Mostrando resultados por autor "Stephen Huff" en Todas las categorías

In the limitless expanse of the cosmos, intelligence need not be confined to water-filled flesh. For every form of imagination, there is an embodiment of it out there in the void. On this world in this system, everything may be uniquely alive, from the rocks to the sandstorms. How does one conquer the wind? It is an alien intellect in the shifting sands of a waterless planet. Journey here to die. Or be reborn.

During the summer of 1968, the Nightland, Incorporated carnival stopped in suburban Pecan Groves, Texas to stage a one-week show. Its performances paralleled a three-man prison escape, the miraculous resurrection of a cherished young boy, and the mysterious appearance of a young lady with a potent pedigree. If the squalor of its Freak Show and the rigged games of its midway are now known only within the faded archives of history, then contemporary society is its primary benefactor and direct ancestor. We see its shadows and hear its echoes everywhere. Welcome to the Freak Show. We are it.

He has perfected the necessary skills, collected the requisite equipment, and buried the resultant bodies. Like a grotesque human hermit crab, he periodically sheds one shell for another, gutting the original to make it his own, and no regard whatever for previous ownership. Fluid and untouchable, he stalks the nation, forever in pursuit of his next lifetime, and nobody knows his name. A ruthless master of disguises, he lives many lives. Maybe one of them will be yours.

He is the scourge of the night, every bachelorette's worst nightmare. He has already killed many single young ladies, and he will certainly kill again. Tonight, he lingers outside the house of his next intended victim. Watching. Waiting. When he sees her climb the stairs to her bedroom, he knows her time has come. Demonstrating expert skill and terrible discipline, he steals into her home to rouse her from her dreams. This victim will not go as easily as all the rest, however, much to his sinister delight. Every matchmaker claims there is someone for everyone. This old adage is never truer ...

Every day, we confront ourselves in mirrors of various shapes and sizes. We stare into them and our reflection stares back. Within these visions, everything about our reflection is backward, opposite, and reversed. Laws of physics prevent one side from emerging into the other, but we all wonder how far those renditions of reality might go. We wonder about life on the other side. How far does our mirror's reflection imitate reality? If we could crossover to the other side, what might happen when in the twain we and our reflections meet?

On the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year of the eleventh holy epoch, he killed God. First, you're probably asking, “Why eleven?” Second you're probably asking, “God with a capital ‘G'?” Of the first question, the killer would only say “because”. It's what the Big Guy wanted. Of the second question, the killer would answer “yes”. God with a capital ‘G'. Some say God is sleeping. Some say God is dead. In this story, the protagonist kills God with his bare hands.

It's Halloween in Pecan Groves, Texas and much mischief is afoot. In the midst of the morbid celebration manifests an otherworldly invasion. How could the citizens of that sleepy bedroom community separate costumes from the genuine horror that has come among them? When the smoke clears, few will be able to explain resultant mass disappearances among the population. Fewer still will believe. Introducing Pecan Groves, Texas. Oh, the mischief that transpires in that sleepy little town!

On the verge of a bloody and catastrophic defeat, a lone surviving robot tech risks life and limb to maneuver to the frontlines and activate an army of machines. Though these metallic monsters have failed in the past, this time their success would be utter and complete. Too complete. These machines are harbingers of global apocalypse and genocide. Be careful what you wish for, because not all is fair in love and war.

Portentously born, his is a dark history of shining nobility and blazing empire. His heritage long since withered pitifully beneath shadows of boastful legend and shades of neglectful disregard, he will claim the familial patriarchy many years before his dying grandfather can fully prepare him for its dangers and demands. Upon ascension and despite his lack of an inherited powerbase, he must somehow regenerate neglected family fortunes or perish violently with his bloodline. Throughout these travails, ominous and disturbing, a mysterious female specter will stalk his childhood with all the ...

One morning on a vacation with this extended family, all bound to watch the patriarch run his first marathon, Mortimer witnesses a terrible crime. In the intervening minutes, a small child’s fate hangs on his capacity to sprint. He will risk everything in his old age to set things straight! He’s no hero. He's retired and has nothing better to do. Run, daddy, run!

Dire questions inevitably linger when someone disappears from a troubled marriage… from a troubled life… from the entire world. When Efren Sinclair’s wife takes a permanent vacation from their comfortable existence, all eyes turn to him, accusatory and condemning. Everyone is certain he murdered her. Nobody believes the ‘woman’ calling his children each night before bedtime is Leah Sinclair. Instead, his family and friends suspect her husband has alibied himself with an industrial grade Live-Jack, an artificially intelligent system capable of passing the forensic Turing Test for ...

Has Earth been visited by extraterrestrials? Yes. They live among us today. They watch us every moment of our lives with one intensely unwavering focus: to maintain the secrecy of their presence. Their surveillance technology is unimaginable. Their control is absolute. Yet, nothing is perfect. Through the years, a few clever people have learned the truth, but this knowledge invariably bears an extreme cost: keep the secret and survive or speak the truth and die. A handful of inquisitive men and women have discovered the extraterrestrial presence among us. Those smart enough to keep the ...

His nickname at work, where his colleagues avoid him like a plague, is "Mr. Accident". Alongside a lonely stretch of road on his way home one evening, he earns his reputation once again. While he sits with a dying youth trapped inside an overturned and crumpled automobile, Mr. Accident tells the boy how he earned his reputation. His is a sordid tale of endless cacophony and disaster, and death follows Mr. Accident like a shadow. Today, he earns his nickname with flare. If you should cross paths with Mr. Accident, beware.

In the aftermath of a genocidal galactic invasion, a remotely isolated colony cut off from all sources of resupply must devise a desperate plan to save themselves from certain annihilation. With their last reserves of fuel and determination, they salvage and resurrect a centuries-outmoded spacecraft named Titan, providing it with a skeleton crew consisting of three novice young men led by two sage combat veterans. Their best hope for success resides in the ship’s volunteer captain, Paladin, a genetically modified warrior descended from an elite race of martial experts. Cold, hard, and ...

On Friday of Easter weekend in Juglan, Texas, many strange events distract from the festivities. Telephone service is sporadic and failing. Fires burn out of control. Police services are nonexistent. The dead and the dying accumulate on the streets. Before the village’s clocktower chimes midnight, many of its citizens will perish and the city itself will lie in flaming ruins. This is the terrible revenge of Nelson Sedgewick. For years preceding this heinous act he has brooded within the ramshackle ruins of his lifelong obsession, his self-styled “Animal Emporium and Family Fun Circus”...

He was an enigma and a genius. He was perhaps the greatest chess strategist of all time. Unable to relate to his fellow human beings, he relied upon his pieces in rank and file for all his companionship and comfort. Though their friendship is decidedly one-sided, his long-suffering assistant tells how his mad genius would lead the nation out of the most costly and deadly war ever waged between men. The bloodiest conflict in history was in an endless state of stalemate. Only a mad genius could save humankind from itself, but the price for victory might be too high to pay.

During the summer of 1823, fortune called from the frontier of North America’s Great Plains. Alternately rowing or tromping along the Missouri River from Saint Louis through Fort Mandan and then beyond to Fort Henry and the Upper Missouri Breaks, countless traders gambled their lives to exploit the bounty of an untamed wilderness. All dreamed of easy profits. Through a hundred years, a plague of such interlopers had traveled there to procure beaver, mink and marten pelts via trap or trade. Herds of buffalo perished to feed them. Whole populations uprooted to serve them. Virulent diseases ...

In a dystopian, apocalyptic future, he is the quintessential survivalist, a heartless loner. The only things that stand between him and death each day are his maxims. He relies on them to manage the violence inherent within a world gone mad, and they are as unforgiving as his soul. Nothing he witnesses or does can bend or break them, until a single unwilling act of kindness alters his philosophy and his outlook with the same stroke of mercy. His maxims keep him alive in a world of harm, no matter the cost or the consequence to those around him. Then she comes along.

To be certain, there are bad men in the world, but for every fistful of male villains there exists a shrewd woman to corrupt and torment them. She is the spider at the center of a web, and they have come to struggle violently in her traps. He's as loving and caring as a Gaboon viper. She’s as gracious and hospitable as a bristling spider. Choose your friends carefully.

When they come to cut her out of her third-floor apartment bedroom, a crowd gathers to point and laugh. A twelve-hundred-pound woman is not without recourse, however, and they underestimate her deranged temperament to their own detriment. Before they get her to the hospital, she will leave the entire town in ruins. She is a mighty big woman originally blessed with the patient, loving disposition of a child. Years of merciless, relentless torment have purged all semblance of compassion from her heart now, and she has grown weary of the laughter. Be warned. Beware!