The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures (75 page)

“And what about me?” I
asked, but I thought I already knew the answer to that.

“Monsieur Hoenec . . . I
am truly sorry.”

The shock hit me then,
punching a hole through my heart. I barely registered it when a barge glided in
from the city, filled with men in red robes who greeted Rashid as a brother and
took us both into Indec-Herat. I remember little of its magnificence.

They treated me well,
that first day: bringing me fruit that I had never seen before, and dishes of
grains. They did not, Rashid informed me, eat meat. He told me a little about
the cities of the coasts: their maritime goddesses, their marvels, and I
listened like a child, with as much wonder and the same suspension of belief.
Dimly, I saw that Rashid’s face sharpened into concern and when he held out a
fizzing glass and said, “Here, drink this. It is a sedative,” I did not hesitate.
I think I hoped to wake and find it a dream, but when I opened my eyes the next
morning the sun was already high above the gold-and-crimson domes. I went with
Rashid compliantly, letting him lead me down through the city. I observed with
a remote, detached interest the lines of priestesses in their blood-coloured
robes, the huge leathery birds wheeling about their heads, and the sellers of
gold and jade and strange vegetables. There were all manner of people here:
some immensely tall, others squat and barely human with slate-blue skin. The
human species, in this pre-catastrophe world, seemed much more varied. It was
starting to dawn on me what we had lost.

“I will show you
something,” Rashid said. “You’ll find it of interest, I think.” He was smiling
and I returned it with, I am sure, a wan grimace of my own. We took a barge
down through a series of canals and I watched the city glide by into unreality.

And then we came to the
harbour. Ships bigger than any I had ever seen, with vast gleaming sails, span
out across the Indus sea. I could see the spined back of a submarine, cresting
the water briefly before it dived. Smaller boats, clearly equipped with some
form of engine, darted like dragonflies between the hulls of the larger craft.
It was a level of technology that put my own Shoal into the shade. And I knew then,
with a lift of the heart at all I was to witness, and a sinking of the spirits
at the thought of all that would be lost, that there was no point in looking
either forward or back.

Kevin J. Anderson
(b. 1962) has written several
X-Files
and
Star Wars
novels,
as well as collaborations with such writers as Kristine Kathryn Rusch, John G.
Betancourt, and Brian Herbert, with whom he has written the continuing Dune
saga:
House Atreides
(1999),
House Harkonnen
(2000), and
House
Corrino
(2001). With Doug Beason he wrote the SF novels
Lifeline
(1990),
Assemblers of Infinity
(1993), and
Ignition
(1996), a
techno-thriller. His solo work includes
Resurrection Inc.
(1988),
Blindfold
(1995) and
Hopscotch
(1997). His 2002 novel,
Captain Nemo,
was
subtitled “The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius”.

Tony Ballantyne
, author of the impressive stories “Teaching the War Robot to
Dance” and “Indecisive Weapons”, has had over twenty short stories published in
Interzone, The Third Alternative,
the anthology
Constellations,
and
elsewhere. His work is regularly translated and published in European SF
magazines and selected for anthologies such as
The Year’s Best SF 9.
His
first novel,
Recursion,
was published in July 2004, followed by
Capacity
(2005).

Stephen Baxter
was born in Liverpool, England, in 1957. He worked in
engineering, teaching and information technology, but is now a full-time writer
with over twenty published novels to his credit. He has earned a considerable
reputation in recent years for his high-tech science fiction novels such as
Raft
(1992),
Flux
(1993) and
Titan
(1997), but he also has a
fascination for the history of science fiction. He has already paid homage to
H.G. Wells in his sequel to
The Time Machine,
entitled
The Time Ships
(1995). His next books will be
Sunstorm,
a collaboration with Arthur
C. Clarke, and
Transcendent,
the latest of his “Destiny’s Children”
series.

Keith Brooke
spent a long time as a promising young SF writer, with three
novels published in the early 1990s
(Keepers of the Peace, Expatria
and
Expatria
Incorporated)
and over fifty short stories published around the world since
1989. Now he’s a promising mature writer and online publisher, launching the
web-based SF, fantasy and horror showcase
Infinity Plus
(
www.infinityplus.co.uk
) in 1997, featuring the work of around 100 top genre authors. He
is co-editor with Nick Gevers of
infinity plus one
and
infinity plus
two,
anthologies based on the website. His latest books are the novel,
Lord
of Stone
(1997; revised edition 2001); a collection of short stories,
Head
Shots
(2001); and
Parallax View
(2000), a collection of stories
written with Eric Brown. His new novel,
Genetopia,
is due in the US in
autumn 2005. Hiding his identity behind the pen-name Nick Gifford, he likes to
scare children, with several novels published by Puffin. Keith lives with his
young family in the English town of Brightlingsea. You can find out more about
Keith and his work at
www.keithbrooke.co.uk

Apart from co-editing
this anthology, and when not growing prize marrows or reviewing curry-houses,
Eric
Brown
(b. 1960) has written over twenty books and eighty short stories. He
has twice won the BSFA short story award, in 2000 and 2002. His first
collection was
The Time-Lapsed Man
(1990), and he has recently sold his
sixth,
Threshold Shift,
due out from Golden Gryphon in the US. His first
novel was
Meridian Days
(1992). The third book of the Virex trilogy,
New
York Dreams,
appeared in 2004, as did his novel
Bengal Station.
Recent
works include
The Fall of Tartarus
(2005) and
The Extraordinary
Voyage of Jules Verne
(2005). His website can be found at:
http://ericbrownsf.port5.com/

Molly Brown
has been at times an armed guard and a stand-up comic. She writes
in a number of genres. Her publications include
Virus
(1994), a
science-fiction thriller for teenagers,
Cracker: To Say I Love You
(1994)
a novelisation based on the television series, a humorous historical whodunit
Invitation
to a Funeral
(1995), and a short story collection,
Bad Timing
(2001).
Several of her stories have been optioned for film and/or television. Her
website is at:
www.mollybrown.co.uk
.

Peter Crowther
(b. 1949) is the indefatigable editor and publisher at the helm
of PS Publishing, a small — but rapidly growing — specialist press devoted to
novellas, novels and collections in the SF, fantasy and horror genres. Somehow he
finds time to write long, complex, and moving stories, as well as edit the
magazine
Postscripts.
He recently moved from Harrogate, and now lives in
a sprawling house close to the sea, surrounded by many thousands of books,
magazines and CDs. His first SF collection,
Songs of Leaving,
appeared
in 2003 and
Dark Times,
a third collection of his dark fantasy stories,
appeared in 2004.

Paul Di Filippo
(b. 1954) is the author of countless bizarre and wonderful short
stories and novellas. His industry, like his imagination, knows no bounds. He
has published seventeen books since his first,
The Steampunk Trilogy,
appeared
in 1995. If you count from his first professional appearance in 1985, this does
not quite average one book per year but he hopes by 2010 (the 25th anniversary
of that debut) to have twenty-five books to his credit. Meanwhile, he continues
to live in Providence, Rhode Island, with his mate, Deborah Newton, two cats
named Penny Century and Mab, and a cocker spaniel named Ginger. Among his
recent books
are A Year in the Linear City
(2002) and
Fuzzy Dice
(2003).
His website is at:
www.pauldifilippo.com

Laurent Genefort
was born in 1968, in Montreuil s/bois. He studied literature at
the Sorbonne in Paris and the title of his doctorate (University of Nice Sophia
Antipolis, 1997) was “Architecture du livre-univers dans. la science-fiction, a
travers cinq oeuvres.” He has been writing SF since 1988, with around thirty
novels and ten short stories to his credit, including the “Omale” cycle,
La
Mecanique du Talion.
“Arago” won the Prix de l’imaginaire in 1995. “The
True Story of Barbicane’s Voyage” is his first story to be published in
English.

Johan Henot
was born in 1970 at Besancon, France, and now lives in Remiremont,
near the Vosges mountains. His many books include
La Lune n’est Pas Pour
Nous
(2004) in which Albert Londres strikes against the Nazis’ attempt to
destroy the moon,
Faerie Hackers
(2003),
Obsidio
(2003) two short
horror novels and a novella,
Pandemonium
(2002) about vampires from
outer space which terrorise Paris in 1832,
Reconquerants
(2001), and
La
Lune Seule le Sait
(2000) in which Jules Verne flies to the moon in an
extraterrestrial ship.

Sarah A. Hoyt
(b. 1962) has published three Shakespearean fantasy novels with
Ace. The first one,
Ill Met By Moonlight
(2001) was short-listed for the
Mythopoeic Award. Her short stories have been published in
Asimov’s, Analog
and
Weird Tales
and as a collection —
Crawling Between Heaven and Earth
(2002).

Tim Lebbon
(b. 1969) wins awards like they are going out of fashion. They
include two British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, plus the Tombstone
Award for the collection
Exorcising Angels
(with Simon Clark). His
latest books include
White and Other Tales of Ruin
(2002),
Changing
of Faces
(2003) and
Fears Unnamed
(2004). Forthcoming books include
Desolation,
the dark fantasy novel
Dusk;
and
Into the Wild Green Yonder
(with
Peter Crowther). His work has been optioned for the screen on both sides of the
Atlantic. His website is at
www.timlebbon.net

James Lovegrove
was born in 1965 and is not averse to giant leaps of the
imagination. His novel
The Hope
(1990) is set on board a vast ocean liner which has been cruising
the seas for decades and contains all manner of horrors. Likewise
Days
(1997) takes place in a massive
department store which welcomes you in but may not let you go. Verne would have
loved them. He has also written
Escardy Gap (with
Peter Crowther),
The Foreigners, Untied Kingdom
and
Worldstorm.
He has
published a short-story collection,
Imagined
Slights,
a novella,
How The Other Half Lives,
and a double-novella,
Gig.
His works for younger readers include
Wings
and
The House of Lazarus.
A new novel
is Provender Gleed,
and a third children’s book,
Ant
God.
He has recently moved to a small village in Devon with his wife
Lou and son Monty. It is very quiet there, and he thinks he likes that.

Richard A. Lupoff
(b. 1935) was introduced to the works of Jules Verne when he was
eight by a sympathetic elementary school librarian. His interest in matters
Vernian has never faltered, although it has broadened to include a wide range
of literature and other media. He holds the distinction of having his stories
selected for
Best of the Year
anthologies in three allied fields: science fiction, horror, and
mysteries. He is also the winner of a Hugo Award, and has been nominated for
both the Nebula and the Oscar. His recently-issued and in-production books
include
Claremont Tales I
and
II, One Murder at a Time,
and
Quintet: The Cases of Chase and Delacroix,
as well as a new edition of his classic study
Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure
from the University of Nebraska.