "The feel of visionary fantasy mixes with hard SF in this powerful novel of a young woman's quest for a missing brother in a far future world beset by out-of-control technology." —Locus Magazine On an artificial world with a forgotten past, floods of "silver" rise in the night like fog, rewriting the landscape and consuming those caught in its cold mists. Seventeen-year-old Jubilee knows that no one ever returns from the silver—but then a forbidding stranger appears, asking after her beloved brother, lost long ago to a silver flood. Could he still be alive? And why does the silver rise ever higher, threatening to drown the world? Jubilee pursues the truth on a quest to unlock the memory of a past reaching back farther than she ever imagined. Finalist for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award.

“Tanjiri is not for you. You are not ready to encounter what exists there.” So Lezuri spoke in warning, long ago. Urban still possesses the strange gift—the impossible puzzle—Lezuri gave him that day. A needle, ultra-thin and twelve centimeters long, with a silvery surface that slices light into rainbow glints. All Lezuri’s knowledge lies locked within that needle. Urban has only to discover the trick of opening it, to gain that knowledge for himself—but the needle remains an enigma. Now Dragon and its fleet of outriders has reached the periphery of Tanjiri system. The belt of ruins lies ahead: a chaos of remnant megastructures from a fallen civilization. Farther in, an Earthlike world orbits in the company of a miraculous living moon created less than 4,000 years ago. An entity—one greater even than Lezuri—must have made that moon. And yet the system is silent. No one, nothing, has answered Dragon’s hails. Perhaps the entity is gone? But Urban doesn’t believe that. He is sure that when the fleet enters Tanjiri system, he will meet this maker of worlds—with the lives of everyone he loves at stake. Better, safer, to encounter this entity from a position of strength, armed with all the knowledge and power contained within the needle.

Politics, terrorism, and heavy weather collide over Honolulu in a vividly imagined near-future thriller from the author of The Last Good Man. Ava Arnett is a Honolulu cop, captain of the night shift in the autonomous Waikiki District. Nine years ago a massive hurricane hit the island. Ava remains haunted by the mistakes she made and the lives she failed to save during that disaster. Since then, she relies on HADAFA, an AI designed to observe, analyze, and predict human behavior. HADAFA monitors her actions, and its assessments guide her decisions. Now, another Category 5 hurricane is approaching Honolulu . . . In the hectic hours before landfall, Ava stumbles into a terrorist conspiracy – and HADAFA begins to glitch. She can no longer rely on the AI. She must decide on her own whether or not to trust a mysterious federal agent named Lyric Jones – knowing the wrong choice could lead to greater devastation . . . and a war no one will win.

The starship Dragon, accompanied by its fleet of outriders, is faring ever deeper into that region known as the Hallowed Vasties. Here, at the shattered heart of ancient human civilization, once-living worlds were ripped apart by the dimensional intrusions of a Blade. Yet despite the apocalyptic-scale destruction, the fleet's telescopes have picked out signs of life among the ruins and the ship's company is eager to go on—but should they? From his post on Dragon's high bridge, Urban looks ahead to the smaller starship, Griffin, now far, far in front of the fleet. The mind that pilots that ship—a stern and colder version of his lover, Clemantine—has gone silent. The implication chills him. Like Dragon, Griffin was an alien warship, designed to destroy without mercy all living worlds, and it still has a mind of its own. The question that haunts Urban: Has that alien mind somehow reclaimed control of Griffin? It's a question he must answer, and...

A young soldier, remorseless and preternaturally skilled at warfare, finds himself a target of revenge in this dark fantasy short story, originally published at Lightspeed Magazine. “A Moment Before It Struck” is a prequel story to the scoundrel lit novel The Dread Hammer.