Xenowealth: A Collection
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
High concept, adventurous science fiction stories featuring the beloved characters and settings from Tobias S. Buckell’s Xenowealth novels.
Enjoy this fast-paced ride through a universe that has been many years in the making, accessible to both fans of Buckell’s Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin and Sly Mongoose novels as well as first time readers. Xenowealth: A Collection includes stories like:
-The Fish Merchant: a glimpse at what first contact might be like from the perspective of those who will be battered by the fallout and geopolitical posturing. First published in one of science fiction’s largest magazines and translated into multiple languages.
-Resistance: what happens when we hand over all our decision-making to algorithms and artificial intelligence? Can we let them vote for us? Should we?
-Necahual: an invading empire finds that not all is as it seems when it lands and gets a lesson about what both past and current occupation means.
-and including Ratcatcher, an all-new Xenowealth story written just for this collection.
Table of Contents
The Fish Merchant (first published in SCIENCE FICTION AGE)
Manumission (first published in BAEN'S UNIVERSE)
Resistance (first published in anthology SEEDS OF CHANGE)
A Cold Heart (first published in anthology UPGRADED)
The Loa (new to this collection)
Necahual (first published in CLARKESWORLD MAGAZINE)
Placa del Fuego (first published in CLARKESWORLD MAGAZINE)
The Rydr Express (first published in anthology THE NEW HERO II)
Ratcatcher (new to this collection!)
How the Xenowealth Came to Be
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fans curious about the background of Buckell's Xenowealth tetralogy (lastly The Apocalypse Ocean) have crowdfunded this collection of nine glimpses into an exciting future. First, technologically superior aliens "pacified" Earth and brought it into the Benevolent Satrapy, a tightly controlled empire of 48 worlds. Then, rebels whom the aliens had scattered through the stars established the totalitarian League and plotted to exclude or else exterminate their masters. Finally, the Xenowealth evolved into a system that would let humans and aliens live together. Most of these stories feature Pepper, a cybernetically enhanced mercenary who usually intervenes with a maximum of deadly force whenever he imagines human values are threatened. Sometimes he fights cruel alien monsters, and sometimes men whose obsessions have made them even more dangerous. Buckell draws on his experiences growing up in the Caribbean to effectively describe what life feels like for powerless people at the fringes of massive events, and these taut but thoughtful scenes of the human race's uncertain progress reward careful reading. (BookLife)